Zosma

by Jason Michael Primrose

  She knew Dylurshin would protect it. King Marshall Nephthys had said in a public statement that, “No military resources would be allocated to combat a fabricated terrorist threat. The time to advance is now. And those weak and fearful will be left to die.”

  Wind strong enough to bend trees and tip livestock, bayed like a wolf, joining in chorus with the rolling thunder’s boom overhead. Earth had begun building its ammunition.

  “I see.” She nodded. “I see what must be done.”

  Celine smelled the acidic air and laid eyes on the supercell soiling the sky, as the coming storm barreled toward them. Her heart pulsed, heavy with the weight of anticipation. A brilliant serpentine lightning bolt bit the helicopter’s broadside. Tumbling, wild and in flames, it crashed into a school. The explosion snapped her from assessment to action. Children’s screams touched her ears and consciousness.

  Rushing across the awakened city on a rising dirt and soil pillar, her short breaths and swift strides ensured each heel caught the earthen bridge paving her warpath to the trespassers. A leap into the air, followed by a triple somersault landed her on the centermost point in Morocco’s capital.

  Silhouette illuminated by forked flashes of the planet’s anger, she shouted, “Hear me, Earth, as I ask you for unquestioned command over your elemental power.” Her open hand raised. “Grant me the strength to bring this threat to the ground and bury it ever so deep beneath your crust.”

  Thunder’s cry shook the atmosphere, accepting her leadership. Her words dove into neighborhoods, corridors, streets, transporting commands, and delivering them to the land, the sea, the heavens.

  The aircraft sent by C20 approached, firing rapid plasma beams. Celine scampered the length of the roof, spinning, leaping and flipping, while summoning chunks of rocks from the building to protect her. The mindless enemy paused to recharge, reposition their guns, and reap the benefits of her vulnerability. She gasped and faced forward.

  Short-range missiles birthed from the helicopter’s belly rocketed forward. Praying the parallel building’s proximity was ripe for her emergency landing, she bolted toward the farthest edge.

  A slip in judgement led to a slip in footing. A traitorous gale ripped the breath from her lungs as she landed hard on her elbows. Sweat slid down her nose, darkening rose-colored stone drop by drop. Missiles shed their shiny exteriors in preparation to detonate.

  Her eyes were stained black with her power’s overwhelming exertion. “Show them,” she said to sand sticking to her moist palms, “When united we are unstoppable.”

  Loaned speed by a typhoon’s world ending gusts, desert dust recruited an infinite number of allies, standing tall against their common enemy as a sky-reaching sandstorm. Her concoction stampeded over her kneeling figure, compacting, snowballing.

  The missiles’ premature explosions backfired on the flying vehicles as the sand wall slammed into them. Engines burned. Metal ripped away. Military choppers plummeted through homes and businesses to their demise.

  Whipping around, she spread her fingers. An earthquake rattled the ground beneath, split Rabat down the middle and molded a ravine to the lithosphere’s depths. The cargo plane, or as she liked to refer to it the “airborne metal can,” fell to its permanent grave, hit boiling magma, and melted with the energy-less U-generator in tow. Like perfectly executed surgery, she sealed the crust closed.

  Quieting skies concluded their spells. Lightning quelled thunder. Exhausted winds did their duty to scatter cloud cover, and dust became its light, jovial self, dancing few and far between in the air.

  Celine turned, uncovered and vulnerable, to tens of thousands of awestruck faces. Screaming children and wailing adults trapped under compromised historical buildings, education centers, and mosques, blocked any victorious feelings. No one would be able to fathom that for the dozens dead and hundreds injured, billions had been preserved.

  Allister Adams

  Cold strangled Allister’s bones. Seconds, minutes, hours, days bled together without access to the rhythmic cycles of the sun. Mounting rage triggered barbaric yelling and obscenities, and the metal suit clanged, as it swayed back and forth with his body’s defiance. Deep gulp after deep gulp, his hyperventilation subsided. He held the sacred breaths in his chest, hoping to reclaim his sanity, then let them go one at a time to warm his lips.

