《Dispatch Work》


 Headhunted

    HeadHunted


    "You can''t be here! You''ll die!" He turned, grabbed the door, trying to get out before the man disintegrated. The handle wouldn''t turn even when he yanked with both hands. It felt like part of the wall.


    "I said the same thing when I arrived." The young Arab man at the table watched him panic without moving. The calm words hardly registered as the door refused to move. He gave up, pressed his back against the door, burying his head in his hands and waiting for the horror to start.


    "I''m sorry, I''m sorry, I..."


    "I know." The man''s voice was still calm, and slowly he lowered his hands.


    "I...Wait, why aren''t you dying?"


    "For the same reason you are not exploding." He frowned not following. The man was still smiling, still totally at ease. "Or searing to death in an atomic furnace. This is a null room. It suppresses all powers."


    "There''s no such thing, or they''d keep...well, they''d keep lots of people in them." He pulled his Punisher T-shirt straight, expecting smoke to billow from the man''s eyes and mouth as the tan skin greyed and disintegrated. It did not happen. "You''re some kinda hologram." There weren''t any scan lines, and the man looked real. Just really puzzled, and the expression was too young for his lined face.


    "No, I am here." A fingernail tapped the table, making a clicking sound.


    "An android." He accused, not believing it, but not wanting to move in case his power kicked in. The man looked at the green wrap he was holding, a bite taken out. His mouth began to water, and the man suddenly cringed.


    "I am a dreadful host. Food?" The young man swept his arms out above the table in a grandious gesture of welcome. The loud rumble from his stomach reminded him that he hadn''t eaten since this morning, the morning all the food in the house had - he lunged forward, grabbed a banana, peeled it as he backed away in case it was simply proximity that had protected his new companion. He tried the door again, but the handle still didn''t move. This had to be some sort of trap. The fruit was gone in three bites, and he picked up the next, waiting for the screams. The teen was still alive, chewing on his green leafy wrap. "Feel better?"


    "Isss goohhd." He managed to reply, trying to answer round the mouthful. After starvation didn''t he need to eat slowly, or did skipping breakfast and lunch and dinner not count as starvation? It was kind of awkward going from middle-class America to wherever on Earth this was, if it was on Earth.


    "Thank you." The man''s smile was genuine and wide. He edged towards the table and sat down, getting a better look at his companion. The most distinct feature was the thin silver torc glittering round his neck above the loose neckline of his ornately embroidered top. Despite the hard lines in his face, he guessed the man was a young teenager, just a little older than he himself. "I thought you may be hungry. I was. Take as much as you need."


    "''anks. That sushi?" He picked up a sandwich, waving it at the plate of green seaweed-like wraps before he bit into it.


    "Mahshi. Tuna stuffed grape leaves. Try some." His mouth full of sandwich, he shook his head, finally convinced the teen wasn''t going to vanish but not entirely sure this wasn''t a hallucination. Didn''t people see weird stuff before they died? His stomach was settling, and he took the time to chew.


    "Not my thing. Sandwiches''r great. I''m J-" he stopped, both to swallow and because the name brought back memories that hurt. Was he a person any more, or was he just a killer? Uncomfortably reminded of this morning, he stopped eating. The teen looked abashed.


    "I am sorry. Please, choose a name whenever you are ready." It was so overformal it felt like his girlfriend''s little brother trying to fill in for his Dad.


    "''n you?" He mumbled.


    "The name I use is Salman. It is not that my parents gave me. That burned." The smile was still there, but the teen''s eyes were dark. He could guess what had happened, and didn''t want to. There was a pause, as he ran out of things to say, and also of sandwich.


    He took another, stalling, and looked around. The room was small, decked out like a fifties diner with a couple of tables and cupboards on the wall. Through the open curtains, bulging and too long for the window, all he could see outside the glass was dark sky and stars. Perhaps beer-guy had been wrong and they had someplace for people like him, but that didn''t mean it was a good place. He wouldn''t let them use him to kill.


    "So what is this? Some kind of mutant trap?" The man looked intrigued.


    "Mutant? I know of the parahuman, and the ultrasapien, but not mutants."


    "Para...Ultra...what the?"


    "I am parahuman." Salman pointed to the window, through which he could only see blackness and stars. "She is ultrasapien."


    "She?" The bulge in the curtain moved, and a bushy-haired face peered round, smiling and wide-eyed. She could only be a child, maybe ten years if that. Somehow she wasn''t dying either, so maybe this null room actually worked. The teen finished his wrap and started another.


    "That is LaVonna." The girl unwrapped herself from the curtain and climbed up onto the window sill, her legs curled cat-like under her as she looked out at the stars. Her name glittered on a gold necklace above her T-shirt. A thin silver torc glittered above it.


    "Hi," he said and waved. The girl looked delighted, lifting a hand and mimicking him as if she had never done the gesture before, but she said nothing. "Hello?" He waved again, and she lost interest, staring out of the window. He gaped, wondering if she knew the danger she was in just being here. "Is there something...?"


    "She cannot talk. She has never seen other people before she came here." Salman''s tone was serious. There was only one question that came to mind.


    "Is she like...er...us?"


    "Yes. A life drain effect that kills any living thing within fifty yards instantly. She was born with it."


    "That''s horrible!" He meant it. What was worse, seeing his mother''s clothes stretched out on the floor with no body in them, or never knowing what a mother was to begin with? She''d never known what she had lost, but he had had it to lose. He abruptly decided he wasn''t even going to ask the man about family. "So why is she here?"


    "Here she is safe. There were various armies closing in, given her value as a weapon of mass destruction. Did no one come after you? Over the years I have encountered so many."


    "They wanted me for propaganda. Look what the dangerous mutants can do, kill them all." He rolled his eyes. "Like I wanted this."


    "Oh." Salman looked surprised. "They did not try to steer you towards their enemies, or control your mind to destroy those they hated? They preferred me as weapon, not story, but then I walked slowly and it took me months to travel."


    "I wasn''t like this for very long," he admitted. "If it had been longer than they might have."


    "What happened? I know little," Salman set his wrap down, his face serious. He took a second, deciding if he wanted to share and then realising that these people at least might understand.


    "I woke up this morning and my family were dead. Then other people started dying, anyone who went near me. My girlfriend..." He brushed at his eyes, wishing the tears would stop. "I hid in a cave outside town where this self-healing guy found me, said I had to die and they''d blame a chemical spill ''cos I was too dangerous to live."You could be reading stolen content. Head to Royal Road for the genuine story.


    "Then you fell through the floor and were here." The other boy smiled. "My family - they died before I -" He stopped, his smile faded, and then began again. "I had been walking and burning for many years, and then I took a step and was here. The fire was gone."


