As the door opened, I felt like there was something in my eyes. I rubbed them, only to see that the claw had disappeared, and I had my own hand again. I stared, but not specifically at the hand. I looked to see what I could see. I could see in front of me... and that's it. I couldn't see what was going on all around me anymore. Still, just to be sure, I checked my head. I could feel my all too familiar nose, I had actual lips, there was hair on my head.
"Yes, you've got your own head back." the voice sounded new, and yet somehow familiar.
I waved the smoke away as I stepped out of the tele-pod. Saya held up a mirror. It was the same mirror that Godfrey used on me before, showing me that I had changed into a fly. But this time, it was my own face looking back at me. A breath escaped me, which slowly turned into laughter, as I knew that I had returned to normal. Or, at least, what is normal to me, Merlin, and Saya.
"Now that we have that taken care of..." Saya tossed the mirror away as she spoke, and turned to the only other person in the room.
It was weird to see this person. I recognized the clothes he was wearing, as they belonged to the lab-coated fly that I've seen. Speaking of which, the fly's that I was fused with must have made some memories of its own, which somehow entered my head. As such, I recognize his face as well. Even so, when I... or the fly, saw his face, it was attached to a different body. So to see him attached to a human body... it was a lot to take in. At least, I didn't suffer a headache thinking about it, so that was a plus. According to the fly's memories, the man called himself Andre.
"Who are you?" Saya asked Andre.
"I told you, my name is..."
"I meant who are you in this world?" Saya interrupted him, "How did you get involved with these Cylons? Or Lehnsherr? Or Magneto, or whatever his name is."
Andre sighed, "It's a long, and sad story."
"Well, until the Cylons decide we're a danger, we have all the time to hear it." Merlin responded.
"It all started back in college." Andre explained, "Where I met Seth the first time."
Saya squinted her eyes, "Who's Seth?"
Andre said nothing. Instead, his eyes rolled into the direction of that bigger fly. All three of us looked.
"That was a man?" Merlin asked, his eyes almost leaving their sockets in shock.
"Indeed. He was..." Andre admitted, "He was my roommate, who happened to be majoring in the same field as me."
"Which field?"
"Radio waves." Andre replied.
"Radios make waves?" Merlin wondered.
Saya glared at him, but Andre smiled as he explained, "Not exactly. When a radio transmits a signal, it sends particles into the air, which travel at a high speed, which we call waves."
I could actually see Merlin wrap his head around this as he scratched his head. Even though he had been communicating through radios for days by that point, the idea was still fairly new to him.
"So Seth and I had this idea." Andre continued, "What if we could send instead of audio or video recordings of people across great distances, we would send people?"
Merlin had a vague look on his face.
"He's basically saying they came up with the idea to teleport." Saya explained to him.
Merlin scoffed, "Why didn't you just say so?"
"You seemed to be the least informed." Andre explained, "I tried to keep it as simple as possible."
Merlin's mouth formed an "O", then he nodded.
"We have experimented for months." Andre continued, "With lifeless objects at first, later with organic subjects. Steaks, champagne, and the like. But we eventually had to test it on living animals. And eventually humans. And... that's when things went awry."
Andre paused. Clearly, just remembering all of this was painful for him.
"When I was first teleported, unbeknown to us, a fly came along with me, resulting in... well, resulting in what you have seen."
"And you never tried to undo it?" Merlin asked.
"The thought occurred to us." Andre said, "But what if we did? For all we knew, I'd get my head back, but would suddenly have the fly's wings, or all six of its legs. We couldn't know for sure if it would work the way we wanted it to. So we adjusted the machine as much as we could, as fast as we could. It didn't take long before Seth decided to use himself as a test subject. This time, he even deliberately teleported himself along with a fly. He came out all right. Or so we thought at first. He came out, but what had happened to the fly? Over the course of the next few days, he slowly changed into... into..."
He couldn't say the actual words, so he pointed at the body of the bigger fly.
"I'm... We're sorry." Merlin said.
"Don't be." Andre replied, "By the time he had changed into that thing, the Seth I knew had already died. And if it wasn't for my human part living in the body of a fly, I would have too."
"That explains why you two became what you were." Saya understood, though she kept her frown, "But how does that tie with everything else?"
"Because we suddenly became the monsters that we were, soon enough the whole world knew what we were working on." Andre explained, "It didn't take long before we were approached by Miss Godfrey. She told us that she was interested in our invention. She claimed she was from a world that had perfected teleportation, and would use their expertise to perfect our machines."
