Through Glass Darkly Episode 1

by Peter Knyte

  ‘Were they visible to the naked eye while they were asleep?’ Asked the police captain.

  ‘No, I’m afraid not,’ I replied. ‘In fact that was one the things that tipped us off about their ability to be invisible without really exerting themselves.

  ‘We knew before we went into the Expanse that they could make themselves entirely transparent by changing the way their skin or shell reflected light, so that rather than just bouncing off, the light was broken up and reflected back into a part of the spectrum that we couldn’t see. But it was only when we stumbled across this sleeping group in the Expanse that we realised this must be a general defence mechanism they employ all the time to avoid being spotted by their natural rivals or enemies in the Expanse.

  ‘Naturally if they can manage to remain this way even when sleeping or unconscious, we reasoned it must be fairly easy for them to maintain.’

  We talked some more about the creatures, how fast they could move, whether they could climb or swim or fly, and any number of other things, all the while trying to plot areas on a map of the city that could be likely hideout areas or hunting grounds.

  ‘As for what you’ll see through the scopes,’ I explained. ‘It will take a bit of getting used to. The scopes will allow you to see partially into both the infrared and ultraviolet bands of the electro-magnetic spectrum, which is going to make the ordinary world look rather bright and unnaturally colourful. You’ll be able to see the body heat of colleagues, or even just a hot cup of coffee. In winter this would make the scopes a lot more effective because the ground and buildings would be so cold in contrast, but now in July, the background heat will create a lot of confusion, which we’re sure the creature will be aware of and deliberately choose to reflect light into that bit of the spectrum.

  ‘Similarly with the ultraviolet, even on a cloudy day the UV levels at this time of year will be quite high during the day, and again the creature is likely to adapt to this added camouflage.

  ‘Now this doesn’t mean the creature won’t show up at all, it just means it’s going to take your men a day or two to get used to the scopes before they’ll be able to spot when there’s something else in the picture that they can’t see with the naked eye.’

  ‘And there’s no way of fitting out our men with a fancy set of the lenses that you’re wearing?’ Asked the Police Captain bluntly. ‘To give them a better chance of seeing this creature.’

  It was Fraser that decided to butt in and answer that one, even though he’d been the closest to a natural Lensman out of the three of them that I’d given a demonstration to, he reassured Platt in no uncertain terms that he wouldn’t wish that particular gift upon his worst enemy.

  I wasn’t seriously expecting them to trust me enough to let me help out with the search, but Fraser surprised me again when we got around to talking about how the search should be conducted, when he suggested to Jenkins and the others that it might be worthwhile letting me tag along with each of the teams for a while just to help them get accustomed to the scopes that we were outfitting them with.

  They didn’t look too convinced about the idea to begin with, but on a whim I suggested they each have a go with the scopes before making their minds up, just so they could get an idea of how tricky it would be.

  You can never tell how a set of lenses is going to affect someone until they get them on, but it was clear within moments that both Platt and Wright were not taking to it in the least. So much so that Platt didn’t hesitate to suggest that there was no point in having the scopes if that was all you could see through them.

  I was beginning to think I’d have to deliver the lensing range demo again, when Fraser came to the rescue for a third time.

  ‘I bet I could use one of those scopes to good effect,’ he chipped in.

  ‘How about a quick game of hide and seek?’ I suggested looking around the room for something to use as an example. It was just then that a member of staff from the boathouse came in with a pot of coffee and some cups.

  ‘Perfect,’ I said, taking one of the cups and pouring a black coffee. ‘We’ll hide a cup of coffee somewhere in this room while you step outside Agent Fraser, and then we’ll see if you can spot its location from the spot where you’re stood right now, once you come back into the room?’

  Fraser seemed game, and after taking a quick look around the room with one of the scopes, he stepped outside for a couple of minutes while we hid the coffee.

  We’d used this as a trick when training new Lensmen for the fleet. Instead of hiding the cup of coffee, one of the people in the room simply drank the coffee and placed the still warm cup back on the tray amongst the unused cold cups. A competent Lensman would not only spot who had drunk the coffee from their elevated body temperature, they would also spot the still warm cup back on the tray.

  I handed the coffee to Jenkins and asked him to drink while I explained. A couple of minutes later with Jenkins having gulped down the coffee, we called Fraser back into the room.

  There were only a limited number of places we could’ve stashed the cup, and Fraser started by examining the obvious ones, in the trophy cabinet, in the only cupboard in the room, but as he swept his gaze around the room to look at these places he must’ve noticed something about his partner.

  ‘You drank it!’ He said, with a genuine smile on his face. ‘I can see your mouth and throat practically glowing with heat.’

  ‘It was very hot coffee,’ conceded Jenkins, with a slightly abashed smile of his own.

  Fraser continued his search, but didn’t spot the cup within a minute or two, so gave up. Before we gave him the answer though, I tried one last test by giving him the spare lensing rig that I picked up in the lab on the ship. I configured the lenses to give a clear picture of the visible light spectrum overlaid with the right bit of the infrared spectrum to spot the cup, and then asked him to look around again.

