by Tyler Hanson
Zen collapsed behind the shelving. Her firearm clattered to the ground beside her.
Oh, shit. SHIT. This was such a mistake.
Her limbs already numbed from nerve damage, she struggled to move. Bullet holes riddled her appendages, their intrusions causing blood to pour onto the dirty concrete floor. Zen coughed, and more blood sprayed out in a mist.
That’s a punctured lung.
Her chest heaved, but she couldn’t inhale fresh air. She could feel the blood entering her lungs, and it felt as if she were drowning. Dull pains sharpened in her stomach as her adrenaline spiked. She fumbled for her relinquished pistol for a moment, but stopped.
Slow and shaking, Zen reached for her belt, gripping her Taser.
I guess you do need it.
Battery’s Report
01.03: “Collapse”
Mississippi, United States
June 21, 1989-A
It took a few seconds for the girl to blink the light from her eyes, and even longer for her blurred vision to clear. She was on her back, the grass tickling her ears and arms and legs. She took a deep breath and felt a tightness in her right shoulder. She looked toward the sensation, but shadow darkened everything in her line of sight. Something burned, its smell as sweet and as bitter as a campfire. The rain had stopped, but the clouds remained.
Another minute passed before her head stopped spinning. A huge chunk of the tree, as big and heavy as a sedan, pinned her legs and chest to the ground. An extended branch pierced her right shoulder, nailing her to the burning hill.
The girl’s instinct was to panic, but instead she only felt a strong, intimate mixture of soothing calm and buzzing joy. Her head was clear, and her skin felt . . . purer than before. It was as if she had just stepped from the shower and smothered her soft body with fresh lotion.
An epiphany struck: For her entire life, she had been running half-empty. She felt . . . no, she knew she had been missing something tangible, something important. Today she received something that left her feeling whole.
But what had she received?
The girl placed her small hands on the tree above. Her eyes widened; blue arcs of electricity jumped between her fingertips, running through her skin like a kaleidoscope of cyan fireflies. Cuts and scrapes covered her bare arms and knuckles, and she watched the arcs jump across her wounds, stitching each one closed. Deep injuries that should have taken weeks or months to heal evaporated in seconds.
She inhaled again and felt a sharp pain in her ribcage. Glancing down, she saw a blue, pulsating glow beneath her shirt and along her sides. The girl winced as something inside her body squirmed. With an audible snap, the pain subsided. Blue light filled her peripheral vision as the bruise from earlier in the day faded to nothingness, fading away with the ease of wiping a stain from a kitchen countertop. The energy danced around her body, showcasing its beauty and its power; in less than thirty seconds, she felt as healthy as before.
No. Not as healthy. Better.
The girl pressed her palms against the tree bark and pushed. Her arms were under her brain’s control, but they unfolded against the thick trunk with no effort, more mechanical than organic. The tree creaked and cracked, showering bits of wood down onto her face. The girl gripped it tighter, and the bark splintered as her fingers dug deep into the oak. The broken shards should have penetrated her hands, but they flecked away from her knuckles, falling to the grass all around her.
She let go with one hand and marveled at the tree, heavy as a car, balanced in her palm with little effort. Her free hand snapped away the thick branch that had punctured her shoulder, pulling it both from the ground and from her body. Even as she motioned to toss it to the side, electricity rushed to the hole, and her wound healed before the bloody stake landed in the grass.
All that remained on the patch of skin was a trickle of blood lost before the opening vanished. The girl grunted, heaving the rest of the tree away from her body. It flew into the air so fast that it was nothing more than a blur, landing almost thirty feet away with a loud crash. She jumped to her feet, expecting exhaustion or pain to strike, but she instead felt ecstatic.
She felt . . . complete.
No. That wasn’t right. She felt charged.
