Going home part 2
When Kira and I were children, she had always been better at making bad situations annoying. Before the accident, before tails and fangs and classifications entered our lives, she had been the kind of little sister who stole exactly one fry from my plate even when she had her own, then denied it while chewing. She borrowed tools without asking, returned them to the wrong drawer and somehow acted offended when I noticed. When we raced bicycles down the farm road, she cheated by cutting across the grass, and when I pointed that out she claimed shortcuts were a form of intelligence. Then she became a lamia at ten and discovered an entirely new category of ways to irritate me.
The ears had been my contribution. Her new pointed ears fascinated eleven-year-old me, which meant I touched them constantly despite being told not to. I called her elf snake, snake elf and several variations that weren't nearly as clever as I believed at the time. Kira eventually solved the problem by biting my wrist with freshly developed paralysis venom, leaving me conscious and unable to move for almost two hours while she drew a mustache, eyebrows, spiders and the word NERD across my face in marker.
Mom took her markers away for a month. I continued touching the ears for the next ten years. Some wars are inherited.
That history was probably why seeing Kira unconscious in the back of a stolen GHCA truck felt more normal than anything else that had happened that night. I drove east with both hands on the wheel while Six rode in the open backpack on the passenger seat. Kira occupied almost the entire rear compartment, her orange tail packed into coils that shifted every time I hit a rough patch in the road. The sedatives had turned her into several hundred kilograms of softly snoring inconvenience.
Behind us, Arcadia disappeared between the hills. For about thirty seconds. Then the night lit up. A flare rose above the trees, followed by another, and through the rearview mirror I saw searchlights snap toward the facility. Radio traffic burst from the truck's dashboard in overlapping voices while I kept driving.
Radio: "Surface units, confirm visual breach! Confirm visual breach!"
Static. Then shouting.
Radio: "Multiple hostiles outside! Repeat, organisms have reached the surface!"
I tightened my hands around the steering wheel. They had gotten out. Not just the smaller ones crawling through maintenance ducts anymore. The swarm had reached open ground. Another voice cut through the radio.
Radio: "All units maintain withdrawal corridor. Do not engage without support. Air assets are inbound."
The road ahead suddenly filled with headlights. For one unpleasant second I thought somebody had already decided to stop me. Then the first convoy roared past in the opposite direction. Armored GHCA vehicles, military trucks and two heavy carriers came around the bend fast enough to throw dust across my windshield. Nobody even slowed for the utility truck going the other way. Whatever registration number was painted on the side apparently looked official enough from a distance, and everyone inside those vehicles was considerably more interested in the S-Class biological disaster ahead of them than the blonde woman quietly stealing government property away from it. I leaned toward the windshield as another line of vehicles passed.
Leona: "Don't mind me."
Six peeked farther out of the bag.
Leona: "We are legitimate government employees."
The drone remained silent.
Leona: "Your confidence is inspiring."
Something moved behind me. A long, miserable groan came from the rear compartment.
Kira: "...nnngh."
I glanced into the mirror. One red eye had opened. Barely.
Leona: "Morning."
Kira's eye drifted toward the ceiling. Then toward the side wall. Then, after a lengthy negotiation with consciousness, toward me.
Kira: "...truck."
Leona: "Excellent. Object recognition survived."
Her brow furrowed.
Kira: "Head... soup."
Leona: "You got tranquilized."
Kira considered that information with extraordinary seriousness.
Kira: "...rude."
I laughed.
Leona: "You apparently required enough tranquilizer to sedate a small zoo."
Kira: "Won."
Leona: "You are unconscious in the back of a stolen truck."
A pause.
Kira: "...tactical nap."
There she was.
Another convoy passed us, this one carrying personnel in sealed armor. A helicopter crossed overhead toward Arcadia, followed moments later by a second aircraft farther north. The Authority wasn't running anymore. It was bringing everything it could find toward the hole we'd just crawled out of. Kira tried to lift her head. It rose perhaps five centimeters before dropping back onto a coil of her own tail.
Kira: "Where... bunny?"
My smile faded for half a second. Then I realized. She still hadn't recognized me despite knowing my voice. Of course she hadn't. Well she is still heavily drugged the sounds must be funny and the last time Kira had properly seen her sister, I had been one meter tall, white-furred, red-eyed and equipped with rabbit ears large enough to announce my emotional state from another room.
The woman driving the truck had blonde hair. Blue eyes. Human ears. Human proportions. I looked at her through the rearview mirror.
Leona: "Turn your head a little."
Kira squinted at me.
Kira: "Why?"
Leona: "Just look."
She did. Slowly. Her eyes wandered over my face, stopped at my hair, moved toward where rabbit ears should have been and returned to my eyes. Her expression became wonderfully confused.
Kira: "...Leona?"
I grinned.
Leona: "Hi."
Kira stared. Her mouth opened. Closed. Opened again.
Kira: "You got... tall."
Leona: "Very observant."
Kira: "Your ears fell off."
Leona: "I got better."
She stared harder.
Kira: "You're... human."
There was enough emotion beneath the sedatives that the joke almost died. Almost.
Leona: "Mostly."
Kira's eyes traveled down what little of me she could see above the driver's seat, then narrowed with tremendous concentration.
Kira: "...boobs still same."
I looked at her through the mirror. Silence. Kira's mouth twitched. Even drugged half unconscious, she knew exactly what she'd done.
Leona: "I should leave you on the road."
Kira: "...medium."
Leona: "I hate you."
Kira: "Love you too."
I couldn't stop grinning. For several seconds the road, the stolen truck and the entire biological catastrophe behind us disappeared beneath something much older and simpler. My little sister was being an asshole. The universe was healing.
Then the radio crackled again.
Radio: "All regional units, containment perimeter has failed. Repeat, primary perimeter has failed. Hostile organisms dispersing from Arcadia site. Civil evacuation authorization requested for surrounding rural sectors."
My grin vanished. Kira noticed. Even sedated, she knew my face.
Kira: "...what?"
I watched another military vehicle race past us toward Arcadia.
Leona: "The spiders got out."
Her eyes sharpened slightly.
Kira: "Big one?"
Leona: "I don't know yet. The Matriarch's containment was almost gone when I left. Even if she's still underground, her brood is on the surface now."
Kira tried to push herself upright again and failed magnificently.
Kira: "...kill."
Leona: "Later."
Kira: "Kill now."
Leona: "You currently have the motor coordination of soup."
She considered that.
Kira: "...angry soup."
I almost smiled again, but the farmhouse was getting closer, and that meant Mom. Home. Animals. Everything we'd spent years accumulating because we thought the farm was a safe place to stay. It wasn't anymore. I pressed harder on the accelerator.
Leona: "We're going home, but we're not staying there."
Kira blinked slowly.
Leona: "We get Mom, whatever supplies we can load quickly, and then we go. Far. I don't care what the Authority says about containment. I saw what was under Arcadia and that wasn't pretty."
My eyes moved briefly toward the dark road behind us. I could still feel the faint pressure of the Matriarch somewhere at the edge of my thoughts. Not gone. Not sleeping. Coming.
Leona: "We're evacuating."