by Ellen Mint
“Hey!” a new voice shouted. I tried to raise my head, to call for help, but Shiro didn’t let up. His head turned to find whoever it was when wetness rained from above.
Freedom! The fist opened and I collapsed to the ground. But air wasn’t coming. Why wasn’t I breathing? The man trying to kill me stumbled back, hands swiping at his shoulders, but it didn’t matter. I couldn’t… A great cough rattled through my trachea, burning hotter than pure tequila. Another puffed it up again, and sweet, pure oxygen filled my lungs.
Arms wrapped around me, and I flailed out to strike. “It’s okay, it’s okay,” the same voice tried to soothe me as hands yanked me across the floor on my ass. I skidded away, the world whipping past in a senseless blur, when a scent rose first. Whatever struck Shiro landed on me as well, and it smelled like…
“Ethanol?” I tried to speak, my voice flailing in a croaky groan. Bewildered, I turned to find a sea of stars in my rescuer’s eyes. “Nolan?”
“In the flesh,” he said with a strained smile as he bent over. Hands cupped around my waist, hoisting me into his arms like a bride on the proverbial conjugal visit. Shit, how many brain cells did I lose from O2 deprivation?
I tried to shake off the thought, or notice how closely Nolan held me to his broad chest. There were far bigger problems at hand. Like pressing charges on Dr. Andersonn.
Incensed, I whipped my head to the man about to face a long stay in prison. He kept wiping at the ethanol streaking down his face in a panic. It might sting, but it wasn’t toxic to…
A massive tear broke from the middle of his forehead. The skin just shredded apart like tissue paper in rain. I waited on tenterhooks for blood to gush out, or the skin to keep peeling until only the visible muscles and bones remained. But a vein squirmed under the mushy skin, and a two-foot-long jet-black tentacle punctured through the skull and out the hole.
It slapped around the room, striking at random before it dug into the glass window above the door behind. The tentacle swiveled the head to face us just as two more burst from Shiro’s eyes.
“This is when we leave,” Nolan somehow spoke neutrally as I started a scream that would never end.
Whatever Shiro was lashed forward, but Nolan dodged lightning fast even with me trapped in his arms. I heard a crash as more priceless equipment smashed to the ground. Every crack of metal and plastic caused my teeth to grit tighter until my jaw ached. How could the lab come back from all of that?
And oh my God, Trini. Focus on surviving first!
With me still dangling in his arms like I weighed nothing, Nolan ran through the door and slammed it shut. A splattering noise burst against the heavy metal and my brain played back the image of sharp black tentacles bursting through eyeballs. The eyes didn’t even dislodge out of the sockets, just popped like balloons as if the squid’s arms emerged from the pupils.
A great shiver rode through my body and I felt Nolan’s hands slip until one nestled right on my ass. The touch caused me to rear away, my foot striking the ground and I skittered from him. Fuck! I forgot about my broken toe. Pain sheared through me, but I hobbled away, trying to spin to face the man.
“What is going on? What happened? Ethanol?!” I cried the first three thoughts of the hundreds rolling through my mind.
Nolan’s mouth hung open as if waiting for input, and I stared like a deranged lunatic expecting a tentacle to burst out. But only a tongue, a very pink and human tongue, licked his lips. “We need to run. Where is your research?”
Again with the research. He fucking knows where it is. He’s a part of it! “Not until you explain something, anything about what happened!”
He breathed deep and that military jawline flexed as if he was about to swing around a giant gun to shoot through a tank. But all he was armed with was the nearly empty spray bottle. “You’re in danger.”
“Yeah, I deduced that when the new post-doc tried to strangle me to death!” Anger was good. Hang onto that or the unending horror of how close I came to death would win. At least Shiro was trapped in the lab. Wait, why wasn’t he opening the door to attack?
Shit, I needed to get out of there. With one hand slapped to the wall, I started to hobble away. I heard Nolan begin to follow behind, his stern voice saying, “Good. What are you doing?”
He must have noticed I had my phone out to do the only sensible thing. “Calling the cops. Dr. Andersonn just destroyed millions of dollars of inventory. Oh, and tried to kill me. That’s also a bad thing.”
