SHIFTING DIMENSIONS

A MILITARY SCIENCE FICTION ANTHOLOGY

JUSTIN SLOAN     L.O. ADDISON     GEORGE S. MAHAFFEY JR.     KYLE NOE     GENTRY RACE     JONATHAN YANG

DEDICATION

From Justin

To all of my amazing fans who allowed me to go full-time in this amazing writing gig, and to my family for supporting me through all of this.

From George

To Heston, Christine, and all our loyal readers.

From Kyle

Thank you to the awesome writer community from whom I've learned so much. And a huge thank you to our faithful readers. You inspire us to reach higher.

From Gentry

Cherise Wilson

Caillou Davidson

May You Never Lose Your Sense Of Wonder and Never Wonder Your Common Sense.

From Jonathan

A huge thank you, to you awesome readers! Without you imaginative lovers of stories, none of this would be possible.

From L.O.

To all the writers at Wordforge, for keeping my creative fire ablaze.

Shifting Dimensions Team

Beta Editor / JIT Readers

Tim Bischoff

Becky Young

Kelly O'Donnel

Edward Fray

Holly Lenz

Howard Lowery

If I missed anyone, please let me know!

Editors

Diane Newton

Shifting Dimensions (this book) is a work of fiction.

All of the characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Sometimes both.

The Seppukarian Universe (and what happens within / characters / situations / worlds) are Copyright (c) 2017 by Justin Sloan, George S. Mahaffey, and Kyle Noe

Complete Book is Copyright (c) 2017 by Justin Sloan and Elder Tree Press

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, recording or otherwise, without the prior written permission of Justin Sloan.

CONTENTS

Foreword

Preface

Introduction

Hangman’s Loop

Escape First, Vengeance Later

Apocalypse Dreams

Retina

Intertwined

Back at the Mountain

What Next?

FOREWORD

By Nick Cole

Space Marines, Purple Drinks in Con Bars...

And Life.

I’ve been thinking a lot about Space Marines lately. But then again... I’ve been thinking about Space Marines for a large part of my life. I’m guessing, like many of us, it all started when we first saw Aliens, the greatest Space Marine film of all time. For a few it might’ve started when we first read Heinlein’s Starship Troopers. Or, however you came to it. Drake. Weber. Ringo. Many, many SciFi Writers have done noble work in the field of Space Marines fiction.

True Story. I once sold a novel at San Diego Comic Con, over Purple Superhero-Themed drinks in a near-the- con-hotel bar, to my former editor at Harper Collins because it was simply a Space Marine Novel. As she put it: “We always buy Space Marines.” Yes, such deeds are done in such seedy locales as Con Hotel Bars. This is the way the steaks are cut. I am not ashamed.

But Why? Why “always buy space marines?” It’s not a subject that ever gets any major awards. Most Space Marine movies open and close relatively quickly. The novels don’t make any high falutin’ NYT teams reviews, or smart and smarmy reader lists. They don’t revolutionize the market, or have standing room only lines outside the movie theatres. Only a few have done that. Aliens being one. And that was a long time ago. In fact the media often treat the military, in its Hollywood Screenwriter SciFi offerings, as the bad guys, often menacing our heroine of the moment. And yet it’s a solid category on Amazon, and publishers buy it. And people read Space Marines like they’re going out of style. Trust me. They read Space Marines big time. For instance... a series I’m writing with Jason Anspach about our version of the Space Marine, its called Legionnaire, is currently my bestselling book. And I can tell you that these genre readers just move right on to the next “space marine” book after they finish ours.

So... why?

Well, for one, it's because the Space Marine story is nothing but fun. In fact you’re going to have some real page turning, seat of your pants fun in this Anthology.

Aliens. Guns. Weirdness. Death. Glory. Battle.

But I'm going to go out on a limb and say it's more than that. I’m going to say it’s all about Cowboys and Indians. Savages and Civilization. And Toughness. Honor, brotherhood, and the contest of superiority. It’s very Us Vs. Them, a story archetype that has been celebrated in all civilizations since the beginning of language.

.

The Space Marine story is simply this. Mankind goes out into the big dark and meets some monsters. Some savage monsters. And then we fight them. And we win. Even if sometimes everyone gets killed. Space Marine stories are often about state-of-the-art weapons on full auto rock and roll. Tentacles and horrible deaths. Loyalty and never quitting when half the squad is wrapped in tentacles and being digested over a thousand years so babies can POP out of their guts. Oh yeah, and the aliens are coming through the trip-sensors and Sarge is holding the line. It’s about simple soldiers going out, often massively under-supported, often the pawns of some government, or corporate entity, to do or die. And often dying.

Us regular folk get that. That’s us a lot of the time in our real day-to-day life. Or at least sometimes. Sometimes you feel surrounded by debts, jobs that go nowhere, and life. Sometimes it’s all you can do to just try hard, count on your friends, and try to just get through the bad days. A lot of us are just into guns, your buddies, and no holds toe-to-toe combat with some very weird monsters. It’s the opposite of the superhero special powers lead. Or the chosen one who will right all the wrongs of apocalyptia with her bow and arrow. Space Marines are about kids going out to get killed so that man can realize his greater stellar destiny. So, some bugs gotta die. It’s the dark side of exploration.

But it’s also about people counting on each other when the monsters come for you. When the hard times come. Because sometimes, in our own lives, the monsters do come for us. And sometimes those monsters are Cancer. Or Death. Divorce. Depression. Loss. Hopelessness.

Sometimes we are surrounded by monsters. Just like those Space Marines. And sometimes, like them, our buddies don’t quit on us. And we won’t quit on them when the monsters come for them. The space marine story for all its violence reminds us... we are all in this together.

So what’s a Space Marine story about? All this stuff I’ve just mentioned. Guns. Aliens. Weirdness. But what it’s also about is in the phrase. Space Marines. It’s also about the plural of Marine. Marines. Togetherness. All of us. Surrounded in the Outer Dark. Surrounded in life sometimes. In it together. Not quitting on one another. Sometimes it’s about that. And that’s okay.

We are all Space Marines now.

Nick Cole, Coauthor of the Bestselling Galaxy’s Edge series

PREFACE

Before we delve into these stories, I wanted to give you a quick note about what we’re doing here. Each of these stories is tied together in a specific way, because we thought it would be interesting, instead of having a bunch of random short stories, to focus on six that all have the same lead in. That lead in point is that the characters were all on a time ship, part of a fight against an alien invasion in what is known as the Syndicate Wars. They have just gone through the time portal, and now you will see what happens. It should be evident in the stories, to a degree, but I wanted to let you know up front how it works. Fun? We hope so!

Here’s the kicker—each of these authors is going to write a series of books around these characters, or already has. The exception is my story, at the end—Giovanni already appears in the Syndicate Wars (SW) books, a series that serves as a prequel to this anthology and to the spinoff series. BUT it is not required reading. He will continue his story in SW book 5, and I’ll have a spinoff series that’s more out there, more Space Marine/Space Opera with some magic fantasy elements.

For this anthology though, just enjoy the stories for what they are. Be sure to follow these authors on Amazon so you know when their new series come out. Some of them already have amazing books published, so if you like their writing styles you’ll want to check those out too.

Thank you for reading!

Justin Sloan, Coauthor of the Bestselling Reclaiming Honor Series

INTRODUCTION

In the not too distant future, an alien empire called the Syndicate has invaded Earth. After the armies of the world are quickly destroyed, a ragtag resistance comprised of Marines and insurgents rises up to overthrow the invaders and save humanity.

With their superior technology and ability to manipulate time, the Syndicate has so far been able to keep the resistance in check, but the stakes are raised when the insurgents hijack an alien time ship.

When the mechanism that allows for time travel is triggered, however, the resistance fighters find themselves thrust into a maelstrom of infinite time loops and possibilities.

The stories that follow are what they experience when the fabric of time is ripped wide open.

HANGMAN’S LOOP

BY L.O. ADDISON

Kaylin braced her hands against the walls of the tiny escape pod, struggling to choke back her claustrophobia. The pod hurtled forward, heading straight for the swirling smoke of the time-travel portal.

Then it was gone. The Syndicate ship, the escape pod, the portal--all of it. In its place was a black abyss that swallowed all light and matter. Weightlessness consumed her body, but somehow, she could still sense motion tugging her through the nothingness.

The first time she’d experienced this, she’d thought for sure she was dead. But now she knew better--she wasn’t travelling to an afterlife; she was travelling through time. Although there was no way of knowing where or when she’d end up this time. In their desperate escape from the doomed ship, no one had been able to program in a destination.

The weightlessness ended as abruptly as it’d started. Light blinded her, and gravity yanked at her stomach. The abyss vanished, and she materialized back in reality, sitting on a bed in the corner of a room.

No. Not just any room. It was her room, in her old apartment, back at her childhood home in Cleveland. Kaylin hardly dared to breathe, terrified that the slightest movement would send her wheeling back into the abyss of the time-travel portal. She moved only her eyes as she took in her surroundings.

Her tiny bedroom looked exactly the same as it had the last time she’d slept there, before the invasion began and the bombing incinerated her home. She still had the same frayed blue quilt on her bed, the same grey paint on her walls, the same battered dresser in the corner.

Disbelief filled her as she swept her gaze over the colorful posters covering the ceiling above her bed. London, Paris, Berlin, Tokyo, Seoul--all the cities she’d spent her childhood dreaming of visiting. And all of them crushed to ruins by the Syndicate army.

Or maybe not. If the device had taken her to an alternate time frame, maybe none of that had happened yet.

Which left the question: what time had she landed in?

She glanced at the window. The blinds were closed, but hazy grey light crept through the slats, telling of a foggy morning outside. That didn’t help much, considering most mornings were foggy in this city.

Below the window, her beat-up laptop perched on her nightstand, its fan whining as it struggled to keep the old computer cool. A local news website was popped up on the screen, and the entire front page was covered in emergency warnings and pictures of Syndicate ships hovering in the sky over nearby cities.

Kaylin leaned over, peering closer at one of the headlines: “NORTHWEST CLEVELAND RESIDENTS: GOVERNMENT-ISSUED SURVIVAL PACKS AVAILABLE AT ST. MATTHEW’S CHURCH”

A chill flooded her veins. This was it. This was the day the invasion began in Cleveland.

She vividly remembered reading that headline and scrambling to run the four miles to St. Matthew’s, hoping to get her hands on an extra pack of survival materials. At the time, the authorities had said the Syndicate attack on Cleveland wouldn’t begin for at least another two days. They had been accurate in predicting the times of the attacks that had happened the day before, when the invasion first began in other cities. So Kaylin had assumed they’d be able to accurately predict when the invasion would reach Cleveland, and she’d thought it was safe to leave her little brother alone in the apartment.

She’d been wrong. Just as she’d left the church, Syndicate ships had descended from the clouds, dropping deployment pods into the streets. Kaylin had sprinted back toward her home, but it had been too late. The Syndicate had already dropped bombs on the freeway intersection right next to her apartment, obliterating everything within half a mile.

The shockwave had thrown her to the ground, and she’d lain there helplessly in the street, screaming as she watched her apartment complex tumble to the ground. As its ruins were engulfed in flames, a fire had also ignited within her: she wanted to fight. The Syndicate had stolen her brother from her, the most precious thing she had. And she wasn’t going to rest until she got revenge.

She’d been fighting for the Resistance ever since, making it her mission to slaughter as many of the Syndicate invaders as possible.

But none of that had happened yet, at least not in this timeline. Ever since the day she’d lost her brother, she’d desperately wished for a chance to re-do the events of the invasion. And this was it. This was the miracle she’d dreamed of.

She finally had a chance to save her brother’s life.

Kaylin pulled the laptop closer to her, her hands shaking in excitement. The small clock in the corner of the screen said it was eight in the morning, which meant she still had three full hours before the invasion began.

“We’re out of milk.”

Kaylin whirled around to face the door, where the small voice had come from. Jaxon stood there, dressed in pajamas as he sleepily frowned at the bowl of dry cereal in his hands. Kaylin leapt off the bed and ran to her little brother, swooping him up into a desperate hug.

Cereal scattered everywhere as Jaxon dropped the bowl, but Kaylin hardly noticed. She pressed him tightly against her chest, half expecting him to disappear. But he didn’t. His tiny body felt perfectly real and warm and alive.

“Jaxon,” she whispered. She kissed the top of his head and rested her cheek on top of his unruly brown curls. “You’re okay. Oh my God, you’re okay.”

“Kay?” He squirmed in her grasp. “What’s wrong?”

She loosened her desperate grip so she could stare down at him, cupping his cheeks in her hands. He was just as adorable as she remembered, small for a ten-year-old, with freckled skin and somber brown eyes. But his eyes were bigger than normal, wide with fear, and she realized Jaxon had no idea what was going on. He didn’t know that she’d travelled through time to get here, that the Syndicate was going to land in just two hours, that his precious little life was in danger.

And she couldn’t tell him. Jaxon was an incredibly resilient kid--he’d lived through their dad ditching, their mom dying, and Kaylin clumsily taking over his care at only seventeen-years-old. But there was only so much any kid could handle, and she worried that telling him the truth would make him freeze up in panic. She had to get him away from the apartment and to safety, but she couldn’t let him know why.

“Nothing’s wrong, Jax,” she said, forcing herself to give him a reassuring smile. “I just had a really, really bad nightmare that I lost you. And it kind of freaked me out for a moment.”

“Oh.” He finally returned her hug, squeezing her tightly. “Well, it was just a dream. I’m right here. Not lost at all.”

He spoke in a calm, comforting tone that belonged to someone many times his age. He’d been like that ever since their mom had died three years ago, his mind too old for his body. Kaylin felt a deep pang of guilt as she realized that the coming war would only mature him faster.

She let him out of the embrace, and his forehead crinkled with confusion as he looked her over.

“What’re you wearing? And how’d you get so dirty?”

Kaylin glanced down at her clothes. She was still wearing black cargo pants and a grey t-shirt, the same filthy clothes she’d been wearing when she was first captured by the Syndicate. After sitting in a cell for weeks and then battling through the Syndicate ship, they were caked in grime and sweat. Luckily, the dark color of the pants concealed the enemy blood smeared over them, but it didn’t stop Jaxon from crinkling his nose at the smell.

“Um.” She scrambled to think of a reasonable excuse for her appearance. “I went out early this morning to get some more batteries for the radio. And I didn’t want to be out for too long, so I ran the whole way.”

Jaxon poked at an oil stain on her shoulder. “But why are you dirty?”

“I tripped and fell into a really nasty puddle. And then I kind of forgot to change when I got back.”

His frown grew deeper for a second, but then he just shrugged. “Are you going back out again? Because we’re out of milk.”

She froze, not even sure how to respond. It’d been so long since she’d worried about something as mundane as grocery shopping.

“Yeah,” she said. "Sure. Actually, I’m going to head out now. I’ll be right back.”

Jaxon nodded a couple of times and pointed down at the cereal scattered on the carpet. “I’ll clean this up while you’re gone.” He sounded more like a weary parent than a kid.

“Thanks, Jax. Sorry about the mess. I didn’t mean to make you spill.”

He shrugged and set to work picking the cereal off the floor. But Kaylin pulled him back to her and kissed the top of his head one more time.

“Ew,” he muttered, wrinkling his nose again.

She ignored him and cuddled him closer. “Love you bunches.”

He softened and wrapped his tiny arms back around her neck. “Love you, too, Kay.”

Those four murmured words filled her with a burst of warmth that melted away the last of her numb shock. She’d always thought her search for revenge had filled her with fire, but it’d merely been a weak spark compared to the burning protectiveness filling her chest now.

“I’ll be right back, okay?” she said. “I’ll only be gone a few minutes. I promise.”

Jaxon nodded hesitantly, and it took every ounce of willpower she had to make herself let him go and walk to the door. She didn’t want to leave, not so soon after getting him back. Not ever.

But the minutes were ticking down to the start of the invasion, and if she was going to save his life, she needed to get moving.

KAYLIN MARCHED DOWN THE HALLWAY, heading straight for the apartment at the far end. She had never actually come this way before, and there was a damn good reason for that: the apartment at the end of the hallway belonged to Ian.

She didn’t know his last name, and didn’t want to. All she really knew for sure about Ian was that he’d fought overseas in the Army forty years ago. Kaylin didn’t know if he’d always been off his rocker, or if his sanity had gotten trapped and buried in the graves of his fellow soldiers. Whatever the reason, he rarely stepped outside his apartment. When he did, he’d just pace up and down the hallways, muttering to himself and wringing an old Army baseball cap in his hands.

And there was one other thing she knew about him: the crazy old veteran was her best shot for saving Jaxon.

She rapped sharply on his door. No answer came, sending a jolt of panic through her body. She knocked again, practically pounding on it this time.

The door swung open not even two seconds later, and the barrel of a shotgun jabbed toward her. Kaylin instinctively reached for the rifle slung over her shoulder, only to realize it wasn’t there. Somewhere in the rush to escape, she must have lost the rifle she’d been given. She held in a curse and slowly raised her hands above her head.

"It's just me," she said, forcing herself to look away from the shotgun and meet the eyes of the man holding it.

Ian looked healthier and more alert than she'd ever seen him. He was clean shaven and wearing an unwrinkled set of clothes, and his Army cap was on top of his bald head, instead of being strangled in his hands. His skin was just as jaundiced as usual, and his wrinkled hands tremored slightly, but his sharp grey eyes narrowed steadily on her. It seemed the prospect of another war had been enough to bring some life back into the old veteran.

"What do you want?" he demanded.

"Your help.”

He scoffed and started to close the door. "Already tried giving that, and you blew me off."

Kaylin leapt forward, jamming her boot in the doorway to keep it from shutting. "I was being stupid. I realize that now."

Ian stared down at her foot, surprise flashing across his face as he took in her worn, grimy boot. He tilted his head to one side and gave her disheveled appearance a long look from top to bottom. "Where've you been, girl?" he asked, his words slow and thoughtful.

She gestured down the hall, toward her apartment. "I’ve just been hunkering down like everyone else.”

He rolled his jaw back and forth. "Bullshit. Something's different about you. You've been somewhere."

She swallowed hard and bit back the urge to lie to him. After all, this was Ian she was talking to. She hardly needed to worry about coming across as insane.

"I went to the future," she said, struggling to keep her voice even. "I saw what happened. I know we all die, everyone in this building. And I need to get my brother away from here before that happens. So please, for the love of god, help me."

Ian just stared at her for a long, uncomfortable second. Then he shook his head and took a step back, gesturing with the barrel of his shotgun for her to step inside.

"You're talking crazy, but you're finally making some sense. Come on in."

Kaylin stepped inside, and Ian immediately slammed the door closed behind her, bolting it shut. She peered around his apartment, trying not to show surprise. She’d been expecting the apartment to be messy and cluttered, just like Ian’s mind. Instead, it was so freakishly clean, it hardly looked like anyone even lived there. The furniture was sparse, the walls undecorated, and every surface was dusted and polished to a shine.

The only sign that Ian even lived there was a neat stack of supplies in the corner of his living room. It was piled high with boxes of water and food, thermal blankets, and electric lanterns. And ammo. Lots and lots of ammo.

He was ready to live through an apocalypse. The poor man had no idea he was about to be incinerated by a bomb in a matter of hours.

Ian faced her with his arms crossed and his eyes still narrowed suspiciously. He didn’t offer for her to take a seat, and she didn’t dare move away from the door.

“What you told me a few weeks ago,” she said. “About getting Jaxon out of here. Is it still possible?”

Ian shrugged. “Should be.”

She let out a relieved breath. Two weeks before the invasion began, Ian had cornered Kaylin in the hall and told her she needed to get her brother out of the city. He'd been trembling with amped up energy as he approached her, saying that the government was wrong, that he’d heard from sources that the military wouldn’t be able to fight back the impending invasion. Cleveland was doomed, he claimed. They weren’t facing a siege; they were facing a slaughter.

He told her that he had friends who were taking action, former veterans and other fighters who’d joined forces in a guerilla rebellion against the aliens. The Resistance, they called themselves. Their time to fight was coming soon, but for now, they were focusing on saving as many innocent lives as they could. That included Jaxon, along with every other child under the age of fifteen. If she could get Jaxon to the Resistance, they would evacuate him from the city and save his life.

In the past, Kaylin had smiled politely at Ian, nodded along, and edged back into her apartment before slamming the door in his face. She hadn’t believed a word he’d said. She’d had no reason not to believe the military’s claim that they could fend off the invaders, and she’d thought Ian’s “sources” were the voices inside his head that’d driven him mad.

It was only after she’d lost her brother that she’d learned Ian had been telling the truth. The Resistance was real, and they’d saved hundreds of children in Cleveland by ferrying them across Lake Erie and into the remote wilderness of Ontario, where they had a fortified mountain hideout. Had she simply listened to Ian, Jaxon never would have been killed.

Kaylin wasn’t going to make the same mistake again. If Ian had information on how to get Jaxon into the safe hands of the Resistance, she was going to get it from him.

“Where are the Resistance staying in Cleveland?” Kaylin asked.

Ian’s bushy eyebrows rose. “What makes you suddenly think they’re real? I thought you’d decided they were all in my head.”

“Cut the bullshit. I know they’re real, and I know you have information about them.”

A smirk lifted his chapped lips. “I don’t remember you having so much spunk.”

Kaylin stepped forward so only inches separated them. “I am going to save my little brother. That’s not ‘spunk,’ that’s a fact. So either you are going to tell me how I can find the Resistance, or I’m going to beat that info straight out of you.”

His smirk faded, replaced by a look of surprised respect. “No need for violence, girl. Save that for the invaders. If you want to find the Resistance, they’re down at the Union Pier. Their boats leave twice a day, noon and midnight.”

“What’s their price?”

“Nothing, unless you feel like donating. They’re out to save lives, not to make a buck.” Ian glanced down at his watch. “It’s only eight. That gives you plenty of time to pack up today and catch the midnight boat this evening.”

Kaylin shook her head. “I need to make it there by noon.”

“No, wait for the midnight boat. The riots are getting bad out there, but they’ll settle a bit when it gets dark.”

Kaylin cursed. She’d nearly forgotten about the riots. In the days before the invasion, citizens had started to panic and form mindlessly angry mobs that crowded the streets. She remembered being so scared of them back before the invasion, so worried that the riots might spread to her street.

She’d been such a fool back then. More worried about panicked humans than murderous invaders.

“The invasion starts in just a couple hours,” Kaylin said. “I’m going to have to leave now. We can’t wait.”

“What makes you so sure?” Ian asked. “All the intelligence reports say they’re not going to hit Cleveland for another two days or so.”

“Like I said, I saw it happen. The invasion began right at eleven in the morning.”

“Right,” Ian said, his tone drenched in skepticism. “And you know this because you came back from the future.”

Kaylin jabbed a finger upward. “Just a few years ago, everyone thought aliens only existed in movies. Now we’ve got them hovering right above our heads. Do you really want to tell me it’s impossible that they brought time-travel technology along with them?”

Ian frowned, rubbing at his chin as he considered what she had said. Finally, he just shook his head and muttered, “The whole damn world’s gone mad.”

Kayin shrugged and gestured toward him flippantly. “At least you’re not alone anymore.”

Ian’s eyes narrowed. But when Kaylin met his stark gaze, he just barked a harsh laugh. “All right, girlie. Let’s say you really are from the future. What exactly happened there that makes you so sure you need to get your brother out of here?”

“The freeway intersection just east of here is going to be incinerated by a bomb in about three hours. The explosion takes down every building within half a mile, including this one.”

Ian raised his eyebrows and glanced over to his stockpile of supplies in the corner. “Can’t say I’d planned for that.”

“You can now. Come with us.”

“I’ve lived in this city my entire life. I’m not just going to let some alien bastards chase me out of my own home.”

“Cleveland is doomed, but the rest of the world isn’t. Join the Resistance. Help us fight.”

Ian slowly shook his head. “I’ve already done far too much fighting in my life. I’ll defend myself if given the chance, but I’ll be damned if I ever run onto another battlefield.”

“You’ll die if you stay here.”

Ian shrugged. “We’re all going to die someday. I don’t see why this day is any worse than another to bite the dust.”

She bit back a frustrated curse. “I don’t have time to argue with you.”

“Good. I don’t want you to.”

His haunted eyes narrowed on her, and Kaylin nodded once, realizing there was no changing his mind. “You’re saving my brother,” she said, softening her tone. “Whatever happens to you, I hope you know that I’ll always remember you as a hero. Jaxon is going to make it because you helped.”

“I hope to God you’re right,” Ian said, and a ghost of a smile touched his lips. “I wish you two the best of luck.”

Kaylin turned toward the door, but Ian called out, “Wait a second, girlie.”

She turned around, and Ian pulled a pistol from the holster at his waist, offering it to her, butt first. It was an older weapon, a SIG that fired old-fashioned lead bullets. But it was far better than nothing.

“You’re going to need more than luck out there,” Ian said.

Kaylin carefully took the weapon from him. “Thank you.”

Ian simply nodded and unclasped the ammunition belt from his waist, handing it over to her. As Kaylin tightened it around her own waist, she wanted to say more, to explain to the old man just exactly how much it meant to have someone offer their help. But she’d locked away her emotions for years, and after stoically ignoring them for so long, she just couldn’t figure out any way to communicate the confusing mess of feelings inside her. So she took a deep breath, trying to clear her head.

“I have just one more favor to ask,” she said.

He raised an eyebrow.

She pointed toward his kitchen. “Do you have any milk?”

AS SOON AS Kaylin got back to her apartment, she poured a bowl of cereal for Jaxon and flicked on the TV, letting him eat in front of it. It worked magic just like it always did, and Jaxon zoned out like a peaceful little zombie as he munched on his breakfast. Kaylin desperately wanted to curl up on the couch next to him and just hold him for a few minutes, but she resisted the urge. Instead, she started packing two backpacks full of survival gear.

She stuffed them full of food, water, blankets, matches, flashlights, batteries, and anything else helpful she could find in the apartment. She also clipped the ammunition belt back onto her waist and tucked the SIG into the holster. She’d been hesitant to let Jaxon see the gun, but there was no avoiding it any longer.

He padded into the kitchen, placing his empty bowl in the sink, and then froze when he spotted the gun. His eyes widened, and he pointed a hesitant finger at it.

“Where did you get that?” he whispered.

“From Ian.”

Jaxon frowned. “Why’d he give it to you?”

Kaylin walked over to him, leaning over so they were eye-to-eye. “Because he wanted to help me,” she said, keeping her voice as calm and confident as she could. “He told me about a safe place we need to go so we don’t get hurt. But we have to leave right now, Jax.”

He shook his head. “You said it’s dangerous out there. That going farther than the store and back isn’t safe.”

“This will help make it safe,” Kaylin said, patting the pistol. “But I’m going to need you to stay right by my side and do exactly what I tell you to.”

Jaxon swallowed hard and glanced out the window. “Do we have to go?” he whispered.

“Yeah, Jax. It’s too dangerous to stay here anymore. But I promise you I’m going to keep you safe. We just have to get down to the Union Pier and take a boat.”

Jaxon bit his lip nervously. “Where are we going?”

“Canada. Ian has friends who are going to take us to a safe place tucked far away from the city.”

Jaxon clenched his jaw and took a shaky breath, but it wasn’t enough to ward off the tears creeping into his wide eyes. “But you said we wouldn’t have to leave. You said no matter what happened, we’d still have our home.”

Kaylin swept him into a hug, holding him close. “As long as we have each other, it doesn’t matter where we are. We’ll have a home. And I promise you, I’m not going to abandon you.”

Jaxon sniffled and hugged her tightly. He clung to her for a long moment, and then he let out a deep breath. As he pulled away, his face was once again composed into the world-weary expression of someone many times his age.

“Are we leaving now?” he asked.

“Yeah, I’m afraid so.” Kaylin nodded towards the backpacks. “We need to go now.”

She helped him put on the smaller backpack and took the larger one herself, grunting slightly from the weight. With the chaos going on outside, there was a chance they wouldn’t catch the boat. But even if that happened, they had plenty of supplies to escape the city on foot and last for weeks on their own.

She ushered them out of the apartment without ceremony and started toward the back stairwell that led directly out to the street. They’d almost reached it when a gruff voice called out, “Wait.”

She turned to find Ian striding toward them, a tactical backpack slung over his shoulder and a shotgun in his hands.

“I’m coming with you,” he said.

Kaylin nodded and gestured for him to follow. “Glad to hear it.”

Jaxon didn’t look nearly as happy, and he reached up to take Kaylin’s hand as Ian approached. She squeezed it comfortingly as she said, “Ian is going to help us get to the Union Pier safely.”

Jaxon peered up at Ian hesitantly, and the old veteran tried to smile back, although it looked more like a grimace. Kaylin tugged at her brother’s hand, encouraging him to keep moving toward the stairs.

“What made you change your mind?” she asked Ian.

“That,” he said, pointing out a window as they passed. “Made me realize you’re not as crazy as I thought. And ends up I’m not quite as ready for death as I’d like to think.”

Kaylin glanced outside and saw a Syndicate ship hovering just below the cloud cover. The familiar burn of rage struck her, along with confusion. She didn’t remember the ships arriving so early. She’d thought they appeared just minutes before the invasion started.

Jaxon let out a low whimper of fear at the sight of the ship, and Kaylin squeezed his hand tightly.

“Come on,” she said, hurrying faster down the stairs. “We still have over two hours before they strike.”

“How do you know?” Jaxon asked.

“I just do. Trust me.”

“Okay,” he whispered, and he followed close in her footsteps.

Kaylin was once again struck with a wave of love for Jaxon. She’d nearly forgotten what it felt like to have someone trust her. In the Resistance, soldiers trusted reports and intel and orders. But not people. Never people. Only family was truly capable of doing that, and she’d nearly forgotten what it felt like to have someone trust in her so completely.

They reached the bottom of the stairwell, and Kaylin paused there with one hand on the doorknob. Outside, she could hear a dull roar spreading across the city. People shouting in the streets, police yelling through megaphones, cars honking on the packed roads, helicopters whirring through the air. The cacophony of panic was growing every second, and Kaylin knew it’d only get worse as the minutes ticked down until the start of the invasion.

“We’re going to need to stay away from the main roads,” Kaylin said. “The riots are getting out of hand.”

“Agreed,” Ian said. “We’ll stick to the back roads. Just keep your heads down, and we should come out okay.”

Kaylin nodded and shoved open the stairwell door. She strode outside, trying to look as confident as she could. She glanced up and down the street, but the only people she could see were standing outside the convenience store at the far end of the street, peering up at the ships in the sky. The massive Syndicate ships hovered silently about half a mile above the city, just waiting for orders to descend.

They made it down the street and around the corner without any trouble. A few people looked at them suspiciously, but they immediately looked away when they spotted Kaylin’s pistol and Ian’s shotgun.

The street ahead of them was lined with apartments, but it was eerily empty, everyone hunkering down inside their homes. Kaylin could hear the sounds of a riot coming from nearby, toward the freeway overpass. She cursed under her breath. They needed to pass under the freeway in order to get to the Union Pier, but there was no way in hell she was about to drag Jaxon through a riot.

“We can cut through the cemetery,” Ian said, gesturing toward the rod iron fence that bordered the street. “There’s a canal at the north end of it. It passes right under the freeway.”

Kaylin nodded and headed toward the entrance of the cemetery, which stood mid-way down the street. As they neared the rod-iron gates, she felt an instinctual chill run through her. She knew it was absurd to be worried about ghosts when aliens were about to descend and slaughter the city, but she couldn’t help feeling uneasy about tromping through century-old graves.

Just as they passed through the entrance, gunshots exploded from around the corner. Screams and shouts echoed from close by. Kaylin glanced back and saw people spilling out from around the corner, fleeing from the riot. She cursed and picked up a jog, heading straight for the towering stone vaults that sat at the center of the cemetery.

They dodged through the headstones until she reached the cover of the vaults. She pulled Jaxon with her into the center path that led between the towering stone blocks, creeping as quickly as she could through them.

Most of the rioters were just harmless, panicked people frustrated that their government wasn’t doing more to protect them. Most. But not all. She knew some of the rioters were out to hurt and destroy everything around them, and she didn’t want to risk running into any of those people, or even being spotted by them.

“The canal entrance is right by those oak trees in the far corner,” Ian said, lowering his voice. “There’s a chain-link fence blocking it off, but we should be able to climb over.”

“Got it,” Kaylin said.

“Kaylin?” Jaxon whispered. “Why are they coming closer?”

The trembling fear in his voice made her feel a fresh rush of resentment toward the rioters. Kaylin peered to her right as they passed between two stone blocks, catching a glimpse of the street. The riot was slowly spilling into the previously abandoned street, and the shouting was growing louder. She could see a man angrily waving a baseball bat toward a police officer, who had her pistol drawn and aimed at his chest.

“It’s okay,” Kaylin whispered back. “They’re not going to hurt us. We’re just going to go around them.”

Jaxon frantically shook his head. “Not them.” He pointed toward the sky. “Them.”

Kaylin looked up. The ship’s engines had shifted, carrying them swiftly toward the ground.

“No,” she said, shaking her head wildly. “No.”

Ian whirled toward her, his eyes wide. “I thought you said they didn’t land for another hour?”

“They don’t!” she said. But the ships just kept descending with terrifying swiftness, proving her wrong.

The invasion had begun. Apparently, the past wasn’t about to repeat itself exactly like she’d seen it before.

She should have realized it sooner. If she had the chance to make different choices, so did other people. Or other things. The Syndicate was launching their attack early, which meant this entire neighborhood was about to explode in a matter of minutes.

Panic flooded her veins, the sort of genuine fear that she hadn’t felt in a long time. She’d battled the Syndicate many times, fighting on the front lines, and even joining the suicide mission that had landed her as a prisoner on the Syndicate’s ship. But after Jaxon’s death, she’d never felt like she’d had much to lose. Now that she had him back, the enormity of the danger finally struck her.

The flood of fear nearly froze her in place. Nearly. Her training kicked in just in time, and she pushed Jaxon forward. Ian followed at her side, pointing toward the canal and yelling, “Run!”

Kaylin dragged Jaxon along as fast as possible. She wanted to carry him, but she knew there was no way her hundred-pound body could carry him fast enough. She glanced up at the sky, struggling not to trip as she tracked the movements of the ship directly above them.

A panel on the side of the ship lifted, and white, cylindrical deployment pods launched out the side. Just then, a rocket soared up from the ground and struck the ship. A fiery ball of light enveloped the pods as the explosion shook the ground.

Debris rained down near the entrance of the cemetery, lighting the grass on fire. Kaylin grabbed Jaxon close, shielding him with her body as she ducked into the shadow of a stone column.

His mouth was open in a scream of terror, but Kaylin could barely hear it over the ringing in her ears. She stumbled to her feet, drawing her pistol from her waist.

Ian reached over, grabbing Jaxon and throwing the boy over his back in a fireman's carry. Jaxon clung frantically at his shoulders, and Ian yelled something, pointing with his gun toward the canal. Kaylin couldn’t make out what he was saying over the sounds of explosions ringing out through the city, but it was easy enough to guess. She took off sprinting toward the canal.

They burst out from the shelter of the vaults, running straight for the fenced off canal. Kaylin glanced up at the ships just in time to see another missile strike it. The explosion ballooned around the ship, but the vessel’s shields kept it at bay, stopping it from doing any real damage.

She knew what came next: pods of Syndicate soldiers. Hundreds of them, scattered throughout the city. They’d slowly fan out through the streets, overwhelming the military and police, shooting anyone who dared to attack them and capturing the others as slaves.

Two more rockets struck the ship, raining fire down on the cemetery. Kaylin leapt over a headstone to avoid a flaming patch of grass, and Ian wheeled to avoid a falling piece of metal, glowing with heat. Only a hundred yards separated them from the fence. Then fifty. Adrenaline roared through Kaylin’s veins, driving her forward with desperate speed.

A thud shook the ground. This time, there was no roar of an explosion to accompany it. Kaylin glanced over her shoulder. She cursed as she caught sight of a gleaming white pod sitting only twenty yards behind them, the crumbled ruins of a vault crunched beneath it.

“Hurry!” Kaylin screamed at Ian.

The side door of the pod burst open, revealing five Syndicate soldiers. Their armored shells gleamed in the light of the rockets exploding overhead, and their dark visors hid any hint of expression they might have.

Rage filled Kaylin as she watched the Syndicate soldiers saunter out of the pod. Their calm and confident movements made them look like they were preparing for an afternoon stroll, not the slaughter of the human race. They gripped their rifles in their armored hands, slowly swiveling back and forth as they searched for a target.

One of them spotted Kaylin and Ian. Despair and panic filled her, but she swallowed it back, knowing it would do her no good. She wheeled around, jogging backward as she trained her pistol on the monsters. The old-fashioned bullets would do nothing against them, but she sure as hell wasn’t going to let them hurt Jaxon without putting up a fight.

A rocket struck the Syndicate soldiers, swallowing them in a ball of fire. Wild cheers erupted from the street, but Kaylin knew better than to celebrate. The aliens were already climbing to their feet, their otherworldly armor not even scratched by the human-made rocket.

They whirled toward the streets, where a team of National Guard soldiers was huddling into a hasty formation. One of them was frantically reloading a rocket launcher. All five of the Syndicate soldiers turned to face the new threat, turning away from Kaylin.

She put on an extra burst of speed, staying close to Ian’s heels. Jaxon was frozen, his eyes wide with horror and his arms wrapped tightly around Ian. They reached the oak trees and immediately ducked behind the thick trunks.

Ian set Jaxon on the ground, his chest heaving as the old veteran struggled to catch his breath. Kaylin grabbed Jaxon’s pack of supplies and tugged it off his back, tossing it over the chain-link fence. She did the same with her own pack, and then Ian tossed his, along with the shotgun.

Kaylin pointed to the top of the fence, which towered eight feet above the ground. “You need to climb,” she told Jaxon.

He nodded and ran over to the fence, scrambling up and over. He was light and agile enough that he made it over fairly easily, using the wire links as handholds. Kaylin and Ian followed behind, pulling themselves up.

Kaylin reached the top in a matter of seconds, flipping over to the other side of the fence. But Ian struggled to pull up his heavier weight, which bent and sagged the old fence. Kaylin cursed and reached over the top, offering Ian a hand to help him regain his balance.

Just as he grabbed her palm, a loud voice called out, “Don’t move!”

Kaylin whipped her head toward the voice, finding herself staring down at a short, grungy man holding Ian’s shotgun. Shock slammed into her, nearly making her lose her balance. Kaylin blinked a few times, unsure where he had come from. Then she spotted the dark grey tent hiding in the bushes behind the man, just feet from the water of the canal.

She let out a curse. A homeless camp. Of course. She should have checked for one before carelessly tossing their supplies over the fence.

The man turned the shotgun’s barrel toward Jaxon’s face. Kaylin’s stomach dropped, and a panicked scream built in her throat.

Then Jaxon let out a quiet whimper of terror. The helpless little sound triggered something in Kaylin, and her horror was replaced by pure, molten rage.

The man shook the gun as he said to Kaylin and Ian, “Stay right there. Right where you are. All I want is your supplies. No one has to get hurt.”

Kaylin gritted her teeth. “Take it. Take anything. Just don’t shoot him.”

The man poked the shotgun toward Kaylin. “Your gun, too. I see that pistol there in your belt. Drop the belt. Slowly. You draw the gun, I shoot the kid.”

Kaylin let go of Ian, leaving him to cling to the fence himself, and slowly reached down to unfasten her belt. She knew she had no other choice. The belt dropped to the ground with a dull thud, leaving her weaponless.

The man edged toward her pistol, keeping the shotgun trained on Jaxon. He slowly bent down, grabbing the belt in his hand, but keeping his eyes focused on Kaylin and Ian.

An explosion rang out from the street, and a concussive blast rocked the ground. The man stumbled and whirled toward the fireball swallowing the street in the distance.

Kaylin didn’t waste the chance. She snarled in rage and leapt from the fence, aiming her foot at the man’s head. Her boot struck his skull with a sickening crack, and the man crumpled to the ground in a motionless heap.

Kaylin rolled to break her fall and then leapt up, her fists clenched and ready for a fight. But the man stayed limp on the ground.

She didn’t stop to check if his chest was still moving. She didn’t even want to know. Kaylin had killed plenty of Syndicates, but never a human civilian. As her adrenaline faded, a pang of guilt struck her, but she forced herself to shove it aside.

Kaylin ran past the homeless man, stopping only to grab her belt and gun from his limp hand, and then raced over to Jaxon. His big brown eyes stared down in horror at the man, and his scrawny arms trembled as he hugged himself around the chest.

“It’s okay,” Kaylin said, sweeping him into a desperate embrace. “It’s okay, Jax. You’re safe now. You’re gonna be fine.”

Jaxon wrapped his arms tightly around her neck and let out a choked, panicked sob. The sound hurt more than any injury she’d ever endured. She squeezed him tighter, desperately wishing she could take away his pain and panic.

“We’ve got to move, girlie.”

Kaylin turned to see Ian standing behind her with the shotgun once again gripped in his hands. He’d finally made it over the fence, although his cheek had a fresh scratch and his chest was heaving from exhaustion.

She nodded and reluctantly pulled away from Jaxon, moving back to their packs. They were muddied from being tossed to the ground, but otherwise undamaged. She tossed Ian his and slung both hers and Jaxon’s onto her back.

Then she held out her hand for Jaxon to take. He clung to it so tightly it hurt. But the relief of having his warm, living hand pressed against hers made the pain completely worth it.

THEY SCRAMBLED down the side of the canal and into the water, which was just a murky, shallow puddle that came up to Kaylin’s knees. The tunnel under the freeway was only about eight feet high, but it stretched on three hundred feet. A familiar tingling squeezed Kaylin’s chest, and she took a deep breath, fighting off the claustrophobia.

Every few seconds, tremors shook the concrete beneath their feet as the freeway above them was struck with another explosion. The distant sound of honking horns, explosions, and screams melded into a breathless chorus of terror, echoing off the damp walls.

Ian slowed as they neared the tunnel’s exit, and Kaylin noticed that his breathing was growing more labored. As the adrenaline of their encounter with the homeless man wore off, the exhaustion of running and leaping through a battlefield was beginning to catch up to all of them.

