by AJ Powers
Still dazed from the chaos, Aaran slinked down from the turret into the Humvee and out a back door. He stumbled to the building, watching as small sections of the structure continued to crumble to the ground. There were splashes of blood pockmarking the rubble, a clear indicator that Aaran’s accuracy had been true. Or true enough, anyway.
He saw movement out of the corner of his eye—a Sentinel reaching for his rifle. With his right arm lying on the ground several feet away, the Sentinel reached across his body with his left; the weapon out of reach.
Like his first kill, Aaran walked up to the dying man on the ground and towered over his body. Unlike that time however, Aaran felt no fear, only rage. He stared into the Sentinel’s blank eyes, hoping that whoever or whatever was calling the shots on the other end could clearly see his face. He didn’t have any witty catchphrases to say, or warnings about the approaching storm. He just stared.
And stared…
Until he drew his USP and aimed it at the “camera”.
The shot from the .45-caliber pistol chased away the incessant ringing that Aaran had heard since the Browning had been silenced.
The echo went on for days.
Chapter 30
Aaran’s body shivered as he sat alone with his thoughts in total darkness. He was in the basement of a house amidst a sea of others just like it, praying he would survive the night. But each time he heard a helicopter do a low flyby or felt the deafening roar of a jet engine rattle the house, he was less and less confident that he would.
The Nebula’s response had been overwhelming, making the search party back in Loveland seem like a children’s Easter egg hunt. Instead of things quieting down as the night went on, more reinforcements arrived, allowing them to expand their search just a little further. The trucks and helicopters had been expected, but the jets had taken him by surprise. They passed once or twice an hour, leaving an explosive boom in their wake when they cracked the sound barrier with ease. Even though he prepared himself each time he heard their approach, the sound still made him jump. He wasn’t sure what purpose the jets actually served in locating him, but if the goal was merely to intimidate him, it was mission accomplished.
Aaran pulled out Hadas’s phone and clicked the button on the side. He squinted as the bright screen blinded his dark-adjusted eyes. It was 2:15 A.M., and the battery was sitting at 31%. It would take a miracle for the device to make it until morning.
The same could also be said about Aaran.
Though his body was screaming for sleep, each time he nodded off, he was greeted by the haunting images of the dead boy’s face. Aaran could still hear his cries for his mother while his life slipped away, an agonizing despair tangled around each word. Every time he heard the gut-wrenching sobs replay in his head, he felt a little less remorse for the ensuing massacre. Even though his aggressive actions toward the guilty parties would never bring that boy—or his brother and mother—back from the dead, Aaran felt as if justice had been served in some small way. And he would not allow himself to feel bad about it, despite how gruesome his sentencing had been.
Admittedly, he’d gotten a bit carried away when he used the lighter fluid in his pack to set the Humvee on fire. He didn’t expect the loss of a single vehicle to impact the Nebula in any significant way, but the burning truck made a very clear statement to the AI overlords: you don’t control every mind in the world. Aaran had delighted in the moment. Even now, as he recalled the sight of flames licking the open doors, he had a devious smirk on his face. It had felt good to torch their ride after using it against them.
Aaran was trekking on a slippery slope with those thoughts, and he knew it. He quickly shrugged off the concerns, though. He had a pile of problems stacking up on his plate at the moment, and hazy moral lines were not among them. He would worry about all that later—if there was a later for him.
A loud grumble from Aaran’s stomach reminded him that he hadn’t eaten a bite of food since leaving the house yesterday morning. He reached down and unzipped his backpack, rummaging around inside as quietly as he could. With several windows running along the exterior walls, Aaran couldn’t risk powering on his flashlight to see what he was doing, so he blindly felt around his bag until his fingers brushed up against a protein bar. He pulled the snack out and ripped it open in one swift motion. After stuffing the foil wrapper into his pocket, he bit the bar in half, and a rush of flavors barraged his palate. Protein bars had never been a favorite of Aaran’s, but as he chewed on the chocolate-peanut buttery ingredients, the fitness candy bar was as good as any bacon cheeseburger he had ever ordered.
