Salutations!

Day 2 of the Poetic Pile-up, featuring a spacey poem and hyperboles. :3

–

So, tell me know
Where the vortex led,
Where the poison stemmed
The furnaces of time and space
A blue box, for the key to keep safe
Where the first bout grew, and where the weariness of adventure was bestrewed
Within and beyond, traveled to the many points of extinction
It spins, held back only by the weight of two burdened hearts
Where the vortex led,
Where the poison stemmed
The furnaces of time and space
A blue box, no one can quell

–  (Can you guess what this was inspired by?)

Hyperboles:

The lawn was mowed with such fierceness, you could hear the screams of every blade of grass scream out in terror from the widespread slicing.

As the eventide waves crashed against the rock shore, they sent thunders that rippled over the closing halo of light, breaking the spectrum and echoing shivers in the hollows of our souls.

The impact of the train cars felt like the collision of two bullets fired from a set of railguns, one mutually destroying the other in a fray of metal, sparks, and contorted sound.

I flicked on the overhead bulb, and the fall of my shadow upon the unkempt floor carried the weight of all memory it had swept up in my wake. I stumbled to remain upright, and my silhouette followed. The smooth floor splintered beneath.

~ TEW (pew pew, poem ammo!)

Hello, blog inhabitants and otherwise visitors!

A fair while has passed since I posted material here, and now that time shall come to a temporary close. ^^

I’m posting two successive posts following this one, each containing poems or poetic-like content. Here is the first installment, a series of three freeform poems I was inspired to write as an abstract writing exercise with Kdrew’s song “Circles” as the inspiration:

Ding dong, welcome young one

Circle in the ground, rivets here to run

‘Round and ‘round,

Pride dodging the sun

Follow the shadows, ring in the rays

Follow the paths, recover what belongs in a rightful place

Beyond walls of etched glass,

‘Round and ‘round

Sprint until every locket is found,

Pride dodging you, catching 22’s

Blast the shards, sprinkle the prismatic doors

To crumble the maze,

Obscure the haze

Bells again, the ways spent

That noise, it’s bearing down

Searching for a way to move on,

Welcome to the second round

‘Round and ‘round

The circle is coming up from the shadow

See the sun, cower from the solar absorption

Heads down, we’re sprinting back,

We’re falling far, far beneath

Zig-zag,

Drop the beat,

‘Round and ‘round

Harmony is a melodic crown!

Some way to avoid the thrice upheaval

It’s burrowing, I’m seeing the signs

The quakes are aural, the trees sway in time

The clocks are in circles, hands spinning in the inconsistent time

Calling the light, shunning the blackness

Ink and whitewash eraser,

Clash at the midway

Oooohhhh

Oooohhhhoh

Color combat combines, the circles mix with inconsistent time

Basked in the likes of both

Spread of speckles to all

My final string, the crescendo note to all

~ TEW (pew pew, poem ammo!)

Section #1 of a HAWK3N-verse-inspired bio I wrote/am writing. Enjoy. 🙂

[Note: This may not make complete sense, if you are not knowledgeable on the story of HAWK3N. I apologize.]

–

Patron File #913453 –

–

MPC Affiliation: Prosk Industries

Status: Military AXE Pilot

Callsign: Wi2P

Alias/Sobriquet(s): Wisp, Rose Blush, the Healer

(Real) Name: [Unknown]

Mark: [Undisclosed]

Gender: Female

Height: Approx. 2 ½ ft.

Eye Color: Hazel

Coat: White

Mane: Variably-bright ginger

Species: Unicorn

=

“Wi2P” originally appeared in the sights of Prosk due to a series of events at the Redstone Training Facility, where she committed acts of vandalism in attempts to cease the influx of new pilots, and prevent “the fuel of war from burning” (as one scrawling described). Her calling-card was an azure “W”.

Three subsequent weeks of intermittent “artistic assaults” followed, during which approximately two dozen pieces of graffiti were found, logged in record, and removed. The nature of these (so-called) cautionary messages remains undisclosed, excepting the knowledge of the witnesses present before the material was redacted. (-See RTF report file [H319]-)

Midway through the third week, Prosk and Sentium Officers became involved in the vandalism prevention program RTF Staff had patched together, which aimed to cease the occurrences and their effects by tightening security, encouraging quicker removal of graffiti and keeping public calm. Both corporations insisted it was necessary to manetain their continued safety, the safety of new pilots, and RTF staff.

After two days, with only minimum improvements on the situation, Prosk decided to lend an extra hoof. “We’re cracking down, before this facility cracks up”, Knurl Weaver—seasoned Patrick-V2 Predator pilot and CSD Officer—explained to RTF security manager Every Key. “If this was an average series of vandalisms, it’d be over and out by now. We have to think beyond prevention and clean-up, to the lasting solution: Find the catalyst, and the bomb stops ticking.” (-Note Reference Log [H319]-)

Knurl was authorized to fly in the immediate members of his Co-Ops Squad to Redstone, where their four B-Class Stealth Axes assembled. Several hours later, after notifying Sentium of the plan (to avoid a stir), Prosk initiated their strategy, codenamed “Shimmering Stakeout”.

Positioned in key locations around the Facility, the cloaked Predators objective was to discreetly observe the area at ground-level; each was equipped with an advanced detection system alongside the standard-issue Infrared technology. Aerial-view support was provided via watchponies stationed on top of RTF’s roof.

Com silence was strictly manetained, until approx. 01:00-hours. Unit [REDACTED] noted unusual movement at the rear loading docks to RTF’s primary hanger, and proceeded to investigate. The subsequent actions of the Squad resulted in the capture of the delinquent.

