by Hodden, TE
He walked towards one of the pyramid skyscrapers. A woman stepped out of the foyer to meet him. The sight of her left Melisa feeling strangely cold. She was.. much the same height as Melisa, but carried herself taller and more confidently. She was a little heavier in build, curvier, with fuller, more motherly hips. Her hair was longer, but the same colour as Melisa’s, her eyes hardened and tempered by long experience.
Melisa stared at her older self, at the woman she would become, wearing an armoured body glove, a long red coat, and strapped over her back: the Singularity Spear.
The Yeoman touched the older Melisa, and the pair vanished in a glare of white light.
Melisa closed her eyes. “No… No…”
She ran across the marketplace, and onto the platform.
Charlie opened his eyes. “Melisa? How… What are you doing here?”
“The ghoul dragged me through.” She put her hands on her hips. “Did I call you here?”
He looked away. “How do you know?”
She kicked him. “You should have told me! The first time! Not when you travel back to make this happen! And¬”
“Don’t kick me!” He yelped.
She lowered her foot. “Why wouldn’t you just tell me?”
“Because you told me not to!” He spluttered. “You told me you wouldn’t believe it, and if you did, you would go about this the wrong way!”
Melisa nodded. “How bad is it?”
“I don’t know.” He rubbed his head. “You… seemed to think it was pretty dire, but I don’t have the first clue how, or why.” He pointed up to the crystal. “I was attuning myself. The energy it gives off is as unique as a fingerprint. Now I know it, I should be able to search for it.”
“But,” Melisa said, chidingly, “for now maybe we should seal the Schism-Way and stop any more ghouls slipping to our world?”
Charlie nodded. “Yes.”
They walked back towards the passageway.
Melisa smiled. “So… What else did my future self tell you?”
He gave her a sorry look. “I wish I could tell you.”
“Lottery numbers? Which horse to bet on?”
“It was…” His cheeks flushed red. “It was personal.”
Melisa rolled her eyes. “Well, the future you is still a pain in the ass.”
“Yes.” Charlie’s smile was sad. “I am afraid that comes from the rules of the game.”
Melisa rolled her eyes. “What? You won’t even pretend to be surprised?” She laughed. “So…what kind of personal?”
“The personal kind.”
“Hey!” She offered him the bag of mint cake. “Sooner or later you are going to tell me. Right?”
“Later,” he said. “Much later.”
Melisa raised an eyebrow. “I don’t think you know how good I am at pestering people yet.”
01001
Rock Harris soared above the clouds, carried at supersonic speeds by his flight pack. The camouflage of his suit blended him into the sky. The alchemical circuits woven through his armour made him invisible to sensors.
His visor picked out the Avatar, beneath him, through a layer of clouds.
“I’m in position,” Harris reported, loading a lightning bolt into his crossbow. “Stand by.”
“Yeah,” Phoebe answered, “I’m going to need a moment.”
“Of course, you do!” Harris growled. “We don’t have a moment.”
“Almost there…”
“Are you flying with the handbrake on?” He chided.
“And…” Phoebe stretched the word to breaking point. “Mark!”
Harris fired the lightning bolt. It struck the Avatar in the back of his head, and detonated in flash of arcing electricity.
The Avatar stopped to hover, twisting round to look up at Harris. The red eye pulsed with light, and the searing white ray sliced through the clouds.
Harris pulled up, and spiralled around the ray. “I got his attention.”
“But he isn’t following you!” Phoebe chided him. “All the time he has that death ray he won’t feel a need to follow you.”
“Yes dear!” Harris thumbed the controls on his crossbow, and loaded an inferno bolt. “Quite right dear.” He took aim, at the Avatar’s eve, and fired. “Better?”
The bolt hit the Avatar in its one eye. It exploded in a fountain of white flames and blue sparks.
The Avatar roared in pain, and shot upwards.
“Better,” Phoebe said.
Harris flew upwards, accelerating as hard as he could, aware the Avatar was flying faster his pack could carry him, closing the gap between them. He pointed the crossbow downwards, aimed at the robot’s ruined eye, and fired a rapid salvo of inferno bolts.