  This time he spotted the cup within ten seconds of looking.

  Platt and Wright were clearly reasonable people, and when they saw the evidence with their own eyes, they agreed to let me accompany their teams in order to help out where possible.

  CHAPTER 13 – PROMETHEUS

  Even in the fading light of the early evening I didn’t need lenses to see the carnage that the creature had wreaked. The remains of three defenceless tramps that had been sleeping rough in the alleyway.

  I’d seen this type of ‘bodily destruction’ on numerous occasions, heads and body parts cracked or gouged open to reveal cavities where once vital organs were so carefully protected, arms and legs twisted and ripped open to expose bone marrow, sinew and muscle.

  It was never easy to look at, and I hoped it would never become easy, but it was particularly hard the first time, so I felt for the police officers and FBI agents who until that moment had probably thought they were hardened to the rigours of their jobs.

  I did as I had done on all those previous occasions. I flicked my lenses down and started to scrutinise the larger body parts for the tell-tale energy signatures, or more accurately the lack thereof, which would confirm the deed was performed by something from the Expanse.

  Even from a few metres away the signature was there. Several parts of the body were significantly colder than they should’ve been, clearly visible under the mid-infrared, while at the same time a lens combination that allowed me to see to the edge of the near ultra-violet showed that all visible trace of electrical energy were also gone. Few people realised how long it took the individual cells in a human body to actually stop functioning, and stop creating the miniscule electro-magnetic field that gave still living flesh, under the right lenses, a unique glow that distinguished it from that which was truly dead.

  We were a way off the main road in an old industrial area of Long Island near to the new airport, so there were very few people around beyond the substantial police presence.

  As soon as I confirmed my suspicions, I explained what I could see to Jenkins and Platt who had arrived on scene only
a few minutes after the search team I’d been working with.

  He hid it better than most, but I could tell Jenkins was as affected as everyone else by the grisly scene, so when I suggested it would be worth checking the wider area he simply nodded and left me to it.

  This was only the second day that I’d been travelling with a Police Sergeant and two of his Patrol Officers, and we hadn’t really started to relax around one another yet, but they clearly knew the local area incredibly well, so after explaining what I wanted to do, I made a point of asking them where they thought it would be good to start. As Riley, the Sergeant, called the two Patrol Officers, Blake and Shelby over to join us, he explained the layout of the surrounding streets, and then suggested we work our way down the alley and toward the right into a nest of other back streets where it would be easiest for someone covered in blood to travel without being seen.

  Riley had tried the lensing scope I’d created and seemed to have quite a good eye for it, but it was Blake, the most junior officer, who seemed to be left using it most of the time.

  I wasn’t expecting to find a great deal, but this was a fairly unique situation, so I set the auto-sequencer on my lensing rig to automatically rotate through the fifty or so lens combinations that I thought most likely to show something. It would take just over a second to work through them all, so I could just keep the rig running as we moved allowing me to spot anything that was there.

  It was an old industrial area, and after we took the right that Riley had mentioned the alley twisted and split several times, each section broken up by numerous loading bays and stages, as well as short side alleys that years previous would probably have allowed several trucks to be loaded or unloaded at the same time without blocking the main thoroughfare.

  I was just peering down one of these dead end alleyways when I heard Blake suddenly stop behind me in the main alleyway. The briefest of glances told me he’d seen something that had surprised him.

  I started to move back over to him, unclasping my sidearm as I went. But his sergeant had picked up on it as well.

  ‘What is it Blake?’ He asked looking down the alley in the same direction as his officer.

  A moment later and I was back in the main alley in time to see the edge of something well over human height that glowed in the mid infrared disappear into a side alley just twenty yards from where we were.

  We were after it in a heartbeat, and as we got to the corner I could see the creature, a full grown Lamphrey, attempting to flee by scaling the sides of a covered docking bay in order to get to the warehouse roof.

  I’d been allowed to carry my Webley revolver, but only because I’d offered load it with some of the enhanced Buckingham bullets that started to burn with an incandescent light and heat once they hit. These only had two thirds the stopping power of normal bullets, but I’d suggested the flaming bullets would mark the target for the others, even if it stayed invisible, and if I was lucky it might even ignite the creatures carapace armour.

  But the Lamphrey was strong and fast, and by the time we’d rounded the corner it was practically on top of the covered loading bay, so I would only get a single shot at it before it reached the roof.

  Blake, hampered by having to swap the scope to his other hand had barely unholstered his sidearm by the time I’d drawn and fired, hitting the thing squarely in the back, just below its head.

  I must’ve caught it just at the right moment, because the impact caused it to lose its hold on the brickwork, and it fell heavily back onto the roof of the loading bay.

  Instinct and my conditioning from the Expanse kicked in, and before I knew it I’d emptied my other five rounds into its back and tail, while walking down the alleyway to close the distance as I fired. Now as I reloaded, I could see the phosphorus and potassium cores of my bullets begin to flame and burn with a violent white heat, which flared in my lenses, and caused the creature to scream in agony. As it did so it faded from the mid-infrared back into the visible light spectrum, meaning the others should now be able to see it as well. But my bullets weren’t stopping it. For a moment after it screamed it turned straight toward me as though ready to leap upon me from the top of the loading bay, but a heartbeat later it was back up the wall to the warehouse roof dislodging bricks and mortar as it went.

