Between Two Minds: Revelation

by D C Wright-Hammer

  One of the men came over and squinted. “Holy shit!” He pressed the button to listen to the noise monitor.

  “Hey! Hey! Hey!” Raunchy rock music echoed throughout the open field around the base.

  The man let go of the button and stumbled back. They all watched helplessly as two armored vehicles barreled directly toward the gates, which, unlike the walls, were not much more than reinforced fencing to allow ease of access for shipments.

  Guards in the watch towers fired shots, but their bullets tattered and ricocheted as the vehicles crashed through the gate. Smoke bombs bounced along the ground as the war machines careened toward the center guard tower. Bullets sprayed down from above, tinking off the steel plating as the vehicles headed for their target. Smoke was already spewing along the vehicles’ paths, and the base quickly became engulfed.

  The squeal of a high-pitched guitar solo chattered throughout the base.

  Clank! Clank!

  Both armored vehicles smashed into the center guard tower, badly damaging the supportive beams. With a metallic moan, the guard tower buckled and then began to fall at an angle.

  “Ah!” the human guards shrieked as they jumped twenty meters to the ground, trying to avoid being crushed by the tower.

  More smoke bombs discharged, releasing a steady stream of gray fog into the air. The intense quartz lighting that had brilliantly lit the base moments ago was now hazy with the smoke. Half of the facility was immersed.

  From the clear side of the base, a sizable contingent of PMU street soldiers came running toward the mayhem. Through the thick smog, they all aimed their MK-Fifties, looking for any sign of white eyes to squeeze their triggers. From behind, they heard the sound of things landing near them, and they all flipped around. Still more smoke bombs burst into the air, and within seconds, the entire base was under a dense gray cloud.

  Back in the security room, the guards, mouth agape, watched as their security cameras become more and more useless. One of the men said, “Look!” and pointed in the direction where the latest smoke bombs had originated. A current of smoke moved purposefully in the direction of the soldiers.

  “Recruits! They’re coming from behind! Fire! Fire! Fire!”

  Red beams flared up one after another, and they were all aimed forward to the advancing smog. As the whoosh of fog got nearer, suddenly the beams began to get erratic, shining in many directions and then ultimately disappearing. This happened steadily from the front of the group of soldiers all the way to the back until there were no more laser beams to be seen.

  One of the guards backed toward the door uneasily. “We…we need to get out of here.”

  The auto-guard attempted to reason with the men, but they were already scrambling to grab their things. One man went for the poker credit saver. Another ran to the door, still facing the holos. He turned the handle and pulled it open.

  Thud.

  He’d run into something solid. When he spun his head around, he saw Ryan’s fist coming at him right before things went black.

  The auto-guard attempted to rush Ryan, but J-A appeared from behind with her activated EMP wand. The auto-guard went limp, hit the ground, and slid to Ryan’s feet. One of the men aimed a gun at Ryan’s face. Ryan rolled down just before the shot rang out, sweeping the man’s feet out from under him, and elbowed his head. Meanwhile, J-A had already gone to work on the other two men, and by the end, she’d beaten them senseless with the handles of their own guns.

  Ryan slid into one of the chairs at the computer and rattled off several commands into the virtual keyboard. A holo appeared with the plans for the base.

  Armory

  Cafeteria

  Garage

  Gaia System

  Guard Towers

  Living Quarters

  R&D

  Storage

  Ryan selected Armory, and it brought him to another list of security measures. One by one, he turned them all off. He did the same for R&D. At the same time, J-A was cutting the holo-feeds from the security cameras.

  “All set on my end,” Ryan said confidently.

  “Here too.”

  They made their way to the R&D building, and on the way, the other shifters joined them. J-A pointed out the location of the armory and gave quick instructions for the shifters to head that way.

  Ryan and J-A approached the already green console next to the door at R&D. They went inside and navigated two corridors to the room they wanted. Entering the lab, they saw a firing range with caricatures of mind-pairs at the far end. J-A shook her head. They found the development area where around two dozen MK-Fifties were being finished. J-A went to work destroying each and every one of them.

  Ryan sought out the computer. He sat in the chair and tried cracking it. When his first two login attempts failed, some doubt crept into his mind. “I don’t know if I can do this. I don’t have EZHack to use simple questions.”