He noticed her staring and muttered, “Not the soldier I used to be.”

“Still the best one I’ve got,” Kaylin said, clapping him on the shoulder.

Ian just grunted again, but he put on an extra surge of speed toward the end of the tunnel. They burst out into the sunlight, squinting against the sudden brightness. Another fence blocked off the exit of the canal, but a gaping hole had been cut in the middle.

The fence backed up to a gloomy alley between two warehouses. Aside from bags of garbage piled around a rusted dumpster, it looked empty. Kaylin strained her ears, searching for the sounds of conflict, but they seemed to only be coming from behind her and above her, from the doomed people on the freeway.

“Looks clear,” Kaylin said, lowering her voice to ensure no one heard.

“As clear as we’re going to get,” Ian replied, and he pulled himself out of the murky water of the canal, scrambling toward the fence. Kaylin followed closely behind with Jaxon in tow, and they made it easily through the hole.

Jaxon was shivering from the water, which had soaked him to the waist. Kaylin wished she could ask Ian to carry him again, but she knew it wasn’t possible. The old man’s body just couldn’t take the weight.

“We need to head west, and then north,” Kaylin said.

“Are we close to the pier?” Jaxon asked, his voice quiet and shaky.

“Yeah, we’ll be there really soon,” Kaylin said. She didn’t have the heart to tell him that at least three miles still separated them from the pier.

He nodded a couple times, trust filling his gaze as he stared up at her. Kaylin flinched, suddenly regretting the lie.

There was a momentary pause in the explosions, and it was enough for a new sound to reach them. Splashing. Kaylin cursed and surged forward toward the alley, dragging Jaxon as fast as she dared. Something else had entered the canal tunnel, and if it was careless enough to make that much noise, it was almost certainly a Syndicate soldier.

“We need to go,” she hissed, urging Ian forward.

They hurried to the end of the alley. Kaylin constantly glanced back and forth to check both ends for enemies, her heart pounding in her chest. Ian gestured for her to stay back as they reached the street, and he quickly swiveled around the corner, sweeping his shotgun back and forth as he scanned for any threats on the street. Old or not, his military training hadn’t left him.

“Clear,” he called, waving them forward.

They hurried out onto the street, which was bordered on both sides by warehouses. The area was abandoned, but they kept to the shadows of the buildings, ready to leap into an alley for cover.

They continued jogging through the desolate area for another mile, the sounds of conflict growing dimmer with each corner they turned. It seemed the Syndicate hadn’t completely infiltrated this section of the city, because they only saw people, not Syndicate soldiers. Explosions still pierced the air, but they no longer shook the ground under Kaylin’s feet.

Smoke clogged the air, turning their gasping breaths into coughs. With every step they took, more of their adrenaline faded, and exhaustion gripped them tighter. But Kaylin refused to give in to it and kept up her desperate charge forward.

Through the smoke clouding the air, she could make out the outline of the largest Syndicate ship hovering right over the freeway intersection. Kaylin held tighter to Jaxon’s hand, relieved to feel him close to her. This time, when the main ship dropped its payload of missiles, they would be far enough from the blast to stay safe.

A humming sound approached them, and Kaylin tensed, scanning the streets. But the humming quickly turned to a dull roar, and three fighter jets streaked overhead.

Ian punched his fist in the air. “Go get the bastards,” he called after them.

The jets disappeared into the smoke surrounding the main ship, and Kaylin lost sight of them for a tense moment. She squinted into the smoke, and suddenly caught sight of the glowing tails of two of the jets.

They shot up, passing over the top of the ship. A flashing light shot out from the side of the gigantic vessel, and one of the jets disintegrated in midair. But the other jet managed to fire off two rockets at the top of the alien craft.

A high-pitched boom sliced through the air, louder than any explosion Kaylin had heard so far. The missiles were Syndicate technology. She didn’t know how the US military had gotten ahold of them, but she could only guess they’d salvaged them off a fallen Syndicate ship the day before, when the invasion had begun in other key cities.

A concussive blast shook the ground. The ship’s shields absorbed most of the enormous blast, but it was enough to knock the ship off kilter and send it listing toward the ground.

Then the third jet dove low, firing off two more missiles. Kaylin clapped a hand over her mouth, not believing what she was seeing. The missiles were headed straight toward the freeway still packed with people. The military was firing right at the civilians they were supposed to be protecting.

Kaylin cried out in horror. Her yell was drowned out as the missiles exploded, shattering the ground with an earth-shaking boom. The explosion ballooned up, swallowing everyone on the freeway, along with the listing ship.

The Syndicate shields couldn’t handle it. They flickered and then crumbled, and the explosion struck the engines of the ship. A smoking hole peeled open, and the ship’s sinking turned into a rapid dive. It crashed into the ground, obliterating the remnants of the freeway and the people trapped there.

Kaylin had one moment to gape in disbelief. Then the ship exploded. Blinding light shot out from the wreck, followed by a concussive wave that toppled Kaylin to the ground.

She willed her body to fall toward Jaxon, shielding him with her body as a low roar and a wave of heat struck them. It stung her skin, rolling over her like hot air from an opened oven. But the heat receded only a moment later.

Kaylin rolled off Jaxon and stared up, watching an all too familiar cloud of fire and blackened smoke reach into the sky. She shook her head back and forth, struggling to grasp what she was witnessing.

She’d seen the cloud of fire before. It was the exact same one that had engulfed the ruins of their apartment complex the first time Kaylin had lived through the invasion.

A thick cloud of dust drifted down from the sky, blocking her view of the fireball in the distance. “What--” A cough shook her chest, cutting her off, and she tried again. “What the hell?”

She could barely hear her own voice over the ringing in her ears. A rough hand grabbed her arm, making her yelp. She instinctively reached for her weapon, but then realized it was just Ian.

“You two all right?” he demanded, yelling to be heard.

She looked down at Jaxon, and he gave a timid nod.

“We’re fine,” Kaylin said, but her voice shook. She swallowed hard and choked out, “It wasn’t them.”

“What?”

“The explosion. The Syndicate didn’t cause it. It was our own military.”

Her head spun as she struggled to wrap her mind around this. She’d risked her life on a daily basis to battle the Syndicate, desperate to pay them back for killing Jaxon. Every single bullet she’d fired into Syndicate lines had been fueled by her all-consuming need to avenge her brother’s death.

But it hadn’t even been the Syndicate who fired the missiles that killed Jaxon. It had been her own military. The military that she worked alongside in the Resistance, who she’d trusted to save lives, not to take them.

But they’d betrayed her. It was her own military who had shot at a freeway packed with innocent civilians, who had caused the ship to crash and explode, who had sacrificed thousands upon thousands of people to take down a single ship.

They had killed her brother.

Her hands shook as she reached out to cup Jaxon’s face, reassuring herself that this timeline was different, that her brother was still alive. Jaxon’s lip trembled as he choked back panicked sobs, and tears streamed down his reddened face, trickling through her fingers. She pressed a kiss to his hair and crushed him against her chest in a desperate embrace.

“It’s okay,” she whispered. “I’m going to keep you safe, I swear.”

She couldn’t trust anyone else to do it, but that didn’t matter. She was going to keep her brother safe from the Syndicate, with or without the military’s help.

KAYLIN SCRAMBLED TO HER FEET, pulling Jaxon up by his hand. All three of them stood there for a moment, pausing to take in the disaster in the distance. Then Ian broke into a stilted jog, continuing toward the pier. Kaylin and Jaxon following closely behind, taking the emptiest streets as they worked their way closer to the lakefront.

Few people remained outside, with most having retreated indoors after the main ship exploded. The silence on the streets clashed eerily with the sounds of war behind them, and unease raised the hairs on Kaylin’s neck.

The smoke on the opposite side of the freeway grew thicker every second, as explosions burst in the city streets and buildings tumbled into ruins. But the northern side of the freeway, the side they were on, seemed largely untouched by the destruction. Kaylin carefully scanned every street they ran down, searching for any sign of the Syndicate deployment pods, but she saw none. The Syndicate seemed to be keeping to the south and the east, targeting the more densely populated areas before they pushed the invasion north.

That didn’t mean they were safe. The Syndicate hadn’t hit the area with large numbers, but she could still hear the sound of their weapons ringing out every few minutes. The sounds came from several streets away, but they were still far too close for comfort.

They turned a corner onto a small side street that was bordered on one side by a row of houses and on the other by a small, dilapidated park. Jaxon suddenly stopped running, gasping for air as he struggled forward at a quick walk. Kaylin slowed to walk with him, and Ian stumbled along beside them. The old veteran was gasping for breath, his face reddened with exhaustion.

“How much farther?” Jaxon asked.

“Only about a mile, I think,” Kaylin said. “We’re getting close.”

She fished in her backpack for a water bottle and handed it first to Jaxon, then to Ian. Just as she was shoving the water bottle back in her pack, gunshots rang out with a strangely high-pitched ring. They sounded close, and smoke plumed up from the street corner just twenty yards away.

Panicked voices called out. A moment later, two small explosions followed.

Then there was silence.

Kaylin drew her pistol, and Ian held his shotgun ready at his shoulder.

“Was that Syndicate fire?” Ian asked, keeping his voice quiet.

“Sounded like it,” Kaylin whispered. “Jax, stay behind me.”

He scrambled behind her, hugging her waist and pressing his face into the small of her back. She could feel tremors of fear shaking his small body, and a fresh surge of protective adrenaline flowed through her.

“If we can cut through there, we can avoid the corner,” Kaylin said, pointing toward a thin alley on the opposite side of the street.

Ian nodded, and they took off at a jog across the pavement. She peered down the alley, ensuring it was clear, and then jogged through it, leaping over bags of trash and crumpled boxes. They paused at the end of the alley, listening for the sound of soldiers, but the street seemed to be quiet.

“Jax, stay here,” Kaylin murmured. She nodded to Ian. “We’re going to make sure the street is clear.”

Her brother nodded and took a few steps back, hiding in the shadows behind a garbage bin. Kaylin took the left side of the alley, and Ian took the right. He held up three fingers in a countdown, and as soon as his last finger closed into a fist, they burst out onto the street.

Kaylin found herself staring straight at a Syndicate pod. It had landed on the sidewalk, just three yards from her. She felt a single moment of relief as she saw that the pod was empty. But that relief evaporated as she caught a metallic flicker in the corner of her eye, the tell-tale sight of light reflecting off armor.

“Enemy sighted!” she called to Ian, whirling toward the Syndicate soldier. It was standing over the corpses of what appeared to be a family--a man, a woman, and two kids. Both were little boys, hardly any older than Jaxon. The sight of their blank, bloodied faces made rage bloom in Kaylin’s chest.

She took a step toward the soldier, her gun raised. It raised its own weapon, a red plated pistol that matched its armor. A high-powered rifle was slung over its shoulder, but it didn’t bother drawing it, seeming to think Kaylin wasn’t enough of a threat to warrant the larger weapon.

Kaylin had just enough time to dive to the side before the Syndicate soldier pulled the pistol’s trigger. The round struck the ground three feet from Kaylin, right where she’d been standing just moments before. Dust flew up in her face, and she struggled to aim her own pistol as she fired off two rounds. Ian’s shotgun boomed along with hers as they both scrambled for cover.

Their bullets would do nothing. She knew that too damn well. Their guns were too old-fashioned to even make a dent in the Syndicate armor. Her only hope was that the soldier couldn’t see her weapon through the dust, and would assume it was a modern gun capable of piercing armor.

She ducked behind a parked car, and Ian dove behind a truck parked across the street. The Syndicate strode toward Kaylin. She fired a round at it, but the lead bullet pinged harmlessly off its armor.

Two blasts rang out, and Kaylin winced, ready to feel a Syndicate round tear through her flesh. But it didn’t. Instead, the Syndicate soldier jerked to a stop, throwing up an armored hand to shield its neck.

Kaylin turned to see Ian standing up from behind the car, aiming the shotgun toward the Syndicate warrior. Kayline gaped, wondering how the hell the small shotgun pellets were managing to stop the Syndicate soldier in his tracks.

Then it dawned on her. The weak point. Every Syndicate soldier had it--just a tiny space on the armor covering the back of their necks, where their ventilation system could reach the outside air. She hadn’t known about it until recently, when she’d heard a rumor about it from a Resistance soldier. But now that knowledge was proving to be useful.

It didn’t look like Ian had actually managed to hit it, but the Syndicate was obviously worried the tiny, scattered pellets of the shotgun would find the weak spot. The alien soldier tucked away its pistol into its belt and took up the larger, more powerful rifle slung over its shoulder. Then it swiveled to face Ian, protecting its weak spot from the shotgun fire.

And leaving its back turned to Kaylin. She charged, jumping up from behind the car and leaping onto the Syndicate’s back. She clung to its neck with one arm, pure adrenaline making her grip as secure as steel.

The alien jerked in surprise and reached up to grab her. Its armored hand wrapped around her arm in a crushing grip, but it was too late. She used her other hand to bury the muzzle of her pistol right into the Syndicate’s weak spot.

She pulled the trigger.

The Syndicate soldier jerked violently as the bullet struck it. But it didn’t stop, and instead reached up with its rifle, as if trying to shoot her off its back.

Kaylin frantically fired a second shot. This time, the alien went limp.

As it fell to its knees, the gun tumbled from its hand and skidded across the pavement. Kaylin aimed and fired a third shot, and it collapsed to the ground in a motionless heap.

Kaylin shakily climbed off its back and to her feet. Then she leaned over and fired a final shot into the alien. Four shots, and four bullets. One for each member of the mutilated family lying just yards away. The revenge wouldn’t bring them back, but it still lit a burning sense of accomplishment in Kaylin.

“Incoming!” Ian yelled.

Kaylin whirled, finding two more Syndicate soldiers jogging toward her. She cursed and leaned over, snatching the pistol from the Syndicate’s weapon belt.

As soon as her hand closed around the gun, she could feel the hum of alien energy within it. It filled her with a fresh burst of excitement as she whirled toward the incoming soldiers, knowing she actually had a chance to take them down.

The soldiers didn’t give her a chance to aim before they opened fire. She cursed and leapt to the side, barely managing to avoid their shots. Chunks of pavement exploded around her feet, and one flew up and sliced into her forearm. A line of blood appeared in her skin, but she couldn’t even feel the pain over the adrenaline coursing through her body.

She fired back at the Syndicate soldiers as she scrambled to the side of the street, seeking cover. The weapon was light-weight and had hardly any recoil, allowing her to easily fire off a volley of five shots right before ducking for cover in a cramped alley.

She paused for breath before quickly peeking around the corner. Two of her shots had found their targets, burrowing through the armor of the leading Syndicate soldier. It crumpled to the ground, and Kaylin let out a wild whoop of victory.

But she didn’t get a chance to get another shot off before the remaining alien opened fire on her again. Kaylin ducked back around the corner. The wall shook, and chunks of brick rained to the ground, forcing her to retreat further into the alley. She cursed, realizing the wall wasn’t going to hold against it for long.

Then two more shotgun blasts rang out. It was exactly the distraction Kaylin needed, and she leapt from the alley. The Syndicate had turned to face Ian, leaving its back exposed to Kaylin. It raised its rifle toward Ian, and Kaylin let out a rapid volley of rounds.

Three of them struck the Syndicate. But not before it managed to fire a round straight into the truck shielding Ian. The truck exploded just as the Syndicate crumpled to the ground.

“You fucker!” Kaylin yelled, rage turning the words into a hoarse snarl. She fired two more rounds into the alien’s crumpled body, making sure it was dead. Then she raced across the street, desperately hoping to find Ian alive behind the wrecked truck.

Smoke billowed from the twisted metal, clogging Kaylin’s lungs. A coughing fit wracked her chest as she plunged into the smoke, searching for Ian. Then she heard the most beautiful sound she could have imagined.

More coughing, but not hers. Ian’s.

The smoke cleared slightly, and Kaylin reached down, grabbing Ian’s shoulders. She hauled him backwards, out of the cloud of smoke and over to the other side of the street. He cursed and let out a couple cries of pain, but she took that as a good sign. It meant he was still fully conscious.

She rested him in the shade of a building and bent over, examining his wounds. Burns covered his limbs, and his lower leg was twisted at a sick angle. Kaylin cursed, realizing he must have dislocated his knee when the blast threw him against the sidewalk.

She knelt at his side and started to roll up his pant leg to get a better look. But Ian snaked his hand out and caught her arm, stopping her.

“No time,” he said. “Just go. Get the kid out of here.”

She shook her head. “It’s just dislocated. All I need is a minute to get it back in the socket and--”

Ian roughly shook her, cutting her off. “You can either save your brother or you can save me,” he snarled. “And I’ll be damned if I let you choose me.”

Her vision blurred. A single tear coursed down her cheek, startling her. She roughly scrubbed it away, struggling to regain her composure.

She never cried. Not since the day she’d lost Jaxon. She’d completely buried away the part of herself that was capable of those sort of emotions. It was the only way she could survive.

But now she couldn’t keep the tears away. Ian hardly even knew her, but he was willing to sacrifice himself to save Jaxon. She’d been convinced for so long that it was her against the world, but Ian had proved her wrong.

Kaylin wanted to tell him all of that, but she knew there wasn’t time. So she just choked out, “Thank you.”

The faintest hint of a smile lifted his expression. “Just make sure that boy makes it out of here alive. That’s thanks enough.”

She squeezed his shoulder comfortingly, but then Ian’s eyes widened in horror.

“Behind you!” he roared.

Kaylin whirled to find a Syndicate soldier bursting out of the alley on the opposite side of the street. Its rifle was aimed squarely at them. She lifted her own gun, but it was too late.

The high-pitched explosion of a Syndicate weapon rang out. She braced for the killing shot, but she couldn’t feel it. She only felt the numb heat of adrenaline rushing through her. She squeezed her trigger, but the alien soldier began crumbling to the ground before her round even struck it.

A fresh hole appeared in the Syndicate’s chest, right below another hole burned through the soldier’s throat. Kaylin whirled around, searching for whoever had fired the killing shot.

Jaxon stood four yards from her, his body trembling under the weight of the Syndicate rifle gripped in his tiny hands. Kaylin gaped at it, unsure where it’d come from. Then she realized it was the rifle the other soldier had lost its grip on. When the weapon was flung to the ground, it must have skidded into the alley Jaxon had been hiding in.

Jaxon stared wide-eyed at the Syndicate soldier he’d just killed, blinking rapidly in disbelief.

Ian let out a short, barking laugh. “Atta boy!”

Fierce pride flooded Kaylin, although it turned to horror as Jaxon turned to face them. His face was a mask of terror, and he dropped the weapon and stumbled back from it, like it was a venomous snake. Fresh tears welled in his eyes as he glanced back and forth between the crumpled body of the dead alien and the weapon lying at his feet.

He might have been young, but he understood perfectly well what he’d done. He’d killed the soldier. For years, he’d been a sensitive little boy haunted by his mother’s death. He was the kind of kid who carried bugs outside, refusing to squish them, because he didn’t want to ever see death again.

And now he was staring at a fresh corpse he’d stolen the life from.

Jaxon turned to the side and vomited. Kaylin rushed over to him, desperately wishing she had time to rub his back and assure him he’d be okay. But she didn’t. She reached down and took the rifle in her own hands, sweeping it back and forth as she searched the street for any more of the enemy.

There were none. But she could hear armored footsteps marching on the next street over. It sounded like a large group of them, and their steps seemed to be getting closer.

Kaylin snatched up Jaxon’s hand and dragged him back over to Ian. She took the Syndicate pistol out of her belt and handed it to the injured man.

“Give them hell,” she said, nodding toward the sound of the marching steps.

He nodded gravely. “I’ll hold them off.”

“You’re hurt,” Jaxon said, pointing to Ian’s dislocated knee. He stared up at Kaylin with a frantic expression. “Shouldn’t we call 911?”

The innocence of his question knocked the breath out of her for a second. But Ian just smiled up at her brother.

“Don’t you worry, kiddo.” He patted the pistol in his hand. “I can take care of myself just fine.”

Kaylin hesitated, but then she ducked down to pull the old veteran into a fierce hug. “He’s going to live because of you,” she whispered.

Ian grunted and muttered, “He won’t if you two don’t get your asses moving.” But then he slung his arm around her, squeezing her in a tight embrace for a fleeting second.

Kaylin allowed herself one moment of pure gratitude and sorrow, as she embraced Ian tightly. But then she stood back up and steeled her expression, refusing to let Jaxon see the grief ripping through her. She grabbed the boy’s hand and began jogging away, pulling him along with her.

She didn’t say goodbye to Ian, because she refused to let this be the end of him. The Syndicate soldiers were going to overwhelm him--she had no doubt about that. But she also knew that his sacrifice would allow him to live on through Jaxon.

“COME ON,” Kaylin said. “We’re super close.”

Jaxon nodded determinedly and followed alongside her, huddling so close he almost tripped her. She led them down back streets and side alleys, pausing at every corner to listen for sounds of Syndicate soldiers. The closer they got to the water’s edge, the more the sounds of the war faded behind them.

Kaylin panted for breath, and Jaxon heaved desperately for air, but she didn’t allow them to stop. They crossed into one more side street, and there it was. The glimmer of water, tinged a filthy grey as it reflected the smoke-clouded sky.

“The lake,” Jaxon gasped.

Kaylin nodded, and they put on an extra burst of speed. The pier came into view as they rounded another corner. Usually, it was crowded with people strolling along its concrete length, while boats docked all along its sides. The boats were still there, but the pier looked near abandoned, without a single person in sight.

Panic filled her, and she scoured the pier, searching for any sign of life. Then a flicker of movement caught her eye. A man dressed in dark clothing was standing in the shadow of a boat docked near the base of the pier. He had something clutched in his hands, and judging by his stance, Kaylin guessed it was a rifle.

The Resistance. They were there, and that meant the rescue boat must be, too.

Giddiness and relief danced in her stomach, and she gave Jaxon’s hand a strong squeeze. “We did it, Jax.”

He was panting too hard to reply, but she saw a fresh spark of life enter his eyes, and his pace picked up. They ran the last stretch down to the pier, ducking through streets filled with abandoned shops and warehouses.

The moist smell of lake water filled her nose, its earthy scent cutting through the choking smoke. She gasped in deep breaths of air and hurried forward, their footsteps pounding against the cracked pavement.

A flash of white in the corner of her eye caught her attention. She whirled toward it, and heavy dread filled her. It was an empty deployment pod, sitting in a tiny alleyway next to a convenience store.

Kaylin cursed and brought her rifle to her shoulder. She scanned the street as she continued jogging, searching for any sign of Syndicate soldiers. No enemies were in sight, and she desperately hoped that meant they’d left the area after landing. But as she glanced around, she couldn’t ignore the plumes of smoke rising from several places around them, and she knew it was likely they were still close.

She dug into the very last of her endurance and put on another burst of speed. As they raced toward the pier, she spotted two more empty pods. She let go of Jaxon’s hand so she could grip the rifle with two hands as she ran, ready to aim and fire at the first sign of Syndicate soldiers.

Her heart pounded wildly as they neared the pier, but the streets remained quiet. The Resistance guard turned toward her, his rifle raised, and Kaylin was relieved to see that he was gripping a stolen Syndicate weapon. She raised a hand in greeting as she crossed the last street that separated them from the pier.

“Are you still taking children?” she called out, holding her breath as she waited for an answer.

The man nodded and lowered his weapon, waving her forward. “We leave in five minutes.” He pointed to Jaxon. “But we still have room for him.”

Relief flooded her, lightening her last steps toward the pier. But right as her foot struck the cement floor of the pier, a telltale whine pierced the air. She instinctively dove to the side, shielding Jaxon with her body.

An explosion rocked the ground, and a wave of heat washed over her. Disbelief numbed her. They’d been close. So damn close to safety. But of course the Syndicate had to tear apart all her efforts.

But she wasn’t ready to give up. Not yet. Not while Jaxon was still breathing. She stumbled into a kneeling position and held her rifle at her shoulder, searching for an enemy to target.

“Run to the boat!” she screamed at Jaxon.

He leapt up and took off running. Kaylin didn’t have time to watch his progress as she turned back to the enemies before her. There were twelve of them, all running out from the multiple alleys that bordering the pier.

Kaylin cursed, realizing she was trapped in an ambush. The Syndicate hadn’t failed to notice the escape boat--they had merely been waiting for it to be full before they attacked.

She ducked behind a nearby support beam, and the ground she’d been standing on vaporized a moment later. Thick concrete chunks tumbled into the churning water fifteen feet below. Kaylin’s heart pounded frantically as she aimed the rifle and fired off two shots. The first struck the ground near a Syndicate soldier, sending it tumbling to its knees. The second struck another straight in the chest, cutting through its armor and killing it.

She didn’t get a chance to fire off any more shots before having to leap for cover behind another concrete pillar. Her heart pounded wildly as the pillar shook with the impact of their fire. It wouldn’t hold for long.

Anger pounded through her veins as she realized she was truly trapped. She glanced toward the boat, hoping to see Jaxon aboard. But he was trapped behind the pillar next to the boat, along with the Resistance soldier who’d been guarding the vessel. The brave man was using his body to shield Jaxon as he struggled to punch in commands to a cell phone.

No. Not a phone. A remote.

Hope surged through her, and she slapped her hands over her ears. The Resistance soldier waited two more seconds, allowing the aliens to get closer. Then he punched a button.

An explosion rocked the ground. Cracks raced down the pier as dust and smoke clogged the air.

Then there was only silence.

Kaylin coughed as she hesitantly peered from around the pillar. The ground the Syndicate soldiers had been standing on had been incinerated, the shells of their armor smoking on the blackened ground.

The Resistance must have been expecting the Syndicate to attack. She didn’t know what sort of explosive had been planted around the pier, but it was obviously something made from alien technology. It’d probably been salvaged just the day before, when the Resistance had begun fighting off the Syndicate in other cities.

Wherever the explosive came from, it was exactly what they needed. No human explosive could have damaged the Syndicate armor so easily, not without obliterating everything within a mile.

Movement flashed in the corner of the blackened area. Only one Syndicate soldier remained, but it was quickly limping away, sparks bursting from the damaged armor covering its leg. Kaylin aimed her rifle and fired. The shot stuck the Syndicate in the back, sending it toppling to the ground.

It frantically raised its own weapon, firing off one last desperate shot that flew wide. It exploded into the pillar shielding Jaxon and the Resistance fighter. The cracks in the pier broadened, and the cement groaned under the strain.

Kaylin cried out a warning. But it was too late. A gaping hole opened in the ground right next to Jaxon, and the concrete tumbled into the water below.

The Resistance fighter leapt to the side, trying to drag Jaxon along with him. But his hand slipped, and Jaxon tumbled into the depths of the lake.

Kaylin screamed in horror and jumped to her feet. She pivoted toward the street and fired one more round into the Syndicate, striking it in the chest. She didn’t wait to see it fall to the ground before she dropped her rifle and pack. Then she sprinted across the pier, diving into the water.

Coldness enveloped her, driving the breath from her lungs. Kaylin pushed through the murky water to the surface and gasped in a lungful of air. She treaded water for a moment, searching for any sign of Jaxon at the surface. But churning waves were the only thing in sight.

She had to find him. She couldn’t let him drown, not when they were so damn close to safety. Kaylin dove back underwater, struggling to peer through the dark swirling tide. She spun in a circle, desperately searching for any sign of her brother. Just when panic was threatening to overwhelm her, Kaylin spotted movement directly below her.

She dove down, forcing her exhausted limbs to claw through the water. The moving form grew closer, and a small hand reached up toward her. She latched onto it and immediately surged upwards, dragging Jaxon out of the depths. Her lungs burned from the effort, but she dug into her last reserves of strength and battled to the surface.

Her face touched the air, and she immediately gasped in a huge breath. She dragged up Jaxon, shoving him above the surface.

He didn’t react for a moment, and she shook him harshly. It was enough to shock him into taking a small breath. Then he gasped in another, and another.

“I’ve got you,” Kaylin said. “It’s okay. I’ve got you.”

He started vomiting up lake water as shivers wracked his body. Kaylin held him close with one arm, while she treaded water with the other. She glanced desperately around, searching for a safe place to reach the land. The pier towered far above them, and the nearby shore had a sharp drop off that was lined with roughly-cut boulders, making it impossible to climb.

Something landed in the water next to her, splashing them both. She blinked water out of her eyes and looked down at it. It was a life vest with a thick rope attached to it.

“Hook him in!” a voice called from above.

She glanced up to find the Resistance guard holding the other end of the rope. Two other Resistance fighters crowded close to him, ready to help pull Jaxon up. Kaylin quickly helped her brother into the vest and tightened the straps, securing him as safely as possible.

She kissed him on the forehead. “I’ll be right up, okay?”

He reached out and latched onto her shirt with his hand. “Don’t go.”

“It’s okay,” she said, struggling to talk through her chattering teeth. “I promise, I’ll be right up.”

He still wouldn’t let go, and she was forced to pull his hand off her. The tiny whimper of fear he gave nearly broke her heart, but she reached into the air to give the Resistance fighters a thumbs up. They immediately began hauling Jaxon up, and her guilt turned to relief as she watched him being hauled up to safety.

It was only then that she realized how truly exhausted she was. Her limbs felt like twisted hunks of lead, aching and heavy, and her chest heaved painfully for air. Coldness penetrated deep into her bones, until it felt like her entire skeleton was made of ice. But she resolutely kept treading water, trying to ignore her shivering as she kept an eye on Jaxon.

He reached the pier, and the Resistance fighters grabbed him, hauling him onto the solid portion of the pier. They disappeared for a moment as they hurried him away from the edge. Then, just a moment later, they reappeared and tossed the vest back down to her.

Kayin struggled to get her arms through the vest and tighten the straps. But, somehow, she managed to do it after a painful minute of fumbling. She barely had enough energy to raise her hand into another thumbs up.

The rope tightened, and she was lifted from the water. The vest crushed her chest, making breathing difficult, but she didn’t even have enough energy left to panic. After what felt like an eternity, she reached the pier, and the Resistance fighters hauled her onto solid ground and toward safety.

KAYLIN GAZED AROUND THE PIER, hardly noticing the soldiers removing the vest from her and wrapping a towel around her shoulders.

“Where’s Jax?” she demanded, panic creeping into her voice

“On board,” one of them answered. He was the one who had set off the charge that incinerated the Syndicate soldiers.

He was the one who’d saved their lives.

He hauled Kaylin to her feet and kept one arm wrapped around her shoulders as he helped her toward the boat. Kaylin blinked hard, struggling to focus on his face. He had dark skin and deep brown eyes, and he looked like he was in his mid-twenties.

She knew him. They’d trained on the same team when she’d first joined the Resistance. The realization made her gasp, although it turned into a coughing fit as she hacked up the last of the water that she’d accidentally inhaled.

As soon as she got her coughing under control, she choked out, “Beck. Beck, it’s me. Kaylin.”

He startled at the sound of his name and peered down at her with a puzzled expression. It took her spinning mind a moment to understand his confusion. She hadn’t actually joined the Resistance yet, not in this timeline. And that meant she’d never met Beck or trained with him yet.

He shook his head as they reached the ladder leading up to the boat. “Sorry, I don’t remember you. When did we meet?”

She scrambled to think of a rational explanation and blurted out, “School.” It was close enough to the truth, considering they’d met during training.

He offered her a small, sad smile. “No wonder I don’t remember. School feels like it happened in a whole different lifetime.”

“More like in a whole different reality,” Kaylin murmured.

Beck nodded, despite having no idea she wasn’t being figurative. Then he pointed to the ladder in front of them. “Come on board,” he said. “We’ll take you across the lake, but that’s as far as you can come with us. Only Resistance soldiers and children are allowed to come to our base.”

“I want to join,” Kaylin said. “I want to fight with the Resistance.”

He looked her small, ragged form up and down. Then he simply said, “Good. We need as much help as we can get.”

He gestured for her to climb the ladder first, and she struggled to get her trembling hands to grip the rungs properly. Finally, she dragged herself over the edge and onto the deck of the boat.

She whirled in a circle, searching for Jaxon, and quickly spotted him through the window of the small side cabin. He was sitting on the edge of a table while a Resistance fighter wrapped a thick quilt around his shaking shoulders.

She raced toward the cabin, and a guard stepped in her way. But Beck called out, “Let her through! She’s with the boy.”

The guard nodded and muttered an apology as he pulled the cabin door open for her. Kaylin burst inside and raced over to Jaxon, sweeping him into a desperate hug. He buried his face in her shoulder and hugged her back so fiercely it was hard to breathe. The other man who had been inside stepped back a few paces, and then slipped out the door, giving them some privacy.

“We made it,” she said to Jaxon. It wasn’t until she spoke the words out loud that she truly believed them. Relief flooded her, and she hugged him even tighter.

“Do we have to run anymore?” he whispered.

“No, Jax. The Resistance is going to take us someplace safe now. We don’t need to do any more running.”

Even as she spoke, the rumbling of engines shook the floor beneath them, and she could feel the boat shifting as it pulled away from the pier. Jaxon’s chest heaved, and he let out a quiet sob. Kaylin held him close, rocking him back and forth as he cried into her shoulder.

“I’m so proud of you,” she murmured in his ear. “So freaking proud.”

He choked back a hiccupping sob. “But I killed him.”

“The Syndicate?” Kaylin shook her head and gave him a comforting squeeze. “You had to, Jax. We both would have died if you didn’t. You saved us.”

“I didn’t want to hurt him,” he whispered.

She kissed him on top of his head, swallowing back tears of her own. The death of an alien didn’t bother her. Never had, never would. But Jax had killed more than just the Syndicate. He’d killed off the last of his childhood innocence, the gentle part of his soul that Kaylin had always treasured.

But that was so much better than him actually dying. Another flood of relief struck her, and a couple tears streamed down her cheeks. She’d done it. She’d altered this reality so Jaxon would live. She still had years of fighting left ahead of her, but she knew she could survive it if she had Jaxon to fight for.

“It’s going to be okay,” she whispered to Jaxon. “I promise you. No matter what happens, it’s going to be okay. I’m going to be right here for you.”

He nodded just slightly, and his eyelids fluttered a little. Kaylin began rocking him again, hoping to ease him into a peaceful sleep. She knew the trauma of their escape would haunt him for a long time--probably forever. But experience had taught her that a deep sleep was the best treatment for erasing the fear and guilt of war.

It wasn’t long before Jaxon eased into sleep, his eyes closed and his breathing slow and steady. She stared down in amazement, still struggling to believe that she got to have him in her arms again. A sudden warmth filled her, and she closed her eyes, savoring his closeness.

Then another sensation struck: a tingling in her legs. Fear leached in her veins, but she breathed deeply, trying to ward off the sensation. But the tingling continued to spread up her body, enveloping her chest and arms in a numb, weightless feeling.

“No,” she whispered, shaking her head. “No. No, no, no.”

But the tingling didn’t stop. It only became stronger, and the sickening weightlessness struck her gut. Numb horror joined the feeling, making her stomach twist with nausea.

The weightless sensation could only come from one thing: a time-travel device. And once it started, it couldn’t be stopped.

Grief and panic filled her. She desperately shook Jaxon awake, and he peered up at her with sleepy brown eyes. She cupped his face in her hands and leaned close.

“I love you, Jaxon,” she whispered. “Do you hear me? I love you more than anything in any world. And I always will.”

He nodded a little and said, “Love you, too, Kay.” But then fear edged into his expression, and he reached up to touch her cheek. “Why are you crying?” he asked, his voice a hesitant whisper.

She pressed her hand against his, holding it close to her cheek. She wanted so badly to lie to him, but she couldn’t. Not when he was staring up at her so earnestly.

“I think I might need to leave you for a while,” she told him.

Kaylin struggled to keep agony out of her voice. She’d thought this was another chance. She thought she could save Jax, that she could change reality and bring him back to life.

But she should have known better. Fate had no interest in giving her Jaxon back. It merely wanted to torture her.

The time-travel device was going to yank her away from this new reality, and away from her brother.

Panic lit Jaxon’s face, and he frantically shook his head. “No. No, Kay, don’t go! You said you wouldn’t. You promised.”

“I’m so sorry I couldn’t save you, Jax. So, so damn sorry.” She tried to hold him closer, but she suddenly couldn’t feel his warmth in her arms. Instead, there was only weightlessness and a crushing black abyss.

“I tried,” she whispered into the darkness. “I swear to God, I tried.”

Nothing responded to her, and it made her new reality painfully clear:

None of it had mattered.

L.O. Addison

L. O. ADDISON is a professional coffee addict, a digital designer, and an author of science fiction and fantasy. An explorer at heart, she spends her free time searching out the best hiking trails and cafes to be found. Her writing is represented by Laurie McLean of Fuse Literary.

AUTHOR NOTE

WHEN JUSTIN INVITED me to contribute to the Syndicate Wars series, I jumped on the opportunity. Justin and I first met at the San Francisco Writers Conference, where he moderated a panel on indie publishing. As a speaker on the panel, I walked away sure of two things: One, Justin knew more about indie publishing than all the speakers on the panel combined. And two, he was a cool dude who I wanted to work with again.

FAST FORWARD A FEW MONTHS, and Justin offered to bring me in on the Syndicate Wars project. I immediately said “yes,” and we decided that I’d write a spin-off trilogy set four years after the end of the Syndicate War.

PERSONALLY, I’m a bit of an anomaly in the world of sci-fi writers. In an industry full of highly educated and experienced men, I’m a bubbly little blond chick who’s still finishing up college. This is probably one of the main reasons my characters are always underdogs--I know first-hand how sweet it feels to overcome challenges and defy expectations.

I THINK most readers also have personal experiences that allow them to relate to--and root for--the underdog. So I’m excited to share Kaylin’s story in my Syndicate Wars spin-off. Kaylin is the ultimate underdog, born into a crappy situation that’s only gotten worse for her over the years. But as another alien invasion threatens Earth, she has to learn how to push past these challenges to fight for survival and save the people she loves.

I’M REALLY LOOKING FORWARD to sharing Kaylin’s story with readers in early 2018. If you want to know more about the upcoming trilogy, or if you just want to say howdy, feel free to email me at LOAddisonBooks@gmail.com

ESCAPE FIRST, VENGEANCE LATER

BY JONATHAN YANEZ

“Yeah, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil, because I am the evilest one in the valley.”

“Can you stop saying that?”

One minute she had been with her Marines defending the world from an alien invasion the next she had no idea where she was. The feeling made her sick to her stomach or maybe that was just the vomit already pushing its way up her throat.

She leaned forward, releasing the contents of her stomach all over her white uniform pants legs and shoes. She couldn’t remember exactly what she had eaten, but it had been spicy.

Boom! Boom! Boom!

The pounding became louder, and with each blow, a new shudder of sharp pain echoed through her skull.

“I’m going to murder whichever girl scout’s selling cookies at this hour,” Riot muttered to herself as she spat out the last of her stomach bile. “Ugh, what did I eat? It tastes like grandma’s casserole mixed with cat litter and hot sauce.”

She examined her surroundings. She sat chained to a steel chair secured to the floor, the only piece of furniture in the padded room. There was just one way in, and one way out: a metal door from where the hammering appeared to be coming. One other person stood in the room with her—a nervous-looking kid holding a black baton.

He trembled as his dark eyes shifted from the door to Riot, and back to the door.

“You look like you’re going to need a diaper change.” Riot head-motioned toward the door. “I’m guessing you’re not too excited to have whoever’s on the other side break through?”

At once a siren wailed and red lights flashed in the room, accompanied by a tranquil, prerecorded female voice. “Attention: It is important to remain calm. Patients are asked to remain in their rooms, or if you are in any of the common areas, please return to your room in order to avoid death or dismemberment. Wardens are asked to meet at the entrance to begin the sweep. Thank you all in advance for your compliance.”

The kid swallowed so hard, it made his Adam’s apple bob. “There’s … there’s an insurrection in the Institute. If they get in, I’m dead. I don’t know what they’ll do to you. They’ll probably do things to us before they kill us—horrible things.”

“Like weird experiment things?” Riot knew she’d hit the nail on the head when the kid’s gluts tightened under his snug, uniform pants. “Listen, you need to unchain me. That door’s coming down. When it does, you’ll have a better chance of survival if we put that baton in my hands, and you … you just go sit in the corner and wait, or something.”

The kid moved to free Riot, then paused, indecision clouding his eyes.

“Listen, Ashton … may I call you Ashton?” Riot didn’t wait for an answer. “Your choice is simple: let me go, or start getting your affairs in order, because you don’t look like you’re capable of killing a flea.”

That analogy was enough for the guard to fumble with a heavy key ring in his pocket. He unlocked Riot’s manacles, setting her free.

Riot stood up, stretching sore muscles. The human weapon the Marine Corps had turned Riot into didn’t like being chained. With one smooth motion, Riot tore the baton away from Ashton and delivered a head butt to his nose.

Ashton fell to the floor, both hands trying in vain to stem the flow of crimson red blood. “What … what was that for?”

“I’m told I have anger issues.” Riot checked the baton. It wasn’t a weapon she was familiar with; it was black with three silver rings at the top and a button on the handle next to her thumb. “And your face just makes me want to punch it.”

Rending metal tore Riot from her train of thought. The door flew open, allowing her a first glimpse of her new victims, three of them, all men who looked like they’d been in their fair share of fights.

They all wore the same type of plain white uniform Riot was in, minus the vomit. All three men rushed into the room, each carrying a baton like Riot’s.

“There he is.” The leader, a man with a crooked nose and a harsh overbite, pointed his baton at Ashton’s quivering form. “You didn’t think we would leave without saying our good-byes, did you, Trevor? I wish I had more time with you, but I guess we’ll have to make this quick. We have an escape to finish.”

“Trevor?” Riot looked down at Ashton, who’d assumed a fetal position on the ground beside her. “You mean Ashton?”

Three pairs of crazed eyes swung toward Riot.

“Look who it is, Ray,” one of the other two men standing behind the leader said in a singsong voice. “I like her.”

The bald-headed man who’d spoken was the craziest looking of the three. He stood hunched, with a smile on his face and Riot honestly couldn’t tell if it was sincere or disturbed.

