THE JOINING: The Cycle of the Shards Book One
Chapter 10

The acceleration of the hopper slowed as the ship neared its destination. Critock couldn’t help but feel a little nervousness. Bounty Hunting wasn’t as fun or interesting as this type of thing, but it was safer, and there was significantly less at stake. But he did not allow himself thoughts of failure. He had a job to do, and for the first time in several hundred cycles, he had a good partner alongside him he could count on.

Every ounce of courage and confidence that Tomkari had gained during the campaign in the storm had ebbed and now he was back to worrying about the mission. While he knew that Earth didn’t have any kind of dangers that were in any way comparable to what they had just went through on the gas planet, he would still rather avoid any kind of fighting. He hoped that he wouldn’t have to do much more, and just keep the main part of the mission to Critock, who he noticed was now looking at him as the craft was about to hit the atmosphere of Earth. “You ready?”

“Ready as we can be, I guess. Same plan?”

“Same plan.” They were close enough to the planet for Critock to adjust the screen to see the actual landscape where they were set to land. As they had hoped, the surrounding area around the forest was as close to deserted as you could get. Critock smiled, it was about time something was going his way.

As he thought that, or perhaps because he thought that, the ship was suddenly rocked with a sudden jolt, sending Critock to the ground and Tomkari spiraling through the air. As Critock raised his head from the ground, a series of loud whooping alarms started going off throughout the ship.

“WHAT WAS THAT?” Tomkari yelled over the alarms, while Critock was picking himself off the floor and jumping to the front screen.

“Hold on…Sensors still down, lets go visual…” He tapped a few times, and the screen changed to the rear view of the vessel. Immediately his eyes went wide as he saw the lead pirate’s vessel, slightly damaged with one wing trailing sparks, bearing down upon them. Critock cursed and Tomkari yelled, and a volley of shots struck the vessel. The ship began spiraling down towards Earth, being pulled into the planet’s gravity.

“We’ve lost stabilizers and all forward control, and our engines are history! I can’t get attitude control back!” Critock called out. Thinking quickly, he went to the side compartment, tapped, and it slid open. As consoles were blowing out sparks and turning on and off, he knew his ship was dying as it was going through the planet’s heat shield, but at least this door still worked. From within it, he retrieved the Sword of Kon. He quickly tossed it to Tomkari. “HERE!” He yelled, and the wisp barely had time to attach it to himself using a portion of his energy. As a white glow enveloped the sword and it hung in mid air below the wisp, he just looked at Critock, confused and panicked enough to not be able to form words.

“WE HAVE TO GO. WE HAVE TO GO RIGHT NOW. FOLLOW MY LEAD.” He turned, but Tomkari was frozen to the air. Whether it was by fear, or just being overwhelmed by being able to hold on to the sword that he had idolized for so long, Critock couldn’t be sure, but either way, there was no time to waste. As he saw the resilient pirate moving back into position and preparing to fire, he finished. “TRUST ME.”

The bright flash in the sky caught both Kyle’s and Mr. Phelps’ attention for a moment. Assuming that it was just the sun reflecting off of a plane or some other instance that would cause no reason for concern, the two went back to their respective pursuits; Phelps attempting to teach, and Kyle attempting to learn how to just skip over the rest of the day, or at least clear out the rest of his brain so he wouldn’t overthink about everything. He started pressing his pencil to the desk point first without realizing it. The thoughts once again invaded his head. No longer was there any chance of avoiding Brian today. In one period, his fate was sealed. He accidentally caught the eye of Travis, who smirked and winked at him. He averted his eyes, but he must have pressed down harder on the pencil lead because it suddenly snapped. Kyle sighed as he looked at the broken piece of lead on the desk. He hadn’t had a chance to pick up another pencil or pen on his breaks, and the pencil sharpener was on the other side of both Travis and Melissa. Gripping the pencil tightly, he mentally prepared himself to get out of his seat and make the journey.

The hopper exploded in a blaze of yellow and red after the last volley of shots had struck the leftmost engine. The influx of energy had completely overloaded every system on the ship, and in microseconds the resulting explosion had rendered molten every piece of metal that the hopper had contained. The explosion quickly faded in air to a large puff of white smoke, and out of this smoke flew two white wisps, one with a sword much larger than itself, and another one, a slightly brighter color. The two wisps flew alongside each other, and the brighter one called out.

