Halfkinds Volume 1: Contact

by Vu, Andrew

  Suddenly, she hears Oscar screaming in the background, followed by Tiago’s childish laughing.

  “Looks like the boys are at it again,” she says, changing the subject. “You finish your soup, sweetie, I’m going to tend to them.”

  I finish my meal. I never do get my answer.

  The memory fades in front of me and I’m transported back to the empty kitchen. My siblings and I had so many entertaining times eating and cooking away in this room, but there won’t be any more meals to cook here. I’ll only be able to look back on those times and remember how long ago those days were.

  The kitchen window has a wonderful view of our backyard. It’s unfenced and there’s nothing but tall grass fields that outstretch for a mile. Our house is at the edge of town and there is a lot of undeveloped land surrounding us. The backyard was a haven of sorts. Mother let us go out, she wasn’t worried about someone spotting us there.

  There used to be a tree that stood in the middle of the field. It was old and the roots were weak. It had a makeshift swing hanging from its branch. I look outside and I imagine a time when the tree was there.

  I see it not tall and proud, but on the verge of collapsing. It’s a clear spring day and I’m nine. Mother has planned a picnic so we could enjoy the wonderful, sunny weather. By that age, we are already plugged into all of our electronics and she wants us to take a break. An outdoor outing is the idea she comes up with.

  She had everything ready, sandwiches, drinks, and some stories she could read to us, just like she did when we were young. Some of us aren’t interested in that kid’s stuff anymore, like my older brothers, so they are begrudgingly forced to join us. Everyone is about to settle in, but mother has forgotten to get a serving spoon for her salad, so she asks me to run in the house and get it.

  I gleefully accept my task. I walk toward the house, but I start feeling queasy. A throbbing pain hits my head and I kneel down over, clutching it. I can hear Isaac yelling to see if I’m okay, but I ignore him because the pain is too strong.

  It feels like something is pounding at my skull from the inside and I hear a barrage of high pitched sounds. It lasts for seconds, but it feels like minutes. And then I see something. My family is happily munching on their sandwiches when a cracking and crunching sounds speeds through the air. The tree is falling. They desperately try to run away but they’re not fast enough. It falls over and crushes everything underneath. I am helpless to stop them.

  I start to cry and open my eyes only to realize that what I saw didn’t happen. They’re still sitting there, talking, starting to eat. It’s only Isaac who has gotten up and he stands in front of me.

  “Are you okay, Iris?” he asks.

  “Um, yeah, I think so,” I say confusedly. “The tree is still there.”

  “Of course it is. Why wouldn’t it be?”

  Suddenly, a panic overcomes me. I don’t know why, but I have an impulse to get everyone away from the tree. I dash over to the picnic area without responding to Isaac’s question.

  “Iris, what’s wrong?” he yells at me.

  But I’m already near the others. I wrap up the blankets in haste, engulfing the nicely set plates and food in them. Some of my siblings look confused, others look angry.

  “What the hell are you doing?” Alex yells at me.

  “We have to move, away from the tree,” I say hysterically as I continue to gather everything.

  “Why?” mother asks. “What’s wrong?”

  I’ve collected all the items and ignore her question. Tiago grabs my arm.

  “Iris, what’s wrong with you?” he says angrily.

  “Let go!” I yell.

  This causes him to tighten his grip, so I drag him and the others away from the tree into a safe zone.

  “Let go!” I yell again.

  “Not until you tell me what’s going on!” he says. I don’t have time to explain. The tree starts to make the same cracking noise I heard and its base crumbles. Pieces of wood fly everywhere. Within seconds, a thunderous thump hits the ground, right where they were sitting, and clouds of dirt fill the air. Tiago lets go of my arm.

  “How did you know?” he says in a stupefied tone.

  “I… I don’t know, I just saw it.”

  That was the first vision I ever saw, though I would have plenty more later. That spot always reminds me of it.