New York, United States
September 9, 2001-B
Zen pulled the Taser from her belt with her working hand and jammed its metal prongs into her neck, activating it. The hot electricity crackled into the air, but it faded into silence as it poured into her body. Her cells drank the energy, ballooning and tightening into something stronger, something tougher. Deformed bullets were pushed from the wounds through which they had entered, and electricity circled around the holes as they closed. The scuffs and scrapes of today’s earlier chase washed away, and her muscles, once as weak as papier-mâché, transformed into an alien material more akin to steel or marble. Zen’s head buzzed from the ecstasy—from the familiar sensation of wholeness.
Indifferent to the gun lying on the ground, Zen re-holstered her Taser and climbed to her feet. The winged man moved around the shelves toward her, his large shadow announcing his imminent presence. Zen gripped the metal shelf that separated them and swung the entire unit at the man, striking a large birdie with an even-larger badminton racket. She felt the metal vibrate with a CLANG as it smacked against him, and he tumbled across the room.
As she entered her opponent’s line of sight, her hands tightened into fists, electricity running under her skin and flowing through veins. The man, still on his hands and knees, lifted the machine pistol he had somehow managed to retain as he fell. Zen raised her arms to protect her face and upper body.
He pulled the trigger.
Once again, heated lead struck her flesh; this time, blue sparks flew from each point of contact, and the bullets flattened harmlessly against her skin.
“Don’t waste your time,” Zen said. Her voice had lowered an octave, and it now carried an almost mechanical tone, as if she were speaking through a voice-changing device. “You had one chance to handle this the right way, and that chance is gone. Start talking, now. Where are we? What are these explosives for?”
The winged man chuckled and rose to his feet with supernatural grace, pulled upward by an invisible force. For the first time, he spoke, saying, “You’re one of them.” His voice was low and rough, as if he had eaten gravel, but it wasn’t abnormal; its regularity belied his unorthodox appearance. “I told them, I told them we should have snatched you people away at the first sign of any Refinement. I said this would come back to haunt us. And look, here you are.” He looked around the shaded room. “Are you here alone, or did you bring more? Where did you even Bogeyman in from?”
Zen strode forward and firmly gripped his shoulder as she spoke. “I don’t know who you think your ‘Bogeyman’ is, or who ‘they’ are. I don’t think they’re worth hurting people over, right? Come down to the precinct with me; maybe we can have a hospital take a look at you, and the two of us can figure this all out together. I promise I’ll help however I can.”
The man slashed at her with his claws, but the talons sparked off the exposed skin of her forearm. What would have left deep, permanent tissue damage instead left thin scratches, no worse than papercuts. Even those disappeared into the air, leaving behind a short spray of blue sparks.
He followed up the attack with a kick to her stomach. The force of his blow sent her flying backward several yards. She managed to land on her feet, shaky but secure, and she grabbed her stomach, taken aback by his strength.
“What has happened to you?” Zen asked.
He flexed his wings and claws, his grin mischievous. “Happened? To me? Don’t worry about that. I’m exactly what I’m supposed to be.” The man sized her up. “You are the accident. The mistake.”
Hot, uncontrollable rage seared its way into her brain, carried there by the euphoria of her electrified state. She charged, lowering herself as she ran to resemble a defensive lineman. She bridged the gap between t
hem in a blink; he must not have anticipated her speed, because she struck him in the center of his chest with her shoulder before he could react. Blue sparks flew from the point of contact, jettisoning him across the room in a straight line, his body nothing more than a grey blur.
The man struck the far wall of the supply room with the force of a train engine, rattling cleaning supplies from the nearby shelves and leaving fine cracks along the concrete surface. He dropped to his knees, gripped a nearby vacuum cleaner to steady himself, and emitted a raspy cough. A black remote slipped from his pocket into the palm of his hand.
He looked up at her, uttering a low growl of annoyance. “I don’t have time for this.”
The man pressed a button on his remote, and the screens on all three boxes flashed from yellow to red, announcing their status change from PENDING to ARMED.
