Tag: Fiction

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The Nexus Project: Part 1

~ S.M. Nolan ~ Leave a comment

1.

The labs at the Interspecies Scientific Collaboration were the foremost in the galaxy. From them all manner of advancements, from technology to medicine, and everything between and beyond, had been produced. It was not uncommon to see the myriad of creatures that staffed it walking the halls in white lab-coats and slacks. Here and there ties of various patterns and colors accented feathers, fur, scales, or outright skin in a melding of humanoid and animal features. The ISC was home to some of the greatest minds known to exist, all of them products of the First Contact War.

It had thrown Earth and its colonies into chaos at the time, but was the greatest blessing in disguise for those few, lucky species carrying the inactive genes for humanoid evolution. Just a generation afterward, those first transformed had carved-out a place in society– whether in its upper-echelons or underbellies.

At the ISC though, everyone was an equal, there for the sole purpose of furthering science. From feathered Corvians with their hollow-boned limbs that tucked beneath their wings, to the Canines and Felines required to wear full-body suits for sterility purposes, their was a unanimous sense of oneness in their work. Across the facility’s hundred or so labs, the brightest minds collaborated no matter their genus or genetic lineage.

That was not to say the humans were gone. In fact, respectable positions, no matter the resentment from those outside. To that end, it was not uncommon to see groups protesting beyond the complex’s ten kilometer sprawl of labs, recreation, and housing buildings. Their sleek, white and gray exteriors matching the sterile colorlessness of their innards.

Security fences shimmered blue in the moonlight, an eerie beauty before protesters and their signs for “segregation of science and politics.” It was yet another clutch issue that lasted the length of the colonies’ news-cycles. Once a week the signs changed, some faces the same, but all chanting for the expulsion of one race or inclusion another. It never occurred to the protesters the irony– or their short attention span at that– of protesting with the species that they felt should be removed or included.

From his fifth floor office window, Dr. Edgar Frost, Corvian and head researcher at ISC watched the latest protest, his arms tucked beneath his wings.

“These fools make my cloaca twitch,” he grumbled with a gravely voice. He hopped one-hundred and eighty degrees, faced the assembly behind him. He best shuffled to the seat at his desk with small hops, “Josie?”

“Yesss?” The feline secretary purred in reply.

Edgar met her eyes with a curious persistent-ruffle to his feathers– as if waiting for her to pounce, gobble him up. Both had learned to suppress such acts outwardly, but no forced evolution could change millions of years of instinct.

“Josie, my dear,” Edgar said. “Would you be so kind as to call downstairs and ensure they keep an eye on our friends outside? We needn’t have another incident like last week’s.”

The canine head of security gave a throaty whimper, as was his way, “Do we really have to go through this again, Dr. Frost?”

Frost’s head tilted with its swift, avian manner, “Gnarl, I’ve little patience for interruptions this week. You know that better anyone here.”

“Yes, but you’ve–”

“I think,” Reyes, the male human, head of PR interrupted. “What Chief Gnarl means to say is we must allow the congregation its rights, else we stir greater resentment.”

Gnarl gave a tired growl, “Yeah. That’s what I meant.”

Frost’s head bobbed like a lowly pigeon, odd for a respected scientist, “Yes and it’s easy for you to say. You aren’t constantly mobbed during nightly flights by ignorant creatures. You know those raptors actually tried to chase me down?”

“Yes,” Gnarl replied tiredly.

Reyes added, “And we’ve still no recourse since they did you no harm. Had you not so evasive in your flights perhaps we could have arrested a few of them.”

Frost’s eyes opened fully, “And risk me being shredded by their talons?”

“They’re just angry, Doctor,” Gnarl replied. “Feeling they’re not being given representation.”

“Last week they felt that!” Frost corrected with a squawk. “This week they feel we should dissolve the ISC and let science progress without aide! I will not have such prejudice directing my policies. Besides–” Gnarl and Reyes exchanged a look, knew where Frost was headed. “Raptors know they are more than welcome to apply, and if we find sufficient candidates that can control themselves, we will allow them in at once.”