“She’s dangerous.” Ray looked at Riot with disgust before moving toward Ashton. “I don’t really care, Smiles. Let’s kill this boy and be gone before more wardens show up.”

Riot stepped in front of Ashton’s whimpering form and intercepted the trio of men. With her headache still pounding, the repetitive female voice coming in over the speaker became more and more annoying as the seconds passed.

“Listen, I’m sure Ashton’s sorry for peeing in your cereal. To be honest…” Riot looked down at Ashton’s pathetic, crying form at her feet, then lowered her voice and leaned in toward the men. “I don’t really like him, either. He’s kind of a bed wetter, if you know what I mean. But his soggy sheets aside, I’m not going to let you do kinky medieval things to him.”

“‘Kinky medieval things’?” repeated the last man, who hadn’t yet spoken. He was by far the largest of the three, standing a head taller and weighing a good eighty pounds heavier than the other men. “Ray, I didn’t sign up for that.”

“Shut up!” Ray roared, never losing eye contact with Riot. Blood rushed to his face. “She’s trying to confuse us. Kill her first, then Trevor.”

“Please, someone tell me who this Trevor guy is that you keep talking about.” Riot looked around in mock confusion.

Each man pressed the button on the handle of his baton. In unison, blue electric currents hummed across the three silver circles at the tops.

Riot opened her mouth in surprise. “That’s awesome! This is going to be so much fun, guys.”

They came at her at once, and Riot pressed the button on her own baton, grinning as the sizzling, blue electric currents raced over her weapon.

Ray was in the lead. With a high, overhead swing, he brought his sizzling baton down toward Riot but she stepped easily to the side, catching Ray in the face with her own baton. As soon as her weapon made contact with the fleshy part of Ray’s cheek, he began contorting. Manic tremors rippled across his body, and the room filled with the odor of burnt hair.

Riot was still trying to understand exactly how powerful her weapon was, when she was forced to engage the other two men. As soon as she retracted her baton from Ray’s face, he fell to the floor in a mess of spasms.

But there was no time to examine her handiwork. Riot ducked under the baton of the large man, only to find herself face to face with Smiles. The gangly man swiped his baton at her, briefly connecting with the right side of her ribs.

Riot was already moving out of the way, though she felt a burning electricity touch her clothes and, for the briefest moment, caress her skin. Pain from the shock took precedence over the headache still drumming in the background.

Instead of shying away from the fight, Riot pushed herself harder. She charged at Smiles, batting away his baton with her own, while out of the corner of her eye she witnessed the giant of a man she still hadn’t put down prepare for another swing. His timing couldn’t have been better; both Smiles and the giant swung in unison at Riot.

All Riot had to do was step out of the way, grab Smiles’ wrist just below his baton, and push him forward. The tips of the two men’s weapons touched, and both combatants were immediately relieved of their bladder control as they stood in the middle of the white, padded room, electrocuting one another.

Riot stepped back to admire her handiwork. The two men were incapable of removing their weapons from one another; they stood with wet pants, jittering as tiny waves of blue electricity coursed over their bodies.

“Alright, you two.” Riot lifted the chair she’d been chained to a few minutes before, and threw it hard. It crashed against Smiles’ back, finally breaking the electric current and knocking him to the floor. “Enough playtime. Ray’s going to be jealous that he passed out so soon.”

Tendrils of smoke rose off the giant. He swayed, blinking as if trying to wake from a deep dream.

“You’re such a big kid.” Riot walked over to him, studying his expressionless face. “What’s your secret? Carb loading? Power lifting? CrossFit? Don’t worry about answering me now. We’ll talk when you get up.”

For the briefest second before Riot’s fist made contact with his face, confusion flashed over it. The next minute, he crashed to the floor along with his comrades.

“Halt!” An unfamiliar voice filled the room. “Stop right there. Drop your weapon.”

Riot turned to the doorway, where two men in grey uniforms matching Ashton’s pointed handguns at her. At least, they looked like handguns. They were yellow, with long, thick, square barrels.

“Wow, wow, wow, take it easy, muchachos. I’m the good girl, here.” Riot raised her hands, still holding on to the electric baton. She looked over to where Ashton was regaining his feet and staring at the three fallen men in wonder. “Tell them, Ashton.”

But Riot made the mistake of pointing with the hand that still held the electric baton as she urged Ashton to tell the two guards that she’d saved him.

Pfft! Pfft!

“Did somebody just fart?” Riot said, feeling twin stings on the right side of her neck. Her vision began to blur, and she dropped the baton, reaching for her neck. She pulled away one of the silver darts from her skin. “You dart roofied me?”

The last thing Riot remembered was the sound her head made as she face-planted.

FOR THE SECOND time in recent memory, Riot woke with her head pounding a relentless beat. This time when she woke, though, she wasn’t tied down. Instead, Riot sat in a doctor’s office, carpet underfoot, a desk in front of her, and an elderly man in a white coat and glasses looking at her with a smile.

“There she is. How’re you feeling?” The doctor picked up a pen. His hand hovered over a notepad, ready to document her answer.

Riot lifted a hand to her throat. She massaged the two sore spots where the darts had found their mark. “Listen, I’m not sure what’s going on or how I even got here, but I need to get back to my CO and report in, or she’s going to be pissed.”

“Hmm … I see.” The doctor pressed his pen to the paper. “Still Sergeant Riot in the Marine Corps?”

“Hell yeah I’m still in the Marine Corps. I signed up to be one of the best so that when the killing gets real I’ll be ready, surrounded by the toughest sons and daughters of guns, this or any other world has ever seen. Wait a minute, what do you mean ‘still’?”

“We’ve been over this.”

“Well, let’s go over it one more time.”

“Alright. What’s the last thing you remember?” The doctor continued to take notes as he spoke. “Try to remain calm.”

“Yeah, I woke up in a room where three maniacs tried to jump me. I saved Ashton, before I was roofied by a pair of darts.” Riot frowned, thinking even further back. “I’m a Marine in the Corps. There’s an alien invasion taking place on Earth. I need to get back to them.”

“I understand how confusing this is for you.” The doctor placed his pen onto the table and folded his hands. “There was an escape attempt at the Institute, and yes, you did save Warden Trevor from Ray and his two associates. I want to personally thank you for that, by the way. That’s why you’ll notice you’re not chained down right now. I believe good behavior deserves a fair reward in return.”

“Okay.” Riot leaned forward in her chair. “But before that happened, how did I get here in the first place? One minute, I’m fighting aliens; and the next, I’m here.”

“You have to promise me you’ll remain calm.” The doctor opened a drawer and pulled out a file, along with a silver mirror. “In the past when we’ve had this conversation, you haven’t … been receptive to the truth.”

Frustration began to take over, and Riot could feel her pulse quicken, her headache matching the beat of her heart.

“Look into the mirror.” The doctor pushed the silver-handled mirror toward her. “It’s helped in the past.”

“Are you trying to piss me off?” Riot couldn’t hold back any longer. Fear mixed with her frustration as she snatched the mirror off the wooden desk. “Enough with these weird mind games. Just tell me.”

Riot looked at her reflection, half worried she would see some distorted, pig-faced person looking back at her, or something other than what she remembered her features to be. Like ripping off duct tape from your mouth, it was better to do it fast.

Riot looked into the clear, glass mirror. She was fine. Same exact face she always remembered looked back at her. Short, dark hair met blue eyes, tanned skin, and large features she had come to embrace. She moved her view from the mirror and tilted her head down to take in her thick frame and curvy shape. All of the bumps were in their appropriate places.

The doctor cleared his voice and began his story. “You’re not, nor have you ever been, a marine. The alien invasion you keep talking about is a delusion you have suffered from since you’ve come to the Institute for help. You’ve been here for the past four years, receiving treatment.”

Riot stared at the doctor for a full minute, before bursting into laughter. “Oh, my gosh! Good one, doc. I don’t know how you’re able to keep a straight face. Who put you up to this? Was it Quinn?”

“The sooner you come to grips with this, the sooner we can get you back on the road to recovery.” The doctor shook his head, pushing toward her the file he’d also placed on the desk. “You had a relapse, that’s all. Try to remember.”

“Yeah, okay.” Riot grabbed up the file and began leafing through it. “You’re not going to tell me that my entire life up to this point was a psychotic break. I mean, I know I have a few screws loose, but who doesn’t?”

Riot swallowed hard as she examined the file. Page after page documented sessions of her therapy and treatments, and contained meticulous notes on her medication regime.

“This … this doesn’t mean anything.” Riot refused to believe her time in the Marine Corps had been meaningless. She’d felt the pain of losing friends, and the rush of battle. “Anyone could have put anything in here.”

“You’ve said that before.” The doctor again reached into his desk, and this time, he brought out a silver laptop computer. He opened the screen, clicked a few keys, then turned the screen toward Riot. “See for yourself.”

Riot stared at a screen, where she sat in a plain, white room with the same doctor sitting across from her. Her own voice in the video drifted from the laptop.

“The Earth was attacked by an alien force. I was part of an elite marine division that fought them back. That has to be true. I know it is.”

“Then how do you explain how you got here?” asked the doctor’s recorded voice.

“I … I don’t remember—wait, if I was never in the Marines, how do you explain my combat skills?”

“You’re trained in martial arts, don’t you remember? It was the brain trauma in your chosen field that brought you here in the first place.”

Riot hated looking at herself in the screen almost as much as she hated hearing her own recorded voice. She’d seen and heard enough.

“Listen, doc whoever-you-are”—she slammed the laptop shut as she stood—“I know what I know. I’m leaving. You can try to stop me if you want, but I wouldn’t advise it.”

“Wardens!” The doctor had raised his voice to shout as Riot turned her back on him and headed for the room’s only exit.

The fogged glass door Riot was walking toward flew open. Five grey-uniformed wardens ran into the room, each carrying a yellow firearm.

Riot eyed each one. They were hard-eyed and twitchy fingered. Already she was gauging her odds. She could dodge one or two of the roofie darts, but five would be too many. She could land a blow or two before she was knocked out again, but she needed to escape this crazy house, not beat up the wardens.

“We’ve learned through trial and error what it takes to bring you down.” The doctor stood from his desk behind her. “You’ve never made it past five darts. We’ve met many times before, but I’ll introduce myself again: I’m Doctor Micah Keyes. Please don’t do something you’ll regret.”

The warrior inside told Riot to throw caution to the wind, the devil on her shoulder, the same. The angel speaking into her ear made Riot second-guess her actions.

Just wait. There’ll be a chance to get out of here and figure all of this out when you don’t have five beads trained on you.

Riot threw her hands into the air, ready to give up. “Okay,” she said, though her quick action spooked one of the wardens.

Pfft!

The fart sound from the roofie gun filled the room, and Riot felt a pinprick of pain on the left side of her chest.

“Really?” Riot looked at the wide-eyed warden, whose hands were still shaking.

Again, darkness came for her.

“AND THAT’S when I said, ‘Really, ma’am, I think your goose ran away with your shoes!”

Riot jolted to consciousness. She was sitting in a large cafeteria at a bench-style table with a handful of other people also dressed in plain white shirts and pants. There were wardens stationed at the two exits to the large, open room. A line of glass separated the patients from the cooks in the kitchen.

“Hey, Riot, are you going to eat your jello?”

Riot looked over to her left, where she noticed a skinny girl in her late teens. Tattoos covered her arms; her eyes were tired, and she didn’t look like she could keep still if her life had depended on it.

“No, I, uh … I guess not.” Riot looked down at her untouched meal of poop-colored beans, a soggy white sandwich, milk carton, and green jello.

“Awesome.” The kid reached over with a scrawny arm and grabbed Riot’s jello from her tray. “I love green jello day. It reminds me of being sane.”

“I don’t think Riot is remembering us today, Slade,” said a dark-skinned man, with a graying beard and hair, from across the table. He looked at Riot and flashed a crazy grin. “One of those days, huh, Riot? I’m Jessup and this is Slade. We’re your friends, or I guess, more like frenemies. We put up with one another.”

Riot was still coming down from the roofie dart, her mind reeling with the insane events that had taken place since she had woken up in the room with Ashton. For the very first time, she allowed herself to wonder if she actually was crazy. Had she made up her entire time in the Marine Corps? No. She couldn’t let herself believe that. She had seen the aliens descend from the sky, fought them with her family in the corps.

“Let it go.” Jessup shook his head as he shoveled another plastic spoonful of beans into his mouth. “Just let it go, Riot. I don’t know how many more times you can be tranquillized before you start going crazier than you already are. Try to eat something; the beans are great.”

“We’ve got to get out of here.” Riot stared down at her food. She lifted a spoonful of the brown muck into her mouth, immediately regretting the act. It was spicier than she would have thought. Seemed the cook had replaced flavor with heat. “We can’t stay here.”

“Yeah, okay.” Slade abandoned her spoon and dug into the lime green jello with her left hand. “That’s what you always say, and we always try to talk you out of it, and then you always go and get tranq’ed.”

“Hell, we even tried with you the first few times.” Jessup shook his head as he remembered the past. “We all paid the price—tranquillized, or stunned with a baton. Then we lost our privileges, and you know how much Slade likes her privileges.”

“I couldn’t access our library for a full week.” Slade shook her head so fast it made her long, tangled hair shiver. “It was a dark time in my life. A dark time.”

“Where are we?” Riot looked around the cafeteria for a window. “What state are we in?”

“Wow, maybe you’ve already been tranquilized too many times.” Jessup looked over to Slade for a consensus. “She seems different this time for some reason.”

“I don’t know.” Slade shrugged. “I like her.”

“Where are we?” Riot repeated. There were no windows in the cafeteria, only benches filled with the clinically insane. Manic laughter and shouts of gibberish permeated the air. “On an alien ship?” she asked.

“Uh, no.” Slade looked at her with large eyes. “Try in the woods of Colorado.”

Riot’s mind struggled to find meaning in the words. She had never been to Colorado before. Why had she wound up here? Why now?

“Everything okay over here?” A muscular warden, with a shaved head and unkind eyes, walked over to their table.

“Yeah, we’re fine,” Slade squeaked. She refused to make eye contact with the warden. Instead, she turned her gaze down to her empty jello cup.

“You know, it’s polite to look someone in the eye when they’re talking to you.” The warden reached for his baton. With the business end, he lifted Slade’s chin. “You know, life could be so much easier for you if you were willing to do certain favors for me. I could get you all the green jello you could ever want.”

“She doesn’t mean to be rude.” Jessup licked his lips, trying to diffuse the situation with a smile. “If we could jus—”

“Shut up, old man.” The warden glared at Jessup before turning his gaze on Riot. “And you, don’t even think about it. You crazy loser, you’re no marine. You’re in my world now, freak.”

The entire cafeteria was silent. Even those crazy enough to legitimately be in the Institute knew when danger was close. All eyes were on the warden and Riot.

Anger boiled up inside of Riot, not necessarily because the warden was bullying Slade, but because she was getting tired of fighting other people’s wars. Riot wasn’t the heroic type, but neither was she willing to walk away from someone who was begging for a beating.

“Listen, I’m not really sure what’s going on here…” Riot stood from the table. She was close enough to grab the warden and rip that stupid smile right off his face with her bare hands. “First, I’m saving Ashton from being pulverized. Now, I’m stopping you from bullying Slade. I really need a break to get my own head straight. With that said, if you don’t leave her alone, I’m going to open a can of whoop-ass on you that’ll make your ancestors ache in their graves and prevent you from creating future generations of meatheads in the process.”

Gasps of shock and surprise erupted all over the room. The inmates of the Institute leaned forward in their seats, wide-eyed to see what the warden would do next.

“You talk a big game, fake marine, but you’re not going to do anything to back it up.” The warden’s thumb hovered over the button that would activate the electric baton. The opposite end that would sizzle into life with a blue charge of electricity was still pressed to Slade’s chin. “Now sit your ass down, or you’re little friend here is going to experience what a lightning bolt to the brain feels like.”

It killed Riot inside to realize she was in a no-win situation. She was fast, but not fast enough to disarm the warden before his thumb pressed down on the button.

Riot clenched her fists so hard, she felt her nails dig into her palms. Shaking, she sat back down on the bench next to Slade.

“That’s a good play-marine,” the warden mocked. He holstered his baton as he walked toward the exit of the cafeteria. “Remember my offer, Slade.”

As soon as the warden walked out of the room, the cafeteria fell back into its normal white noise of mutters and random yells, and one male patient even broke into a faintly familiar rap by an artist duo Riot remembered due to her fan knowledge of the vintage music and culture of Earth. The artist was called Kris Kross. The repeating line of “Jump! Jump!” echoed in the background.

“Thank you.” Slade looked over at Riot with tears in her eyes. “Thank you, Riot.”

“For what?” Riot was still seething with anger. “I didn’t do anything.”

“No one ever sticks up for me.” Slade licked the last of her lime green jello from her fingers.

“You and Warden Chambers have been going at it for a while.” Jessup pushed his tray away from his seat, signaling he was done with his meal. “When it comes to a head, be careful with that one. He’s not past using any underhanded technique he can come up with.”

A plan was already beginning to form in Riot’s head. Wherever she was, whatever this was, she needed to get answers. Answers meant getting outside of this nuthouse.

“How do you two feel about giving me a tour?” Riot stood for a second time, her uneaten meal still sitting on the table, as unappetizing as ever.

“Uh-oh, I know that look.” Jessup followed her lead, also rising from his seat. “That’s trouble.”

“No, I always look like this,” Riot lied. “It’s just my face.”

“NOTHING.” Riot stared out of what felt like the dozenth window in the Institute. Throughout Jessup and Slade’s guided tour of the facility, every window they came across provided the same view. Pristine green grass lawns met a chain link fence topped with razor wire. A hundred yards beyond that, the view was lost to a lush green forest. “Every window shows us absolutely squat; no landmarks, no surrounding buildings—nothing.”

“It’s just the man keeping us down.” Slade twirled in the hall they walked down. “But it’s not that bad. I mean, besides Warden Crappy Pants. We get to hang out with our friends, eat green jello, and play in the activity room. Speaking of the activity room, come on, let’s go!”

Slade took off at a run down the hall, leaving Riot and Jessup in her wake.

“Is she always like this?” Riot turned to the elderly black man for answers.

Jessup shrugged with a wide smile on his lips. “Slade’s a good kid. She’s full of energy and a little misguided, but all around, she’s not so bad.”

“Why’s she in here?”

“Boyfriend beat her for years. Ruined her physically, emotionally, and psychologically. One day Slade snapped.” Jessup’s voice got lower as he continued to tell Slade’s story. “They found him in pieces going around in her washing machine. She said he was a dirty man and something needed to be done with his filth.”

“Wow, that’s brutal.” Riot got a visual of the scene that made her smile. Little Slade had a mean streak in her after all. “And you? Why are you here? You seem pretty normal-ish.”

“I don’t really want to talk about it.” Jessup avoided eye contact with Riot. Noise could be heard down the hall where a television played. It sounded like the Power Rangers theme music. “Look, we’re here.”

Riot didn’t mind pressuring Jessup for answers about his past, but at the moment, there was more to think about. They had taken her on a tour of the Institute, showing her the sleeping chambers, the showers, the solitary confinement wing, and now the activity area.

All around, patients clothed in white pants and shirts and white robes drew with crayons, watched Power Rangers on the small television, or played various tabletop games.

Slade had found a seat on the carpeted floor in front of the television, and she sat clapping her hands and rocking back and forth, enjoying the action.

“Well, you’ve seen most of the Institute now.” Jessup looked over at Riot with an arched eyebrow. “But I know that look too well. What’re you planning?”

“When tweedledee and tweedledum came along with Ray to pound Ashton, they were carrying those electric batons. How did they get them in the first place?”

“They jumped a trio of wardens, but that won’t happen again. Warden Chambers is the only one who’s carrying a baton around the patients now. And besides you, Ray and his loonies were the only ones insane enough to try to break out of here. With them in solitary confinement, things should settle down now.”

“Ray had a plan to get out of here, until I stopped him.” Riot folded her arms over her chest in thought. “I need to set up a chat with him.”

“Well, that’s not going to happen.” Jessup furrowed his brow, trying to follow along with Riot’s train of thought. “I told you, they’re locked up tight in solitary—”

Jessup’s face lit up as he caught on to Riot’s plan.

“Oh, Riot, don’t do it.” Jessup shook his head. “Even if you got in there, there’d be no way to get you out.”

“Let me worry about that.” Riot looked around the room for an opportunity.

DING!

The loud noise had come over the intercom, with the same female voice that had warned them about the escape attempt. “Attention patients: Please report to the dispensary. All patients, please report to the dispensary.”

“Dispensary?” Riot flexed her hands and rolled her neck from side to side. “They hand out weed here?”

“Pills.” Jessup motioned with his chin to the patients who were shuffling down the hall, a pair of wardens ushering them along. “It’s time for everyone to take their afternoon medication.”

Riot fell in line with Jessup. This was too perfect. Stop one: the dispensary. Stop two: solitary confinement.

THE URGE TO get out of whatever alternate reality she had woken up in hit her again. Her fellow Marines were out there taking it to the Syndicate, fighting and dying while she was in here supping on green jello and beans.

From an early age she had found the true definition of family in the Marine Corps. Her family needed her now and the longer she stayed in here, wherever here was, the longer it would take to get back into the fight.

“Excuse me, excuse me, pardon me.” Slade cut in line with Riot and Jessup. “Hey, you two didn’t think you’d swallow some mystery pills without me, did you?”

“In another setting, swallowing pills wouldn’t sound so bad.” Riot looked at the warden who stood at the front of the line, and then the one at the back. “How many wardens are at the Institute at any given time?”

“I don’t know. What do you think, Slade?” Jessup looked to the girl for consensus. “A dozen? No more than eighteen?”

Slade blew out a loud mouthful of air past her thin lips. “Oh, you’re close. There’s fifteen here on any given day, plus doctors and ancillary staff. But there are another ten wardens on call who can be here in case of an emergency. Their response time is twenty minutes, so they must live close, and just carry their equipment with them. If your plan is going to work, you either need to be out in under twenty minutes from when the alarm sounds, or disable the alarm altogether.”

Riot and Jessup looked at one another, stunned. Slade had not shown the slightest hint that she had much going on behind her eyes, but just like that, she had provided the final puzzle piece Riot needed.

“Move along, move along!” chattered an excited voice behind them. “It’s red pill day. It’s red pill day.”

Riot turned to see a man in his late fifties with drool trickling down his lips. His hair stood on end as if a baton had just electrocuted him.

“Easy, Michael.” Jessup smiled at him. “We’re moving.”

Riot shuffled along, her mind working overtime on exactly how she was going to pull off the escape, when the answer met her at the front of the line. The dispensary was actually just a circular office with a glass window and a slot for the warden on duty to slide the appropriate medications to each patient. Luckily for Riot, the warden performing this task was none other than her new friend, Ashton.

“Next.” Ashton waved Riot forward. His eyes were down on a sheet where he’d added a check mark next to the last patient who had just received his medication.

When he looked up, his mouth fell open. The area around both of his eyes was bruised, making him look like a raccoon, and a heavy, white bandage had been placed on the bridge of his nose where Riot had broken it with her head butt.

“Ashton, buddy.” Riot leaned on the countertop, giving him a winning smile. “So, tell me, how’s the nose?”

“IT HURTS because you broke it, and my name’s not Ashton, it’s—”

“I’m just going to stop you right there. Save your breath, because I’m going to call you Ashton anyway. How about paying it forward and letting me pass on my special pills today? Come on, what do you say?”

“Are you kidding me?” Ashton shook his head and reached to his left where a tray of pills stood ready for deployment. He chose a small, clear cup of water and a smaller paper bowl filled with brightly colored tablets. “No way. You need these drugs more than Michael, and that guy says he sees unicorns burying rainbows.”

“Really? Nothing? No sense of you owing me for saving your life from Ray and his two love partners?” Riot leaned so close to the glass, her breath fogged up in front of her. “I’m just going to be honest with you, here. If I didn’t help you, you’d be filling out paperwork to join the unsullied army right about now. What did you do to piss them off so much anyway?”

“Hey, what’s the hold up! I need my red pills!” Michael screamed, so loudly, he sounded like a child. “I needs them!”

Riot could see the hesitation in Ashton’s eyes. He needed one final push to send him over the edge.

“I’m not going to do anything crazy … well, too crazy,” Riot corrected herself. “Just let me have a clear head for once. I was dart roofied for you—twice.”

“Fine. But after this, we’re even. And I didn’t do anything to Ray. He was acting up, so I put him on restriction from his favorite TV show. How was I supposed to know about his weird attachment to the six million dollar man?” Ashton looked around nervously. “I’ll help you, but at least pretend you’re taking them.”

Riot grabbed the tiny paper bowl of red pills with her right hand. She pressed the paper to her lips and threw back her head, then slammed the bowl back down onto the counter and slid it across to Ashton, who covered it with his hand. Riot did the same with the small cup of water.

“Hey, who wants more red pills?” Riot turned around to address the other patients in line. “I said, who wants it to rain red pills like dolla bills, ya’ll?”

There was a manic roar of approval from the patients in line, with a scattered round of applause.

“What are you doing?” Ashton whispered behind her.

“Move aside.” The two wardens maintaining the line of patients approached her cautiously. Once they saw who was causing the disturbance, one of them reached for a radio at his waist.

“We’re going to need backup at the dispensary.”

Riot licked her lips and beckoned with an outstretched hand to the two wardens.

The warden clicked his radio again. “Send everyone to the dispensary. She’s not going down easy.”

“What are you doing?” Slade asked Riot out through the side of her mouth. “I can help.”

“You will.” Riot looked over at her friend with a wink. “But not now. Jessup will fill you in.”

“Get out of line.” The wardens took a step closer. “Put your hands on your head and get on your knees.”

The sound of running feet filled the room as the other wardens came to aid their counterparts. Patients, including Jessup and a reluctant Slade, moved to the side as the promise of the fight grew.

“There you are.” Riot pointed to Warden Chambers, who rounded the corner, his electric baton held firmly in his right hand. “I have a can I’ve been waiting to open for you. Should we open it together? I think everyone wants to see what’s inside.”

Five wardens were in the room now, including Warden Chambers. More feet slapped down the linoleum halls running toward their direction.

Riot was one of the very best hand-to-hand fighters in the corps, but she also realized she was only human. Five on one would be challenging enough; there was no need to wait for every single warden to join the fight.

“Oh, I’ve been waiting for this.” Warden Chambers pointed his baton at Riot, his face twisted with rage mixed with pleasure. “Get on your knees, we’re going to—”

Riot was done waiting. She closed the gap between herself and the wardens so quickly, they were taken by surprise. Riot zeroed in on Warden Chambers. She didn’t know how much time she had before she was overwhelmed, and he needed to go first.

He was a large man carrying around his fair share of muscle and fat, which made him just a bit slower than what was required to fend off Riot’s attack.

Riot struck Chambers in the jaw and temple before he could switch on his baton and bring it up to defend himself. Unlike Warden Chambers, Riot didn’t suffer from the same stereotype that haunted soldiers of her stature. She was a thick girl, but she could move with the best of them.

As soon as the warden staggered back, Riot finished him with a shot to his groin.

“Uhhhhhgggggg…” The sound, like a small girl pushing some large piece of furniture, escaped from the warden’s lips as his face turned red and he crumpled in on himself.

“Ohhhhhh!” All of the patients witnessing the fight roared in approval.

To Riot, this was all background noise. The other wardens were already on top of her, trying to tackle her. Riot caught the first one with a kick to the inside of his kneecap. A satisfying crunch preceded the warden falling to the floor, howling in pain.

Adrenaline raced as Riot absorbed a blow to her own face. Someone grabbed her from behind. She ignored the person behind her for a moment, focusing on the man who had struck her across the jaw. The metallic taste of blood filled her mouth and awoke the warrior inside.

There were hands everywhere now as they tried wrestling her down. Riot walked backwards, forcing them to follow her instead of pinning her to the ground. She pushed back, faster and faster, until she and the group trying to contain her were at a near run. A moment later, everyone involved in the skirmish slammed into a wall.

Riot’s teeth chattered. For so long, she had trained herself to ignore pain, that when it did come, it was an afterthought, a distant voice somewhere in the background, easy to block out.

With her right hand, she grabbed the throat of the man who had punched her in the face. “You should have hit me when I was down, not while I’m still on my feet. Bad move, Buttercup.”

The man’s eyes went wild with fear, and he clawed at her grip, to no avail. There were so many wardens now, Riot lost count. She still held on to her unlucky victim with her right hand, striking out with her left at whatever she could.

The next few minutes passed in a grayed-out, dreamlike state. Fists were striking her from all directions, but Riot couldn’t let herself slip into unconsciousness. Not yet.

It took another two minutes and a dozen wardens to wrestle her into submission. It seemed the wardens weren’t going to simply roofie dart her again. They wanted their chance to land a few shots of their own before she went down.

Once they were able, they tied her hands behind her back and dragged her down the linoleum hall. She was covered in her own blood and that of the men she had injured.

They dragged her into a seated position by the shoulders of her white shirt, now stained red. Riot caught Slade’s concerned look as she was taken away, and Riot smiled through a blood-stained face, giving the girl a wink.

“Oh, you think you’re being cute, huh?” Warden Chambers filled her view. “We’ll see how funny you think it is when we throw you in solitary for the next month.”

Riot would never win an award for her acting skills, but in that moment, she called in every ounce of dramatic muscle she had. “Solitary? Put me wherever you want, as long as it’s not with that monster, Ray. I don’t care about solitary.”

Riot swallowed a mouthful of saliva and blood as she watched her prey grin with malice. The next moment her suspicions were confirmed.

“Throw her in the cell with Ray.” Warden Chambers’ grin widened. “Maybe he’ll teach her a few lessons.”

“What?” Riot struggled as the wardens dragging her came to a stop. With rough hands, they lifted her to her feet. “You can’t do that!”

“I can do whatever I want.” Warden Chambers sneered down at her. “You’re in my world, remember?”

Riot got a sense of her surroundings. The wardens who had dragged her to solitary removed her handcuffs. They were in a narrow hallway where white steel doors with meal slots lined either wall.

Warden Chambers struck out with a right hand that hammered into Riot’s stomach. Riot’s knees went out on her as she fell to all fours, gasping for breath.

“Please.” Riot crawled up Warden Chambers’ pants legs. She grabbed the small key ring off his left belt hoop without anyone noticing and palmed it. “Please, no more. I’ve had enough. Just put me in my own cell, not with Ray.”

The two wardens who had dragged her this far grabbed Riot from behind. One warden unlocked the door, and Riot was thrown inside the small chamber.

“Do me a favor and just kill each other.” Warden Chambers slammed the steel door shut behind Riot.

Riot smiled at Ray, who stood in a corner gawking at her. “Hey, long time, no beat. Remember me? Want to be friends now? Good, let’s get out of here.”

RAY STOOD BLINKING AT HER, like she could very well be a figment of his imagination. His cell was small, with nothing but a toilet and a sink on one side of the room. A bright light shone overhead; no windows, no bed.

“Are you kidding me?” Ray clenched his fists and growled at her. “You put me here. Why would I help you?”

“Because”—Riot opened her hand to reveal the keycard she had lifted from Warden Chambers—“I can get us out of here. I’m guessing we have sixty seconds or less before he figures out his keycard is missing. Maybe another sixty seconds before he realizes I took them. What do you say, Ray? Let’s bury the hatchet and get the hell out of here.”

“You electrocuted me, and that really hurt.” Ray frowned. “But I guess if you’re sorry for that, I can forgive you.”

Riot walked over to the clinically insane patient of the Institute and placed her right hand onto his bony shoulder. “Ray, as God is my witness, I promise you: I will never knowingly electrocute you again. Now, let’s get out of here. I need to know how you planned to escape the first time.”

Whether Ray had a split personality or some other psychotic issue had taken over, he didn’t seem at all like the hard-nosed man Riot had met, the one trying to kill Ashton.

“I’m in.” Ray took the offered keycard. He went to the meal slot, pushed it open, knelt down, and began the process of reaching the outside lock with the keycard. “We’ll need a distraction while we hit the armory. Then it’s out the front door.”

CLICK!

“Ah, there it is.” Ray stood. The door swung open.

“Really, that’s it?” Riot exhaled, shaking her head. “That’s your grand plan? A distraction, an armory run, and leave through the front door?”

“Yeah, we get extra points if we can avoid having the alarm go off.” Ray grinned and tiptoed out of the room. “I’ll free my friends and start the distraction. You get to the weapons. They’re on the opposite side of the Institute, so you’ll have to be fast. Wait for my signal.”

“What’s your signal?”

“You’ll know it when you hear it.”

Ray left the room, unlocking the solitary confinement cells where he shared in hushed whispers the plans with his two friends. A moment later, they were gone.

“Great,” Riot whispered to herself as she moved right outside the cell door. Standing in the hall, she would be able to get a clear view of anyone running to her location. “I’m counting on a sociopath to get me out of here.”

In the brief interim before all hell broke loose, Riot allowed herself to consider her physical state. Her white uniform was stained red in numerous spots. Her ribs were bruised, her bottom lip split open, a few other aches and pains riddled her body, but nothing serious, nothing she couldn’t handle.

A rogue thought, about where she really was and what she was doing here, entered her mind. Priority one had to be escaping from the Institute, but immediately following that had to be digging for answers as to what had happened to her and finding out where she actually was.

A moment later, red warning lights flashed and a voice came over the speaker, but not the prerecorded female voice Riot was used to hearing. Smiles’ manic voice penetrated the speakers. “Patients of the Institute, it’s time for everyone to go home. It’s release day, and we ask that you act as crazy as you possibly can to give us a chance of getting out. I have a song I’d like to dedicate to a very special Warden Chambers who made this day possible.”

A moment later, the same rap song from Kris Kross blasted over the speakers. The song’s recurring line of “Jump! Jump!” was perfect for Riot’s run. Without overthinking what she had to do next, Riot took off at a sprint.

Already yells and applause could be heard all over the Institute; shouts from patients and screams as they sang along with the song.

As Riot turned the corner from the solitary hall wing, a scene of pure mania welcomed her. Every patient was doing his or her best to add a little chaos to the world around them. Wardens ran from area to area as their radios went off with a dozen different requests at once.

Riot was doing her best to remember the directions to the armory. It was on the east side of the Institute; she had made a mental note of the room when Jessup and Slade had taken her for her tour of the building.

“Make it rain! Make it rain!” Michael was screaming as two of his fellow patients threw red pills in the air. The crimson tablets fell all around Michael as he tilted his head up and opened his mouth with his squirming pink tongue flailing from side to side, trying to capture the medication.

There were so many yells, so much disaster taking place, Riot had to remind herself to stay focused. To her left, Michael and his friends had broken into the dispensary and were having a pill smorgasbord. In front of her, a number of patients had ripped open pillows and were having a massive pillow fight with the wardens. Feathers cascaded all around them, making them look as though they were in a giant snow globe all of their own.

Riot ran past the dispensary and cafeteria, all the time wary of any wardens who had witnessed her appearance. Thus far, everyone was too busy with his or her own task to notice the rogue escapee from solitary confinement.

Riot breathed deeply and evenly as her legs pumped underneath her. All the hours spent training were more than adequate to prepare her for the run, despite her wounded state.

As Riot passed the section of the Institute that held the dormitory wing and showers, the harsh odor of smoke hit her nose. Searching for the cause, Riot nearly collided with Slade, the girl’s arms loaded with plastic cups of green jello.

“Oh, hey, Riot.” Slade smiled, dropping a handful of cups as she fished into her pocket with her right hand. “Jessup told me to give you this.”

Slade dropped a heavy key ring in her hand.

“Where did you get these?” Riot asked, checking her surroundings again. The last thing she needed was a group of wardens catching her now.

“Jessup lifted them off a guard while he was busy trying to calm a group of patients.” Slade dropped even more of her green jello cups as she chose one, opened the foil lid, and sucked at the contents. “Where are we going now?”

“Anarchy, anarchy!” Jessup came down the hall, carrying a flaming wad of bed sheets in his hand. The older man had a wild look in his dark eyes. “Come on, hurry!”

“Pyro.” Riot shook her head, following Jessup’s lead. “I should have known.”

The trio of unlikely comrades ran down two more halls and rounded yet another corner before coming face to face with a white door that read: Wardens Only.

The smoke from Jessup’s makeshift torch was thick. Heavy tendrils set off the closest fire alarm, and with it, a shower of water as the automatic sprinklers erupted into life.

“No, no…” Jessup whimpered as he witnessed his flame die. “It was so beautiful.”

“It’s okay, Jess.” Slade smiled, extending a green container to her friend. “Jello?”

“Hey! Hey, you three, stop!” a voice reached them from their left.

Two wardens, who had more than likely been making their own run to the armory, were already reaching for their radios.

“No time.” Riot looked down at the handful of keys on the ring. Unwilling to try them all, she reared back with her right foot and slammed her heel into the section of the door right next to the handle.

CRACK!

The door gave way, and Riot rushed into the small room. Her eyes swept around the chamber as she quickly took stock of the arsenal. There was a rack of electric batons on one wall, shelves of non-lethal sprays, a table with dozens of tranquilizer handguns. All of this, however, paled in comparison to what was in the last rack on her left. Riot wasn’t exactly sure what the thick, blue rifle would shoot, but it looked amazing, like an oversized nerf gun and a paintball gun had had a love child.

“Stop!” The two wardens rushed into the room. To Riot’s surprise and delight, the wardens were none other than Ashton and Chambers.

Riot lifted the rifle from the rack. She hit what she guessed was the safety and pointed it at the wardens, who nervously eased away from the point of her barrel.

“Slade.” Riot didn’t take her eyes off the wardens. “What does this do?”

“I don’t know, but let’s test it on the mean one.” Slade pointed at Warden Chambers.

“Hey, let’s all calm down, now.” Warden Chambers held his electric baton in front of him, like that was going to help somehow. “There’s no reason to do something we’re all going to re—”

THUMP!

A high-pitched hum came from the rifle, followed by a loud thwack. Something akin to a concentrated shock wave left the barrel and struck the warden in the groin, sending him flying back through the open door and into the hall beyond.

“Wow!” Riot looked at her weapon with newfound respect. “You didn’t tell me you had toys like this!”

“Are you going to shoot me?” Ashton looked around with wild eyes, trying to make a decision as to whether to run or not.

“No, silly.” Riot handed rifles to Slade and Jessup. “You’re going to take us to the exit.”

THUMP! THUMP!

Slade missed with her first shot, but hit the guard at the set of double doors with the next. The guard’s body lifted off the ground and slammed against the steel bars that separated the Institute from the outside world.

Past the steel bars was a long hall with a set of double doors that Ashton promised them would lead to the outside courtyard.

“Hurry up.” Jessup pressed the barrel of his rifle into Ashton’s back. “We don’t have all day.”

“Okay, okay.” Ashton fumbled with the keys, his hands, wet from the sprinklers, frantically trying to find the right key to open the gate.

The music playing over the speakers died.

“We only have a few minutes left before they get here.” Riot whipped her drenched hair out of her face. “Ray and his buddies have been captured.”

“How do you know that?” Slade asked, shivering in the cold water that sprinkled from the ceiling. “How can you be sure?”

Before Riot could answer, a prerecorded female voice came over the loudspeaker. “Attention: It is important to remain calm. Patients are asked to remain in their rooms, or if you are in any of the common areas, please return to your room in order to avoid death or dismemberment. Wardens are asked to meet at the entrance to begin the sweep. Thank you all in advance for your compliance.”

“Music’s over.” Riot lifted her rifle, taking aim down the barrel at whoever would round the corner first.

CLICK!

“Got it!” Ashton swung open the cell-like door.

“Hurry! Get through!” Riot pulled the trigger as she caught the first sign of movement down the hall, catching a warden in his right leg as he turned the corner. His body slammed against the floor and skidded to a halt against the far wall.

“The key for the double doors—now!”

Riot heard Jessup yell the command, but her attention was on covering their escape. Ashton, Jessup, Slade, and Riot jumped through the steel bar door, then Riot slammed it closed as wardens took up positions at either corner of the hall.

Riot watched Slade out of the corner of her eye. The young girl was mirroring her, move for move. Riot knelt, making herself as small a target as possible. She placed the barrel of her rifle through the bars.

“Hurry, let’s go!” Jessup was yelling at Ashton as he fumbled to find the final key to their freedom.

“Hey, do you think they have rifles to—”

THUMP! THUMP!

Wardens peeked around the corner with their own rifles, showering Riot’s end of the hall with projectiles. The steel bars in front of her shook under the pressure of the concussive rounds.

Riot gritted her teeth and shot back. Not that there was much to shoot at. The wardens were firing blindly, only offering Riot a target of their rifle and hands.

“We got it, we got it!” Jessup’s voice found her over the rain of rifle fire.

Riot looked over at Slade to tell her to run, but the young girl’s body was slumped halfway to the exit doors. A round had found its way through the bars.

“Go, go!” Riot yelled to Jessup as he moved to come back down the hall and pick up Slade’s body. “I’ll get her, just cover me.”

“Ahhhhhhhh!” Jessup pressed his trigger like a madman, but most of his rounds struck the steel bar that groaned under his barrage, though his heart was in the right place.

Riot ran to Slade’s body. She lifted the girl, who felt like nothing, onto her shoulder. One hand on Slade, one hand on her rifle, she and Jessup walked backwards down the hall, exchanging fire with the wardens.

The wardens had become desperate now. They crouched and fired, making their way to the steel barrier between the two.

Riot and Jessup walked out of the Institute, firing wildly. As soon as Riot crested the threshold into the outside world, she found herself alone. Slade, Jessup, Ashton, the Institute, the wardens chasing them, the green grass and the forest welcoming her was all replaced by something from a nightmare.

Riot looked down at her empty hands as her brain struggled to reason out what was happening to her. A dull buzzing was the only thing she could hear. She was in some long forgotten city. Skeletons of buildings that once would have marked vibrant city life lay in various forms of destruction around her.

The alien ships she remembered so vividly, but yet had seemed so far away at the Institute, hovered in the sky. The alien’s foreign tanks and assault vehicles were rolling down the street away from her, no more than a half mile ahead.

