H.A.L.F.: ORIGINS

by Natalie Wright

  The cone of light circled back and hit its mark, filling the truck cabin with bright white light. Tex’s arm shot up to shield his sensitive eyes. The spotlight found them, and they were ensnared in photons, stuck just as surely as if a giant net had been thrown on them. Despite the cool autumn night air, slick sweat covered Erika’s back. They’d come so far. They’d gotten away from Commander Sturgis and escaped the Conexus and the Regina. She’d gotten Tex out of the militarized school hospital. She’d had to kill a man to do it, a fact she was trying not to dwell on.

  Erika held fast to the steering wheel. Her shoulders ached from gripping the wheel for so many hours. Her palms were so wet with sweat she feared her hands would slide off and she’d lose control. The knowledge that they wanted Tex alive staved off complete panic. He had, after all, been created as a personal bodyguard for William Croft. I haven’t come this far to give up. Let them try to take us. I’m not going to make it easy for them.

  She removed her right hand from the wheel and reached for the pistol she’d laid on the seat between them. She’d taken it from the dead soldier back at the school. Keeping the truck on the road with only one hand took effort. Its steering wasn’t exactly capable of finesse, but she kept them going straight while she tucked the gun into the back waistband of her pants.

  Gunfire exploded as loud as thunder splitting the night sky. A bullet hit the bed of the truck, making an unmistakable sound of metal being torn to pieces.

  “We cannot outrun them,” Tex said. He might as well have been reading from a grocery list.

  “Really? You think? Got any help for me, or are you just going to sit over there like a lump and state the obvious?”

  Tex didn’t seem bothered by her sarcasm. Maybe he didn’t even notice it. “They are attempting to terminate us.”

  Erika sighed loudly and rolled her eyes even though Tex couldn’t see it. “Yes, well, bullets hitting your vehicle generally are a sign that someone’s trying to kill you.” She sucked in a deep breath. “What I don’t understand is why. I thought they wanted you alive.”

  A shot hit the back window, sending a shower of glass across their backs and covering the seat between them. Erika instinctively ducked. Her leg strained, but she pushed even harder on the gas pedal as though that would somehow persuade more power from the old machine.

  They were in the open and vulnerable, staying on the road, but if she swerved down the embankment, they’d be back in the desert, fighting cactus and scrub. They’d be like sitting ducks then. She kept the truck on the two-lane.

  “It appears that Croft has decided that I have become more of a liability than a potential asset. If you want to live, Erika Holt, we must abandon this vehicle.”

  Another bullet hit the roof of the truck, tore through the metal, and buried itself in the upholstery of the seat only a few inches from Erika.

  “You may be right, but we can’t jump out of a car at a hundred miles an hour. The impact will kill us.”

  “I am well aware of the laws of motion and the physics of an impact with the pavement.”

  A spray of bullets coming from the front shattered the windshield.

  “We have no more time,” Tex said. He placed a thin hand on Erika’s hand, her knuckles white from her death grip on the steering wheel. “You must trust me. Let go of the wheel, Erika. We must escape on your motorcycle.”

  Erika had insisted they throw her Yamaha into the back of the truck before they left Ajo. The motorcycle had been like a companion for her, and she hadn’t wanted to leave it behind.

  Erika wanted to live. She wanted to trust Tex. She also wanted to get on that bike and ride. Riding had been her escape from reality many times in the past. It was a fitting means of escape from the Makers. She had difficulty convincing her fingers to let go of the wheel and the false security that the metal roof over her head provided.

  Tex slipped out through the truck’s back window. His small, emaciated body fit easily. He held out his hand to her. “I do not want to leave you behind, but I will. There is no more time.”

  She unwound her fingers from the wheel. She put her hand in his, and he pulled her through the opening just as a barrage of bullets tore into the driver’s seat.

  Her stomach scraped across the sharp edge of the rusty metal window opening, and shards of safety glass prickled her skin even through her clothes. By the time she landed on the glass-strewn truck bed, Tex had the cycle up on the truck’s bed and was straddling it.