“It took three Preds and support from Op-Com to corner this feisty filly,” Weaver later commented. “I didn’t expect our catalyst to look quite like that. But as far as we’re concerned, the bomb is now diffused.”  (-See Field Report –H319—for full operation transcript.-)

Wi2P was relinquished of her belongings (which consisted of saddlebags, various items used to draw and several that had been employed in making the graffiti, a small pouch of rations, boots, a velvety-purple doll, and a peculiar device she carried on her back) and was placed into custody in an RTF holding chamber, until she was moved to Prosk Dropship-J19 the following morning. (Officer Weaver had negotiated for custody with SM Every Keys and Officer Greave Fallon—representative for Sentium’s RTF department—only hours before, by order of his superior. – Note: Prosk neglected to include certain details, chiefly that of the strange saddle-mounted device. Sentium released their say without full knowledge of what they were consenting.)

Dropship-J19 returned to the Prosk military center promptly after Wi2P’s transfer.

–

[Further Sections to-be noted.]

–

Fun Facts:
Wi2P enjoys the language of “leetspeak”, which (in-part) explains the nature of her callsign.
[More trivial tidbits to come.]

File Note, Archive Director: Placid Bookmark – Subject: Possible Corruption –

Every log and report ID has been replaced with the tag “H319”, and the file rejects all attempts to amend it. This is more than a foolish typo. Please send someone from the technical department to scan the system and properties of file “913453”.

– Director Bookmark

A continuation of the Prologue I entered in the Halloween contest.

Feedback, thoughts? Let me know! :-]

(And yes, this is an unusually short intro…)

–

Recovery came slowly.

She didn’t know where she was, or her name. She couldn’t even open her eyes for an unidentifiable span of time, and seemed to slip in and out of sleep and a state in-between it and awake. Attempting to think or wonder about her current circumstance—whatever it was—did not occur to her.

Her sense of smell returned first, her brain finally beginning to reboot her body’s systems. The familiar scents of consano healing salve and lingering sterilization chemicals registered.

Hearing came next. A quiet but steady beeping noise, miscellaneous sounds of machinery, the sound of her own restful breathing. But no voices. She didn’t know why that seemed odd to her, but it did.

Her eyelids raised slightly, and then dropped again. They tried a second time and remained half-open. She was staring up at a pristine white ceiling. Feeling was seeping back into her limbs, and that combined with her currently limited range of sight told her that she was lying on a bed of some sort, laden from just below her neck onwards by blanket, sheet and seemingly some clothing buried beneath them. Around her were some medical devices and a tall white curtain connected to the ceiling, which surrounded the space where the bed sat.

A hospital? She wondered, the ability of intelligible thought processes gradually returning.

She tried to move, but immediately found the task beyond her present strength. A sigh, unbidden, escaped her. She waited a minute more, then attempted movement again. This time, she was able to flex her fingers, which were hidden beneath the sheet and blanket. It was a meager action, but somehow felt… wrong. As though the small body parts were foreign to her. Her eyebrows scrunched, reacting to her brief confusion.

After pushing the odd notion aside, she subsequently endeavored to use her arms. To her surprise, she was able to pull them from out under the hospital-type coverings on the first try. Though, something felt out-of-place with them, as with her fingers. She made the effort to shift herself into more of a sitting position and leant up against the substantial arrangement of white and blue pillows and the bed’s headboard. She inspected her arms, which were now uncovered and lie atop the blanket. The right one had an IV stuck it in, but aside from that, her upper limbs carried not a single—visible—blemish. They still felt wrong, in some way. But she couldn’t put her finger on it, so to speak.

Pushing the covers from her, she bent her knees and then swung her legs over the side of the bed, then paused there, exhaling deeply as the tiredness in her bones continued to recede. She reached over with her left arm and pulled out the IV by executing a quick tug.

The subsequent reaction caused by the momentary stimuli of pain was shocking. Everything came back to her, all in an instant of furious, deafening recall inside her skull.

Jocose released an involuntary shriek as her memories resurfaced as if bursting from a locked box which key had been found and inserted. The influx of knowledge, images, emotions and other was an overwhelming plethora. Learning how to fly once her wings matured enough when she was a child, the grasslands of Kalpana stretching out into the sunset-dominated skyline, an autumn’s clear morning riding birdback, the enticing smells of various foods prepared for the annual winter Sanctuary Feast, the trips aboard hydro trains to reach island locations off the mainland, studying at the New Primoris Private School, her first day at FIRE Academe when Instructor/Captain Dreg made his introduction to her class; the painful day a flight training exercise… cost Jocose her ability to naturally fly, the time her grandfather who had served faithfully as a shipmaster went to his final resting place, the evening years ago when the Insurgent Corps brutally bombed the United Legation and killed thousands to make a statement, the afternoon her best friend Frese died and the absolute despair she experienced…

But one scene in her mind’s eye stood out among them: The rift incident. The malicious dark cloud beating at her, helplessness as her consciousness failed her, desperate to save a civilization that was foreign to her, the antagonizing torment of being unknowingly to whether or not she had succeeded.

The cloud… She could feel its abuse, re-experience the maelstrom of muddled emotion, drown in the mounting fear. It was so real and so terrible. Everything else dissolved, fading away to give prominence to the frightful scene she was unwillingly reliving…

…

Jocose woke to the feeing of linoleum-type floor against her cheek.

She jolted upright on the floor and gasped, looking about frantically under a canopy of reddish hair that had draped itself over her face when she jerked up. She ignored it for the moment, hysteria still gripping her attention. But after a quick glance about, she realized where she was.