A hand gripped mine, fully enveloping it. I whipped over to stare directly into Nolan’s churning eyes. The stars were eclipsed by darkness. “You don’t want to do that. They will only be injured, or worse.”
“What?”
Tentacles shot out of Shiro’s eyes!
Due to oxygen deprivation. It was a hallucination, nothing more. The police would find him, take him to jail, fix everything. I should get to a hospital to have my injuries examined.
“Trini, please…” The man I’d been working with for over six months clasped both my hands in his. He pulled me closer and wrapped his palm around the small of my back. I was practically standing on top of his feet, his body in total control of mine. “I promise I will explain everything once you’re safe—”
The door erupted from its hinges, metal slamming so deep into the opposite wall it crashed through to the next room. Horrified, I stared as a jet black tentacle the width of my thigh slithered out of the room. It latched onto the ceiling and pulled from the lab the body of Shiro. A mass of small tentacles undulated from the top of the head, like spiky hair brought to life, while the main one had punctured through the rib cage.
I feared staring too closely would reveal the splintered bones and meat dripping blood. But a glint drew me in and I found metal ripped free from the tattered flesh. He’s a robot?
“Run,” Nolan shouted, yanking on my arm. My feet stumbled with him while my brain kept churning over the stupid idea that a robot asked me out. “Run!”
A shriek erupted from the thing that used to be Dr. Andersonn. Its tentacles flailed to match the anger and, to my horror, the limp mouth below the burst-apart skull moved. I couldn’t understand a word of what it said, but Nolan blanched.
He shouted back the same incoherent babbling. But judging by the cocky way he spat them, I’d swear it was nothing but a string of curse words. And the seeming worst one of all, the one that made his eyes flare and face turn red, was Kirkan.
The tentacles splattered to the walls, each touch melting the paint off the cinderblocks. It dripped to the floor and foamed up as the ex-Dr. Andersonn tugged his way closer. The body dangled helplessly off of the single tentacle four feet in the air. I stared at the man made of metal, watching it undulate as if the air conditioning kicked on.
Suddenly, the stomach burst apart, spraying half-chewed food across the entire hall. I stared in frozen horror at a single shrimp bouncing off my dress and falling to the floor. Ah!
Nolan latched his hand around mine and tugged me with him just as a second massive tentacle slithered from the gap in Shiro’s gut. “We can outrun it,” he shouted to me, and I laced my fingers with his. Ignoring the throb of pain with every step, I broke into the same pace as Nolan. All the while, I heard the slurp and smack of tentacles slapping into the wall. The hiss of paint dissolving where it touched the floor and ceiling. And a low grinding whistle, as if the creature was singing to itself while chasing us.
“There!” Nolan shouted, pointing to the same door I exited from every day. I stared at the black wash of windows as if I’d never seen them before. Freedom. Get outside. Drink in cool air and find some way to explain all of this.
All I had to do was…
“Too far for you, Yaxha,” the creature rumbled in a voice of mountains. Nolan froze and spun to stare as a blinking red light rose from the dangling hand of Shiro. Locked inside the dead fingers was a long black tube that looked an awful lot like a gun.
The metal body aimed in a second.
It wasn’t until the monster pulled the trigger that I realized it was shooting me. Fuck! I turned as if taking a robot’s ray gun to the back would be any better. Clenching my jaw and eyes shut, I waited for pain to burn up my body when Nolan smashed into me.
We both struck the wall, my fingers scrabbling to keep us upright. Spinning against the hard bricks with my lab partner, I twisted us around until we were back on the path of escape. Did the robotic squid monster miss?
“Gah!” Nolan cried and I followed his gaze to a gaping wound on his shoulder. It looked like a wild animal ripped the flesh and meat clean off the bone. Blood drenched down his shirt, pooling on the floor. Very human blood.
“Run as far as the winds take you, Yaxha,” the robot creature cackled. It raised the gun higher, aiming at the two of us locked together to keep upright. “You’ll never win.”