  With her foot no longer pressing the gas pedal, the truck had slowed considerably as it careened. The old truck’s steering had pulled hard to the right all night while Erika drove, and staying true to form, the truck pulled right and set them on a course over an embankment.

  “Hurry,” he said as he started the cycle. “I have created a shield around myself. It will protect you too, but I am too weak to hold it for long.”

  She thought she should drive since it was her bike, but a bullet zinged past her head, and she gave up the argument. She hiked a leg up and over the seat to settle in behind Tex as he readied to jump the motorcycle out of the moving truck.

  The truck bounced over the rough terrain and picked up speed slightly as it went down the hill that led to a ditch. Erika wound her arms around Tex’s tiny waist as he throttled and spun the bike around. The truck bounced them hard as it tottered down the hill.

  The bouncing they’d experienced that night had already knocked the rusty truck gate down, and it banged wildly against the back of the truck. Tex gave the cycle gas. The cycle skidded and nearly fell over on them, but Tex managed to keep it upright. The motorcycle landed hard on the embankment just as the truck careened to a halt, crashing into the ditch. Erika squeezed her thighs tightly against the cycle and gripped Tex, but she kept herself on the cycle mainly by force of will.

  The truck crashed into the gully behind them. Tex drove into the desert in a sideways trajectory away from the crashed truck. He didn’t turn the cycle’s headlamps on. Tex could see in the night as well as Erika could during the day.

  Before they’d gone twenty yards, the truck exploded into a fireball, and the heat of it warmed Erika’s back.

  “Guess you made the right call. They shot the gas tank. Definitely wanted us dead,” Erika said.

  Tex kept his head fixed forward, his eyes on the road. He deftly steered them around clumps of creosote and cactus as he twisted this way and that through the desert.

  The helicopter circled overhead, its lights searching. Tex changed directions often and bobbed this way and that while always moving away from the crashed truck.

  Erika’s thighs burned from squeezing tightly to keep from being flung off of the machine as Tex made abrupt and sharp turn after turn. “Do you know where you’re going?”

  “Away from the helicopter,” he said.

  Good plan. She wanted to trust in him, but since she and Dr. Randall had taken him from the Conexus, Tex had been indifferent—hostile even—to both of them. She wasn’t sure any trust was left between them.

  But he got you out of that truck alive. She tightened her grip around the bony ribs of the person whose fate seemed irrevocably intertwined with her own. “Head northeast,” she said.

  “Why?”

  “Trust me,” she said.

  They had put distance between themselves and the helicopter, but they weren’t in the clear yet. Erika continued to grip tightly with her thighs as Tex drove in a northeasterly direction, the pfft pfft pfft of the helicopter blades receding, the blaze of the truck soon a memory.

  2

  WilliAm CRoFt

  William Croft threw his cellular phone across the room. It smashed the glass of the case that held his numerous awards and recognitions for philanthropic work and achievements from his over forty years in business. His hands shook, and his heart beat wildly.

  William quaked, not with fear but with anger. His daughter Lizzy had botched things badly in New York. She’d had lost number ten, the hybrid code-named Ale
cto. Even worse, she had killed Robert Sturgis.

  Of the two bungles, the death of Robert was by far the worse. Croft had not authorized her to kill one of the blood. The Makers was already a small group. They could not afford to lose someone of the caliber of Robert unless it was absolutely essential.

  William’s assistant knocked on the door. “Sir Croft? Do you require assistance?”

  He was ready to tell the inept girl to leave him be, but he decided he needed her help after all. “Get in here! Quickly.” He yelled the command, a touch of spittle on his lips. William pulled the monogrammed handkerchief from his inside jacket pocket and wiped his lip on the silk threads that read WJC.

  Ms. Beauregard cracked the door open. She peeked her cherub-round face, complete with tight blonde curls, through the opening. When Croft waved her in, she scurried forward as quickly as her high-heeled feet and too-tight pencil skirt would carry her. Ms. Beauregard’s fingers trembled as she swiped her phone on and opened the app to record his instructions. After numerous assistants over the years had proven unable to transcribe adequate notes to do as he asked, he required them to record his instructions so there could be no doubt as to his requests. She put the phone on his mahogany desk so she could take notes as well.