    "You can''t be much older than me."


    "When the power came to me, my aging stopped. I have walked alone for many years, safe." And lonely. Was that what his life would have been? He''d have killed himself first, was going to, if his power or starvation hadn''t done it for him. He''d tried to grab a MacDonalds abandoned on a counter before he fled the town. The food had rotted in the bag, the milkshake cup disintegrated, leaving him holding a useless straw and covering his pants in smoking, disintegrating drink. It had evaporated completely, not even leaving a trace. Guess mom would never have to yell at him about the laundry again.


    "And you''re not dead."


    "And you are not burning." Salman smiled. "It is quiet without the explosions. I like the quiet."


    "So this isn''t your set-up."


    "I did not create it, but for the first food I had eaten in many years I decided to hear out the first voices I heard in those years. I have not regretted it." He looked out of the window, but all he saw were stars and his reflection over LaVonna''s head. The girl waved at him in the glass and he smiled back, waving back to her reflection as she giggled. She seemed so innocent, and happy. If this was a bad place, surely she''d be miserable.


    "So what''s the deal?" he asked, kicking back in his chair.


    "As it was explained to me, there are places where our abilities are useful. There are those who try to save realities, to keep them stable." He didn''t get it. LaVonna jumped down from the window, running across to him and holding her arms up. On reflex, he picked her up, letting her settle on his lap as she snatched a sandwich in both hands and began to nibble on it.


    "Yeah right. How does me killing everything save people?"


    "There are some situations even their operators can''t recover. When that happens fallbacks are required, to be deployed when the field is completely lost."


    "So we''re just some kind of bombs then? If they can''t have it, no one can?" he said, bitterly aware it was as bad as he thought. No way would he be some government bomb, used to discredit mutants like beer -guy had said.


    "No, a final resource against victorious enemies that would otherwise be undefeatable."


    "Political dissidents," he said sourly.


    "Viral plagues, Zombies, Nanobot armies." Salman offered the last of the wraps. When he declined, the teen took it himself. "Those that have already committed genocide. When a world has been utterly depopulated, when there is nothing left to salvage, the threat remains. Should something break through to another world, billions upon billions can die."


    You burn them. Why''d you need me?"


    "Where I walk, everything dies. Buildings, soil, everything goes to ash."


    "Sounds great," he snarked. "So like I said, why''d you need me?"


    "In a zombie scenario after total loss of the human species, that plane is now useless. It cannot be repopulated or materials recovered from it because of the plague, and it poses a constant threat that it will break through into another plane. Zombies are mindless and charge human life even when it isn''t wise. If you are dispatched - " Salman smiled, spreading his hands out. Despite himself, he returned the grin for the first time. "Your ability could recover entire cities without destroying the infrastructure, allowing repopulation from those realities less fortunate."


    "Worlds die but people live? That happens?"


    "Yes. I have walked worlds where the sun has died, to melt the crust for geothermal heat, or trigger a volcano to safely vent. They are rarely so salvageable." A way to use his power to help people, like a real power not a curse. It sounded too good to be true. There had to be a catch. LaVonna was still smiling, snug on his lap.


    "And what about her? She''s too young to be used like that."


    "No. She would not even understand what she has to do. When she learns to speak and can make her own decisions, then she may be deployed."


    "But doesn''t she have a home?" Salman''s forehead furrowed, the lines deepening. In the cold set of the teen''s face, he remembered what the other had said. If her power was active from birth, what family could she have had?.


    "She was in the jungle fending for herself, before governments decided she would be a formidable weapon. Drop her in a city and let her run to the people she sees. She knows no better, and once she did, the memories would destroy her. Here, she has you, and any others they find."


    "So we get deployed solo?" he asked.


    "And between missions return to our home base, with each other." He ran a long finger round the torc. "The suppressor collars suppress your own ability and protect you from our''s while worn. So long as we do not all remove more than one at the same time, we will be safe."


    "So we don''t get a normal life?"


    "No. But it is a life." He wasn''t sure he wanted one at all, not with the memories so fresh.


    "Can I have a look at that?" He reached for the torc and the teen leaned back instantly, arms raised to block his throat.


    "Do not." Carefully he relaxed, "This is a null room, but it is good to remember these must stay on. If I forgot it when I left, it would not be I that pay the price." Opening a drawer in the side of the table, Salman pushed an identical collar across.


    "Yours is here." He took it.


    "Isn''t this a mutant inhibitor collar?" He''d seen them on TV. If this would work for him, why wouldn''t the government use one? Why had they sent someone to kill him? He could have lived, and then the story would have come out and the media reports. Someone would have damaged the collar, deliberately triggered his power at the wrong time, and he wouldn''t have been able to stop it. The beer guy had been right, he was better dead with his family. "It won''t work. My power''s always on."


    "So is mine, and hers," Salman said, unphased by the admission they were both extinction-class mutants. "These have been adapted to our circumstances. They also have translators. I believe you speak English. I do not. Your Arabic is very good, if far too formal." Now that was a surprise. He turned the device over in his fingers. It was light, a small sliding catch linking the ends, and a segmented back that let it open enough to go round his neck.


    "These don''t blow up or anything?" Salman stared at him, and started to laugh. Tears appeared at the corners of his eyes.


    "No, no, they do not blow up. If I wished to blow up, I would take it off." That was blunt, and he doubted he''d ever be able to joke about his power like that. After what he had done...The technology behind these was amazing, compared to the bulky things he remembered. If this group could cross dimensions, could make these, then perhaps...


    "Can you bring back the people I-"


    "No. I am sorry. I asked the same." The pain was there in the lines on his face. Whoever or whatever he was, Salman knew.


    "If I take the collar off outside this room?"


    "Everything around you will die. Also, you will die slowly yourself. Your power does not sustain you and food will disintegrate like any other organic."


    "What if I decide I can''t live like this?" Salman lost his smile, for the first time looking his age, not the experiences carved on his face.


    "The locked top drawer of the desk contains a gun and a pill. You may use either. Here is the key."


    "Thanks." He took the key, looking at the drawer, and jumped as Salman caught his hand before he could pull it back.


    "Don''t. Please. I have been alone, so long." He stared, not sure what to say. The Arab teen stood up, a little abashed at the plea, brushing crumbs from his face. Reaching up to the torc around his neck, he unclipped it and secured it again. "Just so you can be sure that they come off."


    "I need to think."


    "Of course." Salman opened the door, the handle moving easily. Outside was green grass, houses, and birdsong. He had not heard birdsong since - he grabbed for LaVonna as she slipped from his lap, missed and she ran out into the sunshine, tumbling on the grass.


