Global Union: A New Life

by K. L. Lewis

  Her OmniMorph buzzed on her wrist, its display showing a red “CAUTION—Hostile Nearby” as their Gentili flew overhead. Its red-eyed gaze beamed behind them, cluing Sekhmet to how close the threat was. She peeked over her shoulder, following the red line beaming from the eagle’s eyes and landing on a human in green walking a steady distance behind them.

  She leaned closer to Malcolm. “Behind us,” she whispered. “That woman in the green jacket was the one watching us earlier.”

  He made a quick glance over his shoulder to the human behind them. “How do you want to handle this?” he asked.

  “Let’s not take any chances,” Sekhmet said. “We can find a spot to split up and shake her on the way back.” She checked her OmniMorph on her wrist, its display zooming in on their position on Earth. “We’re about 5 minutes from home.”

  They kept their pace on the highwalk and over an aqueduct. The human followed behind, glancing over the guardrail at the sparkling water below. Sekhmet’s ears twitched for sounds of anyone moving too close for comfort as they stepped down the highwalk and made a left at the corner. The buildings around them were a swirl of pale white sand and teal green towers of Seraphine’s buildings, joined with the iron-blues and grey of Iuvia’s—they were reaching the eastern section of the Terraport soon, where Iuvia was law.

  After taking a right at the next corner, they kept their pace and stepped onto the Terraport. Soldiers in dark blues and greys appeared around every corner, with black and grey Shephound quadrupeds sitting idle by their sides. It was a sight they hoped would deter any trouble, only for Sekhmet’s ears to twitch at rapid steps increasing behind them. She turned to the human fast walking through the crowds. “Malcolm,” she alerted.

  Malcolm peeked over his shoulder and readied the pistol, but Sekhmet paused his hand. “Not yet,” she said. “Over here.”

  She led him over to an alleyway, keeping a wary eye out as the human in green made the same turn. That confirmed it. This person was on her tail.

  Pacing faster, Sekhmet loosened her shawl into a large sheet flowing to the floor. They turned into the alley and backed at the first corner. Sekhmet threw her shawl over herself and Malcolm and pressed her OmniMorph. The grey sheet around them turned into a fuzzy view of the outside as they stood in silence, watching the human in green rushing out in front of them. A befuddled shock and punch toward the ground in a brief fit, the human scanned the voided alley, their gaze shooting through Sekhmet and Malcolm watching her pass by. Looking up to the roofs and searching back behind her, the human continued to the other end alley, and once they were out of sight, Sekhmet pulled down the shawl and wrapped it back around her head and shoulders.

  “That should keep her guessing for a while,” she said. But that good news came with a splitting pain down below that brought her to her knees. “Oh no,” she grunted.

  Malcolm’s eyes widened. “Sekky?”

  “Change of plans, we need to get to the Hospital. Now!” She shouted.

  Malcolm stammered, then took a breath. “How far is the nearest one?”

  “About 7 minutes going North on foot,” his OmniMorph informed him.

  He sighed. “Okay, I guess that’s not too far. But we still have that woman after us.”

  Their Gentility cawwed, descending into a circle before landing on the rooftops. Sekhmet rose to her knees, and her ears perked up. “I have an idea,” she said.

  “And I have a feeling I’m not gonna like it,” said Malcolm.

  “Well, listen anyway,” she grunted. “We’ll both head to the hospital, but you stay on the ground and keep an eye out in case that woman’s still out there. I’ll take to the rooftops and jump my way over there.”

  “And that’s the part I don’t like,” said Malcolm.

  “You have a better idea?” Sekhmet snarled, her face tensing from the pain.

  “Unfortunately, no.”

  “Then trust me on this.” The pain was getting worse, pulsing and waning and pulsing as she fought to stand. There wasn’t much time. Her eyes stayed on Malcolm with a glare telling him to go on. He gave her a nod, hid the pistol, and rushed to the edge of the alley. He peeked left and right before giving her a clear and moved out onto the walkway and falling out of sight.

