“A side effect of using the Vestige,” said Shaun, his voice gruff. The energy blasts continued to flicker and give off pops and crackles like a live wire. “I’m sorry, but you’re not taking it from me. Nobody has, and nobody will.”
Zolyn chuckled, sending a light show across her body as she did.
“You have a fight in you,” she said. “That’s a good sign. You’re not weak. I need someone with power. All you have to do is join me.” She paused as she observed him. He had put this glowing light around his eyes. “What is the thing on your face for? Are you trying to hide your identity?”
“Any Aberrant has to hide their identity,” Shaun replied. “That’s how we survive.”
“Impossible. You don’t need to hide who you are to survive. You are more powerful than any of the people in the vicinity! You could rule these people alongside me. Live off of them and never have to work another day in your life. Wouldn’t you like to let your guard down and enjoy the power that’s been bestowed upon you?”
To her surprise, Shaun nearly spat his response in her direction.
“I would never use that power so heartlessly.”
Zolyn smiled knowingly.
“So, you’re still fascinated with the idea of honor.” She started charging up her power, focusing it until the electrical current between her spherical body pieces was practically illuminating the surroundings like a full moon. “Such a foolish pursuit. You’ve learned to fly and shoot pulse blasts, but you still haven’t learned the real lesson.”
“Oh?” Shaun replied. “And what lesson is that?”
“If you won’t use your power to control others, there will always be someone else who will take that power from you and put it good use.”
With that, she shot forward with the element of surprise and began her attack.
13
The Battle Commences
Zolyn struck Shaun like a freight train. Even with his hands up, he was caught completely off guard by her immense speed. That speed, combined with another surprise element to her attack, which was suddenly going dark, made the alien invisible against the night sky.
BAM!
The momentum alone sucked the breath from Shaun’s lungs. He went flying backwards, his arms thrashing out to stabilize himself. As he tried to keep himself upright, both balls of pulse energy he had been building for Zolyn went shooting away from him. One rocketed up into the sky like a glowing purple balloon of electricity while the other was hurled at the side of one of the nearby buildings. It struck the old stone facade and crumbled it, at the same time shattering any glass that was present.
People down below let out shrieks and stumbled over each other to clear the path of the falling debris. Larger piece of stone work crashed into the street like mini explosions. A few cars got their rooftops crushed in.
While that happened, Shaun flew backwards to regroup. Zolyn was still dark, so he had to strain his eyes to see the slightest movement in the dark. His visor helped, registering Zolyn’s mass after a few excruciating seconds and highlighting it.
Target Acquired.
“Thank-you…” Shaun muttered and wasted no time in firing off a few pulse blasts at the alien.
She dodged the first one with no problem, but the second blast struck her right in the chest. This reignited all the lights in between the floating black spheres, and Zolyn was quickly covered by a webbing of electrical tendrils. The third pulse blast sent her tumbling backwards until she smashed back through one of the unbroken windows of the restaurant. Shaun winced at the damage that was being done, but what could he do? It was either damage to buildings, or giving up his life — and the lives of those on the street.
Glancing down below, he was relieved to see that the area was quickly evacuating. Only a small ring of people remained against the ground floor of a few surrounding buildings.
Many thoughts rushed through Shaun’s mind as he waited to see if the alien rebounded from his attack. Clearly her body was made of some sort of mechanical system, though he had a hard time believing that Zolyn was the sentient kind of robot that would be found in science fiction movies. He wasn’t sure that she was a robot at all. There was something fluid about her that wasn’t typical of an artificial system.
Yet, if she was partially robotic in nature, that meant that she was powered by some sort of energy; the energy that the Vestige contained. How it all worked, he had no idea. But, if she was trying to get to the Vestige in order to harvest its energy, then that meant that she could be overpowered in some way. Striking her with blasts of electricity had to do something to slow her down. After all, when Shaun used a computer he didn’t throw streams of electricity at it to charge it. Instead he plugged it in. That concept meant that by all reasoning, Zolyn had to have some kind of electrical weakness. Maybe shooting her through with an overly powerful voltage would shut her down.
Either that, or Shaun’s last resort was getting into a fist fight. Judging by Zolyn’s constantly shifting form, any physical blows directed at her would be easily absorbed.
All of those thoughts barely had time to stick in Shaun’s mind because moments later, Zolyn reassembled herself and shot back out of the broken window. She soared like a cruise missile. Every motion was calculated. Unlike her body mass, nothing about her movement through the air felt organic. Every tilt an turn was calculated. Even her speed seemed like it was vehicle-like, leading Shaun to wonder if his suspicions were correct, that she was actually an organic being to some extent using the mechanics to travel.
Zolyn rocketed towards him, still in the shape of a woman with her fists bared and super charged with electrical energy.
Shaun tried to super speed out of the way, but Zolyn was too quick for him. It almost made no difference as the fight simply continued with the rest of the world slowing down to a crawl around them.
He went in for a punch of pulse blast to Zolyn’s head, but she dodged it with ease. Her hand shot up and caught the energy and sent it hurtling back at Shaun. He tried to avoid it the same as Zolyn had, but he wasn’t quick enough.