    "I shall let her play there while we wait for you." Salman smiled at her, and held out a hand to him. J -no he didn''t deserve a name yet, looked at him, and the door, and swallowed. To go from a loving family, to nothing, to this in less than a day. It was too much. What the hell choice was he meant to make? He was fifteen, he should have his whole life. Salman lowered his hand, seeming disappointed. "I will leave you to make up your mind. The door is open when you want to join us." He turned, walked through it in two graceful strides, and it swung closed. The latch didn''t shut.


    He sat, staring at nothing, and then stood up and walked to the drawer. The key turned and inside, as promised, was a small box and a gun. Joining his family was the right thing to do, beer guy had said. He''d said himself he couldn''t live like this.


    If his curse could not be cured, perhaps it could do some good. His mother would not have died for nothing. His girlfriend - he remembered vividly her body dessicating in his arms as she screamed and blamed him. Could he condemn anyone else to that death? What would his family have wanted him to choose, if they had known?


    He lifted the gun and looked at it for a long time before he made his choice.


    "All irregularities will be handled by the forces controlling each dimension. Transuranic heavy elements may only be used where there is no life. Heavy atomic weights are available: Arsenic, Caesium, Francium, Lead, Mercury, Plutonium, Radon, and Uranium. Radon and Plutonium have been assigned."

 Ash Lands

    "There are worse ways to die. But right now I cannot think of one." The unnamed warrior''s words, scribed desperately before the last battle echoed in the young man''s head as he saw where he had arrived. Behind him the remains of a great wall stood, carved open from its one hundred foot high ramparts to the river at its base by one great blow. The exposed stones were still clean and grey. The battle had been recent, but the documents had been old. A trick of his new mentors'', but he had seen stranger things from those with powers.


    There was a subtle wrongness to the ground beneath his feet, movement as if it were breathing. He squatted to get his balance, making himself small against the land and hard to spot. With the robes of his desert childhood he could have vanished, but in the garb of his city home, blue jeans against yellowed grass stood out. Scrubland stretched as far as he could see, scrubland that should have reminded him of his home desert and instead made him sick to his core.


    Beneath the bloated dying sun, the sparse trees reached for the reddened sky with branches that spiraled and warped. In his childhood, there had been a penalty for felling a tree, for trees brought life to the desert. These did not. They were twisted things that clawed at the sky, a motion seen only from the corner of his eye but present nonetheless. On the far horizon a darkness arose, like God''s Mountain raging when he had seen it with his mother, long before the bad things happened and she was gone.


    He wanted to go home, but he had no home anymore, lost in a warlord¡¯s boast that there would be no more fires on the hillsides, that his pyres would end them all. It reminded him of the last day he had seen his family, knives against bullets as their own had run out, bodies strewn across the landscape under the treads of jeeps. There were no guns here, no spent grass casings to mark warfare as he knew it. The tracks in the ground were not tyres, but feet and beast and the utterly unknown. So alien, and yet worse for being so close to the familiar. There were no bodies here, but he had not expected any. They were still in use.


    "But right now I cannot think of them." The scrawled words echoed in his head again, still a horror. All the tales of brave princes never said that they''d be dragged from their graves, made to kill their own, kill their family. Any people that still existed here did not live. They suffered, through deeds commited with their own hands as it mastered their bodies and spread to everything as their souls screamed. He would end it. As the sandy dirt breathed underfoot, a dreadful imperceptible river, it felt as though this world itself would fight him. That was good. He would win.


    Balance was a struggle, but he stood up, resolute. He had been sent here to avenge the unfallen, and he would do his task. Before he had not known, just walked, and others had died. This would be rightful. Here the Bringer of the End had stolen a boy''s body, and that boy hadn''t had an angel come with powers to drive the darkness back. For those with powers, the day they got them was the worst day of their lives. For those without them, those days could be worse.


    On his worst day his power had woken: Fire, to make them burn, to sear their ''civilisation'' from the land, a body remade in flame which could never be quenched, leonine paws to shred what opposed him, and wings. Wings which didn''t work, which left him chasing after jeeps and jets on foot for no vehicle could survive his presence. Truly a cursed blessing, for any of his people who were not burned on the warlord''s pyres were burned in his awakening. There was nothing here for him to fear. He was fear. He was death.


    His index finger rested on the clip of the collar, ready to unclip it, unwilling to in case something had survived; not a person maybe, but perhaps a tale or record he could pass to those who would inherit here when his duty was done. And the translator would be needed, for he was sure he did not speak their language. Longing for the simple embrace of the fire, he delayed it for now. So to walk to the wall or into the scrubland?Ensure your favorite authors get the support they deserve. Read this novel on the original website.


    There was no one living by the wall that he could see, and the river should bring life, but this was as soiled as the land, the water now a choked black sludge that roiled and oozed its way along the base of the channel. Lumps and tar-like outflows caught the shores like something alive before being pulled away and onwards by the inexorable flow of tainted filth. Bile rising in his throat, he turned aside. There was no way across the cursed river that he could see, and he shuffled his feet in the dirt in frustration.


    Was this another trick? Were there people here he was being used against? He was no one''s weapon. His fingernail tapped against the metal of his collar as he heard the creak of wood loud in the silence.


    "Who''s there?" he challenged, dropping to a fighter¡¯s crouch, a hand on reflex reaching for a knife he did not carry and did not need. His second was already on the latch, paused and poised.


    The creak came again and he moved, stalking it, finding his careful way through broken blades as he awaited the attack. Around the side of a small hillock he saw the source, set back against the rocks that jutted from the scrub. The hut was ancient, worn down, and yet not so ancient as the crone that beckoned from its doorway.


    "Welcome, welcome, come in. Quick, before they see you." He frowned. The duty of hospitality was sacred, and yet how could an old woman have survived here where no water flowed to drink and the dead walked free? "Which clan are you?"


    He answered truly. It would mean nothing to anyone here, nor to those of his home. Should any have survived the pyres of the warlord, and none had, they could not have survived the atomic fire that followed.


    "A foreigner? New people to this place?" Her eyes glittered eagerly. "You must tell me more. Come in!" So eager to welcome a stranger in a dead land of twisted monsters. He sensed the trap, but did not see its nature clear.


    "What has happened here?" he asked, staying back. She leaned towards him, lowered her voice confidingly as one sharing a morsel of delicious goissip.


