If there was one thing that Melody hated, it was a hypocrite. It was a shame that she’d grown up surrounded by them. Everyone was a hypocrite. Everyone was fake. Everyone pretended to be nice, pretended to care, pretended to want what was best for her. But Melody could see right through that. Melody knew that everyone had always been looking out for themselves first. A mother who preferred to brag about her daughter than spend any time with her. A father who spent all his time away from home. Because whenever he did go home, they’d fight. Things would break. People would cry.

The Angels had promised her freedom from all that. And being the naive child she’d been, she’d accepted. They’d lied. They had told her that she’d be able to fight for the future of humanity. For the survival of the human race. But to do so, they’d made her a pawn. A tool. Merely a vessel for some... something else. The creature that now lived inside her forever, slowly eating away at the remnants of her human body.

How she loathed it. Even though the disgusting little insect was dead, now, its filthy DNA was mixed in with her own. Even looking down at her own armoured, alien hands sent a wave of dysphoria flooding to her head. It made her head spin. She wanted to tear the material off her skin, cut off the alien flesh and return herself to her own human form. But of course, that wasn’t how it worked. If only it were that easy. It was forever a part of her now. Because of the mistake she’d made years ago. But perhaps now she’d be able to undo it...

She’d been to dark places, for sure, in those years. Learned to accept, learned to toe the line, learned to pretend that everything was okay. She’d memorized their words and phrases and tried to be one of them. Tried to follow the impossible orders. But every time she looked at her reflection, she felt sick to her stomach. She knew it was unnatural. She knew that this was wrong. But what escape was there from this?

And then she’d met Ollie.

At first, she’d approached him with apprehension. He was a Demon, after all. Their supposed enemy. And by this point, Melody had killed a number of them. She remembered each and every one. But Ollie had done something no Demon had done to her before. Something nobody had done to her before.

He’d asked her a question. The question.

“Why are you doing all this?”

Melody had never asked herself that question before. And before she could reply, he was right next to her. His voice was in her ear.

“There is another way.”

Of course, she’d discounted it at first. He was a Demon. This had all been a ruse. After all, in the confusion, he’d managed to escape. But the words wormed their way inside her head. They wouldn’t leave. And when she met him again, he whispered again. Yet more questions. Yet more prodding. What did she really want?

Until the day came when, assaulting a stronghold in Sofia, she’d found herself face to face with him a final time. The Echoes under his command were massive and powerful. The rest of her squad were out of commission. She held their regenerating cocoons in her hands. She had one remaining task: to get out of there. To bring them to safety. And as she closed her fingers around the cocoons, she felt someone grab her wrist.

“You want to be free?”

Ollie.

“I want to see you free. All you need to do for me is squeeze.”

The cocoons in her hand were delicate. She gripped them tightly.

“Harder.” To kill. To kill them. That was wrong. But when had they ever listened to her? When had the other Angels ever considered her struggles? It was always so simple for them. They had blind faith in their purpose, or something, and, well, that insect wasn’t there, either. Nobody was watching.

Melody squeezed tighter. The chrysalises were beginning to buckle under the force of her grip. She turned her head to see the Demon smiling right beside her.

“You don’t need to listen to them anymore. You can be yourself,” he cooed. “You can be yourself from now on. You can do what you must do. And you can do it as you please. I felt his hand on top of mine. “So squeeze.”

She felt the membranes burst. The cocoons cracked open in my palm, blood and hemolymph running down my arm and dripping onto the floor. She opened her hand and let the useless husks topple to the ground. And then she exhaled.

And then she cried.

Ollie treated her like a person. He’d let her be an individual. Let her be free. He’d done everything to make sure that she could realize her own potential. He was the only one who’d understood. And he also had a plan. So, with him, she’d waited for the opportune time within the Angels.

But in the meantime, he’d helped her kill her parents. And her teachers. And all the other hypocrites who had made her life such a living hell from the moment she’d been born. He would do anything for her. And she would do anything for him. And she wished nothing more than to bring that same liberation to all of humanity.

So what if most of them would suffer forever? They deserved it. And the Angels could go to hell as well.

Melody looked behind her. The two Angels were still following her. She could make out their silhouettes in the dust. They made her shudder. Such shapes had no business being made from human bodies. But hopefully, she’d be able to outpace them. Sanctuary 1 wasn’t that much further, was it?

It wasn’t.

The passage that she was looking for was hidden in the sand. The network of tunnels reaching out in all directions from the Sanctuary. Now, of course, the people inside weren’t quite acting normal, these days, but that was alright. Expected, even. All part of Ollie’s plan.

The hatch swung open and shut behind her. She locked it tight, but knew that there was no way this would stop the Angels for long. She had to hurry. She raced across the long metal causeways, counting her strides as she went. Twenty. Fifty. One hundred. The door broke open behind her. So quickly? She overheard the buzzing of wings. They were hot on her pursuit again. Two hundred. Two hundred and fifty.

Here.

Melody stopped for a moment. took a deep breath. “Ollie,” she whispered, repeating his name to psych herself up. This would accomplish it. This would get them there. “I’m doing this for you.”

She leapt over the railings and tumbled into the pitch-black void.

The sound of the Angels was quickly swallowed up by the endless silence of her descent. There was nothing. Absolutely nothing. Nothing to see. Nothing to hear. Nothing but the falling air rushing past her body. And even that began to feel like an illusion after a while. With nothing to focus on, nothing to feel, all she could do was think. Reflect.

