Alien Apocalypse: The Complete Series (Parts I-IV)

by JC Andrijeski

  Angry as she felt the manipulation behind that, Jet swiped her face with her gloved hand. She clenched her jaw, fighting to get her equilibrium back, to clear her head.

  But the grief of killing the thing wouldn’t fully dissipate.

  Jet was getting ready to make her way around its dead body, to trudge through the drifting snow in the direction she’d been walking originally, when another growl came out of that darkness. Then another.

  That time, she was pretty sure it was from two different cats. Maybe three.

  Cursing under her breath, Jet didn’t think.

  She turned and began to walk-jog as fast as she could through the knee-deep snow. Her sword’s sheath banged against her back between her shoulder blades as she ran. She plowed her feet and shins as fast as she could, kicking wet snow in front of her.

  She could only hope the cats wouldn’t follow. She didn’t know if she could take on two, and truthfully, she still couldn’t bear the thought of killing even one more of them.

  It didn’t occur to her until she’d been running for a few minutes that she was now going the direction the Rings operators wanted her to go. Even when it occurred to her, however, she knew it didn’t matter...not really. Not anymore.

  They’d find a way to get her to run that direction eventually. Or kill her, if she wouldn’t.

  For now, she just had to hope she could stall them long enough.

  Long enough to stay alive.

  Long enough to remember why she was here.

  Long enough to kill Bukka, maybe.

  Long enough for Trazen––

  But Jet couldn’t think about that. Not here. Not even now.

  So she just ran, feeling her breath come harder the longer she pumped her legs through the heavy snow. Sweat start to dampen her face, to trickle down the back of her sense-suit. She knew she’d probably regret that fact later, especially if she had to stand still long enough for her damp suit to freeze. She also knew she was already winded, and that being winded might get her killed if she came face to face with Bukka.

  There was no point thinking about that now.

  Whatever happened, it wouldn’t be much longer anyway.

  The growls of the cats receded gradually behind her.

  As they did, the screams ahead of her grew louder.

  Like she’d suspected, the cats had only been there to drive her back to where the game controllers wanted her. Jet got a sense of the landscape shimmering once or twice as she walked, so she knew they’d probably re-coded the environment to further guide her where they wanted her on the actual playing field, too.

  Some of the turns she remembered from before had vanished on her return trip. Most of the time when she hit an intersection now, she had only one option. Apparently the pullers had learned their lesson when it came to trying to predict Jet’s directional decisions.

  In better news, that cloying grief had finally started to lift.

  Jet could hear the screams ahead of her, but her mind remembered they weren’t real.

  They were still disturbing to listen to, of course.

  All in all, Jet felt more or less like herself again, though. Her head cleared enough that she even wondered if there’d been some kind of field in that end of the arena, something that made her feel so bad emotionally that she had to leave. They might have put up some kind of boundary over the run space, something that would force her to turn back, make her go in the other direction. She dismissed the idea a few minutes later.

  She couldn’t afford to hope that the phenomenon was confined to a single area. She had to assume they could do that to her wherever she was.

  She had to assume they’d do it when she faced Bukka.

  In fact, the longer Jet thought about it, the more she found herself thinking they’d pulled that particular trick out of their arsenal sooner than they’d intended. It would have made more sense to wait and throw that at her when she faced Bukka the first time. That, or when Jet faced some virtual version of her brother or mom...or whoever was supposedly hurting them.

  Increased empathy then likely would have debilitated her, given that she loved her family already. Jet wouldn’t have been able to recover in time.

  Whatever the specifics, they should have waited for something significant before they started messing with her head, especially since it was a trick they’d never used on her before.

  Now Jet would be ready for it, at least.

  She trudged slower through the snow once the cat’s growls faded, saving her strength, and her breath. She fought to think past the increasingly pain-filled screams that came from in front of her, trying to decide if there was anything she could do to better her odds.

  The light had increased somewhat in the time since she’d started heading back. The change was subtle, but Jet found herself looking up at the sky a few times, into the falling snow, and thinking she could see the barest hint of clouds there. More light seemed to reflect against the snow as well, and Jet could see further down the row between the hedges than before...far enough to make out another L-shaped turn at the end of this one.

  Then something else occurred to her––she’d never really looked over her sense-suit for virtual props. They almost always gave her something. A map. A headset of some kind.

  Sometimes she even got tools specific to the environment.

  Like, for example...flash lights. Infrared goggles.

  The thought made her jaw clench.

  Then it made her curse under her breath.

  Stupid. She might have had access to vision the whole time she’d been in here.

  She didn’t know if the rules were different in a challenge match, but she stopped dead in the middle of the hedge row, feeling over her person for anything she could use. When she stopped trudging through the snow, the screams seemed to grow louder.

  A drawn-out wail by what sounded like her brother made Jet wince.

  They sounded close now. Maybe only a few more turns through the maze.

  For the same reason, she couldn’t wait to look for any tools that might help her.