    "Disaster, since the Emperor''s consort grew so wicked that he must slay her. A faceless demon they said, who dared even poison him. The Shusuro gave another her name before ever the Bayushi leant her his." She stayed in the doorway of her dark hut, gancing anxiously at the twisted plains around them. "Come, child, I have guests so rarely in these dark days. It is scarce safe to have my door open." He chafed at the diminutive. By his people''s reckoning he had been a man, if barely, before the change had taken him. Years had passed since. "My daughters have been starved for company," she added encouragingly and the hair on the back of his neck rose as he heard something break nearby as if underfoot.


    He took a cautious step, picking his way through the weapons that scarred the land. Among the arrows and blades - the arrows and blades that did not touch the decrepit house though it should have been here long before them - showed shards of bone.


    "It is safe here." She beckoned again, urging him forward too eagerly as she saw his hesitation and where his gaze fell on bone of shapes and sizes both human and distinctly not. Here and only here they lay among the weapons and broken armour, picked and polished clean before the bleaching began, fanned forth from the door as if dragged - or spat.


    "A liar''s tongue burns," he decreed, disgusted. As the hag shrilled a clicking cry and charged, his finger slipped the collar latch.


    The crone''s form gave way to a gigantic spider made of rocks and uncounted years, and then to explosion and to nothingness, its unholy scream drowned in the thunder. The ground wailed like a thing alive as it seared to untainted bedrock beneath him, as the trees shrivelled and the goblin-things creeping close unseen fell shrieking like burning snowflakes as the explosions claimed them. A new sun burned, and it burned on the land.


    His body changed as leonine claws stretched. Wings of flame erupted from his back, beat against the air as they burned it. Comforted, home, he let the sound deafen his ears, the fires occlude his sight, and gratefully gave up thought. He was warm, and home, and safe, and burning.


    The Shadowlands screamed its agony as the Ash Beast took its first step towards the dark city of Otosan Uchi. It would take him time to walk there. He had forever.


    "All irregularities will be handled by the forces controlling each dimension. Transuranic heavy elements may be used where there is no life. Unassigned Heavy and Medium atomic weights are available: Caesium, Francium, Lead, Mercury, Polonium, Plutonium, Radon, Sapphire, Silver, and Steel.


    Plutonium has been assigned."

 Sleeping Sun

    On a mountain top above a ruined city, the sun sleeps peacefully. Those below have grown used to light that never moves, to lanterns that suck in light to render blessed shade. Reflectors keep the light on the trees at all angles and the vegetation is plush and verdant as the light never ends.


    Too close to the blaze and rain evaporates before it can fall. The ground lies in ashes and powder and the city lies unplundered, for those that approach too close go from sunburn, to burns, to ashes.


    And each clock-measured morning, the citizens bless the sun, thankful, for they know that it could be so much worse...


    #


    He stepped out of nothingness into nothingness. The darkness was so absolute he thought he had gone blind. Underfoot, gravel crunched as his weight moved. The air was freezing cold, a faint scent of woodsmoke hanging on it.


    His vision was adapting slowly, and as his eyes adjusted small lights danced in the sky above, like aircraft, but no aircraft ever moved like these. The dark sky was dotted with stars, but as he looked down at a certain height midnight blue turned to true black, and the ''stars'' gained an orange tint. Campfires dotted across the hillside. The sight made him homesick.


    His fingertips were losing feeling, and he crossed his arms, burying his hands in the sleeves for warmth. If he waited here, he''d freeze, or have to remove his collar for that cursed warmth and perhaps ruin his mission entirely. Cursing his lack of a torch he shuffled forward, hands groping in front of him. Grass crunched beneath his foot as he felt his toes hit something like stone. A path then, and he had the line of a curb to follow and no time to think about either as he heard the woman''s shout.


    "Who''s there?" He tensed, looking for the speaker, and saw the light, an odd yellow, growing larger, blinking as if it were making its way through trees. It bobbed as it approached and he tensed, reminded of certain deep sea angler fish. One hand rose to the collar, but he would wait. As it came closer he saw the faded trunks and yellow leaves it threaded its path between. Dying trees, but not dead, so this darkness was not the natural state of this world. As it reached his feet, the light shone on dying yellow grass and stone fragments that laid out a path. The gravel had been kicked into the grass along the way, probably by him. And then he saw it.


    A horse, tiny, with the flickering light of a lantern bobbing on its collar. The fur seemed more orange than he was used to, the hair of mane and tail yellow.


    "A Steppes pony?" he said aloud, and it stopped, looking at him with unequine eyes too big for its face.


    "Ain''t never been to no Steppes. This here''s Sweet Apple Acres." He froze, staring unabashed. A Case 53? A bio-tinker''s creation? It was wearing clothes, what he could only think of as a parka, and boots. "Ah think you''re lost."


    "Yes," he said, still staring, knowing he was being impolite. The small horse didn''t seem to care, trotting closer and relaxing. "I believe I am."


    "Ain''t never seen nothing like you before. Ah thought you were a monster, but they don''t talk." It was definitely a girl''s voice, and an accent he was unfamiliar with.


    "I do," he said, stupidly.


    "Do you eat ponies?"


    "No!" Not ones that talked to him, but that qualifier was not one he would add until he knew more of the situation here.


    "Rainbow, he''s safe!" she called, raising a hoof to her mouth as she looked passed him. He turned on reflex.


    One of the lights above was falling, becoming the shape of a pony with wings. In a land of talking ponies, why would they not have wings? It was only as the blue pegasus abruptly diverted that he saw how close he had come to being kicked in the head. It hovered, flapping gently, its blue fur matching the tight fitting bodysuit that covered legs and left wings free.


    "Sorry, can''t take chances you know. All the monsters about." Another girl oddly. Among the ponies he knew, the stallions guarded the herd, but those ponies did not talk. Despite her words, this one did not actually sound sorry, but he could forgive the lack of welcome.


    "Those alone in the dark are easy prey for monsters," he said, too knowing. He didn''t have to guess that there were things moving in that cold darkness as he shivered.


    "Who''re you calling prey?" Rainbow huffed, and the orange one chuckled.


    "C''mon Rainbow, it''s true. We got the Everfree right on our doorstep. When the sun went out, all the creatures in there came explorin''."


    "Wh-what h-happened to the s-s-?" His teeth chattered from the cold. The orange one said something like ''horseapples'', and turned away, head turning back over her shoulder as she went.


    "Come on. House''s full, but the barn''s closer ''n yer freezin''."


    #


    The barn was warm, packed with sheep that raised their heads silently and stared at him wide-eyed, the single dim lantern a comfort after the nearly absolute blackness outside. Huddled in the blanket that the pony, Applejack, had lent him, he was finally warming up. By the time he was up to talking, the blue one had returned with a small purple unicorn bundled up in a thick coat, boots, and scarf, something he felt he was taking far too calmly.


