Aleck gasped in pain as the white flashing lights from a high-energy beam grazed her cheek, creating an instant two-inch burning scar as the blood vessels were cauterized instantly. She didn’t stop. Aleck jumped through a broken grocery store window as shots whizzed past her. She hit the uneven pavement outside at a dead run. Glass crunched under her feet as she weaved in and out between the derelict buildings at top speed until the sound of the Sharlakar’s feet faded behind.

Gasping, with a burning stitch in her side, she hid behind a trash bin in silent terror, wishing her stomach would be quiet as it growled in hunger. She shivered as the chill of the Etheron winter night cut through her thin clothes. She looked up, wishing the two moons didn’t shine so bright. The only sounds she heard were that of distant Sharlakar transports patrolling the city and the slow dripping of a leaky pipe.

She breathed a sigh of relief. There were no sounds of following footsteps. She darted through the shadows of the back alley with tall broken skyscrapers looming over her. As she approached one of the taller buildings, She slid through the back door that was hanging on its hinge and headed to the stairwell. She picked her way carefully down broken, shaky stairs to the basement of the half-burned, abandoned building. Wails of a hungry baby came loudly from below.

"Shush Cara, Don’t cry, my beautiful angel." The words were sung in a whisper by Aleck’s brother Shem. An unwelcome tear snaked down his face. He looked up at Aleck with terror in his eyes.

Payton rocked the baby carrier back and forth. “Please shut up, Cara. If they hear….”

Aleck swung her school bag off her thin bony shoulders and got the formula and water bottles out. She handed one water bottle to her brothers, who took turns taking deep sips. Her hands shook hard. She struggled to get the formula into the bottle without wasting it. She glanced toward the stairwell and swallowed. “Two weeks. Oh, papa, Oh papa, where are you?

Finally, the bottle was made. Aleck tried to feed it to her baby sister, but the baby just spat it out. She rocked her hard. “Please, please stop crying.” Aleck cringed as she heard the pounding of many feet echoing down the stairwell. The efforts to quiet Cara had been in vain. The Sharlakar patrols had heard them.

Aleck put the baby in the baby pack quickly. She drew her energy beam and fired as Sharlakar poured in through the doors with gray skin and bloodshot eyes. For an eight-year-old, she was an excellent shot. Two Sharlakar hit the ground. One made a hole in the already rickety floor as he hit. Driven by terror, her five-year-old brothers fired their weapons with equal ferocity. Soon some of the Sharlakar reached Aleck and her brothers and knocked the guns out of their small hands. Aleck held her sister close. Her little brothers screamed and kicked the Sharlakar in vain. They were dragged into the deep rotten stench of the death camp transport vehicles.

Aleck awoke screaming from the memories and nightmares of the past. Shaking uncontrollably, she struck out blindly until the warm computer-ordered medicine pumped into her veins and calmed her. Numbness flooded in, and the terror that held her was pushed away to an invisible place in her mind.

Aleck curled up in the corner bed of the small medical room and stared blankly, with a tear-stained face, at the stark, sterile white wall. The sounds of the hospital echoed in her cybernetic ears. She could hear the cooks making lunch below, the scurrying of a bug across the floor, the sounds of patients crying or screaming, and the concerned mutters of doctors and nurses looking over charts.

She thought things would be better since the war ended on Etheron, a once bright green forest world. The rebellion finally forced the Sharlakar to abandon their attempts to invade the outer planets. General Wallock was “kind enough” to let her and her twin brothers go live with her Aunt Karla and Uncle Donny until he needed them again. But memories of the war and the General haunted her like a demonic ghost ever tormenting her mind. Sorrow upon sorrow tore at her, so much so that all her dreams were nightmares. Aleck's stomach turned violently as her tortured mind drifted the nightmarish memories of the General.

Aleck hid in terror. She watched the new girl’s, who Aleck had been playing with that morning just an hour before, bruised, bloodied, and broken, naked body get dumped outside the general's door in the underground base underneath the city of Carsen on Etheron. The little girl's face was fixed in a look of absolute horror, and blood streamed from every opening in her body. Aleck had never heard anyone scream like that before, not even in the death camps of the Sharlakar. She saw a soldier she had fought beside stumble out and puke in one corner. Aleck approached him. "What did he do to her?" She whispered, “And why? We were just running by and laughing. And what did he do to you?”