  Isaac is still in the living room inspecting and I slink away from the kitchen towards a door in the wall. It leads to the basement, to the underground sprawl where all our rooms are. I wonder if they took all our belongings from there. I walk down, guided by the streams of light leaking through the small windows that are barely above the ground.

  Sure enough, when I get down to the bottom level, I am not surprised. The rooms have been cleared out. Every single corridor is bare.

  I walk to the end which leads to a big room that was our study. Mother homeschooled us there and taught us about the world outside. I remember the first time she told us about the world’s history, about the Event, about the Ark Project, about everything.

  “What about us?” Candy asks her. I see her and my other brothers and sisters seated in our desks. I’m ten years old.

  “What do you mean, Candy?” mother replies.

  “You said that the Ark Project led to intelligent species, but none of them you named look like us. What are we?”

  Mother doesn’t know how to respond to the question. “You? Um, you are special.”

  “No, we’re not,” Tiago says bitterly. “If we’re so special, why do we live underground? Why do you keep us hidden from the world?”

  He is now a teenager and rebellion courses through his veins. He is older than us and he’s been here longer than anyone else. He yearns for freedom, but mother denies it from him.

  “Because, they won’t understand who you are,” she says.

  “They? Who, humans? Wolves? Dogs? Lions? How do you know that?”

  “I just do, trust me, Tiago.”

  He is still young, so parts of him obey our mother. He sits his down and rests his head in his arms despondently.

  “Children,” my mother says, “I know some of you are curious about the outside world. I would be, too. But I can tell you that your curiosity will be unsatisfied. There is nothing for you out there, only pain and misery. People, animals, they will all want to hurt you. You’re only safe here with me.”

  Some of my brothers and sisters look terrified, others look skeptical. This is when our family started to divide, when factions started to rise, factions that would shape the events of this evening. They weren’t pleasant memories and I walk away from the room.

  I traverse back through the corridors. Each one belonged to a different sibling. One was Isaac’s, one was Maddie’s, one was Lombardi’s. All of us had our own special little place and I make my arrival to the one I claimed. It’s empty.

  My mind travels to a few days ago, right after mother had died. I am frantic, messily packing my things into a bag, carrying whatever I can. I know there’s a chance I’ll never come back home. My room has so many memories and I don’t know what I should take.

  The essential survival items come first. Food, bottles of water, and several changes of clothes fill my bag, leaving only a little room for other things. I see a picture that’s framed, one that has all of our family members. It was taken only months ago, one of the few times that all of us were in a photo together. We took it on the porch and I remembered how happy it made mother knowing that after all these years, we were still a family. She was so ecstatic that she made copies for everyone and made sure we cherished it as much as she did.

  Tears hit the frame as I look at it. She was dead and that picture reminds me that I will never see her happy again. But it’s also one of the few reminders that, for a time, we helped her find some joy in life. Our mother had a tough life, but in her eyes, we were the reward for going through those challenging years. I will be forever grateful. I wipe the tears from the glass and put
the picture in my bag.

  Everything is packed and I’m about to leave when one more thing catches my eye. It’s the story tablet mother had, the one she read fables from. When we grew old and had no interest in those stories, she threw it in the trash. She hadn’t read to us in years, so I guess she had no use for it. But I did and I plucked it from the receptacle without ever telling her. I needed something to remind me when times were simpler, when I had no worries.

  I remember standing there with my bag. There was no more room to fit any items. I take one last look at the story tablet, the last piece of my childhood and walk away.

  The room starts to darken and I snap out of my trance. It’s no longer filled with mementoes. I’m back to reality.

  I walk up the stairs and return to my brother.

  “So, what do we do now Isaac?” I say.

  “I’ve been thinking about that, Iris,” he says. “We should wait until sunrise and then we’ll have to find another place to hide. It won’t be safe here for long.”

  “I know, I never thought our home wouldn’t be.”

  “Huh?” Isaac asks.

  He’s unaware of the things I’ve been thinking, unaware of the emotional journey I’ve taken through the past.

