by Watson Davis
"Get out of my club, and don't ever come back." Roscoe righted his chair and plopped down in the seat. "Someone will be in touch with you tomorrow. After the burials. I don't ever want to see your stupid face again."
"Well, congratulations on your wedding, anyway." Frankl nodded toward Mercedez, who stood in a doorway on the other side of the club. Pursing his lips, he got up and picked his way between the tables, past scowling Family members who lowered their hands and resumed their positions near the exits. Frankl didn't make eye contact with any of them, pushing his way out through the door, walking out into the street and flicking his on-board communications back on, squinting in the bright streetlights.
A throaty, female voice in his head said, “I lost contact with you in there.”
Frankl nodded. “Yeah, they must have some good signal-blocking equipment that jammed our connection.”
"I was thinking about coming in after you."
Frankl smiled. "You gotta have faith, my new friend."
Epilogue
The creature that had once been Santina Steger, a poor, insignificant girl from the bowels of Foxfire station stood on the edge of the rock where she now lived, no longer alone, together with the creatures she’d created, her thoughts now theirs, their thoughts now hers, surrounded by them, protected by them.
She stood on the edge of space, most of the once-human parts of her replaced, upgraded, improved, drawing energy from the sun, from the plasma, from the high-energy particles colliding with her cells. She held on to some of those old parts of her out of nostalgia, some of the thoughts she once had, some of her wants, some of her dreams, but mostly to the memory of a friend who had taught her that, when she was going through hell, to keep going.
And she did.
About The Author
If you like this book, go to watsondavis.net/dsm_signup and sign up for my military sci-fi mailing list.
Watson Davis discovered fantasy and science fiction, magic and technology, Isaac Asimov and Robert E. Howard, when he was a young impressionable boy in Houston, Texas. He wrote his first robot apocalypse short story at eleven, delved many a dungeon and battled many a vampire while pursuing a degree in mathematics, and penned books of swords and sorcery and military space opera. He now lives in Spain in a villa overlooking the Mediterranean.
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