Outsider

[Laowai]

She had run. Moved like she had not moved before...

The book lady had only wanted to speak, to ask as she always did. Always thinking and asking, trying to fill the incessant need she always had to know. It was a Reaper she had met that day. She had heard of them, she knew what her husband knew of course, which was surprisingly, like much Corsair intelligence on this mysterious group, not a whole lot. She had spoken to him, asked questions - it had seemed interesting.

Constantly she had to remind herself to manually tell her mouth to stop speaking as she began to incessantly spout memories appearing in her mind like some form of human printer. “It unsettles people” the lady who lived across the way from the Hangar had told her one day, as she was mindlessly running off botanical facts about the woman’s vegetable patch and acidic levels in the soil.

She had no intention of boarding the station. She had never been on Freeport 9, though she had always wanted to visit a Freeport, she had heard of the many kinds of people that went there and it intrigued her. She had been conversing with the reaper when a pair of Outcast Tridents appeared and engaged her. Her Titan had reacted, engaged in auto evade as she desperately sought to regain control and get to safety, the closest port of call had been the Freeport’s crash dock, and so land she had. The Zoner techs had told her that the damage was slight and she could leave within the hour… so unable to resist her curiosity she had seconded herself outside the dock in an alcove cantina, hiding in the shadows, she had people watched.



She hadn’t been foolish; she didn’t know what scanning equipment was on board. She had hidden herself, well, more accurately she had altered her appearance, her interaction with light and her focus so she would be both seen… and not. This was an accidental discovery that her and Ben had made some time ago, in the transition state of forms, between form and new form, there was almost another state, a third state, physical but not, there but not there. Laowai had wondered if the fully formed Nomads were able to exist in that state permanently - which Zarita had not been able to do - they didn’t know, but what they did know was that when Zarita allowed herself to fluctuate between these states she was very difficult to focus on, or more practically, see with scanners and imaging technology with any clarity. Anyone looking at her in shadows with the naked eye, would see a woman, but details would be such that they would be unclear and it would be written off as a trick of the light, or more specifically,a trick of the shadow.

But the Reaper - Nephilim - he had called himself was unlike any being that Zarita, or anyone she had experienced; including her husband, had met face to face. She had no knowledge of his skills, or his ability to discern what to most was not discernible. He had found her on the station and they continued to converse. Zarita made sure to stay out of the light, but she had felt amplified light wave detection frequencies on her skin within moments and realized that the Reaper was scanning her. She concentrated hard on staying out-of phase. But he was difficult to read, in fact, she couldn’t read him at all. In the months since she had taken control of this body she had grown used to the surface reading and feeling of the people she encountered, the “other” level of knowing that she had of people that was in addition to the visual, the audible….. The reaper had none of that. In fact he was like a hole in space, an armored hole in space in the shape of a man, an-unreadable armored shape that was not shifting it's gaze from her. For a brief moment she glanced at him, wondering if it were possible to make herself read impressions from him, she couldn't, and it didn't matter anyway, whatever the Reaper was was like an anti-magnet. Whereas most people were a warm center that gave impressions more or less regularly, this one was almost repelling whatever it was her body did to read people as it did.


She had begun to feel afraid. She had been reckless and she hadn't realised it. And then, after she had seen his eyes, strange coloured eyes of a kind she had not seen before, he had said…. “And what of your unhuman qualities now that you have seen mine?”


The panic had hit her like a wave at sea and it took all her self control not to reach out with her mind and send the Reaper hurtling across the room. She evaded, looked for an opening, anything that would allow her to shift, to move at the speeds she knew where she could not be seen by any normal person. But this was not a normal person, and knowing that he had encountered something unusual, something unexplained and something very un-Corsair-like, the Reaper sat calmly and held his gaze. He wasn't going anywhere, she had piqued his interest.


“I’m… I’m not sure what….” She had stuttered.



She squirmed and shifted uncomfortably. Then, suddenly she saw a chance. A waiter behind the Reaper stooped to pick up a tray of drinks near a power terminal that had been left slightly ajar. She reached out with her thoughts and gripped the man’s ankle. He screamed awkwardly and tripped, the glasses spilling their contents across the open panel, causing all the lights behind the bar in the alcove to explode with a synchronized “POP”!, plunging the room into almost darkness. As soon as this happened she focused on the lights in the corridor behind her, the one that led back to her ship, she surged them all simultaneously and they too exploded with almost precision timing alongside their bar-side counterparts. As calmly as she could, not knowing how distracted -if at all - the Reaper had been, she got off the chair and walked briskly away down the corridor, moving only slightly faster than a normal human would, wanting to get out of there, but not wanting to completely obey her body's instinct to alter its form, its movement and move faster than human eyes could ever see.


So she had run, moved like she had not moved before, in a state both human, and not.

---

http://img686.imageshack.us/img686/3289/...047770.png