  His shackled hands quivered. Temporal energy would not come to them, and he felt like a junkie suffering withdrawal, having overdosed on their power by seeing so far back in time.

  Devilish smoke entered the lab, winded through chair legs, between test tubes and under microscopes. Creeping up the metal tabletops, the mist molded Dylurshin like pottery into a revolting insectoid creature flaunting scarlet energy-engorged horns. “Can you believe those beautiful Transporter gems are younger than me?” A small smirk crossed its symmetrical, inverted raindrop-shaped face. Its claws wiggled. “We can build generator upon generator, but nothing surpasses the sovereignty of the artifacts of Evale.”

  His mind suspended the plot to escape and listened to instinct. “So-so why me?” Allister asked, shivering, “Or Z-Zosma? Or h-humanity for that matter?”

  “I am here to straighten your trajectory and to give you the purpose you so deeply yearn for.”

  “Gee, thanks, but uh, N-Neight’s got that covered.”

  “Neight Caster is a charlatan. Claiming to be your champion, yet he plots exodus in every waking instant. He abandoned you to pursue his own devices, as was always the prophecy.”

  “You’re lying!”

  “Have I ever lied to you, Allister Adams?”

  No. Dylurshin was as horrifying as it was honest.

  Four vermillion slits narrowed at him. “You do not need the fallen king, you never did. Neight bestowed in you miraculous genetic advancements which will guide—”

  “He did what?”

  Dylurshin’s top fangs fit snug into its bottoms like a well-preserved carnivorous fossil. Light fluttered. Electricity hummed. Paneled walls came to life and populated the foreground.

  Mapped alien chromosome 24 and 25 encompassed the wall. The visual zoomed into chromosome 24, which originated in the Uragonian genome and made up a whopping 10 percent of his total DNA. The other, number 25, hadn’t been identified and made up the excess 10 percent.

  Chromosome 24 rotated and froze. Two separate gene sequences provided augmented mental capacity, longevity, and regeneration, and, as a bonus, Allister was granted access to the Z-energy through his left arm (an obscure, but relevant limitation).

  He couldn’t be an alien. He would have three-fingered claws or purple skin or purple—

  Hair. If the genes in either chromosome coded for physical traits, he figured he’d know it. Then again, without daily supervision those few idle strands the iconic violet of Uragon’s people, may have multiplied and claimed majority of his curly mane.

  Being superhuman was unnerving, being an alien, even a fifth of one, was...

  “Twenty percent,” he said aloud on accident, “it-it’s just 20 percent.”

  “The blueprint. The beacon to lead your people into the coming age of Andromeda.” Dylurshin’s wiry claw neared his concealed hands. “You, who can carry us from this doomed place. It is why I have insisted upon your allegiance.” At full height, it circled him like a great white. “And when Z-energy enhances the technological infrastructure of humanity... ah, the keys to preservation.”

  His head turned from the creature’s taunting speculations. Salivary glands pumped spit out with his words. “It’s not worth it if-if it means sacrificing her.”

  “I am willing to wager my own immortality the individuals suffering on this rock would not agree.”

  A greedy and lost population held steadfast to whatever reality they’d created for themselves. Humans were dependent on the planet and their fellow man for everything, and somehow, at their weakest, most desperate point, there was no mutual appreciation, only expectation, squabbling, and consumption.

&n
bsp; “What self-aware being chooses love over continuation?”

  “Anyone with an ounce of a soul,” Allister said in a strained whisper.

  “My soul was taken.” Dylurshin swam through the air and stopped behind him to bend, as if telling a friend another friend’s secret. “I gather by your vigor, the gems showed you my story.” It tapped the shackles holding him hostage. “I believe that stems from your mother’s side of the family.”

  “Everyone is bound by time, even you,” he sneered.

  Any facts they’d found on the creature skimmed the surface. A scarier thought furrowed Allister’s brow: if Dylurshin was older than Neight by more than the two and a half millennia it had spent on Earth, how long had it existed?

  “There is little you can do to hurt me, if anything,” it announced. Mist raked his clenched jaw, adhered to the imprisonment, and sank between the cracks. “And all the while I have been planting seeds of doubt, isolation, rejection. Letting the fresh spring fountain you call the human mind nourish those seeds. They take root, sprout and grow.”