    "This is Twilight, she''s working on bringing the sun back." Rainbow said. He nodded blankly, wondering if these names were as literal as they seemed, or if the translator was malfunctioning."Told ya, Twi, you''d never seen a - hey, what are ya anyway?" He tried not to jump as she hovered in front of his face.


    "A Parahuman," he answered, and then added his own question over her interested chatter of who and what and why. "What happened to the sun?" The small purple unicorn looked down, and he noticed the rings below her eyes that in a human would mean exhaustion. Her voice was tired and weak.


    "Moon and Sun both vanished at the Summer Sun Celebration." It was not the first world he had walked where the sun had died. In that other, greeted by a blizzard and a starving people, they had fed a child to the flames for their warmth. Disgusted, when they mobbed him to tear his flesh for food, he had let them pull the collar from his neck and feed themselves to his fires. He had expected censure for his choice from his sponsors, not a cool and dismissive ''sacrifices must be made'', and another assignment. But then, that world had already been considered lost, the people doomed, or he would not have been sent.


    "And you are trying to bring them back?" he asked tentatively, suspecting there was more to the story. She nodded, sitting down by the lantern.


    "I''m spending most days creating lanterns and light," she said. "Unicorns used to raise the sun, but that spell doesn''t work anymore." The tangles in the shortcut mane, and the exhaustion in the huge eyes spoke of sleep sacrificed for research time.


    "But you bring a small sun up over the orchard!" Rainbow protested.


    "A time-limited illusion," Twilight said. "We''ve been using them to keep the plants alive."


    "Light''s not right." Applejack scuffed a hoof at the yellowed grass by the door. "Trees''re still dying, just slower. We need more light, ''n'' brighter."


    "Why do you not lid your lanterns?" He was curious. "More light could be reflected to the town."


    "Then how''d I know where to land?" the blue pegasus scoffed, and he nodded.


    "Apologies, I do not often fly."


    "No probs." Quick to scoff, quicker to apologise, and quickest with a grin. Much as he resisted it, the only word that applied to her was flighty.


    Silence fell uncomfortably, as Twi''s eyes were drifting closed. Applejack was fidgeting, obviously wanting to head back to her orchard, but torn between checking on her guest and her work. There would be no further progress at the moment, so instead he rested a hand almost casually against his collar, ready for their reaction.


    "I know a way to create a sun upon the land." It was not false, but he saw no need to give them the full truth at this time. Twi''s head snapped up, suddenly awake. Rainbow dropped from her hover to a perfect one-hoof pose. Most disturbingly the sheep surrounding them looked up and began muttering. Was there anything in this world that did not talk?


    "Then why ain''t ya casting it already?" Applejack snapped.


    "It would be harmful." An understatement, he knew, written in the mile-wide trail of ash and ruin left in his path.


    "Couldn''t be worse''n this!" The mare scuffed her hoof in the dead grass again. Innocence was never so stubborn. Twi raised her head, patiently.


    "Applejack, our atmosphere reduces the sun''s light to something we can stand. Princess Celestia governs-" her voice broke "-governed the solar output so Equestria receives equal light. Otherwise we would burn. Sunlight, unshielded, at ground level would be dangerous."


    And something had happened to this Celestia. Twilight was continuing. "However if Rainbow can gather a solid pool of clouds, I could shape a refractory lens to direct the rays in appropriate...." He had a sudden picture of the small purple unicorn earnestly directing what amounted to a giant magnifying glass over a town, tongue sticking out of the side of her mouth in concentration. It was disturbing.


    "Can your Celestia not raise the sun?" he asked, ending the more worrying train of thought.


    "We don''t know where she is." The problem revealed, finally. "We think she''s trapped. That they bound each other simultaneously." A mysterious ''they'' emerged from the story, a sense of a much longer tale untold. "How far can your sunlight reach? Could you light the town?" Twi''s question was hopeful and transparent: if another lit the town, she could research into bringing the true sun back. It was exactly as he intended.


    "I do not know your units of measurement," he confessed, and Twilight blinked.


    "Do you know how fast a pony travels?" she asked, and he nodded. Even city-born as he was, his parents would have him grow up in saddle for camel and pony. A horse galloped at forty kilometres an hour, for conservatively six seperate hours a day with rests. Six forties were two hundred and forty kilometres, and he had been visible on the flat of the deserts for further, on the brightest days.Unauthorized duplication: this tale has been taken without consent. Report sightings.


    "If my mathematics are correct, I believe six days'' gallop or further." There was a sudden hush. "Though I may not be as bright as your sun. Those within -" he tried to do the maths, failed, and hoped his translator could cover measurements. "- a one kilometre radius would not survive." The wide-eyed looks they were exchanging spoke of less horror and more hope than he had expected.


    "Six days is more''n just Ponyville, Twi," Applejack said. "If we could get it further, could light out to Appleloosa..."


    "Put it on a mountain," Rainbow interrupted, as they looked at her. She shrugged. "The sun''s meant to be in the sky, duh." Twi thought about it, ears twitching.


    "Canterlot," she said, finally.


    "You sure?" Rainbow asked incredulously, coming to a stop in mid-air.


    "It''s central, and once the spells holding the city failed..." Her ears turned back. "No one lives there any more."


    "How far is it?" he asked, curiously.


    "Used to be a day''s gallop, but it'' be longer in the dark," Applejack said. "The trains ain''t running." There would be better uses for coal and fuel in a world where the light had died and the heat went with it.


    "If I were to walk?" he asked. The thought of walking, as human or himself, brought memories of fire and a trail of ash.


    "Flight''s faster." The blue pegasus cut in.


    "Flight''s dangerous," Twilight objected.


    "Danger''s my middle name." The pegasus'' confidence verged on arrogance.


    "Safer than walking," Applejack added.


    "Ladies." He brought them up short as they began to argue. "I cannot fly." Rainbow gave him a grin that he could only consider rakish.


    "That''s not a problem." Unless she was stronger than she looked, she could not have intended to carry him and he could not fly there himself for his control of his wings was too poor and he did not know where it was. "So I get you to the top of the mountain, you cast it." Rainbow said confidently. "And then I get you back to help Twilight get Celestia back."


    "Impossible," he said, quietly.


    "You won''t help?" Rainbow''s immediately hostility met only tired resignation.


    "Once I begin, I shall not be able to. I doubt we shall be able to speak."


    "Continual casting." Twilight''s ears went flat. He considered, then nodded, accepting it as close enough.


    "Should I move the sun will move with me. Anything within its range-" He was cut off as Rainbow interrupted.