  “Are you okay, Iris?” he asks.

  Tears start to flow down my eyes and I let out a light sniffle.

  “Yeah, I’m fine,” I say, struggling through the words. “If it’s okay with you, I’m going to sit on the porch for a while.”

  “Sure, sure,” he says softly.

  I plop myself on the front porch and let the tears come out. So much flashes through my mind and every image makes it harder for me to regain my composure.

  There was a time when I could sit on this porch and find moments of peace. Tiago could be fighting with mother, or I’d be distraught about my future. It didn’t matter, though, because on that porch, I could look up at the sky and let all my troubles drift through the wind.

  “Sister?” Isaac says from behind me.

  I wipe away my tears and sweep aside my misery.

  “I’m fine, I’m fine,” I say.

  “What were you doing earlier?” he asks.

  “Nothing, just thinking about things.”

  “Like what?”

  “The past. You know, when we were young.”

  “Oh,” he says. He treads cautiously. “Those… were good days, right?”

  “Yes,” I say, wiping another tear away. “They were.”

  Those days were some of the best I ever had, but now they are tainted. I can’t look back on the past and find happiness anymore. If I do, it’ll remind me of what I used to have and what I never will again.

  Chapter 29 – Simon Trevor - Storm

  November 17, 3040 4:10 AM

  I landed my hovercar in the distance, like I did when we approached the Spades and Diamond Casino. I want to have the element of surprise on my side because I don’t think they’re expecting us.

  I’ve sent Apollo on scout duty to see what we’re up against. He’s been running circles around the building and hasn’t raised any alarms, but he’ll have a hard time determining who is in the building without a clear view. The Li station has very few windows to peer in and even if we could see what was going on inside, there are no lights on. It appears they’re working in the dark.

  It might be another ruse set up by Tiago. Perhaps Curtis was lying to Fenrir before the bomb went off, to throw us off the trial and lure us into another trap. But in order for that to happen, Curtis would have had to know that someone would survive and who could’ve predicted that? I certainly doubt that any of these halfkinds can tell the future.

  “So, looks like this is the final charge, eh?” Fenrir says to me. “We’re storming the gates before the sunrise.”

  “I suppose so,” I say.

  “Commander, I hope you’re right.”

  “Right about what?”

  “About what we’re doing,” he responds. “Shoot first, ask later. Don’t let your guard down, hit a preemptive strike. Do you really think they’re that dangerous?”

  “We didn’t think so before. Look how it’s turned out.”

  “I suppose you’re right,” he says reluctantly. “But, as I asked before, do you think what we’re doing is right or not?”

  I dodge around the question because the answer isn’t simple. “It doesn’t matter if it’s right or not, what matters is what will happen if we don’t do anything.”

  “And what do you think will happen?”

  “I don’t know. But judging from tonight, it doesn’t seem to be any good.”

  “That’s the human way, I suppose,” he says gruffly. “Either destroy, destroy, destroy, or create, create, create. Why can’t your kind leave things alone?”

  “I can’t answer for all my kind,” I say defensively. “But I suppose doing something is better than doing nothing.”

  “So you think,” he responds vaguely. It’s odd, when we started this mission, Fenrir was the one who seemed most likely to hold nothing back, while I was the one who wanted to use restraint. Now the roles are reversed.

  Apollo returns from his scouting mission and interrupts our conversation. He can sense the tension.

  “I hate to break up the party because I know you and Fenrir must be having an enlightening conversation, but I think Curtis was telling the truth,” he says. “There’s one of them out on patrol right now.”

  “Which one?” I ask.

  “The cheetah halfkind, Ace Lawton,” he responds.

  “And he didn’t see you?” Fenrir asks.

  “I doubt it or he would’ve reacted sooner,” Apollo says.

  “Good job, Apollo. Did you get a look inside?”

  He shakes his head. “Sorry, Commander, it’s closed shut.”

  “It’s okay.”