  Smoky black tentacles slapped, stuck, climbed, and dodged Allister’s frigid, belligerent breath and dove down his throat.

  “Traitor!” Dylurshin bellowed and wrenched backward, losing density.

  He choked, as regurgitated, tar-colored mist scathed his esophagus. With cyclonic force, the angered alien burrowed into the ceiling ventilation, and Allister watched it escape through filmy, wet eyes.

  Bridget Sparks

  C20 Prison

  “You look a mess,” Bridget said. Her nails were coated with ice and sharpened to frosty points. “I see you brought a friend. I thought I told you I wasn’t keen on group play.”

  Russell lingered in the open doorway. Per usual, his khakis were bundled and stuffed into his knee-high snow boots. A fur-hooded parka did a bad job hiding an untucked plaid shirt.

  “You said she was dead,” the guard snarled and entered.

  “Dead?” She laughed. From her roots, she dragged four fingers through hair and unsnagged the last tangle. A tantalizing Bondi beach tan had transformed into pale blue skin, as if warm blood no longer circulated. A jester’s mischievous smirk lit her face. “I learned a new trick,” she cooed. “Wanna see?”

  “Don’t move,” the guard said. His gun rose, charging plasma.

  Russell stepped forward. “Bridget, listen to him. I don’t want you to get hurt.”

  “Even better.” She got up and smoothed her shirt’s hem. “I’ll get to show the whole crew.”

  She hurtled herself at the guard whose weapon was unprepared for her attack. A double punch crisscrossed the guard’s flustered face. Her hand thrust forward to push him away by the throat. Her hand touched warm, living tissue. He squealed. Molecular movement slowed beneath her fingertips.

  The guard’s uniform fabric stiffened as its fibers surrendered to the same ice further cooling his now frostbitten skin. His plump face twisted and solidified in frozen anguish. Death wasn’t sufficient, and the immobile sculpture of the recoiling man toppled and smashed against the steel floor.

  She gawked at the internal organs and body parts cluttering the floor. The temperature plummeted.

  “I told you your powers weren’t gone. Did some research.” Russell pulled the parka around his shaking body. “You have a rare fo-foreign gene, triggered by tra-trauma, allows you t-to t-take on certain elemental pro-pro-properties.”

  She rubbed her fingers, a motion known for jump-starting her electric powers, and murmured, “I think I’d prefer electrocution.”

  “Come with me,” his voice cracked.

  “I’m not falling for this.”

  There came a primal roar. They ducked as shingles showered down on them.

  “What in bloody hell?” she shrieked.

  “I need to get you to the hangar, this-this operation is way out of hand.”

  “No shit, I told ya that two months ago.” Bridget leaned in. “Now, I’m gonna ask ya one question. Answer sideways and I freeze ya balls off. Got it?”

  He nodded.

  “Is Baz alive?”

  He nodded again. “I think so. What I mean is, I’d know if he wasn’t.”

  Her concerned expression met his timid gaze. He didn’t break eye contact as he explained Vancouver’s blowout, which had been mislabeled a superhuman gang war.

  “The World Energy Summit was an international disaster. President DeVries got killed, Captain Brandt too.”

  Satisfactory performance.

  Bridget was the first to stand. “Christ. I miss all the fun.” Tapping her forefingers together, she toyed with the original suggestion. “Let’s move then.”

  They traveled past four other prisons in the open hallway, when, without warning, he cried out and staggered into the oxidized metal and concrete foundation. “I can fight this,” he told himself. “I can fight this. We have to hurry. Hexforth knows I’m resisting.”

  What’s he on about? she thought. Tugged from opposite ends by skepticism and worry, the more he suffered, the nearer she crouched, careful not to lay a hand on his bare skin for fear of what it might do.

  “Babe, be straight, who’s Hexforth?”

  He pointed at a crevice. “There’s a tunnel to the surface, I think it’s this way.” He yanked his glasses off, breathed on the lenses, and wiped the condensation. Placing them over his pouty brow, he blinked up at her. Dark hair buzzed on both sides and longer on top fell into eyes full of understated charm. His chapped, yet kissable lips spoke words that refused to register. “Hexforth is... I’m not sure how else to frame it. Dr. Giro’s not exactly a doctor or a human.”

