Replace

Captain Mckinley, was an alien? None of them could believe it. Of course they were shocked, but it was Xander whom it hit the hardest. He had always admired Captain McKinley, as she is one of the youngest women, in fact the youngest person to make Captain in the DUET. He might have even had a bit of a crush on her, but it all fell apart.

The fact that she was an alien didn't bother her, the fact that she was unregistered as well, especially since she was from a species he had never seen before is what irked him the most. In fact, her ambiguous species irked most of them.

As shocked as they were, they managed to keep quiet pretty well, and observe her actions from the shadows. She turned on the transmogrifier and went through the last couple of transmogrifications registered on the device. She deleted a few entries manually before uploading them to the server. She took a look around her and welcomed a few aliens(?) in the room.

There were a total of five people/aliens and they were completely covered by a hood, covering their appearances. They had a shorter stature which only solidified their suspicions of being aliens. They formed a line, and the first one in the queue went ahead and entered the chamber, right after dropping down the hoodie.

Due to their angle, they couldn't quite make out their species in that shorter duration, but after the machine was done with them a naked woman emerged from the machine, who was much taller than her earlier stature. Her face seemed familiar, and yet a bit unfamiliar. The rest of them followed and one by one everyone emerged looking human. Three men, and two women.

Captain McKinley showed them to the clothes she ensured she brought with her. They were uniforms and thus enabled them to blend in. After everyone was done they left the room, empty and bare. "What was that"? After a whole minute of silence, Wayne asked.

"We are being deceived. She isn't our Captain McKinley." Violette mumbled.

"I know!" Xander scoffed, still affected by the revelation. "I thought she was a protector of the law, and here she is, an illegal immigrant smuggling other aliens. I don't know whom to trust anymore" Xander sighed.

"She isn't our Captain McKinley, but I am sure the original Captain was like that" Violette clarified.

"What do you mean"? Stacy asked her.

"Out of the five 'humans' I saw, I recognised two of them. They work in the med-bay and if they were already aliens, they wouldn't need to use this transmogrifier. They can just use the dissociator to go back and forth" Violette shrugged.

"You think she has been replaced"? Stacey asked.

"I think a lot of them are being replaced. And if you ask my opinion…" Violet trailed off, taking a long glance at the device. "This is the hub of it"

"Wait, you think our mother has been replaced too" Wayne asked her.

"I dunno," Violette shrugged. "I have never met her. But I do know that we need to leave. If she is smuggling aliens, she'll be back. Or maybe someone else. We need to leave, or else it'll be us getting replaced" Violette scoffed.

"Wait, how do you know none of us are replaced yet"? Xander popped the question prompting a series of suspicious stares throughout the team.

"I have been observing you clowns for as long as I have known you. Apart from your acceptance of me being the Captain, nothing seems out of the ordinary. Yet".

"How about this..." Xander trailed off. "We come off with some sort of code word, to verify that it's us"?

"What are we five"? Violette rolled her eyes. "Trust me, they'd know what it is. Cause they will observe us, our tendencies before they replace us, whoever they are. If you ask me, I'd say trust your gut".

"Yeah, not all of us have strong gut feelings like you" Stacey sighed.

"I often noticed Kaze type stuff on his phone… specifically he used a Z slash tag a lot. Maybe he was communicating with someone"? Xander prompted, while immersed deep in thought.

"How is that relevant"? Wayne retorted in annoyance.

"No it is. What if we come up with something like that. Maybe not our phones since they are under scrutiny after Kaze escaped, but a gesture… something so subtle that they won't notice. They won't realise that we are copying, and won't bother noting that about us before they replace us" Xander suggested.

"That's… actually not a bad idea" Violette smiled, probably for the very first time she joined the academy.

"Wait a second! You seriously don't think we should just come up with signs and wait for them to replace us, do you?" Wayne was shocked. "We should run!"

"Where"? Stacey snapped. "If this is global, nowhere is safe. And if that is what happened to our mom, who is to say that it didn't happen to most of our family? It's not like going back home is an option" Stacey pointed out.

"The chicks right but so is this douche. Nowhere is safe.. But we can't just sit here and wait for our destruction to come. We need to escape." Violette nodded.

" But where?" Xander sighed.

"Earth might not be safe, maybe we should go beyond" Violette shrugged.

"Wait, you wanna fly away"? Xander asked, but all of them stared at her in shock. "How are we gonna survive out there. No known planet has atmospheric oxygen close to earth. We might die if we stay here, but we 'will' die if we leave!" Xander pressed on the word 'will'.

"I am not saying leave immediately." Violette snickered. "Give me a week, I'll do some research and figure something out. Meanwhile, you guys come up with a subtle signal, so we can use it" Kane ordered.