Ethanol. Solvents must disrupt it. Without pause, I yanked the half-empty spray bottle from Nolan and hurled it at the creature. At the same moment, it fired, splitting open the plastic bottle and igniting the ethanol. Burning rain burst in an explosion and fell back onto the monster. It screamed in what had to be pain, the ray gun clattering to the ground as the tentacles all lashed back to try and dampen the flames.
“Quick thinking. Come on,” Nolan said as if he wasn’t missing half his arm. With a jerk of his head, he directed both of us out of the building.
Cold March air did nothing to clear my head. My lab partner was still missing a chunk of his shoulder, his hot blood seeping into my dress. My throat ached from the fingers of a creature hiding tentacles inside his chest cavity. And all I knew about it was that it wanted me dead.
“There.” Nolan pointed to his car. Even with his blood splattered on the ground, he took control and fell into the driver’s seat.
“Shouldn’t I…?” I began while sitting in the passenger seat.
He reached over to tug down my seatbelt with his not mutilated arm. In doing so, the back of his hand bounced off my breast causing me to glare at him. But those starry eyes stared at me with an ocean of concern. “You need to be kept safe,” he said.
The car lurched forward, driving out of the parking lot. Slowly, Nolan locked his working hand around the wheel just as the entire plate of front windows of the science building exploded.
CHAPTER FOUR
3.14159…
“Ugh.” The solitary groan was all Nolan said as he plugged his phone into a compartment on the console. Green lights came to life across the car and a soothing voice asked for directions. “Home base,” he said.
For some reason, I expected him to take his hands off the wheel and slump into his seat, but he remained in control. Of course. Self-driving cars didn’t exist, and when people tried they tended to crash through pedestrians.
Hot, sticky liquid glanced against my bare shoulder, and I stared in disgust at the smear of blood swiped across it. Because he was bleeding. From trying to save me.
“You shouldn’t be driving. I can…” I began, but he waved me off.
The car continued to blast down the road and onto a highway while Nolan reached for my lap. Instinctively, I scrunched back, but it was the glovebox he wanted. A small silver tube rolled out of the darkness. He used his teeth to press on a button, which started the whole thing rumbling. Without a second’s pause, Nolan placed the car vibrator right over his wound.
“We need to get to the hospital,” I spoke, trying to come up with a plan beyond scream and spin in a circle.
“It’ll be fine,” he huffed as if one could walk off having the muscle and flesh of your shoulder shot away by a ray gun.
An honest to God ray gun sheared clear through him and would have killed me if he hadn’t stepped in the way. Even with the smell of copper in the air from his blood, I glanced a finger across my throat and winced in pain. I’d nearly been strangled to death, then fried to a crisp, and for what?
“What is happening? Who was that? What was that?”
“A bounty hunter,” Nolan said. His voice was resolute but sweat dribbled from his forehead. The stench of charred skin and hair rose through the car. He was clearly in pain.
Because a metal creature with tentacles for limbs tried to kill both of us. “So, what? I’m being hunted by the terminator? Shit, don’t tell me I’m supposed to birth the future savior of humankind. I don’t even think I want kids!”
“Terminator?” he asked, his chin swiveling away from the road. Traffic had been dead, but the closer we drew to the outer mountains the more it picked up. Headlights flashed past, each rolling glare revealing a crimson sliver of his wound.
“You know, the movie. The metal robot from the future. I’ll be back?” Stop talking. It doesn’t matter.
Nolan snickered as if he too realized I was speaking gibberish. “It’s not from the future, and it’s not a robot.”
“Then what is it? Was it?” I asked, changing tense in the hope he’d agree the tentacle creature was long behind us.
But the grim purse of Nolan’s lips told me enough to set my stomach roiling. I pawed at my knees only to bunch up a pile of satin fabric. What was I doing in a dress at a time like this?
“It’s not a robot,” he repeated, “though the species does employ the use of infiltration suits.”
Infiltration suits? Bounty hunters? Tentacles exploding through eyeballs? Ray freaking guns? Where in the hell were…?
My body fell numb. I swiveled to face Nolan who squirmed in his seat as his sonicating cylinder rumbled on. “Is that thing of earth?”
