“Agra? Quintek?” Taylor pleaded.

  Kneeling in the snow Taylor jostled Agra’s limp body. Her unfocused amber pupils stared back at him from half closed eyes, her beaked mouth parted slightly. The slow rise and fall of her feather draped chest at least confirmed she was alive. He scrambled over to Quintek who lay prostrate and streaked with blue blood from the sealed wound on the back of his neck. Hesitant Taylor hovered his hands over the Syn for a moment before rolling Quintek over in a single strained heave.

  “Come on you bastard wake up.” Taylor cried channeling Jakob as he threw a panicked glance towards the entryway. He hoped his friends where ok. Taylor slapped Quintek around feebly, grabbed the Syn by the shoulders and shook him.

  “Wake up, they’re coming.”

  Nothing Taylor did could wake the unresponsive Syn. He left them where they lay and running out of time stumbled over to the debris pile spilling out of the nearby wall. Grabbing a jagged spear of metal from the pile Taylor raced back toward the doorway clutching his makeshift weapon with trembling hands.

  He heard the hoarse exhalation of shadows shuffling up the darkened ramp. Four pairs of red eyes lit by the morning light now filtering into the atrium blinked at him. Taylor sensed something different with these Syn. They stood timidly at the doorway instead of attacking. Swallowing his fear Taylor retreated so that they could pass. They crept in slowly in a sort of possessed daze. Taylor relaxed the grip on his spear but held his ground. He was relieved to see Jakob and Liz limp in behind the Syn.

  “Guys” Taylor exclaimed as he let his weapon clatter to the ground. He embraced his friends.

  “Taylor please,” Jakob winced. Taylor let go, helping Liz lower Jakob to the floor. Panting, Jakob ran his hands down his face and groaned. “This sucks.”

  “What’s going on?” Taylor asked Liz.

  “We thought you would know,” Liz said looking over at Agra and Quintek lying on the floor. The other Syn had bent down to sniff and poke at their unconscious kin. They expressed wordless concern.

  “What happened?”

  “Agra had just finished explaining how her father and teacher died,” Taylor began.

  “Yeah, she killed both of them,” Jakob said wincing. He rubbed at his cloth wrapped wound to check for bleeding.

  “We saw a hologram before the Syn showed up,” Liz explained. She gestured at Agra. “Doesn’t matter. What did she do?”

  “Agra and Quintek did something. He let her bite him in the neck then Agra coughed up the stuff that sealed Jakob’s wound. After that they both became unresponsive.”

  “Whatever they did tamed the Syn,” Liz said struggling to understand what had happened. She looked around the domed room and studied the tiled ceiling reliefs with interest. She saw the throne and noticed the crown on Agra’s head. “What is this place?”

  “One of them is waking up.” Jakob interjected. Taylor and Liz turned to see Quintek stirring. The raggedy black feathered Syn opened his eyes and lurched upright. Hissing he glared at his fellow Syn until they backed away. Quintek clutched his throbbing head as Liz and Taylor ran up to him.

  “Quintek?” They asked.

  Quintek looked up at them with wide eyed surprise. The humans where equally shocked when they suddenly could understand the dazed Syn.

  “I can understand you?” He exhaled in a hollow sonorous voice. He felt his neck and stared at his fellow Syn as they stood idly by. Quintek’s wonder ended as soon as he noticed Agra beside him. Liz and Taylor joined him as he rushed to her side.

  “Quintek what is going on? What did you and Agra do?”

  “I offered myself and sealed the pact in blood,” Quintek said as he ran a trembling hand across the side of her face. He spoke the words distantly, as if they held no meaning beyond what he had memorized.

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  “I still don’t understand a word he’s saying,” Jakob groaned as he struggled to sit up. He let his weary head fall back to the floor and cursed. “Dying in the snow may have been preferable to this pain.”

  “I had to save you to gain her trust,” Quintek said. “Otherwise, I might not have been able to convince her to give me what I wanted.”

  “What you wanted? I don’t understand.” Taylor frowned.

  “Power,” Quintek said with a chuckle of disbelief, “A power once reserved for my loathsome masters is now mine.”

  Whatever power Quintek thought he had was useless when Agra awoke. She bolted upright and threw Quintek to the ground. His blue blood still dripped from her parted beak as she pushed her knee into his chest.

  “Power?” Agra said savoring the word with the mandibles beneath her beak. She seemed disgusted with herself. Hate filled her eyes. The other Syn began to howl and screech with worry. Liz and Taylor watched in confusion “You let me into your mind Quintek. I know everything you think you know about power you crave and you know nothing. You’ve made a mistake.”