  J-A scoffed from across the room. “EZHack? We tell that to all first-time hackers to give them confidence. It’s bullshit. You did it all yourself.”

  Ryan shook his head and smirked. He took another crack at the console, and sure enough, a holo popped up. He established the connection with the remote terminal at Alliance HQ and began the upload of data. Then, he entered the Seek and Destroy command to target the plans for the MK-Fifty and propagate it through all the attached systems.

  “Done!”

  “Me too!” J-A was unusually cheerful.

  “Great! Let’s get the hell out of here.”

  Outside, they met the shifters who were waiting with the armored vehicles. They weren’t in the best shape after colliding with the guard tower, but they were drivable. Ryan and J-A got in, and they rumbled back out the way they had come in.

  “I’m afraid I’ve got some bad news.” Just hours after their mission, J-A had gathered all the shifters at Alliance HQ. They were in a circle surrounding her as she spoke. “Our enemy has developed a weapon that can destroy our migrated minds with a single laser beam to our mind-pair eye. Another beam to any eye, and we’re reduced to blank hosts.” She paused to let it sink in.

  The crowd murmured in fear.

  “Fortunately, we had received intel on this weapon while it was still in the early stages of development. We were able to destroy significant portions of their inventory and erase the plans from their databanks.”

  Everyone sighed in relief.

  “But before we get too comfortable, it won’t be difficult for the enemy to create new plans and begin production again. We’ve only bought ourselves several weeks. A month at best. So, we still need to take this threat seriously. The success of the FPR invasion depends on it.”

  Ryan was standing in the inner circle, half-listening to the speech. His mind wandered, putting his life into perspective. He’d become a respected member of a group fighting for justice. His paralysis and Auto were only a few months behind him, but it seemed like a lifetime ago. Not only could he walk, but he had superhuman abilities when Charlie and he were in sync. He’d experienced these amazing skills firsthand, and it was still hard for him to believe.

  The thought forced him to reflect on the night he’d had. In some ways, it was much different from the night Junior saved Helen and him from the Padre. Tonight, Ryan had just finished leading a team of the most talented minds in the world. They’d gone into a hostile location to complete a critical mission, and it was a resounding success. But as easy as the night had turned out, Ryan knew it was a combination of Dr. Martin’s guidance, perseverance, and a bit of luck. He was certain the toughest days were yet to come, and in that way, the two nights were very similar.

  Whenever FPR finally arrived, the serious battles would begin. Some of them in streets. Some of them in shadows. Some of them inside everyone. He knew he would have to do things he’d never imagined before Charlie. He knew he wouldn’t have a
choice either. He couldn’t question or hesitate. He would just have to act. He’d have to survive. He’d have to save others. As he tried to think of specifics, the concept of war seemed foreign to him, if only for a moment. But then, he remembered. He knew war. He respected war. He feared war. He’d been in the trenches. He’d looked the enemy right in the eye and done what had to be done. And though he wasn’t proud of it, the smell of the hot blood of the enemy meant that he was still alive. In that sense, he appreciated the simplicity of it all. It was simple. The people who wronged him would have to pay, one way or another. There was no getting around it. There was no saving them from themselves.

  It was with this realization that Ryan discovered he had a massive headache. The exhaustion from the longest day of his life had caught up with him, and he couldn’t bear to stand much longer, let alone focus on a speech he already knew. He turned and navigated the crowd, fantasizing about his bunk and sleeping for ten hours.

  Across the crowd, Helen spotted Ryan when the speech began, but the shifters were tightly huddled on her side by the corridor to the medical area. She waited patiently for the speech to end so she could be with Ryan and tell him the great news.

  She watched J-A, half admiring and half impatient for her to finish. When she looked back, she was shocked that Ryan had disappeared. She poked her head around the layers of shifters, and fortunately, caught a glimpse of his backside. She barreled through the crowd and ended up on the inside of the circle. By the time she found Ryan again, he’d turned in the direction she’d come from. Six rows of shifters had filled in between them. She kept bobbing her head to track him, and when she saw his side profile, she scowled. His white eye was glowing brighter than usual. She panned her view to see what he was looking at. Tony was a few meters ahead of him. She tried desperately to keep both of them in sight while pushing her way between two shifters.

  “Hey! J-A’s talking! Show some respect.”