The night passed painfully slow, which only added to his misery. He gave sleeping another shot, but had the same results as before. He checked the phone again. It was 3:56 A.M. and 23% battery left. It was going to be down to the wire, but he was now cautiously optimistic about the battery lasting, though he would be flying “deaf” for the rest of the trip home.
Home…
He missed his home. He missed how it felt like returning to his childhood home every time he’d walked through the door. He missed the leather couch. The hum of the desk fan. The warmth. But mostly, he missed the girl he shared it with. As his thoughts lingered on Hadas—her sarcastic jokes and girly giggles, her smile when she was happy or the way her nose crinkled when she was angry—he realized he may never actually see her again. He filled his head with visions of her smile, instead of the grisly images that had been bombarding his thoughts all night long, and for a brief moment, he tricked his mind into believing he was sitting with her, watching TV. Thinking about his life with her gave him hope that maybe he would make it back to her after all. A hope that he desperately needed.
He wondered if she, too, was still awake. If she was worrying about him the same way he was worried about her. He hoped she wouldn’t be foolish enough to come after him. It would be a risky game in perfect health, but suicide with the injured leg she was coping with. Being responsible for her death was a much more terrifying prospect than facing the Reaper himself. If she was gone, then the shallow well of reasons to carry on in such a godforsaken world would finally be dried up.
And just like that, Aaran’s mind returned to the dark pit of desolation it had fallen into the moment he’d heard the mother’s cries for help. As he fidgeted with the phone in his hand, Aaran would have killed for a full signal bar so that he could call Hadas to let her know that he was okay. So that he could tell her to stay put. So, he could have one last chance to hear her voice…
Aaran dropped his face into the palm of his hand and he sighed heavily, feeling the warmth of his breath bounce back at him. “Quit being so dramatic, Aaran. You’ll get through this,” he tried to reason with himself.
He stole another glance at the phone: 4:21 and 13%.
“Well, that was fast,” he said, noting the significant drop in battery level over such a short period of time.
He reached into his bag and grabbed another protein bar. It had the consistency and taste of a block of chalk, coercing a gag from the back of his throat. Not worth it, he thought as he stuffed the food back into his pack. If I’m going to die tonight, I will not have this as my last meal...
4:40 and 9%.
Aaran’s mind was filled with the white noise of a thousand different thoughts and worries fighting for his attention. Though his environment was pitch black, he stared blankly into the darkness, his eyes fixated on one particular section of nothingness. “Just hurry up already,” he growled as a helicopter passed overhead. “Either come get me now or leave me alone!” He had resigned himself to either outcome, but was tired of waiting.
As if answering his ultimatum, the digital scramble began to trickle out over the earbud hanging halfway in his ear. The sounds of the hunter becoming the prey.
He could feel the liquid dancing around his eyes as the brutal reality of his situation came crashing down around him. “Damn it,” he said, complete and total dejection in his whispered voice. He rubbed his face w
ith his hands and pulled himself up off the cold, hard basement slab. He powered on the phone’s screen again: 4:52 and 3%. With the screen still on, Aaran used the small amount of light the OLED screen provided to look around the basement. It was unfinished and mostly used for storage. There was a small freezer chest over in one corner—too small to hide in—a couch in the other, and dozens of boxes and plastic bins splitting the difference, each one meticulously labeled. He turned around and saw the furnace and water heater on the other side of the room. In the corner opposite of that, a washer and dryer.
The earbud got louder, and Aaran jumped when he heard squealing airbrakes just outside the house followed by a loud whooshing sound.
There was a loud crash upstairs, followed by a stampede of calm but determined boot steps filing in through the front door. The floor above Aaran creaked and groaned as the Sentinels scoured the house for their fugitive, and it would only be a matter of seconds before they stumbled across the door to the basement. Aaran’s fate was sealed.
