First Song

I looked around the waiting room at the other people present, feeling pretty terrible at the state some of them were in. Many were clearly suffering as a result of their advanced age, but there were also a few suffering from what seemed to be degenerative issues.

‘You want to help them,’ Muse commented to me.

I really did. There just wasn’t much I could do. Hell, I’m studying the impacts of global climate change to ecosystems, not how to diagnose and treat complex illnesses. I wasn’t a doctor, and never would be.

Muse didn’t say anything else in reply to my thoughts, so I shifted my focus back to my music.

I got a few awkward glances from people, and I was starting to feel like maybe I looked a bit too weird with my hoodie on. A few of the glances had been to study my face, though – it took me a few seconds to realise that they were fascinated by my eyes.

One elderly gentleman in particular, sitting opposite me, seemed to be unable to look away. I gave him a warm smile, and he returned it.

The announcement board beeped a few names before it was my turn, and I saw various patients waddle and walk their way deeper inside the building. Ultimately, it didn’t take too long for my deadname to appear, along with the simple instruction of ‘Room 5’. With a quiet sigh, I rose to my feet and tucked my music away into my hoodie pocket. It was one of those hoodies with a pocket that spanned the whole width of the front.

Several more eyes turned to me, flickering from my face to the sign and back again. I ignored them the best I could, swishing my way through a couple of plain, white doors and into the faint blue corridor behind them.

It was pretty easy to find the door that I wanted, given they were sequential. Once I’d found the one with ‘Room 5’ signage, I knocked on the door, waiting to be asked to enter. My nerves had left me shaking slightly.

“Come in!” came the voice of a young woman. After a steadying breath, plus Muse’s assistance, I cracked the door open and stepped inside. The doctor gave me a warm smile as she saw me, and I returned it. She looked like she was at the beginning of her medical career, going by her age.

She had a bright, friendly face and welcoming eyes. Okay, this woman was good at her job. She immediately began to put me to ease, though I could already see some confusion start to creep in.

The room itself was quite brightly lit, with bands of sunlight streaming in through a set of blinds. She was sat on a comfy-looking computer chair next to a desk, an aging computer terminal set on it. Behind her, against the wall, was an examination table. Everything was some shade or hue or blue and white.

“Hello,” she began, but immediately faltered. “Are you here with someone?”

She looked behind me but I was already closing the door.

I shook my head, but continued to remain standing, “No, I’m the person… for this appointment. Please can you call me Erin, though?”

I smiled at her again, awkwardly while I waited for her to process what I’d said.

With a jerky gesture of her hand she indicated a chair that had been set up, “Oh, right. Please, take a seat.”

Gratefully, I did as asked and sat, knees angled together with my hands resting in my lap. Okay, I could already tell that this hoodie was a dumb idea.

Just like Rishaan, her brain seemed to be having its own problem bridging expectation with reality. “Alright, well, why don’t you explain to me what the problem is,” she eventually said, returning to some kind of predetermined script that she was well practised with.

“Well,” I began, gesturing at myself. “As you can see, I… um… I’m trans.”

She nodded, her eyes narrowing as she looked me up and down. She’d picked up a pen from her desk and was idly tapping it against her fingers.

I wiped my hands against the fabric of my skirt as sweat began to make my palms damp. “I was hoping that you might be able to help me get my documents changed,” I eventually added, once it became apparent that she was waiting for more.

“If I were to be honest with you… Erin, wasn’t it? You don’t look trans to me, you actually just look like a perfectly normal cis woman,” she replied, her head tilting ever-so-slightly. “I’m sorry, but I’m struggling to believe that you are who you claim to be.”

Right. That’s true.

“Yeah, okay. That’s valid,” I replied, my eyes dropping to the floor a moment.

‘It does seem like the accelerated process has a downside, doesn’t it?’ Muse added, making me hide a smile.

I’d almost forgotten she was here with me.

I considered how I would even go about lying to her, but then a possible track opened in my mind.

Well, if you don’t seem to believe that I am who I say I am, how do I prove it to you?

I gestured at the computer on her desk, “You should have my medical records on your computer. I went into hospital recently and they did some tests. Can you look at them? They wanted to do more, but I was too scared.”

She glanced at her computer now with a doubtful expression that told me she expected to find nothing. Lips pressing together, she began looking back through my files.

After just a few moments, she was opening what seemed to be blood and other test results. I had no idea what they meant, but her eyebrows rose a little – then she looked at me.

“Alright, Erin. Would you allow me to do some more blood tests?” she asked when she looked back at me, and I nodded. I just hoped that my DNA or whatever hadn’t changed.

‘Your genetic programming is unchanged, Erin. It wasn’t necessary to make alterations. All instruction sets for how you are now were already present,’ Muse answered.

She stood up and headed towards the door, “Sorry. I’ll be right back.”