  “I must be on a plane to New York as soon as possible. Phone Kip, and have him ready the jet.” William was not certain of what irked him more: having to clean up Lizzy’s messes or having to make the trip across the pond to do it. He much preferred London to New York and did not relish time amongst the Yanks.

  Ms. Beauregard’s fingers still trembled as she wrote notes on her stenographer’s pad. “Will anyone else be joining you, sir?”

  He thought for a moment. “No. Let Kip know minimal staff. There’s no time for a chef and sommelier. I want to be wheels up within the hour.”

  Ms. Beauregard checked her watch. “But sir—”

  Croft shot her a look that could peel paint off of a car. “Within the hour, Ms. Beauregard.”

  She nodded furiously. “Yes, sir. And you’ll be landing at JFK as usual?”

  “Of course.” He proceeded to spew forth additional directives at such a feverish pace Ms. Beauregard’s fingers were likely cramped when he gave her leave to exit the room.

  William Croft’s father had begun hatching the Makers’ master plan in the late 1940s after the Roswell crash. William had carried out his father’s plans. For over sixty years, he and the Inner Circle had worked tirelessly and meticulously, building the Makers and the underground facilities that would house them when the time came. Billions of dollars were spent to create the human-alien hybrids that would be their insurance policy against the coming alien threat. Negotiations and a successful treaty were arranged with the Conexus so that the Makers would be the sole recipients of the antivirus. Also, number 9 and Robert’s inept sister, Lillian Sturgis, had nearly obliterated the elaborate and meticulous insurance policy.

  William’s upper lip involuntarily curled up in disgust as he considered his daughter Lizzy’s failure to reprogram Alecto. Presently, she was off-grid somewhere with Anna Sturgis.

  “What am I to do with her?” he asked himself aloud. If Lizzy were not of the blood, he would simply have had her terminated. In fact, in his anger, he might have dispatched her himself. If she was not of the blood.

  She was, though, as was Lillian, and he could not leave Thomas and Anna out of the ring of culpability. All of the blood. How could he take a pound of flesh when all that had betrayed him were part of the Makers?

  He was in his seat on his plane and wheels up within sixty-two minutes. He took note that Ms. Beauregard had failed his command to get him into the air within sixty minutes. That would give him cause to fire her when he got back to London. If I come back to London.

  The virus had already spread through much of Arizona. Cases had been reported in California and Texas, as well as a second ground zero in China. Dr. Montoya of the CDC had the antivirus, though. William was not so much concerned that millions of ordinary people might become inoculated as he was irritated that he had not gotten the anti-viral injection himself and that his company would not profit from the cure. He had a mole planted in Montoya’s organization, though. By the time he landed in New York, the mole might well have the antivirus to put into William’s hands.

  He watched the sky turn orange as the sun set on the day that had cost him so much. His mind worked feverishly on machinations to set his empire straight.

  3

  JACK

  Jack kept his foot to the pedal and his eyes on the road. Fueled by adrenaline and coffee, his cells were more caffeine than water.

  Alecto had pulled herself into an egg-shaped blob in the back of the van. She slept so soundly she could be mistaken for dead. Thomas also slept in the back, only slightly more alive than the human-alien hybrid he shared the space with. Alecto had healed his bullet wound, but the trauma had robbed Thomas’s energy.

  Anna was more awake than asleep but no more company to Jack than the rest of them. Lizzy’s attack had left Anna with a slash of pinkish-red skin running diagonally across her left eye. The knife wound would heal in time. Jack was more concerned about how Anna would emotionally heal from watching Lizzy gun down her father. Anna was staring off toward the horizon in a nearly catatonic stupor. Jack figured she needed comfort and encouraging words after the ordeal of being kidnapped, watching her brother get shot, and witnessing the execution of her father. But Jack was fresh out of comfort and encouragement at the moment.