“Purrhaps,” Josie said as she returned from reception. Her ears had been attuned to their conversation even beyond the room’s walls. “We could bring in a MeLon in disguise. Just for a while.”

“No!” Gnarl barked. “Abso-lutely not! I will not allow MeLons in this facility, friend or foe. They’re too much of a security risk, and I will not–”

“Good Suns!” Frost squawked. “Calm down, Gnarl. Josie, thank you for the suggestion, but I’d rather not compound the problem with spies. We may be transparent, but we do have secrets.”

“It wasss merely a thought,” Josie replied, staring dully at an orb of light dancing down her lycra bodysuit.

Frost’s tongue skirted the insides of his beak in disbelief. Felines were like that– easily distracted and perpetually elsewhere. It made them excellent in positions where aloof manners and calmness were necessary. Josie especially always seemed half-stoned, probably was from too much nip each morning. All the same, she remained the cool-headed foil to Frost’s shrieking madness.

Presently he needed her full attention. He gave a grating squawk, “Josie!”

Her eyes widened to full size, her fur on end around her neck, “Ssssorry.”

“Now listen here, all of you,” Frost said carefully. “Our preparations for the Nexus Project are almost complete. There will be no way to keep the project contained once the first prototype is built, which means we have just under three weeks to secure this facility and ensure each department is prepared fofr the backlash.”

Gnarl bared his teeth, “I’ll have the bloodhounds double their patrols.”

“Good, Good. See that you do.” Gnarl rose from his seat for the door. “Reyes?”

“Yes sir,” the human replied.

“Ensure your department has contingencies prepared.”

“Right away, sir,” Reyes said, and hurried out after Gnarl.

“And Josie, darling,” Frost said as he rose for the window. “Ensure all visitors are thoroughly screened and the scanners have been checked for tampering.”

“Yess, doctor.”

She rose with a sway and sauntered from the room. Frost stared out the window at the congregation protesting, “My nest be damned if those fools take deep-space from us.”

Short Story: Think Deeply

~ S.M. Nolan ~ Leave a comment

The bomb threat at the Oakton Memorial Hospital had been called in by an anonymous tip. Whether or not it was credible, the two-thousand odd doctors, nurses, M-As and other people inside were evacuated. A whole city block was cordoned off. Police blockades re-directed traffic or otherwise halted it whole for two blocks further on all sides. Someone had estimated, if the building went, its parking garages at either side and a few of emptied businesses might go too.

The chaos was already well under way when the Emergency Response Squad arrived. The new-age SWAT team was more an army than a police force, privately funded by many of Oakton’s large corporations to relieve the local, municipal government’s pressures. In truth they were free-agents, authorized to use any and all force necessary to eliminate threats. Unlike police, they were not a government agency, and were free to do any of a number of sordid things– like kill without the petty worries of justice, due process, or the pesky amendments protecting the obviously guilty from being presumed as such.

In short, ERS was everything American Police wished to be with none of the obligations that kept them in check.

ERS was rarely called in, though. OPD didn’t like having its toes stepped on, neither as an entity nor as as individuals comprising that entity. Even so, they couldn’t handle a threat of this nature alone. Recent years of poor press and tension between citzens and the department had festered a growing resentment. Among other things, it kept many would-be peace officers from joining.

OPD gracefully bowed to ERS, this time. In request for aid, containing the situation and keeping panic from spreading, ERS’ crack-squad were sent in. Their ingress across Oakton from its outskirts was unmistakable. They rolled in like an army in freshly armored sleek, blackened APCs with angry looking cannons. The vehicles were all thick, steel-plated angles and cylinders with tires enough to crush even the largest of vehicles that got in their way. Enough of the pseudo-tanks were able to form an impassable wall around the hospital’s entire city-block.