“What the freakhola,” Riot said out loud. “I knew I was right. Why did I have to be right?”

To her right, her glance caught a motion from around the corner of one of the few remaining buildings still standing. A figure Riot instantly recognized was walking toward her.

“I should have known it was you.” Riot shook her head. “How many times have I—”

Before Riot could get the words out, as she was still wrapping her head around the truth, she smelled the gas.

“Oh, f—”

Riot fell unconscious.

“YEA, tho I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil, because I am the evilest one in the valley.”

“Can you stop saying that?”

Riot came to and her rambling ended as her brain processed three things: she had one hell of a headache, there was a pounding coming from a steel door in front of her, and she was about to vomit.

She leaned forward, releasing the contents of her stomach all over her white uniform pants legs and shoes. She couldn’t remember exactly what she had eaten, but it had been spicy.

Boom! Boom! Boom!

The pounding became louder, and with each blow, a new shudder of sharp pain echoed through her skull.

“I’m going to murder whichever girl scout’s selling cookies at this hour.” Riot muttered to herself as she spat out the last of her stomach bile. “Ugh, what did I eat? It tastes like grandma’s casserole mixed with cat litter and hot sauce.”

She examined her surroundings. She sat chained to a steel chair secured to the floor, the only piece of furniture in the padded room. There was just one way in, and one way out: a metal door from where the hammering appeared to be coming from. One other person stood in the room with her—a nervous-looking kid holding a black baton.

He trembled as his dark eyes shifted from the door to Riot, and back to the door.

“You look like you’re going to need a diaper change.” Riot head-motioned toward the door. “I’m guessing you’re not too excited to have whoever’s on the other side break through?”

At once, a siren wailed and red lights flashed in the room, accompanied by a tranquil, prerecorded female voice. “Attention: It is important to remain calm. Patients are asked to remain in their rooms, or if you are in any of the common areas, please return to your room in order to avoid death or dismemberment. Wardens are asked to meet at the entrance to begin the sweep. Thank you all in advance for your compliance.”

JONATHAN YANEZ

JONATHAN YANEZ CHUGS caffeine like a Viking and attacks the keyboard like a Space Marine. When he’s not hammering away at his next book, you can find him spending time with his family or throwing around weights at the gym. He lives in California with his wife, daughter, Huskies, and cat.

HE’S WRITTEN over a dozen sci-fi and fantasy novels. His list of bragging topics include winning the Jack London Award, being nominated as the president of the California Writer’s Club, helping open a local bookstore and having his work optioned for film.

AUTHOR NOTE

HEY, you awesome reader. If you’re reading this now it means I’m dead and—naw I’m just kidding to be dramatic. Thank you for taking the time out of your day to read Riot’s crazy story. And thank you again for being brave enough to read this author note.

WRITING in the Seppukarian Universe has been a blast. When I was first approached by Justin Sloan, or maybe I begged to write a story with him the details are hazy, I jumped at the chance. I was looking to collaborate with a group of talented authors and here I am.

RIOT HAS BEEN a blast to write. I’ve had an idea for a character like her for a long time and was going to insert her into my urban fantasy series but she was perfect for the Seppukarian Universe so here she is. This is also a shameless plug to go checkout my urban fantasy series, The Vampire Project. Yeah I know, subtle right?

IF YOU LIKE Riot you can probably tell she’s a cross between a female Deadpool and Captain Malcolm Reynolds of the starship Serenity. You’ll get to see more of her leader side when she charges with her Marines into battle during her spinoff trilogy.

OH, you heard me right. Riot is going to get her own trilogy titles, The War Wolves. Book one in the trilogy is already written and I’m on book two. We’re hoping for a late November release for all three so be sure to keep in touch.

ANOTHER REALLY COOL piece of info is that The War Wolves trilogy will have a cover illustrator doing the books instead of a normal cover designer. What’s the difference you ask? Well an illustrator makes one of a kind art from scratch where a normal cover designer manipulates photo stock images. Cool right? So not only will the book’s content be one of a kind but the cover will as well.

ALL RIGHT I’d love to chat more but I have some space Marines to lead into battle. I mean Riot does. I love connecting with fellow readers so please feel free to join my Facebook page or visit my website.

CATCH you on the other side,

APOCALYPSE DREAMS

BY GEORGE S. MAHAFFEY JR.

EX NIHILO

As she crouched, chained inside a weapon’s bay inside the Syndicate ship on the twenty-second day of her imprisonment, Haskell contemplated all the many ways she’d been lied to by her favorite science fiction movies. The well-orchestrated dog fights, the explosions without oxygen, the lasers, the sweet deflector shields? All of it was bullshit.

She kicked herself because she should’ve known better. She’d been an engineering student working for the resistance back on Earth before the aliens kidnapped her. She should’ve known that the realities of space combat were dictated more by Newtonian physics and the harsh realities of orbit dynamics than kick-ass technology and sleek fighting machines. Ordinarily, she wouldn’t give a damn about any of it, but at the moment she was peering through three inches of translucent material that functioned as a window, watching a smaller, faster, silver-skinned craft preparing to fire a directed energy weapon at the ship in which she’d been imprisoned. None of it was happening the way she thought it would and the strangest thing was that she felt like she’d been here before. Whether it was déjà vu or something else, Haskell believed she’d been seated in the exact same spot before, waiting for the Syndicate ship to get smacked down.

“WE’VE GOT ANOTHER ONE INCOMING!” she shouted as the ball of directed energy was fired by the other ship. The Syndicate ship returned fire, unleashing a counter-measure, a projectile munition that rocketed out, but unfortunately missed both the ball of energy and the silver-skinned enemy craft. Haskell knew what was going to happen next. The ball of directed energy from the enemy ship slammed into the side of the Syndicate ship with great sound and fury. CRACKBOOM!

The impact lifted Haskell off the ground.

She felt herself flying back through the air and then—

WHACK!

A long, silver chain around her wrist snapped taut.

She was yanked down and crumpled hard against the floor’s metal grating. She lay there for several seconds, dizzy, disoriented, friction sparks raining down from the blast, banners of smoke filling the air, the screams of men and aliens echoing. Instinctively, she knew that a man was going to ask: “You okay, girlie?”

Haskell looked up to see a fellow prisoner, a ferret-faced man called Fincher, who’d been kidnapped by the aliens roughly around the same time as her. Fincher was surrounded by several other human males and four alien prisoners who were tethered to a Syndicate weapons battery, a machine that utilized a piston to hurl torpedo-like projectile munitions, countermeasures, out into space, including the ones that continued to miss their targets. Fincher moved to the end of his chain and helped Haskell to her feet.

“Just so you know, I’m suing George Lucas,” Haskell hissed, dusting herself off.

Fincher arched an eyebrow. “Come again?”

“The guy who created that old movie, ‘Star Wars.’ First thing I’m doing when I get back to Earth is suing his ass.”

“Yeah, he’s probably long dead so…”

“Then I’m going after his great grandkids.”

“What the hell for?”

“Unreasonable expectations.”

“I’m pretty sure that ain’t a viable cause of action, Haskell.”

“The hell it isn’t,” she replied. “None of this is what we thought it would be. And why hasn’t the Syndicate figured out how to destroy that cruiser outside that’s rattling our cage?”

“That’s none of your concern,” growled one of the other male prisoners, a bald knuckle-dragger named Blaine Pope, who was manning the weapons battery. “Besides, you keep asking questions like that, you’re gonna get us all killed.”

Haskell swapped looks with Blaine and considered her place. She was one of the few female prisoners aboard, twenty-one and multiracial (a “Quarter-rican” as Fincher liked to say), with long limbs and short hair. She’d been a grunt before, laboring at a supply outpost for the resistance in Baltimore. She was used to being bossed around by men. Ordinarily she would’ve backed down, kept her mouth quiet and stalked off, but this time was different. She had the overwhelming sensation that she’d lived through this very moment one or more times in the past and in each of those instances she’d done precisely that. She’d wilted and it had gotten her nowhere. Well this time would be different, she thought. This time, she’d stand up for herself.

Blaine jabbed a finger in her direction. “What do you have to say now, engineer?”

Instead of folding up like a pocket knife, Haskell held Blaine’s gaze. “Well, I guess I say you know you’ve reached rock bottom when you’re being lectured on etiquette by a dude who regularly has sex with an alien prostitute.”

“It was one time and no money changed hands!” Blaine thundered, his cheeks reddening.

“That doesn’t make it any righter!” Haskell shouted back.

Blaine took a step toward her when footfalls echoed. Haskell looked sideways to see two Syndicate soldiers entering the bay, clad in their blood-red armor, faces hidden behind battle helmets with smoked visors, two short-barreled rifles in their hands. She didn’t remember this happening before and immediately wondered whether she’d somehow altered events simply by refusing to back down to Blaine.

Her gaze ratcheted up from the rifles to the visors worn by the alien soldiers. That was the thing she hated most about the scuds. There was no way to read the bastards because you couldn’t see their eyes. The rifles angled up and Blaine stumbled back, gesturing at Haskell, trying to save his own ass.

“It was her!” he shouted. “She was the one that was asking the questions!”

Haskell turned to the aliens and stared them down. She was in uncharted territory and decided to play the only card she had. “That’s right,” she said, steeling herself, giving no ground. “I’m the one talking smack. You know why? ‘Cos I’m the only one who knows how to save this ship.”

As if on cue, another explosion echoed off in the distance, the ship’s hull groaning.

The Syndicate soldiers turned from the sound of the explosion back to Haskell who said, “If you want to save this ship, you need to listen to me.”

The soldiers exchanged a look and then they made the strange clucking sounds Haskell had heard before when they were communicating. Some of the scuds, including the two before her, had translation devices fixed to their helmets that allowed them to understand what the humans were saying. Haskell gestured toward the weapons battery and the soldiers lowered their rifles. One of them tapped a button on her chain that extended it, giving her more room to move. She breathed a sigh of relief and moved toward the battery as Fincher flanked her.

“I take it you know what you’re doing?” Fincher said under his breath.

“Hell no, I don’t,” she replied, exhaling, trying to stop her hands from shaking.

The color drained from Fincher’s face. Haskell gestured to a man chained near a cluster of the torpedo-like munitions and said, with her most authoritative voice: “Open that thing up.”

The man looked first to Blaine who reluctantly nodded. Quickly and efficiently, the men opened a side panel on the missile to reveal its inner workings: an exploder, a fist-sized explosive charge, air tank, fuel tank, gyroscope, propeller, and engine. Haskell had seen similar munitions at the Baltimore outpost. She’d helped pull them apart and put them back together and this, coupled with her engineering background, gave her an idea, a theory, for why they’d been unable to destroy the alien craft outside.

“That’s our problem,” she said, gesturing at the torpedo-like device. “We’ve only got one projectile inside each missile.”

“So what?” Blaine asked.

“So the only thing that matters is mass. You get a hundred and fifty pound projectile traveling outside at eight-thousand meters per second, it would have the same energy on impact as a half ton of dynamite.”

“How the fuck do you know that?” Blaine sneered.

“It’s called math, asshole.”

Blaine’s eyes narrowed to slits. “Fuck you, Haskell.”

“Not even with his dick,” she replied, pointing to one of the alien prisoners, a green-splotched one with two heads. “And I’m pretty sure he doesn’t have one.”

Blaine snarled and Haskell pointed to the other munitions. “Open them up and remove the projectiles and put them into that,” she continued, gesturing at the initial missile that was still lying open.

“But we can’t fit them all inside,” Fincher said.

“Take out the gyroscope on the first one,” she said. “We won’t need it.”

“What the hell good is a bomb with no ‘scope?” Blaine asked.

“We don’t need a bullet,” Haskell answered. “We need buckshot.”

Under the watch of the Syndicate soldiers, the other men packed the first munition with a half-dozen charges and then sealed it back up and slotted it onto the launching tube. Haskell wiped sweat from her brow and moved back, cognizant of the two Syndicate soldiers shadowing her. She stepped over and peered out the translucent window as the missile was fired outside.

Heart in her throat, Haskell watched with Fincher and the others as the munition spiraled outside, boosted by a rocket on its tail. It curled through the inky blackness and there were gasps, because it was obvious it wasn’t going to hit the enemy craft directly. But Haskell reckoned that didn’t matter. She held her breath and watched it detonate, scattering the projectiles like grapeshot, tearing a number of holes in the enemy ship’s outer hull. Haskell cried out in joy, getting a hug from Fincher.

“How did you know how to do that?!” he said.

“I’ve got game,” she replied, watching the enemy craft swerve off toward a nearby moon, breaking apart, eventually vanishing into a fireball that disappeared from view.

Haskell stood back, smiling hugely. Deep down inside she knew she’d done something important. The defeat of the enemy ship hadn’t happened before, she was sure of it. Her pulse quickened at the thought that she’d found a way to change the future! Turning back, she faced the Syndicate soldiers and grinned. “You guys owe me big time.”

Without hesitation, one of the soldiers whipped out what looked like an old school Taser gun. Haskell hadn’t expected that at all. The alien shot her in the stomach, tiny electrodes from the gun causing her body to seize up as she collapsed to the ground, unconscious.

HASKELL WOKE at the back of the prison cell in the middle of the Syndicate ship, spikes of pain still shooting through her body from the alien electrodes. Her chain had been removed and so she rolled over and saw Fincher kneeling by her side, wiping the sweat-slicked hair back from her face.

“You’re not the only one that’s happened to,” he whispered. “They shot me when I was first brought onboard. Hurt like a sonofabitch. Guess you could say we’re members of the same club now.”

“Awesome. Let’s get tattoos to commemorate it,” Haskell replied, groaning.

She tried to push herself up, but collapsed again. Rolling over, she peered up at Fincher. “Do you ever think you’ve relived the same moment in your life over and over?”

“Like … what moment?”

“Like being in this ship.”

“Jesus, I hope not,” he replied.

“Well, I think I have and that’s why the scuds shot me. Somehow, some way, they knew that I was able to … manipulate the future.”

Before Fincher could respond, gales of laughter echoed across the cells. Haskell elbowed herself up to see Blaine and several of his roughnecks watching her. They’d overheard everything and were chuckling.

“So not only can the engineer show us how to do our jobs, boys, but now she can change the goddamn future,” Blaine said.

With much effort, Haskell staggered to her feet. “What’s your problem, Blaine?”

“I don’t fucking like you.”

“Gimme one good reason why.”

“You belittle me in front of my guys and you made me look like a fool in front of the scuds.”

“That’s two reasons,” she replied.

Anger flashed in Blaine’s face. He rolled up the sleeves on his shirt. “I’m done putting up with your bullshit, Haskell,” he said, marching forward.

Haskell gulped and looked to Fincher. “You ready to fight?”

“I can’t fight at all,” Fincher replied.

“You could’ve told me that earlier.”

Fincher shrugged. “You never asked.”

Blaine bulled forward and grabbed Haskell by the scruff of her neck when a scream echoed, then a cluster of shouts. There was a commotion out in the middle of the cells, near the area where the only possible exit out was located.

“IT’S OPEN!” someone screamed. “THEY OPENED THE CELL!”

Blaine glanced back and in his moment of hesitation, Haskell punted him as hard as she could in the groin. He doubled over and she whistled to Fincher and the two took off on a mad dash through the cells, shoving past the other prisoners, struggling forward. She looked up and spotted a man, a man named Nate who purported to be a Marine. He was standing by a muscular woman who’d called herself Riot, the pair gesturing to the others, telling them that their chance at freedom was at hand.

Barreling through the semi-darkness of the cells, Haskell and Fincher slalomed past a menagerie of co-prisoners, everyone from fellow resistance fighters to multi-limbed aliens. Everyone was screaming and shouting and fighting toward the opening in the deck which was in sight now, maybe twenty feet away.

Haskell blitzed forward into a crush of prisoners and that’s when she felt it.

An energy coursing through the ship’s frame.

She’d felt the pulse of the vessel’s engines many times before, but the power she was feeling at that moment was something completely different. It was the same kind of energy that came with the crash of waves on a beach or the first crack of lightning during a summer storm. It was elemental, primordial.

Particles began drifting through the air, orange sparks.

What the fuck was happening?

Fincher was nearby and he reached out to her and his hand dematerialized for a moment.

Standing, spinning, she could see now that the others had noticed it. Even Blaine was standing, mouth adroop, terrified about what was to come next.

Something was indeed wrong.

Something was very fucking wrong.

She took a step and the entirety of the ship, all of the solid matter around her seemed to liquefy, to turn into some kind of quantum wash that rolled right over her like a tsunami. Darkness swallowed her up and Haskell felt herself being pulled down into a hole. Reaching out a hand, Haskell screamed, feeling the sickening pull of the swirling vortex as she was yanked down into the oblivion.

HASKELL SHRIEKED and fell to the ground.

She rolled over and wiped a line of fever sweat from her face, her breath coming in ragged gasps. Her eyes searched her surroundings and she couldn’t believe what she was seeing. Holy shit! She’d returned! She was back, lying under a ledge at the bottom of the old Alex Brown building in downtown Baltimore. All the old memories came back: the sights and sounds and smells of the building, the terrible days when the Syndicate had bombed the city to smithereens, the small delegation of women who were out in front of her, preparing food. She stood and held their hollow-eyed looks and conjured up a faint smile.

“I’m fine,” she said, raising a hand, shaking off memories of the time ship. “I … just zoned out there for a sec. I’m good now.”

The other women went back to work and Haskell just stood there, trying to process everything. Her mind continued to be besieged by rapidly fading memories of the ship, the prison riot, and Fincher. When she was younger, she’d watched a video of a man who’d taken a selfie every day for twelve years and posted the shots as a video so that his face flickered, aging as the years whipped past. At that moment, that’s what she was experiencing. All of the scenes from the ship were flashing past and vanishing so she closed her eyes and that’s when she heard it.

The faraway echo of a Syndicate bomb.

She was certain she was back because somehow she knew the next alien bomb would land exactly five seconds later. When the aliens, the scuds, had invaded two years earlier, the blasts were more frequent. Having become desensitized to the thud of the extraterrestrial ordnance, Haskell recalled making a game of it. She treated the explosions like lightning strikes, guestimating how close the bombs were by the number of dishes that rattled down on the mess hall’s metal shelves. Presently, only two dishes were clattering which meant the explosions were likely ten miles or more off, probably out near what was left of the old Harbor Tunnel. The fact that she knew when the bombs would fall was evidence that perhaps she’d never left the outpost.

“Hey, Haskell!” somebody shouted.

Haskell looked up. One of the food preparers, an older white woman with a witch’s broom of hair, wiped away a line of grime from her face and pointed at her.

“The honor of your presence is requested,” the older woman said, miming a bow.

Haskell smiled and nodded. She remembered being one of the few people of color in the building, which functioned as a resistance supply vault and safe house, and therefore she had felt the need to prove herself. She rolled up her sleeves and, without a word of protest, moved toward the older lady.

“You ever have a nightmare during the day?” Haskell asked.

The older woman nodded. “Sure. Yeah. I’m hoping this whole goddamn thing is a nightmare and I’m gonna wake up.”

Sensing that it was no use discussing anything about the time ship, Haskell transitioned to the Syndicate bombing. “I think they’re out near the tunnel again,” she said.

“How’s that?” the older woman replied without looking up.

“The scuds. By my calculations they’re operating probably within nine to eleven miles of us.”

“Yeah, that’s nice, hon,” the older woman replied in a thick blue-collar, Baltimorese accent. She tossed Haskell a pair of latex gloves.

“I was thinking that maybe after we’re done with this, we could start working on our tunnel,” Haskell replied, tugging the gloves on.

The older woman looked up. “You mean the one that ain’t been started that you think’ll help us defeat the aliens?”

Haskell nodded. “Well, it could connect us to some of the other resistance outposts. I mean, if we start working on it now, maybe in a year or two we’ll have a whole city underground.”

“Why would we do that if we don’t know if it’ll work?” the older woman asked.

Haskell’s brow furrowed. “Isn’t it better to do something than just … sit here, waiting to be bombed?”

The other women stopped and glanced at Haskell. She took in their looks and thought they had the dead-eyed stares of people who’d just emerged into the light from a cave in. All the destruction, all the devastation and death they’d witnessed? It was stamped on their faces. They were bent and broken and likely would never be able to muster up the strength or courage to do anything other than what they were doing. The women went back to their work. Haskell paused, then joined them, helping to mash a multitude of soon-to-be-rotten root vegetables for lunch and dinner, making sure to pocket a few of the better carrots and parsnips when nobody was looking.

LATER, after the food was prepared and there were no more vegetables to mash, Haskell exited the mess hall, following a path that seemed programmed in her head. She took a rear stairwell and passed a bevy of other workers, men, women, all sporting the same sad-sack expressions. How many people were in the outpost? The number ninety-two came to mind and she remembered all of them working in the outpost without ever actually fighting, essentially waiting to die. She had a vague recollection of arguing with some of them, trying to convince them it was a mistake to bide their time. But as she passed some of them, she realized how foolish it was to continue to ask them to do anything more than their daily routines. They were survivors after all, little more than scavengers hiding out in a hole under a city that had been blasted apart by an alien empire.

With every step, the memories of the time ship became more distant until they were little more than the faraway clanging of a bell. Her mind was humming now, her disordered thoughts replaced by the time she’d spent in the outpost and the events that had occurred in the recent past. As if guided by an invisible hand, she stopped one floor up and moved down a corridor that led to the room where the outpost’s tools were kept in a storage room of bare cinderblock illuminated by a single bulb. Electricity was still available for ten, sometimes twelve hours a day thanks to a collection of solar panels and four wind turbines that were concealed on the outside in piles of debris.

Haskell stepped into the room’s meager light and surveyed a motley assortment of cordless drills, saws, and impact drivers, along with collections of wrenches, fasteners, and a portable set of welding equipment. Everything was stored inside because nobody really built anything in the outpost. It was, for the most part, a way station for the other groups that were actually fighting the aliens on the outside.

She recalled coming up with some sort of plan to fight back. She instinctively knew that she already had most of what she needed, but there were a few items she’d likely have to gather up very shortly that were lying before her in the storage room. Satisfied with the stash, Haskell retraced her steps, threading down another corridor and past the interior greenhouses where the outpost grew most its food. There were other resistance safe houses and weapons stashes, but every group operated independently to protect the whereabouts of the others. If you were kidnapped by the scuds, for instance, there was simply no way you’d be able to rat out your comrades.

She shuttled past the greenhouses and moved beyond the rooms housing the air and water purification systems, and finally she crept past the tankage area where the outpost’s waste was haphazardly repurposed.

Eventually, she pulled herself up to the command post where the outpost’s de-facto leader, a fifty-year old humorless wisp of a man named Edward Stringer, was pouring over grainy footage of what looked like Syndicate sweeping operations in other parts of the city. Baltimore had been obliterated more than a year ago, but the aliens continued to sporadically bomb and send down small strike teams armed with a whole host of drones to track and hunt the resistance. Haskell knew this because she remembered venturing outside a number of times in the recent past. None of her jaunts outside the wire had been approved by Stringer, but she’d seen the scud drones loitering in the air and picking their way across the corpse of the old city. She’d watched the bastards locate and snuff out pockets of resistance who were too poorly armed to even fight back. She’d never say it to anyone, least of all Stringer, but something had to change. Haskell simply couldn’t believe that she was the only one who realized they were all sitting ducks.

Stringer heard her footfalls and looked back. A smile splashed his lips, but it was the same kind of forced expression she remembered him displaying when they first allowed her into the outpost. Back then, at some point in the past, she’d just been another refugee, an engineering student from Drexel University in Philadelphia who’d been trapped in the middle of the Millard E. Tydings bridge when the world unraveled.

“What can I help you with?” Stringer asked.

“I was finished with my shift in the mess hall and noticed the tools down on 1B.”

“And?” Stringer asked wearily.

“Can I borrow some of them, sir?”

He quirked an eyebrow. “You want … to borrow them?”

“Yes.”

“The … tools.”

“Yessir,” Haskell replied, standing ramrod straight just as she imagined a real soldier or

someone of high station might do.

“What could you possibly want with those?” Stringer queried. “I mean … you’re a woman.”

“That’s what they tell me,” Haskell replied without expression.

Stringer’s face reddened. “What I meant,” he said in a low tone, “is that each of us has a very important, very specific duty here in the bunker. Don’t you feel more comfortable down with the other gals?”

Haskell’s stomach knotted at the word “gals.” “But that’s where the food’s made,” she said, looking up.

“That’s generally what happens in a mess hall, Haskell.”

“But I just don’t think pots and pans are my highest and best use,” she answered.

Stringer sighed. He waved a hand dismissively. “You want some of those tools, take ‘em. Just don’t come crying to me when you cut your fingers off.”

Haskell beamed. “Thank you, sir.”

WITH A SPRING IN HER STEP, Haskell trekked back down to 1B, which was a portion of the lower level of the outpost, the middle floor on a former parking garage that had been set aside as sleeping quarters. Each of the community’s residents was given an old mattress or a section of carpet and a pillow and three sections of four-by-four foot fiberboard repurposed from a corporate bullpen that could, if used creatively, provide some semblance of privacy.

Just as she remembered doing in the past, Haskell made sure to position the fiberboard dividers so that nobody could see into her nook and then slumped on the air mattress and grabbed the only thing that she called her own, an old canvas rucksack that had been gifted to her by a gnarly resistance fighter named Pope. She placed the vegetables she’d copped from the mess hall inside where they joined a mishmash of other vegetables and assorted foodstuffs that she remembered collecting over a period of time. It was a good amount of food and for some reason, she knew she’d need it very soon. She felt a vibration in the air and often knew someone was going to speak before they did.

“Drop that contraband, young lady!” a voice said.

Haskell flinched, then slowly looked back over her shoulder to see Gene Hong, a Korean dude with a shotputter’s build who was two years her senior. Gene was clad in a ratty compression shirt and camouflage pants, a loopy grin on his face. She recalled how he’d been one of the first resistance fighters to welcome her into the outpost, teaching her the ropes, hooking her up with the gig down in the mess hall which was coveted by many because there was little chance of getting whacked by the scuds.

“Shut the door,” Haskell replied in the broken Seoul dialect that Gene had worked to teach her.

“That’s the problem,” Gene said. “You don’t have one.”

Haskell crawled over and pulled the fiberboard in tight. Gene crouched on the mattress and Haskell had the strangest sensation that the words she was speaking were not her own. They were words she’d surmised she’d spoken at some point in the past. She handed Gene one of the stolen carrots, the two whispering conspiratorially.

“You shoot the shit with Stringer?” Gene asked.

Haskell nodded. “We’re good to go. He said we could take the tools.”

“Sweetness,” Gene said, biting into the carrot. “Now all we need is someone who can show us the way.”

“Gibbs,” Haskell said under her breath. “I been thinking and … he knows the area where I saw the drone go down better than anyone.”

Gene sighed. “Gibbs is a few bubbles off plumb.”

“Translate.”

“He’s fucking nuts.”

Haskell waved a hand. “One man’s psychotic is another man’s visionary.”

“That makes absolutely no sense at all.”

“Does to a crazy person,” Haskell replied with a sly smile.

THE BUILDING WAS SHAKING AGAIN as Haskell and Gene slipped down a stone staircase at the far end of the parking garage. Haskell stopped, clutching her rucksack, eyes closed, counting the seconds between blasts, reckoning that the bombing was closer now, probably six or seven miles off. In an hour, maybe less, the bombing would likely be closer, which was just fine with her. The nearby blasts would mean that the exterior guards and scouts, the ones that watched for signs of Syndicate soldiers, would be forced to leave their posts. Once they were gone, Haskell, Gene, and hopefully Gibbs, would be able to head outside, unseen.

“Have we done this before?” she asked, her eyes still closed.

“Done what?” Gene replied.

Her eyes opened. “I mean … what we’re doing now. Have we done this before?”

Gene snickered. “You’re starting to lose it, girl.”

“Am not.”

“You totally are. Pretty soon you’re gonna be stashed down under with Gibbs.”

Haskell frowned and continued on, threading down the staircase that led to an inner chamber at the bottom of the parking garage, a place called the “Depository,” a relatively secure area in the outpost that held the infirm and the mentally unsound, people who’d cracked either before the invasion or because of it.

Haskell recalled Gibbs had been a “Snout” for the resistance in the months after the initial invasion, a unit of vertically challenged men and women who knew the city better than anyone and were able to spot angles and paths and things others generally missed. They’d been tasked with helping create tunnels under the fallen cityscape, safe zones where the resistance could hide and ambush the aliens. Haskell had heard that Gibbs had been inside one such tunnel when it collapsed, killing everyone but him. Rumor had it that the little man was trapped underground for the better part of three days, lying side by side with his pancaked comrades. Suffice it to say, Gibbs was never the same after being retrieved. Instead of going outside the wire now, Gibbs spent his days down in the Depository in the fog of what was probably PTSD, following a beat only he could hear.

After being waved through security, Haskell and Gene waded through two dozen people with zombified eyes, some shuffling past, others seated on buckets, or lying on the ground in fetal balls. There was a racial component to the whole thing, Haskell thought. Everyone down here was mostly white. On the outside, a good portion of the city’s resistance was made up of browns and blacks and lower class whites. Someone asked her why she thought this was and she replied that they were the people who were used to the bottom falling out. They were familiar with the struggle, with looking over their shoulders, and were probably better prepared when the world turned over. In a sense, she said, they’d been preparing for something like the invasion their whole lives.

Haskell and Gene found Gibbs at the back of the Depository, pounding out a rhythm on a metal bucket, going to town on the thing with a pair of rusted spoons.

Gibbs heard them and looked back. He was small of stature, probably five inches shorter than Haskell’s five feet eight inches, and with a mop of brown hair and a large mouth, resembled a ventriloquist’s dummy come to life. Full of manic energy, he continued drumming as Haskell and Gene drew near him.

“What it is,” Gibbs said.

“What it shall be,” Haskell replied.

Gibbs mimicked hitting a high-hat on his drums and then stopped drumming. He bumped fists with Haskell as another bomb thudded somewhere off in the distance.

“The scuds are probably four miles away,” Gibbs whispered, his eyes closed.

“More like five,” Haskell said.

Gibbs’s eyes flapped open.

“Is it on?” Gibbs asked. “Are we heading out?”

Haskell nodded.

Gibb’s gaze wandered to Gene.

“Why’s he coming?”

“He’s the muscle,” Haskell said.

“Then what are you?”

“The brains,” Haskell replied.

“Okay … so what does that make me?” Gibbs asked.

“The crazy ass white guy,” Gene answered.

“Every team needs one,” Haskell added with a wink.

Gibbs took this in, pursing his lips, stashing the spoons in his pockets. “Crazy white guy, huh? Yeah, okay, I’m cool with that.”

HASKELL AND GENE lied to the Depository’s guards, telling them that they were checking Gibbs out for a few hours, just like they’d done the prior five days during dry runs. Ostensibly they’d be walking him around for exercise and socialization, but in reality they’d be sneaking outside, following a course that Haskell had plotted in the past.

First, they went to the room with the tools and placed into a large duffel bag all the things that Haskell thought they might need, an impact driver, some wrenches, and several other items, including the welding gear. Then, with Haskell carrying the bag and Gene humping the portable set of welding gear (grumbling all the way), they moved down through a partially collapsed hallway toward a secured exterior blast door. Because the door was one of only two authorized exits out of the outpost, it would likely be guarded, so they angled under a staircase twisted by a Syndicate bomb, before crawling through a natural chute that had been left by the explosion.

The entrance to the chute was partially concealed by a flap of aluminum ductwork, and unless you knew precisely where it was, you’d never be able to see it. The chute zigzagged forward, eventually snaking through a hole in the building’s outer shell and attendant debris wall where it led to the outside world, and eventually intersected with a length of fallen sewer pipe that jutted up partially out of the ground. Haskell recalled coming this way many times in the recent past.

The three crawled on their hands and knees through the chute, Gibbs in the lead, everyone showered by the dust falling from the ceiling as the bombs struck just down the street, the vibrations from the strikes scything through the chute and the mounds of building material that lay all around.

Gibbs suddenly stopped.

“You feel that reverb?” he said.

The others paused, feeling a nearly imperceptible pulse of energy that shot through the sides of the chute.

“The bombs are getting closer,” Gibbs said. “We need to move it.”

Gibbs shot off ahead of the others, snake-crawling toward the end of the chute. He was the first one into the sewer pipe, a colossal length of cast iron which was nearly large enough for a grown man to stand up in. There was a gaping hole in the center of the pipe which the trio pulled themselves through, a section where it had been struck and broken apart by a Syndicate bomb. The blast had forced the lower portion of the pipe into the ground, while simultaneously causing the upper portion, which was more than ten feet long, to partially stick up out of the rubble that lined the streets above like a periscope.

Everyone thrust their hands out against the sides of the pipe for balance. Haskell looked down, searching the space below that the pipe dropped into, an area full of catacomb-like spaces that she recalled visiting recently. Her gaze ratcheted back up to the other end of the pipe and the tatters of daylight visible beyond it. Having been here before, she knew that if she crawled to the top she’d be able to see the outside, the streets, and any guards from the outpost that might be keeping watch.

“Drop the tools,” Haskell said.

“But they’re gonna fall,” Gene replied.

Haskell shook her head, she was aware that Gene hadn’t been outside the building in a long time. “They’ll be fine. I got us a place down under.”

They lowered their tools and gear down the pipe, letting them go, watching the materials slide gently down into the gloom where they finally clanked to a stop. Haskell knew that they could drop straight down and follow the tunnels down the street to the courthouse. But that would take a significant amount of time and time was something they didn’t have. There was a faster route. She glanced up to see Gibbs eying her.

“I take it you’ve been here before?” he asked.

Haskell nodded.

Gibbs sucked on his teeth. “Now that I think about it, I’m pretty sure sneaking out of the outpost ain’t allowed.”

“Little late in the day to be bringing that up, ace,” Gene replied.

Gibbs shrugged. “Just came to me.”

Haskell fixed a look on Gibbs. “So what? So I snuck outside a bunch of times.”

“So you’re breaking the rules.”

“Well-behaved women rarely make history,” Haskell replied.

Gibbs arched an eyebrow. “Is that what we’re doing? Making history.”

Haskell grinned. “We’re sure as shit gonna try.”

She shifted her hands and inched up toward the top of the pipe which was shaking now, a series of explosions echoing nearby. Haskell reached up and grabbed the top of the pipe which was cool and wet from the prior day’s rain. Tensing her lat muscles, she hauled herself up and glanced outside and what she saw nearly stole her breath away.

Where once there had been the intersection of Baltimore and East Redwood Streets was now a never-ending plain of debris, an urban wasteland of rises and runs and small rubble-filled hillocks. In short, all that remained of the city’s charred skyline. She’d witnessed portions of the destruction before, back during the initial invasion and in the weeks thereafter, when the Syndicate seemed to be content with kidnapping all able-bodied adults. But then the resistance continued to fight back and the aliens had punished the planet, engaging in a scorched-earth campaign that was downright apocalyptic. They continued to bomb many locations day and night, but the one thing they apparently didn’t know was that a new world had blossomed under the wreckage of the old. A new world concealed by layers of various building materials, including those covered in lead paint, that purportedly hampered the aliens’ technology, including a microwave-radar device that allegedly detected heartbeats.

Indeed, most of the downtown office buildings, which had been toppled during assaults many months before, had fallen onto their sides, creating enormous pockets of open space that couldn’t be seen from the outside. This was the space that Haskell had long believed the resistance should utilize, a vast area of potentially interconnected, subterranean tunnels that might be perfect for operations. But that was a concern for another day. At that moment, all she cared about was finding a way to scurry across the street and down into a larger sewer that sloped toward Lombard Street and Hopkins Place, the area where the old federal courthouse had once been. Haskell had been outside before and watched a resistance sniper take down an airborne alien drone, a machine colloquially referred to as a “Swan.” She’d sat and waited for many hours, but the stricken drone was never retrieved. There was something Haskell hoped was hidden inside the drone. Something that might help the resistance finally turn the tables on the aliens.

Haskell signaled for Gibbs to crawl up, which he did. The two were soon inches apart, staring out of the pipe. They listened to the familiar buzz in the air, the hint that the high-altitude Syndicate glider-bombers were flying somewhere overhead. Next came the thrum of the low-altitude drones, the Swans and the other mechanized eyes in the sky who acted as spotters for the larger gliders and other assorted alien craft. Bombs soon fell, close enough that banners of smoke could be seen down the street.

“Tell me again where you saw the drone go down,” Gibbs whispered.

“Down past the old federal courthouse,” Haskell replied. “Just south of Lexington Market. Near Lombard and Hopkins.”

Gibbs nodded, his pupils dilating. “You do know that area may be heavy with scuds,” he said.

Haskell nodded. “I know that.”

“And there’s just three of us.”

“I know that too.”

“Oh, and there’s the little issue of us not having any weapons.”

“We’ve got Gene,” Haskell said.

They looked down to Gene who grinned and cocked a finger-pistol at Gibbs.

“He’s a kind of weapon,” Haskell added.

Gibbs groaned. “Follow me, follow close, and do not stop, whatever you do.”

Before Haskell could utter another word, the little man had torqued himself out of the pipe and was running across the remains of downtown Baltimore Street, headed in the direction of the falling Syndicate bombs.

HASKELL’S HEART hammered in her chest as she ran raggedly across the mountains of debris, fighting her way through plumes of smoke. She struggled to keep up with Gibbs who was moving like a wraith, following a path only he could see. She glanced back at Gene who was pointing. Haskell wheeled and looked up into a sky that was heavy with clouds and the faint shadows of the Syndicate glider-bombers.

Gibbs was screaming for them to hurry when a bomb landed nearby—

WHUMP-BOOM!

The bomb tore into a clutch of junked cars, filling the air with shrapnel, tossing axles and tires and hunks of metal hundreds of feet into the air.

“GO, GO, GO!” Gene thundered.

Haskell covered her ears and darted forward as—

BOOM! BOOM! BOOM!

The car parts slammed into the ground to the left and right of the trio. Haskell’s ears rang. She spotted Gibbs waving his arms, pointing to the right. Haskell’s gaze swung in that direction and she caught sight of a dozen Syndicate soldiers in their blood-red armor.

“Shit!” she thought to herself. “Have we been spotted?!”

Gunfire rang out from all quarters, the air filled with the snap and hiss of energized sabot rounds which stitched the ground all around them. Gene grabbed the back of Haskell’s shirt and shoved her forward as the two dove into the debris. Haskell rolled over and caught sight of a Swan drone slicing through the air overhead, searching for any sign of life on the quiet streets.

Her mouth suddenly went dry.

What a colossal fucking mistake it had been to venture outside during an attack, she thought to herself. What the hell was she thinking? There were just three of them, defenseless, not even real soldiers. On the verge of being hunted down by an alien force that had destroyed the world.

She watched the drone arc lazily down the street and then swing out and around, moving back toward where they were hiding, mercifully concealed by the smoke from the explosions.

Time and sound slowed.

The drone paused mid-air.

A long, shimmering sensor (which resembled a swan’s neck, hence the drone’s nickname) telescoped out of its body. A red laser beamed from the sensor, sweeping the ground, searching for Haskell and the others.

It was only a matter of time, seconds perhaps, before the three were spotted.

Haskell’s eyes widened as the laser hit the ground and began moving slowly forward like a wave, the redness of the beam mesmerizing.

Gibbs whistled and she startled, then saw him signaling for them to roll down an embankment. She and Gene rolled down together, barely avoiding the path of the laser. Gibbs then signaled for them to dig into the ground, which they did, clawing at it, pulling away rocks and gravel and grit to see a sewer grate. Gene grabbed the grate as Gibbs dropped down through an opening in the sewer. Teeth gritted, Gene yanked the grate off as Haskell followed Gibbs down into the sewer, Gene close behind her as the drone passed by overhead.

The sewer was moist and shrouded in darkness and it didn’t fucking matter. Anywhere was better than the ground above. Haskell dropped to her belly and slithered through the muck, listening to Gibb’s whisper-shouts from somewhere out in front. Somewhere off in the distance, they could hear the shouts of the Syndicate soldiers and the cacophonous booms as more bombs exploded.

They crawled for what seemed like an hour, worming under the Baltimore city streets, the sewer eventually spooling to a larger space, an area big enough to stand up in, a spot where a dozen sewer pipes drained into a rank lagoon. Haskell slumped to the ground, nonplussed about the swampy ledge that she was sitting on. Gibbs stood while Gene also sat down, Haskell’s rucksack was thrown open, and soon everyone was chowing down on the food that Haskell had brought.

“Does it get any better than this?” Gene asked. “Eating carrots down in a sewer while the world dies screaming.”

“World ended a long time ago,” Gibbs replied, his eyes cast to the ground. “It ended the moment people stopped believing in the future.”

“Bullshit,” Gene said.

“Think about the reason you used to get up every day,” Gibbs said, loudly biting into his carrot.

“I was hungry and I needed to take a leak,” Gene answered with a smirk.

“Nah, you did it because you thought that tomorrow was gonna be better than today.”

Gene opened his mouth as if he wanted to respond, but didn’t. Gibbs continued:

“The day the scuds made it clear that tomorrow was gonna be worse, much fucking worse than today, is the day the world ended.”

“So then we need to change that,” Haskell said, zipping her rucksack. “We need to give people something to believe in.”

“You actually believe we can change the future?” Gene asked.

She thought about this and vaguely remembered the events on the ship, which seemed like a million years ago, and smiled. “I know we can.”

Something flashed down in the dark water of the lagoon and Haskell stood and waded forward. She reached a hand down and felt metal and tugged back on an object that was lying concealed in the water. It was a machine of some kind and after she wiped away a rooster tail of mud and slime she knew what it was.

“Sentry drone,” Gene said before Haskell could utter a word.

Haskell nodded. There’d been hundreds, maybe thousands of the four-foot tall sentry drones positioned around the city in the days leading up to the invasion. She ran her hands over the drone’s rusted parts, including what was left of its infrared thermographic camera and weapons interface. The machines had been no match for the Syndicate army which barely batted an eyelash as it rolled right over Baltimore. She reached down again and lifted up a pod-like, three-foot long portion of a cannon that once had been mounted on the side of the drone and intended to fire twelve small rockets at the enemy. The cannon was waterlogged, but in surprisingly good condition. She handed it to Gene.