"She would?" this sounded incredible to Merlin.
"But there was a catch." Saya realized.
"Yes." Andre admitted, "She wanted us to keep experimenting with our unsuccessful teleportations."
"Why?" Merlin didn't understand.
"She said that her people had developed synthetic brains." Andre explained, "But to install that into an organic body takes a lot of time and effort. But if we could somehow use our invention to fuse organic bodies with electric brains."
"So to make conversions more efficient." Saya sighed.
"Conversions?" Andre had no idea what Saya was talking about.
Merlin opened his mouth to talk, but Saya stopped him, "You're not done talking. Where does Magneto fit in?"
"I'm not sure." Andre admitted, "One day, he visited this factory, somehow willing the steel doors to open, despite our best efforts to keep him out.
I had to assume that Andre, much like myself, had the memories of both him and the fly. And like me, even he gets confused about who is who.
"We were afraid that something as powerful as him came to kill us." Andre continued, "But he didn't. In fact, he looked fascinated by our appearance. Even Miss Godfrey was shocked at the sight of us. Why wasn't he? It made us trust him enough to want to share Godfrey's plans for us with him, as well as our own plans."
"Which were?" Saya asked.
"Seth and I decided that if we could somehow control these fusions that our machines can do, we could use it to fuse other people with flies as well. All behind her back of course. But, as Magneto pointed out, how do we get people to willingly enter our machines along with flies? So he proposed a new idea. We would let the whole world fuse with these synthetic brains, and use that to our advantage."
"How?" Merlin wondered.
"According to Magneto, this world was nearly destroyed by a swarm of mechanical mosquito's." Andre explained, "If we could get our hands on these mosquito's, figure out how they work, and subsequently reprogram them, we could use them to invade people's new brains, so to have them follow our every command."
Merlin scoffed, "And I thought Smith was bad enough."
Andre frowned, "Smith? It's about high time you three told me who you are."
As best as they could, Saya and Merlin explained everything. Who Smith was, what he's doing, where we were from, what Saya meant earlier when she mentioned conversion, the fact that I didn't talk, and everything else he needed to know.
Andre exhaled, "Yes, I can see why you would say I'm as bad as that Smith. But remember, it was the fly that was in control. Even when Miss Godfrey came in with... your friend here... while I felt bad for him, the fly that controlled my body had no problem putting him in the machine, along with a fly, and be the first human fly where we were in full control of its fusion."
I rubbed my head as I heard him say that. They were in full control, and yet they couldn't do anything against my headaches.
"On the other hand, it gave me an aid in trying to stop... me and Seth from doing what we were doing." Andre continued, "They wanted to reprogram the mosquito's, so I thought of doing that before they did."
"Which you clearly managed." Merlin laughed.
"I adjusted one mosquito's, which would in turn adjust one other. Both adjusted mosquito's would go on to adjust one more each, making a total of four mosquito's that would go on to do the same with one each..."
"Until they were all adjusted." Saya interrupted him.
"At least the ones that were in this room." Andre corrected her, "But in the situation we were in, it was enough."
"So what are you going to do now?" Merlin asked.
Andre sighed, "Since these little things are responsible for what happened to this world, I will tell them to restore what they can.
"Can you let us take some of them along with us?" Merlin asked, "These little buggers can be very useful against our enemy."
Andre thought about this for a few seconds, "I don't see why not."
"Saya, Merlin, M! Do you hear me?" Murphy's voice sounded in my ear.
All three of us placed our hands to our ears, so to hear him more clearly.
"Murphy, you're back!" Merlin sounded cheerful.
Andre raised a brow, but he didn't question what was going on.
"Sorry to have kept you in the dark for so long." Murphy apologized, "I had to keep radio-silence, or else they would have tracked us down."
This raised a question in my mind. If my head got switched with that of a fly, what happened to the ear-piece I had in my ear?
"Also, while you were down exploring, I was looking for a resurrection ship." Murphy continued.
"A resurrection ship?" Merlin asked, which raised Andre's head.
"It's something that the Cylons use." Murphy explained, "When they die, their consciousness gets downloaded into another body."