The winged man gripped the handle of his vacuum cleaner and flexed his wings in front of his body. When he pulled them behind him, pockets of air travelled with them, propelling him toward Zen. Dust formed a cloud around him, and he was back in Zen’s face in a fraction of a second, swinging the cleaning instrument at her head.
Zen tried to stop it, but she couldn’t raise her hands in time to prevent the device from striking her temple. Blue energy rose around her head and arm in defense, and the vacuum shattered in half at the point where it struck her. She slid sideways a little, almost tipping over before regaining her balance.
Bending her knees and twirling in a full circle, Zen built momentum. Her spinning back fist connected with his raised, blocking arms, and the force of the blow rattled the light fixtures overhead. Loose papers and debris flew by them, and more dust sprinkled onto their heads. But as a counter, he clutched her offending arm, using her body as an anchor to prevent her from launching him again.
The man raised a knee into her gut, knocking the wind out of her, pushing her body up and back. His wings surrounded her like a cocoon, pulling her toward him, and he followed with a flurry of hand strikes: Jaw, neck, chest. She could feel the unnatural force of his attacks, each one making her insides squirm.
Pushing past the brief pain, Zen took advantage of her proximity to the winged man. She raised both fists above her head and plummeted them down onto each side of his shoulders. Her strike forced his body down into the ground with a thunderous crack, like a hammer striking a nail into the concrete. Dirt and rock sprayed from the point of impact as his feet made craters in the floor, highlighted by a spider web of fissures.
He bent for a moment, as if injured by the blow, but he suddenly straightened, smacking the top of his skull against Zen’s face. Warm blood ran down her lip while blue sparks rushed to repair the burst blood vessels. She stumbled, and the man capitalized on her disorientation to dart around her, disappearing toward a side of the room she hadn’t yet explored.
Zen wiped her nose, shook her head to regain her senses, and renewed the chase. She skidded around the shelving to find him prying open a pair of silver elevator doors embedded in the wall. They slid back, revealing the emptiness of the shaft beyond. He took two steps inside and flapped his wings once upward.
“No!” Zen said, her voice warbling electronically.
She reached for the incandescent light fixture hanging above her. Her hand gripped and squeezed the warm bulb, shattering the glass, and she fumbled to insert her fingers into the open socket. The lights in the room flickered, spastic and urgent. She diverted power from their circuits, the pull as irresistible as earth’s gravity, and electricity cascaded into her body. Her muscles grew stronger, the ecstasy more intense; her heart pounded like a rabbit’s foot, and her breath quickened. After three seconds she released the broken fixture, and the room’s flickering returned to a warm, steady glow.
The man flapped his wings a second time, this time lifting him into the shaft, out of her sight. Zen leapt forward; the shelves around her dissolved into a blur, and her hair flattened against her scalp from the force of her jump. She flew past the open elevator doors faster than intended, denting the inner wall of the shaft before landing on the floor.
Inspired, she turned and jumped upward, rocketing twenty feet into the air. Her foot connected with the other side of the shaft, and her heel bit into the metal, holding her aloft for the millisecond it took to crouch and jump again, back to the inner wall. She bounced back and forth up the elevator shaft, carefully avoiding the metal suspension cable.
To Zen’s frustration, the winged man flew further and further away. His flight path was much faster than her ricochet method of climbing, and he was fading into the darkness of the shaft above.
She had almost despaired when the man stopped and hovered in the air, just a speck in the shadows above. It seemed as if he was forcing himself into one of the closed doors sealing the building from the shaft. As he broke through the doors into the building, his arms and wings pushed behind him, sending the two pieces of the elevator door flying down toward Zen. She pirouetted in midair, her shirt skimming against the chunks of metal plummeting past her, no more than a hair’s breadth away. Gritting her teeth, she continued her ascent, ignoring her anguished muscles and heightening vertigo.
