Christen stared at herself in the mirror. Blood caked her clothes, hands, and face, but her expression drew her attention. Even she could see she wasn't the same.

She saw a world that should have been alien to her, a people she did not know, yet it felt as much like home to her as the Earth did. She mourned the loss of so much beauty, such a wonderful society with admirably lofty values.

Yet, she could not help but feel that there was more to the story of Astor than their rise to royalty and their fall at the hands of the Morgal. Did it have something to do with what she experienced when she defeated Moorland? Why did she believe that the history of Astor wasn't always the elegant ascent of a superior people? That once the Astor came from more primal stock, but unlike the Morgal, they fought their natures and conquered themselves?

They defeated the predator inside, a fight most humans fought every day. Some won, others lost, but one day they might destroy themselves like the Morgal or triumph like the Astor, but they deserved the chance, which the Morgal would not grant them.

If these aliens were anything like the images in her head, even with the council's plans, would it really give them a fighting chance? Christen wondered as she slowly undressed to take a shower. It would be better to perish while fighting than just die.

Christen stepped under the hot water, but images of the Astor kept popping into her mind. When this all started, Dana intoned that she would be little more than a modified human. Super but still human. Why did she feel less human with every passing day and revelation?

Every time she closed her eyes, flashes of her life as Christen Benton mixed with her life as Christen Strickland, and interspersed between those two lives was a past she should not remember, but even this wasn't as advertised. She started roughly scrubbing herself with a sponge, and it reminded her of the day she escaped the jungle in Mexico. She'd had blood and filth on her that day too.

The flashes she remembered of her so-called genetic memories also seemed to contain something more personal, like moments of someone's life. They were brief and indistinct but not like the rest of it. They felt familiar, close like they were part of her. The blood finally came off, and Christen reluctantly turned off the faucets. 

Reaction set in, in increments, as the last few weeks snowballed into something much like the rage she experienced earlier in Moorland's presence.

When people say they saw red, she always thought it was a metaphor, but red washed over her vision as her heart kicked into overdrive, her senses heightened past the edge of pain, and the images hit her like a shotgun blast to the head.

For a while, Christen was someone else, living some other life. She didn't even hear them come in. She wasn't aware of them drying her shaking body, carrying her to the bed, covering her with a sheet and holding her down as she spasmed, and her eyes rolled back in her head.

It stopped without warning.

For one moment, she saw another face staring back at her from a reflective surface that was and wasn't a mirror. A woman who could only be Astor in her inhuman perfection, and then she was back in the room with Kendra and Michael, looking anxious but not surprised.

She didn't ask what happened. Christen knew because some small part of her brain had remained aware of her surroundings. She noted them not asking what happened either because, she surmised, they expected it.

"That was a pretty powerful flashback," Kendra remarked.

"Do you get them too?" Christen asked as they helped her upright and gave her some water. Her entire body ached as if she was recovering from running a marathon. Not that she ever had.

"No, Doc gets flashbacks like that of Astor, but sometimes they are bits and pieces of your life. Marsden says it's not supposed to happen like that. The memories shouldn't be of a personal nature, things a person would not share, but since you were created from the DNA of someone else, you might remember their lives," Kendra informed Christen with a slight frown.

"So everyone who gets the serum will have flashbacks of my life?" Christen asked, and Michael laughed.

"No, darling, we wouldn't want them to lose their minds," he teased to lighten the atmosphere, yet he and Kendra seemed uneasy.

"You're hiding something from me." Christen carefully shifted into a more comfortable position without losing her grip on the sheet.

She felt uncomfortable with the thought of Michael seeing her naked, and yet in barracks in the jungle, she had seen him without his clothes in the communal showers as he had seen her, but somehow that was different. Impersonal. Sitting beside her on the little chair, just at that moment, he was way too close for comfort.

"We are not, but we think Marsden hid something from us," Kendra admitted.

"And who is Marsden?" Christen asked, and suddenly they were both a little distant.

"That you will see for yourself, and he will tell you his story. Now, we'll bring you something to eat. Take a minute, and then, unfortunately, we'll have to leave. We don't want to endanger these people. There may be only a few Morgal scattered worldwide, but they are constantly in contact, and they have powerful allies," Michael concluded the conversation. 

She watched them leave, and as much as she trusted them, she suspected there were things she didn't know yet.

***

Christen expected to be poked and prodded the moment she set foot in the compound after the urgent conversations Kendra and Michael had with several people during the last part of their drive. Instead, the first face she saw was that of Doc, but Doc didn't look quite the same as she did before. It wasn't something you could put your finger on, just subtle changes, and as they hugged, she realized her perception of Doc had changed.

She could sense Doc the way she could sense Dana or Alexander. They were connected in that mysterious sense that felt like family to her, yet she felt protective of Doc in a strange way, as if their roles were now reversed. Doc was hers. Her child, for lack of a better way to describe it. The possessive feeling wasn't natural, and she could understand Alexander so much better now.

