No one was home.
She curled onto her side, pulling her legs up and folding in upon herself. Her lost one, her loved one, was truly lost and couldn’t find his way back. Wrenching pain wracked her chest, and she screamed, hoping it could escape that way, right up through her throat.
The scream turned into a roar.
Chapter 1
“All right, it seems clear,” Pete called from the doorway. “They’re long gone, if they were even here.”
“Let’s check it out, people. It’s big, so, spread out and let’s see what we find.” Captain Petrial waved them into the large warehouse from his position at the communications truck. “Except you, Yepez. Get over here.” When she jogged up, he grabbed the collar of the young man next to him and pulled him away from the screen he was staring at. “See what is interfering with our backup long range, will you? I’m not buying the sun spot shit.”
“Yes, sir,” she nodded and turned to the equipment, carefully glancing away from the young, embarrassed private. After a quick survey of the data in front of her, she commented, “We have no break in standard links…”
“Just check it, Rose. If you are gonna last on my team, you will ensure that you have at least two lines open and available at all times. I don’t like to be out here without them. If you can work out a third, that’d make me ecstatic. Understand?”
“Yes, sir. Will work on a backup to the backup, sir.”
“Now we understand each other.” Gerald Petrial let go of the recruit. “You. Watch and learn.”
“Yes, sir.”
The captain headed back toward the entrance to what looked like another in a long list of dead ends. As his head turned, he scanned the terrain out of habit. The high desert at that time of year held little to hold the eye for long: small, scattered trees and some low brush, all nearly the same color as the rocks and thin soil. The cloudless sky stretched out above them, somehow bigger here than anywhere he had traveled in his many years in the corps. It was late morning, so the small animals that scurried about between dusk and early morning had long since taken themselves to cooler and safer places. Far in the distance, just behind the steady rise in land that hid it, the bordertown Juniper would be bustling with activity. Beyond it, the wide, deep Croc River wound its way from the remote mountains that fed it to the open mouth of the delta. However, here, not an hour’s travel away, there was no sign of the lush natural vegetation and extensive farmlands that spread out from the river on both shores.
He paused at the door and raised an eyebrow at the approach of an old friend and former commander; he was accompanied, of course, by his mysterious charge. “Grant?”
“Can we go in?” The man asked.
“I’d rather you didn’t, unless you have good reason.” Petrial turned and watched his unit comb through the warehouse. It was large enough that they still hadn’t reached the back of the building. His eye caught on a shape hovering over some boxes. “Hey! You’d better not be scavenging, private!”
“No, sir!” The man jumped back, dropping into the box whatever he had grabbed onto. “Um, nothing here…” He hitched his firearm up on his shoulder and moved further from the entrance.
Petrial sighed and looked down at the young teenage girl across from him. She was dressed in a standard border patrol field uniform that hung on her small frame. Her hand gripped Grant’s sleeve, and her brown eyes swung from the warehouse to the captain; she swallowed nervously, something which made her look younger than she was. It was the first time he had seen the usually boisterous girl so shaken. He asked, “Is she picking up something?”
Grant answered, “We think so.”
Klein jogged up to them. “We are finished with the perimeter search. There is nothing in the short, Captain. I’m leaving four here and taking one out for the second arc.”
“All right. Keep sharp, Klein, like this was the first one.” Their team had investigated ten sites in the last few weeks, and not one had furthered their search for the terrorist faction that was active in the region. He had to remind his team constantly to not get comfortable. He knew from experience that complacency and arrogance were two attitudes that got people killed in the field.
When Klein walked over to confer with his team, Petrial said to Grant after a short hesitation, “Gimme a minute then, to make sure it’s absolutely safe.” He stepped over the threshold and yelled out, “Toni, how we looking?”
“I don’t see a thing, Captain, but there’s still a lot to check,” said Sergeant Antonelli, looking up from the scanner.
“Saia, how about you?”
“It looks okay to me,” said the woman, just now reaching the far back corner, waving a metallic wand back and forth in front of her and checking the monitor in her hand.
“Grant, come on in.” He wasn’t sure exactly what the girl could do. It was strictly prohibited to discuss it, and with good reason, but he knew who her aunt and parents were. He could only imagine that whatever ability she had inherited from that family was a powerful one.
Despite Grant’s assurances, and despite the intense pressure for results from his superiors, he had not been receptive to permitting such a young girl to join their operation. A father of three, his gut told him every time he saw the fourteen-year-old to ship her back to the city; but if her own father felt safe enough with it, then Petrial could accept it...barely. In the end, he had only agreed because they had gone so long without making any headway, and, although it was classified as a dangerous assignment, they had not had one hint of trouble. The disgusting truth was that they hadn’t had a hint of anything. He had decided that if this girl, with her unnamed powers, could help them out in some way, it might be worth going against his instincts.
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Mercy laid her hand on the doorjamb. She forced herself to be calm, taking a deep breath and pulling down her shoulders. Inside, she battled an agitation that had begun the moment they arrived at the remote warehouse. The cause of her irritation was the difference between what she saw and what she knew. She frowned and whispered to Grant, “I think this is it, but it looks different.” She lifted a hand and pointed to the back of the building. “Over there. Can we check there?”
