Disadvantaged by mental strain, Dylurshin’s influence poisoned the conversation betwixt her and the trees, channeling its own requests through the mother called Earth. Dispirited and disloyal roots corkscrewed around her in rapid succession.
Inadequacy shackled her creative spirit. Wild thoughts and personal fears convinced Celine she didn’t have the imagination or strength to achieve her desired elemental manifestations. She knew what Dylurshin was, but she didn’t how it came to be, she didn’t know why it was there. The missing knowledge extinguished her fire. It felt implausible to overcome a threat without privilege to its weaknesses or its intentions. There was no soft underbelly, no Achilles’ heel.
Moving fast, the ominous face advanced, ready to impose its influence on her geological power, as it had done a year before in her slumber. She would’ve rather died than suffer its exploitation, than have her gifts usurped for certain evil. Stroking the roots constricting her arms, Celine prayed for a final favor.
“My brothers and sisters, hear me,” she said, “You have been influenced by this parasite. Listen no more to its sweet words of preservation. Do to Dylurshin with stone, what it has done to me with wood.”
Earth obliged with a quaking invitation of bedrock from beneath topsoil, subsoil, and weathered rock fragments. The rumbling rectangular prism surfaced, and surrounded the entity, surging past its height and sealing at the top. Shrieks echoed as Dylurshin battered the prison’s interior.
The roots retracted. She swallowed doom’s bitter taste and engaged her audience. “Stone won’t hold it for long.”
A long-haired teenager reached for her hand to help her stand.
“I’m fine,” she said and picked herself up off her haunches.
The handsome young man known in the world’s high society as Bazzo Sparks flexed his exposed abdominals and pulled his abused body into an “L” shape.
“Cel-Celine.” He mustered a one-sided smile. “Glad ya came.”
She inhaled, turned to the street and replied, “We cross paths far too often for coincidence.”
“No complaints here.” He coughed, choked, gagged, and cleared his throat. “Dorian, Dr. B... gotta find Dr. B.”
Her skin cracked like sunbaked clay. “You can barely stay awake. I can’t hold myself together. And he is too afraid of his own power to fight.” Thick veins crossed her forehead and spread down her body’s left side. “This region will be lost to Dylurshin’s influence. You need to warn the American—”
The crumbling tower cut in on her counsel. Dylurshin Hexforth had vanished and so did the last of her energy.
Florence Belladonna
Florence opened her mouth, and inhaled the fondest memory of Wesley DeVries.
Twenty-two years old. Optimistic, but not naive. She tended to let her reputation precede her and strode into his office, prepared to accept an internship, even though there were no open positions. The instant they shook hands, what had been about making change in the world and challenging the political sphere’s norms, became about his dimples and the way his eyes thinned when he smiled. Scarlet painted lips reshaped from a thin, entitled line to an intrigued smirk.
At the onset, her brain bulldozed any ounce of attraction. Earnest green irises brightened with intelligence instead of infatuation. She’d gone on to explain to him why his economic infrastructure for the New SoHo development project wasn’t viable, still a bit naive to the inner workings of global politics and the dangerous creature she was destined to become.
Fifteen years later, life’s unpredictable and unfair dealings had stripped her heart’s fervor and left it frozen in a way it might never thaw, let alone reignite.
She’d been seduced by sweet vengeance and betrayed, riding tied up in a stolen pick-up truck’s bed. Her wrists grappled with the itchy rope constriction. Primitive, yes. Loose, no. She rotated by fishtailing her legs, brought her heels to her butt, and pushed herself past the truck’s rear wheel guards. Shoulders swinging left, right, left, right, she gained enough momentum, swung her torso up, and used her legs to scoot her back against the tailgate. She propped her shoulders on it as her head gave in to gravity and came to a rest on its bumpy metal cap.
Serene space spread above earned her mind’s focus.
“Hang tight gorgeous!” Hunter called back. “We’re here!”
Here. They weren’t here. They were there. Somewhere in the vicinity, lay the flesh and bones of an assassinated U.S. president. New sounds and smells were there too—wailing sirens gunning up the hill and scorched grass.