"I missed you," Doc said, and until that moment, Christen hadn't realized how much she'd missed Doc, their camaraderie and friendship.

"You very nearly left me on my own," she scolded, and Doc looked guilty.

"I didn't think I would make it out of that forest, and I actually thought I was done for it," Doc admitted, and Christen hugged her again.

"I am so glad you are not," Christen said with an intensity that made Doc tear up.

"No crying, please. There will be enough to cry about if we do not find a way to defeat the Morgal," Michael said gruffly, and Christen punched him on the arm for his lack of sensitivity. His grimace told her she could have pulled her punch a bit. 

"What now?" Christen asked as she linked her arm with Doc and followed the other two.

"Now you rest. We gather the Council, talk about what we discussed on the way here, and then they will speak to you," Kendra said as they made their way into the main house, and Kendra showed Christen into a rather large room.

"Doc will not be staying, and you will rest up. Dinner at six, and the big decisions can wait until tomorrow," Kendra instructed and as much as Christen wanted Doc to stay, she had to admit that she did need rest. But more than that, she needed time to think.

"I will be allowed to speak to Doc later?" Christen asked with a tired sigh.

"Of course, she will show you around the compound in the morning, but you look like hell, take a nap. You don't have to worry; you are safe here," Kendra said.

Christen frowned.

"You are not our prisoner, Christen. You are our leader, future and hope," Michael said.

Christen baulked at the idea of being any of those things.

"Don't worry about it. You'll man up when the time comes; it is in your DNA. The Astor were not born to follow, and they were not born to accept defeat. You will learn much of yourself over the next few weeks. It won't all be what you expect," Kendra warned.

Michael glanced at her in that familiar way that hinted to Christen that he thought Kendra had said too much again.

"You sure expect a lot from a science experiment that no one intended to do. Human trials were not on the menu," Christen teased.

Something in the way both Kendra and Michael looked at her made her uneasy.

"Your creation was no accident, Christen Benton. Nothing you think you know about the day Alexander infected you with his blood is as you think. You were no accident, just like Dana didn't prick herself with that needle, and I am not talking about fate. The others were experiments, failed experiments, to be blunt, but you are the real deal," Doc stated flatly.

The three of them glanced at her.

"There is someone you need to meet before this makes sense. There are things even Kendra and Michael do not know. Secrets meant only for you," Doc said.

She hugged Christen again, and then they left her alone. She didn't know what to think as she unpacked her meagre new belongings.

What did Doc learn that not even Michael and Kendra knew? How could what Doc said be true? She didn't know and didn't intend to drive herself crazy by wondering.

Christen still didn't feel like herself, and her body hadn't entirely settled down, so she lay down, intent on taking a nap.

***

Christen woke and blearily sat upright. The date and time on her HUD made her frown. How had she slept for three days? Disorientated, she closed her eyes for a bit.

Had someone drugged her? No. She was slightly feverish, according to her HUD. This was still part of whatever started happening when she fought Moorland.

Something Kendra said suddenly popped into her brain. "At this stage of your development..." were Kendra's words, and they made her frown. What did that mean, and what was happening to her? She felt odd, not quite herself.

Someone had brought her clothes, which didn't look much different from her regular workday clothes. She took a shower, preoccupied with her thoughts, and it wasn't until she brushed her teeth and wiped the precipitation from the mirror that she glanced at her own image.

Although she still resembled the Christen from before, she definitely wasn't. One look and she could see the Astor, the creature not born of this planet, too perfect and too everything if she were honest. Her eyes were bluer than the sky, unearthly somehow. 

Nausea overwhelmed her, and this time it was worse than before. Blood spewed from her, not a whole lot, and it wasn't fresh red, but brownish and metallic.

She had to brush her teeth twice to eliminate the taste, but the feeling of wrongness had left her body.

It wasn't until she caught her eyes in the mirror that she realized what happened. That discharge had been the last of her humanity.

The final bits of this earth that had remained in her veins. She was Astor. She wasn't human or superhuman anymore—she had become the alien, but there was more to it.

The face in the mirror was not quite her own, and she suspected this would not be the last change. It was almost as if she knew something she wasn't ready to accept.

"Are you finished yet, Christen? Someone is waiting to meet you," Doc asked from outside the door, and when Christen emerged from the bathroom, Doc seemed surprised by the extent of the changes in her.

"They said you might look different, but wow," Doc murmured almost to herself.

"Who wants to meet me?" Christen asked as Doc studied her like a new and exciting species of virus.

"See for yourself," Doc said mysteriously, and Christen momentarily hoped it was Dana, but her senses told her that Dana wasn't in the compound and wouldn't need to meet her.