Free Adaptation: book I by Pepper Pace

him while he was wasted. He knew that he should not have indulged so much, but he felt better even if he had consumed twice as many dandelions as he had ever previously consumed.
    The yellow caps of the dandelion were a narcotic for Centaurians, and as far as Bilal knew, he was the only one who had ever figured it out. He was definitely the only Centaurian to be indulging in it. It wasn’t as if Earth 2 had weeds.
    Bilal unsuccessfully tried to move gracefully so he wouldn’t draw attention, but he decided he was being paranoid. He had every right to be on the mother ship. He had several samples that he needed the ship to process, and no one knew it was for his own purposes.
    Bilal went to a level where the ship’s receptors were located. There were several other Centaurians connected to the ship for various reasons, and he ignored them. Bilal slipped his body into one of the niches and extended his tentacle until he was linked with the ship. The ship felt warm and comforting, the familiar humming undercurrent putting him at ease. 
    Bilal allowed his filaments to push from his tentacles and communicated his needs. He retrieved several samples he had stored within his body and passed them to the ship. One of them was some of the ovum he had collected from the human female. She was a bit older but still of childbearing age.
    Bilal knew that he could not procreate with a human. Not directly …
    He located Raj’s sperm cells, fed them to the ship, and monitored every step as it performed the relatively simple task of impregnating the egg. Once the cells began to multiply, Bilal extracted samples of his DNA and spliced it into the developing egg. It aborted immediately, which is why he needed the ship. He programmed the ship to make his cells adapt.
    That was the ship’s purpose. It hadn’t been the Centaurians that had created the end of mankind. It had been the mother ship. The Centaurians in their ignorance had no idea that it was happening until it was too late and someone had programmed the ship to stop adapting. By that time, however, most humans had been infected by the alien cells, which had been carried through the mother ship’s connection to the earth—the signposts.
    The alien cells lay dormant in humans, and they needed to be reprocessed annually to confirm that the cells did not come back to “life.” If that happened, it would wipe out the remaining humans. It meant that the mother ship could never leave the humans. The Centaurian’s nomad existence had come to an abrupt end in an attempt to pay their debt to mankind.
    Bilal waited anxiously for the ship to adapt his cells to that of the humans. When the fertilized egg began to thrive, he marveled at the new life form. It multiplied rapidly as human eggs did, but because of his alien DNA, it happened at an even greater pace. He had known that his cells would dominate, but he didn’t want that. He slowed the rate and manipulated them further until many of his traits remained dormant.
    It only took a few days. When it was completed, Bilal retrieved the egg and stored it. He wasn’t sure how long it would be viable outside of a mother’s womb and wasn’t exactly sure why he had done this in the first place. Now that he was no longer wasted, it seemed like an extreme and potentially dangerous thing to do. But each time he marveled at the life form that he had created, he knew that it was too late to undo it. He was incapable of turning off the life he had started it.
    But he would if she didn’t want it.
    He would destroy what was created if she wouldn’t accept it.

     
     
     
     
     
     

Chapter 9
~Decisions and Consequences~
     
    As Carmella lay curled on the porch, eyes glazed in grief, she felt something soft and warm rub against her legs. The tears had stopped some time ago, but she was still unable to pull herself together. The depression ran so deeply that she couldn’t stand.
    Her eyes moved to the sight of a wolf lying against her legs. It