  Scorching hot attraction led a reasonable temp to her cheeks. Her parted mouth and infrequent swallows matched her doe-eyed look.

  “Bridget, did you hear me? Dr. Giro’s not real.”

  Ding. The elevator opened. A pillar of ashen air rushed at Russell’s betrayal, swarmed the basement, captured any available oxygen, and forced them to separate.

  “Mr. Ashur,” the thing said, “you are needed in the hangar for the U-generator deployment.”

  Unlike any voice she’d ever heard. Unlike any creature she’d ever seen. Deliberate, calm mist moved and pulled to resemble Dr. Giro’s faint shape. Her mouth dropped. It didn’t solidify to washed-out flesh. To call it a demon would be short-sighted, but what else could be said of the hellish red eyes eight feet above her? Dwarfed by its titanic shadow and a mouth she was convinced devoured souls, she wrenched her legs closer to her torso.

  “Neight showed me the monster you really are.” Russell squeezed one eye closed and from the side of his mouth he said, “undid your delusions.”

  “What I am?” it queried. “What of my descent, my inhumanity? I gave you confidence, drive. I gave you worth. A worth your own people did not see.”

  Russell crawled to Bridget, one knee after the other. “No. No. No! St-stay, stay away!” Face paled, he turned to her and lowered his voice, “It’s not going to let me go. You have to kill me.”

  Irrational nerve trumped irrational fear. “Actually, I don’t,” she said with stinging sarcasm and glared at the overgrown parasite’s matte black exoskeleton. “I’ll kill that instead.”

  “You think you can kill me?”

  “Baz used to say, do your best,” she jeered.

  The being lunged, choosing the grim reaper’s scythes as its arm’s transformative choice. Pristine, icy whiteness bombarded Bridget’s tightened fists. Her strained throat muscles emanated a spirited war cry. Her poised body discharged brilliant blue energy waves, and frigid air condensed the moisture between them into a frozen, opaque wall.

  “You were nothing before me, Russell Ashur,” it boomed, “and you will be nothing after.”

  Bridget gravitated closer to what was her last chance at intimacy.

  “I used to believe that,” Russell said in lust’s low whisper, “until you—”

  “It’ll break through sooner than later.” She retreated, unable to f
ollow through on the fatal and selfish kiss. “Why’d you come down here?”

  “Because I’m sorry,” he said, then sank and wrapped his knees in arms. “I didn’t intend for you to end up here, or for us to end up like... ”

  He’d dozed off. As for any hypothermia victim, Russell needed to stay awake to stay alive. Winter clung to his bare face, neck and his ungloved knuckles, and though she couldn’t see, she envisioned his bones’ violent vibration under the quilted coat. She’d spent a month disgusted by the cringe-worthy syllables that formed his name, promising to torture and end him at their next encounter. Watching him yield to the inevitable, she would’ve thrown herself in his arms to thaw his body, his guilt, and their connection. Yet, as cold as the room itself, Bridget had nothing to keep him warm but sympathy and an apology.

  Florence Belladonna

  Antarctic Airspace

  “Do you need help?” Florence asked.

  “Nah, I’m alright. Airspeed’s a tad high though!” Bazzo yelled back.

  “It’s the wind. Did you account for the wind?” Frowning, she observed his unpracticed, one-handed landing. “You should’ve let Giovanni fly,” she said, balanced on the airplane platform edge. Polar air rushed beneath the glass-bottomed plane as they lost altitude. With a tenacious grip on the handle over the exit hatch, she shook her head.

  “C’mon Dr. B, ya don’t trust me by now?” he said. “Gio wouldn’t do well in unfamiliar territory, and let’s face it, I saw no good reason to program an Antarctica flight sequence before this a.m.”

  Landing gear squealed. They bounced up and down on the smooth, slippery surface that concealed the truth of their origin and a dangerous enemy. Taxi lights guided their path, and if he didn’t stop within a few hundred feet, it would be across the River Styx.