She had fallen from the bed when the recall struck her, and now stood where she had just before been lying, still within the concealment of the ceiling-to-floor curtain. How long she had been out was uncertain, but the remnants of tearstains and mucus left on the floor were a sure indicator some of her time spent there was crying. She touched a cheek with her hand and felt streaks caused by saltwater droplets that had run down and dried. She sniffled and sat down on the bedside again, confused and indignant. The IV had fell to the floor as well, and remained there. She stared at it, a small, somewhat bloodstained needle connected to the nearby machine, which had gone silent. The tiny incision it had made in her arm was already scabbing.

The recall she had experienced was irregular. It was unnatural. She had never felt something quite so like it; memories could be intense, but that was bringing it to a level Jocose wasn’t privy to. She had never attempted to shut a rift by her lonesome either, but that was by choice. The recall was an action she had had no authority over. She glanced at the IV again. A minute second of meager pain caused all that?

The only explanation she could offer was it being a “freak occurrence”. They had taught her in the Academe that abnormal mental activity had the possibilities to be the result of many variable “catalysts”. Anything from the uncomfortable notion something, or someone, was in her psyche, to the simplistic and disheartening fact she may very well be in the beginning stages of insanity. Damn psychologists. Many of the psychiatrists and psychologists in FIRE’s HR department weren’t known for their courteousness when explaining the metaphorical minefield of mental scenarios. It was often straightforward, no nonsense with them. For being faeries professed in the medical studies of the brain, they certainly didn’t seem interested in mind-games, even if those games were for the benefit of their patients. Jocose made a note to look into it when she returned to HQ and file a complaint.

Now, she realized. I have to figure out where I am… and how I survived. She suspected that she was aboard Regent VII, and where she had awoken was not a hospital, but the starvessel’s infirmary.

Thoughts of the recall still ebbed in her mind, but she pushed them back and composed herself. She couldn’t remain sitting here like a distressed child awaiting the return of a doctor who would reassure her that everything was going to turn out alright and she could go home soon. She would not allow it. Her pride and dignity forbade her from appearing helpless and weak. She found herself oddly glad no one had, apparently, been there when she had had her intense recall and collapsed. To anyone else, it would’ve appeared as though she had done so because of the slight pain from removing the IV needle. So where is everyone else? She quietly slid off the bed, grabbed a section of curtain, and peeked out to get a view of the area beyond her little space. A long, sterile white and blue room occupied by closed curtains every few feet which were uniform to Jocose’s own. Light fixtures in the ceiling illuminated the room, but some seemed unusually dim, as if running on emergency power.

Jocose hadn’t seen this room aboard Regent VII. But then, she hadn’t seen many of the I.D.O.S.’s rooms. She wasn’t in the afterlife; that she knew. No theorization or interpretation of heaven, hell, or any other religion’s and otherwise parties hypotheses and descriptions said they had the appearance of an infirmary section.

Still, where has everyone gone to? Minus the various medical machines droning, the silence was eerie nothingness throughout the room. Some of the curtains swished gently with the invisible breezes emanating from low vents in the walls, and one of the overhead lights flickered, then returned to normal just as quickly. It was subtly disconcerting.

Jocose stepped out from behind her curtain and began walking deliberately down the aisle of other curtains, as though checking the floor’s structural integrity, turning her attention to the slightest noise or movement. It’s just a smidgen of paranoia. She told herself. You endured maltreatment from a sentient black cloud while suspended in space before a hazardous dimensional rift, then experienced a racking memory recall that resulted in fainting. You have the right to be cautious, even if it proves superfluous. Instructor/Captain Dreg had once told she and her class that it was “okay” to have fear, but not in the way that that fear overcame you. He said this as they were about to begin a live underwater training session, standing in the main “compartment” of a mockup of a Helix Dropship suspended two hundred feet above the large training pool, which was a decent sized lake in its own right. “If you must fear—which most every sentient creature does at some point in their lifetime—use it as fuel, turn it around. Make fear into an asset, an item in your toolbox, and you can wield one of the greatest weapons this universe and all other universes have ever had. The trick is learning how to tame yours.” He promptly shoved one of the trainees nearest the edge off the mock Helix, into the water below, and then gestured to the others with a wave of his free hand. “Begin training exercise.”

Jocose smirked, despite herself. His prep talks consisted of some of the better entertainment and morale boosting aspects of her time at Academe.

Distracted by the reminiscing, she suddenly made a misstep with her footing, tripped, and fell face-first towards the floor near the end of the room she was making her way to. She was barely able to raise her hands in front of her before colliding with the linoleum.

She cursed herself for being so careless, though it was, in actuality, a petty thing. Worry was what set her off. Worry about if she may have just possibly disturbed whatever or whoever resided in here with her, unless she was alone. She hadn’t decided to check what was behind the other curtains; fear could be tamed and utilized as a tool, but she didn’t have to endorse it. So she had ignored the prospect of checking.

Now she wondered whether or not that was such a wise choice.

She lay as still as possible against the floor and waited, eyes and ears attentive for any indicators of hostile or otherwise presence. A minute passed without noticeable change throughout the room. She exhaled sharply and began to get off the floor… again. Why are you so jittery, Jocose? This needs to cease. You’re a capable cadet in FIRE, for Kalpana’s sake! And you’re lying around like a frightened animal in thi—

Her train of thought stopped and dead. She had caught sight of something—moving—in her right peripheral vision. She jumped back and spun around to face it.

There, only a few feet away, stood a shocked and frazzled looking little girl; she couldn’t have been anything more than a tween. She wore a white infirmary gown dotted with blue spots, which was obviously a few sizes too large for her, like an oversized bathrobe. Atop her head, falling from her shoulders and draping down her back like a river of red was a mess of voluminous, vibrant reddish hair that was very nearly long enough to touch the floor. Her skin was pale, but not to the degree in which it was opaquely so. Her face was speckled with the remains of freckles that had once been many, and her young cyan eyes shown like centerpieces. Her expression held scrutiny, stupefaction and mounting consternation.