The Avatar burst from the clouds, roaring with fury.
“Darling?” Harris suggested.
“Wait for it,” Phoebe suggested. “And…”
The Avatar accelerated harder.
The Manta jet’s stealth field pulsed off.
It was directly above Harris, the nose pointed to the stars, the aft to the ocean, powered down. It dropped fast, like a stone. Harris let it pass him, and dove into the open mouth of the jet, slapping the ramp control.
“Go!” He shouted.
“Not yet, Darling!” Phoebe sang, from the flight deck. She had donned a suit of Scimitar armour to use as flight suit.
Weightless, Harris propelled himself up to the flight deck, and clung to a chair. “We have his attention!”
“I know,” Phoebe assured him.
The Avatar was seconds away. Hurtling up, as they hurtled down. He was in spitting distance. In touching distance. He was reaching out with four clawed arms.
Phoebe threw the throttle to the max, and the engines howled, engulfing the Avatar in their blue flames, as the jet surged forwards.
Harris braced himself in the chair, grateful his armour was cushioning from most the g-force of the sudden acceleration. Beside him Phoebe was laughing gleefully.
“Phoebe, I think you made him mad,” Harris said, watching the displays.
“Yes!” Phoebe cackled, throwing switches. “Reconfiguring for space flight. The missile countermeasures are armed. The harpoon launcher is ready…”
On the screen the Avatar was matching their acceleration, beating it, closing the gap.
Phoebe tilted her head, and smiled at her husband. “Oh, we shall lead him on a merry chase indeed…”
They were high enough to see the clouds bending with the sky, around the curve of the Earth, to see the clear sky melting into night.
And then they were free of the Earth, and floating weightless in the darkness.
Harris tapped open the weapons systems.
Phoebe looped the Manta about, and flew straight at the Avatar.
Its eye flashed, and the white-ray grazed the hull, scorching the outer armour.
“Well,” Phoebe said with a sigh, “he heals quick.”
Harris targeted the Avatar and opened fire, with a rapid burst from the rail guns. None of the flachettes reached the Avatar. It blasted them from the air with its white ray. With the railgun still hammering away, Harris fired the missile countermeasures. Cannisters of foil and glitter, perfect for confusing targeting systems, flew at the Avatar and burst. His ray swept around, flashing between the potential threats.
Harris fired the harpoon.
The grapple speared the Avatar in its side, and lodged fast, trailing the hardened cable behind it.
Phoebe slammed the throttle to max, and the Manta took a steep dive into the atmosphere, dragging the Avatar behind them.
The Manta rattled and shook, as tore a path through the boiling pressures of re-entry. Fire rolled over the armour plates of the hull. The cable to the harpoon burned away. Harris checked the displays, and the Avatar was still falling, cocooned in steam and smoke, its armour glowing the colour of honey.
They sliced down into the clouds.
“Yes!” Phoebe cheered, hauling on the yoke to
level them out from the fall. “Yes!”
The Avatar tumbled out of the clouds, trailing steam and smoke behind it. The white ray lanced out from the fireball, ripping apart the Manta’s engines.
Phoebe gripped the yoke, and threw a flurry of switches. “No! No! No!”
Harris tried to scream his wife’s name, but couldn’t be sure if managed to. He couldn’t hear his own screams over the sound of explosions as the ray struck the Manta again, slicing through the hull and the airframe, cleaving the Manta in two.
The two halves fell away from each other, spinning and tumbling wildly, like leaves upon the wind.
In the blur of confusion that followed, Harris glimpsed the Avatar hitting the sea, in an explosion that threw waves up into the clouds, like a mushroom cloud.
Harris released himself from his chair and kicked off, firing his flight pack. He soared through the air, sky, reaching out for the crumbling half of the jet. “Phoebe! Phoebe!”
The shrapnel was pouring from the wreckage. Harris had to roll and dodge, trying to make his way through the debris, but it all took time, fractions of precious seconds, as the sea loomed ever larger.