Captain Abraham Logan stepped from an APC. As acting leader of the ERS battalion, he had complete autonomy. His ultra-thin, kevlar and graphene-woven, black uniform and tac-vest gave him all the menace of SWAT combined with the next-gen tech of an army more advanced than the US’s own. The comm-link in his ear was satellite-guided, good for up to a thousand meters under water, or a mile of concrete on all sides. It connected him with ERS dispatch that had twenty-four hour access to public and corporate satellites to monitor situations in real-time.

Equipped with thermographic and night-vision, A-R glasses, Logan could see in the dark while overlaying his GPS-tracked location on a map of the hospital to one side of his vision. In combination with the Explosive Ordinance sniffers embedded in small, microscopic points around his clothing, he was almost singularly useful. His own stubborn will and battlefield experience would keep him and his people alive so long as they listened.

He led his group to the doors, their hi-tech gadgetry enabled and their comm-links active. Their AR glasses even had small cameras to keep ERS-dispatch aware of the teams’ surroundings. They presently showed Logan and his team breaching the facility with expert movements, their voices short, punctual.

“Cut the lights,” Logan ordered through his comm.

An ERS dispatcher, linked to the city’s power grid and the Hospital’s auxiliary generators, did as instructed. The lights went out. Gleaming, sterile white and warm wood paneling turned to dark silhouettes and blackness underfoot. It was almost blinding. The team’s AR glasses faded up their night-vision, and the way ahead was clear– albeit a little more gray-toned than usual. The active sniffers on Logan’s suit tracked scents of plastique and something most certainly lethal, but unidentifiable.

The team moved in sweeping caution, to a stairwell. They burst through its entrance to follow the stairs downward for a basement boiler room. Silence beneath their collective boot-steps sent a chill down their spines. Even Logan, war-hardened as he was, shuddered from the cold. He hid it from his team, led them further down in silence. The E-O trail was hot, as a faint, green line on the AR at their eyes.

They slipped into the bowels of the hospital beyond the stairs, angled for a morgue spanning half the basement. This was where they kept their dead. Everything said it. It was cold, morbid, and overpoweringly sterile smelling. A slightest scent of death though, still remained– as if it could never be scrubbed for its eternally continued presence.

Once more they readied to breach and entered the morgue. The team’s chill shudder returned in full force, caused a pause to their advance. Night-vision revealed steel surfaces of counters, tables, and gurneys both empty and filled across the morgue. Bodies atop them tainted the air further, the stench increasing each second the air warmed from lack of cooling. Even if Logan had given the order to engage the back-up power for the room, he doubted it would undo the odor around them.

He fanned the team out across the room. Behind them the door swung closed with a click. They advanced through the long, wide morgue and autopsy area. Logan followed the AR sniffer trail toward small doors equally spaced along the back wall. Body storage was six high, twenty wide, and according to the faint-outlines on thermal-vision, mostly full.

Logan was too preoccupied with the sniffer trail. It led to a door in the center of the storage unit. He pressed a pair of fingers against a panel there that was still active, likely powered by a back-up battery. Over the course of a minute, the door swung open. An empty tray inched outward. In its center sat a curious looking bomb; tall, wide, but hollow with a glass protrusion atop it. Through it, there was the undeniable stir of vapor mist.

Logan set his rifle aside, reached for the bomb.

“I wouldn’t do that if I were you,” an old-man’s voice echoed over the room. The men and women rubbernecked. “Don’t fret. I’ve been gone a while now. You on the other hand…”

The door they entered from hissed, locked. Ventilation covers snapped shut across the room. All at once, the other hundred-and-nineteen doors on the storage wall opened. The scent of over a hundred bodies doubled the team over, Logan included. A few people passed out, overwhelmed by a mix of Methane and Vomit.

After a few moments of retching, Logan regained his feet, “You sick bastard!”

“Death is a funny thing, Captain,” the man’s voice replied over the PA speakers. “It does interesting things to a man. For instance, it causes a reaction of decomposition that, when mixed with bloating, makes one able to literally explode their guts around the room. The problem of course, is that we are dead when we gain this lovely ability.”