The detective reached the fractured opening; with a cry and a final shove, she tumbled out of the shaft, her skin rubbing against carpet. Zen looked up and saw a sea of desks, computers, and telephones. A cluster of frightened faces, connected to white-collared shirts and black ties, surrounded her. She heard strained and panicked voices murmur about her appearance.
Zen rolled onto her back and saw the elevator label above the gaping entrance.
FLOOR 105.
You traveled, what, a thousand feet? Straight into the air? Wow, girl. That’s impressive.
She climbed to her feet and glanced to the left, where, beyond a half-open door, she could hear shrill screams in the distance. Gathering her composure, the detective resumed her chase.
Mississippi, United States
June 21, 1989-A
Rejuvenated, the girl looked around. “David?”
No reply.
She scanned the charred landscape. “DAYYY-UHVID!”
Her eyes located a pair of smoldering shoes a few yards away. She tried to run to him, but her recalibrated legs launched her high into the air. She shifted her weight to better control her fall, landing next to the boy with a heavy thud.
The girl scrambled closer, anxiety knotting her stomach.
The boy’s left arm and neck bent at an unnatural angle, making the girl queasy. Plumes of smoke rose from a charred, black crust covering the boy’s chest. Small flames danced along his burned flesh, and his bloodshot eyes stared, sightless, at the dark sky. Worse still, despite the girl’s despair, she shoved down pangs of hunger introduced by the aroma of barbecue drifting from his body.
The girl held out a finger and traced the outlines of the boy’s burns. It took her a second, the longest second of her life, to realize why she was drawn to them.
They were the exact places her body had touched his when the lightning struck.
“No . . .” she gasped, her voice weak. The girl expected no answer, and she received none. Instead, tears arrived, rolling down her cheeks like raindrops. “Don’t . . . please . . . don’t go.”
Sobbing, the girl slumped over her first victim.
New York, United States
September 9, 2001-B
The winged man rushed down the hallway, slashing his claws into any civilians within reach. Blood spurted from tears opened in arms, chests, necks, and faces, pooling onto the floor and splattering against the walls.
By the time he reached the end of the hall, a dozen people were lying still, their bodies underscoring a grotesque Jackson Pollock exhibit. Zen was close behind, vaulting over the fallen bystanders, urging herself to catch up and put an end to this madness.
The man burst through a pair of doors into a room devoid of furniture. The sun burned into Zen’s eyes through the windows on her right. The grey assailant skidded to
a stop, backlit by a row of floor-to-ceiling windowpanes. He turned around, his black eyes piercing her.
“You don’t understand what you’re doing,” he said. “The moment you followed me here, you were already dead.”
Something began to beep, its pitch high. The man pulled a small, rectangular device from his pocket and pressed a button, dismissing what Zen assumed to be an alarm. She checked the mounted analog clock on the wall to the left.
8:45AM.
Zen stepped forward to apprehend him, but she stopped at the sight of movement behind his silhouette, outside the window. Barreling toward them was an enormous passenger plane. Zen couldn’t see into the cockpit, but it really didn’t matter what was happening inside; by the time her brain registered it, the plane passed below her line of sight.
The entire building shook from the impact. Glass sprayed from the window frames, and flame and smoke coiled through the sky around Zen. The floor collapsed beneath her, a hot explosion rocking through her body. The shockwave drilled her into the walls, and she crashed to a stop on an unknown floor.
Powdered plaster filled Zen’s lungs. She coughed as electricity flashed around her, attempting to keep pace with the damage inflicted upon her body. Her vision hazed, and the only sounds she heard were distant cries of terror mixing low, ominous rumblings.
Zen’s movements slowed, her thoughts muddied. She wasn’t sure how much time passed before she regained her composure. One minute? Two? Ten? The walls burned, the structure unstable and crumbling with every passing second. The dead littered the floor, motionless, while the living screamed and fled as fire consumed them. Sprinklers activated, but they did little to extinguish the flames from the jet fuel somewhere below.
Zen took a single step forward, but the floor caved beneath her, and the detective fell several stories before she came to rest again.