    "Not cool."


    "No. Extremely hot."


    "So how long will this sun last anyway?" Rainbow asked.


    "Until I cease casting." He stopped, considering."If you can take me to this mountain, I shall shine the sun for one year. Should your Princess be returned within the time, one who controls the sun should be able to speak to me. Or you will find alternatives."


    "A year?" Twilight said, thoughtfully.


    "It gives you time." In truth he expected little of them in the time, but they could stockpile food and organise themselves. Should it be needed, he could stay longer, for time was the one thing he had too much of and they had had too little.


    "But, food, water¡­" With surprise he realised that her concern was for him, and he smiled.


    "I can sustain myself for the duration." The fires kept him whole, if not wholly of the same shape. The purple unicorn shook her head.


    "We need to plan-"


    "Twi, food''s runnin'' out. The trees are dying." Applejack cut her off grimly. "Ponies are dying. We gotta move now." Twi began to pace.


    "If Dash takes him there now, Applejack can warn the town." She grimaced. "I''ll speak to the Pegasus Mail Service and the Town Hall. We''ll need to get word out, so people don''t think the Princess is back. Derpy can co-ordinate with the mail, if I write a mailshot that can be distributed efficiently once the sun comes up. A guard of pegasus to stop ponies approaching..." he wasn''t sure where the scroll had come from, probably one of the saddlebags, but her head was down over the paper as a floating quill scribbled a checklist. Her tongue was, in fact, sticking out, just as he''d imagined.


    "Is she always-"


    "Yes." Blue and Orange answered in exasperated tandem, and he laughed.


    #


    Hot air balloons weren''t something he''d ever travelled in before, and never at night. There was something peaceful, yet eerie about it. Careful not to unbalance the basket he peered over the edge, clutching the blanket close for warmth despite the burner close to his head.


    Below them lines of light marked the few roads fully and continually lit. Small sparks, probably caravans and convoys, moved along them and some few specks out on their own pressed on through darkness to the orange and white lights that marked towns.


    The canvas above vanished into darkness, and he could just see the dim shapes of the two pegasi towing the balloon, the others flying escort, their lanterns carefully dimmed. The sound of wings scarcely reached him, the muffled silence oppressive as if the night itself was listening.


    Ahead, where they were flying, there was nothing.


    A blue shape formed in the dark, lantern close, keeping easy pace with the basket. She held something out, attached somehow to a hoof that acted as a hand.


    "Here." It was an airsick bag, though he found himself more curious about how she was holding it. Her voice was muted, barely a whisper.


    "I am fine." His own voice was as low, the sensation of danger hidden in the dark so close it was terrifying.


    "Good. Just stay quiet." The dark pressed down on him, stifling, and he kept his voice low to draw no danger as he answered.


    "There''s something out there."


    "Yeah. We''re over the Everfree," she sounded almost subdued for her. "Sound carries. Let''s get there without monsters."


    "What happens if they hear us?" Her grin was far cockier than he liked, yellow lantern light glinting on white teeth.


    "We''ve gotta reputation to uphold."


    "And a basket," he reminded her, and she laughed. The steady beat of wings filled the air as he let the conversation die, feeling the brush of air on his face as the balloon travelled onward. Rainbow kept pace by the basket, glancing round eagle-eyed. "What happened to your Princess Celestia?"


    "You don''t know?" Rainbow sounded surprised.


    "I thought you would give me the faster answer." A courteous lie, but Twilight had been impossible to distract from her list once she had begun to make it.


    "Princess Celestia was about to raise the sun, and this other alicorn appeared. Said she was Nightmare Moon, Celestia''s sister, and kicked Celestia clear to Canterlot. The sun and the moon kind of collided and set. It''s been dark ever since." That told him enough to know that he knew nothing at all, but the sun had died and he did not need to know more to help the people he had met here. When gods fought, mortals suffered.


    "You hear that?" Suddenly Rainbow was alert, all business. He looked round, listened in the dark. All he could hear was the sound of soft wingbeats, the pegasi flying and all he could see were the lanterns.


    "There!" He pointed, voice raised slightly, as one of the lanterns blinked. Something had flown in front of it, between the balloon and the pegasus guard. Rainbow was moving as he pointed, straight to a patch of blackness darker than the night, and kicked out at something that folded and fell.


    "Take ''em down! It''s not like we haven''t tangled with monsters before and totally whooped their sorry butts!" She matched words to actions, another birdlike shape briefly illuminated by her lantern before two back hooves knocked the creature out of the sky.


    "Harpies!" He heard her warning shout as the pegasi split up, to engage their enemies. It wasn''t a fair fight, The pegasi were stronger, faster, but they were wearing lanterns, The harpies could see in the dark, falling on the pegasi from impossible angles, ambushing them from what should be empty sky. Their own dark feathers blended in with the night, making them near-invisible.


    Above him, fabric ripped. The basket tilted horribly and began to descend, dragging the pegasi in the traces down with it. Clinging to the edge of the basket he fumbled for the bolts, pulling at them with numb fingers until the metal turned. Suddenly free, the two pegasi shot forward, vanishing into the darkness. Praying there was enough of a balloon left to act as a parachute, he clutched the ropes, trying to stop them tangling with the burner.


    A sudden gust came from behind him but no lantern light, and he ducked as something whistled over his head. He lashed out blindly backwards, feeling feathers break under his fist. A outraged animal shriek let him know it wasn''t a pegasus he''d struck, and he caught a handful of the dark pinions, yanking them out as a huge talon struck for his head. Slashing claws opened his shirt, drew a line of fire across his chest as the ropes before him parted. Crying out in shock as he lost his grip, he fell, hearing the creature''s screech of triumph, reaching for the collar, knowing anyone nearby would not survive his transformation - and was caught.


    Blue forelegs hooked under his arms from behind, slowing his stop proficiently with barely a jolt.


    "Come on!" she shouted, wings driving them forward.


    "The others?"


    "Want us to go on ahead." She didn''t sound happy about it, but then the easy confidence returned."You get the sun up and we can beat these things easy. Get on my back. You''re screwing up my aerodynamics." Unsure what to do, he was suddenly dropping again, yelping as he landed awkwardly across a blue back."Get your legs outta the way of my wings." Obediently, he folded his legs as far forward as he could, gripping with his knees as he''d learned since childhood, and clung onto her neck.


    "Hang on!" The wind stole his reply as she tensed and leapt forward in the air. Fast as they had been going, it was nothing to this. Behind them he caught glimpses among the lanterns of the bird-bat-things as they wheeled in mid-air, tossed helplessly in their wake.