The energy blast caught the side of his face. Its heat seared one of his cheeks and cracked his visor. A red flashing ring of light appeared in his vision — the visor warning him of the physical danger.
With gritted teeth he flew out of super speed and fell back, making a loop around one of the tall buildings to try and shake Zolyn for a few moments. By the time he circled back around, his cheek had healed itself, though his visor was hopelessly cracked. The spider web obscured part of his vision, like a busted windshield.
He glanced over his shoulder to see if Zolyn was following him. Even through the broken visor it was obvious that she was not. The air behind him was clear. He turned to check in front, which was where he had fled from. That spot was clear as well.
Where the hell did she go?
First and most obvious thought was that she had gone up above to do a sneak attack. Yet, when he looked up, the night sky was empty. Even searching with what remained of his visor, there was no indication that the alien had turned off her light source and was hiding above him.
That left only one other option.
Before he could even tilt hid head down he was struck from below by Zolyn. The force knocked him off balance and his flying faltered.
No! Not now!
He was going to fall through the air if he couldn’t catch himself, quick!
He lashed out to catch himself, but as he did so, he realized that he wasn’t falling. In fact, he was suspended in the air — supported by Zolyn.
She had caught him and clamped down on him, no doubt to keep him from fleeing.
He struggled. Her grip tightened on him.
“I told you that you could either hand over the Vestige, or I would take it by force. Looks like you’ve chosen force. Luckily for me, I’m prepared.”
Shaun tried to pull himself out of Zolyn’s grasp, but to his horror, the pressure on his chest where she had wrapped herself aroun
d him was growing stronger, rippling out like a weighted blanket.
Looking down at his body he saw with horror that Zolyn had morphed her physical shape until she became like a sheet over his own body — a living piece of metallic fabric that was binding itself around his torso, arms, and legs so that there was no chance that he could get away.
14
Reinforcements
It felt like there were tiny insects crawling all over ever inch of his body — including his face. The tiny black spheres, no bigger than a bead, rolled across his cheeks, covering his nose and forehead. They continued on until they threatened to stop his mouth from opening. In fact, Shaun was almost too afraid to open his mouth in case the pieces of Zolyn decided that they were going to go inside him.
Thankfully they did not.
But the sensation was akin to having a million ticks running across his skin.
“No!” He said through gritted teeth. “Get off of me — let me go!”
He struggled to bring his arms in towards his chest, but Zolyn was too strong for him. She was methodically taking control of his limbs and stopping him from flying away. He expected to plummet to the ground. There was no way for him to use his flight abilities with his hands contorted so awkwardly, but Zolyn was keeping him in the air somehow. The tiny spheres continued to roll in constant motion across his body, clicking into one another as they did so. Click, click, click.
“Where is the Vestige?” she asked. Her voice was amplified as if he were listening to her through ear buds. With a grimace he realized that some of her pieces had to be circling the inner part of his ears. The clicking continued, like a crab walking across a polished surface. Her tone became more impatient. “Where is it? I know you have it on you. Unless you have it inside you. Austin Spencer had his implanted in his arm.”
“You’re not going to get it,” said Shaun, refusing to answer the alien.
As if he was going to tell her where the Vestige was. It wasn’t on his body. It wasn’t even in his body. He hadn’t needed to use the medallion, or any of its shards, since that fateful final battle with Bill Flagrant — The Drone. Somehow, through a phenomena that he didn’t even understand, the powers that the Vestige had granted to him had become transferred into his biology. Now, without needing any physical connection to the Vestige, Shaun could use his Aberrant abilities freely. He had even been given a few new abilities that he had not known before.
Zolyn didn’t know this. Shaun dreaded what would happen when the alien figured it out. He also had a horrible image in the back of his head of Zolyn realizing that the Vestige wasn’t in any of his clothes, so she would rip his body apart to find the shard. The same thing had happened when The Cloak tried to pick a fight with The Drone and got his arm snapped in half so that the piece of black stone, presumably a variation of The Vestige, could be retrieved and used by Bill Flagrant.
Shaun wasn’t going to let that happen to him.
He fought, using all of his might to try and bring his limbs back under his own control. The strain was like lifting an extremely heavy weight, accompanied by the aching pain of doing too many push ups in one series. He groaned, his teeth snapping against each other.
“I told you that it was useless to struggle,” said Zolyn in his ear. “I want what I came for. You will give it to me one way or another. I’d like to do this without having to rip you apart.”
Shaun’s eyes widened.
So, she was going to resort to that if worse came to worse! This lit an even greater fire under his ass and he did the only thing he could think of, and that was to channel all of his energy through his arms, forcing some electricity blasts to his palms and out through his fingers. The purple sparking energy exploded from his hands like a live wire and the sparks traveled back up his fingers, jumping from tiny sphere to tiny sphere like conductors until the energy formed a blanket over the upper half of Shaun’s body as well as Zolyn. He gave the blast everything he had in him, but to his surprise Zolyn just started to chuckle.
