The cavalry charge through the Fakra installation obviously wound up in the cafeteria when I was the steed. I loved emptying out alien pantries, but I stopped shy of stealing someone's plate out from under them when I observed the food. Almost everything our Elusian-creation brothers nibbled on was in some kind of thick outer shell, from a fruit that they told me was called thyreia and an oyster-like mollusk they called yuaek. The intelligent design was obvious, soft interiors able to be accessed by their intended chitinous recipients.

"They break those with their mouths?!" I asked Corai.

The Elusian grinned. "You could too, Preston. In fact, I dare you to."

"You want me to hurt myself? I'm not a relationship expert, but that seems like a red flag. You're just like Mikri when he tried to put eggshells in the food he made! Lacerating my mouth like a cheese grater is fun for everyone, huh? Is tissue-sample parmesan what lights your fire and toots your chutes?"

"No cajones. You Solwegians punched through tanks, and you don't think your strength could pop a fruit shell?"

I stared at her, before grabbing a thyreia out of a basket. "God. Tell me you don't actually call us Solwegians."

"Of course not. We call you guinea pigs, my love."

"Ha ha. Yeah, that's funny…except I believe you."

I cracked the fruit with my back molars easily to prove a point, finding that my Sol teeth cut through that hard exterior like a mushy banana. I drank the bittersweet slurry inside—it seemed very utilitarian, packed with nutrients and having a bit of an aftertaste. My eyes locked with Corai's, finding silent encouragement to press the cracked shell to her gray lips and tip a bit of the liquid into her mouth. The Elusian made a face as she swallowed, like she didn't know how to feel about its flavor.

"It's no hot-fudge sundae with extra tangerines and almond-mint taffy, is it?" I prompted Corai.

The Elusian arched an eyebrow. "How could it be? You're dreaming of menu items that don't even exist."

"Have you watched me throwing things into my science-project bowls in the kitchen for my entire adult life? Anything edible, just sloshed together like saliva and toothpaste. How do you know it doesn't exist?"

Corai gave a playful smile. "Bet, then prove me wrong. If I give you a second date, you'll have to make it for me."

"If?!"

"Well, I do expect to see more than the cafeteria. No pressure."

I winced with indignation smoldering in my blackened eyes, before hurrying away from the food hall like my ass was on fire. The Fakra who were filling their bellies had been glaring at us, with several starting to get antsy and eager to confront us. It was likely a good thing that Corai had given me a flirtatious prompt to move on. Parading an Elusian around riled up the commonfolk, and honestly, I could remember my own anger at her when we first spoke face-to-face. I shared their hatred once.

I'm an obstinate son of a gun, and her ethereal personality brought me around. Seeing that she was different and on our side made me understand her. Surely the Fakra can learn to appreciate Corai as a good creator too, just like Mikri and I both did amid our anger.

I passed some secured rooms, where angry soldiers were posted and adamant not to let us pass. While I couldn't actually afford to piss them off now, for Sol's sake, I could do a little trolling. Setting Corai down for the moment, I walked up to the guards and lunged my hands toward them with a loud shout of "Boo!" My arms receded after they flinched and stumbled backward, satisfied that my feinted jab had spooked them. I figured they'd be nervous of what human hands could do.

I grinned, abruptly fake-jabbing at Corai in the same way. "RAWR!"

The Elusian didn't move an inch. "Goodness me. You are very frightening, Preston. I just might faint with terror. Promise to catch me if I do?"

"That seems like a second date kind of thing. I'm gonna need some assurances, but if you keep me around, I'll catch you as many times as you want."

"You drive a hard bargain. I suppose I…can't recycle you."

"You wouldn't want to. Tin cans recycle much better. Mikri—Mikri could reincarnate as a can of tuna that our cat will eat out of. You're a cat person; I can tell."

"I don't think I'd know if I was," Corai chuckled. "How can you 'tell?' Enlighten me."