“Do you trust me now?” Critock practically sang. The act of changing form never seemed to be one that should be done quickly, but desperate times called for desperate measures, and immediately after calling for Tomkari to trust in him, he had instantly changed, his body almost becoming pure white, before folding in upon itself and morphing into his soul form. While he had no face to show it, he was exhilarated from the adrenaline that the near escape had caused, and was hoping to carry that all the way down.

“Not exactly the plan, was it?” Tomkari was similarly exhilarated, though still so scared that he could barely move. Immediately after Critock had changed, he had flown to the front of the ship. Tomkari knew to follow, and when the shots hit the engine, the two moved forward as quickly as they could. The resulting explosion had drove both of them forward, but as they no longer had any bodies or any internal organs to be harmed, they had been pushed harmlessly out of the destruction. “What do we do now?”

“Divide and conquer. You take the sword, stash it somewhere safe, I’ll get it after. I’m gonna do a direct join on the run.”

“Isn’t that exposing yourself a bit much?”

“Can’t be helped! We need to get ourselves set before that pirate makes his next move! There’s no time to slow down!”

“Right. Okay, there’s a mid-day meal in about half of an hou…in just a little while. I’ll meet you there!”

“Ok, I’ve got it! See you down there!” The two wisps split off slightly, each using their quickly memorized geography to navigate. From above, Critock could see the school, its brick two story décor standing next to a smaller road, off a major throughway. He could see the vehicles on the road, and thought it quaint that the traffic was contained on the roads instead of automated sky lanes. Sighing at the primitive nature of the planet and wondering what else he was going to have to deal with today, Critock rushed down towards the school. He noticed that in his spirit form, his vision was far better than it had been, and he could see down into the school, in fact into the very window where his target was. He mentally mapped out his trajectory, as any attempt to slow down would leave him well off the mark and losing precious time. He noted the layout of the room, the location of his target, as well as one of the children heading towards the window that thankfully was open, and made a slight course correction.

Every step now seemed like a mile as Kyle stood up from his desk and headed towards the pencil sharpener. He averted his gaze from Brian’s friends, and chose instead to keep his head high. Why should he put his head down? They’ve been in this same grade for at least two years, and even at his worst he couldn’t see where he wouldn’t move up. He didn’t normally feel like he was above people, and he knew he didn’t know their home life or situation, but considering the way they alongside Brian had treated him why shouldn’t he feel a little bit superior! He held his head high, which unfortunately allowed Melissa to stick a foot out, catching Kyle in the ankle. With out any warning he stumbled and fell hard to the ground right in front of the sharpener, which immediately caused a outburst of laughter from the immediate surroundings, Melissa and Travis louder than anyone. The sudden noise caused Phelps to pause in the middle of a sentence about the orbit of Pluto to see Kyle on the floor, pushing himself up slowly. “Everything okay over there, Kyle?” He asked concerned, which caused another bout of laughing from a few tactless individuals.

Refusing to give his detractors the satisfaction of knowing he was in pain, he just uttered “I’m fine.” As he began to get up.

Critock was trying to figure out the angles with the student in the way when suddenly he dropped out of sight. He thanked anyone that was listening, Gods or the Five or whomever, as he made his final push. He mentally prepared himself for a joining. He saw his target, and pushed himself to fly as fast as he could towards him. The join would be at high speed and it would be quick. He hoped that the negotiation would be just as quick; he may have to come up with some kind of an explanation to get away from the students quickly. Maybe it’d be simpler than he thought, maybe someone in that room could be Pt’ron and this whole thing would be over in a matter of minutes! He allowed himself some last thoughts as he rushed in.

Kyle finally got to his feet, using a nearby desk of a sympathetic classmate for support. It could not have been timed better, or worse, if he had planned it. The instant that Kyle stood up was the moment that Critock had hit the point of no return. He had enough time to see the boy stand up, and he could not change direction quickly enough with the velocity that he had reached. He mentally cursed louder than he ever had without uttering a word as his spirit form and Kyle’s body met. Kyle literally never knew what hit him as he was standing away from the window, and the only thing that anyone else saw was a bright flash that they mostly attributed to the sun reflecting off of something else in the room.