  Without thinking, I went from a walk to a run, as it clambered over the edge of the warehouse roof. This very creature was the one that had defiled the bodies of my friends and crewmates, including Ariel. And now, as I reached the loading bay an anger I didn’t realise I carried filled my veins, and before I knew it I’d followed it up the loading bay scaffold onto the building roof proper.

  I could see the burning bullets in its back as it retreated across the rooftop, and I managed to hit it again before I knew I’d even drawn my gun. It saw me and fled, racing across the rooftops, down onto a lower roof, jumping across a narrow alleyway. But where it went I followed like a vengeful spirit, flaying it with burning bullets as I went.

  The row of industrial buildings was long, but suddenly we came to the end of the warehouses and unable to go further the creature dived off to the side behind a skylight and across the front of the building.

  I was distantly aware of shouting and voices from below as I continued to chase the thing across the night sky, heedless of the fifty foot drop to hard pavement and road beside me. And then I saw my chance, as it leapt from the rooftop we were on, down a few feet to the next building the old slates shattered and gave way beneath the creatures weight sending it sliding toward the edge. I had it and it knew it, but my rage made me thoughtless, and as I fired another bullet and then another into its shoulder and head, I jumped down onto the same roof in order to deliver the kill at point blank range. But the already shattered slates slid out from under me as I landed, sending me spiralling toward the drop that we had been skirting.

  There was no way I could save myself, especially not with one hand still gripping my revolver. But there was a part of me that could not let the creature escape, so even as I slid toward the edge of the building I emptied my gun into its arm and side, hitting it again and again. And then I was over the edge and falling.

  Only at the last moment did my free hand grab onto an old electrical wire that hung down just below the building’s roof, and stopped my fall. I finally dropped my empty gun, and heard it clatter on the street below, but there was nothing else for me to grab hold of or pull myself back up.

  The creature, hung barely six feet from me, over a dozen incendiary rounds smoking and burning it alive, but somehow with a baleful look in its eye it found the strength to pull itself back up onto the roof. I tried to follow it, grasping at the guttering above my head, and desperately trying to find a foothold in the brickwork, but it all just came away in my hand, and even as I struggled I could feel the wire stretch and begin to give way. And then the creature appeared above me, scarcely inches from where my left hand clung to the wire. But it just stood there, looking down on me with a steady intelligence in its unblinking black eyes.

  My mind raced for a moment before slowing to a deadly calm as I returned that creatures gaze, knowing that when it came for me I would take it over the edge with me down onto the hard ground below.

  But still it hesitated, pausing in a way I had never seen before. And then gunfire sounded from below, and bullets started to fly past the creature into the brickwork of the building and slates of the roof. It was the Sergeant with Blake, Shelby and some other men.

  CHAPTER 14 - REPRISE

  How they got to me before my strength failed I don’t know, but somehow they got into the building and out onto the roof in time to lower a rope down before I fell.

  While the other search teams scoured the area, Riley bundled me into the back of a patrol car and had me taken back to the hospital to get checked out.

  As my adrenalin fuelled anger subsided, my energy went with it and I barely remember the trip, let alone the examination, but when I woke up the following morning it was
to discover my entire body covered in minor cuts and abrasions I didn’t even remember getting.

  My clothes were ready and waiting for me on a dressing table, along with my Webley, which someone must’ve not only picked up for me, but also cleaned and oiled. Sitting next to it on the dresser four boxes of ammunition in unmarked packaging. Opening one, I couldn’t help but smile, they were Manstopper Hollowpoints, the hardest hitting bullet ever made, so much so they were banned by most countries because they did so much damage when they hit.

  But then the thought occurred to me. They wouldn’t be giving me these if they’d caught or killed the creature last night. It must still be on the loose.

  The realisation made me impatient to be out of there and back on its trail. I knew they’d want a doctor to check me out if I waited, so I dressed and armed myself, taking special care to load my freshly cleaned gun and my refills with the bullets so considerately provided.

  Waiting for me outside my room were not only Riley, Blake and Shelby, but also Hughes and Fraser.

  They were talking amiably enough amongst themselves, but stopped as soon as I opened the door.

  I was half expecting a severe rebuke for my reckless behaviour the night before, but they seemed to sense I was far from proud of myself, so after a few minutes of polite raillery, they allowed me to ask the question that I already knew the answer to.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ replied Riley, with a genuine look of disappointment on his face. ‘We thought we had it cornered on the rooftops for a while, but it must have managed to turn itself invisible again once the bullets you peppered it with went out.

  ‘We certainly found a good trail of what passes for blood in those things, including where it climbed down, and which direction it headed in. We’ve even got some hunting dogs being brought in to try and track the thing.’

  ‘Scent tracking, of course. I don’t know why that didn’t occur to me earlier on,’ I replied. ‘When will they get here?’