"You float around at a distance and do your own thing."

Her laugh became heartier. "Just because I act feline in your eyes doesn't mean I want a cat. I like to be around lively, vivacious characters. I think I'd be more of a dog person."

"Counterpoint: pugs exist. That's what happens when humans try to engineer life; it's not good. Think a D-tier compressed head like the Fakra, but without any of the breathing or functioning."

One of the guards' heads snapped toward us, as he finally had enough and prowled in our direction. "Hey, dickhead, what the hell did you just say?"

"Uh, jan t'nai! Have a nice life!"

I scooped Corai back up into my arms and bolted away at top speed, leaving the angered Fakra in my dust. It came to my attention that there weren't a lot of soldiers wandering the hallways, and while of course most of their forces were handling Siam's invasion, there should be some stationed back here to generate foot traffic. That suggested that an event must be ongoing to occupy the others, perhaps signifying the occasion of getting back at their creators.

I tried to tap into the far sight that I'd wielded after stepping through that portal, but it didn't come up on command. That would've made it easier to find directions of where to go, like putting a big quest marker over their heads and seeing how far away it was. I had to look into that ability more, once Earth's science-nerd-humans were looped back into the picture. At any rate, my super speed made it easier to sweep the facility, until I heard voices and stepped into a theatre.

There's some kind of show going on in there! That'll be the perfect thing to sit in on with Corai—Fakra entertainment is totally new, and this'll give me the chance to take her somewhere noteworthy!

I crept through the half-open double doors and slid into a seat in the back row, hoping in the dim lighting we'd go unnoticed. Corai detached herself from me and observed the stage silently. The Fakra had a complicated puppet show ongoing, with some performers utilizing all four arms to give lifelike movements; I could see movement underneath the stage, with chitinous bodies cramped down there. The complex puppets also used some mechanical, animatronic parts to compliment the handcrafted elements.

The voice actors seemed to be separate from the puppeteers. They sat in a glass booth off to the side, with their bodies and faces hidden under colored robes. A spotlight focused on the specific voice actor when they had a line, which offered an option to observe this performance like an audiobook. With Fakra linguistics loaded into my nanites, I could see the glowing letters above the stage spelling out, "The Collapse." Judging by the verdant setpieces, and the presence of an Elusian puppet among Fakra likenesses, I inferred what was meant by this.

"This might not be a good play to watch—sorry. I don't want to remind you of the bad shit the Elusians did on our first date," I apologized to Corai, beginning to rise to leave.

Corai's eyes darkened. "It appears this show is almost at its end. I want to see this. I won't run from what we did to them; it's a cautionary tale of how we could easily treat humans. I must wrestle with…the horror of that."

The tale has been illicitly lifted; should you spot it on Amazon, report the violation.

"It's not your fault. You don't need to feel guilty for things you had nothing to do with! Making yourself miserable won't undo their suffering. There's no reason to blame you."

The Elusian's face contorted, struggling with something. "I must come clean to you about…my connection to them, later."

I startled, leaning back and recoiling in betrayed horror. Corai would never have…it was before her time, I thought! Had she coldly denied any missions to send them aid, to single-mindedly focus Elusian resources on cultivating us? Of course, I'd heard her admit before that she'd done nothing to help them, but I didn't blame her for only being able to fight for so much. If my beloved Watcher set them back in our name, that wasn't nothing. I just couldn't believe she would, after feeling her compassion, but what else could imbue her with guilt?

"We will never look back," the Elusian character's voice actor said in an icy voice. "Your entire kind are failures. Your project is shuttered. As we have given you everything, you are nothing without us. Whether you live or die—it is of no consequence. You are incapable of doing anything to give your pitiful lives any value."

A Fakra puppet groveled, begging. "What have we done? Why are you deserting us?"

"You breathed life into us. That can't mean nothing. Please forgive us. Let us prove ourselves. You can't just not care about us, we're…" a broken-sounding voice actor whimpered, on behalf of another Fakra character.

