Chapter 25 Not Very Original

"You remember now?" asked the creature, picking something out of its teeth.

"What the hell did you do?" Dustin slowly got up from the floor and sat back down. His head felt like it had been hit with a sledgehammer.

"I straightened out your memories. Your mind had been scrambled from those Josagn Jokes poking around in your head. They should never have gotten their claws on that memory crap from the Ogifgar. Too bad they convinced the humans that the Ogifgar were bad guys that needed to be put down. Of course, that's what the Josagn do best."

"Lie?" he guessed. He knew how vile the race was and relished the fact that he had ended so many of them. It would have been nice if the entire race had been wiped out, but he had a feeling that hadn't happened. They probably had pockets of themselves scattered all over the place.

"Of course," it agreed, hopping down from the table to check out the kitchen.

Dustin sat there, remembering bits of his life. His dad had sent him and his mom away, to keep them safe. He remembered watching the ship he was flying, get blown up. They hid in the sewers of human cities, surviving on scraps until some of the humans hunted his mother down to rape and kill her. That was when he formed his hatred of humans. He vowed to hunt down and kill every one of them that had touched his mother.

And he did, too. They all had to sleep sometime.

As a child, he hadn't understood the importance of his status as the prince of his people, until he met Olivia a year later. He had hidden aboard a transport ship, that was heading to the war front with supplies. It was the best time he had ever had, as the food was plentiful, and there was no one to try and hurt him. Olivia had hidden on the same ship. She never told him what happened to her parents, but she recognized him as a prince almost immediately. She said he had an aura about him. Whatever that meant.

He learned that his people were scattered, and he was still young and stupid enough to think that he would make a wonderful king. The problem, his people sucked. Sure, they had an awesome ability to shapeshift, but it took years of practice and intense training to get good at it. If only there were some way they could speed up the process.

Olivia helped him break into the heavy wooden cargo containers that housed the mechs and giant war robots, that were planned to be used on the battlefield. It was there, he discovered his love and interest in technological things. Olivia didn't have a clue.

By the time the ship arrived, he had a working model. Determined to make a better one, he took to attacking the robots on the battlefield, and scavenging parts. Olivia helped immensely. There were many close calls. Everything changed when Granny Gooblen arrived.

She took them under her wing, kept them fed and safe from every alien that was after them. Only a few hunted them specifically for what they were, most only saw them as orphaned brats.

The many planets they had traveled to and visited rushed through his mind in a haze of memories. If he tried to focus on any one, it would stop and present itself, but there were so many, he didn't really try hard.

Every time he ran into some of his people, he was able to make them working PED's and showed them how they worked, but because he was still young they always opted to leave instead of follow him. They always promised to come if he ever found a safe place, but then the humans started hunting them in earnest.

Granny had gone out to collect some food, when the humans came to capture them. They had fought of course. Olivia fought better then he did, she didn't always have her nose in some electronic parts.

The shuttle ride was long. They were taking them to some science facility where they were going to study them like animals. Everything they tried to do, to escape, failed. When they finally arrived, Dustin was surprised to see that the lead scientist was a Uz'En in hiding. He was terrified of being discovered.

Dustin used his draw as the prince, to convince him to keep them safe. Reports were written that were misleading, steps were taken to hide and mislead. Then he convinced him to copy him. To take his place. The genetic sample was never his. They were given his PED. His abilities as the prince gave him access to memories of everyone of his race, past and present.

His head was aching as he tried to remember how to use those princely abilities. He didn't think they had all been unlocked when he agreed to go into the tank as the last subject in a made-up experiment. Every male had taken the time to change to look like him.

"It was all fake," he whispered.

"What you were saying seemed wrong. Uz'En can't be cloned. Their genetic material is more than that of other races. There is an energy signature to each one. When you try to split that signature, it grows weaker until it fizzles." She hopped back onto the table, munching on something that she was pulling out of a white bag by the handful.

"The memories were messed up when they tried to implant the fake memories. Everything was erased or changed to try and hide us. The original Dustin didn't know it was me. He fed me the same lies he fed to every other Dustin that had made it to him."

"To keep your people safe, you were always willing to go to great extremes. Bet you never imagined it would give you such a headache in the future." She chuckled as she finished the bag and threw it on the ground.

"Damn! I was the one who made the nanobots, too! Those bastards stole my nanobots!"

Granny tipped her head to the side. "They did? What did they use them for?"

"Killer robots."

"Hmph! As if that's never been done before. Not very original if you ask me."