by Julian Miles | Jun 12, 2013 | Story |
Author : Julian Miles, Staff Writer
“Oh for god’s sake, not again.”
It’s only the fourth time I’ve thrown up in the last hour. As I reach for the towel, everybody in the room tenses. They relax after I wipe my mouth and sag back into the chair.
“For a killer, he doesn’t show much.”
The burly one is right. I show very little of the dangerous composure my kind is supposed to have.
“That’s what makes him effective. Appearing to be harmless.”
The skinny one passes comment in an attempt to appear wiser than he is. He’s the junior of the team.
“Whatever. He’s worth a fortune. Plus we get upgraded just for finding him.”
The leader is the longest serving. For all his experience, he has no idea what he’s captured. Or I hope he doesn’t. I may have screwed up this time.
“Can I have some water?”
“No.”
The reply is unanimous. They have no idea why I’m rated as an unstoppable, highly-trained threat to their employers, but they are cautious. Too many have died trying to take me.
“You can have a drink when they get you where they want you to be. When the interference lets up, I’ll report in and everyone will be a lot happier. In fact, I’ll go up to the roof and call in.”
They watch their boss leave and miss my shoulders drooping in relief. I thought I had been caught for real this time.
Burly and Skinny are just getting worried about Leader when two loud thuds herald my deliverance. The air distorts in front of them and slams them into the wall so hard their bodies leave tracks in their own blood.
The door swings open and a familiar figure strolls in with a tray of food in one hand, a steaming compressor-pulse shotgun in the other.
“Room service, Mister Jennings?”
Fleming always makes me laugh. His deadpan delivery and ability to imitate any accent is just so refreshing after moments of utter terror.
“Thanks, John. And say thanks to Sally and Spitz too.”
“And Charlie. He’s been supervising the ‘atmospheric’ interference and his eyes may never uncross.”
Eight years ago I was a junior accounting clerk. One morning I found myself arrested for serious crimes across the country, all corresponding to places I had been at the relevant times. After a lot of shouting and screaming, I was resigned to my life being over. That night, a man came to my cell. He explained that I had been set up to cover for an operative of Asylum, a company that worked internationally for the highest bidder. They had even corrupted governments.
But this man’s bosses only employed those whose lives had been damaged or destroyed by Asylum. If I wanted, they had a lunatic plan for me to strike back at Asylum. That was the night I started working for Exile.
The next day I daringly escaped during a prison transfer; there being no traces of me having had any help.
Asylum think that when they framed me and it drove me to discover hidden talents. They want me dead because I obviously know a lot from interrogating everyone they send after me before I kill them.
Actually I know nothing and have a team of the most dangerous people I know, and who I believe to be the most dangerous people on the planet, making sure I always get captured and never get kept.
Professional killers really shouldn’t be this much fun to travel the world with. I’m having the time of my life.
by Clint Wilson | Jun 11, 2013 | Story |
Author : Clint Wilson, Staff Writer
We were pretty much finished. A dozen seven-foot Parakti loomed over us, spewing their fowl breath past yellow fangs. The survivors huddled behind me, fourteen hungry women and children. They had all looked up to me for protection. Now?
The leader’s greenish black skin tightened over his frame as he struggled to make our speech. “Your children will be raised on slave farms. Honor decrees that the rest of you may speak your last words now.”
When I was but a boy I had once witnessed an eerily similar scene. I had been a scared waif hiding beneath some debris while the man protecting his small band of humans that day had been my father.
He had been a blacksmith, as tough as they came. And he laid down a challenge that day, something I had never seen before and have never seen since. The alien had had no choice but to accept. And my father was killed in seconds. Then I watched the slaughter of the other adults.
Now I stood taller than my father had once been, and I too had started life as a blacksmith. This was followed by a stint in special ops, which was followed by two tours of duty on the Parakti home world. These days I climbed die scrapers with a hunting axe on my back. I too was as tough as they came.