Jocose tentatively opened her mouth to say something. The other girl mimicked her movement exactly. No words came out. No…

She raised her arm, slowly, wary to confirm a fact she would’ve rather left well alone. Again the girl followed her action without blunder. No…

Jocose hesitantly stepped forward, and the girl matched her pace as they approached one another. She and the other girl extended their hands simultaneously, and they met. Except what Jocose felt was not flesh, it was a smooth pane of glasslike material. A mirror.

A full-length mirror containing an image of herself.

This here be my Halloween Contest Entry! Why is it so late? Totally not because I was procrastinating, no sir!

Mild language warning. Content may frighten small children.

Hammer’s Reach.

Ben Chatfield

“Gone. They’re all gone. Just like that, man. I thought we couldn’t loose. We’re built to not loose. How does that happen? Tell me that, man. Tell me that.”

Eran’s voice was high-pitched, bordering on hysterical. Rin did his best to ignore him, focusing on stitching up the bloody gash in his own arm. The youngest of the group, Eran could be forgiven for the jumbled flow of sentences tumbling from his shell-shocked brain, especially after what had just happened. No one had expected this outcome. Fifty years of planning, and everything had just… fallen apart.

“What do we do now, man? They know we’re here. They’ll follow us. They’re gonna-”

Luke, stationed by the room’s only window, finally snapped. “Shut up! Damn coward. Just shut your mouth. ”

Eran froze, his terror-stricken eyes locking on Rin’s face. With both Commander Hollis and Lieutenant Lael dead, Rin was the leader now, by rank. Not that there was much left to lead. Just him, Eran, Luke, and Nia sleeping in the bedroom. Four left. Four left out of thirty.

It had been a massacre.

Luke left his post, navigating the maze of broken support beams and dead cables to Rin’s side. When he spoke, his voice was somewhat calmer, but anger still colored his tone.

“Nothing moving out there. To be frank, we’re pretty high up. They don’t climb if they don’t have to.”

Rin sighed, then slid the needle under his skin one last time, gritting his teeth against the pain. He didn’t mind it much. Pain was something to be appreciated. Pain meant you were still alive enough to feel. Sometimes, that was all a soldier had to keep him going.

“How is Nia?”

Luke threw a sideways glance at the bedroom door. “Still asleep, last I checked. Whoever used to be here must’ve evacuated in a rush. Everything’s still in place, beds, TV, food supply. Power and water’s out, of course.” He paused. “I, ah… I don’t think she’s going to recover soon. She was in Synch when the other two snuck up on us. She may have gone in too deep, fried her brain.”

Rin frowned, placing the red-stained needle into the small sanitizer bath his med-kit provided. “No good. With her out of the picture, we’ll have a tough time fighting even one of the hostiles.”

Luke blinked in surprise. “Fight…? Rin, we can’t fight them at all. Our training, our numbers, the Synch… they were all lies. Our superiors have been playing us for fools.”

Rin rose to his feet, a flash of anger replacing his customary blank expression. “No. We were overconfident, yes. Commander Hollis was reckless, but if we’d waited instead of jumping right in, we wouldn’t have been overwhelmed. “

“That’s crazy. You’ve seen what they’re like. Leutenant Michaels was wearing that special armor, the new stuff that you can’t break through with a jackhammer, and the Freaker went through it like it was paper maché.”

“If we’d thought it out, if we’d waited-”

“We would still have died! Those things can’t be stopped. It’s a suicide mission.”

Rin turned so they were face to face, keeping his voice under careful control. “What do you want to do, then? Sit here till you starve? Wait for the Freakers to find you and pull your heart out through your throat? I don’t care if it looks hopeless, we’ll find a way out. All of us. I’m bringing this team home alive, end of story. All of us.”

A tiny sob escaped the dark corner Eran had retreated to. He wasn’t a soldier, really. He’d been pulled into the FireLight program for his high response numbers in Synch testing. Synch was a brain-weapon, burning out the synapses of whatever the user was looking at when he or she turned it on, but it needed someone smart behind the ‘trigger’. Eran might have had the smarts, but when it came down to the brass tacks, he was useless.

What they had been prepared for, what the government had told them, was that their first assignment would be an extermination mission. Air-drop into the Quarantine Zone, kill everything that moved, and go home for the celebration. Estimated enemy kill numbers would have been in the thousands, and the Q-zone would have been accessible for the first time in almost sixty years. Billions of dollars in resources and land, and all that stood in their way was a little thing the news had nicknamed “Freaker”.

Rin glanced towards the room’s only entrance, blockaded with a variety of heavy furniture. It was just protocol, completely pointless. If the Freakers wanted in, they would get in, no matter what was stacked in their way.

“It’s starting to get dark. We’re bad enough off as it is; we don’t stand a snowball’s chance in hell of fighting them at night. How are we doing on ration packs?”

Luke slung his backpack off his shoulder, flipping through its contents. “With just the four of us, six days’ worth. If we do two meals a day.”

“Give one to Eran, and see if you can get Nia to eat. We’re going to dig in here, wait for morning. The mission’s still a go, but our priority now is getting Nia back for medical attention. We’re getting out of here tomorrow.”

***

When Rin awoke, it was still early morning. Luke was sitting beside the makeshift bed Rin had fashioned out of leftover sheets and pillows, absently cleaning his automatic handgun. He stopped when Rin rolled over, setting the weapon on his lap.

“Rin, you up?”

Something in his tone set off warning bells in Rin’s head.

“Roger that. Something wrong?”

“I, uh… I’ve been trying to get through to the top brass, let em know we’re still here, get us an airlift. They… they can’t seem to hear us. I think our radio’s broken.”