  They had accomplished phase one of their mission and freed Alecto from the Crofts, but the price of their success had been high. Thomas had been shot. Anna had been brutally knifed. Jack’s hands were stained with the blood of Makers men that he’d had to kill in order to free Alecto and survive the ordeal. Worst of all, Lizzy Croft had shot Anna and Thomas’s father, Robert, in the back.

  They were through only phase one of what Jack had signed on for. They still had to somehow break Anna’s aunt, Lilly Sturgis, out of federal military prison in Miramar, California. And so Jack was driving west to Miramar. The sooner he completed the job, the sooner he would be free of the whole thing.

  Exhaustion finally won out when they hit St. Louis. “I have to stop for the night,” Jack said.

  Anna gave no argument. She numbly paid cash for two adjoining rooms at an inexpensive motor inn. She quickly pushed Alecto into one of the rooms, said a quiet good night, and closed the door.

  Jack stood outside her door and stared at it.

  “You were expecting a good-night kiss?” Thomas asked. His voice dripped sarcasm.

  Jack ran his hand through his wavy, newly dyed brown locks. He hadn’t bathed for two days, and his hair felt stringy and greasy in his fingers. “No.” He shuffled to the door of the room next to Anna’s and unlocked it. “Just hoping she’s okay is all.” He would have gladly returned a good-night kiss if Anna had offered it, but he didn’t want Thomas to know that. The memory of kissing Erika flitted through his mind. He felt instantly guilty for envisioning a kiss from Anna.

  He turned the light on, and before he had a chance to say anything else, Thomas breezed past him, flopped onto the bed nearest the door, and clicked on the television. Thomas flipped through channels until he found CNN. Jack would have preferred silence. Even a shower could wait. He only wanted to bury his face in a pillow and sleep until someone forced him awake.

  Jack stripped out of the blue work shirt with the name “Steve” embroidered on the left chest pocket. The shirt reeked of BO and was spattered with the blood of Makers guards he had shot in the Croft penthouse. I’ll never put that back on. He shrugged out of his pants as well and stood in a pair of boxers and an undershirt.

  “I’m beat. Can you turn that off so I can sleep?”

  Thomas shushed him, glared, and turned the sound up. “Listen.”

  Wolf Blitzer’s face was mouthing words that Jack’s tired brain strained to fully comprehend. Blitzer said something about a coa
lition of Mideast forces that had attacked France and Great Britain. Jack’s exhausted brain tried to wrap itself around the phrase “turn into World War III.”

  Jack was confused. “What the—”

  Thomas shushed him again.

  The camera panned from Blitzer to a middle-aged guy who was supposedly an expert on electromagnetic pulses, which he referred to as EMPs. The man’s voice talked over a computer animation illustrating how a large enough EMP could take out the electrical grid of a country or even a whole continent. The video ended with the lights blinking out over Europe and faded into a live satellite image of Europe. It was as black as the animated simulation of it in the video.

  “This is not good,” Thomas said.

  As usual, the guy was a walking understatement. Jack’s mind recalled images of dead men torn into pieces by the laser weapons fired by the alien ship and strewn across the red bricks of Apthartos. Europe had gone black. Jack’s conspiracy senses tingled.

  “There’s no way this news is legit,” he said.

  Thomas rolled his eyes, his voice clipped. “Jack Wilson, high-school senior from BFE Arizona, authority on news?”

  “No. But I’ve spent enough time now with black ops and the Croft/Sturgis clan to spot bullshit news when I see it.”

  Thomas raised an eyebrow, but the angry crinkle in his forehead eased. “What specifically do you find unbelievable?”

  “First, the Middle East countries have been fighting amongst themselves for thousands of years. Like they’re going to suddenly unify into one cohesive force? I don’t buy it.”

  “Perhaps they were more unified than we knew?”

  Jack shook his head. “Second, why attack Europe? Lots of people in the Middle East hate Americans, so why not attack us?”