The soldier didn’t seem to see or hear Aleck. He looked up, staring at the wall with empty eyes. He grabbed a knife from his belt and tried to plunge it into his heart, only to have his hand turned away by the cyborg anti-suicide programming. "I can't even kill myself to prevent him from using me like that again!" The soldier screamed in horror.

Aleck's head jerked up with wide eyes as she felt an old withered hand grab her by her collar and drag her quickly away from the door as another withered hand went firmly over her mouth, silencing her. It was Colonel Mires, an old friend of Aleck’s parents. "Since they sent the general to ‘help’ us, we aren't free anymore." He hissed in her ear. Aleck looked up at him with confusion in her eyes. "Follow my directions, child, or you'll be the next one they drag out the door." Aleck swallowed.

The drugs she was on did not allow her to remain in her nightmare. Instead, her mind drifted to memories of her aunt and uncle’s home on the farm where, instead of the peace she had hoped for, she had found only nightmares of a bloody war that haunted her not only while Aleck slept at night but also while she was awake during the day. She could no longer tell what was real and what was not. She vaguely realized where she was. Her aunt and uncle, in desperation, took her to get help at a private clinic that not only had an excellent reputation but a willingness to work with a poor farmer’s salary.

She cracked open her eyes. She saw a doctor, two nurses, and a technician staring at the screen with fear on their faces as if a bomb had dropped in their midst. None of them were sure of how to handle it. "What the...”

“Oh no, that is not good.” Muttered one nurse.

Aleck could see the screen from where she was lying. The full-body scan images stood unmitigated before the medical team, revealing a nightmare of stubby body parts, which looked like the limbs had been ripped off the body. The shorn limbs were intermingled with robotic limbs that were so natural looking that only a scan could tell the difference. Aleck shook in dread. So now they knew. What would they do with her?

“If they find out we have her. If they think we even touched her programming...” The tech said, eyes wide with fear.

"I'll say this," said a rather plump older nurse, "Dead people don't cry, scream, and shake from nightmares. The line the government has been feeding us about the cyborg being emotionless and dead, with their brain used as a computer and their soul no longer being there, is a crock."

“So what can we do? Just hand her back to her aunt and uncle locked in nightmares? Look at her; she’s just a child.” stated a younger nurse who seemed ready to fight for Aleck. Was it possible? Could these people be willing to help her? The danger they would face...

“A child, no older than my little girl.” The tech closed his eyes and swallowed. “I’m scared, but to leave a child in her nightmares. I can’t...”

A small tear rolled down Aleck's cheek. She opened her mouth and then closed it, struggling to speak. What Should she plead with them for? Should she ask them to risk their lives and the lives of their families to save her from the nightmares? Or stay in the nightmares and know they were safe but face the consequences when the general found out she was no longer useful to him. Her fear of the General won.

She managed to croak out barely. “Help me!” A tall, stout man with gray hair, almost midnight black skin, and a build that suggested he had been an athlete in his youth walked towards her bed and touched her on the cheek.

“We will, child. I’m Dr. Bastion, and I don't care what the government says. I'm not going to turn a fourteen-year-old girl away.”

He turned to his team. “If anyone here doesn't want to be a part of this, quit now. I will write you a recommendation to another hospital and not hold it against you if you do. Though I will remind you if you report us, the government might still choose to have you executed because you saw the scan.”

No one left, even though they all knew the price if they were caught “reprogramming” a Borg.

“Aleck, tell us how you became a cyborg?” Dr. Bastion asked bluntly.

“The colony worlds that had survived the violent attacks and death camps of the Sharlakar used the cybernetic plants to save and rebuild survivors. Every single one of us are cyborgs, all with Borg codes that had been automatically pre-programmed into the small computers implanted in our brains. We used the factories on the outer worlds to keep from being completely wiped out.” She whispered, fighting the sleepiness from the drugs.

"Whatever happened out there, our government certainly didn't say anything about it.” Muttered the head nurse, who looked at Dr. Bastion expectedly. “What about her family?”

Dr. Bastion pulled up the phycological profile that her family had filled out. “Given their profiles, we can trust them with the truth. Call them into my office.”

………………………………………………………………….

Dr. Bastion went to hook up the latest memory imaging devices that would allow him to see what Aleck dreamt about. He attached the last cord to the video feed and watched her drift back into the world of dreams.