    He buried his face in blue fur to shield it from the wind and the whipping rainbow mane. As the world dissolved into colours he could see behind his eyelids, a chord thrummed through his bones, felt not heard, and sound ceased.


    Slowly he raised his head, cracked an eyelid a fraction. A rainbow was retreating ahead of them. Carefully he looked down. As the waves of light passed, he caught glimpses of towns, villages, ponies looking up amazed, lanterns held close, for the scant moments as it passed, falling into droplets of light that slowly faded. He snatched a breath from the wind, and it felt like facing into a gale. Quietly he breathed the only word that fitted.


    "Awesome."


    "Course it''s awesome," she shouted without looking back."I did it!" Confident as always, but he wasn''t sure if it counted as arrogant when she could back it up.


    #


    She glided down to a perfect stop on the mountain top, posed up on back one hoof. He spoiled it when he tumbled off, laying flat on the ground and gasping for breath.


    Rainbow stretched her wings, checking the flight pinions. With a quick birdlike jerk of the head, she pulled a broken feather free and smirked at him.


    "Bet ya don''t know any ponies who could do that."


    "Yes." He smirked back as her glare became indignant, and pointed a hand towards her."You." It was amazing how fast her expression changed. While she was still preening, he rolled over, getting his feet under him, and raised the lantern.


    It was a square plateau, maybe one hundred feet across. The mountain peaked on one side, high beyond their lanterns, dropped off into nothingness and darkness below. There was scarcely space to move or stretch. Hard granite wouldn''t burn like dirt.


    "So, do your thing," she said, impatient.


    "Is the mountain clear? If there is anyone on it, they will die."


    "It''s been clear since the Princesses fought and Canterlot got kicked off the side," she said, tartly."The city''s in the lake." That was definitive, unless in this world fish spoke.


    "I will cast once you are away from here," he reminded her, drawing a difficult breath in the thin air."After one year, the darkness will return. I shall need food and water then. Nothing will survive here, perhaps not the rock itself." Shivering in the cold he began to disrobe, folding the clothes carefully. She wheeled, turning away, and then peered back.


    "What are you doing? This for the spell?"


    "It is not a spell, Rainbow Dash. It is simply being what truly I am." It would be a long year, but he had been alone for longer. And for less cause. His gift usually brought death. Let it now bring life.


    "So you''re like a baby sun, or something?"


    "Something. A young sun is close."


    "Hey, does this make me the only pegasus to raise the sun?" He laughed as she struck a proud pose on the mountain, and slapped her rump like the ponies he knew. She jumped and nickered indignantly.


    "Get," he said fondly, picking up the folded clothes and passed them to her. She stuffed them in the saddlebags, folded down for lower air resistance."Please, bring these back at the end of the year."


    "Got it." She nodded, waiting. It was so cold up here now he could hardly breathe, but that would not be a problem for long. His fingers found the collar, sticking lightly to the icy metal.


    "Fly for your town, do not look back. I shall give you a count of ten before I begin."


    "Awesome. Hey, you only have to give me five." In a swirl of feathers she was gone, her voice fading behind her. He gave her twenty. His fingers unlatched the collar. The sun rose.


    #


    On a mountaintop in a land of equines, the sun sleeps peacefully. Sometimes it is a lion, sometimes it has wings, and always it shines. Those below have grown used to light that never moves, to lanterns that suck in light to render blessed shade. Under its constant light, they farm and study, stockpiling the food and fuel they need to live.


    They have learned to live with cellars and blackout curtains, and have grown skilled with the use of shades and reflectors so the trees do not green on only one side. The vegetation is plush and verdant as the light never ends. The houses bleach in the side facing the light, and spell stones drink in the light to store it against Year End when the sun will go out.


    Too close to the blaze and rain evaporates before it can fall. The ground lies in ashes and powder and the city lies unplundered, for those that approach too close go from sunburn, to burns, to ashes.


    And each clock-measured morning, the citizens bless the sun, thankful, for they know that it could be so much worse...

 Smudged

    All irregularities will be handled by the forces controlling each dimension. Transuranic heavy elements may only be used where there is no salvageable life. Heavy atomic weights are available: Arsenic, Caesium, Francium, Lead, Mercury, Plutonium, Radon, and Uranium.


    Radon and Arsenic have been assigned.


    Jay stepped out of nothingness, nearly losing his balance as leaf mulch slipped under his foot. Grabbing the nearest thing - a branch - to save himself with his free hand, he yelped as his passenger grabbed onto his torc to avoid a fall, pulling it tight. Choking he turned his head to get the pressure off his throat, tried to release her hands as they tightened, cutting off air. Setting his back against the tree trunk, he managed to get his arm under her for better support, prying the girl''s fingers off his collar one by one.


    "It''s OK. It''s OK." he said hoarsely, when he could breathe again, knowing she couldn''t understand him. It was the tone that mattered. "You OK, LaVonna?" The child smiled and settled, bushy head nestling against his shoulder. God knows what the translator was telling her, since she didn''t speak any language of her own, but she seemed to like being spoken to. Even if it was essential, Jay really wasn''t convinced LaVonna being sent on any mission was a good idea. She was too young to understand what she had to do, and he wasn''t sure he had a good idea either.


    Even so, it was more of a briefing than they usually got: Salman''s ability would make things unimaginably worse, and his own curse - he still couldn¡¯t think of it as anything else - was useless as the problem was silicate, not organic. But the problem was still a life form, and so she could affect it. They''d know it when you see it, he had been told, which was a really useless briefing. Threatening to refuse got indifferent acceptance and ''then everything on that reality dies''. Gee, thanks for the guilt trip.


    Since they wouldn''t tell him more, he gave up trying. Stuffing his pockets with chocolate bars and a rubber bouncy ball, he had picked up LaVonna because it was easier than trying to explain what they needed to do. Now they were here, in a forest, at night, and he still wasn''t sure what his first ever mission actually was. If he took his torc off the forest and everything in it would die in seconds so that couldn''t be the problem.


    "This is a forest," he said out loud to LaVonna, "and those are fields." She was beginning to look round, still clinging to him as if she was scared of the dark, and he shifted her weight to his hip as he straightened up. The girl was too heavy for him to carry easily, but if he put her down she was strong enough to pull her hand free and run off if she saw something interesting. With a town nearby that could be catastrophic, for them or her. As long as he could keep her interest, he could keep her from running off, and he really didn''t want to deal with a ten-year-old playing hide and seek at whatever-o''clock this was. The road was just visible from where they were, being round the base of a hill behind them, and he started to walk. A road sign or two might tell him where they were, because he was completely lost.