  “What’s the plan, Trevor?” Fenrir asks.

  “No more sneak attacks,” I say. “We do a frontal assault. It’ll be at most six halfkinds and we brought in some extra fire power, so we’re prepared for whatever they have.”

  “Ahh, you’re referring to the Spitfire?” Apollo says.

  I pick up the heavy gun from the ground and secure its strap around my torso.

  “Yes, I am,” I say. “And this.”

  I pull out some mini grenades from my pockets. They’re called mini grenades because of their size, not because of their damage capabilities. Their blast radius is quite remarkable.

  “What do you guys have?” I ask. “Don’t tell me you only have those single barrel energy pistols equipped in your helmets.”

  Apollo swishes his tail in an odd motion. The sensors in the back of his helmet pick it up and four more barrels protrude from hidden compartments. Fenrir does the same.

  “Try five barrels,” Apollo says. “We can switch it to higher caliber, too, if you want.”

  “Um, that’s not necessary,” I say. “Fenrir, do you have any more marbles left in your shooter?”

  “Only a few, I didn’t have time to restock or recharge,” he says.

  “That’s okay. Everyone’s armor equipped?” I ask. They both nod. “Okay. We’ll take out Ace first and then carefully make our way in. Equip your scent boosters. Got it?”

  Both of their helmets switch gears and out come the scent boosters.

  “Good,” I say. “Let’s go.”

  We march prudently towards the station. It’s about 200 meters away. We walk through some shrubbery that hugs a hovercar parking lot. It leads to the entrance and it’s our only cover, as the area around the station is quite open. I crouch down and make sure my head doesn’t stick out. The canines tread lightly on their paws.

  We’re now about 100 meters away and I can see someone moving along the side wall. He’s strolling about casually and appears to be holding an energy pistol. He grips it loosely with his hands. I give the signal for the others to stop and their steps come to an immediate halt.

  “You see him?” I ask the other two.


  “Yes,” Apollo says. “That’s Ace.”

  “You think either of you can get a clear shot from here?” I ask.

  “It’s a tad far,” Apollo says.

  “Yes, 100 meters is a bit much,” Fenrir says. “Even with my homing sensors on, I’m not sure how accurate I can be.”

  “I don’t know how much closer we can get without attracting attention,” I say. “If neither of you think you can do it, I’ll take it.”

  “Be my guest,” Fenrir says. “You’re the Commander.”

  Apollo also nods.

  “Okay,” I say. Both my hands clamp down on the handle of my pistol, my right index finger grazes the trigger. I hold it up in front of my eye, keep my arms steady, and zoom in on my target. A deep breath goes in and then exhales out. My mind is clear, my focus is strong. I take one last look at my target and pull the trigger.

  The flare streaks out of my gun, arcing in the air until it homes in my target. It travels fraction of a millisecond by fraction of a milliseconds. I’m wide right. I miss by a few inches.

  Ace reacts to the impact of my shot. A small hole is on the station wall. He sees the dent and is confused by what has happened. He doesn’t make the connection that it was a pistol that fired at him, but knows something very peculiar is going on. He peers closer at my miss and inspects it.

  “Let’s move!” I yell. “Full strike!”

  The three of us emerge from the bushes and charge towards him. He turns around and it looks like he’s about to vomit. He doesn’t have time to think and bolts for the door, his pistol still in hand.

  We’re about 20 meters away and we’re closing in on him. He’s in front of the entrance and knocks a few times on the closed door. We fire a few shots his way, but aiming on a full sprint isn’t easy and they miss him left and right. He sure is taking his sweet time entering the building. As we approach, I notice he’s not trying to get in, but phoning in some kind of code.

  Sure enough, I’m right. Out bursts a behemoth of a creature, a pistol in each hand, firing like a maniac.

  “Try and take me down, assholes!” he yells.

  The glare of the street lights shine off his massive frame and they hug his colossal and well-defined muscles. He has a horn stuck in the middle of his head. It’s Alex Lawton.