That wasn’t it. Broken equipment was an aggravation, but Luke was a real soldier. Little things like that wouldn’t get to him. There was something else.

“Luke… what happened.”

Luke tried to smile, but his face couldn’t quite manage it. “Rin, the kid… Eran, he…”

“What? He what?” Rin already knew the answer, but he was praying he was wrong. Eran was a good kid, a bit wimpy on occasion, but still a valuable member of the team. There was no way…

“He… he jumped last night. Off the roof. He must’ve climbed over the barricade, and… I’m sorry.”

Even in the dim light, Rin could see the tears streaking the man’s face.

“He killed himself?”

“Looks that way. He’s… he’s down there right now. You can see him from the window.”

“Any chance he’s…?”

“Not with that much of his own blood on everything.”

Rin let himself fall back on the bed. Death almost seemed commonplace to him now. It had been only two days since project FireLight had launched from the UK, a group of highly-trained and combat efficient men and women laughing and joking around in the back of the heli-carrier. Two days, and already he had seen twenty-six of his lifelong friends and comrades die.

The group had fallen to overwhelming, superior enemies, man-made monsters from the pit of hell. They had lost, but somehow it was almost an expected loss. Eran was different. He had escaped the Freakers, only to be beaten by his own fear. An oddly useless death.

“Rin, you don’t think… it’s because I yelled at him, wasn’t it? I shoulda been more careful. He was so young…”

“Don’t go there, Luke. You don’t want to live with that. Eran barely passed psych profile. We all knew he had suicidal tendencies. The top brass chose to ignore it. They needed a good Synch user. Heck, half our team was psychotic. You gotta have something broken in your head to go toe to toe with a Freaker. Anyway, this isn’t on you. Blame it on the guys who shoed him in when they should have sent him home.”

Luke still looked shaken, but he nodded anyway.

“What about the body?”

“Freakers usually ignore the dead. We’ll give him a proper burial when we come back. Too dangerous now.”

“So, what then? With comms down, we got no way out.”

“Airstrip near here, saw it on our way in. Think they called it the JFK International, back when this place was a country instead of a Freaker zoo. They’ll have a radio there.”

The distant clatter of heavy artillery made them pause. Rin listened with disinterest. The rhythm was off, old-fashioned combustion weapons. Not homeland soldiers. Some other country looking to cash in on the Quarantine zone’s resources. It was foolish, really. Everyone knew that Freakers were immune to harm, and no amount of bullets or brute force would change that.

As the fusillade ended, Luke again ventured conversation.“You used to live here, right? Before they evac’d everyone.”

Rin nodded.

“Lose anyone?”

“Entire family. Mom, dad, grampa, and my little brother.”

Luke’s eyebrows jerked upward. “Holy… I’m, ah, I’m sorry, man. Didn’t know.”

“It’s fine. That’s why I joined up with FireLight. Wanted another go at the bastards.”

“Roger that. We’ll get em yet. At least we know this Synch stuff works, kinda. We can beat them one-on-one, should be enough to keep us alive to JFK.”

With a grunt of effort, Luke got back to his feet, slinging the heavy equipment bag over his shoulder.

“You want to get Nia? It’d be a pain for me to have to carry her and all the equipment.”

Rin sighed. “The handsome, brave leader gets the girl, huh? Never thought I’d have to actually carry her.”

Luke grinned. “Hey, that’s life. Let’s roll out.”

***

They made it two blocks without incident. Luke had all three backpacks slung over a shoulder, leaving Rin free to support Nia’s weight. She was small, but her body armor almost doubled her weight. Rin had taken a full course of GenQue muscle enhancers back at the academy, enough that he could literally roll a truck with his bare hands, but carrying two hundred pounds, plus his own armor, for twelve miles…

Up ahead, Luke stopped abruptly.“Hold up, I hear something.”

Rin lowered himself to one knee as quietly as he could manage, scanning the streets for signs of life. Ancient automobiles dotted the road, left to rust apart where their owners had abandoned them. Buildings crumbled onto the sidewalks, sinkholes dug great gaping ditches into the pavement. The dead city loomed around them, cold and still in the cloudy gray daylight.

They waited there a full two minutes, silent, watching, waiting.

Luke finally gave up, adjusting the packs on his arm. “A brick must’ve fallen or something. Coulda sworn I-”

A thunderous crash sent them both to the ground. Rin rolled Nia off his back, wincing slightly as her helmet cracked against the street. No time to be gentle. Gun up, safety off in the same motion. Eyes. He needed to see the eyes. The gun was useless if the Synch couldn’t lock on, and to Synch he had to see…

He saw the face, and froze in horror.

It was Eran.

Or rather, it was Eran’s face. Rin had heard about this before; Freakers wearing human skin like clothing, stripping it from the dead or the very, very unlucky living. This one had taken Eran’s face and wrapped over its own, a ghastly mask set in a frozen expression of utter terror.

The Freaker’s cold gaze rolled slowly over the prone soldiers, its pale eyes changing from circles to slits, then back again. Black cloth fluttered in strands from its spindly limbs, the uniform it had once worn now nothing but tatters from constant abuse.

Moving as little as possible, Rin reached to the back pouch on his belt, tugging free a flash grenade. Freakers could adapt to anything, but it took time. If he could blind it, get in close, and…

“YOU SON OF A..!”

Luke had shed the carry-bags, and now stood tall with FireLight’s standard-issue semi-automatic rifle balanced against his shoulder. The first few shots went wide; the rest were deftly dodged, the Freaker twisting and bending out of the way faster than Rin’s enhanced vision could follow.