Straight through the rear window molding, jacked up, armored police cars blocked the road. Canadian officials surrounded them, weapons aimed high, likely for Hunter’s skull, incognizant of its metallic protection.
“Pull over now!” a high-pitched voice instructed over an intercom. “Pullover or we open fire. I won’t ask again.”
“Ha!” the detective spat.
The engine revved. Gunfire blazed. Hunter abandoned ship. The sleek Ford F-150 slammed into the vehicular barricade like a runaway train, causing instant engine explosions. Florence hadn’t a free limb to anchor herself and ducked, curling her knees to her forehead as bad suspension sent the truck off of its left wheels. The vehicle’s side crunched on impact with the road. Her backbone banged the rear wheel guard before she flipped overboard, hurled from safety and into the hard sidewalk. The metal continued sparking and scraping as the truck skidded to a stop up the street, smoking and damaged.
“I’m here on a special mission,” Hunter said, showboating a massive firearm. “Got a U.S. fugitive in my camp, and I’m gonna drag her over the border, dead or alive.”
Bewildered troops consulted the police captain.
Gun barrel steadied on the open window, she shouted, “Keep your sights on him, eh!”
“Sooo, which of you suckers is gonna lend me their whip?”
“Take him down!”
The cavalry obeyed. Round after round of tracer bullets lit up the neighborhood, ripped his leather jacket to shreds and ricocheted off his metallic form. Not the slightest bit tickled by their assault, Hunter charged his plasma weapon. “You know, I was going to let you all live. But you ruined my custom jacket.”
Frantic shouting, plasma beams firing, blood spattering, and maniacal laughing consumed the private acres.
Will to fight. Will to live. Will to move. She searched her waning psyche for fiery passion to do the aforementioned and found a shrinking heart that snuffed out hope and possibility. Hunter was right. Her inclination to self-preservation or selfish devastation (they’re very similar), drove her to give up, to lie there, to wait to be penetrated by stray gunfire or impaled by scrap metal rain.
Florence’s bodyweight squished her hands. She wriggled onto her stomach and inch-wormed across the street. Pause.
The sword of Psion sword lay parallel to her, center stage to Hunter’s wrath.
There came another blessing right after, the hairless tan face and tight-lipped glower belonging to Dorian Xander. He stood by the bulldozed gate, searching his palms for... There they were: waves born from sonic absorption ignited and basked his grim expression in a psychedelic purple glow. Shoom. Shoom. Shoom. Converted concussive energy blasts pumped through his palms. Hunter shouldered one and deflected it. On the second, he lost his footing. The third and biggest consumed his figure and knocked him through the Canadian military’s blockade.
“Dorian!” she called out. He stepped into the street and looked around at eye level. “Down here!”
Dashing her direction, he spotted the sword and scooped it up before he reached her side. A clumsy hand inspected her bruising and then he wedged the sharp edge through the winding rope’s knot and after a little pressure, thousands of tiny fabric incisions unraveled.
Florence Belladonna, the infamous telepath, known for stealth, beauty, a quick tongue, and quicker blade, planted the sword’s tip in the pavement and hoisted herself up. If this were her last fight, at least she fought f
or something and someone she’d believed in. Unevenly heeled footsteps, accompanied steel dragging on asphalt and a low, hoarse, feminine growl. “Give it a rest, Steele.”
“Round two so soon?” Hunter asked and launched a vehicle her direction.
It screeched and whipped around. A second wind coursed toes to fingertips, and Florence slid underneath it, flipped to a standing position, and though limping, ran toward the detective.
A detached door twirled, feet from slicing her in half. She jumped, planted her enhanced foot on it, and leaped into the air. Psiborg leg surrounded by pulsing energy, her body swiveled, and the sword’s sharpened edge clanged, scraped, then slashed Hunter’s metal exterior. He flew back, tumbled over the street, and landed on his stomach. Both of her feet planted.
“Go ahead and kill me,” he said, breaking into nervous laughter, “won’t be your first and won’t be your last.”
Florence skulked toward him.
He stayed on the ground, gripped his wound, smiled like he’d won some game. “His first born. His little lady. Go on, make Lord Giovanni Belladonna proud.”
Get a grip Florence, she thought, sword raised over his neck. He’s not worth it.