“Okay,” Grant said easily. “Let’s check it out.”
This is the place, she said to herself. I know it is…so why does it feel wrong?
She looked around at the tables and machines that were dusted like the floor with a thin layer of the same beige dirt that spread in all directions outside. There were large shelving units that were linked to an intricate system of conveyor belts and sorting machines but, despite the advanced technology, the packaging itself seemed to have been done by hand. When they maneuvered around a large pile of discarded boxes, Mercy looked far enough into the room to see it. She froze, her gaze affixed on the heavy metal door cut into the back wall of the warehouse.
That’s it.
“What is it, Mercy?” Grant asked.
She still didn’t notice that she was mumbling aloud. “That’s it. He’s in there.”
“Who?”
Mercy blinked, and looked up at her father’s longtime friend. She unhooked her hand from his sleeve. “I...I mean...can we look in there?” She walked toward the door.
Grant followed her, calling to a man ahead of them, “Did you check out that...what is it, a storage room?”
“It’s an old freezer, I think. There’s nothing there,” the soldier said, walking to it and opening it up with a sharp tug on the handle.
Mercy stepped up to the small walk-in freezer. A few, mostly empty boxes were scattered on the aluminum shelves that lined the walls. She shook her head, because she couldn’t make sense of what she saw. She closed her eyes and tried to remember. The memory of the vision she had had was like an image projected onto steam, wavy and indistinct.
The desert spread in all directions. A box became a building, and the building became a warehouse. A room was born in the box. A man stood in the room, surr
ounded by light, but filled with...jagged teeth tore into her.
Her eyes flew open and she resisted the urge to grab her chest, although the ghost of that pain still gnawed on the spot where she had been bitten. Her eyes were suddenly sharp and her mouth was set. After that particular vision, she had been filled with purpose. At first it was only a temptation, but it grew, until it drove her to betrayal and deceit. Now, it filled her with triumph.
It will be worth it all.
“I know this is the place.” She stepped into the room and touched the cool shelf lightly with the tips of her fingers. She tilted her head up at the ceiling, noting its familiar shape and depth. “Yes, this is it, but the warehouse looks…” She turned around and the huge building opened its maw and devoured her. “...wrong.”
Her power surged from a point in her deeper self, filled her, overflowed, and carried her away.
The warehouse stretched, and filled first her sight and then her mind. The soft, red flesh of its huge mouth turned to flame and the flame licked everyone clean. Their clean, black corpses littered the ground: the kind man at the door to the freezer, Captain Petrial, the one called Toni, all of them. She floated through the ashes, carried by a strong, steady wind. She tried to reach out to one of the bodies, but her arms were too weak, so she sent her self instead. She was pulled away, her head lifted into the light, where sweet darkness waited...
The scream jolted her awake, and then startled her again when she realized it was coming from her own throat. She clamped her mouth shut and focused on the face in front of her. Her mind pieced together lips that were moving, a chin and two eyes that she knew...Grant. Then the heavy muffle over her ears lifted.
“Mercy!” shouted Grant, grabbing her shoulders. “What happened? Are you okay?”
“Fire. Fire happened.” Mercy blinked. She looked past Grant to Captain Petrial who was running toward them. She saw him, then she saw his bald, blackened head on the floor. This time, when she tried to reach him, her arm lifted just fine. Then, the ashen skull filled with flesh and a face and a frown: he was worried. He was worried about her. She sucked in a breath, and the beating in her chest intensified until her body began to shake with it. Didn’t he understand? He needed to be worried about himself!
She shouted at him, “Run!”
“Mercy! What’s wrong?” Grant repeated. He turned to explain when the captain stopped next to them, his hand reaching out to steady her. “She had a vision, just now.”
They both stared at her when she batted their hands down, grabbed their uniforms, and began pulling them to the exit. Why was it so far away?
“Run! All of you, get out!” Her words bounced off the far walls and carried back with them the stares of those around the warehouse. “There’s going to be an explosion...and a fire! Get out!” She yanked again on the men around her, who, despite their confusion, had become infected by her panic and began to rush toward the door.
“Everyone out,” yelled the captain before hitting his com. “Klein, what’s your status?” He took three more steps. “Klein, report.” Three steps. “Yepez, report.”
One of the two men running through the doorway ahead of them fell down and lay still. The next soldier, right on his heels, didn’t even have time to slow down before she, too, took a shot to the head and instantly hit the ground. There was no sign of the three that had already made it out of the building.
“Everyone take cover!” The captain swerved to squat down behind a heavy machine, pulling Mercy with him. Grant and one other soldier crouched down with them.
Captain Petrial pushed Mercy into Grant, “Take her back to the freezer. That’s the best cover we have.”
“No, wait, don’t stay in here! You have to get everyone out!” Mercy begged.
“Captain, I can’t get anyone on the com,” Antonelli reported grimly from a position by the door.
