same world, different life

Chapter 9. The truth revealed

After I had my human form again, I had started to stay in it more and more, but it soon became clear the day after I received it why the hive queen wanted my human form back.

"How many times has that been now, 5?" I asked her.

"In a day on top of it, your Infested must have strengthened your stomach," she replied.

"I'm starting to regret listening to you," I told her.

"Hey, you should be thanking me for getting Dante to convince Machiavelli! At least hold up your end of the bargain," she replied.

"fine," I regrettably replied, "do you need me to do another one?"

She picked me up, cradled me, and said: "rest your stomach. I know it's late, so why don't you sleep with me tonight?"

"Might as well," I replied as one of her drones wrapped me in their membrane.

"I guess you're sticking around then," she replied as she held me against her chest and laid down. "Good night, then."

"Good night," I replied before I felt a calming sensation and fell asleep.

I woke up the next day with one of her drones on top of me near the entrance. "Can you get off? You're a bit heavy," I told it. It went back into the hive while I went to the couch to stretch my dragon form wings again.

"Nathan, you up yet?" I heard Machaivelli ask me. I popped my head up off of the couch, and he noticed me with a curious stare. "Daniel's stopping by again; maybe you'd want to be playing outside with him again," he told me.

I turned to my scaled form and replied with: "Yeah, and then maybe we can go find your son finally."

Then Machiavelli checked his watch and told me: "Well, your mental trainer needed to put her kid with the Infested for a while, and since you seemed to be her best client, she wants you to fill in for him."

"For how long?" I asked him.

"She hasn't got a date for when he'll come back," he replied.

We headed to her place again, but after Machiavelli closed the door, I noticed the kid was still here. She gagged me until he wasn't within hearing distance. "What was that for!" I shouted at her.

"Sorry about that, but right now, we have more pressing matters," she replied.

"Is he here?" I heard a voice say.

"Yeah, he is Virgil," she replied.

"Who's he?" I asked her.

"Nathan, this is Virgil, Machiavelli's son, we've been trying to expose your caretaker for weeks now," she told me.

"Expose him, how exactly?" I asked her.

"For the control freak he is, that's why I left because he could barely take care of me after my mother was killed, and I doubt he could do any better for you, Nathan. When we were in Saturn's orbit, he kept bragging about how he could take the rowdiest kid he could find and tame him like a savage beast, but you're not like that today that was then. Just about everything he told you is a lie, your family's condition, the deadline, all of it fake. We may separate the kids, but it's not usually for more than a few days in cases like yours; in his case," he said as he pointed to the other kid in the room, "His family was on a business trip in Aisa and left him with a friend before we got here. Hence, they probably ended up on the Eurasian ship. we still need to track them down, though."

"Who else knows about this?" I asked them.

"Dante, the hive queen, your friend Daniel's a bit oblivious to it, though. Dante kept wiping his memory of anything about our plan with the implant he has in his brain," Virgil replied.