“You sick fuck, these are people!” One woman shouted. She sprinted for the door, breath held, tried to pry open it.

“Ah, ah, ah,” the voice said. “You’re locked away, you see. Were I in your position, I’d make peace with that.”

“Fuck you!” Logan shouted. He suppressed a dry-heave.

The man sighed as though a teacher disappointed with his pupil, “Now, now, Captain, we all have to die sometime. As I said, the body does interesting things. One which I have discovered, and which no one else knows but I.”

“Let us out of here you bastard!” The woman screamed as she booted the door.

“No,” the man replied simply. “No, you are to be the statement which reveals my discovery.”

“What the hell are you talking about, psycho?” A man shouted upward at the room.

“You see, I’ve discovered something many men don’t realize they already know about a dead body,” he paused dramatically, as if it meant all the world to his phrasing. “What I’ve discovered, dear friends, is that a body can create a powerful statement after the consciousness inhabiting it leaves.”

“You son of a–”

“And many dead bodies, Captain,” he said without interruption. “Can create a very powerful message.”

“You son of a–”

A sound came from behind Logan. A buzzing that shot up a thousand Hertz to scream with a high-pitch. Two blocks away, the earth jolted and trembled with a nearby explosion. Dirt and debris filled the air. A cloud of smoke and dust covered the distance between ground-zero and the furthest cordoned areas. The shock-wave blew out glass from every window for a mile. Shards rained through Oakton as precipitous drops that fell from the heavens.

When the dust settled, it took two weeks for ERS and OPD to count the dead and injured– most from the effects of the shock-wave. The crater where the hospital had been was kept roped off for months. Various crews worked day and night to restore power, water, and sewage to the effected areas.

Through it all, ERS and the various news outlets worked to locate the man responsible. When the team’s final moments, recorded by ERS’ dispatchers, finally leaked to the web, the world began to speculate. His statement, it seemed, was lost in the tragedy of the moment. That was, until a few amateur sleuths discovered a single phrase whispered in the final half-second of audio.

Buried beneath sounds of methane igniting, bodies being torn asunder, and cement cracking was the man’s voice; “Think Deeply.”

Short Story: A Measure of Compassion

~ S.M. Nolan ~ Leave a comment

The old man sat in his rocking chair on the front porch of his home. The scenery was something out of an old photograph from the dust-bowl with only the most minor, verdant patches to differentiate the times. His shotgun sat to one side, leaned up against the wall between him and the old hound dog whose eyes were as milky white as her owner’s.

Rain began to beat a steady tempo atop the porch’s awning above. The dusty horizon was splattered darker with each moment that passed. Even before he’d smelled the rain, he’d felt it in his bad knee. A century ago he might’ve been out dancing in the downpour with Mary, but she’d been gone decades now, and damned if the old hound hadn’t developed two left-feet in her old age.

There was a streak through the sky like some fool’d shot a missile out of the old nike base down the way. He almost didn’t believe his eyes, but the hound’s milky-whites reflected the elongated string of fire that arced downward through the sky too. He was convinced, especially when in the distance, past old Peterson’s former farm, it struck the ground like a flaming lawn dart. There was all manner of fire and smoke billowing along the horizon, but given not a soul lived ’round these parts anymore, he sensed he’d be the only one able to investigate.

He hobbled down the few steps to the wet earth, one-two’d in his half-hunch toward his blue pick-up. The dog waddled along after him, her steps even less sure of themselves than his. As usual he stooped to lift her, help her up into the truck. It grumbled to a start beneath them, began the turbulent trek up the dirt-drive and across the cracked asphalt for the abandoned fields to Peterson’s back acres.

The smoke and fire died down as the rain became more dense, weighted the day’s light nearer toward nighttime darkness. Were he not so sure of his whereabouts, he might’ve lost he and the poor hound in the muddy landscape ’til night turned to day. Instead, he jostled his way over the hard, wet terrain toward the smoke-plume that lessened with each breath.