As soon as Critock hit him, full in the back, the joining began. Instantly Kyle went flying forward as though he had been tripped again, and landed face down in the middle of the room. This time only Travis and Melissa were laughing, as it looked like something had seriously hurt him. Phelps’s face was red and angry as he yelled, understandably thinking it was the two bullies that had taken him back down. “What is the matter with the both of you?” Both of them put their hands up, as confused as anyone else in the room, though their innocence was no matter to Mr. Phelps, who mentally already had placed the two of them in the principal’s office. But that could wait. As the classroom went silent, he turned to the boy on the floor, who had both hands on the ground, trying to stand up, but was twitching curiously. “Kyle?”

Kyle was raising himself from the floor as best he could, but he found it difficult. He felt like someone had stabbed him in the back very quickly, and then pushed him. He blacked out for just a moment, and now that he had come to he felt very wrong. His body was sluggish, his vision was slightly blurry and almost seemed like everything was farther away than it should be, and he didn’t recognize half the words his internal dialogue were saying. Almost like a loud clicking in his ears. He heard Mr. Phelps calling his name, and at the same time felt like he was going to throw up. He knew, even with his strangely fuzzy mind, that he needed to get out of the room quickly. Regardless of what else was going on, he didn’t think he could live down the humiliation of having fallen over twice, and then throwing up right in the center of the classroom. He looked at his teacher pleadingly, and asked a one word question.

“Bathroom?”

Phelps nodded slowly, and Kyle stood up as quickly as his body would allow him. He felt a blast of energy from every pore in his body, as though he had been given a shot of adrenaline, and he bolted. He almost burst through the classroom door, and began to head for the Men’s room farthest away from the classrooms, one that hopefully would be deserted at this early part of this class period. He felt sore suddenly, but still with an urge to vomit, and he walked as quickly as he dared, lest some hall patrol or teacher replace him. He had left so quickly he hadn’t had time to grab a hall pass, and if anyone saw him at this point he was likely to just end up throwing up on them, or just plain passing out. He didn’t know what was happening to him, he didn’t know much about his health other than he was okay his last physical a year ago. Hopefully it was just some kind of spasm or something. He’d go to the nurse after he got out of the bathroom and everything would be fine. Hell, maybe he’d even get out of school and dodge the bullet that was his confrontation with Brian Boyd altogether! The closer he walked to the bathroom though the more he doubted everything was fine. Everything on him hurt and was tingling and nothing was making sense in his own head anymore.

Kyle pushed through the bathroom door and quickly crouched to check for any feet in the stalls. None there, and nobody at the urinals either. His energy wearing off, he stumbled to the mirrors, and looked at himself. He was shocked at what he saw. His eyes seemed to be changing color back and forth from his standard blue over to a orange color over and over, the irises seemed to be arcing blue streaks of electricity. Indeed, he now saw those same streaks, albeit larger, crossing over his skin, jolting out of his fingers. He turned on a faucet to splash himself with water and looked at himself with amazement as the strange clicking inside his head seemed to become English.

“Ka-Ki-Kr...Calm down! Calm down! This is normal. You are okay! We’re going to be okay! YOU’RE OKAY!”

Kyle put his hands over his ears. Was this what going mad felt like? He always heard people talk about hearing voices, was this actually happening to him?

His hands didn’t blot out the voice. “This is a joining. It’s normal. I’m from another planet. Every bit of your DNA is being rewritten to include new information. You’re going to be ok, please don’t panic. This next bit is a bit rough...”

The voice was suddenly replaced by a piercing loud squeal, terrible in his ears and it seemed to be coming from inside his head. He felt his stomach lurch, and he fell backwards into a parallel toilet stall. As his body started to refuse to obey his commands, he flailed an arm around, knocking closed the stall door. His last thought alone was that he hoped no-one was going to come in to see whatever was about to happen take place.

From the outside of the stall, it looked like there was an electrical storm happening right behind the door. Suddenly big blue electric streaks began emanating from the stall, increasing in intensity and size until suddenly they seemed to fold back in on themselves, drawing back in to their source. There was a bright flash of light then from behind the door, and a powerful force which pushed back the centers of the walls around the stall and the stall door itself. After that, everything was quiet. The sudden heat from the electric display had fogged up the mirrors, there was a running faucet, and one particular stall was all but destroyed from the awesome display, but nobody came running in to see what was going on, for in the one instance of actually good timing that had happened thus far this day nobody was close enough to the bathroom to notice anything out of the ordinary. The closest classroom had heard a sound similar to a far away ‘thump’, but that was as close as it came.