He snorted and shook his head.
Well…fuck.
Okay, aliens were real. And trying to kill me. But real, capable of visiting other planets, exploring…infiltrating, plotting, wanting to kill me. Why me?
“Where’s your research?” Nolan asked, stopping me dead. The exact same thing the tentacle man kept screaming while he choked the life out of me. What were they on about?
“Back at the lab,” I said, watching Nolan’s stern visage melt to pain. “And in yours too!” His eyes lit up and he turned to me.
“Not that. The cancer research means nothing…”
“Okay, well, it’s your work too,” I bit back.
“He’s after the polynomial algorithm.”
What? “But that’s just, it’s not real. I mean, okay, it’s real, but I’ve only been testing a few ideas. Seeing if I could…”
“Trini, please, where is it? Your research? Your proof?”
There wasn’t much proof to show. “My laptop at home and…” I cracked open my purse and picked up my pen that doubled as a USB drive. “Here.”
“Bless,” Nolan said like I just sneezed. With that, his shoulders unknotted, and he melted into his seat as if we didn’t still have a massive tentacle creature thing chasing us.
Absently, I twisted the pen around in my fingers. This stupid thing was why some robot-wearing alien wanted me dead? What if I tossed it out the window onto the highway? Let a dozen trucks run it over and destroy it in an instant?
All that work, the hours devoted to a question everyone laughed off. The people who thought I was wasting my life trying to see if a complex solution could be solved in polynomial time. It wasn’t possible. Mathematicians have tried to solve it for decades. I should be out dancing or whatever normal people did for fun. Yet here it was, something so revolutionary alien bounty hunters chased me.
My fingers locked around the pen, holding it safe. I wasn’t going to give it up without a fight.
Hunters. Plural. Why did you think there’s more than one?
I skirted my eyes over to the man, the human who’d worked beside me for six months. Who wasn’t bleeding green or blue, but iron-scented crimson. Who knew all about this alien mess from beyond the stars. What was he? CIA? Some secret alien protection organization? A rogue astrologist who hunted bounty hunters in his spare time?
“Who are you?” I asked, fully spinning in my seat. I tried to search across his face, one that always looked
normal if not handsome. The lips remained staid, his jaw relaxed, but those starry eyes burned as they drifted to me.
“Trini,” he whispered, his once commanding voice crackling like sheets of ice. I shivered to my toes, which were as trapped in this car speeding eighty miles an hour down the highway as well as the rest of me. “I’m afraid that I lied.”
Fuck.
“My injuries were too severe. I need you to take the wheel,” fumbled from his lips just as his hand fell.
Shit! I leaped as far as I could, only to have the seatbelt snap around my sternum. But I got a good grip on the steering wheel and aligned the car back on the road. Horns blared at the insane sedan drifting into an occupied lane, and I tried to give them all a cheery ‘everything was fine’ wave. That earned a few middle fingers.
“Nolan?” I asked aloud even while focusing on the road ahead. My hip dug into the console while I strained to reach the wheel. If I was going to use the pedals, I’d have to unhook my seatbelt and…climb into his lap.
Once I was certain no car was ahead of me, I risked staring at him. What if he died? Why didn’t I insist we go to a hospital? Why didn’t he want to go? Insurance premiums?
His once pristine face was knotted in pain, but his lips moved in a breath, and he shifted. Only a faint, whew. Please stay alive.
Unhooking my seatbelt, which my brain screamed at being unsafe, I slid one foot into his side of the wheel well. His foot pressed on the accelerator and I tried to shove it off. In doing so, the car began to slow.
More horns blared at us as the speedometer dipped from eighty to sixty. Damn it! I strained to reach with my toes, but I couldn’t push it far enough. I didn’t have a choice.
Sliding, I gave one last oomph with my leg and my foot slammed onto the gas. The car shot forward, and I dug my hands into the wheel to keep from tumbling back. But the momentum caused my spine to brush against Nolan’s ripped up shoulder.
A moan erupted telling me he was still alive and making me feel awful for hurting him. “Sorry, sorry,” I mumbled.