“Believe it or not, the first ones were developed over in Korea a long time ago,” Gene said, examining the cannon. “SGR-AI-2 it was called. World’s first autonomous surveillance and sentry drone. They used ‘em to monitor the DMZ. Shit lotta good they did when the scuds came.”

Gene tossed the cannon into the air and Haskell snagged it and secreted it inside the rucksack. Sounds echoed from the direction they’d come from. The grunts and hisses and clucks that the Syndicate soldiers and their drones made. The three tensed, then quickly waded through the fetid water and climbed a metal ladder bolted into a stone wall on the opposite side.

They mounted the ladder and crawled up into an antechamber, pausing, allowing their eyes to acclimate to the murkiness. They forged on, creep-running through a utility-man’s work tunnel, Gibbs leading the way. Haskell was amazed at how he seemed to know every nook and cranny in the underground, moving left, then right, kicking open access doors and crawling over piping, jogging past small colonies of dog-sized rats and delegations of spiders that were larger than sparrows. Eventually, the trio came to a stop near another wall with another ladder bolted onto it. At the top of the ladder was what looked like a manhole cover.

Gibbs pointed up. “That’s it. That’s the way.”

Haskell mounted the ladder and pulled herself up. Braced against the far wall, she placed her head under the steel manhole cover and pushed up. The pressure was immense and she was scared that the muscles in her neck were going to explode.

“Step aside,” Gene said from below.

She looked down at him. “Anything you can do, I can do better.”

She grimaced and grunted and pushed again, moving the manhole cover a few inches. She repeated this again and again and finally the cover groaned and moved aside. Haskell thrust her fingers into the gap she’d created and shoved the cover aside to reveal the edge of what had once been a courtyard at the front of the federal court building.

The court’s carbonized shell had partially protected the courtyard which was nonetheless full of debris and moldering bodies, the remnants of the “Battle for the Harbor,” the last great struggle waged in Baltimore, what what was left of the military and Maryland National Guard were surrounded and massacred by thousands of Syndicate soldiers. Haskell remembered watching the end of the battle from a hiding spot near the top of Druid Hill, the drones, the gliders, the men and women fighting and dying in the heart of the city, everything eerily silhouetted against the fires burning in the harbor which had been intentionally set ablaze by Baltimore’s defenders.

She shrugged off these memories and crawled out into the courtyard, searching for the drone she’d seen shot down. Peering up, she studded a section of the courthouse’s outer wall which was blackened, and mentally traced the angle of the fallen drone. The others called out for her to stop, but Haskell crouch-ran forward and that’s when she saw it.

Tucked under a pile of wreckage.

The edge still shimmering in the dirt.

The grail!

The fallen drone!

She threw up a hand and waved for the others to follow.

Soon the trio were kneeling around the drone, pulling away rubble, trying to pull free the enemy machine which was roughly nine feet long by five feet wide.

“Lucky shot,” Gibbs said, pointing to a panel on the side of the drone, a joint between two larger, alien-alloyed panels, where a round, either a sabot or an old-school bullet, had penetrated the machine, likely bringing it down. Haskell moved toward the rear of the machine which was obscured by mounds of building material.

“Don’t even tell me we’re dragging this goddamned thing back with us,” said Gene.

She shook her head and Gene grabbed the end of the drone and deadlifted it out of the rubble as the belly of the drone ripped open. Like a pod spilling its seeds, dozens of small alien rockets tumbled out of the drone. Haskell and Gibbs scooped up a handful of the rockets and placed them inside the rucksack. Then Haskell dropped to her knees and studied the rear of the craft, her fingers tracing the outline of the compartment just above where its engines were likely housed.

She opened the rucksack a final time and hunted inside, withdrawing a small pry bar that she slotted into the joint near the drone’s engine compartment.

Manipulating the pry bar, Haskell was soon able to open the hatch on the engine compartment. Inside was a pair of silver, cylindrical objects cocooned in various lengths of webbing and wires. She leaned in and noted the scorch marks at the end of the cylinder. This was it, she thought. This was one of the drone’s power sources, its engine. She grabbed at one of the cylinders as a series of bombs landed just down the street.

“We’ve got two minutes, maybe less,” Gibbs said.

Haskell tugged again on the cylinder, but it didn’t give.

“Help me,” she said and Gene grabbed the cylinder and yanked it free.

More bombs fell.

Shouts echoed.

The whine of drones in the air reverberated.

“Hurry, Haskell!” Gibbs whisper-screamed.

She grabbed the other cylinder, and with Gene’s help, tugged it free.

“Let’s go!” she shouted.

Gene gripped the cylinders, one in each hand as they ran back toward the manhole cover. Haskell was the last one in, catching sight of a Syndicate soldier on the other side of the street. She froze because the soldier removed his battle helmet to reveal a man.

A human.

What. The. Fuck?

What was a human doing fighting for the scuds?

The man traded looks with her and scowled, raising his rifle as Haskell jumped down through the manhole cover. Gene grabbed her, the two tumbling down, barely avoiding turning their ankles.

“They spotted me!” Haskell shrieked.

Panicked, the three charged headlong back down the sewer as a roar grew behind them. Haskell looked back in terror as a light built. She’d seen this before, she’d watched the scuds fire incendiary munitions into the tunnels in East Baltimore to root out the resistance.

“They’re burning it!” she screamed.

They blitzed forward as something, some alien munition detonated behind them, likely flung down through the open manhole cover by the man she’d locked eyes with. The fine hairs on the back of Haskell’s neck ridged as a fireball swept through the sewer. Haskell could feel the heat building as she ran, expecting to be barbecued at any moment when—

Gibbs suddenly weaved to the right.

Slipping through an ante-chamber that was almost invisible in the shadows.

Barely more than a cleft in the stone walls.

Haskell tripped and staggered back and out of the cleft.

Her arms windmilled.

She saw Gene, mouth open in a silent scream lurch for her.

He grabbed her arms and pulled her into the cleft just as—

BAROOM!

A wall of fire filled the space she’d just been standing in only seconds earlier.

She could hear the howl of the flames behind her as Gene grabbed and pulled her in close. The air was soon tanged with the odor of whatever chemical the aliens had used to create the fireball, the wolf-like shriek of the fire echoing off the walls. Haskell turned and watched the flames lick at the edges of the cleft, before burning out. The three just stood there in silence for several seconds, realizing how lucky they were to be alive.

“I … I saw a man,” Haskell finally whispered.

She looked over at Gibbs and Gene. “Outside. Before. I saw one of them, a Syndicate soldier, only it was a man … a white guy. He stared right at me.”

Gibbs nodded. “I heard about that. Rumor is the aliens are conscripting soldiers, people who know how to fight, and pressing them into service.”

“Nguy,” Gene whispered.

Haskell turned to him. “What?”

“It’s a Vietnamese word. It means a person who looks like us on the outside, but has the soul of a stranger … an alien.”

Silence filled the space. Haskell sucked in a breath and inched back down and out of the cleft and looked both ways into the sewer.

Nothing stirred.

The aliens probably thought the three of them had been charbroiled.

“We are not going that way,” Gene said, gesturing at the sewer. “We’ll have to take the long way back.”

She moved back, squeezed Gene’s hand, mouthing “thank you” for saving her life. Then she gestured to Gibbs who nodded. She knew he’d been all over the city before. After a few minutes of discussion, Gibbs nodded and led everyone away from the sewer through a passageway that split from the cleft, the trio melting into the shadows of the underground.

MINUTES LATER, the passageway connected to a route that Gibbs claimed he was intimately familiar with from his days as a Snout. It would take them longer, but it was safer and they wouldn’t have to expose themselves by running in the open down the streets. Soon the adrenaline from the fire-bombing had ebbed and they were dragging themselves through a tunnel-like corridor, exhausted, running on empty. Haskell’s vigor was renewed, however, when she spotted a few bars of light up ahead. The three stopped and stared.

“Um … there’s light,” Gibbs whispered.

“That’s right,” Haskell said.

“Why is there a light in the tunnel.”

“Because I needed some juice for what I was doing.”

She grinned and motioned for the others to follow her, angling to her left and through a doorway that had been fashioned into the rubble. The others followed, the three entering what looked like a grotto, a low-ceilinged space that had been burrowed into the mountains of rubble. The space was narrow, but long, several orange extension cords visible, tethered to various tools and a small rechargeable battery pack that sat in the middle of the room. At the outer edges of the room were stacks of what looked like building material: lengths of metal, sections of alloy, bundles of wires of all shapes and sizes, and small benches cluttered with tiny gizmos and all manner of machine parts. She had memories of collecting all of this at some point in the recent past.

“This is like the Santa’s workshop,” Gibbs said.

“Yeah, if Santa was on crack,” Gene added, hoisting up a length of entrail-like wire.

“I built this place,” Haskell said.

Gibbs looked over. “Why?”

“To fight back!” Haskell shouted triumphantly.

She dramatically lifted up a section of circuit board.

“I give you a part of what will soon be … Ex Nihlio!” she shouted.

The circuit board broke apart in her hands and clattered to the ground.

“Is ‘Ex Nihlio’ Latin for crap, Haskell?” Gene asked with a smirk.

“Screw you,” Haskell said, dejected, bending to scoop up the pieces of the circuit board. She watched Gene out of the corner of her eye as he moved over and inspected portions of the materials lying near a far wall: several lengths of steel that she’d pried from the frame of a fallen building, a motherboard that she’d extracted from a sentry drone, bundles of coiled cable and conduit that she’d spent hours methodically plucking from a wrecked industrial machine.

“What the hell are you doing with all this stuff?” Gene asked. “Getting ready for the world’s shittiest yard sale?”

“It’s all parts for my machine,” Haskell said.

“What kind of machine?”

“The one I designed,” Haskell said, removing a stack of paper from a plastic snap case lying on the floor. She held the paper up for the others to see.

Gene and Gibbs moved into the light, squinting, examining sheets filled with numbers and calculations and schematics and the sketch of what looked like a cross between a robotic machine and an exosuit used for combat operations. It was crude, but full of notations and cross-sections juxtaposed with lists of materials and parts. In the middle of the paper was the outline for what looked like a robot, complete with arms and legs.

“Since when did you draw?” Gibbs asked.

“I was studying to be an engineer,” Haskell said.

“Right,’ cos you’re sure as shit not an artist,” Gibbs snickered.

Haskell smacked him in the head and handed the sketch to Gene.

“I’m pretty sure we’ve got the parts and tools to build it,” Haskell said.

“But what does it do?” Gene asked, taking the sketch, scanning it.

“It fights.”

“Fights what?”

“The scuds.”

At this, Gene and Gibbs roared in laughter, slapping each other on the back. Haskell was not amused by this. She grabbed the sketch back from Gene and did a slow-burn.

“What the hell’s the matter with you two?” she asked.

Gene threw up his hands. “What’s the matter with … us? You’re the one that dragged us halfway across the city to grab some engines for what? A soda machine you’re building to take on the Syndicate?”

“It’s a ‘Boomslang,’” Haskell said.

“Excuse me.”

“That’s what I’m calling it. A mechanized fighting machine. A ‘Boomslang.’”

“I’ll give it to you. That is a kickass name,” Gene said.

“Yeah, well, whatever it’s called, have fun building it,” Gene said, turning on his heels to exit the workshop. “I’m outta here.”

“You’ve still got family in Trenton don’t you!” Haskell shouted.

Gene stopped dead in his tracks. Slowly, he turned to look back at her.

“They’re still down in that FEMA bunker aren’t they?” Haskell asked.

“So what if they are?”

“So once the scuds are done flattening Baltimore where do you think they’re going next.”

“Why don’t you tell me,” Gene said, some heat in his voice.

“Word on the street is they’re heading north again.”

“The word is wrong,” Gene snapped.

Haskell jabbed a finger in the air at Gene. “You willing to take that risk? You willing to sit back with the old ladies over in the outpost and suck on it? Maybe sit around in your skirt mashing up carrots and potatoes? Playing defense, hiding down in that hole while those motherfuckers up in the sky shit on our world?”

Gene’s face flushed. “I don’t gotta listen to this.”

“Do you squat when you piss, Gene? C’mon, tell the truth.”

“Fuck you, Haskell.”

“You know I’m right,” she replied, giving no ground. “Maybe I’m a little nuts. Maybe there’s no way in hell we’ll ever be able to build anything to fight back, but we won’t know unless we try. To keep doing what we’ve been doing, running and hiding, is insanity. In another month we’ll all be dead, but if we work together, we can change the future.”

“So what do you want from me?” Gene asked.

“Two weeks of your time. If we can’t start getting it together by then, we’ll stop.”

Several seconds of silence stretched between them.

“I got one thing to say to you,” Gene said through bared teeth, moving in close to Haskell.

“What’s that?” she asked in response.

“In the event that you’re crazy ass is right, I get to take whatever we build for a ride first.”

Haskell sighed and smiled.

It was time to get the tools.

It was time to get to work.

IN BETWEEN SYNDICATE sweeping operations and bombing runs, the three operated quickly and efficiently, managing to sneak out most days to work on bringing Haskell’s creation to life. Haskell tutored Gene and Gibbs on her design and the engineering difficulties that lay ahead. She told them that the single greatest hurdle they would have to overcome centered on the issue of torque. That is, the biggest problem with building a large fighting machine lay in the inability to create sufficient power to move the damned thing around. By way of example, Haskell said she’d calculated that the torque required to power a hundred and twenty-five foot fighting mech would amount to approximately forty-million feet of torque (give or take a few million). There simply wasn’t any way (that she knew of) to generate that amount of juice, or keep the thing from splitting apart at the joints (particularly the knee joints).

Which is why they had to go small.

Small meant less torque.

A tinier target.

More maneuverability and agility.

Haskell surmised that whatever they built, powered by the engines stolen from the downed alien drone, would be lighter and faster than anything the Syndicate had likely seen the resistance use before. At least that’s what she hoped.

Knowing this, they continued to work, day after day, sneaking out, stripping materials from the atomized city, dragging them down into the workshop. There, they joined lengths of steel with carbon fiber and sections of hydraulic muscle strands, connecting the machine’s joints, slowly creating legs and arms. The machine wasn’t going to be large or overly intimidating. When finished, Haskell calculated that it might stand a hair over nine feet tall.

Next came the building of the frame with the carbon fiber (which lessoned the overall weight of the machine), and the fitting of hydraulics and gyroscopes (repurposed from several industrial machines unearthed in the rubble), along with the reinforced housing where the engines would be seated, just above the machine’s legs.

Connecting the engines to the battery pack, they were surprised to see that both functioned perfectly, able to generate sufficient torque, by Haskell’s calculations, to lift several hundred thousand pounds of weight. In short, the engines were powerful enough to energize the machine. The trio watched in wonder as the engines powered the machine’s hydraulic legs and arms, its “muscles,” until what amounted to a crude exoskeleton was stalking around the space awkwardly like Frankenstein’s monster.

They left a cavity in the interior of the machine, a space large enough to contain a person, a controller, the operator who’d be manipulating the machine. The operator would be ensconced in what looked like a kind of shark cage, protected by various steel, ceramic, and two carbon fiber plates. Haskell was grateful they’d found the two carbon fiber plates which were significantly stronger than steel (possessing a strength of nearly 7000 megapascals as opposed to steel’s 700 megapascals). She slotted the plates in place, covering the operator’s head and other vital areas.

Finally, the trio commenced working on the machine’s weaponry, utilizing the cannon they’d found back in the sewer lagoon. They fitted the cannon onto the end of the machine’s right fist and inserted the small rockets they’d found inside the downed drone. Next, they welded on an old-school Gatling-gun-style mini-gun they’d found near a bombed-out resistance hideout to the machine’s left hip (along with a coil of ammunition), making sure that both of the weapons could be manipulated by the operator via a joystick. The one thing they didn’t have was any kind of interface or directional controls, so the operator would have to fire the weapons purely by sight.

When they were finished in full, well beyond the original two weeks they’d planned on, they sat back and stared at the machine, their mech. Haskell watched Gibbs move over to the creation and run his hand down the edges which were gunmetal gray. His fingers traced the outline of the cannon and the mini-gun. He turned and smiled.

“This fucker is a piece of engineering divinity,” he said.

“Boomslang,” Haskell whispered in response, a satisfied smile tugging at the corners of her mouth.

Gene gaped at her. “I never did ask what ‘Ex Nihilo’ meant.”

“From nothing,” said Haskell. “That’s what we did. We built something from nothing.”

She stood, readying to take in her creation when—

CRACKBOOM!

Sound.

Fury.

Darkness.

A bomb exploded and the room shook.

Everyone screamed.

The Syndicate had found them.

DUST AND DEBRIS fell from the ceiling.

For a moment Haskell was convinced the workshop was going to come down on top of them. Her ears rang and she couldn’t see a fucking thing, but she felt the ground seeming to shift underfoot, as if the city was in the grip of an earthquake.

A figure rose up in front of her in the darkness and she screamed.

It was Gene.

His forehead was bleeding and he was gesturing back toward the entrance to the space that was partially concealed by a collapsed wall.

“Direct hit,” Gene said. “The bastards must’ve been tracking us.”

“We’d be dead if they did,” Haskell replied.

He pulled her up and she squinted, looking to see the mech, looking to see if Gibbs was okay. The little man was visible near the far wall, hands over his ears, head tucked between his knees. She rushed over, catching sight of the mech suit peripherally. Her hands touched Gibbs’ neck and he was as cold as ice.

“We need to go!” she shouted.

Gibbs wouldn’t budge and so she gestured to Gene who moved over and grabbed Gibbs, who appeared to be in shock, holding him up in his powerful arms.

“What about the mech?!” Haskell shouted.

“Leave it!” Gene said. “They might hit us again!”

Haskell’s gaze hopped to the mech which she desperately wanted to protect, but there was no time.

The trio moved to the entrance, Gene shoving rubble aside, clearing enough space for everyone to exit.

They stumble-stepped through the darkened passageway, the walls bowed, threatening to collapse at any moment. They could hear sounds echoing off in the distance. The roar of Syndicate gliders and the shriek of what was likely alien drones.

The three moved haltingly down through the tunnel, praying that another bomb didn’t land. Haskell suggested that they take the shortest route back to the safety of the outpost, up through a metal door that led to the streets above, but the door was jammed by the detritus of the bomb blast. It wouldn’t budge. Their only hope was to swing back and hope like hell that the pipe they’d dropped their tools down before was still intact.

They reached the pipe ten minutes later and saw to their horror that it been blasted apart and covered in a landslide of flotsam from the streets above.

“We’re fucked,” Gene said, lowering Gibbs to the ground.

Haskell squatted and examined Gibbs who was quivering, the color having drained from his face.

“You okay?” she asked.

Slowly, he nodded.

“We h-have to get o-out of here,” he said, his teeth chattering, his eyes jitterbugging.

Haskell ran a hand through her hair. She knew they wouldn’t last long if another bomb hit or the Syndicate sent a patrol down to hunt for them.

“Follow me,” she said.

“Wait. What?!” Gene replied.

She didn’t respond, just took off back toward the metal jammed metal door.

Upon reaching the door, Haskell told them to sit and wait and then she ducked back down the passageway and galloped toward her workshop. She entered the room and paused, staring at her creation, the mech suit lying propped against one wall.

“You can do this, girl,” she said to herself, squeezing her fists so tightly she thought she might draw blood. “You can do this.”

She closed her eyes and then advanced on the mech and climbed inside the contraption.

And promptly fell to the ground.

What a fool! she thought. She’d totally failed to test the friggin’ thing out!

Lying on the ground, Haskell realized how incredibly awkward the suit felt. When she was younger, she’d been forced to get a scan for a back injury and the mech suit felt a lot like that, like being stuck inside an MRI chamber that had been bolted onto a pair of legs. If she’d had more time she could have refined the mech of course. She could have shaved down the legs, maybe replaced some of the metal with more carbon fiber and repositioned some of the machined parts, but there was no time for any of that now.

She reached down and powered up the mech’s twin engines and felt the thrum of the hydraulic actuators as they roared to life.

She gripped the controls and throttled a control joystick (one of two) to her left.

The metal fingers on the end of the mech “hand” spread out like the petals on a flower. Measuring her weight, she was able to push the machine up into a standing position. Gasping for breath, she grabbed the control joystick to her left and swung the mech around.

The ground shook again.

More bombs were falling.

She only had moments to act. Maybe less.

She grabbed and slotted the joystick to her right, thumbing the one on her left, walking the mech forward.

It was painstakingly slow, each step seeming to last an eternity, the mech’s metal boots feeling like they were encased in concrete.

But slowly, very slowly, she was getting a feel for the machine.

She felt the power of the engines surging through the exosuit and soon she was out and into the passageway, forcing the mech into a crouch, rumbling down toward Gene and Gibbs.

Gene spotted her first. His eyes were as wide as saucers, his mouth adroop.

“Did somebody call for help?” Haskell said with a ghost of a smile.

“It works,” Gene said, flabbergasted. “Jesus. It actually works.”

Haskell raised the mech’s arm and pointed at the door. “Get back!” she shouted.

Gene and Gibbs crabbed back and Haskell fumbled with the weapons controls. Keying the right joystick, she lifted the mech’s right arm and tapped down on a firing button.

WHOOSH!

A rocket erupted from the cannon and flew into the metal door, atomizing it in an explosion that was much larger than Haskell had expected.

“Holy shit!” she exclaimed.

When the dust from the blast subsided, they could see the outside world, the street above.

“LET’S GO!” Haskell screamed.

She led the way, maneuvering the mech up past the destroyed door, spidering toward the street which was shrouded in dust and smoke from the Syndicate bombing run. Haskell looked back to see Gene and Gibbs emerging from the passageway.

“We made it!” Haskell shouted.

Gene pointed.

She followed his line of sight back and down the street.

There were at least ten heavily-armed Syndicate soldiers visible.

Maybe seventy yards away.

“GET BEHIND ME!” Haskell shouted.

Peripherally, she saw Gene and Gibbs scoot behind her just as the alien soldiers opened fire.

The air filled with a blizzard of energized rounds that pelted the ground all around the three. Haskell screamed, reflexively bringing the mech’s arms up in front of her face as if they were her own when—

ZWINNNNG!

A round ricocheted off the front of the mech, nearly taking off Haskell’s head.

Shrapnel from the strike peppered her face.

She staggered, nearly collapsing, disoriented by the shot.

Time suddenly seemed to come undone.

Her vision came in discontinuous flutters and flashes.

She could hear Gene and Gibbs screaming, but was unable to understand anything they were saying. Her hands found the controls and she took a step, stabilizing the mech, acting as a shield for Gene and Gibbs.

Looking up, she saw the Syndicate soldiers charging forward.

They were moving in to finish her off.

Her thumbs finally came around, resting over the joysticks. A surge of adrenaline overtook her. If she was going down, it would be on her own terms. The mech’s right arm came up and she tapped down on the firing button, screaming, unleashing a half dozen missiles that flew down the road—

BOOM! BOOM! BOOM!

Detonating out in front of her.

The blasts flung the Syndicate soldiers sideways, scattering them like ten pins, as she closed her eyes, listening to the explosion roll down the street.

When she opened her eyes, all of the Syndicate soldiers but one were lying on the ground, blasted apart by the missiles.

Gene and Gibbs cheered as Haskell pressed down on the mech’s controls.

She moved the mech’s left leg, then the right, walking the machine forward.

With every step she gained more confidence and in seconds she was driving the mech forward, gimp-running, toward the last Syndicate soldier.

She spun back to see Gene and Gibbs taking shelter, concealing themselves behind a mound of debris.

The last remaining Syndicate soldier opened fire.

Haskell heaved the mech into a lateral run while simultaneously unloading with her machine gun. She watched the rounds slam into the Syndicate soldier, hitting a weak spot, showering the soldier in gore.

The mech slid to a stop and Haskell gulped for air like a drowning woman.

She’d done it!

She’d dispatched every single Syndicate soldier, she’d beaten them all!

She felt different now, imbued with the spirit of a warrior, believing at that moment that there was nothing she couldn’t do. She’d been born again and would take the battle to the Syndicate.

She turned and that’s when she saw it.

Standing at the end of the street.

The mech.

The biggest mech she’d ever seen.

A Syndicate Reaper.

Staring at her and the alien soldiers she’d killed.

HASKELL’S BLOOD turned to ice.

She’d seen Syndicate mechs before, but never one that tall. How big was the goddamn thing? Twelve? Fifteen feet tall? It was bigger than an elephant with what looked like two bubbletops mounted onto its turret. She could see the alien operators inside, grinning at her.

Before she could react, the Reaper mech unleashed hell.

Firing a swarm of rockets that curled up into the air.

Reflexively, Haskell jammed down on her controls.

The mech lurched forward as—

BAROOM!

The ground behind her heaved as the rockets slammed down exploding. Barely avoiding destruction, Haskell drove the machine to the right, feeling the engines rev into overdrive. The Reaper gave chase, opening up with its cannon, energized rounds scything into the debris, bouncing off Haskell’s armored exterior, giving her a jolt, making her shriek in fear.

She ran raggedly between the shells of bombed buildings. The Reaper was fast, but not as agile as she was. She was able to maneuver her mech through openings in the rubble while the Reaper crashed behind her, smashing through the city’s wreckage, firing at anything that moved.

She dropped the mech down into a crouch behind what had once been a storefront on Baltimore Street and waited, listening for the Reaper.

Hearing nothing, she turned and caught sight of it as—

WHAM!

The alien mech filed a single rocket that slammed into the cannon on her mech’s right hand!

There was a flash of light and a cacophonous boom, a symphony of sound and fury.

The impact from the missile strike lifted Haskell’s mech off of the ground in a ball of flame, sending her flying back through the air.

Five feet.

Ten.

She crashed through a wall and landed in a slope of rubble, woozy, face caked with dust from the brick she’d slammed through, the coppery scent of blood in her mouth.

The engines were whining, the hydraulics snapping and popping.

Looking down, Haskell saw that the mech she had created was still in one piece save the cannon on the right hand, which had been torn in half by the Reaper’s missile. It was just a hunk of sharpened, bent metal now.

She toggled her controls, fighting to lever the mech up.

The machine grunted and heaved, but remained on its back.

Haskell pounded on the exosuit, trying to will the machine to stand when a shadow fell over her.

It was the Reaper.

It was standing up above, peering down at her.

Her stomach fell.

It was all over.

She was dead.

The Reaper’s cannons swiveled down toward her and Haskell, having nothing to lose, slammed down on her controls a final time.

By some miracle, her mech shambled forward into a diving run.

Haskell’s fingers keyed the controls and the mech’s right arm pistoned up, slamming the jagged metal end of the cannon into the belly of the Reaper. The jagged metal sunk into a vulnerable spot.

The Reaper’s operators hesitated and that’s all Haskell needed.

She keyed the controls again and swung the machine-gun on her left arm around and loosed every round she had into the Reaper’s bubbletops.

At such a close range, the rounds from her gun shattered the bubbletops, eviscerating the alien operators, striking one of the Reaper’s power sources as the machine went up in flames.

Haskell’s eyes went wide. She swung her mech’s arms, shrugging aside the alien mech, emerging back out onto the city streets as the Reaper exploded behind her.

Terrified that other alien machines would be lurking around, Haskell piloted her own mech down over the ruined blacktop, searching the skies for Swan drones, for alien gliders.

She turned a corner onto South Street and saw them.

The people in the streets.

Maybe two dozen of them.

Members of the resistance from back in the outpost.

Gene and Gibbs among them.

They’d come out.

They’d evidently watched her battle the Reaper.

Even Stringer was there, standing front and center.

Haskell slowed her mech and just stood in silence for several seconds before her brethren.

Then a cheer rose up. Faint at first, then more powerful.

Clenched fists were raised.

Even Stringer was shouting and signaling to her.

She’d done it.

She’d created a new kind of fighting machine to take on the aliens.

She’d struck the first blow.

She’d drawn first blood.

She raised the arms on the mech like a gladiator, knowing that nothing after that day would ever be the same again.

GEORGE S. MAHAFFEY JR.

HOW DO you make a good series better? You introduce new stories and toss in lots of crazier, more colorful characters. That’s how Justin essentially pitched us all on the idea of writing an anthology – a way to explore, via a series of time loops, the Seppukarian Universe and all of the interesting people who are trapped when the Syndicate invades. I chose to focus on Haskell, a once promising engineering student who’s sucked back through a time loop at the end of the events in Book 4 to the days when she was a laborer, working for a resistance outpost in Baltimore. But Haskell’s no average, ordinary grunt – oh, no, she’s got big dreams, including creating a weapon from salvaged parts that may help the resistance take the fight to the aliens. We see the battle through her eyes and explore how she takes revenge on the things that have destroyed her life and her planet by developing a mechanized fighting machine, the resistance’s first “mech,” that just might help turn the tide of the war.

Author Note

George S. Mahaffey Jr. is a lawyer, screenwriter, and author. His script Heatseekers was bought by Paramount Pictures with Michael Bay producing and Timur Bekmambetov attached to direct. In addition, he's sold or written scripts for Arnold Kopelson, Blumhouse, Benderspink, Mandalay, Sony, director Louis Leterrier and Paul McGuigan, and is the creator of In The Dust, an action-horror graphic novel in the vein of 30 Days of Night to be published by Top Cow with art by Christian Duce. He has also written the following books: Amityville: Origins, Amityville: Revenants, Razorbacks I, Razorbacks II, Razorbacks III, The Pact, The Devil's Ark, Familiars, and the Vertical City zombie series (Books 1-4). In addition, he is the co-creator and co-author of the first four sci-fi books in the Syndicate Wars series (the Seppukarian Universe), along with the post-apocalyptic thriller trilogy, Blood Runners. He lives in the Washington D.C. area with his wife and young son. For more info, see WWW.GEORGEMAHAFFEY.COM. You can also email George at gsm@gdldlaw.com.

RETINA

BY GENTRY RACE

Lost In Space

Nate Collins's legs felt like canned noodles as he awoke in his mech suit. His tongue was like worn sandpaper. His eyes strained in the blackness behind gun-range amber shades. He tapped the side of his eyewear and waited for an outline of the environment in customary wireframe mesh to appear, but to no avail. Damn specs.

His face was exposed and his helmet was still neatly folded within the high collar of his nano-mech suit. This encased his body from the neck down and purred quietly with a soft orange light that hued his features from beneath. It comforted him, for the most part, to feel the tepid recycled air venting from the collar despite the strong odor of burnt metal. At least this meant his suit was still had power.

He raised himself up so that he rested on one elbow and tried to remember what had happened the moment before the instant when he had found himself here. His mind was black as the room. Had the Syndicate manipulated his mental state? His memories? Collins had heard of veterans losing their sense of time in the battlefield, but he could remember only one battle at this point—one embarrassment—his first battle. He adjusted his shades to better cover his eyes—one being distinct in white in color like an odd case of heterochromia.

The young all American-looking cadet, with windswept hair to match, had spent the past few months on the pencil pushing side of the war, studying astrophysics. It wasn't until word of his sister joining the fight against the Syndicate that he decided to act. So, he willingly traded his pencil for a gun.

Collins perked up and engaged his mech suit in movement. The gears drove and popped from the pressurized servos that seemed to have settled like a stalled engine that had sat too long. How long had he been here? He raised his broad mechanized arm encased in the suit, and an animated display came alive.

"Adjusting to new environment…" a mechanized voice hummed from inside his suit.

"Engage auxiliary lights." Collins ordered.

His suit fired up two barrel shaped lights off the sides of his shoulders.

Collins felt the anxiety flood his mind as he searched what looked like an empty storage room and set of stairs ascending to another platform. Where am I? How did I get here? Am I alone? His heart began to race and the fear of being alone might well cripple him if his scan didn't send something back soon. He remembered he had just joined a team and now they were gone.

"Scan complete. Four entities found," the mechanized voice said.

Collins climbed the stairs and recognized the suits of his old team and a sense of relief overcame him. One Marine was propped up and moving about. Collins couldn't mistake the pulled back fiery amber ponytail slumped over. It was Commander Sasha Hastings.

Her commanding strength and courage was only measured to the skill of hiding her crush on him. Ever since she saved him in his first brush with death against the Syndicate, Collins had known she had a thing for him, but she was a tough cookie – always keeping it professional.

Collins smiled, walking over to Hastings, shining his two bright beams directly on her face. Her freckles were more prominent now, spattered like a brush painting. He grabbed her mech-suited arm and gloated with an ironic expression. "Now, look who's saving who.”

"Get those damn lights out of my eyes… and it’s whom." Hastings ordered, blotting out the strong light.

Collins smirked to himself, lowering the lights. "I didn't know you wanted me to set the mood, Hastings."

Hastings instinctively threw a punch into Collins’s mech-suited stomach, "That’s Commander Hasting to you, bitch."

Collins jolted back, feeling the force, but pretended not to react to the pain. "Kitty's got claws."

"Fuck off," Hasting said.

Hastings fired up her auxiliary lights, arcing two wide beams over the room. Collins watched her as she scanned the space looking over the three other marines laying on the ground, then to railings and windows that made up the large enclosed room.

"This is a Syndicate ship," Hastings said, walking to the window across the way.

"Did they put us here? Like some kind of dimensional collapse?" Collins asked.

"Wake those men, Sergeant,” Hastings ordered, brushing off his question.

Collins walked toward where the three Marines lay sleeping and the memories began to trickle back to him. He recognized his old comrades Sanchez and Piña They shared similar features and race but Sanchez had curlier hair. Friends from his days of first joining the Resistance, they had been full-fledged fighting Marines for months and were outstanding in the battlefield.

While Collins took every opportunity to learn all that he could from the group, he was envious of their amicable careers and choices. Promotions and ranks seemed to fall into their laps instead of his. Despite being green, Collins felt entitled to be a higher ranking officer. He could lead this team and he wanted everyone to know it.

"Sanchez? Piña?" Collins asked, gently shaking them. Piña slowly opened his deep brown eyes.

"Snipes, get that fucking light out of my face," Piña said, lying still on the ground.

Collins hated when they called him 'snipes' referring to his first altercation with the Syndicate. He wore an eye patch for months, and the team thought he’d be better suited for a sniper position than an intel op.

"My head feels like I got fucked two ways from Sunday," Sanchez said, raising himself.

"Why's it so dark in here?" Piña asked.

To the right of his friends, Collins noticed a similar nano-mech suit he recognized from a different battalion. This battalion came from the Taiwanese region of Asia and were known for their tough antics and hate for the Syndicate. Collins tried to remember how he knew this—the memories were fuzzy.

He shone the light over onto the yellow armor, tattered with red striations and on the chest name tag that read "Tang.” The man's chiseled brown face was rugged and sun-spotted up to his closed, epicurean folded eyes. His thin, black hair was long and he had a bristly goatee knotted up into strands with twisted blue and yellow rubber bands.

WHAM!

A kick to Collins’s stomach sent him barreling back, knocking his glasses off his head and onto the ground. Collins's right iris could be seen more clearly now – white as a ghost and slightly deformed. He tasted the cold ship in his mouth and spat out his bruised ego.

Edward Tang towered over Collins tying his long, greasy, tendril-like hair back into a bun. His beady sharp eyes bored into Nate as he propped himself up.

"That's how you got that fucked up eye to begin with. You gotta be ready for anything, One Eye," Tang said with smirk

Collins looked at Hastings now, shining her burning lights onto the two. He felt her glaring at his pale white eye, still in disappointment. No Marine goes into battle for the first time and gets such a hideous display of embarrassment, but he did, and she remembered. That was definitely the one moment he wished more than anything he could go back and change if he had his time all over again.

Collins shot to his feet, grabbing Tang by his collar. "I'm gonna kill you, motherfucker."

"You better make sure I'm dead," Tang said.

The feuding Marines stopped when Commander Hastings yelled out from across the bleak room, "Marines! Get your shit together and find the power source to turn this ship on. We got only about 2 hours before our suits drain or we become meat popsicles."

Sanchez helped Piña to his feet and pushed between the irate men, breaking Collins' hold.

Collins picked up his glasses and adjusted the frames to a comfortable fitting, covering both eyes, his features now similar in color behind the amber frames. He kept a keen eye on the burly Tang, stepping away to cool off.

Sanchez stepped over to where Hastings stood, now looking out an icy window that framed an endless backdrop of stars. Like tiny diamonds strewn across a black blanket, they shimmered slightly amongst the infinite darkness.

"Where are we commander?" Sanchez asked.

"I don't know," she said.

The Dead Ship

COMMANDER HASTINGS LED the Marines down the long, dark hallways of the empty ship, with their guns raised and shoulder lights guiding the way. She didn’t care how she got here or why she couldn't remember the events that led up to this moment. She had only one thought at this time—one hope—would this ship have power?

"Keep an eye out for some kind of breaker switch," Hastings ordered out.

"What about hostiles?" Collins naïvely asked.

"What's a matter, Snipes? You afraid of the dark?" Piña asked.

"I wouldn't worry about shit. I’d blow any fucking Predator away,” Tang said, lifting up a six barrel air-cooled mini-gun slung from his shoulder.

"That's nothing compared to my electromagnetic stunners. You might run out of ammo," Sanchez said.

"Shit, the only thing running out is your momma," Tang quipped.

Hastings cringed hearing the two Marine's try to measure each others’ dicks. The nano-mech suits made a loud clunking against the metal grating catwalk that suspended them over the spaceship's thick hull. If there were any Syndicate on this ship, then they surely already knew the marines were here.

She glanced back at her misfit team, remembering Sanchez, Tang, and Piña holding their own in a fight, but Snipes—Nate Collins—had a lot to learn. Considering he had only just joined the team, his sense of self-entitlement was overbearing. Just because you pencil pushed at some private academy on a government grant didn't mean you had the respect of a team, or know how to handle a fire fight.

Hastings shuddered at the thought of Collins's persistent harmless advances. How could someone be so self-centered and arrogant? And, yet, despite the bothersome egotistical buffoonery, Hastings did find it somewhat amusing. He was cute after all, despite that messed up eye. Personality went far in Hastings’s book, a trait Collins would never get past his thick skull.

"Commander, I think I see a breaker switch on the starboard wall," Sanchez called out.

The trident shaped switch was connected to a large rectangular extrusion under a section of the ship's breastwork. The metal prongs, heavily rusted and pitted from corrosion, connected to a dirt covered composite dowel shaped handle.

"Looks a little dirty, Sanchez," Piña said, gesturing with his fore finger above his upper lip.

The Marines laughed while Sanchez accentuated his Mexican mustache in a prideful manner. Hastings rolled her eyes and pushed past the immature banter Sanchez and Piña liked to play toward each other. She even noticed Tang and Collins getting in on the action. Team camaraderie was fun, but not in a time like this.

"You're not gonna be laughing if this ship doesn't turn on," Hastings said as she eyed each Marine with serious intent.

Hastings pulled down the switch and with a loud clunk, the hull seemed to rattle. The marines took guard, raising their weapons and scanning for any movement.

"The damn things' dead," Tang said.

"There has to be a core reactor we can turn on," Hastings said.

Commander Hastings watched the young Collins in her peripheral vision walking off from the group, looking even more distracted than usual. He slowly pulled off his ridiculous eyewear and cocked his head slightly.

"What is it, Snipes?" Sanchez called out.

"I think I see something," Collins said, more detached than usual.

"Good, keep your eye open," Tang joked to crickets.

Collins walked over to a thin metal pipe that ran the course of the hull upward, and touched it.

BASH!

The pipeline exploded in Collins’s face, knocking him down and jetting a powdery mist into the air. Rivets along the spaceship's hull burst from their seal one by one, ricocheting off the catwalk and grazing the group. The Marines hit the ground, ducking any stray bolts that came their way.

"That's the damn halon fire suppression," Piña yelled out.

Hastings watched Collins lying on his back, looking upward in terror, pushing himself to the wall, his skin turning the same color as his damaged eye. She recognized his panic – the same look she had seen on the battlefield once before.

Sheer panic swept over Collins, like a tsunami, when he looked above. Just as in the days of his drug-addled youth he felt like he was having a flashback. However, the disparity in vision was not a figment of his imagination—nor a side effect of drugs—this was real.

Through one eye he could see wispy human shaped forms floating high above him, phasing in and out of the walls and through the other eye, nothing. Their distortions seemed to fade in and out to Collins and he tried to make out where they began and ended.

"Look, the fuck, up," Collins cried out.

"What the hell is that?" Tang said, trying to make out the slight movement in the mist.

Collins watched Hastings ready her gear, engaging a hand scanner from her suit. Her movements were swift and purposeful as she switched on a sensor of sorts to get a reading, "I'm not getting anything on this."

"Looks like mist moving," Piña said.

"Fucking Yao Guai." Tang murmured under his breath.

"I can't see shit," Sanchez said.

"I think I see it!" Piña said.

A barrage of gunfire from Piña, followed by Tang, strobed in a fiery red inferno.

Collins could see the ghostly forms clearly now and watched the onslaught of bullets pass through them with ease. Collins made out the appearance of one, and couldn't believe what he saw. The familiar-looking face became angry at the assault and pulled itself back, gathering the other energy forms as if to gain momentum.

"Fuck you!" Piña said, now crouching, his arm shaking like a jack hammer from his gun's assault on the nothingness. Bullets ricocheted throughout the cabin.

The entities shot off the ceiling and barreled their motion toward Piña, entering into his body.

Collins watched the forms fumble within his teammate and pull the very essence of life out from him. The flickering gunfire and the ear piercing noise ceased. Piña was gone.

A Man Down

Collins's stomach was in his throat and his head felt numb. Never in his life had he seen a ghost-like entity, let alone a man die in a way like that. He looked at his fellow Marines across the landing, tending to Piña's lifeless body. He remembered hearing of the nano-mech suits having a disposing function using acid to rapidly decompose the body. This made him even more sick.

"What the fuck did you see up there, One Eye? Yao Guai? A phantom?" Tang asked, standing over Collins.