  Now it was just her. Looking up at the platforms and balconies sticking out from the buildings, Sekhmet braced the pain and crouched down, tensing all the stress down to her legs, and sprung up along the walls. She landed on one of the balconies, then shot up to another, each leap higher until she landed on the rooftops. Off in the distance, past the flattops and towers, stood the Pax Pacifica Military Hospital sitting on one of the artificial hills. She clenched her belly, took another breath, then tensed her legs and broke into a sprint toward the end of the building. Reaching a meter from the edge, she leapt over the urban canyon and soared over the highwalks. She heard the brief chatter from the people below glimpsing her as she landed on the building ahead. Then she ran to the other end, and made another leap to the next one.

  Another kick had her gasping, stirring a scare in midair as she stuck her landing on the rooftop. She lost her balance, tumbling and sliding on her back before hitting a wall. Thank goodness she didn’t land on her stomach, and she breathed a sigh of relief as she felt another two kicks. But her ear twitched at a high-pitched wail above her head, and quick glance up had her eyes widen at a shadow casting from the sun. It was the human in green soaring over the rooftops, a small rifle tight in hand as they moved in.

  She hopped on her feet and rushed behind the walls as the human took aim. She barely dodged the bullets piercing holes on the surface behind her. She ran to the edge, jumping and landing at a lower building ahead. After a sharp leap left and another one right, she took cover behind a long pale wall and caught her breath as her heavy gut kicked a fit.

  She listened to the high-pitched wail sounding behind her and peeked around the corner at the human soaring to the building and landing a few meters away. With a press on her OmniMorph, Sekhmet’s shawl vanished around her head and neck, and she draped it over her whole body and backed against the wall as the human stepped into view. Holding her breath, she watched the human walk in front of her and waited until they passed by, then she pressed her OmniMorph again, and the fuzzy image sharpened into a clearer view of her surroundings. With soft silent steps, she stalked behind the human, watching as they moved to the edge. The closer she got to the human’s back, the lower she sunk to the ground, waiting as the human turned around. They were completely unaware, looking over her just at the edge of her feet. Then, when the human turned back, Sekhmet pounced.

  The human’s shot hit the wall as Sekhmet snatched their arm and yanked them to the ground. There was a brief tumble, then another shot—Sekhmet gasped at a white-hot graze at her side and stomped her heel into the human’s hand. The human yelped, and Sekhmet yanked the gun out of their grip before whipping the heavy end of it across the human’s face, knocking then toward the edge of the rooftop.

  She pointed the gun back at the human, but a splitting pain below once again brought her to her knees. “No! Not now!” she said as she braced the pain.

  The pain grew more by the second, and she couldn’t keep her aim on the human rising back up. She squeezed out a few shots, all of them hitting the wall around the human as they sprinted for cover. Her hazy aim at the human behind entrance corner, the splitting pain gradually began to subside just as the human peeked out. Sekhmet squeezed out a shot before it clicked empty, then tossed the gun away and made a run to the other side. She leapt over the street to the next building. Upon landing, a sting shot through her side, blood seeping from the wound of the shot she took earlier.

  Her heart sank—was it too late? She was just within reach of the hospital. She dropped down to ground level, gritting from the pain until another pop sounded behind her, followed by a white-hot spike piercing her back. She fell to her knees, the pain pulsing from her shoulder and spreading to her body. It was a struggle t
o breathe as the air itself began choking her, and the panicking crowd scattering around her gave her a splitting headache as she watched nearby soldiers fan out through the street.

  The world whirled before her eyes, her head growing heavy as she stood mere meters away from the hospital. Every step closer made spiking aches through her body, her vision, her hearing, the feeling of the ground beneath her, all of it waning and fading away.

  All she heard was a voice that sounded like Malcolm’s echoing in her ear. “…met…Sekhmet!”

  “No,” she cried. She was almost there.

  Another shot popped, the bullet whisking past her hair. A man in blue and grey stood in front of her and fired muffled shots in the air. BLAM! BLAM! BLAM!

  A screech pierced the air as a Gentili shot over the hospital like a rocket at the human. Its wings folded in, it knocked the human out of the air and sent them plummeting to the rooftops. The Gentili dove at them. Then silence.

  Crawling up the steps, clenching the wound on her side, she looked over her shoulder watching as the Gentili rose back to the air and landed at the steps in front of her.