“The Chorus of Symbiotes,” she whispered. That was where she was going. The sacred home of the symbiotes. A sanctum for the Angels. A sacred place. But one already infiltrated by one of their own. A disease seeping in from the depths, from the dark, creeping up and taking control. Their disease.

The sound of rushing water jolted her back to reality. She was drawing near. Her wings spread and slowed her descent once again, humming back to life above the surface of the roiling waters beneath. She soared over the waves of this mysterious subsurface ocean, seeking the pinprick of light in the distance. She simply flew over the waters for what felt like years, nothing but the roaring sounds of the waves for company, and the faint light in the distance, growing ever-so-slightly brighter.

If there was one thing the Angels hadn’t lied about, it was the power. The ancient, power, seeping into them from the Earth itself. These ancient places, these great mysteries... there truly was no explanation for it outside of magic. If only they had used it for something more constructive. If only...

The light grew brighter here. And its source became clear. The waters gathered into a whirlpool, and at its centre the vortex descended deep, deep into the ground. She checked her watch. Only a few minutes had passed since she’d entered from the world above.

And now it was time to descend a second time.

She tucked in her wings and fell into the centre of the whirlpool. The waters cascaded all around, until she reached the bottom. Dry ground. A pale chamber. The Chorus of Symbiotes. The room was unimaginably large. White honeycomb patterns rose up in grand towers the size of skyscrapers. And the voices here... though she’d shut them out long ago, Melody couldn’t avoid them anymore. A chorus... that was an apt name. They cried out in her mind, berating her. Attacking her. Traitor. Liar.

But he shut them out. The darkness that crept from the shadows, growing longer until the whole place was dim like the hour after sunset. And in the dark, she heard skittering, and the rushing of wind. And she felt a presence approaching. Their presence. Their agent.

“I’m not afraid of you Jekyll,” said Melody.

“You should be.”

“You’re just an Echo.”

The creature rumbled in the darkness, rocks and stones crackling underneath. “Just an Echo?” It chuckled. The sound of its laughter caused the whole cavern to tremble. “I am not a toy. You think that we are servants of the Demons? You think that you we, the true children of Gaia, would subject ourselves to alien filth?”

Snap. Snap.

Melody took a step back. “What are you saying?” She felt sick inside.

“Do not be fooled by them, daughter of Earth. I am the real claimant. The real inheritors of this place. We use the Demons for a time, but soon... well, that thing thought he could use me. And he thought even you could. What a fool.”

“What?”

“He has given me the hearts of the Angels. They will be useful. You will be useful.”

No. She wasn’t sick. There was something alive inside of her. Something writhing and screaming and clawing at her. This wasn’t normal. “We had a deal, Jekyll. You would take control of them and we—”

Snap. Snap. With the sounds, sparks flew in the darkness. For a moment, Melody thought she saw a glimpse of... of something. “A deal? You thought yourselves my master? My equal, even? I was there long before your kind crawled out of the mud. You are nothing to me. Dust. Less than dust. No. My metamorphosis is coming. And we will reclaim the Earth.”

“But Ollie had said...”

“You were fooled by him as well. Child. You were nothing but a tool.” Enormous claws loomed out of the shadows.

Nothing but a tool? No. Never. Ollie would never... “No. He didn’t know.” She backed away as quickly as she could, glancing up.

“I thank him for this excellent tool.” Another rushing of the wind. Distant towers shook and crumbled, smashing into the ground with billowing clouds of dust. The chorus that had been here, the symbiotes... they were long gone. And Jekyll had filled up everything. And the bit of the symbiotes in her...

The thing inside her was eating her up. She felt it.

Melody bolted for the entrance. Her wings burst to life, launching her up through the whirlpool, up into the dark cavern above. The waters raged all around. And so did her mind. Had Ollie betrayed her? Had he been using her? She knew in her heart that he hadn’t. And yet, her own heart was faltering with doubt. Especially as she felt the new presence inside her growing stronger.

The waves lapped at her feet. No time for this. She needed to focus. She needed to get out. And there was something... something moving beneath the waves. Something huge. Jekyll? Just how large was he? Just how powerful...

The walls of the sheer drop were coming up. Melody looked up and immediately rocketed up into the blackness. She trusted in Ollie’s directions. She needed to trust him too. It was Jekyll who’d betrayed them both. The Echo. Yes... or at least Ollie would be able to explain what had happened. She faltered for a second. Arcs of pain rocketed through her whole body, orders of magnitude worse than the acid dissolution of her transformation. She felt her nerves themselves trying to break free. An unending urge to tear off her own skin. But she was no stranger to fighting that feeling. And there was no time to stop.

A splash from below sent waves up the rock walls, spraying her wings with seawater. The darkness was chasing her too. Jekyll. She heard his claws snapping in the darkness, the rushing of his limbs, the presence... no time to think. Fly faster. She urged herself to her very limit.

But the creature inside of her wouldn’t listen. Her legs... when had they stopped listening? Why did they hang limp beneath her, now? The pain was gone, and in its place was numbness. Her legs continued to morph and change, strange elongations and appendages that had never been there before. Metamorphosis? Melody began to panic.

“You will make a good tool,” said Jekyll.

The creature within had consumed her entirely, nearly. Her arms and legs and wings were no longer her own. She felt his presence asserting itself within her extremities, filling every space with a total control that would never let go. It wasn’t supposed to be like this. Ollie had said...

She saw two figures standing on the causeway above her. The Angels. Her pursuers. But now, there was no place left for anger or rage. Her body was no longer even its own. But she could muster one final cry, one final pair of words, spit out between lips that burned to move.

“Run.”