The Elusian puppet kicked the begging Fakra out of the way. "Worthless. Drown in your own waste and excess—remain on this world forevermore. It's fitting, since your entire experiment was a waste. That's all you were, just a throwaway contraption. You are no equals. You were lucky to have a second of our notice."

I can guess that Elusians are central antagonists in lots of Fakra media. The grays were cruel.

The Elusian figure was rocketed to the rafters by a pulley, yanked at high velocities off the puppeteer's hands. The lights above the stage dimmed, as sounds of fighting, begging, and shouting came from the voice actors. They flickered back on for a moment, and showed the greenery on the set having been quick-changed—it now withered. The puppets fought beside it, fighting for scraps of food. Their lavish technology laid rotting on the ground, falling into disrepair.

As the lights went out again, several seconds passed before a wall of flame danced across the stage and climbed up a building backdrop, consuming it. The city crumbled to black tar in that dim orange lighting, while the Fakra puppets looked to the rafters—bleeding, dying on stage—and begged for the Elusians to return. They were confused, unable to understand why they'd been cast aside. A pile of bodies climbed ever higher in the creepy lighting, until the voices had died. The corpses were all that was left.

When the curtain fell, I could hear muffled choking sounds next to me. I turned as the lights came up to see Corai weeping, and my hand shot to her back to comfort her. Whispers spread through the Fakra audience after the nearest spectators noticed us, gossiping among themselves at the sight of an Elusian watching their play and showing open grief. The last thing I'd wanted was to upset her, as much as it bothered me whatever secret she was hiding.

I'd always thought this Watcher was transparent, even about terrible events that didn't suit her cause; that was what inspired me to be forthcoming with her, about what I'd seen in the fifth dimension. Deciding not to have this conversation in front of agitated, angry Fakra, who'd just been reminded by this play of why they were fighting the Elusians, I herded Corai out of the auditorium. I checked over my shoulder that no one followed us, before moving over to a seating area that was tucked away.

"Learn something, Corai-svran?" Commander Velke walked slowly out from behind a corner, arms crossed. "Congratulations. It seems you do feel something when faced with how terrible your people are."

The Elusian pushed me back, as I placed her behind me protectively. "I'm sorry, Velke. They left you to die, and I cannot imagine how they slept at night. It bothers me that this hasn't bothered me before, but as the humans say, out of sight out of mind."

The Fakra tried to imitate a smirk with his rigid beak, managing to be a bit creepy. "I do see why Preston fell for you. We have romances about Elusians too, it's a popular genre. The one good Elusian who was banished, or hid away for a million years to try to break us out. Even who was captured on a follow-up visit and falls for us. I can understand why a human would fundamentally crave that."

"Corai is different from the others, Velke," I protested. "She really cares, and stands up for what she believes in: us. She was never a passive observer who could just leave! Among her people, she was one-of-a-kind, and that's a shame, because I wish you did have someone like her rally behind you."

"Ah, I know Corai is different. I heard what she said to the Justiciary; it was all over their newcasts when we landed on Suam," Velke sighed, pulling up a video clip in AR and hitting play.

Corai's voice in the recording was charged with anger, as she lambasted Justiciar Colban. "I think my feelings for them opened my eyes to how we treat people like playthings to be discarded. Is this the first time this assemblage has spoken the Fakra's name in a million years?!"

"Yes, I'm sure it was, Corai. You're an interesting one. You have morals, calling out their carelessness at a time when you could only have acted out of earnest belief," Velke murmured.

In the present, the Elusian's eyes dropped. "I do truly believe that you deserve better, and I'll never desert humans. We made the Fakra because we were bored and sought the impossible, and that was an unfair burden of expectation to place upon you. The others didn't care because your lives, in their eyes, were so far beneath them—they're so detached that they can turn compassion on and off. That is the truth. That doesn't mean I want this bloodshed, Velke. I sought peace."