I closed my eyes and uttered the words I had heard so long ago. “By the spirit of Great Zatai, I question your honor Parakti.” The looming beasts all gasped and looked instantly to their superior. I went on, “You will not even grant your challenger xathoo before honorable unarmed combat, and me but a puny human?” I slapped my chest twice, another Parakti challenge.
The leader stepped forward, easily a foot taller and a hundred pounds heavier. Now I could really feel his hot disgusting breath. “I never once said I would not grant you xathoo human. Now I grant you xathoo so make it quick!”
I did not hesitate. “If I win you let us go unharmed.”
The entire troop of Parakti broke out in their gurgling laughter.
“Granted!” shouted the leader as he swung his claws down at my face. And then suddenly I wasn’t there. Like I said, I was as tough as they came, hard as the nails I used to pound out by hand and just about as fast as anything alive.
Before he could whip around I was nearly behind him and by the time he finished his turn I popped up with five pummeling blows to his chin in less than a second. The alien reeled and that was all I needed. In less than a heartbeat I was five feet off the ground twirling my entire two hundred pounds, my foot whipping along like the projectile in a slingshot. The kick to the side of his giant cranium rang out like an old fashion gunshot. And even as he dropped like the ton of shit and slime that he was, I could see his yellow-green eyes flickering back to consciousness. And as I fell upon him his sharp claws swiped once more at my leg, but by the time they got there, there was only air. My other leg rammed downward, my knee cracking alien face bones. His body heaved one last time. I thrust my hand in and ripped his Parakti heart from the back of his throat, and held it up high… as the rest of them lowered their heads, and stepped aside to let us pass.
by Duncan Shields | Jun 10, 2013 | Story |
Author : Duncan Shields, Staff Writer
Greenland.
That’s where we discovered them first. All melted wires and skin grafts. Christmas lights in their eye sockets and playing poker with old-school punch cards. The population of an entire small town turned into player pianos.
We found something that looked like a broken radio sprawled just outside the city. A shattered egg made out of thin green wires and battery acid. Drip craters and drag marks in the snow pointed towards town.
We all stood in curious wonder, staring as Angela walked forward, bent down and touched it. Just stupid to bring a civilian, really, but none of us thought to shout out “Don’t!” or anything like that. The whole team was to blame.
She barked and went fetal. She twisted around in the snow with a horrible gargling sound. Some of the green wires jumped up and snaked towards her. Small shapes shifted under the snow. White rooster tails started up and raced towards her.
They converged on her quivering body with a flurry of snow and wet noises. We heard fabric tear. We heard sizzling. I heard a bone snap. We stepped back.
After about ten minutes, movement ceased. We stood there in the snow, watching our breath cloud in the air. The rest of the team looked at me. I looked at the steaming form of the woman in the snow.
It moved a leg like a clockwork ballerina.
Whatever was left of Angela stood up awkwardly and walked towards town. I was reminded of stop-motion animation from early movies.
We followed her, careful to give the wreckage a wide berth. She walked down main street to the shoe store. She went in and sat down on one of the benches. A few sparks shot out of her neck and she was still.
It’s like she was put there. Like a picture of an accurate shoe store needed a customer so she was told to go there.
The town is like a museum. They had phones but no internet. We were lucky. Whatever that thing is, it looked like a technological virus or life form. If it had parsed or accessed the net, there’s no telling what would have happened.
The city was quarantined. Relatives of the inhabitants were told of a deadly blizzard. It was swept under the rug.
In my dreams, I still see Angela with torn clothes, whirring with each step, lumbering through the snow towards the town.
by submission | Jun 9, 2013 | Story |
Author : John Kinney
When I was twenty years old, advancements in medical science and our understanding of DNA coding finally climaxed. I invested half of my money in a company called Stockholm and Siegfried, who specialized in genetic manipulation and, most importantly, cloning. They didn’t normally clone humans, despite how easily they could, because most considered it to be an ethical dilemma, but my frequent donations eventually changed their minds. When I was thirty, I had my parents’ graves dug up for samples of DNA. I told the research team that the whole project would be our little secret.