I gasped when I heard that. Earlier, Godfrey talked about saving my life from a Stormtrooper. I didn't know what that was. I did remember her... or rather the Cylon woman that looked like her, meeting me along with a man in a white combat armor. Is that what she was talking about? If so, then how could Godfrey have had anything to do with that? It couldn't have been the same woman, because the one I met was killed by Tuxedo Kamen. And even if she somehow survived that, the entire base blew up. I was lucky to get out of there alive myself. So it couldn't be the same woman. Thinking about it, why did Godfrey pick ME of all people to put into the tele-pod? If what Murphy told us was true, and Cylons can download themselves into new bodies... and it took Murphy this long to get back to us... she may still be out there. I shivered at the thought of it. When I was the fly, I had no trouble killing her. Maybe I was acting on the fly's instinct, maybe I was letting my emotions take the best of. Maybe it's both, and more than that. But being myself again, the thought that I might have to face her again... the lab suddenly felt a lot colder than before.
"Did you find that ship?" Saya questioned.
"I think so." Murphy replied, "But it jumped before I could do anything. In fact, all of their ships did. I'm not picking up any more signals from them."
"What are you saying?" Merlin asked, "They have all left?"
"It seems that way." Murphy replied.
"It looks like that Cylon woman had no back-up plan." Saya said.
"You mean you've thwarted her?" Murphy asked.
"We have." Merlin smiled.
If Murphy could sigh, he would have, judging from what he told us next, "Then I'm afraid your work isn't done here yet."
"How do you mean?" Merlin wondered.
"If they couldn't take over this world through a back door, they will now try to invade en masse." Murphy replied.
"En masse?" Merlin repeated.
"What's going on?" Andre asked us.
Merlin repeated to him what Murphy just told us.
Andre visibly shivered. I could tell he was clenching his teeth together, before he made his decission, "In that case, I can't let you take any mosquito's with you."
"What?" both Saya and Merlin were shocked to hear this.
"If they are as dangerous as you say they are, then we'll need all the help we can get." Andre said, "You go out there and do what you can. Meanwhile, I'll have the mosquito's go out and search for more of themselves, adjust them, and then have them replicate themselves. Hopefully by the time these Cylons return, I'll have a big enough defense against them."
Merlin sighed, "That's sounds fair. What do you think, Saya?"
Saya shrugged, "If he doesn't want us to have his mosquito's, I won't force him to."
Andre nodded, "Thank you."
"Don't thank me." Saya raised her voice, but not enough for this to be a shout. Still, it was enough for Andre to be taken aback with this outburst.
Merlin tried to break the silence, "Eh, when can we see you, Murphy?"
"I've locked on to your signals." he answered, "I'll be landing near where you are shortly."
"We're leaving." Saya said.
Though Andre said something to her, she didn't stop to say anything back to him.
"It was nice meeting you." Merlin said as she shook hands with Andre.
"You too." Andre replied, after which he turned to me, "And you, thank you for your help."
I shook hands with him too, after which both Merlin and me chased after Saya.

As we were making our leave, I noticed that there was nobody else in the building. Which was odd. Did that mean that every single person in this building was a Cylon? Or at least in some way connected to Smith's Army? If so, then why didn't they attack us? Even if the flies and Magneto were our enemies, they weren't exactly friends with the Cylons either, so it would make sense if they joined us in a battle. But even so, we'd be outnumbered seven (including that gray man) to seven hundred (if not thousand). While Magneto was clearly strong enough to make an entire building rumble, even he wouldn't be a match for an entire fleet of ships. In short, they had an advantage over us. Why didn't they take their chance? As I was thinking about this, I felt a tingling on my cheek. I lifted my hand to scratch. To my surprise, I felt a solid object, crawling up my finger. I lowered my hand to look. A fly had crawled its way into my hand. Could it be? Was it the same fly that had been fused with me? I smiled. I didn't know how long we were fused together, but it was clear that the fly had started to respect me in some way. This got me thinking about that Cylon woman. If she indeed resurrected in another ship, she would have found out about what happened to the base that blew up. She would probably have assumed that I died along with everyone else inside. Meanwhile, another base got blown up. While I had something to do with that, she couldn't know that. However, having met me in this world, I could only imagine how surprised she was to see I was still alive. On top of that, she tried to manipulate me into sparing her. I didn't. Or maybe it was the fly. I'll probably never know. Either way, I killed her. Did that trigger her into thinking that I might have had something to do with the destruction of that other base as well? Did that scare her so much, she left with the idea of returning with a larger army? A Cylon is afraid of me? Are we building up a reputation now?

THE END