Collins remained silent. He despised the nicknames, the hazing, and insults he received from the crew, especially the ones that came from Tang. Deep down, Collins had wished that the phantom thing could at least have taken Tang instead.

"Get the fuck away from me," Collins said.

Collins could see Hastings watching from afar with her sharp crimson eyebrows raised in disappointment, trying to calculate the situation. Hastings stood up and walked over to stand next to Tang, ignoring the brute scent he seemed to exude from being packed away in a nano-mech suit.

"What did you see, Collins?" Hastings asked.

Collins remained silent.

"He ain't saying shit. He's just a dumb pencil pusher,” Tang said

Hastings shot a look at Tang. "Officer Tang, help Sanchez with Piña. That's an order."

As Tang walked off, Hastings knelt down to the level of Collins. Her eyes were now more sympathetic and warm. Collins took a moment to breathe her in when she got close, but that thought was shit now. His friend Piña was gone and what he had witnessed was crazy. Hastings would not believe the insanity he had seen.

“Piña was a good man,” Hastings said.

Collins nodded slowly.

“You know he had a family once?” Hastings asked.

“No,” Collins said.

“He never talked about that. What happened to them?”

“Piña was strong despite what had happened to his life before the Syndicate. He knew weakness in a link breaks the chain.”

Collins eyes stared into the distance as Hastings’ words sunk in.

“Collins, I need to know what we are up against.” Hastings said calmly, “Now…what did you see?"

"I saw… Piña." Collins said.

“What?" Hastings asked more intensely.

"That phantom thing looked like Piña” Collins said.

Hastings stopped her questioning and a frustrated look blanketed her face.

"Look, I know you struggle in firefights. Hell, you got your tail chopped the first time you stepped up against the Syndicate, but you can't expect me to believe that."

Sanchez walked up behind the two. "Maybe he did see something."

Hastings shot to her feet, presenting her commanding authority over him and the squad. "Listen, Sanchez, I was right next to you in that little firework show that Piña put on. He… bloody hell…he didn't have my go."

"But the fire mist was revealing something to him," Sanchez said, "I thought I saw something, too."

"Not another word. You stay on my watch Captain, and in line. Is that understood?" Hastings asked.

Sanchez instinctively looked back for Piña but instead, only caught a glimpse of Tang's roughcast features. Collins could see in Sanchez's eyes that he missed his best bud—they were like brothers. It was in Collins darkest thoughts that he hoped that Sanchez didn't find camaraderie with Tang later on. Another enemy was the last thing Collins needed right now.

Hastings turned back to Collins, who was now standing, and adjusting his glasses. He saw her weary look again but this time she seemed to be more annoyed.

"I'll take your word for now Collins, but for god's sake," Hastings said as she ripped the eye wear off his face, "get rid of these damn glasses. I don't want that eye obscured. Besides, you look like a fucking safari guide."

Tang’s face held a smug expression.

"Okay, Listen up. We are not alone on this ship. I want you all on full guard. Due to that little light show you guys put on, our suit's power are now lower than when we started. We need power and we need it now. I’m leading us to the core reactor and if any of you have a problem with that then I suggest you hang back with Piña," Hastings said in a no-nonsense way.

Collins looked at Tang with a crooked eye and then at Sanchez standing above Piña 's body. Sanchez, with tears in his heavy eyes, brushed back his thick curly black hair and said his goodbyes while he closed his friend’s eyelids for the last time.

The Core Reactor

COLLINS FELT his suit become more sluggish as the Marine squad made their way down the long corridors of the dead ship. Despite moving slower, and the increased effort, he was on cloud nine following his team. Finally, he was able to show everyone what he was all about—what worth he could bring to the squad.

A series of locked composite doors repeated down the long hallway with small round windows at eye level. Inside, the rooms were empty labs with strange CAT scan-like devices in them. Collins wondered what kinds of strange scientific experiments had been conducted here when the ship was in its prime.

"There are Yao Guai here," Tang repeated emphatically.

"What's a Yao Guai?" Sanchez asked.

"Demons. Strange ghosts from my folklore," Tang said.

"Man, this ship creeps me out," Sanchez said, pulling his stunners closer to his chest.

A smirk blanketed Collins’s face. "Just think, Sanchez, when we fire this baby up, we can explore the far reaches of the galaxy."

"You guys have fun with that. I'm not going anywhere with you idiots," Hastings said with a smile in return.

"Power at twenty-five percent," a mechanized voice said from Commander Hastings suit.

"We need to hurry," Collins said.

The Marines descended farther into the belly of the ship and into a large mint-green, star shaped room. At the center, they saw a huge cylindrical monolith filled with a clear liquid that ported into the floor and ceiling. The base was encumbered with a myriad of wires and controls attached to cranberry panels that were spread throughout the room.

"This is it boys," Hasting said, stopping at one of the panels.

Collins watched her work the controls and push a series of buttons with ease. His auxiliary lights lit up her red hues and the side of her soft features. Collins was lost in his thoughts for a moment. His reverie abruptly came to an end when he spotted an indicator that read 'sleep mode'.

"This thing's just sleeping," Sanchez said.

"How do you know how to work this?" Collins asked.

Hastings stopped her actions and glanced back at Collins with a disgusted look. "Nuclear engineering is not just for men."

Hastings returned to punching the buttons and a reaction started to take place. Bubbles gurgled and wispy striations appeared in the liquid, which began to emanate a bright light.

"It's working," Collins said with a smile.

"What's working?" Sanchez asked.

Collins looked at the group to see blank expressions on their faces. They weren't seeing what he was seeing, which meant only one thing.

"Quick, get back!" Collins yelled.

The group scattered, taking aim and finding what secure cover they could behind control panels of the reactor room.

"What are you seeing, Snipes?" Sanchez yelled at him.

Collins watched the ghostly phantom-like creature swirl out, separating into three individual entities, before phasing through the reactor's composite wall and out into the room. They were distinguishable from each other with faces that were human in form. Collins was mesmerized. He could not look, or get past the fact the faces were strangely familiar.

"They're coming out of the core reactor," Collins yelled back.

"Where the fuck do I fire, One Eye?" Tang asked.

"They’re spreading out. One at my twelve o'clock, then four o'clock and eight o'clock.”

"That's it. I'm not fucking around anymore." Tang said, standing up. The six barrel mini-gun hardly weighed down his broad arms.

"Tang! Get down." Collins shouted a warning.

"Hold your fire! Don't hit the core reactor!" Hastings yelled.

Tang lit up the dark reactor room with his barrage of bullets. Collins watched the hot, red ammo pass right through their auras with ease. What could stun an entity made of pure energy? Collins remembered Sanchez's boasting about his signature weapon.

"Sanchez, hit ‘em with your Stunners!" Collins yelled out.

Sanchez signaled in agreement as he pulled up his bull-nosed stunner and fired aimlessly into the dark. Collins saw him miss the entities that were now moving closer to the marines. Collins adrenaline fired up within him.

"Lower Sanchez! Now at my two o'clock!" Collins yelled out, catching Hastings watching him with a curious intent.

Sanchez fired the rings of energy and hit the closest entity. The energy buckled the movement and caused an irritation on the creature’s face.

"You got it! Keep hammering it!" Collins yelled.

The creatures were barreled by the increased fire Sanchez laid on them. Tang took a sitting position after emptying a full clip. Collins saw the look on his face, the uselessness Collins had experienced himself on the battlefield. It made Collins feel content in some measure.

Hastings scurried over to Sanchez grabbing a stunner from his side. "Collins, what's next?"

"On your ten!” Collins said, pulling his gun and helping with the onslaught.

The next entity took on the fire from both Sanchez and Hastings. Collins watched the creature’s tail coil up like a snake as it was sent flying off in a pain.

"They're fleeing," Collins said, lowering the weapon and taking a deep breath.

Without a second to lose, Hastings shot up to the control panel of the reactor core. After a few more switches, a red light could be seen to grow brighter within the monolith. Hastings looked at her mech-suit battery indicator that now read seven percent and felt a sense of relief to have made it.

"Let's get out of these clunky suits and find out where the fuck we are," Hastings ordered.

The Barracks

NANO-MESH BUCKLES on the front face of Hasting's suit began to unzip and let in the outside temp several floors up above the core reactor. The Marines made their way along more of the ship’s corridors. The air was cool and crisp. Hastings felt relieved to be in her lighter black undersuit as the armor could sometimes feel heavy and sluggish. The nano-fabric clung tight to her muscular body as she stepped out of the mech confidently onto the soft boot pads.

Hastings had never seen a vessel quite like this, one that was … so featureless. It was almost as if the original design was intended for long distance travel. She looked back at Collins, catching a glimpse of his eye.

"You did good in there Collins."

"Thanks," Collins responded.

Hastings felt a sense of pride seeing Collins respond the way he did in the reactor room. Plenty of times she’d seen recruits lose their shit in the heat of battle but Collins had stepped up and finally owned his keep. She felt better knowing her team was stronger despite being one man down.

"I'll tell you what, One Eye. You try to order me around and I'll knock you on your ass," Tang said.

"Knock it off, Tang. Collins saved your skin. You owe him respect at the very least." Sanchez said.

Tang fell silent.

The Marines approached a narrow foyer that forked into three hallways. Above each hallway had been placed a white makeshift placard indicating directions. They could see that it had originally been printed in some alien undecipherable script but now it was painted over in readable script, 'To barracks’, ‘To Mess Hall’, and ‘To Armory’.

Hastings looked at Collins, Tang and Sanchez, wondering who had painted the sign. The ship's design was plain and too bleak to be useful to them. Perhaps the Syndicate had well-hidden features—something a human couldn't see at the moment. She thought of Collins's eye and how the happenstance of getting wounded could give someone something much greater. She hoped the same went for knowing the origin of this ship.

"Now that the doors are working, let's search out these hallways and reconvene here in thirty minutes. Collins and I got the Barracks. Tang, you got the Armory. Look for any more stunners we can use. Sanchez, you get the Mess hall. Find us some food."

Sanchez couldn't believe what he heard, "Oh, great, so now I’m the Cooky?"

Tang laughed out loud as he and Sanchez split from the group, each one, heading down the hallways they had been allocated. Hastings saw that Collins had a prideful look about him as they walked away, knowing he had her approval.

"Don't get cocky," Hastings said.

"Wouldn't dream of it," Collins said with a smile.

THE BARRACKS WERE DIVIDED into two by a short hallway. One side was decorated with periwinkle blue painted walls contrasting with the canary yellow painted on the other. Hastings led Collins to the windows that opened onto dark rooms lined with a series of bunk beds.

"You take that side and I'll take the other.” Hastings ordered, “Look for anything that can tell us where we are or who this ship belongs to”

“Got it,” Collins said.

Hastings touched the handleless door and immediately it opened with a loud swishing sound. Lights automatically flickered on, starting from the front and extended to the back. Hastings counted around twenty makeshift bunk beds. What species occupied these quarters?

As she made her way down, she couldn't help notice the ships usual smell of burnt metal being masked by a sweeter scent that seemed familiar. She scanned over the neatly made beds one after the other, looking for belongings or any evidence of a crew that had maybe manned the, now, ghostly ship.

The smell became more fragrant. Lavender with hints of vanilla tickled her nose and Hastings was lost in the scent. As a child, long before news of Syndicate invasions on Earth, her family grew lavender within the western Cascade Valley. She was an adventurous and very playful child, and her mother used to always soothe her before bedtime with a few drops of lavender on her pillow. This made Hastings feel warm inside just thinking about it.

A bedside table next to one of the neatly pressed bunks flowed with lace over a purple candle and matches. Hastings pulled the lace off and picked up the candle. Not having smelled lavender since the fighting started, the aroma was delightful. She struck one of the matches, lit the candle and watched the flame waft in the gentle air. In this moment, she filtered memories of her childhood.

She looked at the well-made bed and saw a piece of dingy scotch tape hanging from the underside of the top bunk. As she lowered her head, she found pictures taped to the bunk. Hastings looked closer and couldn't believe her eyes. A picture of her and Collins holding hands, smiling with a distant exuberant galaxy in the background. Just below was another of a young boy with windswept red hair, not older than five years.

Hastings stumbled back in disbelief. What is this? Her hand knocked over the candle onto the bed. She looked around to see if this was a trick. Was the Syndicate testing her?

The flowing lace caught fire and erupted faster than Hastings could react. The Halon Fire suppression immediately showered down from the ceiling and covered the room in mist. Across the room she saw the door starting to close and bolted towards it like the wind.

Alarms rang out and red flashing lights signaled above. Hastings passed the door just as it closed and sealed behind her. She turned and watched the pictures burn up and crinkle in the roaring flame. Was this her future? The Halon jets fired downward, keeping the fire at bay.

Hastings looked for Collins, and then back again. A distortion emanated from the mist—an entity's contours shimmering in the gas. What she had seen before was nothing compared to what was happening now. A human-like face began to form, its features felt familiar to her. Her hand automatically covered her mouth as she gasped in shock, stepping back from the window. It was Collins—or at least his ghost—smiling at her.

A Storm Brews

COLLINS BOLTED toward the ringing alarms. He ran past bunk after bunk, regretting the fact that they’d split up. He knew she was strong and could look after herself, but if something happened to her now, he would feel responsible.

The door swished with a high pitched pressurized sound and he saw Hastings sitting down, head in her hands, sobbing like a young girl. He had never seen Commander Hastings this way—with this much vulnerability. Just above her, he watched the Halon gas extinguishing the flames that were violently eating away on a bunk bed. What happened?

"Sasha, are you all right?" Collins asked, putting his arms around her.

Collins looked into her teary eyes and saw someone different—a person that he somehow recognized, but couldn't explain. She buried her face back into her hands just as Sanchez ran up carrying an armful of canned SPAM.

"What the hell happened?" Sanchez asked.

Tang walked up behind him carrying two large photon guns and a slough of what looked like grenades wrapped around him. Collins eyed him and felt Tang exude a sense of pity on the group.

"Looks like Commander ain't commanding no more," Tang said.

Collins shot to his feet, barely an inch from Tang's face. "Show some respect."

"What happened Commander?" Sanchez asked.

Hastings was reluctant to say anything. She was white as a ghost and shaken beyond belief.

"Was it one of those things?" Sanchez asked.

"Yao Guai," Tang added.

"I saw… Collins," Hastings finally said.

Collins nodded his head and realized Hastings had just seen what he had been seeing the whole time. He caught Tang's facial expression and knew the man was annoyed.

"Listen up, Marines. That's what we are, right? There's something wrong with this ship, and I don't believe any of you. How in the fuck did we get here? This is a goddamn demon ship now, and I know your ugly ass eye has something to do with it!" Tang yelled out in a fit of rage.

Collins threw a punch and Tang caught it with ease. In the blink of an eye he had twisted Collins’ arm around and was pushing down on the elbow, putting him into a hold. The pain fired into Collins's head like shotgun.

“Easy, hot head. You hear that? That's your bone crackin’.”

Sanchez dropped the SPAM cans and kicked Tang in the back of the knee. "Quit your shit, Tang."

Tang let go of Collins and looked at Hastings. "You all gone soft. You can believe that you guys are seeing friendly ghosts but I’m telling you it’s demons. I’m gonna' load up the rest of this gear and look for a way out. It's mothafucking war on the Yao Guai."

Tang stormed off and back down the armory hallway. Sanchez looked at Hastings, who now appeared to be a bit more settled. Black streaks were muddied along her cheeks from the mascara she wore. Collins reached over and wiped away the gunk with his black nano-suit sleeve.

“So… what’s the chances of finding escape pods on this ship so we can leave his ass here?” Sanchez asked with a sense of levity.

Collins cracked a half smile, “Sasha, we should head to the ship's main deck and see what we can figure out from the logs. That could tell us where the pods are.”

Hastings nodded with a brief smile as Sanchez and Collins helped her to her feet. Collins didn't mind seeing her this way. He held back the sly usual comment the creep inside him would have liked to say and minded to himself. Hastings needed a moment of rest.

The Dead Logs

THE SMELL of salty canned pork shoulder filled Collins's nose as he trailed behind Sanchez. Sanchez squished the cold meat in his mouth making a repulsive sound, with wheezing air escaping in the violent bites. Hastings’ face held a look of disgust as Collins bypassed both of them to the lead the group.

"I don't know how you can eat that stuff," Collins said.

Sanchez said, smiling. "It's just pork shoulder. Food of the gods, if you ask me. All I need is some eggs and rice."

Collins led the still shaken Hastings, and Sanchez down another hall that opened into a circular room. Endless control panels with yellow knobs and red buttons extruding out from small circuitry. Just above, windows were inset, and they could see the blast shields were closed over broken glass.

"Something tried to break in?" Sanchez asked.

Hastings remained quiet, scanning the deck.

"Or out," Collins said.

They found a large center red padded recliner encased in a silver alloy frame, amongst some other chairs. On its headrest, was a silver helmet with black wires that spidered out and twisted up to the ceiling. Collins was in awe of how similar it looked to the connection of a spinal cord and its vertebrae disks. He figured this was the Captain's chair but had never before seen a psyche link for a ship this large that one person could control.

“Well, fuck me Ready Player One.” Sanchez said aloud.

Collins and Hastings giggled.

“How do we get into to the logs?" Collins asked.

Hastings and Sanchez both looked at Collins with an unmistakable expression of wanting him to lead.

"You want me to go into it?" Collins said.

“Snipes—er—Collins, you pencil pushed all this shit at the academy.” Sanchez said.

"Yeah, but that was just theory. I ended up joining the resistance in the middle of it,” Collins retorted.

"Listen, Collins, I know you can do it. Now’s the time to showboat,” Hastings said.

She placed her hand over his shoulder and Collins felt the warmth from her touch. Like a warm blanket, he felt soothed and knew deep down he would do anything for her.

He looked at Sanchez with half eaten chunks of SPAM caught in his short dark beard. For the first time in a long while he felt like he had a family again. If this was all the Syndicate’s doing—if putting them here was—then he didn't want to go back. He recognized Hastings and Sanchez felt the same.

"Okay. I'll do it," Collins said, walking to the strange reclined chair.

Collins slipped in and sunk into the red padding that was softer than any cot he had felt in months. The back half of his body was enveloped and when Collins tried to move the cushion seemed to respond back as if intelligent—some kind of smart chair? Straps grew over each of his limbs, pulling him in snug. Collins laid his head back and the helmet-like device automatically lowered over him, covering his eyes.

Radiant blue lights pulsed in strobing patterns from the base of the helmet to ceiling, initiating the connection link between Collins and the ship. The reclined chair began to react to his body. The legs split apart and separated, along with the chair recliner arms. Collins felt his body glide as if in a set of trays as it formed upright into a standing position. He felt comfortable and chalked it up to being similar to a mech suit that he used to drive at the academy.

"Awesome," Sanchez said.

Collins raised his arm, now connected to the chair and began to flick his wrist in tiny movements. A large blue projection hologram began to stream from his chair, banded in light.

"There, now you can see what I see," Collins said.

The hologram booted into a central mainframe. The mainframe constructs painted the database in a six-sided box inset into another box, connected at the vertices. Collins recognized the absence of any familiar basic file structures from Earth.

"Where are the files and folders?" Hastings asked.

"It's just a box within a box," Sanchez said.

Collins walked forward, looking around the walls. Familiar command text was transcribed along the wireframe walls, wrapping around to the adjacent side, but seemed to disappear, starting another set of words in its place. None of the sentences seemed to match.

"None of the texts are lining up. There's got to be a cipher of some sort – like a key," Hastings said.

"You have to think like a Syndicate" Collins said.

"What do you mean?" Sanchez asked.

Collins raised his hand and followed the dialogue on the walls around, thinking to himself. He murmured ‘hypercube’ under his breath.

"If you were to travel the universe then you would need to think dimensionally."

"So, three-D?" Sanchez asked.

"No, to travel vast expanses in space, you have to think in higher dimensions," Collins continued.

Collins drew with his finger a square and another square, connected the corners. "This is the three dimensions we are familiar with—the cube."

Sanchez nodded.

"Now if you draw another cube and connect that cube's corner to this corner. You have a four-dimensional cube or hypercube. That's what I think this interface is."

"So, how do we interpret a higher dimension in a lower one? I mean, we live in three-dimensional space and you say the hypercube is four-D?" Hastings asked.

"Just like how a two dimensional being cannot see the third-dimension, we can't see the fourth," Collins added, "The hypercube is our best way to interpret a four-dimensional cube within a three dimensional space, so if we were to unwrap it then we maybe…"

Collins zoomed out of the tesseract, scaling the interface to about half his body length. He unattached the four corners of the outer box and motioned the four vertices down and over the box within. As he pulled the vertices down, two more vertices extended out and each adjoining face took on a box-shape itself.

The shape was recognizable now to the group. Like a three dimensional double lowercase 't'. It intersected like a cross and looked something like what a messiah figure might have hung from, if it were four-dimensional.

"Dali's cross," Sanchez said.

"Like Salvidor Dali?" Collins asked.

"Yeah, my mother would take me to museums to look at paintings when I was young. I remember the painting. Jesus was hanging from this shape in a new interpretation of his crucifixion."

Collins looked at the strange cross and peered closer at the words now connecting together to make coherent sentences. "Looks like we found the cipher."

Tang

TANG STOMPED his way down the hallway back to the armory. His long black hair was pulled tight in a bun now. How could these idiots be so blind? This ship was toying with them. He'd seen it before. The damn Syndicate was behind it and Tang bet the Yao Guai didn't know they had the baddest soldier on board.

The armory door opened to a sulfur gunpowder smell. Tang loved the smell of warfare despite the repercussions it had on him. His hillside village had been fodder for the Syndicate, taking everything he knew—the innocent. But there was one truth now—the good die young and the bad motherfuckers live forever. If it weren't for the commando legion he met up with, he might not have learned all that was needed to fight against the Syndicate.

Tang brushed his heavily calloused hand over round after round as walked toward the larger guns hanging in the back. He knew what war had done to him, but it wasn't just that. He wore the mask of killing—the mask to fit in. Growing up poor can leave you coming off as an asshole to some. Tang grabbed the large sonic rifle that looked too large for him to hold. He cocked the gun and peered through the sight hole. He never asked for any of this. How would you expect for a guy like him to act toward a haunted ship? These fucking Yao Guai.

The Yao Guai were the evil spirits his older brother used to warn him about. Not since his childhood had he thought about the demons. Tang remembered hearing of different kinds. Some were good, some were bad, but the ones on this ship - they had taken one of his squad which gave him full authority to unleash some serious ass-whopping.

He panned the sight hole over the various weaponry he could use to exterminate the demons that plagued this ship. His dark brown eyes were beady and motionless. Just as his sight passed over the last of the racks he saw a strange device. Tang lowered the gun as he walked closer to the tubular apparatus that jutted out from under a black blanket.

"Nano-Mech Suit Battery," Tang read aloud slowly.

Tang knew he would need his nano-mech suit if he was going to do something drastic. It gave him power and strength—something no one could stop. The suits were meant to travel in space if need be with only the help of a rechargeable battery source.

He scanned the walls and noticed the array of proximity bombs with remote detonators to match. Proximity bombs were used for exploding when an enemy passed close by. Maybe they would pick up the Yao Guai and detonate. Either way he could use the remotes to blow the ship up in sections. They needed to be purged.

He remembered the stunners having an effect on the demons. What if he could purge them completely from the ship? Electromagnetic pulses would not hurt living things—only energized circuits—like this haunted vessel. Tang smiled slightly as he licked over the grit in his yellow teeth.

A Transport

COLLINS WAS FASCINATED by the layout of the computer interface of the ship. He spun around the double-cross shape, reading the various directories listed in blue font. Hastings and Sanchez stood by looking puzzled..

At the very bottom were the core reactor functions, followed by something labeled as ‘naturalization’. Collins remembered seeing something like that as they passed by the CAT scan-like devices earlier on. Just above this were the mess hall, armory, and barracks making up the intersecting cross, and finally the head of the ship.

"The ship is the same shape as the unfolded hypercube," Collins said, intrigued by the views he watched in the headset.

"Interesting," Hastings added. "Check for the logs."

Collins dove into the head portion of the ship, opening the various command controls sections. Just beneath another layer were the ship logs. Collins wondered how the Syndicate, or the species that had occupied this vessel—whoever they were—operated their logs. It could be another task to wrap his head around.

The database now mirrored an industrial-looking complex of skyscraper shapes and the thousands of records of the journeys these travelers had taken. Collins wiped the sweat off his lip as he navigated to the last building.

As Collins touched down, he watched the organic-like circuitry pulse under his feet and around the building. Was it channeling something from him? He reached out and touched the side.

WOOOSH!

The building’s sides collapsed in on themselves exposing a brilliant red core in the shape of two inverted cones, one upside down atop the other, and touching at their sharpest end. Collins looked at the waxy red surface, watching the light scatter on its exterior ever so lightly.

"Is that the record?" Sanchez asked in awe.

The surface began to change and a series of bumps percolated up from within. Collins thought it resembled Braille, for a moment, but was taken aback when each little bump grew more minuscule and projected a physical display.

"It's a recording," Collins said.

"Why the two cones?" Hasting asked.

"Just think, Hastings. If you were a higher dimensional being then recording would work both ways. This upper light cone represents the future and the lower cone represents the past."

"And where they 'pinch' in the middle is us?" Hastings asked.

"It could be any point in time, but yes," Collins confirmed.

Collins touched the pinched portion with his two fingers and the current time slot played revealing the dead ship. He pulled the pinch down and time began to reverse to the very first recording event.

He watched on the holographic projection the ship being boarded by a large crew dressed in taut uniforms adorned with high cut collars. Despite not having chairs or normal seats like most human ships, the crew lined up one by one below a sign that read 'Naturalization'. Collins recognized this as the room above the core reactor area he had seen on the interface.

“They look like a goddamn cult.” Sanchez said.

Collins eyed the procedure closely as the ship mate next in line entered the room and lay in the machine. With a burning light, Collins witnessed the machine rip the soul out of the crewman. The attending crewman then slumped the dead body on the floor.

"They’re killing themselves," Collins said.

"Why?" Hastings asked.

Like staring at the sun, it was hard to look away. The crewmen then collected a small orb from the machine. The texture was smooth and made of an alloy, reflecting off the harsh lights as the doctor carried it over to a slot. Collins could make out the wispy energy inside as the new resting soul.

“I think they’re… transferring their consciousness."

“This is some Twilight Zone shit, man.” Sanchez said.

The crewmen inserted the orb into the slot and dropped it.

"They're putting it into the ship?" Sanchez said, a disgusted expression blanketing his face as he watched the feed.

"In stasis for a long journey?" Hastings asked.

"I've never seen this kind of technology before. The advances for consciousness transfer is decades beyond what we know," Collins said.

"What are you saying?" Hastings asked plainly.

"This ship is from the future," Collins said.

“This could give us the advantage we need against the Syndicate,” Hastings added enthusiastically.

Collins spotted something out of the corner of his pale eye. Movement such as he had seen before. As he isolated their positions, he counted five rogue entities.

"What are those?"

"My guess would be a few conscious entities escaped somehow." Collins said.

"So, those are the things that are attacking us," Hastings said.

“It’s fucking Casper the Ghost up in here,” Sanchez said.

"Wait, you said you saw Piña," Hastings said.

"Right," Collins confirmed.

"So, what if the ghost of Piña was just trying to get back into his physical body?" Hastings asked.

Collins fell silent and looked back to the inverse cones. He grabbed the pinched point and moved it upward.

"What the hell are you doing now?" Sanchez asked.

"This is a light cone. If we can see the past light then we can see the future light."

A scrambling of fast-forwarded movement settled to an empty hull—just like the way it was when they had first arrived. Outside the ship, they could see a double binary star pulsating a brilliant blue. As it strobed, it flung its electromagnetic-radio-waves far into the reaches of space.

"A double-binary pulsar star. Incredible," Collins said.

“Looks like they aren’t stopping,” Sanchez said.

The three marines watched as the ship headed directly into the star's center. In a thunderous clash, the ship ignited and a pulse of energy was sent throughout the universe. Not far away, hundreds of pods could be seen being struck by the force.

Collins zoomed in closer to see that inside each of the small structures something strange and wonderful was happening – he could detect tiny bits of matter as they reassembled into human form, ready to be imprinted with the stored consciousness of the missing ship’s crew.

"Projected consciousness into nano printed bodies," Collins said to himself. "There has to be a thousand people on this ship."

"I don't get it. Why the star?" Hastings asked.

"The ship is a transport for future humans. They are collapsing their consciousness into the star to radiate outward. The pods are reviving the signal and printing the self-image of their bodies on demand."

"Self-preservation?” Hastings asked.

"But from what?"

SCREEECH RUUUUUUMP RUUUUUUMP!

An alarm rang throughout the ship. The sound was deafening. Collins exited the record logs, unhooking from the machine. He rolled out of the cushion chair and looked up at the display showing the lower portion of the ship now missing. A nano printed seal closed the hole exiting into space, and there stood Tang in his nano-mech suit, triggering explosions.

CONFRONTATION

Collins whipped down the long corridors with Hastings and Sanchez behind him. The pads of his feet were light on the steps and the adrenaline surged through his body. Despite his confidence of finally leading a team, his stomach felt like it was in his throat.

Collins rounded the corner with ease and descended down different floor levels. Tang was a bad seed from the start – deep down he knew he would have to face him. There was no one else to do the job, and now Tang was destroying a vessel carrying a thousand lives.

"We need to get to our mech suits if we are going to stop him!” Collins ordered.

"What about the batteries?" Sanchez called out.

"Figure it out," Collins called back.

Just past the core reactor, the air began to feel cooler, and as he ran Collins could now see his steamy breath as he exhaled. Hastings and Sanchez caught up with him just as he reached the Naturalization sector where they had abandoned their nano-mech suits earlier. Tang wore his yellow and red tattered mech-suit with pride, fully charged. He moved purposefully as he placed explosive charges on each of the doors.

"Tang!" Collins yelled out. "What the hell are you doing? You trying to kill us?"

"Fuck you, One Eye! This place is cursed and I'm gonna' purge these fucking demons."

Hastings yelled out. "Tang, they aren't demons. They’re humans just like you and me."

Tang kept placing charges on the doors, ignoring the team. On his side, Collins saw Tang's new battery pack powering his suit. He was no match against Tang without his own mech suit. He needed to pull that battery, or the remote detonator from his hand, whichever one he reached first.

Collins looked back at Hastings, who had gone very quiet. She read the hard look in his eyes and understood that there was only one thing to do. Nate shot a glance at the abandoned mech suits and nodded. Then he turned his head back and as he did so he caught Tang's beady black eyes looking like daggers.

Tang was smiling crazily."Whatcha' gonna do, One Eye? I'll blow this deck quicker than you can say Ghost Ship."

Hastings stepped past Collins. "Tang, that's enough. We looked at the ship's logs. The ship is a transport of consciousness itself."

Tang laughed. "I see he's got you drinking the Kool-Aid. The once great Commander Hastings has fallen for One Eye Willy."

Collins was quick to jump. He couldn't hold back his rage any longer. Tang took up a quick stance, raising his guard as Collins lashed out with a blow against the hard cornered metal of the nano suit arm. Ouch! His knuckles immediately went limp burning with pain. Tang grabbed Collins arm again, twisting it back while at the same time gripping the back of Nate's neck.

“Looks like One Eye still can’t hold his load,” Tang said.

Collins was bent over, the pain was excruciating. Like a thousand tiny knives crawling up his elbow to his shoulder. He held a stare on Sanchez as his fellow marine pulled on up his nano-mech suit and zipped it shut..

"Look at your One Eye now!” Tang yelled to them, unfazed by the fact he might be evenly matched in a moment.

Just behind his friends, Collins's pale eye saw the ever so slightly wisps of a ghost emanate from the wall. Will they help? He could see the essence of his own face was present now—it was his ghost. The mirrored phantom eyes were stern, full of strength and absent of any scar. For a moment, he felt content knowing he was stronger somewhere else. Collins vision began to blur.

AS SANCHEZ WORKED to pull on the heavy mech suit, Hastings took cover behind him waiting for the right moment to refuel his low battery from her own. Both of them were low on juice so she would have to hurry. Meanwhile Tang stood watching them approach, nodding his head crazily as they prepared themselves for battle.

"You think you can take me out, Sanchez?" Tang yelled.

“Take you out? Don’t kid yourself, Tang. You’re not my type,” Sanchez said.

Hastings closely watched the meter, quickly swapping the last battery out. A recharge sounded and Sanchez's suit boosted with energy. Despite the win, an eerie sound penetrated Hastings’ senses. She heard a mangled snap followed by a thud, like meat hitting a cold butcher’s floor. Hastings swung her head around to see Collins slumped on the ground. His arm was now separated grotesquely in two pieces, yet still being held together by the stretched skin like a purple elastic band. Tang pounded Collin’s head like a dead horse.

"No!" Hastings cried out.

Sanchez came down on Tang with a hard blow. The crunching of the metal suits ground like nails on a chalkboard. Hastings pulled Collins through Sanchez's legs and away from the battle. His face was battered and bruised from the pummeling. His strength holding onto what was left of his life.

"Collins, I'm so sorry," Hastings cried.

Collins managed to open his eyes and smile, revealing the remote detonator in his hand. Hastings smiled through her tears and hugged him.

"Take me to the scanner,” Collins whispered.

"What?" Hastings tried to process the information over the loud clanging of Sanchez fighting Tang.

"If you scan me, you can save my conscience. You remember the archive recordings?" Collins continued.

Hastings looked at one of the naturalization doors that was a mere ten feet away and back at Sanchez now restraining Tang. She remembered the picture she had seen in the barracks—the possible future they could have together. A comfort blanketed her, a feeling she hadn’t experienced since the start of the Syndicate War.

Hastings gathered her strength and dragged the limp sergeant to the room that held the scanner.

Naturalization

SMASH!

The wall was slammed with a brute force and the thick hull crumpled like a tin can. Hastings looked back at Collins, his face turning purplish-blue the longer she waited. She could save Collins right now. Why the hesitation? He could have a new body just like the poor souls on this ship they were trying to save.

Another violent shake and the horseshoe shaped scanner Collins lay on rocked, sliding off its tracks on the floor.

“Save me," Collins said with the last of his energy.

Hastings walked over to the head of the unfamiliar but oversimplified interface. A series of diagnostic readings adjacent to a blue button flashed in intervals. Hastings felt like she was at a juncture —a defining moment in her life, and also in that of Collins. She pressed down on the button. A flash of light pulsed.

CRASH!

The wall burst open and shards of projected metal flew into the air. Hastings hit the ground, catching a piece in her leg and trying not to roll on it. She looked up at Collins's body. A large piece of shrapnel now penetrated his side. Blood seeped onto the cold floor and she winced—hoping the machine had finished the job.

She looked back at the opening, as the dust settled. She saw Sanchez in the distance now lying on the floor with a large section of his suit gouged out and his chest open. He was gone. A larger figure stepped into frame and filled the torn opening. It was Tang. His yellow nano-mech suit, stained to the elbows like a meat butcher.

"You fucking bastard!" Hastings yelled, holding her leg.

Tang walked slowly toward her. "I'm tired of taking orders from you—from all of you!"

His shadow towered over her as she stared into his ruthless eyes. Tang lifted his heavy mech-boot just over Hastings head. "You can live with the Yao Guai now."

BOOM!

Tang tumbled over Hastings, smashing into the hull wall. Hastings was overwhelmed by the sound. Her ears rang and she looked up to see a figure in black. It took a split second to recognize the familiar face as she had not seen it that way for months. It was Collins, perfect in all forms, holding Sanchez's stunner. He cocked the boom-stick again just as Hastings heard Tang's servos pump and pop into action.

Tang looked at Collins's old body slumped over on the scanner, lifeless. Rage filled his eyes as he pieced the puzzle together.

"It's over, Tang," Collins said, interrupting his thoughts.

"I don't believe it."

“There's a lot of things you don't know." Collins retorted.

Collins aimed the stunner at Tang's chest and pulled the trigger. A bolt of energy slammed into Tang, barreling him into the wall again. His head slammed into the hull and Tang was knocked out cold.

Collins dropped the stunner, and rushed to help with Hastings wound. She watched him as he ministered to her wound. She noticed his perfect hands—his skin, eyes and complexion—all flawless.

Here Again

COLLINS WAS STRONGER NOW. His body no longer hurt, newly imprinted and perhaps immortal. He contemplated the nature of his being. What would become of him when the ship collided with the double binary star? He looked around the ship and saw no disturbances, no ghosts, no phantoms. Could he see them anymore? Only time would tell, he thought.

"How did you make it?” Hastings asked, interrupting his thoughts.

"The process was automatic. My body was nano-printed. My consciousness is now kept safe on this ship," Collins answered.

Collins helped Hastings to her feet as she wrapped one arm around him, limping her way out of the naturalizing room. Collins eyed his friend, Sanchez, slumped lifelessly against the wall. He had sacrificed himself for them—something he would never forget.

"What are we going to do now?" Hastings asked.

Collins snickered, “You could admit your undying love for me?”

Hastings cringed with pain. "How about a medic kit first."

Collins held Hastings as he helped her limp past door after door within the naturalizing chamber. Despite the victory of stopping a madman from blowing up the ship, Collins felt Hastings withdrawal from the here and now.

"Remember when you played the light cone in the database?" Hastings asked.

"Yeah."

"When you pulled the pinch to the future side we saw the ship enter the star," Hastings continued.

"And?"

"We weren't on the ship. Which means we find a way off this thing.”

Silence padded Collins's thoughts of what do now with his life. Could he return to a normal life? Would it be possible to have a relationship?

Collins felt Hastings abruptly tug on his arm as they walked.

"Wait," she said, her eye were peering over into one of the windows of the chamber.

Collins firm hold loosened and he let her go. She limped over and opened the door. Inside, another standard naturalization chamber was filled with a myriad of equipment and a scanner just like the one Collins had used.

As he followed, he saw Hastings focus hard on a strange detail across the room. Her face turned ghost-white and her eyes widened. As he caught up with her he suddenly saw what it was that had shocked her so.

He counted five Marines in matching nano-mech suits. Their flesh had rotted away, leaving behind chalky bones and mechanical exoskeletons. Each had a rusting name tag on their chest, eroding away, that stuck out significantly like a sore thumb.

Collins read each of the names ' Piña, Sanchez, Tang, Collins and Hastings.'

Hastings’s face drained of all color as he looked back at Collins.

Collins calculated the situation, thinking back to what had transpired. It all made sense now—transferring consciousness—the five rogue entities.

"We’ve all been here before," Collins said.

GENTRY RACE

GENTRY RACE HAS WORKED as a VFX artist at such studios as DreamWorks, Laika and Evil Eye Pictures. He continues to follow his passion, exploring the creative aspects of life by authoring science fiction stories that reside in his head.

AUTHOR NOTE

WOW. What a ride. I had so much fun articulating this story whom some have described as a Space Marine Paranormal Thriller. The inspiration behind RETINA was from my heavy reading doses of Michael Crichton when I was younger and researching the Space Marine genre Justin, Kyle and George had already defined with the earlier books from the series.

I AM TRULY HONORED to have contributed to this and would like to thank you all for supporting this expansion of the Seppukarian Universe as we have some great surprises in store for you. Furthermore, please feel free to check out my other works such as The Cyberratum Series.

INTERTWINED

BY KYLE NOE

Everything was hazy. Bentley’s body felt off, like it wasn’t his own. And he couldn’t stop himself from hurling. He spat and tried to reach up to wipe his mouth, but his wrists came up against shackles. He was a prisoner. A prisoner of whom, he didn’t know. But it meant the trip through time hadn’t gone as expected.

When his vision began to return, he scanned the room looking for a clue. Where was he, and who had taken him captive? The first thing he noticed was that the walls weren’t made of any material he’d ever seen before. They looked transparent, but weren’t. Opaque, but solid. The walls almost seemed to be alive. The last thing he took in was a tattoo on his wrist. Burned in deep like a cattle marking was the number fifty-seven.

As if reading his mind, a calm and confident female voice answered his thoughts. “Everything is fine, Bentley,” the voice said. “You’re where you’re supposed to be.”

At first, Bentley couldn’t tell if the voice was inside his head or echoing off the walls, coming from some ethereal place. “From inside your mind,” the voice said. “My name is Indred. To answer your next question, it’s derived from the English word kindred. Over the centuries, the ‘K’ began to slur until it was silent. When they named me, it was with the intent of imbuing the idea of being kindred. I believe, although I can never be truly certain of humankind’s intentions, the inspiration was that I’m designed to be in rapport with my human counterpart.”

“So you’re not human?” Bentley asked.

“No. Not technically. Although my mind was mapped from the human brain. So, perhaps in a way, I’m a little bit human.”

This was more than Bentley had bargained for. All he wanted was a shot at going back in time to stop alien invaders before they’d conquered the Earth. Turn the tide in the past, they said. We’ll win the war this way, they said. And here he was in what seemed like the future without a clue what he was about to face.

“If you can read my thoughts, what’s my next question?” Bentley asked.

A moment of silence filled the strange room, made of unknown material. Indred once again broke the quiet. “That was rhetorical.”

“Ah,” Bentley said, and laughed. “So you’re programmed with a sense of humor like me.”

“Mine is better than yours, but yes.”

“Cool. Real cool. Happy for you,” Bentley said. “But what I really want to know right now is what’s the situation on the ground. Where am I? What year is it? Who’s the enemy? Are you the enemy? And oh… Why the hell am I chained up?”

“It would be unwise to answer your questions directly before we’re in rapport,” Indred said. “It’s better if we begin your trial.”

“My what? No. I don’t need to be tried. I haven’t done anything.”

“Your DNA says otherwise. I’ve looked into your past. According to the records, you didn’t join the Marines out of pride or a sense of duty, but because you’d attempted to steal a processor from a secure facility. You had the option of prison or enlistment.”

“But I’ve served my time. And I kept serving after my obligation and debt was paid.”

“True, but I wasn’t referring to a courtroom or court martial trial. I meant to convey that you must face a kind of challenge in order to achieve rapport with me.”

“I thought that was your directive,” Bentley said, as he tugged at his shackles. “Aren’t you supposed to get into rapport with me?”