There was an explosion that shook the ship. The twins and Aleck left the Sharlakar ship at a dead run. A couple of soldiers ran closely behind them. Just then, a secondary blast destroyed the ship and threw them back about ten feet. The soldiers looked back at the rising smoke from the enemy ship. They blinked. Then they choked back laughter at the audacity of the handy work of the twins, who had set the bomb. The smoke rose in the shape of an offensive hand gesture. Aleck just rolled her eyes in irritation. It was a waste of time and resources. “The hell twin strike again!” laughed one of the soldiers. They all high-fived the twins.

“How many Sharlakar do you to have on your count now?”

Shem and Payton smirked. “More than all of you put together unless you include Aleck.”

Aleck glanced at her scanner and timer and glared at her brothers. “Shut up! You’re wasting time. We got a whole slew of Sharlakar coming over the hill.” A 3D tactical bubble emerged from the video link in Aleck's arm. She used her other hand to form a tactical plan. The soldiers watched in awe. The twins, who were almost as talented in tactics, sharpened the program up.

“Major, I see more coming out to the left. Shouldn’t we move now?” Said the twins to Aleck.

“Wait! My Lieutenants, Your impatiens will only get men killed. We’ll hold out until the other company is set.” The twins squirmed and fidgeted. Two adult soldiers moved and put a hand on their shoulders, calming them.

Aleck spotted movement over the hill. The Sharlakar she saw on her scanner came out of the nearby base to find out who was blowing up their ships. They had reacted just as she hoped. The other group arrived just in time. She signaled the men to take cover, then waited until the Sharlakar hit just the right spot.

“Attack!” She yelled. Several Sharlakar fell. A missile exploded uselessly against the shields around Aleck's team as the Sharlakar fired back. Aleck shouted orders into the comlink. It was a thing of beauty to see. A secondary force cut in behind the Sharlakar while a third one raided the now lightly defended base and turned their wall-mounted turrets against them. The energy beams of the cyborg mowed down the Sharlakar foot soldiers like one of those new laser lawn mowers over thick Vicarian grass. Then pinpoint zip explosives no bigger than an elephant gun bullet zipped out of the cyborgs' arms and blasted through the shields on the enemy tank with effectiveness the Sharlakar could not match.

Aleck’s mouth curled into a grim smile.

The doctor stared in shock at the violent images of war. If this was a good dream, then what in the fire was this girl having nightmares about?

He found out soon enough. Aleck dreamt of half-eaten people still living in death camps and the bodies of little children tortured and abused piled up outside the door of the General, who appeared later in the timeline the doctor managed to create. Dr. Bastian vomited more than once. When the dream observation was over, he made a road map to her cure.

He then had one more thing to do. He needed to warn Aleck's family about her brothers.

……………………………………………………………

Dr. Bastion stood up and greeted Uncle Donald and Aunt Karla as they entered his office. He invited them to sit down on a soft leather couch. “Would you two like anything to drink?” He asked. He preferred making the patient's family feel as comfortable as possible when delivering rough news.

“Just water, thank you.” Said Aunt Karla.

“I need to talk to you about Aleck and the full dynamics of what it will take to help her.” The doctor punched some buttons, and glasses of water appeared on the end tables on each side of the couch.

He sat on a matching couch across from them and touched the clear glass table that served as a tri-di information screen he could use to pull up charts and information as he talked to the patient’s family. He pulled up Aleck’s body scans and the video memory player.

When it hit them that their niece and nephews were cyborgs, Aunt Karla broke down, tears streaming down her face, pleading. “Please, of all of my wife's sister’s eight children, only four survived whatever this was that happened during years of the Cutoff from the outer colonies. Aleck and her younger twin brothers, Shem and Payton, showed up unexpectedly at our door in filthy rags just a month ago, along with the death certificates of the rest of the family. Their all we have left of my sister's family."

“Relax, the team agreed to help her.” Dr. Bastion reassured her, biting his bottom lip.

Aleck’s Aunt Karla wiped her tears away in relief. Aleck’s Uncle Donald’s stopped holding his breath. "Thank you so much! I know what a terrible risk you are taking.”

“You are too. From what I gathered from Aleck's memories, they may already be being controlled by a runner.”

“For what purpose?” Asked Uncle Donald with a frown.

“Assassination.” Dr. Bastion answered bluntly. You must pretend to be ignorant of what they are, or they could use them…

“To slaughter my family.” Uncle Donald took a deep breath. “I understand; thanks for the warning.”