After that, I just sat in silence waiting for her to return.

‘I liked her jacket,’ Muse put in, while we waited. I smiled. It was a pretty standard, plain white jacket that almost all doctors wore.

‘Her nose hair was lacking.’

After what felt like about five minutes, she came back with another person. She was quite clearly a nurse, wearing the blue uniform that they all have. She even had the stereotypical brooch watch thing attached like a medal to her breast, with a clock face that was upside down.

It took me a moment to realise that she’d come to take some blood, only cottoning on as she wheeled a stand of trays to my side. The trays contained all of the paraphernalia she’d need to get as much blood out of me as she wanted, and I visibly squirmed at the sight of all the blood vials.

I had never been a big fan of needles, and I made sure to look away while it all happened. There was a deep, sharp sting on the inside of my elbow as the needle pierced my skin.

‘You want them to take this, correct?’ Muse asked me.

Most definitely. Please don’t, like, make it stop or anything until they’ve finished. More stabs would not be welcomed.

It took about thirty seconds for them to be satisfied and the nurse began to remove the needle from my arm. It was only then that I was fully able to relax. Muse immediately went to the task of healing the damage that had happened, my skin tingling just briefly.

The nurse labelled several vials containing my blood and gave me a plaster for the spot where she’d just inserted the needle.

“Thank you, Erin,” the doctor eventually said to me, once the nurse had taken everything away and left.

“Wh-what do the test results from the hospital show, anyway?” I asked her, rubbing at the plaster I’d been given.

‘That dressing is redundant. I stemmed all bleeding within moments,’ Muse pointed out, sounding a little haughty. Yeah, well, I had to keep up the appearance of being a boring old human, okay?

“The tests show a strange abnormality in your hormone levels, in particular elevated female sex hormones,” she stated, looking me over. I smiled in reply.

“What does that mean?” I asked.

“Well, it’s actually atypical, although similar things have been known in intersex individuals,” she replied. “The blood tests that I’ve asked for should be able to tell us more.”

I nodded my head at that, giving her a wide smile. It seemed like she really did believe that I was who I said I was – or maybe at least she was beginning to.

“Um. So… since my birth certificate says ‘male’ do you think that I could get a letter to say that I intend to stay female permanently?” I eventually asked her, going for the whole reason why I’d even needed to come here in the first place.

She looked at me, curious.

“Just so I can apply for, like, passports and identity things. It’ll be a bit impossible for me to travel right now.”

She blinked, uncertain, looking back at the computer screen. Eventually she said, “Leave it with me. I’ll look into that and see what else we might need first.”

I beamed her a relieved, happy smile, and she couldn’t help but break into her own. “Is there anything else I help you with, Erin?”

“Could you get me a referral to a gender identity clinic, please?”

---

It had been getting a bit too hot as I walked out of the building, so I took off my hoodie and draped it over my arms. I’d noticed the need for some kind of shoulder bag quite quickly, especially once I’d discovered the lack of any kind of useful pockets in women’s clothing. Without anywhere to hold my things, the hoodie had actually been practical, even if it hadn’t helped with the doctor.

I allowed myself to bask in the sunlight, closing my eyes and tilting my head back.

‘It was nice of you to want to help those people,’ Muse said to me after a few moments. ‘The ones inside.’

I blinked my eyes back open and turned to look back towards the door I’d just exited. My stomach knotted in frustration.

“Isn’t there something you can do for them?” I asked, mumbling to myself as I started my walk home.

‘Maybe eventually, although that goes back to me needing to be complete,’ she answered.

I glanced left and right before crossing the road, angling myself down a side street that was a shortcut to my house. What did completing Muse entail, exactly?

‘We need to go back to where I landed – it was near where we first met. There you will find the rest of me.’

“So the place that was cordoned off because of the bomb?” I enquired.

‘I believe so.’

I reached the end of the road and turned at the intersection, moving along a much more open road with a higher level of traffic than before. There was quite a lot of traffic now, with school kids clogging up the pavement.

Grumbling to myself, I stepped around a few of them. From behind, I heard someone calling out my name.

“Erin!”

Turning to look in that direction, I saw Sarah making her way towards me through the seething mass of teenagers.

I waited for her to catch up to me, then reached out for a hug, “Hey, Rah. How was school?”

“Boring and lame,” she answered as she accepted, sighing gratefully into the embrace.

We walked back home, side by side, chatting about our crazy days.

---

Sarah and I each went to our rooms, and I checked my phone. I’d noticed that it had gone off while we were walking back but hadn’t bothered to investigate. I really enjoyed Sarah’s company now, and she’d been such a wonderful sister to me.

It was actually a new text message from Rishaan. Apparently there had been another video of Artemis posted online, and he’d managed to find it within an hour of it being released. He claimed that not many people had been able to link the two events yet – he’d only managed it because he’d been looking specifically for her.