  She couldn’t feel anything new on her sense-suit, which is maybe why she didn’t think to look before. Usually her clothes were different altogether, fashioned to go with some fictional storyline where Jet was a soldier or a bandit or a pirate or whatever. In those cases, it made sense to go through her pockets, since everything she wore was unfamiliar.

  This time, she looked pretty much exactly the same as she had outside the arena.

  She was about to give up entirely when she felt over her shoulder near the hilt of Black, and found a long, narrow-feeling pocket that hadn’t been there before. It must have appeared on her suit after she entered the virtual arena. The fold-over flap at top sat directly below her left shoulder, not far from the edge of her scabbard, but easy to miss even when pulling her sword. It lay flat enough she might not have found it at all, if she hadn’t thought to look.

  She opened the snap-top and her fingers found a flat, narrow piece of metal inside.

  Sliding it out, she held it up to her eyes, squinting through the dark to try to make out what it was. She honestly had no idea, even after she’d felt over it a few times.

  One end seemed sharp, the other round.

  Was it a knife of some kind? A pick? A key?

  Taking her gloves off and feeling over it with her bare hands didn’t help much, since it was still too dark to see it beyond the basic shape. The one end was definitely sharp. It must be a knife. But if so, why didn’t it have a handle?

  Eventually she slid it back into the pouch, exhaling a plume of steam.

  Something about the flat piece of metal would come up later in the run, assuming Jet managed to stay alive long enough.

  Hopefully its purpose would be obvious then.

  She went back to trudging forward through the snow, passing a few more turns in the hedge. She didn’t bother to go with Trazen’s advice any longer, even when they gave her a real fork in the maze,
which wasn’t often. Her internal clock told her she’d been in here more than an hour. She had to assume the game pullers were just tiring her out for her match with Bukka, and probably deliberately frustrating her, too.

  She had to wonder how the pullers were keeping the crowd entertained though, given that. This had to be the most boring run on record for anyone watching from the outside. Nirreth liked blood...lots of it. Killing that cat couldn’t have been nearly enough to satisfy them.

  Hearing the screams grow more desperate again in front of her, Jet winced.

  Maybe they were being entertained by something else.

  Something happening where Jet wasn’t.

  Feeling a sudden catch in her throat, Jet began walking faster. She was nearly jogging again by the time she reached the end of that segment of maze, lifting her knees to plow faster through the wet snow. Without waiting, she turned left, towards the sounds of the screams, which were now punctuated by gasps and whimpers and pleading, softer sounds of pain.

  Jet felt her throat close more.

  Then the thought finally reached her––the thought she hadn’t let herself think, until now.

  Maybe they’d found them. The Nirreth. Isreti’s people.

  Maybe they’d really found her family.

  That dull pain in Jet’s chest turned into a stabbing fire.

  Maybe that’s how the operators were entertaining the crowds of Nirreth. Maybe it really was her mom and brother in the center of this maze, being brutalized by Bukka. The thought brought a sick, dread feeling to Jet’s gut, intense enough that she broke into a run...or as much of one as she could manage in the wet snowdrifts that filled the maze corridor.

  It was definitely getting lighter.

  She could see the snow coming down for real now. The maze row stretched out before her; she could make out individual leaves in the hedges, the rolling pattern of white where snow rested, covering the green. The snow in the middle of the row was nearly at thigh-height now, making it harder for her to move quickly. She knew it was slowing her down a lot...and tiring her out...but she tried not to think about either thing.

  Eventually it was light enough out that she could tell it was full daylight.

  Heavy, gray clouds and fog still obscured the sky overhead and the tops of the maze, but Jet could see the hedges clearly now through the falling snow. She was jogging fast when she reached up to the pocket and unsnapped the top again, pulling out the thin piece of metal.

  It looked like copper to her now, only run through with an oil slick of colors that tended towards green and turquoise blue. One end was sharp and the other flatter and rounded...it looked almost like a throwing knife, but its purpose was no more apparent to her in the light than it had been in the dark. Jet slid it back into the narrow pocket and snapped the top back up without slowing her pace.

  She was close enough to hear gasps now, heavy panting, like someone who couldn’t get their lungs back to suck in enough air.

  The screaming had stopped.

  Jet tried not to let herself think about why that was.

  She could still hear them breathing, she told herself.

  They were still alive.

  Of course, she had no idea if the breathing she heard was her mother and Biggs or the people who had been hurting them.

  Either way, she knew she was near the end of this thing.

  She could feel the end approaching, could sense it in the hard shot of adrenaline that hit her blood stream as the maze around her grew more and more quiet. Her heartbeat grew louder to fill the silence, thudding in her chest like an erratic hammer.

  The lighter it got, the more she felt that end grow nearer, until now, she felt certain she would find it as soon as she turned that last corner of maze.

  She knew all of that, yet somehow, she still wasn’t prepared.

  Jet flattened her back to the last piece of hedge, peering around it as though it were made of stone, Black gripped tightly in both hands.

  She could hear more breathing now.

  More than that, she could feel that the maze ended, even before she confirmed that fact with her eyes. Whether she’d come out of the maze altogether or just found a wider pocket inside it, Jet could sense an open space up ahead. The air flowed differently, so that was part of it.