“I have a question for you, though. You mentioned in the paperwork that Aleck has a living twin sister. Wasn’t she part of the cutoff?”

Aleck’s aunt shook her head no. “Aleck’s twin sister Alexia was visiting us so she could compete in the intergalactic academic bee when The Cutoff occurred.”

“Ah, I see. I’m going to be brutally honest with you. I’m not sure we can cure Aleck. She has the worst case of shell shock I have ever seen. Normally, all we can do is put them in padded rooms and keep them drugged. I have developed some new techniques and medicines that could cure her, but they are at the experimental stage. I will have to ask your permission to use some techniques and medicines that the government doesn’t authorize. There are no papers to sign since we are helping her illegally anyway. I just need to know if it will be okay with you?”

Uncle Donald and Aunt Karla looked at each other and nodded. “Yes, of course,”

Dr. Bastion stood up. “Thank you. We’ll do the best we can for her. It will take several months, though, and there is no guarantee it will work on a case as severe as hers.” He got out a package containing the hospital’s visiting hours and rules for visitation and handed them to Uncle Donald. Then he escorted them out of the hospital.

…………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………

About nine months earlier, far away, a prince clenched his fist on the distant world of Rillia. Blood streamed down his arm as the living marriage band of Awn was ripped off his arm. The soldier bandaged his arm and fitted a new unbroken pair of marriage bands on his other arm. The high council pronounced judgment on his now ex-wife and her lovers.

"Not in a thousand years had such shameful acts been committed in the house of Ramiu. Lieutenant Commander Tresai, Rear Admiral Kenzy..." The list went on and on. Jareth glared at the men once under his command. Finally, the list of names ended, "You stand guilty of having an affair with the High Fleet Admirals' wife, thus betraying our beloved High Prince and Fleet Admiral His Highness..." The council went through his full name, which was almost as long as the list of names of the men who betrayed him. "…of whom you were under his direct command. For this dishonor, you are considered to have committed treason against the government of Rillia and will be put to death."

There was a choked gasp from the men who expected just a jail time punishment for the affair. "Take them away! “said the leader of the council. Jareth watched as his own angry tears splashed on his boots.

"Bring forth Cassava." He looked up as he heard his now ex-wife’s name. She looked at him with pleading eyes. Jareth jerked his eyes away. The High councilor pronounced Cassava's sentence, " For your affairs on your husband, I hear by strip you of all right and privileges of your rank and sentence you to prison till the day you die. And only a high prince or the king will be allowed to pardon you." The hammer went down as Jareth breathed a sigh of relief. He did not want his ex-wife to be executed. He wasn't the villain here, no matter what the intergalactic press said.

They made it sound like she had been driven to it by mistreatment from him. Jareth had, in truth, spoiled her greatly. He gave her anything she desired. She was never really happy, though. She would yell and throw the gifts at him if she did not like them. Then she would demand more, then scream, and would attack him. He certainly had the scratches on his arms and chest to prove it. He had walked away each time and never once raised a hand against her.

His father, the king, stood up and announced. "The marriage to my son has ended with no dishonor from him, and he is free to remarry." The Rillian high guard took his outwardly beautiful ex-wife away from the high throne room.

He turned to his father and started to lift his pointer finger to his heart and forehead to give Him a hand gesture of respect. His father turned his back on him in shame. Jareth gritted his teeth. While his words said, he considered Jareth innocent of harm to his wife, his father's actions indicated otherwise. Jareth bowed humbly before his father. "Surely, my father, you know me well enough to know I would never in any way harm a woman?" He stared in shock as his father did not bother to turn to look at him, let alone answer him. He turned on his heel and left the high council chamber.

His footsteps echoed emptily as he walked through the vast, rich halls of the palace. He saw the stares of the servants and heard the whispers in the hall. “Do any believe me innocent in this?” He muttered to himself as he looked away from them, unable to bear their judging eyes anymore.

He went to his room and froze as he saw his ex-wife's stuff still around the room. He swiftly walked to his closet, grabbed his space bag, and headed out to his private space hanger. He got into his shuttle and flew it up to his spaceship that waited in orbit above. He set the navigation to the maximum amount of Jumps that was reasonable for his supplies to last. He guided his ship expertly out of the Rillian system and to the first space gate. He set his rich metallic golden eyes on the portal and lost himself in the beauty of the star-scape. The longer Jareth didn’t have to deal with people, the better.