I started playing the video, hopping onto my computer chair and resting an elbow against the desk.

This time the video had been shot in daylight, although I thought it looked like it was still pretty secluded. We were surrounded by warehouses, and cracked and crumbling roads.

The focus of the recording was her – the woman that had been in the previous video – although we were still a fair distance away. It was too far to make out very many details, although I could see that she had dark hair, either brunette or black.

Whoever was holding the camera shifted to give a better view of what was happening, leaning further around a wall to increase the field of view. The change in perspective revealed a large, white van. The rear doors were open and two men in dark clothing were prostrate on the ground next to it, their limbs splayed at unnatural angles.

As the video progressed, young girls clambered out of the vehicle, clearly distressed. The woman assisted each one, giving them a small, reassuring hug before moving onto the next. After five girls had appeared from inside, she suddenly turned towards the camera.

There was an intake of breath as the camera operator realised that they had been noticed. The woman bowed her head slightly, and began to limp towards us. I could make out the red stain of blood trailing down her trouser leg as she drew closer.

Our view became unsteady, and then turned to black. I guess whoever had been making the recording had decided that they didn’t want to stick around.

I sat quietly for a moment, considering what I’d just seen. It looked like she’d been rescuing some young girls from being kidnapped. Just the idea of that sent shivers down my spine and made me curl my small fingers into fists.

‘I could not tell if Artemis was there,’ Muse commented once it had finished. ‘But that woman is drawing too much attention to herself.’

Right. Artemis was her name for the symbiont, not the woman. I wondered what her name was.

My phone chimed again, letting me know that I’d received another message.

Rish: I checked out the number plate

Rish: That van’s German

Huh, was she in Germany? I mean, that’s pretty close – though I’d still need a passport to get there. I sent a text back thanking him for finding that, and his reply was just a thumbs up emoji.

---

- Casey -

I lifted myself up to peer through the crack in the window. I was staying low against the wall of the warehouse I was bunkered down in, doing my best to stay hidden.

It hadn’t taken me more than twenty four hours to track down the rest of the men that had tried to kidnap me, and now I’d found them. When I’d heard that they were trafficking in children, I knew that I had to put my foot down and do something to stop these monsters. Even if I can’t bring them down completely, I could at least do something.

The girls were huddled in a circle now, under the watchful eyes of several real nasty looking dudes with pistols. A black minivan was parked just next to them. I briefly considered the idea of just rushing the assholes right now.

"Come on... they're right there."

‘You may think you’re invincible, but the girls are not, Casey. Be patient,’ Hunter’s voice told me, making me grumble.

So we waited. I could hear the girls outside whimpering in fear, but every time they got a little more vocal they would be reprimanded by one of the dicks with guns. I only knew a little German, but it was enough to know they were being told to shut the fuck up.

A large, white minivan pulled up after a few more minutes, making my heart start thumping hard in my chest. The time was almost here.

Two men got out of the new minivan, and began speaking to the leader of the first group. The back of the white minivan was opened and the girls were shoved inside, one at a time. Fury was boiling in my veins at this point.

Just as the men had finished whatever exchange they were having, Hunter’s voice came back.

‘Now.’

I launched myself into a run, pushing myself out from the door frame that I had been crouching next to. It took the men a little while to spot me running towards them, then another while to start aiming their pistols. I carried on, feeling my anger flood into my muscles.

I heard the report of their pistols as they fired at me, but Hunter was calm inside my head. The trajectories of the bullets were deviated in an arc around and behind me.

The first man I came to was just starting to look confused when I lunged at his chest, reaching out to rest my palm against him. The jolt of electricity I sent through was enough to leave him convulsing on the floor. I’d have to process all this later – when people aren’t trying to kill me.

Cries of alarm were coming from the first group of men now, and they all scrambled to get back into their own vehicle. I guess I had a reputation or something.

With only one person left to face down, I turned to where I thought he might be. As it happens, I was wrong, and he was standing directly next to me, the barrel of his pistol pointed at my face.

In the speed it took to think, I had already knocked the barrel away, and his shot found nothing but the air around my head. He staggered back, taking aim again and firing wildly. One of his shots found my thigh and I felt myself lose balance for just a moment, pain searing through my mind.

Hunter suppressed that – the sensation like a massive surge of adrenaline coursing through my body. With a growl, I found myself lunging at the guy that had just tried to end my life.

The closest part of him to me was the hand holding the pistol, so I aimed for that. The smallest tap was all it took for me to bring him down just like this buddy.

I searched around to see if there was anyone else coming for me, but found the place empty. The sound of the other vehicle as it drove away was echoing around the warehouses, letting me know that they were still leaving.

Catching my breath for several moments, I limped my way slowly to the back of the white minivan and pulled open the door, revealing the faces of five terrified young girls. My anger dissipated in the blink of an eye, my heart already beginning to break for them.