  Sound traveled differently, too.

  Jet stuck her head out further, looking into the segment of clearing hidden by the hedge maze wall. She hadn’t been wrong. The hedge ended...leaving an open space that stretched further than the fog and snow allowed her to see. She looked around that space, glimpsing trees in the distance, what might have been park benches, all of it covered in at least six inches of snow. Bringing her focus back to the area nearer to the hedge wall, Jet tried to get a sense of what she might be walking into.

  Once she had, she sucked in a breath, unable to help herself.

  The sight made her dizzy, briefly blanked out her mind.

  Her brother was strapped to what looked like an old-fashioned wooden chair. Naked, he was bruised from head to foot, cut in the face and his fifteen-year-old chest and arms, bound to the chair with what looked like iron cuffs at his ankles, wrists and throat.

  He’d been gutted.

  His head slumped over his not-breathing chest, his entrails steaming over the snow, which was red with his blood.

  The person who’d been gasping was her mother.

  Her eyes stared at Jet from the chair next to Biggs’––strangely round despite their natural almond shape. Her irises and pupils punched black holes in the whites of her eyes as she stared at Jet uncomprehendingly, like she was a ghost.

  Jet was still staring at her mother’s face when someone cut her mother’s throat, using a sword.

  Jet screamed.

  She screamed without thought, without reason.

  She ran out from behind the hedge, unable to stop herself, even as the giant woman wielding the sword looked back over her shoulder, her broad face showing a pale surprise as Jet ran at her with Black clutched in one hand.

  Her mother was already slumping in the chair.

  Unlike Biggs, her throat hadn’t been bound to the chair’s wooden back. She was naked like Biggs, covered in bruises and cuts, what looked like burns. Her hair had been burned, so that part of her head looked blackened and red. Her lips were swollen. Her face...

  Jet screamed again, standing there, staring as her mother bled out onto the snow.

  It’s not real, it’s not real, it’s not real...

  She couldn’t make herself believe it.

  That nausea was back, so intense she nearly blacked out.

  “It’s not real!” she screamed, staring at Bukka when the giant woman turned. “It’s not real!”

  Bukka continued to stare at her, her face blank. She continued to stand there, holding the bloody sword. She hadn’t yet moved at all from her position over Jet’s mom, when she suddenly surprised Jet.

  She laughed.

  She laughed and laughed, even as she stepped back from the two wooden chairs, the two people who were the only people Jet had left in the world. The only real leverage any of them had over her. Staring at her mother and Biggs, Jet knew, without knowing how she knew.

  It was real.

  They’d killed her family.

  Somehow, they’d gotten them away from Richter and they’d killed them.

  When Jet looked up that time, the nausea was gone.

  In its place, hatred swam through her veins...a feeling so intense it seemed to come out of her very skin. It brought her mind back to Bukka, back to death, back to pain. At the same time, that hatred had no need of a story or even words.

  Despite that fact, or maybe because of it...everything became very clear before Jet’s eyes.

  No one was waiting for her outside that arena.

  No plan to topple Isreti was about to go down.

  Richter had done this somehow. Richter had set her up. Isreti must have gotten to him. Threatened his life. Threatened hi
s rebellion. Threatened something Richter gave a damn about. Whatever it had been, Jet’s family ended up being the price.

  Richter gave Isreti her family.

  She stared at Bukka, that hatred seething out of her with every steaming breath. She just stood there as each piece fell neatly into place, completing a dark picture in Jet’s mind, all the shards of glass assembled back into a mosaic she couldn’t unsee.

  That time, the sound that came out of Jet was closest to a roar.

  The first few moments of her attack were a blur, a crystalline blur of swift, unthinking movements––like a dance, but one that happened in some higher, more distant area of Jet’s mind.

  She’d lunged after the woman without a single thought.

  All of her fear around the woman’s size, her strength––it vanished.

  Empathy was the furthest thing from her mind.

  She’d gone right for Bukka’s throat. The woman ducked and Jet only slashed downward, managing to slice her open just above one eye at the first cut. Blood ran at once, covering the whole side of Bukka’s face and Jet didn’t think...she pressed the advantage, slashing up in the same motion towards the arm and hand holding Bukka’s sword.

  She hit her hard enough that the woman grunted, opening her fingers.

  Jet watched the sword fly up in the air in her peripheral vision, but she didn’t back up, simply shifted her weight and brought her own sword back down.

  She hacked off Bukka’s hand with that blow, severing it right at the wrist.

  Bukka let out a scream. It sounded almost like the mountain cat’s bellow.

  Jet didn’t let it get very far.

  Leaping towards the woman as she fell to one knee, she jammed her sword right into the woman’s throat.

  The scream died.

  The woman’s eyes bulged out, more than Jet’s mother’s had.

  Jet closed her own eyes as the two images tried to superimpose, then gritted her teeth, tasting blood from her tongue as she yanked the sword up and then backwards, out of the woman’s thick neck. She used her whole weight to do it, stepping back and pivoting her hip to the side and back at the same time.