The Exiled Earthborn by Paul Tassi

me a with a children’s tale?” he asked.
    “I do not, but you will learn that soon enough. He will teach you what sort of punishment a Xalan should endure when he turns his back on his own kind.”
    Alpha was angry now, and slammed his claw on the table.
    “You accuse me of betraying my people? I received my father’s message. I know what you and the Council have been keeping from us, all of us, for thousands of years. This lie has fueled our civilization to the brink of ruin!”
    The green-eyed Xalan nodded.
    “So it is true, you do know. It was a mystery why Commander [garbled] was pursuing you personally, but now it is clear. I pleaded with them to spare you. I told them I could bring you back and you could work under my tutelage as in the old days. But now I see how far gone you truly are. They were right; you should be dead like the rest of your clan.”
    Alpha was fuming at the restrained creature before him. The prisoner’s green eyes glinted as he pressed on, his lips curled over his stained teeth in what looked almost like a wretched smile.
    “Did Commander [garbled] tell you how your father died?”
    Lucas looked nervously at Tannon, who was staring straight ahead, watching the conversation unfold, as were a dozen high-ranking officials around him. The creature continued.
    “I know they told the public it was a targeted Soran airstrike, but that was a merciful excuse to hide his treachery.”
    Alpha’s claws rattled on the table as he tapped them furiously. Lucas was growing increasingly uneasy.
    “They restrained him in the Council chambers, and brought in your brothers, one at a time.”
    “Tannon,” Lucas finally said. “Get him out of there.”
    The prisoner continued.
    “After each charge was read, one of them was beheaded in front of him as he cried out.”
    “Tannon!” Lucas shouted, and a dozen heads turned to look at him, except those of the two creatures in the soundproof room. Alpha seethed and Lucas could see his muscles tensing. Alpha touched something on his metal hand and a mechanism somewhere in the room clicked. Tannon nodded to the guard who tried to open the door.
    “Sir, it’s locked. He’s done something to it.”
    “Undo it, damnit!” Tannon roared.
    “By the time they brought your sister in, he was weeping. It was pathetic. I could not believe this was the brilliant mind I once revered.”
    A sister? Alpha had never mentioned her in all their time together. Lucas banged his hands on the window to no avail. Don’t, Alpha. He’s baiting you.
    “For the final, most poisonous charge of high treason, they cut her up piece by piece as she was still alive and screaming. It was the last thing he saw before he—”
    Alpha leapt across the table and plunged his claws into the creature’s throat. Soldiers yelled and fired at the seals of the door in an attempt to open it.
    Black blood gushed out onto the table as the two locked eyes. The translator was still projecting the dying creature’s thoughts.
    “We could have … won this war … you and I.”
    “I will win it,” Alpha said coldly, his teeth bared. “I will purge our people of monsters like you.”
    He ripped the creature’s esophagus open and the captive Xalan collapsed on the table. Alpha was visibly shaking as he rested his bloody claws on the metal surface.
    The door finally opened and soldiers stormed in with assault rifles pointed at him. Tannon marched in and Lucas quickly followed. Blood pooled around the creature’s head and was dripping quietly onto the floor.
    “Unauthorized execution of a restrained prisoner?” Tannon said. “I should have you share his fate right here, right now.”
    “I was … I did not …” Alpha stammered to find the words. Lucas had seen him fight when necessary, but this was a level of brutality he never expected from his friend.
    Alpha looked up at Lucas with pain in his eyes.
    “I was unaware of the specifics of my clan’s death. I believed my sister would have at