“Luke, get down! It’s gonna…”

The Freaker had already moved. In the blink of an eye, it was toe-to-toe with the soldier, one steel-gray arm driven through Luke’s ribcage like a lance. The older man’s face contorted in pain, but he didn’t cry out. His arms moved, reaching up to grip the Freaker’s head with both hands.

“Not yours… that’s not your face, dammit… give… it… back!”

Black needles erupted from the Freaker’s head, stabbing through Luke’s hands. The soldier was beyond pain now, visibly weakening. His eyes met Rin’s, and he forced a grim smile.

“Get out of here, Rin. Get Nia back. Get her back safe. Live. Live for me.”

Then he turned away from his comrade, glaring into the monster’s ever-shifting eyes.

“Eat this, pig,” he spat out through bloodied lips, and with the flip of a mental switch, he drove the full force of his Synch into the Freaker’s brain.

The Freakers were perfect war machines, indestructible, adaptable, built as the pinnacle of human evolution. They did not breathe, they did not eat, they did not sleep. They had no need for emotions or intelligence. Designed flawless, they seemed unbeatable, and for twenty years, they had remained so.

Synch changed that. Synch was both a name and an action; a device that granted its user the ability to burn minds through eye contact. It wasn’t simple to use; it was a surgeon’s tool, to be used with precision. Luke had no interest in using precision, hammering the deepest recesses of the Freaker’s mind with a single command, over and over and over: “Burn. Burn in hell.”

The Freaker began to steam, then smoke, its brain doing its best to interpret the commands it was receiving. Its eyes popped, steamed, regrew, only to bulge and burst again. The gray armor coating its skin carbonized, cracked, and fell to ash.

Luke wasn’t faring much better. Blood was running from his nose and ears, his eyes shining brilliant green from the Synch. “Overclock” was the term the trainees had for it. Two brains working as one, with one struggling to remain separate as it dictated orders to both. No one could overclock without snapping, and Luke was hardly an exception.

“Rin… kill… it…”

Rin jerked into action, unfolding his own rifle. Stupid, stupid. He should have already had it out. One man breaks the Freaker with Synch, the other man kills it. Simple… but when they trained, only the target ended up dead.

There were no tears as Rin lined up the shot.

“Goodbye, friend.”

Luke’s face twitched, almost a smile.

“Bye.”

Rin fired, and kept on shooting until the last bullet exploded from the barrel and the trigger clicked on empty air.

The Freaker was dead. Really dead, no longer able to regenerate. In an attempt at self-preservation, its Evo chip had forced its way out of the overheating shell its host had become, exposing itself to Rin’s withering fusillade. It had shattered in the first three shots. The Freaker itself was now nothing more than a blackened collection of bullet holes.

Luke was dead, too. He was hardly recognizable, his face a mask of burns; half from the close proximity to the superheating Freaker, half from the injuries his own Synch had inflicted.

Rin felt the loss gripping his heart with unbearable force, and pushed it away. Time to mourn later. If there was one of the creatures, there would be more soon.

He picked up Luke’s gun. It was still half-full, about ten shots left. That would have to be enough. He folded it into its carry state, clipping it onto his belt where his had previously rested. He hoisted Nia onto his back, returning to the mission at hand.

A battered sign dangling over the road read “JFK International, 2 mi.”.

***

The airport was barren and empty, debris and trash littering the long pathways and airstrips. The massive building was in the process of slow implosion, with little remaining of the massive compound.

The radio tower stood watch over the ruin, glaring down at the tiny figures below through spiderwebbed eyes of glass. It had been abandoned in the mad rush to escape the looming menace bearing down on the fleeing population. The Freakers had been programmed to kill, and kill they did. Every man, woman, child, animal, and insect, mowed down by the very thing that was to have driven them to the pinnacle of scientific greatness. Perfect evolution, weaponized and set loose on its own masters.

The country had been sterilized in four days; the continent in seven days.

Freakers couldn’t cross the ocean. That was all that protected the rest of the world from similar annihilation. Whether by choice or because they truly could not swim, the Freakers remained in the Quarantine Zone, formerly known as North and South America. Many of the evacuees, like Rin, had escaped to Europe or Britain. Many had gone to other parts of the world, returning to their respective homelands.

Most had just died.

Rin let Nia slump to the ground, his breath coming in ragged bursts. He could see her face through the translucent helmet visor, her expression peaceful in slumber. Tiny scars around her eyes marred her otherwise unnaturally beautiful face, the result of her failure to Synch. It wasn’t her fault, really. They had expected the commander to do all the Synch work, leave the shooting to the cadets. Hollis had been the first to go. The Freaker had literally torn his head off. In the bloodbath that followed, only the four of them had escaped.

Now there were two.

The tunnel leading to the radio tower was partially blocked by the gutted wreck of a massive airplane. From the damage, it seemed the plane had dropped more or less straight down on top of the building, crushing everything below and presumably killing everyone on board. A withered skeleton dangled from one window, a passenger attempting to escape the plane when death overtook them. Rin barely spared it a glance. Nothing useful about an old corpse.

It took him seven minutes to clear enough of an opening for both him and Nia to pass through. The concrete stairs within the tower were crumbling with age, but Rin climbed them anyway, Nia resting in his arms. The tower had stood this long, it was unlikely it would fall now.

The door at the top was jammed shut. It took two kicks to loosen it; the third broke the latch, slamming the door open. Rin, off-balance from carrying Nia, stumbled through into the tower.

Sitting in the corner, staring at him with eyes that shone faintly in the darkness, was a Freaker.

Rin almost laughed out loud. There was no reason for it to be there. None at all. It just was, and that in itself was infuriating. All that way, all that they had gone through, and this was how it ended. A bloodstain in an airport tower no one would ever visit, a tower in a dead land filled with monsters.