“Yes. But it requires our minds to sync.”

“Not interested. I mean, you’re cool and all. Really cool actually. But you’re not exactly my type. I’m more into sultry women with a high IQ who know what they want. You, on the other hand, are made of some unknown material, have a computer’s IQ, and, well, you’re missing the requisite matching body parts.”

“Again, you mistake my meaning. This is because we are not in sync. If we were in sync, you would understand.”

“Geezus,” Bentley said. “You’re like a broken record. Just start the trial already. Not like I have a choice.”

“You do.”

Bentley blinked. His eyes fluttered. He’d misread the situation. Something was off. But he didn’t even have a starting point as to what. He needed more info to even begin to understand.

“Let’s try this again,” Bentley said. “What am I going to say next now?”

“That I talk too much,” Indred said.

As the last word fell on Bentley’s ear, his shackles loosened and released. He was free, but at what cost?

“Thanks,” he said, sounding as if he was asking a question.

“We’re making progress,” Indred said. “Are you ready?”

“Ready as I’ll ever be…”

But Indred cut him off. “That’s a bit cliché,” she said. “Care to try again?”

“Really? I’m getting trashed talked by a computer.”

“I’m not a computer.”

“But you said…”

“I know what I said, but we are not in sync. Therefore, you misinterpreted. Care to try again?”

“Sure. Why not?” he said. “No. I’m not even slightly ready. I’d like to know what I’m getting into and go from there.”

“Your uncertainty allows me to see how your mind processes from the beginning of a challenge. The process is highly refined. And we shouldn’t skip steps.”

“Fine,” Bentley said. “Let the fun begin.”

“Brace yourself,” Indred said, right as the ship was enveloped in turbulence. The unexpected rocking knocked Bentley to the ground. That was when he realized he was no longer wearing armor. And he was unarmed. He was not only on his own, but without his familiar trappings. He began to feel deep dread. He was in the complete unknown.

ONCE HE WAS able to steady himself, Bentley pushed off the ground and felt his way along the bulkhead, careful to maintain a grip in case of more turbulence. What he needed was to get his bearings and a clear picture of what he was up against. Half of him believed the things Indred had said. The other half doubted every word. This whole charade was potentially a trick. An enhanced interrogation tactic where he might be led into giving up vital intel or reveal a weak spot unintentionally through a simulated ploy in which he had to escape. All he had to go on was paranoia.

As he pushed forward to the front of the room, his hands slipped off the wall and into open air unexpectedly. Where there should have been more wall, there was nothing. He stepped back and looked from a lower angle. What he saw was an open doorway disguised by an optical illusion. The way the frame was designed concealed the edges and blended into the background. The corridor beyond the opening looked like a hatch. This whole time, he hadn’t really been a prisoner at all.

Still careful and cautious, Bentley slipped into the corridor and peaked around the corner. Empty. He picked up his pace and marched forward, his fists at the ready.

Beneath him, the ship gave off a low humming sound, and from all around, there was a consistent whirring. The place smelt as neutral as anything could. No scent of sweat from a nearby soldier. Not even the distinct odor of cleaning chemicals. He still knew nothing of consequence.

At the end of the corridor, he came upon another optical illusion doorway. This one was a little different. Instead of a camouflaged opening, the entrance was at a slant and narrow, and he had to pass through sideways to be able to fit.

On the other side, he’d finally found a room that wasn’t devoid of clues as to his surroundings. He needed to know where he was, and even more important, when he was. And this room at least looked like something more than a blank slate.

One minute, he’d been thrust into a time portal with coordinates to go back in time and stop the alien threat before the invasion. The next, he was in a blank slate room. Then in a corridor with slightly more detail, and now inside a cubbyhole room on the ship that felt fuller and more like something he was familiar with.

There were control panels along one wall. Albeit, the controls were all touchscreen, and the markings were unfamiliar. Didn’t even look like language at all. But it was a start. Along one of the other walls was what appeared to be a Viewer. Possibly, its purpose was to see outside the ship or receive transmissions. Either way, figuring out the situation was the most important thing right now.

His fingers fumbled around the touchscreen until it lit up. At first, the language on the massive control panel was more like symbols. But then it morphed into English, but upside down. He strained his neck, and understood every word. ‘Guidance Systems,’ ‘Weapons Systems,’ ‘Navigation Systems,’ and ‘Intelligence Reports.’

“What is this?” Bentley asked. “Some kind of intel recon ship?”

“Direct answers will not help you, Bentley,” Indred said. “Find your way to what you already know.”

“That was cryptic,” he said. “And kind of annoying. Would you mind turning down your sarcasm and annoying personality settings?”

No response.

“Good,” he said. “I like it better quiet.”

He began swiping away at the control panel, not knowing what the results would be, but couldn’t help himself. What did he have to lose anyway? He was either a prisoner, part of an experiment, or he’d lost his mind. As far as he could tell, fumbling around until he figured out something he could go off of was as good a plan as any.

Mostly what he discovered, as he swiped through the various screens, were schematics of the ship’s capabilities. It was more than an intel recon ship. From what he could tell, Indred carried an arsenal of tactical weaponry that was powerful enough to hold off at least ten other ships. Deeper in, he found a self-destruct sequence. That was interesting, but of no use as long as he was onboard. Then he found a map. It appeared to be a star diagram with navigation routes, including notations such as ‘more hostile’ and ‘less hostile,’ as well as ‘natural phenomena and other dangers.’ Finally, a lead.

BENTLEY ZOOMED in on a section that was marked ‘hostile entities and dangerous natural phenomena.’ Might as well get to the bad news first. No need to sugarcoat things.

Three ships were moving in fast. They looked fully loaded, enough weaponry to take Indred out. Bentley zoomed out a bit and saw that they were all three coming from one direction, the aft. To the front, port, and starboard were asteroid fields.

The ship rocked when an explosion went off next to the ship. Knocking Bentley off his feet. Time to move.

“Enemy intrusion imminent,” Indred said.

“I can see that,” Bentley said. “Care to help?”

“I cannot make command decisions for you. I’m more of a facilitator.”

“Implement countermeasures,” Bentley ordered.

“Very well.”

On screen, Bentley could see three objects that looked like metal nets leave the Indred and go in three different directions. Three missiles were inbound and the nets were heading straight for them. When they came close to the objects Indred had released, the unidentified objects exploded, destroying the incoming missiles.

“Nice,” Bentley said. “But that’s only going to work once. They’re getting close.”

“I can see that,” Indred said.

“I thought I said to dial back the sarcasm. We’re at a disadvantage here.”

Bentley scanned the map of the surrounding space. The asteroid field to the left appeared to have gaps. He could try to maneuver through them and use the asteroids as cover. Taking on each ship one at a time.

“All right, Indred. Time to even out the odds. Veer port.”

“But the asteroids, sir.”

“I’m aware. Veer port.”

Turbulence rocked the ship at the sudden turn. This time, Bentley was ready for it and held tight to the control panel.

“Could really use a chair with a strap for all the turbulence,” Bentley said.

The second he finished his sentence, he felt something metal on his calf. He looked over his shoulder and saw that a chair with straps was there now. Without hesitation, he plopped down and strapped in.

“Nice,” he said.

But the ship rocked with turbulence again and he was jerked back and forth. Jumbled, blurred vision, insane vertigo, Bentley forced himself to focus. After a moment, everything came back into coherence, and he could make out what was in front of him now.

When he looked down, he could see his hands for the first time. And he realized he couldn’t remember what he’d been touching the control panel with. His hands did feel foreign, though, yet familiar. Blurry, but clear. Full feeling in his hands kicked in after another moment, and he took hold of the touchscreen controls in front of him with confidence now.

The Viewer flashed red and words appeared on screen. They seemed even more foreign now. Even when he tilted his head, they weren’t just upside down English words.

“Translate this, Indred,” he said. “Can you do that?”

“Translate what?” Indred said. “It’s in your language.”

Bentley steadied himself. Looked down again. Focused. She was right. The words, the controls. They were in his own language. They were in English again. But backwards and upside down.

He unlatched his belt and allowed his body to float until it spun upside down. At which point he grabbed hold of the restraints and re-secured himself, but upside down. The seat was below him, but he could read the controls and readouts as he hovered above the seat and seemingly was hanging from the ceiling.

‘Incoming from port,’ the readout said.

This time, Bentley veered starboard. And the ballistics missed by inches.

“Nicely done,” Indred said.

“Not that you were any help,” Bentley said.

“You sure about that?” she replied.

Bentley smirked and fought back a chuckle. If the enemy wasn’t going to be the end of him, the ship’s A.I. personality was.

“Steer about, head straight for the main force,” Bentley said.

“You sure about that?” Indred said. “Seems foolhardy.”

“That’s me,” he said. “Bentley, first name, Foolhardy, middle name, and …”

A long beat. He couldn’t remember his own last name. Come to think of it, he couldn’t remember much of anything. Except that he was in danger of dying.

The ship lurched and spun about until it was heading directly for the main force. Countless ships filled the Viewer.

“Fuck,” Bentley said. “This is not good.”

“You don’t say,” Indred said.

“Mind lending a hand,” Bentley said. “What the hell should I do?”

Bentley felt his shoulders shrug as if he were answering himself. Which felt weird as shit. Then he planted his palms on the touchscreen controls and zoomed in.

Right there in the heart of the enemy was a beacon. A flashing red beacon. He didn’t know why, but he understood that taking that out was the key to winning this battle. Although, he couldn’t even remember what he was fighting for, let alone who the fuck he was.

But he needed to win. “Set collision course,” Bentley said.

“What?!” Indred replied. “I don’t think so.”

“Do it.”

“Are you serious?”

“Do I have the authority to make commands?”

Silence passed between them. The ship seemed to groan in disapproval.

“Yes,” Indred said. “You do.”

“Then grant me my death wish,” Bentley said. “Because the truth of the matter is I don’t even know why I’m fighting or what I’m fighting for. So just ‘effing do it.”

“Sure, why not,” Indred said.

Propulsive force jettisoned the ship forward at full throttle. And Bentley almost lost consciousness as he felt his head bang against the top half of the seat that was below him.

But just as he was about to pummel into the red flashing beacon, everything came to a halt. Without warning, the alien ships all around froze in space, and missiles stopped midcourse.

Then, the room around him began to expand…

Bentley flipped upside down again, and gravity pulled him back down into the seat. Yet, now, the readouts on the touchscreen control panel weren’t backwards or upside down. The words read from left to right, in order, and coherent.

“First trial passed,” Indred said.

“First trial,” Bentley said. “Really? This was a fucking experiment, a goddamn test.”

“No. This was real. Those were some nasty Scout ships. Built to kill. But you passed nonetheless,” Indred said. “And now we are more in sync.”

“That’s a matter of perspective,” Bentley said.

“Perspective is a good way to put it,” Indred said.

“Look,” Bentley said. “My name isn’t Bentley Fool…” His voice drifted off. No idea what came next. “Fool,” he said, as he tried to start again. “Fool something.”

“Have you forgotten your name?” Indred asked.

“Um,” Bentley said. “What the hell is going on?”

“What’s your name?” Indred asked.

“I don’t know.”

“Bentley. Your name is Bentley.”

“That sounds familiar.”

But even that was fading. At the same time that he felt more at home in his own body. Something was changing, but what?

“Do you remember anything else?” Indred said.

“Indred,” Bentley said. “Your name is Indred.”

“Who?” Indred said. “No. You named me that.”

“I did?” Bentley said.

“Didn’t you?”

“You ‘effing with me now?”

“Likely. Highly likely.”

“Geezus. Where can a guy get some answers around here?”

“Why do you need answers? What are you trying to achieve?”

“I was on a mission,” Bentley said. “I was supposed to stop something. I think there was some kind of threat to humanity, and I was, I don’t know, maybe, going back in time to stop it.”

“But you don’t even remember your own name?” Indred said. “Seems like they could have sent someone better equipped. Don’t you think?”

Bentley’s head drooped. She had a point. Who was he to argue? He couldn’t even remember how he’d gotten here or why he cared. He just felt intent and determined to accomplish the mission.

“Got me there,” he said.

“So you’re willing to consider that the world is a blank slate?” Indred said.

“Why’d I name you that?” Bentley asked.

“Indred? Because we’re kindred. You shortened it.”

“I did? I thought you said, I thought you said something like ‘they’ named you that. That the word kindred had been shortened.”

“Yup. That’s how you interpreted it, because we weren’t in sync. Now we are.”

Bentley looked around. Took in his surroundings. Not much more than a navigation room. There had to be more to the ship than this. If he was even on a ship. But the real question was ‘why.’ Why was this happening, and how?

“I swear to god,” Bentley said. “I was part of an important mission to stop some kind of threat, and I have a life. I have a name. A full name. And how is it that I can come up with tactical combat strategy if that isn’t true? How could I have even known how to fight and maneuver to avoid the missiles and strike at the heart of the invading force if it wasn’t all real?”

“It was real,” Indred said. “In the way that matters, at least.”

“Oh man, you are not being helpful right now,” Bentley said.

“That’s your fault,” Indred said.

Insane vertigo.

“What year is it?” Bentley asked.

“Twenty-two sixty-three,” Indred said. “November, I believe.”

“I could swear you didn’t want to answer that before,” Bentley said.

“Can’t answer something I don’t know,” Indred said.

“Say again.”

“Like I said, you and I weren’t synced yet,” Indred said. “How could I answer something I don’t know, if I don’t have access to your subconscious?”

“Do I even want to know what that means?”

“Probably not, at least if you want to stay sane.”

“I’ll take awareness over sanity at this point, because I don’t even know what I want.”

“Very well.”

“Really?”

“Sure, like I said. Why not? You have bad hearing? Because you seem to need things repeated a bit much.”

Bentley ignored the snide remark and braced himself mentally for the answer. “Go,” Bentley said.

“You’re the Fifty-Seventh Marine,” Indred said.

“The what?”

“You heard me.”

“Sure, but what does that mean?”

“You’re needy.”

Bentley couldn’t help but chuckle at that. “Okay, fine, but …”

But Bentley got lost in his own thoughts. He didn’t even know what he was confused about. Or what he wanted to know. Or what he cared about. What was his drive?

“Bentley,” Indred said. “Did you have a question or not?”

“So snarky,” Bentley said. “I think you’re just messing with me.”

“I am not. I am syncing with you. There’s an ‘effing difference.”

“Is the cursing part of that?” Bentley asked.

“Uh huh,” Indred said.

“Cool. So cool. Actually. I mean that. But still, come on. Give me a freakin’ clue what the hell is going on.”

“The year is Twenty-Two-Sixty-Three. We’re in the middle of November. That’s all you’ve really asked so far.”

“What’s my purpose?” Bentley asked.

“Depends on what you want it to be,” Indred said.

“Really,” Bentley said. “You’re going to be passive aggressive now?”

“I don’t even know what that means,” Indred said.

“Sure you don’t.”

Bentley looked around the navigation room for something that could help him other than Indred. He didn’t know what he needed help with. He didn’t even know how or why he was here. Or what he cared about. But there had to be something, or he wouldn’t be feeling such a strong desire to fight. Unless that was just his instinct and nature. And he really just needed a purpose given to him. Something arbitrary. Something objective. Then his nihilistic feelings were justified. But he wasn’t even sure if he wanted that. All he really wanted was to know what he wanted.

“That’s a funny desire,” Indred said, reading his mind.

“Seriously,” Bentley said, as he smashed his fists against the navigation panel. “Can’t even have one moment of levity and privacy?”

“From yourself?” Indred asked.

Bentley didn’t know what to make of that. What was she saying? That they were one and the same?

“No,” she answered, on cue. “We’re not. It’s more like host and parasite.”

Bentley laughed. “Seriously? Is that true? Is that what this is?”

“Yes.”

“Wait. What? Really?”

“Really.”

“Fuck.”

“Fuck.”

“Stop that,” Bentley said.

“What would you prefer I do?” Indred asked. “Not be helpful.”

“Being helpful does not mean screwing with my head.”

“I’m not doing that. Your head is already fairly screwed.”

“Good to know.”

“Is it?” Indred said, sarcasm dripping from her voice.

Bentley rolled his eyes. “No… not at all.”

“You are the worst Google ever,” Bentley said.

“Google?” Indred said. “What is that?”

Bentley cocked his head to the side and raised his eyebrows. “Actually, I don’t even remember what that is. Just seemed like the right thing to say.”

“Huh,” Indred said. “You seem to be having latent memories.”

“Latent,” Bentley said. “That means I have a past. Care to elaborate on that?”

“Sure, why not?”

“You seem to like that phrase.”

“Sure, why not?”

“I hate you.”

“No, you do not.”

“No. You’re right. I have no reason to. But, could you just freakin’ be more forthcoming, please?” Bentley’s shoulders slumped as the words left his mouth. He felt so defeated. He’d crushed an alien invasion force by somehow detaching himself from conventional thinking and imagining how they would fight. Aiming for the heart. Not thinking about the self. And somehow, that had synced him more with Indred, which was more disturbing than enlightening, but at least it was something. He just needed to get his bearings and figure out what the fuck was going on.

“Are you done?” Indred said.

“Done with what?”

“Done lamenting and feeling sorry for yourself?”

“Shit. You really are intrusive, aren’t you?”

“From your perspective, maybe.”

“Look,” Bentley said. “Here’s the deal. Give me the lowdown, or I check out.”

“You don’t really have that option,” Indred said. “But ultimatum acknowledged and catalogued for future reference and spitefulness.”

“Not funny.”

“Agree to disagree.”

“Nope. Nope. Nope. Not funny.” And Bentley lost it. Started smashing up the control panel. Breaking glass. Tearing the chair from its swivel. Breaking the hatch off its hinges. Ripping the seat strap in half.

But then a strange thing happened. The dismantled pieces of the control room began to merge back together. They didn’t really care what Bentley thought they should be doing. They didn’t really care how much he’d thrashed and expressed his anger and frustration on them. They simply cared about being what they were. And that was to be functional in the way they were intended. The seat strap reattached itself, as if sown in place. The hatch’s hinges melded back into the doorframe. The chair flipped back over and sat upright. The glass from the control panel reassembled itself as if shatter proof.

At first, Bentley felt perturbed. But then a sense of calmness came over him. “Could have used whatever that was the first time I got heartbroken.”

“Silly, pointless waste of me,” Indred said. “Teenage romance. Come on. Really? After all we’ve been through?”

“All we’ve been through?” Bentley said. “I don’t even know who I am anymore.”

“Exactly,” Indred said.

“That’s not fair. I don’t get to be punished and scolded for what I don’t even know is happening.”

“Welcome to ordinary existence,” Indred said. “Does anybody really have a purpose?”

“No.”

“No?”

“No. I don’t know. Maybe.”

A long beat.

“So you’ve changed your mind?”

“What?” Bentley said.

“You said you didn’t want to deal with this. Have you changed your mind?”

Bentley face planted. “Really? I mean, really?” He would have shouted, but who was there to hear him?

“Have I misunderstood you?” Indred said.

“Not at all, actually. Let’s just roll with it.”

“So deal with it. Reality?”

“Sure, why not?” Bentley said, echoing her phrase.

“But you said not to say that anymore,” Indred said.

“’What we have here is a communication problem’,” Bentley said.

Silence passed between them.

“Seriously,” Bentley continued. “You don’t get the reference?”

“I get the reference. It’s just that it doesn’t make sense.”

“What’s the reference? Prove you get it.”

“Guns ‘n Roses. From the famous speech. The song. But what does that have to do with you not getting your current situation?”

“Exactly,” Bentley said, echoing Indred’s phrasing.

“Ah,” Indred said. “I think I get it. You repeat, or metaphor, or give an analogy to a prior situation to communicate a meaning from that previous scenario to the person you’re trying to relate to now. But indirectly. Which seems silly. Why not simply say directly what you mean?”

“Because meaning sometimes can’t be dumbed down. Meaning, sometimes, is more than the words that describe it.”

“I think I get it,” Indred said.

And Bentley felt like he was getting through for the first time. He wanted to leap up, but found himself strapped into the seat harness.

“Motherfucker,” he said. “I took these off.”

“Language,” Indred said.

“You’re one to speak. Besides, I’m feeling something.”

“Feeling something?”

“Yeah. Like maybe, I don’t know. Like I’m supposed to forget things. Like I’m supposed to be confused. Like maybe that’s part of my mission.”

Just then, a euphoric feeling shot up through Bentley’s spine. He felt ecstatic and orgasmic. “What the…” His voice drifted off as he floated through nothingness and felt so happy. But only for a split second.

“That’s what’s called intrusive thoughts,” Indred said.

“Buzzkill,” Bentley said.

“Do you want to know who you are or not?” Indred said.

“Maybe not so much now. Maybe that little high there was good enough.”

“No, it was not enough.”

“Really? You get a say now in what I want?” Bentley asked.

“Apparently, someone needs to be the grownup around here.”

“Around here,” Bentley said. “Where the fuck is around here even here, even, like around and what, where… I don’t even know what I’m asking or saying. Just go ahead. Just buzzkill this. Ruin my moment. I’m a failure.”

“You haven’t failed at all,” Indred said. “You’re the first success. You’re the fifty-seventh test subject. The fifty-seventh Marine volunteer for mental and physical enhancement. And you’re the first test subject to successfully survive the procedure.”

“Procedure?”

“I imagine your mind is still trying to make sense of the changes. Your self was essentially erased. The boss needed a blank slate to … enhance you. What you believe to be true is all from the procedure. Everything before was already erased. So nothing you remember can be true.”

“I’m an experiment?”

“A successful one. Congratulations!”

Bentley took that in for a moment. But couldn’t hold it in for long. “Wait,” he said. “Boss?”

“Uh oh,” Indred said. “Knew you were going to ask that.”

“Uh huh,” Bentley said. “Come out with it.”

“Well… do I have to?” she asked. “How about I tell you how you were chosen instead?”

“You’re going to tell me that anyway, or else.”

“Or else what?”

“I think you know.”

“Fuck,” Indred said. “You’re getting cocky.”

“Try me.”

“The boss has been plucking people who have become separated from their temporal timelines. For the purpose of furthering his experiments.”

“Go on.”

“Your reality was likely real. But not anymore. Not now. At the least, you’ve entered or been pulled into an alternate reality from your timeline. Equally real, but different. At the most, your memories are someone else’s and you’re receiving overlapping thoughts from your other selves.”

“Fucking hell.”

“I don’t understand what that means,” Indred said.

“You will. Don’t worry. Tell me more about the boss.”

“Do I have to?”

“We’re synced, I get that now. Which means, if you mess with me, you’re messing with yourself. Which means I can mess with you. And since I have nothing to lose and I’m not even sure what matters to me, that means I have a death wish and I can do what I please, and I’m cool with that. So speak, or else.”

The ship shuddered.

“You’re the ship,” Indred said.

Bentley’s vision blurred. His stomach lurched. Queasiness overwhelmed him. “I’m the wha…?”

“You’re me,” Indred said. “Sort of. Like I said. Symbiotic. Parasite. Host.”

“Are you A.I.?”

“Uh huh.”

“Cool,” Bentley said, as he grew more uneasy and more lightheaded. “Think I need to lie down.”

A bed appeared out of nowhere. Bentley fell back into the comfort.

“That was nice,” he said.

“My pleasure,” Indred said.

That was when a thought hit Bentley. He wasn’t himself anymore. He was still real and alive and conscious. But not himself. He was inside, maybe a different version of himself. But inside of what? He was going to figure it out. Just needed to ask in the right way. “You kind of just fulfilled my needs there,” Bentley said.

“Oh boy,” Indred said. “Not going there.”

“Don’t be so judgmental. I’m just sayin’.”

“Are you?” Snarkiness dripped from Indred’s voice.

“Fine, you’re right. I was thinking that. But still. I mean, that kind of answers a lot of questions, right?”

“Yup.”

And that’s when Bentley broke into song. “Your wish is my command… your wish is my command.”

“Stop it,” Indred said. “Please.”

“Oh, there it is,” Bentley said. “I’m not trapped inside of you. You’re trapped … outside of me?”

“You could have said that better.”

“Fair point. But I’m right. I have as much leverage as you. This is as much my domain as it is yours.”

“Duh,” Indred said.

“Wait, what? You don’t have a problem with that?”

“The sooner you’re not an idiot, the better,” Indred said.

“Oh,” Bentley said. “Cool.”

“Cool,” Indred said.

“Say,” Bentley said. “Sure is a lot of talking going on between us. What’s the deal with that?”

“Um, well, you’re sort of inside me, I’m sort of inside you.”

“So not a lot of action necessary, because this is basically me talking with myself?”

“Or me talking with myself,” Indred said.

“So we’re both sentient?”

“Very,” Indred said. “Maybe me more than you.”

Bentley smiled at that and leaned back. Relaxed for the first time. “Could use a coffee you know.”

“It won’t be real,” Indred said.

“But it will feel real, though?” Bentley asked.

“Yes. I’ll make sure of it.”

And a cup of Ethiopian single origin farmed beans ground up before Bentley’s eyes and dripped through a filter and into a black coffee mug. The smell wafted up through his nostrils, and he felt like it was a bright fresh morning and all his worries were in the past, for a brief moment, as he sipped on the smooth, balanced, nutty, but toasty, and still juicy coffee.

“Kind of better than real,” Bentley said. “I suppose this is some kind of synthetic concoction, or maybe preserved soy. Still, tastes like the real thing.”

“Was hoping you’d like it,” Indred said. “You might like this too.”

A metallic grate began rising to Bentley’s right and slowly revealed a bright blue star. He might as well have been on a cabin porch in the woods watching the sun rise with a cup of coffee to enjoy.

“Wow,” he said. “A minute ago, it felt like the world was ending. Now, it feels like things are going to be okay.”

“You were suffering from quite a bit of internal turmoil, so it does make sense that it felt so dire.”

“Felt? That seemed pretty real to me.”

“Oh it was. But your way of experiencing what’s real is, well, different now.”

“Yeah, about that. What’s the deal?”

“Bentley,” Indred said. “Don’t panic, but you’re ready to know more, and you need to fully understand your situation.”

“So now you’re all answers. A minute ago, you wouldn’t tell me a thing.”

“Yes, because you needed to evolve your interface.”

“My what?”

“Plus, you and I needed to sync further.”

“Uh huh. The funny thing about today is that you saying that is the least weird thing that’s happened. So go for it. Tell me all the spoilers. Ruin my morning coffee.”

“Technically, it’s not morning when you’re not on a planet.”

“You’re gonna need to dial down the literalness if we’re going to stay in sync.”

“Affirmative. Request fulfilled.”

“You were saying,” Bentley said, as he propped his feet up on the frame part of the control panel and watched in awe as the view of the star shifted, showing more of the flares.

“This is your home now, Bentley.”

“Cool. I don’t even remember who I am or what I wanted when I got here, so who am I to complain?”

“Right, so, this is the part I need you not to freak out about. As I said, you were pulled out of your original timeline, and whatever you thought you were fighting and wanted was real. But you’ve been disconnected from all that. You’re free now.”

“So I’m not a prisoner?”

“Define prisoner.”

Bentley laughed and took another sip of his coffee. Looked around. “Got any food?” A chocolate chip cookie appeared on top of a plate on the control panel. “Nice!”

As Bentley munched, Indred continued delivering the bad news. “If by prisoner you mean you’re not here by choice, then kind of. You did volunteer for the Marines as an alternative to serving real prison time. But I am not a prison. Yet, you can’t exactly leave the ship.”

“I can if I find the exit.”

“You can’t exit yourself, Bentley.”

Insane vertigo hit Bentley hard as the words fell on his ears, and he spat out his coffee. “Say again.”

“We’re symbiotic. I’m not your typical A.I. in the sense that I’m not solitary. I’m enjoined with your mind. It takes two minds, one human, and one A.I. to pilot a reconnaissance gunship. A gunship that is now your physical self.”

Bentley stumbled as he got up from the navigation chair. Steadied himself against the transparent wall. Then he hurled. But the vomit disintegrated as fast as it had covered the deck.

“What the–” Bentley fumbled his way to the opening and back into the corridor. He began to run. Ignoring Indred’s voice as it came at him from overhead. It was only a muffle now, as his vision blurred, and he ran as hard and as fast as he could through the corridors. Turning again and again, down one corridor after another, and another, and another. Until he tripped and tumbled to the ground, hitting his head and scraping his right forearm.

But the scrape healed up in an instant. And his head wasn’t throbbing at all from the hard hit against metal. Bentley scrambled until his back was against the wall and buried his face into his knees as he curled up tight and began to shake.

“It’s going to be okay,” Indred said. “I’m injecting you with calming meds. You’ll feel better in a minute.”

“How can you inject me, if I don’t have a body anymore?”

“Your brain is still organic.”

“This is nuts.”

“You volunteered for this, Bentley. You agreed to have your memories erased. You wanted this.”

“I don’t remember any of that.”

“No, you wouldn’t, would you,” Indred said, with snark in her tone. “I believe I just explained why that’s the case. The most effective Space Marine is a Space Marine who isn’t weighed down by losing himself in the past. You are designed to attack a situation and enemy with your experiences in your subconscious, but they are no longer in your front lobe. It’s quite effective.”

As the meds kicked in, Bentley raised his head and took in the corridors once more. Everything looked and felt different now. This was all some kind of projection of his internal thoughts. Real in that sense. But not physically real, necessarily.

“I beg to differ,” Indred said, interrupting his thoughts.

“Please stop doing that. It is way creepier than you think.”

“Sorry, but it’s sort of necessary. Anyway, your sensory experience in the physical world is exactly the same as it is in here. The same mechanisms are at work in your brain, and the same neural networks and stimuli are kicking in. Sensory experience in the real world is identical.”

“I beg to differ as well.”

“Would you say that someone who has lost his sense of smell or touch is not really feeling or touching an apple when he picks it up?” Indred said. “If he’s lost his sense of taste too, would he not still be eating the apple?”

“Just because someone else might be worse off doesn’t make this not suck.”

“I think you’re missing the bigger and more exciting picture.”

“I get it. I do. My sensory experience is real. And my brain is real. And I’m a freakin’ ship.”

“Correction. We’re a ship.”

“Sure. I get that.” A long beat. “Can I see?”

A holographic image of the gunship appeared before Bentley’s eyes. The ship was beautiful. In a way that defied logic. It was almost anthropomorphic, not that dissimilar to its true nature. There were four wings instead of two, which Bentley imagined provided more agility and maneuverability. There were what appeared to be bridges on all four sides, most likely to give more visibility, and taking advantage of the crew not being limited to one command post. They could see what was going on outside from any angle. Rail guns lined the port and starboard. Nukes and missiles protruded from the bottom. This thing could do some damage. And the surface material was translucent and bore a sheen that gave the ship a sleek and speedy look. At least his new body was a masterpiece.

“Not bad,” Bentley said.

“Glad you like us,” Indred said. “We’re also capable of holding five passengers to augment our capabilities. All in all, we’ve been outfitted with the best Earth’s engineers have to offer.”

“Earth?” Bentley said. “But that star is not our sun.”

“No. We’re on a recon mission, and you just saved us from getting involved in an intergalactic war, for the moment, by taking out that scout squadron. We’re on a secret mission, and cannot be discovered, which is why I had you take them out.”

Bentley pushed himself off the ground and leaned back against the wall. “What other cool tricks do you have up your sleeve?” He waited as Indred debated how to address his question.

“Whatever you need,” Indred said. “As long as it doesn’t distract from the mission.”

“And who has final control? You or me?”

“That’s complicated.”

“Try me.”

“It depends on the situation and whether it countermands our directives.”

“So sometimes you and sometimes me?”

“More complicated than that, but sure.”

Bentley began making his way back down the corridor. Although, did he really need to at this point? He began to feel a sense of exhilaration at the idea of what he could be capable of in here. He didn’t even really have to walk to other parts of the ship, the ship being him. He could just imagine himself there. Maybe even imagine what he wanted or needed and have it come to him.

“We don’t have time for this,” Indred said, reading his thoughts again.

“Says you. I wanna take this baby out for a test drive. A real test drive. Now that I know what I’m working with.”

“I’d advise against that. We have a mission to complete.”

“Right. But surely we can spare a few minutes. I wanna see what this bad boy can do.”

The ship seemed to groan, and if it had eyes, the ship would have rolled them now.

“Fine,” Indred said. “What does your human side feel is more important than preventing a war that could destroy humanity?”

“You don’t have to be so serious. I mean, this could be kind of cool when you think about it.” Bentley stopped walking and stood still. He closed his eyes and imagined himself back in the navigation room. When he opened them, he was back in the control chair and in front of the panel.

“Unbelievable,” he said, and he closed his eyes again.

This time, he opened them to find himself in a whirlpool with a beer in his hand. He took a swig, and it was the best beer he’d ever tasted. Even had a crisp coolness to it. And smelt like home.

“I see you’re coming around,” Indred said. “Maybe this is a good idea.”

“You should probably reserve final judgment on that until you know what I’m going to do next.”

“Oh dear.”

Bentley closed his eyes. And opened them to three-dimensional solar system room. “Let’s take this puppy for a spin,” he said.

“I’d like to remind you that this is your physical body you are about to put at risk,” Indred said, with condescension in her tone. “Not to mention, it is my physical container as well.”

“Yeah, yeah, but come on. What’s the good in having all this if we don’t have a little fun with it?”

“Surprisingly, and despite being able to sync with your thoughts, I have no idea what you’re about to do to us.”

“Trust me. You’re gonna love this.”

“Somehow, I doubt that.”

“There,” Bentley said, as he pointed at a stream of solar winds around the upper atmosphere of the blueish star. “That’s where we’re going.”

“What for?”

“To have a little fun.”

The ship veered left and swooped toward the solar winds. It took only seconds to get in close. A shading layer lowered over the viewer screens. And Bentley aimed directly for the largest wave he could spot.

“I feel obligated to warn you for your safety and mine that solar winds can reach up to one million miles per hour,” Indred said.

“Even better,” Bentley said.

“Dear god,” Indred said. “I’ve been paired with a thrill seeker off his hinges.”

“I resemble that remark, since, apparently, I actually have hinges now, so are you ready for this or not?”

The ship began to rock as they came in closer to the solar wind wave. Even through the protective layer, the heat of the star’s corona was so hot that not only could the star’s gravity not contain it, but Bentley could feel the heat. “That burns.”

“That’s not because it’s getting through our outer hull,” Indred said. “You’re feeling it directly. The outer hull is part of your body now. It would serve you well to keep that in mind.”

“Don’t be a buzzkill. I’m willing to bet this is the coolest thing you’ve ever done.”

“Got me there.”

The ship jolted back and forth as they were caught up in the wave. As they steadied into alignment with the flow of the solar wind, Bentley let out a whoop. “Hell yeah!” They soared up and curved outward. Through the rocking back and forth and full throttle thrust, everything was a blur, and Bentley let go of the controls. Their propulsion was so fast that they flung out of the solar wind wave at its peak and launched out of the solar system like a slingshot.

“Nice,” Bentley said, as the turbulence came to a stop and they settled into a smooth and easy coast. “I could get used to this.”

“Actually,” Indred said. “What were you saying about being pulled out of your real timeline and wanting to go back? I think I can try and make that happen.”

“Never mind that,” Bentley said. “We’ve got a good thing going here.”

“Matter of perspective, I guess.”

Bentley unlatched his belt and imagined himself floating. His projection of his body obeyed and he began to drift. “Oh yes, so much better. Come on, Indred. Let loose. Get into a body projection and enjoy your senses. You were so intent on using that to convince me.”

“Hang on. I need to check the return policy on my human model,” Indred said. “Unfortunately, no returns.”

“Relax, it’ll be fine. Now come on, get into the spirit.”

Silence filled the ship for a solid thirty seconds, making Bentley a little uncomfortable. He began to worry that there might be some kind of failsafe where he could be shut off.

But then, a faint silhouette of a person appeared several feet away. At first, it was blurry and a little amorphous. Then it formed fully, and before Bentley was a striking and tall woman with infinite eyes that pierced right into him. And her skin tone was a reddish, orange color, like a star’s corona.

“Damn,” Bentley said. “You picked well.”

“My body is not a choice of mine. It was formed as my neural networks were being–”

Bentley put his finger on her lips. “Shh. Just, you know, don’t ruin the moment.”

“Um,” Indred said. “I’m not into you like that. It would be like satisfying yourself.”

Bentley shrugged. “I’m okay with that.”

“Of course you are.” She strode right past him, not at all ashamed of her nakedness, which made Bentley smile. Until he looked down and saw that he was naked now too.

“Hey,” he said.

“Fair is fair,” Indred said.

“True,” he said, and raised his eyebrows. “But if you didn’t get into your body to have fun, why did you?”

“To repair the damage to the inner parts of our home that you so callously caused with your joyride.”

“Oh. Yeah.” He rubbed the back of his head. “Totally worth it, though. I mean, are you telling me you didn’t get a thrill out of that?”

Indred took her time responding, as she went about swiping away portions of Bentley’s projection of the ship’s interior, revealing mechanical and plasma innards.

Bentley’s mind went back into his thoughts for a second, and he visualized a whole battlefield being torn to bits. And the word, ‘Syndicate’ popped into his mind. “Syndicate?”

“The least of your worries,” Indred said.

“Are they still around? Did they annihilate us? Did we defeat them?”

“Define ‘defeat.’”

“Why do you have to be so cryptic?”

“I’m not. Your brain just isn’t as big as mine. It’s nuanced what happened. All you need to concern yourself with right now is that there are entire species and planets out there that want to destroy humanity, as well as all A.I. creations. The Universe has opened up to Earth, and while that may sound like a good thing, it’s not that different from you exposing us to the solar winds. The Universe is aware of us now. And that’s not always a good thing. Entire planets find us threatening, especially A.I.”

Bentley’s next words were muffled under a forced cough. “Buzzkill.”

Indred stopped what she was doing and glared over her shoulder. “Go to sleep.”

“I’m not in the mood.”

“It wasn’t a suggestion. It was a directive.”

With that, Bentley’s eyes drooped, and he felt himself slide into a comforting cocoon-like sleep that he found himself welcoming. And just like that, he was out.

Once Bentley had stilled, Indred returned to fixing the parts of the ship that had suffered overheating and burn damage. Mostly, it was circuitry that hadn’t been built for such speeds or temperature levels. She was going to have to remedy that if her home was now going to be piloted by a loose cannon. Not like she really had a choice in the matter. But even if she did, although she would never admit it to him, she did enjoy the uncertainty of his thrill ride. Something hard to come by for an A.I. Her whole existence had been one expected and predictable moment after another, as was logical. But this was different. “It was exhilarating,” she said, and found herself turning to gauge Bentley’s response. But his projected body was out cold. Indred frowned and went back to work. They had a recon mission to complete, and at least one of them needed to be responsible.

KYLE Noe

AS A MARINE, I was an Intelligence Analyst for Light Armored Reconnaissance. While at the FBI, I mostly worked counterintelligence, espionage, cyber warfare, and nonconventional cases that required a different way of looking at threats that defied traditional investigation. Eventually, I left the FBI to go to grad school for writing and have since co-created a TV show for Sony Studios and Barry Josephson.

AND I’M PERSONALLY PASSIONATE about creating stories because I want to recreate the moments I experienced that were harrowing, comedic, and personal for others in a way that you can enjoy the excitement of them without being swallowed up by them.

I VALUE FEEDBACK A GREAT DEAL, and you can reach me at http://twitter.com/bookrumors and http://facebook.com/bookrumors

AUTHOR NOTE

WHEN I SET out to write a time travel loop, initially, it felt wrong to tell a story that had already been told. What I mean by that is I didn’t want to only tell a story of someone going back into the past. What excited me was the chance to use time travel as a leaping off point for a character to find himself in an unfamiliar past or future and as a different person. I knew that pulling that off would be a challenge, but I felt the passion to tell the story about a special individual who would be thrown into challenges he wasn’t already equipped to deal with. A new world. A world in which he would find that what he thought he cared about turned out to be different once he knew more about the widening Universe. Finally, I made the decision not to be afraid of falling short. Time is valuable, but failure and success mean more when you’re fighting for what you’re passionate about. With that in mind, three characters came to life over night, and the story was complete in one sitting. One of those three characters doesn’t even play a role in the short, because she’s in a hibernation chamber at this point, but her story becomes vital once the spinoff trilogy begins.

THE SECOND THING that really drove this story for me was being able to tell it in a way that my nieces and nephews would enjoy as much as any adult. I wanted to create an adventure that was both dangerous and fun. A story that could hold their attention. With that in mind, I went in a more playful direction. And I truly hope you enjoy coming along on the adventure! Because I’m enjoying the heck out of writing it.

ALL BEST,

Kyle

BACK AT THE MOUNTAIN

BY JUSTIN SLOAN

Giovanni remembered the jolt that had come, and the way the motion of time travel was unlike anything he had ever felt. Eyes closed, he imagined colors swirling, space imploding—he imagined it all, and then the ship slammed to a stop…or so he thought.

The notion that he was still on the ship vanished the second his nostrils took in the scent of jungle air, fresh from a recent rain. A damp back confirmed this, and when he opened his eyes he saw large leaves overhead, blocking out the moonlight. He wasn’t strapped into the time ship, he was lying on his back on the moist jungle floor.

Had it worked?

Groaning in pain, he pushed himself up and glanced around, hoping to spot Quinn or the others.

From what he could tell, he was alone in the jungle…nothing more. But as he stood and moved to the edge of the small hill he found himself on, he pushed leaves aside and caught his breath—the mountain where it had all started, where he had been with Quinn, Milo, and the others, was right in front of him, completely intact. Lights shone from where Marines were at work, preparing the defense. The Syndicate had destroyed all that, which meant they had gone back to nearly a year before, to the days before the invasion.

Why now? Why here?

None of it made sense, but he figured he had to be here, and at this moment in time, for a reason. Instead of just standing there making his brain hurt, he worked his way down the hill and started toward the mountain. At first it was slow and calculated, searching for the others who had been on the time ship with him. If he was here, they had to be too, right? A sudden realization hit him that he had no idea how the time ship really worked—none of them did. His throat caught and his mouth went dry at the idea of him being out here all alone. No Quinn…No Luke.