  “You think I made a mistake? Your mind is open to me and you are the one who is mistaken.” Quintek squeaked beneath her weight. “This power is everything you’ve craved.”

  “Agra what kind of Syn bullshit is going on?” Jakob exclaimed as he finally stumbled into the fray clutching his chest. He had managed to get up unnoticed in the confusion. Agra wrapped a clawed hand around Quintek’s neck watched him squirm.

  “Forgive me Quintek, but if I’m enjoying this it’s because of you,” Agra continued. “You did this to me. You lied to me. You took what wasn’t yours to take and gave me what I didn’t want.”

  “Agra are you listening to me?”

  Agra acknowledged Jakob plea by blinking sudden clarity. She released Quintek and sat up beside him with an introspective frown. In the silence she adjusted her mother’s golden headrest.

  “I’m really a Syn now,” Agra explained. “I’m no different than my mother. Quintek tempted me and I let him have what he wanted the moment he realized what I was. The Syn Queens require the strength of another’s mind and soul to rule and he tricked me into sharing what I should not have shared.”

  “Did I trick you?” Quintek asked as he regained his feet and wiped frost from his ruffled feathery down. He gestured at the docile Syn standing around them, their first loyal subjects. “You were able to pacify your kin. You saved them and the humans from another pointless struggle like I said you could.”

  “I did not know the cost of the bond, neither did you.” Agra hissed. Quintek hung his head in shame, an intrusive emotion he did not quite understand. Like Agra he felt the loss of something within himself, but reveled in what he had gained.

  “Do not worry,” Quintek said, “That part within yourself you feel you have lost is not gone. You passed it to me. I’m just as much a child of man as you are now.”

  “You did all that by biting him?” Liz asked.

  “It was the bile,” Agra said wiping her beak. “It somehow changes the one who receives it.”

  “What about me? I got some of that bile crap. What did Quintek do to me?” Jakob demanded.

  “Nothing,” Quintek said with a dismissive wave of his hand. “For me, it’s just a trick, an impotent salve that becomes useful from time to time. For Agra However it is a means of exchange and an insurance that the one she marks as her familiar survives. That much I knew.”

  “So, by sharing a mind a Queen and her familiar can control other Syn?” Liz said asking for elaboration.

  “I don’t know. All I know is that I awoke somewhere beyond this planet. It was a dark place where all my people shone like stars. I could feel the pain and fear propagated by the other queens to keep my kin manageable. There I found the Syn that came down with you and told them everything was going to be ok. I reached into them and freed their souls from the influence of the queens.”

  “That’s it?”

  “I met the other Queens too,” Agra said staring blankly into space as if recalling a dream. “Now they’re on their way here kill me. All of them and the ones they lead.”

  “Excuse me?” Jakob exclaimed as he dropped back to the floor in disbelief. He clutched his shoulder and winced as he continued. “Are you telling me that the entire Syn race is coming here while we sit around like a bunch of idiots?”

  Liz and Taylor paced the room.

  “I think our chances are good,” Quintek offered halfheartedly.

  “That’s very reassuring Quintek. Thank you,” Jakob scoffed.

  “Look at the bright side,” Taylor said. “At least somebody knows where we are and are coming for us.”

  “I don’t think that counts as a rescue,” Liz sighed shaking her head.

  “Let them come,” Agra said defiant and unafraid. She felt something stirring within herself. It was the resolve Quintek had infected her with. Now she understood his hatred and lust for revenge and reconciled it with her own feelings. What Quintek wanted was savage and evil in her mind, but not without merit. It was a mistake to have avoided the others for so long while they ruled the galaxy unchecked. They had been the ones to kill her father and her teacher. Liz and Taylor gave each other fearful glances as Agra began to cackle. Quintek seemed apprehensive, weary of what he had done. Agra drew him into tight embrace as she gestured at the stars above.

  “Together we will take on the others like you always wanted. Their empires will be ours to rule.”

  Liz and Taylor sat down beside Jakob with resignation.

  “Do you think we’ll ever get home?” Taylor wondered. Liz shook her head. She honestly didn’t know. Jakob groaned again.

  “Our lives depend on Agra now whether we like it or not.”

  “Our lives were in her hands the moment we landed,” Liz said.

  “You still don’t trust her?” Taylor sighed.

  “What we think doesn’t matter anymore. At this point I think we are just along for the ride.”