The truck’s head-lights splayed over the first signs of wreckage with a dutiful gaze. Bits of tall metal stuck from the ground at all angles, most red-hot. Whatever had crashed didn’t look like any missile he’d seen in his army days. As a matter of fact, the bits didn’t look like anything he’d ever seen before. They weren’t made of any metal he could place, too dull for steel, too firm for aluminum and with a sort of queer glow that looked more like oil on water in the sunlight.

He slipped out of the truck to help the hound down to her feet, then groped along a fender to cross the high-beams for the wreckage. The smoke was near gone by then, the fires embers along the edges of hot metal and smoldering grasses. The old man thought to go closer, but even the hound knew it best not to. Instead, the pair circled wide around the area, made sure to lean in over the taller edges of the dirt crater that’d been carved out for better looks of the interior.

It wasn’t until the two came full-circle that the old hound began her howling. She danced back and forth in place, left-footed and all, with her ears back and her arthritic spine stiff. Her growls became howls as much aged-whooping coughs as they were canine vocalizations. The old man put a hand on her head to calm her, but she only went quiet. She still danced backward with a wheezy whimper, as ready to flee as any creature he’d ever seen.

It was then that a shadow caught his eye at the edge of the head-lights. It turned to a silhouette of gangly, human-like features as it clawed itself through the dirt, drug itself forward. The old man would’ve run if he’d been capable of anything more than awe. The hound would’ve done the same if not for her stubborn devotion to staying at her master’s side. All the same she began her howling again, this time louder, more frightened than anything.

“Shush it now,” he said with a backward swat of the air. She went quiet as he stooped down, offered the poor soul a hand, “You alright there, friend?”

A curious bunch of clicks and sharp sounds echoed in his head, as if they’d come from his own thoughts. He wasn’t sure whether his mind had gone suddenly, but he kept himself focused on the wretch that drug itself toward the light. When its gnarled hand graced the light it was charred almost black over a deformed set of three fingers.

The strange hand reached for the old man to help while the weird clicks and screeches sounded again. He worked himself down to his knees, grasped the cold, wet hand that felt more like rubber than skin. With a heave, he drug the creature back to see the face of something more inhuman than even the most frightful carnival attractions from his youth.

“Good lord,” he said with a breathy voice. “You ain’t human.”

The dog whimpered as the creature came to a rest in his lap. He looked its head over to see the the viscous sheen of tears that leaked from black, oblong eyes. With a hand he ushered the hound over. She approached carefully, sniffing as she went. Another wheezy whimper saw her inch toward the creature’s face. It made a few clicks with heavy breaths, lifted a hand toward the dog. She slapped his face with a wet tongue, and the clicks and screeches made a stutter as if altogether shocked to laughter.

The old man cradled the creature’s head as it looked up, teary-eyed. For a moment there was a silence that even the rain didn’t feel right in breaking. Then, with that same curious way, words formed in his head as if from his own thoughts.

“Th-aankk you, fr-iend.”

With a last breath, its eyes closed and it went still.

The hound gave one, deep and mournful howl. The rain picked up. The old man did his best to lift himself and the creature for the back of his truck. By morning, a hole was dug. The creature filled it– just a little to the left of Mary in the back acre. He wasn’t sure whether to mark it with a cross or a star, so he left it blank.

He finished moving the last of the earth to fill the hole, leaned on the edge of his shovel while the hound laid in the dirt. Her milky-whites more sad than he’d ever seen ’em behind the little cyclones of dust kicked up from her hard snorts.

“I suppose we ought to say something,” he admitted aloud. The hound huffed a breath against the dirt and lifted her head. He scratched an eyebrow with a dirty thumb, “I don’t rightly know what to say though. If’n you think you got something, now’s the time.”

She gave a sharp whimper, went silent. They listened to the wind for a moment, his eyes on the sky above. She whimpered again and the wind stilled.

He nodded, “I suppose that’ll have to do.”