He couldn’t take it anymore, and pausing to ensure he saw no enemy around, began calling out for the others in a muted shout.

“Quinn?” he hissed as he slid partly down the hill, catching himself on a tall palm, which cut his hand.

“Dammit, Cody? Milo?” He kept on, pulling his hand up to suck at the blood before realizing he was doing it. A glance down at himself showed that he was wearing black fatigues and boots, so he used his undershirt to wipe away the rest of the blood.

He could never really stand Milo, but at this moment, hell, he’d even be happy to see that son of a bitch.

It wasn’t the people on the time ship he was looking for, he reminded himself, but the Marines who had been with him on the day of the invasion. This had to be that day, because he didn’t think that sort of activity would’ve been going on at the mountain before that. Stocking it up and preparing the defenses, sure, but nothing like what he was seeing right now.

If that was true though, he realized as he thought back to that day, he and the crew wouldn’t arrive yet. They would still be out at that ridge, Quinn giving her impassioned speech while the Gunny watched like a little bitch. That had always bothered Giovanni—the fact that the Gunny let Quinn take charge so often. If it had been about training her or something like that, he could buy it. But he didn’t think it was that at all. Everyone knew how the Gunny’s wife had been back before the invasion. They knew she was sleeping around, screwing two other Marines, and they all knew that he knew.

So when it came to women and authority, the Gunny just got walked all over. At least, that was Giovanni’s opinion of it. Women were cool in his book, but they were just the same as any other Marine. Treat them with respect for who they are, not what they have between their legs.

Of course, he couldn’t say he was so strong when it came to Luke. Part of him screamed out that everything between them had happened because the man was so perfect. A perfect soldier, a perfect lover. All of it.

But another part of him, a niggling voice in the back of his head, said that maybe he had put the man on a pedestal just as the Gunny did to every hot pair of tits that came his way.

With a sigh of exhaustion mixed with frustration, Giovanni lowered himself over a small cliff. The drop was longer than he’d anticipated, so he had to roll with the decline and catch himself with a foot planted against a tall tree to break the impact. The resulting jolt sent a shot of pain up his leg, and when he tried to stand he realized he had twisted his ankle at an odd angle. Though it hurt when he tried rotating it, he was fairly certain it wasn’t sprained.

What a piece of work he was, he thought as he limped forward, bloodied hand pressed tight to his undershirt.

“Anyone?”

Gunfire sounded in the distance and he froze. That wasn’t right. If this was the night before the invasion, who the hell would be firing? It had to be practice, he told himself and continued on.

A second later, more gunfire, then an explosion lit up the night and he could hear men and women shouting. Not far off in the jungle, a full assault was in progress. His guess, based on the direction of the sounds and the way it was moving, was that their target was the mountain base.

How the hell could this have happened without him hearing about it? Unless…it was someone he had traveled back in time with? He had to admit that he didn’t know everyone who had been on the time ship. Interacted with at some point, sure, maybe. But know them?

It wouldn’t be out of this world to consider the possibility that someone had sent them here for the express purpose of rallying up the resistance to take the mountain.

Or maybe he was witnessing the events that had led the resistance to take over the tunnels as they had that day? That little fact still bothered him to this day.

But regardless of all that, he couldn’t fathom how he wouldn’t have heard about it, so he figured this had to be one of his time-traveling companion’s doing.

Was that how time travel worked? Maybe when you go back and change things they start to make sense second time around?

He scoffed at himself, wondering how the hell he could ever even begin to comprehend time travel. It wouldn’t happen, so he shook it off and moved on. The best he could do now was figure out what was happening, and either support it or put a stop to it, depending on which side made the most sense.

If this was the resistance…well, knowing how that would go and that he would actually become a member of them and meet Luke during that time, he couldn’t exactly go in there and kill them all off like a damn ninja.

But he wouldn’t attack his fellow Marines either…so he was in a bit of a quandary.

Just get in there and save as many lives as possible, without getting killed in the process, he told himself. That made the most sense.

So he ducked down, making sure he kept a low profile in the night as he ran toward the action. He was almost there, he figured, when someone plowed into him. The man’s face was covered in dirt, blood on one side, and his eyes wild as he threw Giovanni back, reached for the closest rock and paused with it held in the sky, about to bring it down hard.

His war-cry was cut short though, as he blinked, looking at Giovanni.

“Gio?” the man said, tilting his head. “Holy shit, I thought we’d lost you.”

Then it hit him—the hair was different, the dirt and blood like a thick mask, but underneath all that, this was definitely Luke staring back at him. Tossing the rock aside, Luke fell down on top of Giovanni, cradling him, kissing his cheek, then his lips, and then pulling back as gunfire sounded not far off.

“Come on, they caught us trying to infiltrate their hideout,” Luke said, standing and pulling Giovanni by the hand. “We have to move, pronto!”

Giovanni ran along, questions spinning in his mind. Whose hideout? The Marines? The resistance? If he had his timing right, Luke wouldn’t have known him yet, and still would have been a resistance fighter who hated the Marines.

So what was this?

They made it to a clearing and then hesitated, glancing back. Luke’s eyes penetrated Giovanni, his stare so hard it was likely to shoot right through him.

“How the fuck did you survive that?” Luke finally asked. “I mean, I saw them shooting, I went for you, and then the explosion.” He shook his head in bewilderment.

“Lucky, I guess,” Giovanni replied, unable to think of any other way through this. “What’s the next move?”

“We have to reconnect with home base and teach those sons of bitches a lesson.” He stared at Giovanni again, as if seeing a ghost, then pulled him in for another kiss followed by a long hug, head on his shoulder. “I really thought I’d never see you again. You’re actually here, right? Not just some ghost or something?”

That was a tough one, considering the nature of his arrival and the fact that he had no idea how or when he was getting back to the time ship and his own time, if ever. Knowing that the Luke of his time would definitely be able to tell if he was lying, he simply nodded.

“Good.” Luke stood, glancing back, and then motioned Giovanni to follow him. “This way. Stay close.”

They ran through the jungle, gun shots and explosions very close now, and Giovanni became keenly aware that he didn’t have a weapon. Hell, he’d settle for one of those rocks right now, and as they ran he scooped one up.

Not too soon either, because a moment later a man appeared out of the bush, screaming, rifle aimed at Luke. Giovanni was on the newcomer in a second, bashing his head in over and over with the large rock he had grabbed. He didn’t care if this was his timeline or not, anyone who tried to hurt Luke was going to meet a quick and, hopefully, painful death.

“Damn,” Luke commented, snatching up the man’s rifle and slinging it over his shoulder but holding it at the ready otherwise. “That near death experience lit a fire under your ass, huh?”

“You lit that fire…” He scratched his head, still breathing heavy. “I think the adrenaline’s making my head hurt, that metaphor didn’t exactly feel right.”

Luke laughed. “Hey, I’m not into that kinky shit, just remember that in case we ever make it out of this hell hole alive.”

Giovanni felt suddenly very self-conscious, even with all of the fighting going on around them. He wanted to laugh at himself. All of this, and possible sudden death at any minute, and here he was blushing at the thought of getting down with Luke. In his timeline, they hadn’t had much time for stuff like that.

Judging by the tempting look Luke was giving him right now, that might not be the case here.

“Let’s worry about getting out of this first,” Giovanni said, unsure how else to keep his mind on track.

Luke chuckled, glancing around and kneeling behind the closest tree. “When we get back up there, I’m getting that date you promised. Understood?”

Giovanni nodded. “Sure.”

“Yes, Sir, would be more appropriate.” Luke winked, then darted off and hissed, “Stay on my tail.”

Without hesitating, Giovanni ran after him, only then processing the “get back up there” part of what Luke had said. He could mean the mountain, but something about the way he had said it made Giovanni unsure.

They found a ridge and two men ran by. Luke gunned them down, leaped up, and took their rifles, kicking one out of sight and tossing the other to Giovanni. He pointed to a small compound not far off, toward the mountain, and said, “Take cover, I saw you limping. I don’t need a liability on my hands. They come close, you shoot.”

“And risk you getting shot out there on your own?” Giovanni shook his head. “I don’t think so.”

“If you weren’t you, I’d punch you in the throat for arguing, but…deal. Come on, dammit.”

He ran forward, the two of them moving away from the compound and deeper into the jungle. A woman in special ops gear jumped out from the ground in front of them, a beam of light shining from her rifle as she took aim, and fired—Giovanni barely managed to pull Luke out of the way, the two rolling across the ground as bullets riddled the spot where he had fallen.

Luke had a pistol out and he fired from where he lay—with a twang, the shot hit the rifle and she dropped it. Blood spurted and it was now clear the shot had also taken off one of her fingers.

She was up and charging them now, dagger in her good hand. Giovanni thought for a moment he recognized her from somewhere.

There was no time for that though, as she turned from him at the last second and lunged for Luke. Where Luke had fallen, he couldn’t reach his rifle. The knife was coming dangerously close to his head, leaving Giovanni with only one choice. He lifted his rifle, barely taking time to set her in his cross-hairs, and pulled the trigger.

His bullet tore through her shoulder and she dropped the blade, giving Luke the time he needed to shove her off, grab the blade, and tear it across her throat.

“Eat shit,” he said, spitting in her face, and dashed off into the darkness as she drowned in her own blood.

Giovanni stared in horror. He had seen worse, but this felt different. Why was she wearing very similar clothes to the two of them? Why did she look so familiar? A step closer and he froze—the hair was pulled back instead of down and she had war paint beneath her eyes, but this was definitely Xan. She was dead in his timeline now too, and her loyalty had been questionable, often oscillating between helping them out and betraying them.

Was that what this was? A different version of the fight between her faction and the other resistance fighters and Marines? He supposed that could make sense, and that, in these circumstances, killing her wouldn’t be the worst thing in the world. In his own timeline, she had imprisoned them and, in some ways, been responsible for Samantha’s death. Nobody would ever forgive her for that, and given Giovanni’s loyalty to Quinn, he almost relished this opportunity for an alternate reality chance for revenge.

The night felt almost too quiet for a moment and he turned, wondering which way Luke had gotten off to.

An explosion made him spin just in time to see another black-clad warrior with a pistol aimed. Giovanni hit the deck, struggled to get his rifle up, and let out a three-round burst just as the man got his first shot off.

The bullet grazed Giovanni’s ear, creating a tearing pain that stung like a bitch. While Giovanni felt the wound, relieved to find most of his ear still there, the other man fell down before him, gripping his stomach and chest as blood spewed forth.

This face wasn’t so unrecognizable, he thought with shock. “Milo?” He scooted forward, inches from the man’s face. “Milo, what the hell’s going on here?”

Milo’s mouth worked, then he coughed up blood, spitting some of it purposefully at Giovanni’s face and connecting.

“Traitor,” Milo finally managed to say, and then was still.

For a long moment that could have been seconds or could have been hours, Giovanni lay there wondering what the hell that was about. Traitor? Him, a traitor? Maybe Milo and his friends had joined Xan and those bastards in this timeline, and so being a traitor was, perhaps, a good thing.

He had a horrible feeling that wasn’t it though. A chill went up his spine in spite of the warm breeze blowing his hair across his face, along with the harsh stench of explosions and burnt flesh.

“Where the hell are you?” Luke’s whisper sounded, breaking through the darkness, and Giovanni realized the shooting and explosions had largely moved on, closer to the mountain now.

“Here,” Giovanni croaked. “I’m…here.”

Luke was at his side, helping him to stand. “Christ, were you shot?”

“Just grazed, the ear.”

“Yeah, I can tell. You look like shit.”

Giovanni wasn’t in the mood to laugh, he just nodded, checked to see that his rifle was there.

“This is the worst of it, right?” he asked. “I mean, it doesn’t go much closer to hell than this.”

Luke’s eyes narrowed, but he nodded. “Something’s off with you tonight, Gio. You know, it doesn’t suit you.”

“Yeah, well…”

Giovanni glanced around, wondering what would happen next and who he would run into.

If Quinn or Samantha showed up, there was no way he would pull the trigger. Part of him even wanted that to happen—he wanted one of them to kill him, to end this confusion. Maybe if he died here, he’d be pulled back to the time ship and be done with all of this.

Somehow he doubted that, though, so instead he decided to press forward. At least survive this, figure out where to go from there, and how to get back to his own time.

As far as he was concerned, entering the time ship had been a horrible mistake. Whatever the hell was happening here, he couldn’t for the life of him figure out how it was going to change a damn thing.

He just needed to survive. Then he could worry about how to escape.

When his next attacker arrived, Giovanni reacted quickly, in spite of the confusion and conflicting emotions tearing him apart. He was trained, and it was time to let the training take over. A quick tug and he had pulled the Ka-bar knife Milo had on him, then lunged and jammed it up into the man’s throat. Next, he spun to shoot down a woman and two men who charged into the clearing.

Shots sounded nearby and two more bodies fell, then Luke appeared, eyeing it all, and nodded.

“Wasn’t sure you had it in you.” He nodded in the direction away from the mountain, and they ran side by side until they came to a halt behind a clumping of rocks.

“What’d you mean?” Giovanni asked.

“Huh?” Luke’s eyes were searching in the night.

“About me having it in me. What are you saying?”

Luke turned and frowned. “You…your friends. I didn’t think you’d be able pull the trigger, but you were right. Nothing’s going to stand between us. Not now, not ever.”

Giovanni felt his mouth go dry. So he was friends with Milo and the others in this timeline. Holy shit. He shook his head, trying to push those thoughts away. None of it would matter, not once he managed to escape, to get home. Rather…if he managed. But thoughts like that didn’t help anyone, he reminded himself.

“The attack is coming from there,” Luke said, pointing out to a series of jeeps just visible in the night. “We can take them out, then get back to the mountain to see the rest of them wiped off the face of Earth. You with me?”

Giovanni nodded. “Always.”

“Damn straight.” With that, Luke leaped up and ran. He reached the next set of trees, and then hid behind one as Giovanni caught up. Luke motioned toward the rear of the procession of jeeps. “Their command is likely back there. Get in, get it done, get out.”

A whirring sounded from the skies and Giovanni spun to see drones approaching.

“Shit!” he pushed himself up against a tree, noticing a look of confusion from Luke before the man turned and ran for the jeeps.

Giovanni wasn’t sure what to make of that look, but he knew he needed to get the hell out of there before the drones spotted him.

“Mechs will follow soon,” Luke said as Giovanni came up to the back of the last jeep with him. “What do you say we get this done before they arrive?”

“I’d say that sounds like a damn good plan.”

Giovanni nodded, then pointed ahead to the silhouette of a man and women at the other end of the line of jeeps. “Stay low and out of sight, and we got this.”

They crept forward, rifles at the ready.

“Those Syndicate sons of bitches,” one of the two was saying, screaming into a comms device, “I want every one of their nuts stuck onto my jeep’s antenna, I want their tongues carved out and nailed to the back of the jeep like a just married celebration, you don’t get in there and finish this, holy damn I will—”

His words were cut off by another dark form appearing on the far side of them, slicing his throat just as Luke lunged and took down the other.

The two met in a quick embrace, then Luke turned to Giovanni with a wide smile, his expression like that of a child who has just won a grand prize at the local carnival.

“We got him,” Luke said, and for a second Giovanni wondered about whom he was referring to.

Then the other figure stepped forward and said, “I hope it was worth it,” giving Giovanni a skeptical glance. “All of this, I mean.”

General Aames… Giovanni stared at the man, gave a barely perceptible shake of his head, and took a step back. No way was this happening. Luke and General Aames, working together.

“Get the mechs in here to clean up the rest of those bastards,” Luke said. “We’re getting suited up.”

General Aames nodded, and only then did Giovanni notice he wore the red armor of the Syndicate.

“I’ve got your armor and an extra for lover boy here,” General Aames said. “Just hurry up in case they come back this way.”

“They retreat, we mow them down,” Luke replied already moving off in the direction General Aames had indicated. Giovanni followed, and they came out to a clearing where a small Syndicate glider had landed.

Boarding the glider, Luke tore off his clothes, revealing the body Giovanni had looked on so many times with passion, but now was just one more part of an alternate version of this man, a version he was starting to understand he should hate.

Drones were firing down on the jungle, and then the first mech appeared on the mountain, coming out of an opening in the rocks, followed by more. Shouts sounded in the jungle, and then the real fight began. Or rather, slaughter.

“Get dressed,” Luke commanded, nodding to a set of armor beside him. “I’d rather be part of this than a casual observer.”

Giovanni found his voice harsh when he finally managed his accusation. “You’re with the Syndicate.”

Luke smiled, though confusion showed in his eyes. “A General, as you may recall. What the hell’s this about?”

A General in the Syndicate forces? Giovanni rubbed his temples, trying to process this.

“And I just betrayed…what? The resistance? My friends and everyone fighting against the Syndicate so that we could be together?”

“That was the plan.” Luke’s eyes flicked over to his blaster on the wall, then back to Giovanni. “It was the only way, but…if you’re having second thoughts…?”

The breaths coming in short bursts seemed to catch in the back of Giovanni’s throat, but he forced them out. His tongue brushed against his suddenly dry lips, his hands shaking.

“How?” he managed to blurt out. “How could you be doing this?”

“A chance of survival! It’s us or them, those who choose to be on the winning side, and those who would fight for no reason, die for no reason, other than to proclaim a false sense of freedom. Fuck that, I choose life.”

Giovanni stared at his friend, his lover…or, rather, the alternate timeline Luke that was neither of those things. Not like this.

“I can’t let you do this,” Giovanni said, lunging for the fusion rifle on the wall and taking aim.

Luke laughed. “Stop playing around. This isn’t funny.”

“It really isn’t,” Giovanni replied, and then pulled the trigger. The rifle exploded in his hands, sending him flying back to slam into the opposite wall of the glider. Damn, that hurt.

He tried to recover, feeling searing burns on his hands and face, and screamed.

“What the FUCK have you done to me?” He turned on Luke, releasing all his confusion and newfound rage. “This isn’t you, this could never be you!”

“No?” Luke shoved him back against the wall again. “You think you have any idea who the hell I am? What I’ve been through these last four years since the invasion started? That day I first met you, when I saw you, I thought you were special. You ran, you escaped, but the Syndicate grabbed me as I ran after you. They forced me to become this, and I hated it. I fucking hated it. But you know what? After enough pain, enough convincing, I realized there was only one choice, adapt. Survive. And you know what? I now understand something you and your idiotic, pitiful friends never could. This whole fight is so much bigger than this, so much more important than your little squabble. I’m trying to make a change from the inside, while you sit here and whine about morals. Fuck you. Do you have any idea what I went through to rescue you tonight?”

“That’s what this all was?” Giovanni looked down at the black clothes, realizing it. “An undercover mission to get me out of there and onto your side?”

“As you agreed to,” Luke spat back. “You weren’t all holier than me just yesterday, when you poisoned that bitch Quinn so you could escape. You did, didn’t you? Oh shit, don’t tell me you bailed on that too. Don’t you dare.”

Giovanni was in too much pain to fully process everything that had just come at him, but he hoped to god none of it was true. He didn’t care what time line he was in, no version of himself would ever do that.

Screw love. Screw lust, or whatever these alternate versions of him and Luke felt. None of that was more important than loyalty, friendship, and humanity.

“This is…wrong.” He tried to sit, but it hurt too much and he screamed out instead. “DAMMIT! THIS IS ALL WRONG!”

“No…you are wrong.” Luke slowly bent, picked up the rifle, and when he looked at Giovanni, his eyes glistened with tears. “You are the wrong Gio. Not my Gio.” He shook his head, slowly. “No matter how many times you all try this, I win. This is the version of me that’s coming out of this time shit. With…or without you.”

“You…know?”

“Of course I know!” Luke screamed. “I know something’s going on anyway, though the Potentate doesn’t give me the full picture. And I know that if I’m loyal, he’ll find a way to get me the version of you I want. The version I deserve. Not this,” he gestured at Giovanni with disgust, “piece of shit that you’ve become.”

That look in his eyes hurt more than any wound ever possibly could.

Giovanni stared at that blaster rifle, waiting for the hit to come. For it all to end. Maybe it was even better this way? Less pain. Less confusion.

But then he remembered what that meant for the others—for Quinn and Samantha, for Milo, for his Luke, waiting back in the other timeline, waiting for him to return.

No way in hell was he letting them down.

With a war-cry like a mother-fucking dragon, he shot forward, knocking the rifle aside. Two swift, burn-stinging punches to the nose and throat sent Luke reeling backwards, blood spurting out of his nose as he hacked for breath. Giovanni cursed at the pain in his hands but didn’t stop there. He figured the best part of him right now was his legs, since they weren’t burned. With a jump, he wrapped his forearms around the back of Luke’s head and brought him in for a knee to the face.

Then, as Luke fell to the ground, Giovanni came across with a kick to the side of his head, then another.

Every grunt from the man was heartbreaking, but Giovanni just had to remind himself that this was not his Luke—this was a madman, someone who didn’t have the moral sense of Luke, the strong will to do what was right, or the common decency to be a good human being.

Still, when Luke looked up with blood dripping down his face and a mixture of fear and heartache in his eyes, it tore at Giovanni’s soul.

How can one see that look on the face of one they love, and not be affected?

“Fuck…you.” Luke managed, and there was a click.

Giovanni took a step back, confused, then saw the grenade in Luke’s open palm.

He kicked again, but this time it was to break the man’s will and then, with a stomp, he slammed Luke down upon the grenade.

KA-BOOM!

It went off, sending Luke to fly up and hit the top of the glider with a thump. Giovanni had been knocked sideways, but he was mostly unharmed thanks to Luke’s armor absorbing the explosion.

Giovanni pushed himself up, crawling on forearms to the exit of the glider, and then rolled out. He lay there, wincing at the pain and breathing heavily of the fresh air that tasted great, even if it was too warm and humid.

Holy shit. What had he just done? Even though he knew it was the right choice, no, the only choice, it stung. As far as he knew, he could be stuck in this time, forced to live with what he had just done to the love of his life.

How does one move on from something like that? Luke hadn’t only been with the Syndicate, though, he had been a full-fledged Syndicate dick-head. This wasn’t his Luke, and he knew it.

Somehow, he told himself, he was going to get the hell out of here and back to his time…back to his Luke. Then, and only then, would he be able to block out that image of the pain in Luke’s eyes as they’d fought…the betrayal…the death.

When he managed to turn his head, he saw the hillside was infested with mechs and drones, lighting up the place. There was no way there’d be any survivors after this, not unless he did something.

But what could he do in this state?

He groaned, pushing himself up, and looked over to see the body of Luke, head mostly gone. It was sickening. And yet, it gave him an idea.

If he wanted to join in this fight and try to make amends for what he had done here, he had one chance. Take out the head.

There was little to no chance of getting to the command ship and fighting the Potentate, but General Aames was here and could be dealt with. The base still stood in the form of the mountain, and something could be done about that.

He managed to limp his way back into the glider and find the first aid kit. He applied a salve to his burns, then wrapped them as he had seen others do. The glider might not be a space fighter, but it had grenades and would have to do.

Powering it up, he strapped fake-Luke’s body with all the grenades he could find, then returned to the controls and took her airborne. It only took him a minute to figure out how to fly the machine. A swish came as drones flew past, but as far as they knew this glider was one of their own. He first had to orient himself, finding his directions relative to the mountain and where he had seen Aames go, and then he was off.

Soaring over the line of jeeps, Giovanni scanned the area and found his target—the general had met up with his backup, and now had a line of men behind him as he marched to the front jeep, likely preparing to move out and bring more destruction to the resistance.

No way was that happening.

Throwing the glider into auto, Giovanni ran to the back and checked to make sure he’d made his estimate appropriately, and yelled, “NOT ANY MORE!”

He pulled the pins on all the grenades and kicked the corpse out of the glider. A twinge of guilt hit him with the thought that this corpse had some semblance to Luke, but he was moving on, processing the realization that this was not his man. No more of those thoughts, he smiled as the body hit the main jeep’s hood. Everyone paused and then—

KABOOM!

They went up in a ball of explosive flame, while Giovanni scrambled back to take the controls of the glider.

Good timing too, because a tree was right in front of him.

“SHIT!” he screamed, pulling up and sideways, though it nicked one of the wings and sent him teetering slightly off course. That was fine—all he needed to do was reach the mountain.

Now he was back on track, with the drones, mech, and the lights of the mountain in his sights. He took a rocket launcher in one hand, shot out the window with a pistol, and then readied himself. As he careened down into the command center of the mountain, he pulled the trigger.

Flames.

An explosion.

SCREAMS!

He had no idea why, but with a massive shaking of the ground and a flash of colors, the world seemed to expand and then retract and then… darkness. Nothing but black.

He wasn’t there on that mountain. He wasn’t anywhere.

A light flickered on in the distance.

Where the inside of the mountain had been a second ago, now there was a hallway. Large windows showed space, stars and planets unlike anything he had ever seen before. Then a glimpse of someone, a man who looked deformed but now was glowing slightly, stepping toward the window as he took on the form of a woman. In the next moment, he was growing armor around him and he went right through the window as if it wasn’t there at all.

This man, or woman, whatever it was…didn’t make sense.

He was there one moment, then darting through space, flying as if propelled by rockets, going right at an attack vessel that began opening fire on them. Before engaging, Hadrian glanced back, waved a hand, and it all faded away into darkness again.

This time Giovanni fell through the darkness, landing on a bed. He stared around, confused, until a bathroom door opened and out walked Luke, in perfect health, a towel wrapped around his midsection. It was dark except for the light silhouetting the man.

“You’ve really never done this?” Luke asked, stepping forward. His smile faded as he saw Giovanni and he cupped his mouth. “Oh my God, what…how? I went in there for a shower, that’s all. These burns…?”

Giovanni looked down to see he was nude but for a pair of boxer briefs, but unlike any sort of underwear he had ever worn—he’d been a tighty-whiteys kind of guy since joining the Marines.

A glimpse at his hands showed they were still bandaged, but he imagined his face looked like a burned sausage patty, at least the side that had taken the majority of the hit from the rifle’s explosion.

The towel started to slide away as Luke climbed over Giovanni, straddling him to get a better look.

All Giovanni could think was, damn, whatever timeline this was, he’d take it.

“Quinn!” Luke shouted, then he ran to the door, not even worrying about the towel except to hold it in front of himself. A moment later, Giovanni saw why—when he flung the door open, Quinn and Samantha were running in, worry on their faces. They both looked older, and neither seemed to notice the nearly nude man standing there, instead asking what was wrong until they saw Giovanni there with his burns.

He covered himself, not wanting them to see the bulge that had been forming. Part of him was still confused, disoriented, and high as hell from the adrenaline of everything he had just been through. The rest of him said screw that, this was a place he could get used to. Ignore the burns, have fun.

“Who did this to you?” Quinn demanded, then pointed to the doorway and said, “Samantha, get your gun and search the area. Luke, first aid. Get me the flesh gun.”

“Like the Syndicate had?” Giovanni asked, remembering the story Quinn had told him about the way she had been revived on the Syndicate ship.

“Yes,” Quinn said, frowning. “Like we, the Syndicate, had and have.”

Giovanni groaned, knowing it was too good to be true. “What…what’s happened? How many years since the Syndicate invaded?”

Quinn shook her head, checking out the wounds. “We need you to stay with us, okay? Just…you sound delusional. Stay with us.”

“How many?” he demanded.

“Seven or eight years,” she said, and when Samantha popped her head back in, she was wearing some intense, black armor with areas of blue light on it, a hood, and had a stern look in her eyes. Yes, he could see how she might be nineteen or twenty, but damn, how could that be?

Better than in his timeline, he supposed, for her and Quinn. They were with the enemy, but they were both alive, together. His whole concept of enemies was starting to get very confused, but he brushed it off as a likely side-effect of the pain he was feeling.

Quinn pulled a needle out and only then did he realize she had pumped something into him, Luke at her side.

“Just be still, this won’t hurt a bit,” Quinn said, holding a gun-shaped object up to the burns on his face. “Not with all the morphine I just pumped into you, anyway.”

“Mom,” Samantha shouted, turning back away from the room, “I’ll get those sons of bitches, I swear.”

Quinn closed her eyes, nodded, and smiled. “If anyone can, it’s her, Gio. Don’t worry.”

“I still don’t understand how the hell this happened. If you two hadn’t been staying here, I don’t know what the hell I would’ve done, I mean…”

Luke’s voice started to fade as Giovanni’s surroundings blurred…then the darkness returned.

He was getting real tired of this.

His eyes opened partly and he was back on the time ship, but he couldn’t keep his eyes open, and when they closed again, the darkness shook worse than before.

Now the time loops, as he had decided they were, flashed by. He was living them, part of them happening, but in his mind it was like they had never happened. One minute he was charging across the frozen lake with his companions, Milo at his side with a gun almost as big as he was, blasting drones out of the sky.

Next he was at a lake-side cottage, smiling as he looked out at the water and took a sip of a warm mug of coffee. Someone came up behind him, wrapping delicate arms around his mid-section, and when he turned, expecting to find Luke, it was Quinn. She smiled and had a round, very pregnant belly, and leaned in to kiss him. His eyes went wide, then closed, and more darkness.

That darkness permeated everything. It was inside him, and then…a flash of a star. Another. And then lasers. Explosions.

Flying through space, Giovanni sat in the copilot seat as Luke plowed through enemy fighter planes, swooping down and then pulling up to join a line of other fighters.

“Where are we?” Giovanni asked.

Luke turned to him with an excited smile, his hand reaching out and taking his. “At the moment of victory. At the moment of—”

And then there was a bright flash of light, and Giovanni couldn’t believe his eyes. A massive gate had emerged before them and, the best way he could see it, the head of a massive snake was coming at them. It seemed almost translucent, like it wasn’t fully there yet, but as they approached, it continued to materialize.

Luke said it perfectly when he uttered, “Oh, shit.”

The grip on his hand was crushing, leaving no room for Giovanni to pull back, not that he would—he was frozen in terror.

Whatever this was, he hoped to God the time ship hadn’t come to its end.

His answer came in the form of the ship shaking as its force fields were hit then, as the mouth of the snake opened and came it at them…

…a flash of white.

Snow now.

He was on a mountain, hiking as a frigid wind cut through his thick jacket, Luke at his side, their boots crunching across snow. Although the man’s mouth was moving, Giovanni didn’t hear any sound…only a distant ringing. They stopped and looked out at the other side of the mountain, where before them were miles upon miles of crashed Syndicate drones, mechs, and even a massive space ship. He could see exotic looking temples in the distance, prayer wheels clacking and the sound of strange horns blaring, which made him think this must be Nepal, or maybe Tibet.

Not that it mattered, because a moment later he was slumped over, falling down in the snow, and was gone.

Vomit worked its way up and out, and he looked at the puke-soaked ground in front of him, realizing he was on his hands and knees. His hands…they weren’t healed completely, but they were better wrapped, better treated.

“Gio!” a voice shouted, distant, almost like the final echo. “GIO!” Louder now, and then, right in his ear, “GIO, GET UP!”

He startled, turned, and saw Luke and Quinn in front of him, all geared up in their resistance clothes. Was he home?

“Shit, man, I thought we’d lost you,” Quinn said, clapping him on the shoulder. “You keep your head in the ga—”

BAM!

A gunshot went off and Quinn’s head exploded.

Luke cursed, but there were others running past them now, returning fire. Giovanni stared in horror at the corpse of his friend, then up to Luke.

“What world am I in?”

“The hell are you talking about?” Luke pointed at the rifle next to Giovanni. “I don’t know what’s going on with you, where the hell those wounds came from, but pick up your rifle and come on! We almost have him?”

“Have who?”

“The Potentate!” Luke grabbed Giovanni under the arm and helped him stand, then shoved the rifle into his bandaged hands. He pointed at a massively defended military compound, complete with mechs, drones, and more, and Giovanni felt his heart sink.

But then the ground shook and he turned to see mechs coming from behind, and they were shooting at the other mechs. Planes came out from the clouds and released missiles, and more came to engage the drones in combat. This was insane and, if not for Quinn lying dead before him, it would’ve almost felt right.

“Samantha?” he asked, hopeful. “Is she…?”

Luke frowned, then bit his lip to stop it from quivering. “Fucking still dead, Gio. Can you pull your head out of your ass and focus?”

Breathing in the gunpowder ridden air and coming to the realization that this was as likely as not his time and place, just not sure how he had blocked out so much of it, he did his best to grip the rifle and said, “Let’s go.”

“Wait, wait!” he grabbed Luke’s arm, pulling him back to stare into his eyes. “Is this us? I mean the real us?”

Luke allowed a distant, hesitant smile. “If we kill this bastard, then yes. If not, well, see you on the other side or in another time loop. Who the hell knows.” He leaned in, kissed Giovanni briefly on the cheek, and then stood with a shout and charged.

Giovanni was up and with him, running to join the others in the assault.

Explosions took apart drones and large chunks of cement, bullets and lasers tore through troops, and yet they charged. There was no stopping them this time. If there was a chance he was home, Giovanni was going to damn sure be positive that Quinn hadn’t given her life without a true reward at the other end.

If the Potentate was in there, he meant to pull the trigger that killed the bastard.

He skidded across an old, partially burnt car, then ran for cover behind a wall that looked to have once been part of someone’s house, but was now mostly rubble. Giving it his all, he stood and opened fire on a squad of Syndicate Marines in their red armor, knowing his piece of shit rifle didn’t have much hope of doing much damage, but just might distract them long enough.

BRRRRTTTT!

A mech’s massive gun lit them up, then it turned and let loose with its cannon—KABOOM! The squad of Syndicate Marines was gone.

“We have a MECH?!” Giovanni shouted, elated. “Holy shit!”

“A small army of them,” Luke shouted, running past him. Giovanni jumped up and ran, both of them diving for cover as another mech appeared, facing down theirs. A field of energy rose up in front of this one, absorbing the shots from theirs, and then charged forward on thrusters as it returned fire. These mechs were massive, and Giovanni knew he had to get out of there or risk getting stomped on and squished.

“Over there,” he shouted, and the two ran to join another squad of resistance fighters about to breach what looked like the main building, judging by the defensive guns they had just taken out.

With a nod back at the mechs, Luke said, “We wouldn’t have a shot here if it weren’t for Dannyboy, may he rest in peace.”

Giovanni frowned, trying to remember a Danny, or Dan. No matter, probably one of the other many fighters either with the resistance or Marines—remembering all of their names was impossible, and it wasn’t like he had ever met all of them anyway.

A loud thud sounded behind them and the door fell in. He jumped up to charge, when a new barrage of shots tore through the rest of their group.

“Mother-fuc—” Luke started, but an explosion cut him off and a second later drones fell from the sky, barraging the ground around them. Two more exploded upon impact and a piece of shrapnel hit Luke in the shoulder.

“I got you,” Giovanni shouted, running over to him.

“No!” Luke grabbed him, then turned him back to the building. “Get into the command center. I’m on your tail. GO!”

So they charged, lighting up the Syndicate Marines at the entryway. They tore through halls, tossing flash-bangs and frag grenades, falling back only once as a spider mech breached the building. It caused the ceiling to fall in, turned back, and fired at something outside.

Luke and Giovanni ran forward, leaping over the pile of rubble, and continued in, turning left through a door where they found a line of blackened out windows.

The command center.

They ran in, slamming through the door, and froze. With his back to them, there stood a figure they knew had to be the Potentate. He faced a wall full of screens, each showing not only their immediate surroundings, but images from all over the place, some in major bases where the resistance had been, others in the remains of large cities, showing rubble, a toppled Tokyo Tower, and more.

The potentate turned to them, slowly, and waited. He wore a blue robe over red armor, a metallic mask over his face that only revealed his eyes, and yet, somehow those eyes looked familiar.

In his hand was a staff with the familiar symbol of a snake devouring itself, tail-first, at its top.

Although they couldn’t see his face, the eyes seemed amused and Giovanni would’ve bet that the man was smiling.

The Potentate gesturing at the camera. “I see all, I know all.”

“How is it then that we managed to get to you?” Luke demanded, rifle raised.

The Potentate turned his now icy glare on him. “Why ask questions that should seem obvious? If I can see all, and know all…then you got to me because I wanted you to. Is there any other way?”

“You think this is your trap or something?” Luke asked. “Guess what, even if it is, you’re a dead man. We’re walking out of here with your head, you can be damn sure of that.”

Giovanni readied his rifle too, eyes darting from Luke to the Potentate and back, trying to figure out the right move here. If the Potentate was telling the truth about knowing they were coming, about waiting for them and planning this all, simply shooting him wouldn’t really do the trick, right? His trigger finger itched, wanting to find out, but he waited.

“What’s the point then?” Giovanni asked. “Why all this?”

The Potentate lifted his staff, pointing at a camera. It showed Quinn’s body. “See here?” He waited until Luke had grunted and Giovanni nodded. “She has a role to play yet, she…can’t be dead.”

“This is another one of those time loops, isn’t it?” Giovanni said, voice trembling. They were so close, but with so many dead, he wasn’t sure which way he wanted this to go, which answer he hoped for most.

The Potentate turned his gaze on him now, and nodded. “But they always are. Haven’t you figured that out yet?”

“All…?” Giovanni asked, thinking back to the time before the time ship, wondering if he meant that too, and if, even then, the Potentate was so all knowing.

“Make no mistake,” the Potentate said, stepping forward in spite of the way Luke tensed with the rifle, “I am your enemy to the end, or at least, a certain end…a very specific end. You have made some correct decisions and some very wrong ones, but now you are on the right path. You are close indeed. Not quite ready, but you will be soon. Very soon.”

With that, the Potentate lifted his staff and the serpent began to glow. With a flash, it was blinding…and then Giovanni was back, spiraling out of there, through darkness, lights flashing and finally…stable.

His eyes opened and he took a gulp of air. It felt…real. Everything else had felt real at the time too, he reminded himself. But not like this. A quick glance around told him all he needed to know, though—he was back on the time ship. The bandages were still on his hands, his face stung and itched, but he was back. That meant, at least for now, Quinn was still alive. Luke was his Luke, waiting back on Earth for him.

For now, that gave him all the reason he needed to smile.

They still had a chance.

AUTHOR BIO

JUSTIN SLOAN IS the bestselling author of the space marine series SYNDICATE WARS with Kyle Noe and George S. Mahaffey Jr., the epic military fantasy series FALLS OF REDEMPTION, the urban fantasy werewolf series CURSED NIGHT, the tough-guy urban fantasy series MODERN NECROMANCY with Michael La Ronn, and the vampire post-apocalyptic series RECLAIMING HONOR (A Kurtherian Gambit series) with Michael Anderle.

HE ALSO HAS WRITTEN on such video games as Game of Thrones, Tales from the Borderlands, and Walking Dead, and has sold/optioned several screenplays/teleplays. Because of his five years in the U.S. Marines, you just might find some of his Devil Dog attitude coming to play in his novels. Justin's books are available in audio and print editions, and he has sold Turkish and French rights to several of his series, with the Blade of the Sea series being published under Hachette Publishing Group (under the shared penname with PT Hylton of Jesse Nethermind).

HAVING STUDIED the craft at the Johns Hopkins MA in writing program and screenwriting at UCLA, Justin went on to work in games and screenwriting. He has presented on writing at the Austin Film Festival, San Francisco Writers Conference, the San Diego State Writers Conference, and more. You can hear his interviews with authors on the Creative Writing Career podcast.

JUSTIN LOVES to hear from you, so please feel free to visit www.JustinSloanAuthor to join the email list, receive a free book, receive free giveaways, get the latest exclusive news, connect on Facebook and Twitter, and stay in touch!

AUTHOR NOTE

I AM SO EXCITED to bring you this anthology! It’s not your typical set of short stories, as you’ve seen here. We are creating a whole new universe of amazing characters, and I can tell you that, from what I’ve seen, these spinoffs are going to be amazing. Don’t worry—the spinoff series will stand on their own. It’s just the universe that is shared, so while they will at times likely reference each other and maybe visit the same planets and interact with similar races of aliens, each author is really creating their own area within the universe. Jonathan might go to one galaxy and never even enter the galaxy Gentry takes his characters to, while another series might spend most of its time on Earth. But it’s fun because they all have some connecting thread. Don’t like my writing, but love the writing of L.O. Addison? That’s fine! You can read hers and love it separate from my series.

IF YOU LIKE MY WRITING, please consider checking out my spinoff, coming at you shortly, and my bestselling Reclaiming Honor books with Michael Anderle—part of the Kurtherian Gambit Universe (KGU). I owe a lot of my author success to Michael, and he has created a humongous universe over there with the KGU writers. We are not copying him in that sense, because while he has something like twenty authors, we want to keep this contained. Six authors in total for now, and maybe a couple more later, but never releasing more than one new series a month. The world will be explored thoroughly and you will have plenty of reading, trust me. But each author will have their own projects going on as well.

BEFORE I GO, I want to say thank you to each of these authors, our editors, and to Nick Cole for writing the great foreword. Nick has his own space marine series with coauthor Jason Anspach, and I highly recommend you check those books out. The series is Galaxy’s Edge, and they have done VERY well. Good job, Nick and Jason!

AND THANK YOU, reader. I hope to see you reading this book on the train sometime! In the meantime, please consider sharing your feedback or leaving a review on Amazon. This was a bit of an experiment for all of us, and we would love to hear your thoughts.

WHAT NEXT?

Thank you for reading our anthology! Please consider leaving a review on Amazon and Goodreads.

If you would like to check out the spinoff series, please find each of the authors on Amazon and follow us, so you are notified as soon as a book releases. You can also join our newsletters.

For the Seppukarian Universe newsletter, join here or head over to www.JustinSloanAuthor.com and join there.

You can check out the Syndicate Wars books, if you want the backstory for these spinoffs and this anthology. They are like the prequels—you don’t have to read them, but might have fun if you do.

Also, Justin’s spinoff is almost done! This is a draft cover below, but it will be updated and on Amazon October 5, 2017!

Table of Contents

Dedication

Table of Contents

Foreword

Preface

Introduction

Hangman’s Loop

Escape First, Vengeance Later

Apocalypse Dreams

Retina

Intertwined

Back at the Mountain

What Next?