“Go, Grant,” the captain dismissed them. “Anyone have a visual?”
A voice called out, “Yepez and the new guy are down, looks like they’re covering the door with snipers…”
“Shit. Back?”
“It’s covered,” yelled another voice from the small door next to the loading bays.
Grant pulled Mercy back toward the metal door. As they approached it, Grant’s attention was drawn to a transmission display located in a cubicle along the back wall. “Mercy,” he said, opening the thick door, “You wait inside. I’m going to see if that will get us a connection.”
“No!” she screeched. “You can’t. We can’t stay here. We all have to get out!” Was he crazy? Couldn’t he understand what she was saying?
“There’s no way out. The only hope for us right now is a call for reinforcements, but our com truck is probably disabled, so this might be the only way.”
“No! I had a vision, Grant, a strong one. They’ll all die if they stay…” She pulled on his shirt.
“Stay here.” He yanked her hands free, pushed her inside forcefully and slammed the door. Darkness engulfed her as she spun into the old metal rack, which shuddered and began to fall forward. Disoriented and blind, she tried to rush back to the door, but she had gotten turned around. She crashed into the shelf as it descended onto her.
Mercy couldn’t tell if her eyes were open or shut. She tried to wave a hand in front of her face, but both arms were pinned beneath something heavy. She tried to turn over, and felt the shelving unit shift. Then she heard it, a loud boom that shook the building. She froze, knowing that it was the explosion that would kill everyone in the room next to her. The instant it took her to draw in her breath to scream was the time it took for the second shelf to land on her.
Chapter 2
When it was left alone, when no one was there to stop it, the cold painted on a mirthless grin and started fires. It sunk into the skin, burrowing its way down into the thicker flesh, and then sat there, waiting. Everything in its domain shivered, and then ached, and then went numb. Then, slowly, things began to burn.
She floated, frozen, and dreamt of drifts of snow piled higher than her head on both sides of the path. Her bare feet stung with every step they took on the hot coals that covered the ground. When she turned and tried to climb one of the icy walls, her hands dug into the soft snow and her fingers caught on fire. When she tried to blow them out, the flames erupted, licking at her face, her cheeks, her nose, her ears. Her heart beat madly and the flames died down and then went out. The nasty cold that had settled over her smiled patiently; it had all the time in the world.
She continued down the path, the high sides of which started to grow together, until she could just barely slide through them. Her shoulder scraped the snow and caught on fire. She instinctively shied away from it, but that put her back up against the other side. Flames. Icy, cold flames.
The cold, strong but naive, began to consume its own host, heedless of the consequences. At first, she struggled, but it didn’t take long to see the futility in it. The cold was everywhere; it covered the earth. The only thing that was not burning cold was the stub of a candle in the center of her body. There, a small but diminishing bit of heat struggled to survive.
Everything began to slow down. Even time dragged itself sluggishly through the snow. Mercy was slowing and getting ready to stop. It was shortly after she collapsed into an icy white drift that Mercy felt a familiar shimmer in her mind that reminded her of her father or her aunt.
Auntie Lena? Are you there?
A summer wind blew down the corridor, snuffing out the flames and wrapping her up in a thick, warm invisible blanket. The icy walls backed away, and the ones that didn’t move quickly enough began to melt. The warm wind picked her up and pushed Mercy forward. She went increasingly faster, until she was running, her feet barely skimming the ground. A hot breath on her neck, spreading down and outward, chased away the cold and soothed her burns. It spread inward, exciting her blood and using it to carry itself throughout her body. Each place it passed glowed with life. Tingling, soothing, healing wind.
Whispering wind...
“Fight, Mercy. You have things to accomplish, and my child will need her mother.”
When the warm wind left, it took her dream with it, and the memory of the dream. The only thing it left behind was its warm breath, nestled within her body.
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“Your contract with us is up, so you’re free to go. I’ve just got word of trouble out of Sonora. We’re the closest, so my unit has been assigned to check it out.”
Scythe shrugged on his backpack and commented, “The Sonoran jurisdiction is where the rebels are concentrating their attacks right now.”
“Yes, but,” the Kin captain said, anticipating his interest, “we haven’t been assigned to that. We’re due twenty home days after completing three ops in a row. I’m hoping this is just a routine check and go.”
“So, what is it?”
Reave hesitated before answering, “Some Humans got themselves blown up.”
Scythe said, “It doesn’t sound like it would interest me.”
“No, I didn’t think so. Everyone is already dead,” he said, a quick parting jab. He returned to his work.
Scythe didn’t respond. Let the captain have his fun. However, since his assignment was finished, Scythe was already looking for another job. He would have preferred to find one nearby, since the settlement they were stationed in appealed to him in a couple of ways. On the other hand, the terrorist hunt was just the type of thing he liked to do. He had been keeping tabs on it in his spare time and had let the scheduler know that he was interested. Unfortunately, he had been in the middle of his last duty when that opportunity had come up, so he had missed it. Then, the Kin unit had been recalled and the operation had been given over to the Human border patrol for some reason, which made him wonder...
Halfblood Journey Page 2