Slowly, the stall door opened. Slowly, cautiously, Kyle emerged. He held on to the small wall that met the door, and then pushed himself across to the sink. As he reached it, he placed both hands on the sink itself and looked down into the basin, as though he was about to throw up. Instead of vomiting, however, he looked up at the fog-covered mirror, and lifted a hand to wipe it off. The hand slowly moved revealing Kyle’s face.

“Oh no. Ohhh no.”

Critock looked through his eyes and saw Kyle looking back at him through the mirror. He blinked, Kyle blinked instantaneously. He had complete control over his body. He heard a small yelling voice from the back of his brain.

“WHEREAMILETMEOUTLETMEOUT!” The voice was almost incoherent. Critock put Kyle’s hands in his hair and took a couple steps back. How could this have happened? He had his target in his sights! It was supposed to be the teacher, not some boy! He started breathing faster, and he felt his control slipping. His thoughts were intermingling with the boy’s, and the two languages were becoming a mixture of nonsense that he had to sort through. He had to fight his own base instincts of panic as well. How could this have happened! What had gone wrong! After a few moments he realized that his thoughts were not in the guttural clicking of the Marconian language, and instead were in a dialect and voice he was unfamiliar with. With a start he realized it was the boy’s. He was thinking his thoughts but in the boy’s voice. Almost without realizing it, he had overtaken the forward consciousness of…Kyle. His name was Kyle Edison. Okay, that was a start. The screaming had ebbed somewhat, becoming more of a dull background voice than a ringing in his ears, but Critock didn’t know enough about joining to know if that was because the boy was wearing himself out or if he was fading farther and farther away. He moved his mouth experimentally, watching himself in the mirror, silently forming words in a language he didn’t understand. There was some tingling in the body, ‘his’ body, that wasn’t exactly pleasant, and his reaction time wasn’t where it usually was, but he could move the muscles, and while the boy was still protesting the joining greatly it seemed that either he was allowing Critock access to the body or he simply didn’t know how to stop him. He glanced at the door, marveling that the simple act of moving the eyeballs was a feat unto itself. Satisfied that no one was coming in, he looked back at the mirror, and took a deep breath. Every action, including breathing, was now becoming easier to him, and he assumed that soon he would not even hear the dwindling yelling of the understandably scared child. He knew he had to try to calm the boy before he could even begin to deal with the situation and try to replace a way out of it. In a day, if he was somehow still able to locate Pt’ron and the Shards and deal with that in his diminished state, he would be gone, but the boy would remain.

Once the joining had ended and Critock and Kyle were two different individuals again, Critock’s memories would remain with the boy. While he had never had personal experience with the aftereffects of a joining on a primitive species, he had both read and heard that it could have a significant impact on the joinee. For the most part, joinees would remember nothing, their brain automatically repressing the incident to protect their sanity. Sometimes, the brain just couldn’t handle it, and even after joining would completely shut down, rendering the joinee a vegetable. In very rare circumstances, the joinee would remain lucid after the incident and also remember everything that happened and retain all knowledge that the joiner possessed. This typically only happened if the joiner and the joinee had maintained a good repartee during the joining itself. This is what Critock was hoping for. With his knowledge the boy could do great things for this world, and perhaps be a part of bringing it out of the dark atomic ages that Earth was currently in. At the very least it would assuage his conscience a bit. Even though it was the boy’s own fault for standing up when he did, he could not have possibly known what was about to transpire.

The voice was still dwindling, and Critock blinked again, and found he could do it effortlessly. The diminished optical ability was a little hard to get used to, but everything else was progressing well. He took this opportunity to try and speak to the boy, and by speaking out loud to test his command of the vocal cord, muscles and tongue. “Kyle. Kyle, can you hear me. Please listen to me.”