  That was the last straw. Helen cupped her hands around her mouth and took a deep breath.

  “…and that’s why the Shifter Alliance will win!” J-A finished her speech just as Helen yelled, “Ryan! Wait!”

  The explosion of cheering, laughter, and applause filled the common area, drowning out Helen’s words.

  In the chaos, Helen lost Ryan and Tony.

  She was inexplicably filling with dread for being kept from Ryan, but not ready to give up. She fought through layer after layer of rowdy shifters, making it almost to the corridor leading to the medical area just ten meters in front of her.

  Then, everything went black.

  Helen froze in place.

  The crowd gasped.

  “The generator room!” J-A screamed. “Get there now, Fire Team!”

  By the time J-A finished her command, the emergency lights had come on. A large group of shifters headed away from Helen while the others huddled near J-A. At last, Helen was free to go after Ryan and Tony.

  But it was all too much for her.

  The crazy day.

  Being unable to get to Ryan moments before.

  The power outage.

  Ryan acting like an ass the last time they had spoken.

  She thought that pregnant women shouldn’t have to work that hard for some Goddamned decency, and with that thought, began to hyperventilate. An anxiety attack overcame her, and she put her hands on her knees, struggling to breath and see.

  The thought crossed her mind that Natalie was trying to take over, but that wasn’t the case. This was something she was going through, and she’d have to pull herself out of it. She glanced up, strangely noticing that the corners of the room were still dark where the emergency lights couldn’t reach. It was obvious that the episode was screwing with her vision. Had she not known better, she’d have thought she saw Ryan come out of the hallway and turn. But it was dark. His image seemed oddly murky. She blinked slowly, and the illusion was gone as fast as it had appeared.

  She shook her head and took the most deliberate breath she could. She finally gathered herself and straightened. She walked toward the corridor when the regular lights kicked back on, and she heard chatter from behind her about a false alarm.

  Helen was about to walk into the hallway to the medical area when the bright light revealed something to her. Something on the ground.

  Drops of blood. She was instantly startled, then followed them to the sewer exit room just off to the left.

  “Oh my God!” Helen saw the guard, lifeless on the floor. At the exact same time, a blood-curdling scream came from behind her. Helen turned around to see a nurse coming out of the hallway, her hands covered in blood.

  “It’s Tony,” she sobbed, hysterically. “He’s been ripped apart.”

  J-A dashed past the nurse and into the corridor. She was gone for only a few seconds, but it felt like an eternity to Helen. When J-A appeared in the common room again, she seemed speechless at first. But then, she took a deep breath and shouted at the top of her lungs, “Where the hell is Charlie-Ryan?!”

  Helen stumbled out of the sewer exit room into the common space, catching J-A’s eye. Helen swallowed hard and trembled as everyone looked at her.

  “Ryan’s gone.”

  THE END

  Dear Reader

  Thank you for reading Between Two Minds: Revelation, my second novel. I hope you enjoyed the book, and rest assured, there will be more entries in the series. When you have a moment, please go to your favorite retailer’s website to give the novel an honest review. Your feedback not only lets me and others know how much you liked the book, but it challenges me to make the next book that much better.

  Thanks again!

  Acknowledgments

  A loving thanks to my wife, Emily, for challenging me to tell the best possible story.

  A very special thanks to Debra L. Hartmann and her team at IAPS for again going above and beyond to make my second novel what it is today.

  A special thanks to:

  My beta readers for providing honest, helpful feedback.

  My Twitter friends, many of which are readers and other writers. You provided the community that helped get me through the months leading up to the release of Book Two.

  My Facebook family, friends, and fans for liking, commenting, and sharing my posts. You all motivate me to be a better author with every interaction.

  About the Author

  D. C. Wright-Hammer is the innovative author behind the Between Two Minds series. Born and raised in Northwest Indiana, his family, friends, and experiences from “The Region” were paramount in shaping him as a person and author. D. C. is currently employed by a large Chicago-area software company as a certified scrum product owner. He spends his free-time with his wife and two children and enjoys reading popular sci-fi, thriller, and fantasy books.

  To stay up to date on all the latest information regarding D. C.’s books and other content, visit hammerstonecreative.com, and like and follow him at:

  twitter.com/dcwrighthammer2

  facebook.com/dcwrighthammer