They returned home to retake their places on the porch. The old man settled into his chair as the hound collapsed in her usual way. He stared outward, uncertain of where the creature’d come from, but sure its final moments were as peaceful as they could’ve been, given the circumstances. That was something, he felt; if nothing else, any visitor should know a measure of compassion. His only regret was that he couldn’t show it more.

The Collective: Part 9

~ S.M. Nolan ~ Leave a comment

9.

Rude Awakening

The group returned to Tokyo unscathed. Nothing had changed; either the Collective wasn’t sure of the damage done yet, or they were expertly keeping it quiet. Lex guessed the latter. Rachel agreed; it was doubtful anyone in the Collective was willing to admit defeat, let alone when it spelled disaster for the world’s economy. Credits were still good for the moment, despite not being backed by anything hard, but the news would eventually get out.

Containment was one of the few things the Collective hadn’t been able to exert over the Sleepers. Their lives in the virtual worlds were all connected by RSS-feeds, news blotters, chat-logs, forums; information flowed freely through them all. The Collective had learned the hard way long ago that the more one attempted to manipulate its flow, the more pressurized it became. All the same, contingencies would be enacted to keep people from waking, rioting once the news got out. Lex aimed to make any countermeasures pointless.

She and the others were ready to move almost as soon as they reached Tokyo’s limits. The deaths of Steinsson and Andersson would ensure that the final, few members of the Collective were even more heavily-guarded than the last. Without a doubt there’d be whole GSS contingents between the remaining four members of the Collective and Lex’s group.

They were secondary targets now though. The main targets were already sighted, and their last asset was ready to take the playing field. He’d been informed of his duties on return from Switzerland, all relevant information transferred to him. His allegiance had been assured by the murders of Li and Kay before him, the continued deaths of the Collective further ensured he would honor their deal. Regardless, it wouldn’t be long before the Sleepers woke, with or without him.

Lex and the others piled out of the van long enough to eat, rest, and await nightfall. They vacated a hideaway beneath Tokyo’s streets as the last rays of sunshine were snuffed out, gave way to Tokyo’s neon, light-polluted glow.

Lex led the way through alleys toward their destination. Vehicles were too easy to track given their sore-thumbed obviousness on empty streets. They were easily concealed along the surface all the way to the target building; a giant, server-storage site that stole most of the nearby real-estate with an impressive expanse. It looked about as futuristic as it was; all angles with windows that formed an upward curve along two-thirds of its front, ended with the lowest third’s roof. The rest of the building rose like a giant, crystal chrysalis into the sky. If Lex had to guess, she’d have said there were roughly a hundred and twenty floors between the lobby and the roof. At its very top would be her targets.

She split off from Rachel and the others at the rear-entrance. There was an almost mournful look in the latter’s eyes, but both women knew there was nothing to be done about it. Rachel was needed elsewhere and Lex’s assignment was something she needed to do herself.

She stealthed her way through empty, service hallways. The narrow paths cut through the building’s interior to a grand lobby. Granite floors and marble-topped half-circle reception-desk sat beneath a quarter-wall that split the lobby in half, extended sky ward to the crest of the curved windows. The Global Entertainment logo of a wire-frame globe with solid continents stared down.

Lex passed it, careful not to be caught on any of the dozens of cameras around, and skirted the walls for the elevators at the back of the lobby. She stepped inside an elevator to await the signal, watched a small LED screen glow with an animated version of the globe-logo. It flashed to a face and Lex’s eyes narrowed on the man she’d ordered to speak for the Collective.

His Japanese features were obvious, pristine, but he hadn’t been glitzed with make-up– the sweat that gleamed off his face said as much. In fact, Lex knew for certain he was hiding in a hole, broadcasting through a remote up-link the team maintained from a server-room.

He cleared his throat, “On behalf of Global Entertainment, I would like to speak with you, our loyal audience, for a moment.” Japanese subtitles repeated his words in character script as Lex’s jaw tightened. “Two days ago, the final reserves of Platinum and Gold bullion that back our digital currency were destroyed. For those that do not know, it is these reserves that all money is based off. In effect, our entire economy has been eradicated.”