“You saved my life once.” She sheathed the blade, circling him and focused. “I’ll spare yours.”
Telepathic power penetrated his cavernous mental space, sifted for the deepest, darkest memories. Buried under toughness, misogyny, apathy were childhood scenes. Crying for hours hiding in the closet while his parents abused substances. Lashings whenever he was disobedient. Being offered up as an experiment. Left to die after the experiment failed.
Hunter’s tortured screams fought a helicopter’s thunderous arrival for attention, and the metallic mutation covering his upper torso, hands, arms, neck, and head reverted to human flesh, cell after cell, organ after organ. The detective, stripped of wit, charm, and guile, crouched into a fetal position.
Blustering wind took over her face. She turned its direction and muttered, “The bloody nerve.”
Airforce One’s new VH-94 helicopter enlivened the morose mid-night sky with glaring spotlights.
Dorian had returned from somewhere. Her first thought was the mansion grounds. Bazzo’s comatose body rested on his thin shoulders. He lingered at the curb while searchlights inched toward illuminating his scrawny shape.
Dorian, don’t run, she projected. They’ll find you.
He lowered his head, knelt, and laid the body on his back on the sidewalk. Survival. Living on his own terms. Solitude. Desires sprinting through his mind faster than he, toward the damp forest. She stopped reading his thoughts.
The idea was to go to Bazzo’s side and examine his condition, but she stood sculpted in contemplation, loneliness concrete in her veins. She could’ve fought a little harder, run a little faster, been a little smarter.
A pair of dress shoes and a pair of heels clicked in unison.
“They could’ve sent anyone up here. Why did they send you?” Florence asked.
“You’re under arrest,” a gravelly voice said. It belonged to Townsend Black, a cabinet member and DeVries’s right hand man during his tenure as Senator of New York.
“You’re the ones who should be arrested.” She pointed to Hunter. “Trusting that unhinged psychopath to lead your takeover.”
“President DeVries knew the risks when we planned the summit,” Townsend argued, stone-faced, “It was meant to lure C20 out.”
“Bullshit, Townsend!” Florence screamed. She stepped forward, used her inside voice and said, “Bull. Shit. Risks can be mitigated. Best of luck feeding that story to the American people.”
“Easy, Florence,” Clara Whyzelle, the press secretary, interjected. “We’ve known each other a long time. We can work through—”
“Dr. Belladonna,” he sneered. His arms were already crossed. His hip already cocked. “Our pursuit of C20 and this operation is a private matter which doesn’t need your input, just your cooperation. You’re to come with us for questioning and we’ll go from there.” He turned his back on her and marched to their transportation.
“Is it just you?” Clara asked, getting closer.
Florence wiped dirt and tears off her chin and tilted her head at the sidewalk. “And him. I’m certain he needs a medic.”
“Where is Allister?”
“We didn’t come together. So, I don’t know.” Her posture sank, no longer obligated to feign poise. What she’d witnessed was incomprehensible.
“I’m sorry to lose Wesley, he was an amazing president. An amazing person. And I know he meant a lot to you. But, if Allister’s been compromised, we need you to help us stop this thing.”
Chapter Seven
Cosmic Bloodlines
Allister Adams
C20 Lab, Antarctica
Sleep hadn’t visited Allister in the seventy-two hours since he’d been captive. Crystalizing icicles burned the skin under his cheeks. It took convincing from his inner voice to admit the incessant teeth chattering belonged to him, and he hit the brakes on hours of continual thoughts. Both hazel eyes, stung from the cold, fluttered closed, and his bearded, angular chin sank. He’d had Zosma in his arms as their lips touched in sweet surrender.
Part of him killed Dr. Giro in homicidal hatred. Part of him killed Dr. Giro in a noble effort to free Zosma. But, “I wouldn’t kill anyone,” he’d said to Celine. It was a lie now, a lie he’d live with forever, even if he told it before he knew his limits. He wrangled with the two parts of himself, deciding which one was more at fault for the murder. It didn’t matter the ratio, she wasn’t freed. No, quite the opposite, Dylurshin, a mysterious being, was freed from the constraints of a human host. He should’ve known better.