And then the wreckage hit the sea.
The world stopped, and turned silent, losing its colour as the impact buckled and tore what was left of the Manta, and the sea swallowed the remains.
Phoebe was gone.
01010
Brandi Summers slept on her sofa, her bare feet nestled on the fluffy cushion, a herbal tea left to go cold on the coffee table, a paperback on her lap, and her big headphones on so the neighbours didn’t complain about the late night monster movie.
She was too tired to dream, which was for the best.
If she dreamt, she would remember, and today had been a day she longed to forget.
The business card she had been given was tacked to the board behind her computer, amongst the floppy discs, with the doodled labels (“Work’s Christmas Party”, “The Parade”, and “Candle Night” amongst the favoured pictures).
The computer clunked and shuddered to life, the LEDs flashing, and the drives whining.
The screen blipped to life, with a cursor flashing, then lines of code, as the hard disc was scrutinized, her emails picked through, and each of her photographs studied.
Oblivious, Brandi slept on.
01011
Catherine Williams stood on the windswept Montauk beach, watching the waves. They were black as tar under the cloud choked night, lapping on the clay dark sand.
Angel stood beside her, shivering. Catherine couldn’t tell if it was the frigid breeze carried by the waves, or the anticipation that made the mousy, veiled woman, quiver. Next to her, Barney was in his Osprey duds, the weapons on his gauntlet constantly changing, as he inspected the arsenal available to him. One of the Manta jets sat on the grassy bank down to the beach.
Matthew stood at the water’s edge, staring to the horizon.
Catherine was dressed in her Scarlet Knight armour, the Singularity Spear in her hand. It was itching at her mind, whispering ever more urgent warnings, as the Avatar approached.
Another Manta circled overhead, and set down on the sand, blowing a whirlwind with the engine wash. The ramp lowered and Charlie, armoured as the Yeoman, stepped down onto the beach.
Melisa followed him.
“No!” Catherine darted to her niece, having to resist the urge to drop into the Warp. “Mel! No!”
Melisa stood firm. “I thought the message was for all hands on deck.”
Catherine nodded. “But not you. Not for this. Take the Manta. Help evacuate the island.”
Melisa cupped Catherine’s cheek, and Catherine was sure the girl looked at her with more than just her eyes. As always, she saw more of the truth than Catherine could hide. “What happened? What happened to… Phoebe?”
Catherine closed her eyes. She couldn’t find the words. Her breath scalded her craw.
“No!” Melisa whispered. “How? When?”
“Melody!” Matthew said, without turning around. “Go!”
Melisa kissed her aunt’s cheek. “Stay safe.”
Catherine nodded. “I promise.”
Melisa turned to leave. She gave the Yeoman a look, that was… curious in a way that Catherine could not put her finger on. She prodded his scaled armour with her finger. “Do not let anything happen to my aunt. Okay?”
Charlie nodded. “Of course.”
Melisa lay a hand on her breastplate. “When this is done, we need a serious talk about today.”
He nodded again.
Barney burst out laughing. “Oh… Oh no… Are you two…?”
“No!” Melisa and Charlie answered at the same time, with the same venom and certainty.
Barney rolled his eyes. “Sure.”
There was a roar of engines, as Harris, in his Scimitar armour, dropped from the sky. He landed in a crouch, a crossbow in each hand.
Melisa ran to him. “Rock?”
Harris growled. “How close?”
Catherine reached through the spear. “Minutes at most. It’s still on the seabed.”
Barney looked impressed. “You stopped it flying?”
“No,” Angel said. “It just learned not to travel exposed.”
Harris nodded. “Good. It means it knows we can hurt it. That means we can kill it. If we do, maybe it will learn that this planet is more trouble than the invasion is worth.”
Melisa hugged Harris. “I’m so sorry.”
“It,” Harris whispered, “will be sorry too.”
Charlie crouched, and let a handful of sand drift through his gauntlets.
Catherine crouched beside him. “I don’t suppose there are any Schism-Ways nearby?”