  “Hostile lost,” it said to her, hopping over to her side. She screamed as its beak clamped at the bullet lodged in and pulled it out. Her shoulder throbbed so much that with every pulse of pain her skin changed from dark grey to red, then to pink before returning to her natural golden beige. She could barely move as she felt herself roll and lift into someone’s arms.

  “Sekky!” a man cried out. The image was fuzzy, but she knew Malcolm’s face anywhere. If only she had the energy to speak back.

  “Sekky!” a man cried out. The image was fuzzy, but she

  A medic rushed out, turning her over as they tended her wounds with blue patches. Each patch had an icy chill that numbed the severe pain and closed her wounds. But she had already leaked out so much blood, and she panicked until she lurched from another kick in her belly. EMTs and soft pale robots came out with a stretcher and loaded her on top.

  With no time to waste, they hurried inside.

  I

  Part One

  CHAPTER 1 – A NEW LIFE

  A stretcher rolled through the pale halls of the Pax Pacifica Military Hospital, a pregnant woman laying at the center with a small crowd of soft, pudgy nursebots jogging alongside her. She huffed in pain radiating from the cuts and bruises littering her body, dry blood from open wounds staining her skin. But her most pressing concern was the baby she was about to deliver, and she fought to stay concious as the stretcher rolled into a pale room.

  The doctor and nursebots circled around her, readying themselves for delivery. “I see the head!” the doctor shouted. “Now, push! PUSH!”

  The woman’s shriek pierced the air, then came a baby’s wail.

  DeMarcus Leon Maahes was born on May 31, 877 Res Novae Century. The nursebots held and cleaned the newborn parahuman as the doctor checked his vitals, all while his mother, Sekhmet, took her rest and waited to hold him. She was tired, weak, and weary, but she toughed through the pain, and her golden tail flicked under her sheets in anticipation of the nursebots handing her child to her. She nestled DeMarcus in her arms, smiling as his tiny hands waving up to the two long scars on her cheek all while his father Malcolm stood by the bedside with a soft smile on his face.

  For a parahuman, DeMarcus barely looked like either parent. He was slate gray compared to his mother’s golden-beige skin and his father’s almond-brown complexion, the only thing he had in common was his black hair from his father. The doctor told them it had to do with the skin-changing Biomorphic Pigments that Sekhmet had in her body before coming in, and another element in his blood said to be the miraculous reason he was still alive. Yet moments after he was held, DeMarcus went quiet—his crying stopped, his breathing faint, and his body went limp.

  Heavy air fell upon them as Sekhmet held him close, waiting for him to move. But he didn’t respond.

  The doctor checked DeMarcus’s heartbeat, then shouted haste at the nursebots, one of them crouching to all fours and morphing into an incubator—its back swelled into a clear shell for the nursebots to place DeMarcus inside, and small monitors flashed on the shell’s surface. Eyes were glued to the incubator as the heartrate slowed to a crawl, then flatlined.

  Sekhmet turned pale, and a tear streamed down her cheek. Her sharp ears drooping down to her shoulder, she nestled in Malcolm’s arm and gripped his shoulders. Their son was just born, and now…

  There was a beep. Then a pause. Then came another beep. Her ears perked up, and she turned to the shell, watching the monitor beep at a steady pace. There was a brief kick, and a wave of his hand, and soon baby DeMarcus started moving inside the incubator, his cries echoing within the shell.

  “He gave us quite a scare,” the doctor said.

  “Analysis complete,” the incubator spoke. “Military-grade nanostrains have been identified in the newborn’s circulatory system.” Images of bean-like and wormy objects projected on the incubator’s shell.

  “So, that’s what they were?” the doctor noted. “I’ve hardly seen anything like them. He’s lucky he inherited them from you, ma’am. Otherwise, he might not be here right now.”

  Sekhmet chuckled. “Yeah, they’ve saved my life several times as well.”

  Over the next few hours, Sekhmet and Malcolm sat together smiling at DeMarcus sleeping in his own crib. Malcolm removed a silver and gold rectangular medallion from his neck and placed it on DeMarcus’s blanket. “Here’s to a new life.”