The Freaker before him was smaller than the rest. It seemed thinner, too, almost emaciated. Its black uniform was torn but still resembled clothing, a memory it wore from habit, not necessity. Its skinless head resembled a jack-o-lantern, its leering mouth drawn taught against flat, triangular teeth. A demon with a pumpkin for a head, its rags like a cape, its claws scrabbling for a soul to drag down to the abyss.

Rin knew appearances meant nothing; they changed to adapt, to evolve. Shape was easy to manipulate with an Evo chip stuck in your spine, and terror was in their nature. Psychological warfare, even if they no longer knew what that meant.

For some reason, though, he wasn’t scared. Death was literally staring him in the face, and he didn’t care. Nothing mattered any more. Either he died, or the Freaker did, simple as that. The thought gave him courage, and he spoke, his words rattling harshly in the silence.

“Well? You’ve killed everything that matters to me. You took my family, my home, my whole damn country. So come get me! Don’t chicken out now, you freak! Kill me! KILL ME!”

The Freaker moved. Whether it moved to attack, or was just changing position, Rin would never know. His brain had already clicked over into a state beyond thought as his Synch chip whirred to life.

Calculations. Millions of neurons firing in tandem.

One mind running two bodies. Breathing through two sets of lungs, one pair strong, one which hadn’t done its job in twenty years. Two hearts, beating to different rhythms. Which was his? Another mind, the remains of the Freaker’s human origins, pushing feebly at the invader. Circulation, involuntary motions, nerves, subconscious thought…

He was in too deep. Trying to control too much would overclock the Synch. The Freaker was trying to move; he stopped the signals. It was attempting to grow another arm, he halted that too. Expand, explode, compress, eject the brain; all attempts to fight him, all expected and frozen before the Freaker even realized it had created the thought.

A rogue command slipped through: Grow tougher. Attack incoming.

If Rin had had control of his face, he would have smiled. You want armor? Sure. More armor.

The Evo chip read the incoming instructions and reacted, hardening the Freaker’s surface, pouring all available mass into armor. Internal organs, muscles, bones, everything liquified, turned to indestructible plating. The heart was the last to go, and when it went, the brain was without a source of power. Thoughts became mush, synapses died, and the last thing Rin felt was a signal from the Evo chip. A sort of electronic wave goodbye as the bit of technology evacuated its host.

The Synch severed properly; Rin was back in his own body. His eyes burned from the strain, and tears were streaming down his face. Through the blur, he saw the glint of green that was the Evo chip, sitting serenely atop the carbon-armor statue that had once been a Freaker.

A single gunshot traced a supersonic line from man to monster, and the green light went out forever.

Rin’s head was pounding, the world was beginning to slip away. Somehow, his hands found the tower’s radio system, obsolete but still functional. His suit interfaced with it automatically, splicing his power box into the radio’s wire system.

“Lieutenant Rinver Ireon to anyone that hears this. I am with an injured soldier, coordinates 00.79.675. If you are foreign, we offer advanced weapons in return for evacuation from the Quarantine Zone. If you are Homeland… operation ‘Hammer’s Reach’ has failed. FireLight has taken extreme casualties. Requesting immediate evacuation. Over.”

For the longest time, there was no answer. Rin’s eyes closed several times, only to re-open a short while later. Time seemed to pass, seemed to drag, seemed to race, as the radio hummed in flat monotone.

Then, a burst of static, and a voice like that of an angel.

“Rinver Ireon, this is FireLight overwatch, we read your signal. Stay put, we’re coming to get you.”

In the darkness by the door, Nia’s head turned, her eyelids fluttering slightly in a more natural sleep. Rin was too tired to feel any joy, bracing himself against the massive switchboard to see out the main viewport. The sun was struggling to shine through the clouds, dancing in disorganized rays across the endless wasteland of stone and steel. In the distance, an entire skyscraper gave way, thundering to bits with a muffled roar. Rin watched the cloud of dust settle, remembering what the city had once been. Remembering what the Freakers had stolen from the world.

“Someday… Someday I’ll be back. You just watch yourselves. Rin’s coming to get you, and when I’m done, this land will belong to mankind again. You just wait, you damn Freakers. You. Just. Wait.”

Chapter 1

            My name, as I am called by the living is Timothy.  It was my title by birth, the very name of my great-grandfather Timothy Lawrence.  He was a great leader of a small town, nestled in Beverly, East Yorkshire.  My mother was a historian and a lover of Great Brittan’s legendary past.  My father on the other hand, was less of an activist in my life.  It wasn’t as if he didn’t care to send a letter now and again, but as the flow of birthday cards became more and more obsolete, so did my father.

When I was five we moved from England to New York, seeking new life under the red, white, and blue.  America: the land of the free and a place of hope for the hopeless.  Such a place took me in as one of them.  For the past twenty years I spent living with my mother and always I wondered of my father.  Was he dead, gone?  Did he still want to be with us?  My sixteenth birthday rolled around and still no call, nor card, nothing.  The next four years my father lay hidden in the dark, not willing to expose himself to nether myself, or my mother, who had long given up on him.

After graduating with honors and a Masters degree in English I moved to a smaller city to begin my practice: Chester, New Jersey.  With the income I had earned I raised a small cottage and started the process of moving in.  For the next few months life had gone on, until last night.

The sun splintered in through my pale window.  My bedroom floor was covered in sheets and pillows as many of them had been thrown there from my unconscious outburst.  I just sat, looking out at the forest that surrounded my house.  My mother always loved the country.  She was born in the rolling plains of Scotland.  My father on the other hand was born in the heart of Britain: London.