Lex quit listening. By now there would be chaos across the ‘net. The two Collective’s members on-site, heads of tech Kazue Matsuoka and her lover Maja Stroman, would be scrambling to shut down the link, confused as to why they couldn’t. Lex hit a button for the top-floor penthouse. The elevator lurched upward. She was the distraction, meant to buy time to finish the broadcast, enact the final part of their plan.

Lex touched a communicator in her ear, “I’m moving up.”

Rachel looked back at Ryo as he hunched over a keyboard on the edge of a floor-full of servers. He pressed his ear as he worked, “The broadcast is thirty seconds out. I’m hacking the system now. You’ll be the only functioning elevator. There’s a whole contingent in the penthouse. Be ready.”

Lex’s hands clenched into fists, “Just get it done.”

Rachel cast a look between Yang-Lee and Kaz, racked the bolt on a GSS rifle, “Here we go.”

The elevator-doors opened at the penthouse floor. Twelve rifles lit up the insides. For a moment there was nothing but the sounds of sustained fire. Someone shouted something in Japanese, and it stopped. The squad leader pointed to two of his team, sent them in to scour the elevator with a pair of gestures. They inched forward, leaned into their rifles, with rigid bodies. The rifles swept left and right inside, up and down, found nothing. They relaxed in confusion, turned back to face the rest of the squad.

The squad’s arms lowered. A near-silent of metal on fabric swished. Lex’s boots slammed a vent cover atop the elevator. She plunged through, landed blades-out. The swords angled up, stabbed in at the spines of both men. Blood sprayed from punctures as the blades pierced their fronts. Rifles rose again, chattered against Lex’s double-wide meat-shield.

Holes riddled the dead men. The blades propelled them forward. Lex growled, burst from the elevator with a flying leap, flipped up, over the line of armed men and women, landed behind the squad leader. Fire lagged behind, followed, went silent before it killed the commander.

One blade went left, the other right. A pivot turned to a pirouette. A hand followed through. Lex mentally counted down; Eight.

A wide leg sleep, low gravity. Two bodies tumbled, stunned. One more fell from a dual slice across the belly. Seven.

The sweep turned acrobatic. A flying round-house staggered another man. A blade sliced a second’s throat beside him. Six.

She began another landing; a blade cut the calf of a woman. The other plunged up, in, and out her sternum. Five.

A wide, uplifted sweep, lacerated another woman’s torso. Four.

Lex’s legs drew nearer, body upright. The three staggered men began to recover. She whirled with a spin, made circles to aim. A stab inward through the heart of the last man standing, and one on the ground. Two.

With another sweep, and a fluid shift, she kept the last men down. The blades whirled, plunged down through soft bodies. Zero.

She hesitated a moment to control her breath, then ripped the blades out to survey the carnage.

Tell-tale abstracts of blood were painted across the penthouse’s beige walls. Corpses lay where they’d fallen; some atop one other, others sequestered, alone. All were covered in blood. The penthouse’s hardwood-floor was a crimson pool of still-warm blood beneath Lex’s boots. She straightened with a whirl of her blades. Blood flung from the tips as she marched forward along the wide hallway, into a massive, main room that looked out on Tokyo with a bird’s -eye view.

The sight was breathtaking. Tokyo was a glowing jewel of prosperity in an otherwise blackened sea. Lex was compelled toward the windows. She took a few steps to the large, six-person dining table atop a platform. It shined from a lacquer finished that mixed the faint neon of Tokyo with the room’s low sconces on its supports and walls. For a moment, Lex almost regretted what was about to happen. The click of a pistol’s hammer reminded her of its necessity. From the sound, she guessed something German.

“Miss Stroman. Nice of you to join me.” Only the faintest of feet scuffed wood from a corner of the room, “Tell your wife to stay or I kill her before she reaches the elevator.”