Brandt sacrificed his life to disrupt the Z-energy pulse. Florence was killed by the blast or missing. Celine was too shaken to fight alongside him as prophesied.
Allister’s body was suspended in an X-shape, covered neck to knuckles to ankles in a layered titanium alloy suit reinforced by steel. It bore an advanced civilization’s sophisticated mark and did nothing to keep him warm. Thick, link chains tugged his arms as far from his chest as possible, and nearly ripped the tendons that connected his shoulders. Legs positioned in a similar way, his quads flexed in fear of them being torn from their sockets.
He recognized the lab’s interior design, dappled with ice, bereft of furniture. Indistinguishable from the one Dr. Giro had built at the Andromeda Project, it was as pure of disturbance, as it was spotless. The containment center sat in a corner and shined with the Z-energy’s light.
Walls and archways carved inside towering crystals brought out the alien in the architecture. C20 was a castle under the Antarctic ice sheet. Dylurshin Hexforth’s castle.
He took the time to navigate detail after detail, looking for what he’d missed. His mistakes may have cost them the world.
In 1973, the Arecibo observatory contracted the world’s top ten scientists to make adjustments to its communication capabilities. Twenty years before Rabia Giro was born, yet, Rabia Giro was on that team. He’d commissioned the blueprints, and those updates were the sole reason Neight Caster’s distress transmission was received by Nicolas Delemar seventeen years later. A plan had been set in motion.
There wasn’t a question whether General Nicolas Delemar and Captain Jared Brandt had been on puppet strings. Their ambitions, magnified and manipulated, woes, amplified and accelerated, pit against each other in lethal rivalry and predictable betrayal. Lining up the facts, the two men had impacted Allister’s life in detrimental ways; Nicolas having killed his father, Captain Brandt having killed his mother. He’d been an intentional target in Dylurshin’s power-mongering game.
Allister suspected he served a purpose, otherwise Dylurshin wouldn’t have taken the utmost care in making sure he lived through the energy pulse.
His spirit extinguished, profound disillusion engraved on his brow, regret’s sharpened point corkscrewed his stomach.
Fed up wit
h patience, Allister’s head thrashed about. Strength, none. Regeneration, slow. Z-energy, nonexistent. Time. The silver lining on an otherwise hopeless cloud. Allister had time. His tense muscles relaxed. I have time.
The Transporter gems’ temporal energy heat cured his goosebumps. It raised his body temperature and escorted a vibrance to his cheeks. White light jolted from under the body prison, rushed around in a circle like a fish too big for its bowl until time slowed to a stop, and the present tumbled away at warp speed.
Allister saw the C20 base’s deconstruction. Research groups left, then arrived in the Antarctic region. He witnessed colonial exploration, glacial ice shifting. One thousand years in the past, two thousand years in the past rushed by in a speedy, reversed time lapse, a fight, a crash landing. The play button pressed on 470 B.C.E., Antarctica’s barren glaciers dwelled in transfixing silence.
High-pitched whistling pierced the air. An opaque, dome-shaped vessel had been double-crossed by its own speed as it struck the mesosphere’s extreme cold and molecular friction. It blazed a hot orange, and four tapered metallic legs rattled behind it. The italic, circled “AE” followed by a sideways “8” insignia had all but burned away, and the space ship’s violent impact ruined the surface. Giant icicles eroded to either side, building walls, as it slid atop ice toward a head-on collision with a towering glacier.
He identified those alien symbols. They hailed from the closest neighboring galaxy, Andromeda, where Uragon had existed.
Wind gusted against the exposed cockpit, demonstrating the colossal strength to slow, and then stopping the ship’s path to obliteration. Its internal contents were an easy target for his awe, and he spotted a giant, refrigerator-shaped airtight prison. Clouded condensation on the device’s cracked window tormented his curiosity.
Of the six aliens strewn about the main cabin, two were awake. The one closest to its edge was male. Tall, lizard green, slimy complexion, an oblong head, and pointed ears, a physiology Allister recognized, but wasn’t as unique as the four gorgeous grey wings that protruded from his spine. The being groped the ground and folded his (only) two fingers around an emerald green staff.
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