She was amused!
Screwing his face up he gave the blast another bit of pulse energy, hoping to shake Zolyn off of him. But, the exact opposite happened. Instead her grip on him tightened until he was starting to have trouble breathing. The buzzing, tickling feeling of her chuckling continued.
“That’s a nice try,” she said. “But, you don;’t know what you’re doing. You’re only feeding me more energy. You’re not going to kill me that way. I told you not to struggle. Please, cooperate! I want this over with as much as you do!”
A feeling of dread settled in Shaun’s stomach.
So, this alien is fed by my energy. It doesn’t matter what I do. She will overpower me and absorb everything I throw at her!
What was he going to do? She had control of every part of him, and she started to lift him higher into the air. It felt like being lifted up by a giant elevator. Higher and higher he was raised until he realized what Zolyn was trying to do. The air was becoming thinner and it was harder to breathe. She was depriving him of oxygen so that he would pass out! Then she would be able to search him more freely and probably do as she said when she realized that the Vestige wasn’t in his clothing — tear him apart.
He couldn’t let that happen! He needed to fight!
But, the lack of air was starting to weaken him. That, combined with Zolyn holding him with his limbs fully extended was taking away every bit of energy he had left at his disposal.
“No…” he said, tears starting to brew in his eyes as the wind whipped at his face.
The world around him was starting to become blurred and hazy. The combination of that with the darkness of the night sky caused him to feel sick. Zolyn was flipping him head over heels. The brilliant lights of the city were now below him, twinkling like Christmas lights. He saw cars moving, tail lights flashing, and heard the sound of shocked people and traffic all mixed together with the roar of the wind.
He was moving sideways now. Moving through the air.
Where was Zolyn taking him?
His eyes caught sight of the harbor and the dark plume of smoke and steam billowing from the glowing hole in the concrete platform.
She’s taking me to the space ship…
That would be the end of him.
But, what could he do? His energy was depleted and now he could barely struggle against the alien’s hold on him. She was designed to dominate, and he wasn’t going to free himself. He would just have to see what the inside of the space ship looked like. Hadn’t that been a daydream of his from when he was a kid? He had always wondered what being abducted by aliens would be like. Now he would know for sure. It definitely wasn’t anything like he had imagined.
If this is the end, he thought, then at least I gave a good fight.
He felt their course returning towards the ground, lowering. His lungs were able to expand more to take in fresh air. At least he wasn’t going to suffocate. There was that. The little things.
His eyes locked onto the bright glow of what had to be the light of the space ship. It was so bright that he couldn’t make out the shape of the craft. It was illuminated like a giant light bulb. He squinted through his visor.
The light was flickering, morphing into various shapes as if it were alive. That was interesting. He tried to focus on it and see what was going on.
The brightness intensified suddenly and he heard a pop like a bulb exploding. It actually shocked him — and Zolyn too because she shuddered around him, losing altitude briefly before regaining it.
“What was that?” she said, sounding unsure of things for the first time since Shaun had encountered her.
He felt her looking around, using whatever counted as eyes for her to scan the surrounding area. There were mechanical wizzing noises and the sound that a hard drive makes, only amplified hundreds of times in Shaun’s ears.
He was still looking at the ship, however, fascinated by the light show on display. It was milky and misty. Beautiful, he thought.
&n
bsp; In the blink of an eye the light gave off a brilliant flash that blinded Shaun. He felt stars in his eyes and a ringing sound filled his head. Zolyn shuddered again.
After blinking a few times Shaun was able to see down below, and the beautiful light display continued — only this time there was a blue streak of light that shot out of the glowing hole where the space ship had crashed, and this streak of light arced gracefully through the darkness until it turned and directed itself right at Shaun.
Is this another alien? he wondered. They all traveled so quickly! If only they could stop as gracefully. He was thinking of the way that Zolyn had smashed through the side of the restaurant. Was that because she couldn’t control herself as carefully in Earth’s gravity?
He hoped not because the blue streak of light was continuing to shoot towards him and Zolyn, and judging by how big the light was getting, it had to be moving at least sixty to seventy miles per hour.
“Oh boy…”
Within seconds the light slammed into Shaun, pushing him — and Zolyn — to the side. The blue light was like an ocean wave, and the two of them were a tiny boat floating on the surface.
It actually was pleasant compared to being squeezed nearly to death. Shaun observed as the blue light struck him that it was breaking apart like tiny particles. Indeed this phenomena had to be another alien being like Zolyn, though what they were trying to accomplish by smashing against one of their own kind — disorienting them as they hunted their prey — Shaun hadn’t a clue. What he did know was that the blue light wasn’t pure light at all but rather the same type of tiny spheres that Zolyn was.
Only, they were incredibly bright. Shaun had to squint to see them clearly, and they moved so swiftly that he couldn’t lock onto a few spheres for more than a couple seconds before they were flying off through the air, turning around and coming back to swarm around him. The blue spheres were like a group of angry hornets — and they gave off a buzzing sound to go with the movement.
The Aberrant Series (Book 4): Super Invasion Page 8