Beverly was my parent’s compromise; it was neither a huge city nor a sprawling countryside.  But I would not compromise for my father, thus Chester.  I would have brought my mother here as well, but her work in the schools tied her down.  My shirt lay on a rickety chair paired by an old oak desk.  Rising stiffly, I stumbled over and slip it on.  My digital alarm clock displayed 9:00 am.  I had slept in, after rolling out bed screaming bloody murder at one in the morning.

Papers covered in scribbles were spread out all over the desk in disorderly fashion.  Centering them all was a small laptop computer.  With much squeaking I eased myself into the wobbly recliner, booted up the PC, and began typing frantically.

9:35am October 20^th, 2006

I cannot begin to describe the events that have occurred in the past night.  Dreams of horror and terror beyond imaginable. A monster from my nightmare called me Gregory.  Greg is the name of my father, which is short for Gregory.  My mother always called me a little Greg when I was younger; due to the many actions that I performed that somehow imitated my father. 

My dream said I had a son.  Me?  A son?  I have never been with a woman in a relationship more than a friend.  Though now that I think of it, I do know a Martha.  She had recently co-authored a book with me called “The Rising”.  The books constancy was that of fictional political matters in America, yet I highly remember creating that work with her more than any other.

She was a very quite woman; short in stature, yet not in mind. A brilliant mind she had at that.  Full of thoughts and ideas that few compared with.  A very…

My hands stop typing.  Tremors filled my very bones.  Her scream, I could still hear it ringing in my ears.  Anguish over took me as I remembered the pain of her passing.  Though my mind convinced me that the Martha of my dream was not the one of reality, yet something in my gut could not separate the two.  Tears were brimming in my eyes as I let my emotions get the better of me.  It was only a dream right?  How does something so fake become so real?

For ten whole minutes I sat, staring into nothingness, pondering and questioning my very state of mind.  My life had been one of complete turmoil.  After the disappearance of my father, my mother had been wooed many times by several different suitors.  Now it would be disrespectful and even untrue to say that these men were ugly and grotesque, yet they were that way on the inside.  When my mother finally chose one of her liking she did not realize the heart of the man.

Because of that choice she made I still bear the scars of countless beatings from my stepfather.  When my mother was away he would drag me, shirtless, outside and into the cold and smack me around.  Over the many years that went on for my mother would constantly ask why I had black eyes or a bloody nose.  I was too afraid to tell her.  But it came a day when I overpowered my stepfather.  I would take his beatings no longer.  That time it was he who fled our home.

Still the childhood that we live through does not make us or define us.  Of course that does not take away the fact that it is very painful to receive daily beatings from one’s stepfather.  What I learned through all of that was to be better: better than my father who left me, and the one who left me with bruises.

A cold draft came in from under my closed door.  My bear feet started to feel slightly numb and I quickly stomped them to get the blood flowing.  Sluggishly I shut my computer down, stood, and walked to the perpetrator of all this cold air.  As I exited my bedroom I could see my front door from my standing point on top of a flight of stairs.  My front door was ajar.  Panic sized my already unstable heart.  I could have sworn that I had shut that door.

A clattering sounded from my kitchen.  Slowly, I crept downward: the stairs reacting to my every move in a creaky chorus.  I clenched my hands into tightly balled fists.  It seemed like it took forever to get down the stairs as ever step sounded painfully loud.  My heart was beating like an out of control drum.

A crash resounded once again, louder this time.  Stealthily I crept onward, seeking to find the source of all this commotion.  Sweat dripped down my lip, making me quickly wipe my mouth with the sleeve of my shirt.  Fear creped down my spine and rooted itself in my chest: tightening it.

In the kitchen chairs were overturned, dishes and cups shattered on the floor.  What stopped my heart was nothing that lay on the floor, but what was suspended above it.  Hanging by a roughly knotted noose dangled a body of a woman.  Her black hair was dripping from exertion against her killer and it hung over her face obscuring features.

My stomach revolted at the sight of the body as a putrid taste filled my mouth.  The woman’s slim form slightly swung left and right from the angle she was hung.  A trickle of blood slithered from her lip and over her chin.  The creaking of her weight on the rope was the only sound other than my breathing in the room.  I stepped lightly, trying to avoid cutting my feet on the broken glass that littered the floor.  As I reached the woman her appearance became more and more familiar.

“Mom?”  There was no denying the form that hung, lifeless before me.  With a trembling hand I brushed some of her dark hair away from her eyes.  Her green eyes stared at me with blank expression as her mouth opened in a silent scream.  This time there was no holding back the sickness in my stomach as it emptied its contents on the floor.  Tears blurred my vision; this couldn’t be happening.

I feel to my knees, ignoring the pain that flared from pieces of glass that cut them.

“Oh God no, please no,” I allowed my body to shake with each sob of sorrow.  I screamed, so loud; too loud.  Hot moisture wet my cheeks as I wept.  I glanced upward to see a yellow object on my mother’s stomach.  I vainly tried to cut my cries to a sniffle as I stood quickly.  It was a sticky note attached to her.  It read:

Death is such a cruel thing isn’t it Timmy?  The execution of the ones you love, as you stand now defenseless before them must hurt you, deeply.  I told you we were coming, and yet you did not heed our warnings.  And we, have now become one.  One of mind, heart, and soul.  Yet you don’t understand Timmy; why I do what I do.  Why I kill.  Do not think I kill without purpose and reason.  No one is without sin Timmy and because of that all must face death.  The voices above have told me so.  They have called for my repentance, my allegiance, and a willing hand to kill all who opposed the way.  You must hate me bitterly, but I enjoy your hate.  It fills me with joy to imagine you seething, squirming with rage.  Come and find me Timmy, I am near.  Find the ones you love: ether in this life or in the ones you dream.  There you will find me.  Find Martha lover boy.  She’s next,

Black.