The German woman’s hard-angled face sneered, pulled high-lighted hair tighter around her round forehead. Lex didn’t move. Stroman shot a glance sideways, froze her wife with a look, “Your reckoning has arrived, Alexis.”

Lex ignored her, “It really is a beautiful view here at the top.” The German took a few steps forward, angled wide around Lex with the gun on her. “Join us, won’t you Kazue?” The Japanese woman remained frozen. “Very well then.”

Stroman took the platform’s steps one-by-one, settled even with Lex. The gun’s aim was firm, “Whatever you intended to prove ends here.”

Lex’s body remained steadfast. Her eyes swept the multi-colored beauty ahead, “Maybe.” Stroman’s left hand gripped the pistol beneath the right, further steadied her aim. Lex sensed the shift, waited, her eyes on the horizon, “Then again, perhaps I’ve already completed what I set out to do.”

As if flicked by switches, Tokyo’s city-blocks went dark one-by-one. Stroman didn’t notice until the lights went out above her. Kazue spoke from the corner of the room, “Maja!”

She glanced sideways to see the emerging darkness. Lex struck. In one move, she had Stroman by a wrist, gun pointed outward, away. Stroman eyed the blade hilt-deep in her gut. She grit her teeth, bucked back and forth. Kazue gasped, began to sob in the corner.

Maja’s mouth leaked blood, “You… Bitch…”

“The Sleepers are awakening,” Lex said coldly. “In two minutes power will return across the city long enough for an EMP to detonate.” Stroman fought with her last ounces of life against the grip on her wrist. Lex’s hand was firm, “In two and a half minutes, your world will be ours again.”

She ripped the blade from Stroman’s torso. Her body tumbled down the platform’s stairs to the floor. Kazue launched herself across the room, fell into howls beside Maja. Lex dislodged the gun’s magazine, tossed it across the penthouse. She turned, blade pointed downward, for Kazue.

“You’re a monster!” The woman screamed at Lex. She repeated the phrase, shoved her face against Maja’s chest to weep.

Lex stared down while the words echoed through her head. She didn’t doubt their truth, but couldn’t deny it was the Collective that had made them such. All she’d done was set out to right the world’s balance. There was never a choice for her but to ensure the Collective’s debts were repaid in blood. There was no system left to punish them. No courts to hold them accountable. No police to arrest them. They’d seen to that. With it, they’d as much signed their own death-warrants as formed the monster bound to slaughter them one and two at a time.

“You know what has to happen, Kazue,” Lex said. She ignored her, but her cries went silent. “The Sleepers must awaken. The debt must be repaid.”

Kazue sniffled. She kissed Maja softly on the lips and cheek, rose with a final breath. Her eyes were hard, tearful, but accepting. They met Lex’s. Kazue swallowed hard, stiffened her neck and spine with a small pair of nods.

Lex made it quick; a lone thrust through the heart. Kazue went limp against the blade, fell beside her lover as it retracted. The power faded back for a brief moment, then the sound of something like metal grating shook the building. A wave rolled out across Tokyo. The penthouse lights flared brightly, then died out. A door opened near the elevators, a shielded flashlight attachment on a rifle blinding Lex even at the distance. It lowered to reveal Rachel’s face, the others behind her.

Rachel jogged forward, met Lex halfway up the hall with a pant, “We’re ready to move. We’ll have to take the tunnels, the streets are already turning into chaos.”

“No,” Lex said defiantly. “No-one hides anymore. Hold your own, but don’t harm anyone. The GSS will be inbound. We need to ensure the people are protected.”
Rachel gave a nod, leaned to look past at the two bodies beside one another, “Stroman and Matsuoka?” Lex gave a sole nod. Rachel huffed from exertion, “Good. Come on.”

The rest of the group turned for the stairwell. Lex hesitated, mind caught in Kazue’s willing sacrifice. She hadn’t begged, or pled, merely accepted her fate. Lex sympathized, started forward to follow the others down the thousands of steps to the lobby.