Chapter 19 - The Bynar Race (Patreon)

“We have. The investigation is ongoing, but our most notable finding was the assassin’s identity. They were fairly well known in certain circles and went by the name Zero. Our DNA scan had some interesting results, though. The assassin was not Arkarian, as they first appeared, they were not even male. The assassin was a Bynar, wearing prosthetics to appear like an Arkarian. We learned their real name, of course, but it is irrelevant, as it is a 128-digit sequence of numbers that doesn’t really translate.”

“A bynar??” I repeated out of shock. What the fuck?! Out of all the species for an assassin.

Got to say, though, Zero was a damn cool name for a Bynar assassin.

I turned my thoughts back to when I’d first arrived in this universe and my study of the various races that had appeared in the various shows. Bynars were a race of humanoid native to the planet Bynaus in the Beta Magellan system. They were shorter than most humanoids, though not exceedingly so, and were genderless. They had lilac colored skill and enlarged skulls. There were a few other physically identifying characteristics unique to their race, which would explain why someone in the assassin profession would want to appear as a far more non-descript looking humanoid. Bynars were fairly distinctive and would have been instantly identified as to race. And unless this universe was crazier than even I realized, there couldn’t be many Bynar assassins around, right?

The Assassin’s extreme technical skills and method of assassination certainly made more sense. When a Bynar was born, a surgeon removed the child’s parietal lobe and replaced it with a synaptic processor which allowed the entire race to interconnect with their planet’s master computer, and in turn, each other. As a rule, this meant that virtually all Bynars had an incredible baseline technical ability. Their society was so integrated with technology, it defined them as a race. They also lived and worked in pairs. I was under the impression they were always in close proximity.

“If he was a Bynar, does that mean he has a partner somewhere that will be trying to kill me? To finish the job or get revenge for my killing their partner?”

Sloan shook his head. “Zero’s partner was killed some years ago in an accident, which apparently drove them insane. Normally when a Bynar’s life partner is killed, for whatever reason, as accidents and illness do occur, they’d have been assigned a new partner. Zero became a sort of criminal deviant in their society when he refused a new partner and was then subsequently banished from their home world and their connection to the master computer was severed, which probably did not do them any favors mentally.”

Speaking about an individual who was part of a genderless species really played havoc with speech when you were used to using gender pronouns all the time.