4:58 and 1%.
Goodbye, Hadas.
The phone went dead.
Then, he heard the gunshots.
Chapter 31
“Where the hell are you, Aaran?” Hadas said as she looked out the corner of the trash bag-covered windows.
It had been over three days since Aaran had left, and the pit in her stomach was only growing deeper. She’d been worried when he hadn’t come home that evening, but the worry had shifted to panic when the worst-case-scenarios ripped through her mind once she’d heard the pounding machinegun shots echo through the valley. Soon after, the panic had morphed into debilitating fear when the Nebula had mounted an aggressive response to the volley of gunfire at dusk.
Her stomach twisted painfully as she limped back and forth between the living room and dining room. She hadn’t eaten since before hearing the chaos in town, and hadn’t slept in even longer. She chided herself for not going after him as soon as she’d heard the shots. Though she knew the only way that endeavor would have ended was her death, she couldn’t help but feel disgusted with herself for not even trying. He would have come for me, she thought. If Aaran never came home, she would never forgive herself. She contemplated suiting up and going after him now, but there was no point. If Aaran was still alive, and she wasn’t kidding herself, that was a big if, she knew he would be laying low until things cooled down.
She hobbled into the kitchen and made a pot of coffee in the four-cup maker. The shake in her hands, along with her lightheaded balance, made for a wobbly pour. The pot slipped in her hand and the scalding liquid poured over her skin.
“Son of a bitch!” Hadas shouted with a rage hotter than the brown liquid. She threw the ceramic mug across the kitchen, shattering it into a hundred pieces against the far wall.
She set the pot back down on the burner and reached into the freezer, grabbing a bag of peas. She pressed the frozen vegetables over the burn and felt a small but immediate relief. Her back fell against the refrigerator door and she slowly slid down to the floor, tears streaming down her face. The pain from the burn was intense, but the tears were not related.
They were for Aaran.
She sobbed over the thought of never seeing him again. Though she’d never denied to herself that she was quite fond of her new friend, she hadn’t realized just how much he’d meant to her, not until he didn’t walk back through the door three nights ago. She didn’t think it was possible to feel so strongly for someone after such a short amount of time. She couldn’t label her feelings as romantic—though that was certainly not off the table—but he wasn’t just some nomad that had come into her life one day and departed the next. He’d stayed with her. He’d cared for her. And once they had claimed this house, it had made her believe in some strange way, that the future might not be so bad. But that future had Aaran standing by her side, every minute of every day. And now, that dream was just as uncertain as everything else in the world. It was starting to look as if the Nebula had taken away yet another of Hadas’s loved ones.
She pulled the bag of peas away from her skin, revealing reddened, flaky skin with several ugly blisters bubbling up. The burn was bad, but she’d live. The stupid mistake—the result of sleep deprivation and anxiety—was just adding insult to injury. Nevertheless, she’d need to treat it soon to avoid infection.
She gasped in pain when she wearily pulled herself off the kitchen floor. Her ankle was still tender, and she couldn’t bear her entire weight, but the pain and swelling had improved significantly over the past forty-eight hours. She hobbled over to the stairs and grabbed onto the railing, hopping up each of the steps and using only her good foot. After catching her breath from climbing the carpeted mountain, Hadas made her way over to the vanity, which had become their tabletop pharmacy, and looked for a burn ointment in one of the pre-assembled medical kits they had found during their scavenging. Though the label on the plastic box advertised a burn cream, it looked like it had already been used since her search turned up nothing. Reaching for the next best thing, she tore open a foil packet of antiseptic ointment and lightly applied it to the burn before gently wrapping her hand in gauze.
Unable to conjure up the energy to make the trip back downstairs, Hadas walked over to the bed and collapsed. She stared at the empty space where Aaran should have been. It almost felt like they were an old married couple, and suddenly, her husband was gone. She had been alone for nearly a year before Aaran had come into her life, and had been doing just fine. But now, his absence left a sizeable hole in her life. It just felt wrong to be alone.