On the eve of my thirtieth birthday, the DNA was replicated and, in the morning, two embryos floated in a vat in the basement of the lab.
My parents are twelve now, the tender age that I had lost them in the crash, so many, many years ago. My father’s blue eyes stared into my own and in a small voice he told me that he loved me. He used to look me in the eyes and smile and tell me so when I was his age. I had to choke back tears when my mother smiled and told me to buy her more finger paint because of how much she loved painting. I hung her stick figure picture of my father and I next to one of her college portfolio paintings of a beautiful mountain landscape. I always loved that painting. She had told me that it was of a mountain that she had hiked during her trip to Germany. I made sure to get her more finger paint from the store when her and dad were sleeping in their beds.
I call them mom and dad, and I taught them to call me son.
They will be married when they’re old enough. It will be just like it was, so long ago, but I won’t let them leave me this time. Technically, they can never leave me.
When I die of old age, their son will grow up to be just like me.
by submission | Jun 8, 2013 | Story |
Author : James McGrath
“I know you’ve all heard it, but you have to hear it again…”
We’d heard the guide’s speech six times, so Kirstin and I stood at the back joking around as usual. He’d recite the dangers of leaving the tunnel, how we’d be guarded and eventually he’d tell of our destination.
Hastings, 1066. Was Harold shot through the eye like the Beaux Tapestry depicts? As history undergraduates we’d seen it firsthand many times, but it drove the tourists wild. We wanted to see the other side; William’s side.
As the guide fell silent I adjusted my little red backpack and prepared to go in. Nine others walked from the museum’s silver halls into the white oscillating bubble ahead of us, and we followed impatiently. I felt that strange quiver of stepping into what felt like nothingness. This was the tunnel. 2080 stayed clear at first, though slightly faded through the now transparent bubble behind me. The tunnel walls wobbled around us and as we walked our time slowly faded. Our surroundings became a pale grey.
This was an English Autumn sky.
We walked for five minutes until 2080 had been replaced by a birds-eye view of a field; the soldiers scattered across it like toys in a young boy’s bedroom. I spotted Harold and his Housecarls within minutes and pointed them out to Kirstin.
“Look for William this time!” she replied and began barging her way to the front.
She passed the guide, a look of horror formed on his face, and two guards ran from the end of the tunnel to meet her.
“Step back,” one ordered.
“Can I please just see the Normans?”
“No miss, please step back.”
Never one to give up, Kirstin changed tactics and took out her phone.
“What are you doing!? Please step back!” the guard continued.
“Take my phone,” she said, “Film some instead.”
“Filming is against company policy! If you don’t step back I’ll have to ask you to leave.”
Kirstin had had enough, she ran to the side and tried to charge past the guard but he grabbed her arm.
The phone flew out of her hand and careered towards the exit.
The guide had told us at the beginning what would happen should anything enter 1066. It’s nothing like Hollywood where you have to stop your parents meeting to make an impact on the future. Someone spotting a time traveller would have their life take a completely new direction, and even the slightest change in the winds could drastically alter the future, if done far enough back.
The phone touched the other side and we saw a ripple appear in the exit, but the guards were quick. One stuck out a hand and wrenched it back in.
“I’m sorry,” began the guide as battle raged down below, “but this session is over, you can get a refund at the service desk. Please exit the tunnel at the opposite side.”
Nobody wanted to leave; that’s when we’d find out what had happened. Sheepishly, we all walked back to 2080 and watched 1066 fade around us, once again feeling the tingle of changing times.
The silver halls appeared before me and I grinned widely. He was wrong! He’d said a change in the air could affect anyone back in 1066, but clearly nobody had felt it. I let my little white handbag fall onto my elbow and beamed at Stephanie.
By the time we’d got the refund I’d already forgotten the problem. I looked at the other members of the group, and the six of them looked equally confused.
