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fell
back into gear.
    “Caelum…?”
    I nodded weakly while my gaze followed
Prissila’s progress across the floor until she disappeared from
view. “You don’t have to tell me, Caprice. I’ll stay clear of
her.”
    As the words left my lips, a disappointed
thought ran across my mind.
    What a waste. That girl was as close to a ten
out of ten as I’d ever seen.
    I blinked and noticed Maya Khayman had picked up
her tray.
    She was watching me too, with an unreadable look
on her face.
    Then she turned away and walked over to the
stairs leading up the floors. At the second floor she found herself
a table, and ate the remains of her lunch alone.

Reflections – 2.
    The Prides called them Fragments.
    They were artifacts found decades after the
Cataclysm had torn our little corner of the galaxy apart.
    At least, that’s what we were told.
    From what I understood, they were pieces of
numerous larger objects, and only the Prides knew how many of these completed objects could be made. However, the Prides were
reluctant to combine the pieces and form a completed item – an
Artifact.
    I understood their reasons.
    If a Fragment on its own was that powerful, then
when all the parts were combined the end result would be
unstoppable by conventional means. For that reason, the Prides
chose to keep the Fragments apart, locked away in secret vaults
throughout the asteroid colony of Pharos, and probably elsewhere at
covert installations deep within the Hurakan Nebula.
    The other reason was the Prides didn’t trust us
Familiars.
    And we Familiars were the only ones that could
operate a Fragment.
    That being the case, what were Familiars? What
made us so special?
    Genetically we were almost identical to humans
but there were differences, and those differences were what the
Fragments reacted to. However, before Arisa’s blood triggered my
awakening as a Familiar, my genetic sequencing looked unremarkably
Regular.
    During the bi-annual medical examination
conducted at the school, I had recorded negative values when it
came to deciding my compatibility to one of the eight Symbiotic
strains. What I didn’t know was that there were two tests, one for
deeming eligibility to a Pride, and one for deeming eligibility as
a Familiar.
    Two days before Caprice stabbed me on the
rooftop, my impending Awakening as a Familiar became known to the
Prides.
    Two of those Prides moved to acquire me –
the Raynars and the Lanfears.
    What resulted was a skirmish that led many to
believe the Raynars wanted me dead.
    The truth was a little different, but I won’t
spoil the fun at this point.
    Because I was ‘bonded’ or ‘branded’ to the
Lanfear Symbiote my abilities wouldn’t fully manifest unless I
absorbed the blood of a Lanfear Aventis. If I drank the blood of
other Prides, I wouldn’t power up to the same degree.
    I did say drink the blood of other
Prides.
    The truth is we Familiars have one trait we
share with fictional vampires.
    We can drink blood and draw nutrients from
it.
    At first the thought of drinking human blood
turned my stomach. The thought of drinking Aventis blood made me
want to slit my wrists.
    But I guess things changed, or rather, I
changed.
    Little by little, I stopped hating the Aventis
as much as I did.
    But I digress.
    That wasn’t what I wanted to talk about.
    I was talking about the drinking of Aventis
blood.
    Specifically, I was talking about drinking the
blood of Arisa Imreh Lanfear.
    My Awakening had triggered genetic and
physiological changes. One of those was my ability to extend and
retract my canines. I have to admit that was the creepiest change
of all, and it made my skin crawl the one time I drew them in and
out while watching myself in a mirror.
    There were a handful of occasions when I made
use of this new ability. I plunged my canines into Arisa’s tender
flesh, and drank her warm blood as it flowed into my mouth.
However, most of the time Arisa’s blood was injected into me
whenever the Lanfear researchers