"I know. Your goals are noble…especially for an Elusian." The Fakra commander, an expert in interrogation, leaned forward with intrigue gleaming in his red eyes. "I just find it curious why you react with such strong guilt, as if you played a personal hand in our abandonment. Did you?"

My heart lurched, terrified that Corai-svran might answer in the affirmative and shatter my beliefs in her. That might be more soul-crushing than when she found out about humanity's culpability in this all, since she'd seen no reason to distrust us personally. It had taken me a long time to let my guard down around an Elusian, to not blame her for every hardship humanity had endured before and after crossing The Gap. If my steadfast faith in her perspective and personality was shattered, I didn't know if our closeness could ever recover.

No, I have to trust in the person I know, just like I did in spite of my doubts when I busted her out of prison and told her the truth. Corai might also wish to discuss this privately, since I wouldn't be sure how Velke would handle anything controversial.

The Watcher's eyes were resolute. "No. Of course not."

"But something bothers you, when you're forced to look deeper at the Fakra's plight. Despite your morals, you wanted to justify what your people did to yourself, like you're protecting something, or someone. What stains your conscience?" Velke prodded.

"You don't have to answer that," I told Corai privately. "I'm sorry about how this outing has derailed. I wanted today to be special."

"It's fine, Preston. He deserves to know; as do you. I hope it won't sour your image of me, but somehow, I think you can understand having parents whose behavior shames you," the Elusian answered, and that hint of what bothered her released the constricting grip on my heart. I'd run away from and disowned a cruel family too, so I'd never judge anyone for who they were related to. "Commander, my father—a kind, gentle man that I admired and who…encouraged me to become a Watcher. To succeed where he'd failed. He was a Watcher on the Fakran experiment."

Velke seemed surprised, but didn't react with explosive anger like I would've expected. "I'm amazed that you would tell me. I knew the suffix -svran from the minute I heard it. I put the pieces together a while ago, so you can imagine why I wasn't your biggest admirer."

"Y'know, I remember you talking to me about sympathy not evening the score, Velke, but the last thing we want is to be 'hardened'; that's how you get like the Elusians. That's how you get to the point where you could leave an entire species to die," I interjected, recalling our conversation after my body swap. "Killing or removing them all doesn't need to be done. Corai treated her creations differently from her father, so why should she bear blame for what those dickwads did?"

"Because I did nothing to correct it. I wanted to believe that he had to have a good reason, but I never questioned it," Corai murmured. "I'm glad that Preston challenged my beliefs and opened my eyes to the…sapient cost of our actions. It shouldn't have taken him to see."

"You didn't need me though. It took you looking at what you already knew in your heart, and reflecting on what you did with so much more feeling for humanity. That's okay. No one wants to admit hard things about people they love."

Velke stiffened, as if reluctant to say his next words. "It's not your fault, Corai. You should be judged on account of your own actions, not those predicated by another. I reject your apology on these grounds—it is not yours to apologize for."

The Elusian smiled, and to the Fakra commander's surprise, she gave him a swift hug. "You were no failure, merely because your successes did not meet our definitions. Those harsh words have hung over you for a long time. I'm still sorry you were not loved the way our children should be. I will try to do better."

"Don't touch me," the Fakra snapped, pushing Corai away. "I…have an invasion to attend to. We'll leave for our diplomatic visit to Earth tomorrow. Excuse me."

Commander Velke hurried off with awkward coughs, and I grabbed Corai's hand with my own to give it an affectionate squeeze. It made me feel warm in my chest to be trusted with more about the Elusian and her past; I sought to know her in her entirety. That goal, however, definitely didn't fit within the confines of a first date. Deciding that was enough exploration for the day, I wandered back to quietly retire to our rooms.

There was a lot for humanity to be brought up to speed on, but maybe there was hope of gentling the Fakra commander. For now, I was glad that we'd been able to share a heartfelt moment together and build some trust.

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