The screaming and yelling had stopped, and Critock hoped that this meant that the boy would listen to reason. “If you look through your memories, you can tell things are different. There’s two thousand years of new information in there.” The fact that he was able to rattle off Earth timeframes easily while just a short time ago he would have chastised Tomkari didn’t escape him. “You can access it, take your time. I’m from another planet. I’m an alien, but I’m not here to destroy or take over anything, do not be scared of me. I’m here to stop a very bad person from destroying the world.” He decided to dumb down his mission as much as possible. If the boy wanted the facts, he could go looking for them. “I accidentally took over your body, I was trying to get to the teacher when you stood up. I’m sorry, I couldn’t stop it.”

There was a small answer, very far away. “Get out.”

Critock sighed. This wasn’t going well at all. “I wish I could. My species is able to do incredible things, but we’re still limited. If I extracted myself from your body right now, I would be left in a weakened state, and I’d be unable to work to the best of my abilities. That could mean that this school and everyone in it, to say nothing of the rest of the world, would die. My world would too, Kyle. I give you my word, in a little over a day, I will get out. If you can hold it together until then, you might get to keep some of my memories. You can use those to be an incredible human. Your life will change, you’ll no longer have a need for what this school can provide, you’ll be far above anyone else on this entire planet. What do you say?”

There was a beat, and he was met with a rush of images. A larger boy with an angry scowl. A red-headed girl. A few other faces, none of which clear enough to pick out. An older man sitting at a table eating some sort of noodles. Then a small voice again that called from out of the darkness, so slight now that Critock had to strain to hear him.

“Get out.”

Critock sighed as the boy went silent. At least the yelling had stopped. Confused anger had been replaced with a silent seething, and that was better than nothing, at least for his own sanity. With that taken care of for the time being, though not resolved, Critock allowed his thoughts to turn to a more pressing issue. Namely, what was he going to do? Every plan that they had come up with on the way here, everything that Qua’roti Alpha had said, it was all now out the window. The teacher was almost perfect. He had access, he was already above the students so any additional questions would not seem out of the ordinary, the plan would have worked. Now? Now he was just one of the crowd. It was a minor miracle that the kid wasn’t Pt’ron in the first place! A quick glance at Kyle’s memories and self quickly made him realize that this was one of the last students suitable for this sort of subterfuge. He wasn’t anyone that anyone would listen to, there was no opportunity to use any kind of influence because there just plain wasn’t any. He had friends but none of them were in any kind of power. He went over everyone in his mind. If he stretched, he supposed that the one called Daniel might be of use. He didn’t know enough about what went on in a school office to know if there was any access that could be gained. The rest were just fairly normal, which was fine. The red-headed girl…Shanna? She knew something of computers. That might be useful. He noticed that when he thought about the girl, Kyle seemed to be trying to push back his probes, as though he was actively trying to prevent replaceing out more about her. It wasn’t anything that Critock couldn’t push past, but he let it go for now. The kid was mad enough, he didn’t want to turn what was already one of the worst joinings he had ever heard of into a full blown war.

There was a sudden sharp pain from his left wrist, and he winced. He looked at it to see a single silver band seem to come through the skin and stop, looking like a bracelet more than anything else. Critock remembered the one part of the plan he still could accomplish, and also realized he could still try and salvage this. He tapped it and then held the wrist up to his mouth. “This is Critock. I have landed, but there’s an issue. The joining went wrong.”

There was silence, and then the voice of Qua’roti Alpha came through the bracelet. “We cannot send further support, Critock. The Military Corps has taken further control of the operation. The timetable cannot be moved.”

Critock sighed as he paced back and forth. “Alpha, I didn’t join with the target. There was an accidental joining. Repeat, Accidental. We need assistance.”

It was quiet for a moment, and Critock imagined the head of the Religious clique of Marconia arguing with the head of the Military. He half wondered how one bad decision several hundred cycles…years…ago could have led to all of this. The voice came back on suddenly, and shortly.

“No withdrawal until the Shards and Pt’ron have been destroyed. I’m sorry Critock, you will have to make do. You and Tomkari are on your own.”

Critock let out a guttural Marconian curse and stopped as he realized the Human vocal cords were not meant for such speech. It physically hurt him to curse. He searched for a word in the English vocabulary found in Kyle’s mind that would fit his current mood and he used it, over and over again. Obviously contacting Alpha further wasn’t going to bear fruit. The last thing that he had heard was true.

They were on their own.