“I hope you’re okay, Aaran,” she spoke softly as her fatigue overpowered her pain and anxiety.
****
She didn’t remember falling asleep, but when she woke up, it was nearly fourteen hours later. After blinking away the grog, she looked over to Aaran’s side of the bed again. She had hoped to find that he had arrived home in the middle of the night and climbed into bed.
Nothing.
Hadas contemplated her options for a moment before climbing out of bed and shuffling over to the closet on the other side of the loft. Her ankle was feeling better than yesterday, giving her some additional confidence in her decision. She donned the hunting camo she’d worn on Thanksgiving morning, pulling it right over her sweatpants and sweatshirt. She pulled her bullet-resistant vest on top of that, then attached her Jericho’s holster to her belt.
Stopping off at the pharmacy table again, Hadas grabbed an elastic medical wrap as well as supplies to redress her burn before walking back over to the bed. She wrapped her ankle tight before putting on her socks and lacing up her boots. She took a few steps to check for comfort and was pleasantly surprised with how much less pain she felt. The wrap, along with the boots, greatly stabilized her ankle, allowing her to walk with only a slight limp in her gait. It still wasn’t ideal, but it would have to do. She was done waiting for Aaran to come back home. She was going to go find him. How she would accomplish that, she had no idea. It was going to be like finding a needle in a stack of needles while the house is on fire during an earthquake. But the suicidal odds weren’t enough to stop her from trying.
Hadas took the gauze off her hand, and the sight underneath made her lose what little appetite she’d had. Trying not to dwell on the alien-like texture of her skin, she used a bottle of water and a rag to clean and saturate the injury before slathering on some more antiseptic ointment. She wrapped fresh gauze around it and made a fist before flexing her fingers. Her movement was limited, but not completely restrictive. It was good enough.
With everything else ready to go, Hadas picked up the Jericho off her bedside table, chambered a round, and then slid it into her holster. She grabbed her Tavor and put the sling around her neck and arm before tugging on the charging handle.
“I’m coming, Aaran,” she said solemnly. “Just hang in there.”
She grabbed the railing to the stairs and hopped down on the one foot again. Though her ankle was feeling exponent
ially better, she didn’t want to tempt fate by taking an awkward step and reinjuring it, or worse, crashing down the stairs. She grabbed her pack off the dining room table and made her way to the kitchen, loading it up with as much water and food as she felt comfortable carrying. She didn’t know how long she was going to be out, but assumed it would be no less than a few days. She made sure to pack some canned goods and a box of granola bars.
Before heading out, she lashed a sleeping bag to the back of her pack. The frost-covered grass over the past few weeks was a reminder of just how cold the nights were getting, and with enemies still actively patrolling the area, a fire, even a small one, was out of the question. The thermal sleeping bag would be vital for her survival. She just hoped it was as warm as it claimed to be.
Hadas mentally ran through the checklist of gear she needed and gave herself the green light. She took a deep breath and opened the front door, an arctic blast quickly rushing in past her.
She stopped on the edge of the porch and listened closely to her surroundings. Since Aaran had taken the phone, she would have to rely on her own eyes and ears for hostile activity. She felt a bit naked without the device, but was comforted that Aaran had it with him and hoped it was helping to keep him safe.
A few engines echoed off the hills to the west, but overall, it was a quiet morning compared to the twelve hours following the gunshots. Though enemy activity would dictate her approach, an entire squadron of bombers wouldn’t be enough to persuade her to scrub the mission altogether. Nevertheless, she was grateful that the rampant redlining engines had died down.
As ready as she could be, Hadas stepped off the porch and headed toward town on the gravel road. Thirty seconds into her walk, she jumped when she saw an armed man emerge from the creek up ahead. She raised her rifle and took aim, her finger just millimeters from completing the transaction. She remained motionless as she stared down the approaching figure.