“Yes,” Charlie said, a little distracted. “None I can let you throw the Avatar into, I’m afraid.”
Catherine wrinkled her nose. “Well, we wouldn’t want this to be easy, would we?” The Spear flashed a warning in her mind. “Melisa! Go!”
Melisa ran to the Manta, and it took off, circling overhead, before heading inland.
Catherine pointed the spear to the sea. “Here he comes!”
The Avatar emerged from the waves at a sprint, a forcefield parting the water around him, freeing him from friction against the waves. His strides were long and powerful, clawing deep into the dirt. Its eye flashed, and the ray swept across the beach.
Catherine sank into the Warp, ducking under the ray.
The others slowed into the stretching time, rolling and ducking away from the ray as it flew over the beach, gouging a trench in the sand, melting the walls to glass.
Catherine ran, the elation soaring through her, as she sped out, over the water, so fast she skimmed the tops of the waves, circling wide, building up speed, as she ran behind the Avatar, readied her spear and threw herself at the robot.
The spear punched into the armour, slicing deep.
Catherine pulled herself from the Warp, and concentrated the displacement down the spear, down through the shaft, to the head, to the very tip.
The Avatar didn’t move. It stood firm.
Catherine sank back into the Warp and rolled aside as the robots claws scythed round at her, followed by the white ray. Catherine ran circles around the robot, dropping deep into the Warp, to where time stood still, then surfacing, for a fraction of a second, channelling the displacement through the spear, pinning the robot down, as Matthew wrapped it in his aura, snaring the arms, choking the throat, and hoisting the Avatar off the ground, and swinging it at the beach, at the speed of sound.
Angel stepped forwards, touching her hood. Her gemstone pulsed with light, and the Avatar slammed to a sudden halt, the armour plates of it skin buckling and distorting.
It dug its feet into the sand, and stepped forwards, pushing against Angel’s force projection.
She grunted and pushed back, leaning forwards, straining with efforts.
The Avatar took another step, pushing Angel back through the sand.
&
nbsp; Matthew snared the Avatar again, and held it fast, tying it down, as Angel released her force projection, then threw it at the robot, over and again, hitting the robot like a sledgehammer.
Catherine went deep into the Warp, as deep as she had ever dared, and ran at the Avatar, she drove her foot into its ankle, and surfaced. The displacement kicked its foot out from under it, and the robot dropped to its knee.
The Avatar’s claws caught the spear before she could drop back into the Warp. Millipede like robots wormed out from its fingers, wrapping around the spear, digging in their claws, as maws full of tiny teeth tried to drill into the singularity orb.
In Catherine’s mind, the spear wailed in complaint, and she lost her grip on the Warp.
The white ray hit her in the chest, and turned the world to nausea and pain.
Catherine crashed down onto dank sand and rolled back into the waves.
The worm things on her spear squealed electronic yelps as they broke into small parts, and were sucked away from the spear, into a tornado of sand that whirled around Charlie.
The tornado of sand and debris sang as it whirled faster and faster, until the grains of sand started to glow white hot.
Charlie gestured with his hand, and whirlwind hurtled across the beach, consuming the Avatar, faster and fire, a scorching wind of fire, full of white-hot shrapnel, slicing through his armour, punching through his joints.
Barney folded nebula cannons out of the Osprey suit. They rested on his shoulders like bazookas, and made a sound like the sky cracking open, as they fired bolts of bright pink plasma at the Avatar.
Harris flew overhead, his crossbows firing like machineguns, the bolts exploding in the Avata’s eye, denying him the chance to use his ray.
Matthew and Angel moved in unison, a punch from his aura, followed by the wrecking ball of her force projection.
The warmth of the spear’s presence flowed through Catherine, numbing her pain and salving her anguish.
Catherine sank deep into the Warp, down into the murkiest, darkest, depths of time. To where the sand of the firestorm hung still in the air, and she saw the gaps between the particles and flames, until the energy bolts and crossbow darts were hanging still in the darkness, and her friends were frozen.