  July 1, 879 RNC. Two years after his birth, baby DeMarcus was curled asleep in his blue pajamas, his toys singing above his crib. His mother and father snuggled in bed at the center of the room, and the apartment bedroom was dim and serene, its windows displaying a waning twilight sky before shifting to a crystal clear view of Seraphyne City. The morning sun glinted over the spires and arches in the horizon, and the searing light shined through the window as the alarm clock blared. “Good morning! It’s seven o’clock! Time to wake up!”

  Little DeMarcus groaned and opened his eyes to his toys hovering above, then rolled over to the guardrails of his crib. Through the rings, he watched his parents still fast asleep, his mother shutting the alarm up with a slam of her palm. Small hills rose from his parents’s sheets as his mother shifted underneath. And with a mischievous smile on his face, DeMarcus leapt out of his crib, landing on his feet on the wooly carpet floor. He crawled to the foot of his parents bed as his mother tapped his father. “Malcolm? You awake?” she asked.

  His mother hadn’t noticed him out yet, yawning and stretching in her red and white pajamas. DeMarcus peeked over the foot of the bed at Malcolm brushing her scarred hand away. “Stop it, Sekhmet,” he groaned.

  The sight sparked a slight snicker from DeMarcus, only for him to cover his mouth and duck to the floor at the twitch of his mother’s ear. “DeMarcus?” she called.

  He didn’t respond, instead crawling under the bed to his father’s side. He watched her feet touch down and step toward his crib, then he peeked around the corner as she she turned toward the bed. “DeMarcus,” she called, more sternly this time.

  Again, he didn’t respond, snickering at her frustration.

  There was a rustle above, followed a deep “Ahem.” He looked up at his father Malcolm, suddenly awake and resting on his chin with a smirk down at him. The boy nearly shot to the roof as his father lunged at him, falling to the floor underneath. But Malcolm still caught him before he landed on the carpet, and he squirmed in his father’s grip before, failing that, gnawing on Malcolm’s arm.

  “DeMarcus, quit that!” Malcolm shouted, pushing DeMarcus’s teeth from his arm.

  After a dirty look and a cross of his arms, he floated in his father’s grip, pouting at his mother smiling at him on the way to the redwood kitchen. He was sat in his highchair, and his mouth began to water at the smell of mashed meat and potatoes whiffing into his nose.

  “Ya hungry?” his mother asked him, setting a small box
on the table.

  Though he was still learning to speak, he could still say “yes”—or rather, his way of saying “yes” was more him reaching for the box of food between them. He watched in awe as his mother took a small spoonful and flew it into his mouth. He savored the taste, and then reached for more, only for his mother to pull away. “DeMarcus, that’s not how you ask,” she said.

  He gave her a pout and a growl, only to change his tune from his mother’s firm raise of her chin and dark glare back at him. His ears drooped, and he shrunk in his chair. He knew better than to do that, and that was his reminder.

  “What was that?” Malcolm asked, glancing from over the refrigerator door.

  “Your son just growled at me,” Sekhmet said.

  “Hey, he didn’t get that part from me,” Malcolm said with a shrug.

  But he did get the green in his eyes from him. Yet his short black hair was as soft and mangy as his mother’s. That and his tail too. Even with the grey skin tone that couldn’t be changed, that didn’t stop them from seeing him as any less of their son bouncing with glee at a small jar Sekhmet pulled out. Mashed apples, little chunks on a small spoonful that his mother flew into his mouth.

  His ear twitched at a ring and a buzz from his mother’s OmniMorph on her wrist, and he was curious at the bright dazzling light shining from its panel. Sekhmet unraveled the OmniMorph from her wrist and unfolded it into a tablet, pulling an earpiece to her ear as she listened to a video message sent by someone named RA.

  “Arr, Aye!” DeMarcus shouted, reading the letters on his mother’s screen.

  “Very good, DeMarcus!” Sekhmet cheered, hugging DeMarcus. “That’s your grandpa.”

  “Grampa!” DeMarcus repeated.

  “What’s it about?” Malcolm asked.

  “Just if we’re enjoying our stay in the North American Federation, and hoping to see DeMarcus someday,” Sekhmet answered. “I’m surprised he hasn’t asked when you’ll be available as Overseer. You ready for that?”