    A car engine started and he jumped, laughing at his own surprise at the utterly mundane noise. Would have been nice to know there were people here, but he guessed there had to be people, or there wouldn¡¯t be anyone to die if they didn''t come. The sound was behind the hill, and he hung back cautiously as it got louder, just in case this was the threat. LaVonna looked towards the sound, fascinated but not afraid. Jay set her down, putting a hand on her shoulder ready to slip her torc if it wasn''t a car.


    Rounding the corner, tires kicking up dust on the road, the car came into view, a real classic. Bright blue, a convertible with the top down, and the rounded headlights and gorgeous lines of a fifties Plymouth. What was in the passenger seat wasn''t bad looking either, but her clothes looked like something his mother would - an image of empty clothes and ashes lying on the kitchen floor, don''t think about it ¨C dated clothes. And tight ones.


    The blond guy in the front seat was steering one-handed, his arm round the shoulders of the girl who was snuggling really close. Jay grinned appreciation, watching the car accelerate towards the town lights, engine roaring. Good going, guy, whoever you are. Car like that took a lot to keep running, but what Jay would have given to take that on his road trip.


    They weren''t the threat. No chance. Salman would have fried two teenagers in a car along with everything else, and if he took his collar off - don''t think about it.


    A shooting star. He paused, watching, and pointed it out to LaVonna. She looked up unafraid and then her brow furrowed as she pulled back. It was getting bigger, no, it was getting closer. As the blaze seared across his nightvision he threw himself over her with a cry. There was no crashing impact, just the sound of something tearing through trees and branches. Then silence.This novel''s true home is a different platform. Support the author by finding it there.


    Raising his head, he couldn¡¯t see any signs of the meteor. It must have come down in the forest nearby. Jay grimaced ruefully as he stood up, brushing mud off himself with one hand while he helped LaVonna up with the other. Know it when you see it, huh? He''d seen it and that had to be it. Taking LaVonna''s hand as she pointed mutely into the forest, he nodded and slowly began to work their way through the trees.


    The woods at night were dark, the trees just thin enough that it was not pitch black. LaVonna didn¡¯t seem to have problems, but she''d grown up in the jungle. After the second time he tripped on a root and she giggled, he let the feral girl take the lead. Picking her way cat-footed through the trees, he clung to her hand, grateful for the reflective strips on her clothing or he''d have seen nothing of her at all. She hesitated, pointed again, and he came up next to her.


    The crater was smaller than he''d thought, visible in the light from the gap where it had cleared the trees. There was something in the middle of it, a pocked thing like an acorn or pineapple, Jay couldn¡¯t see it clearly, but something felt wrong. Most meteors burned up in to atmosphere and those pockmarks were too regular to be natural. He put his hand to his torc on reflex, then remembered that there could be people around if they''d seen what he just did, and that only LaVonna''s power would affect it. She was shifting a little uneasily, staring at the thing and huddling close to his leg as she pointed again, worry written all over her face.


    Smiling to reassure her, he knelt down and unlatched her collar, pulling it away as she grabbed for it. Around them the grass browned immediately. Before she could get upset he pulled the ball out of his pocket and bounced it, setting off the flashing lights inside. Her attention was captured immediately. He bounced it again, letting her go as she squirmed and the tree next to him aged and blew away like dust. Jay shivered, reminded of that morning he woke up when the town had¡­ her curse was closer to his than Salman''s.


    As long as the ball was here, she probably wouldn¡¯t run off. If she did he''d be chasing her through an expanding trail of dead forest, to get her before she reached a town. Smiling even if he didn¡¯t feel like it, he threw the ball hand to hand, watching her stare enthralled. Holding it up, with a flick of his wrist he deliberately threw it over her head towards the edge of the crater. She chased it, giggling and oblivious, as the forest died around her.


    It was good to see her laugh. LaVonna was the same age as his girlfriend''s little sister - don''t think about her, don''t think about what happened to her, not now, not here - she should have been playing with her phone and discussing cartoons and clothes, not chasing a toy made for three-year-olds because she''d never seen one before.


    He guessed they all had their own tragedies. Their powers ¨C curses - had ensured that. The ball rolled at his feet as she giggled and waited for him to throw it back. This time he aimed just towards the other side of the crater, still well-short of it. LaVonna chased the ball, grinning widely, bare feet crushing through dead grass. They''d tried putting shoes on her, but she hated them and the callous on her soles was as tough as leather. She tumbled over herself as she caught the flashing ball, sitting up and waving it over her head in triumph. Jay smiled and clapped.


    On the side of the crater, a small scrap of something gelatinous heaved and shrivelled as it crawled up over the edge.


    LaVonna glared at it, disgust obvious on her face, and scrambled to her feet. Backing towards Jay frowning, she pointed at the ooze. He nodded, gesturing her back here and then ruffling her head as she cringed and giggled. Backing out of reach and clutching her ball, fifty yards away, trees died as she moved. He held up her torc invitingly, and she looked at it and then at the ball, shuffling her feet indecisively. Jay cringed inwardly. This wasn''t a good place for her to decide to be difficult just because. He sweetened the deal, holding up a now warm and slightly squashed chocolate bar with the torc.


    The girl was still torn but chocolate won out. She shuffled forward, and eventually, reluctantly, offered the ball in exchange. Jay clipped her torc closed with relief, closing her hands back over the ball and trying not to laugh at her wide grin as she realised she got to keep both.


    He sat her on a rock covered with dust that had been moss, enjoying her chocolate bar, and looked for a branch. It was quite a distance to reach the trees, but he could still see her clearly, across the open space that had been a forest. Her range was terrifying. He''d have had to walk a way beyond the remaining trees to find an intact and fallen branch, and decided that leaving her alone that long wasn''t smart. Instead he jogged to the nearest tree and hacked a thin branch down with his penknife, jumping and twisting to pull it free before he ran back.


    LaVonna hadn¡¯t moved and watched with interest, licking the chocolate wrapper clean, as he approached the shrivelled mass by the crater. She wasn''t going anywhere near it. Smart kid.


    Cautiously he poked at the cloudy ooze-like thing. It cracked, falling apart under its own weight as if flash-frozen. What was left was little more than sand. Whatever life it had had, it was dead now. He straightened up with a sigh of relief. This had to be the risk they''d been sent for, some invader, a pathogen that could eat-


    The ball hit him on the arm, as he belatedly remembered the other risk of the forest: a bored ten-year-old. "Ow!" he protested, not seriously, stopping to pick it up and throw it back only to see the state of his hands. Brown. He looked at his sleeve. Chocolate smears. Jay sighed and went to throw the sticky and now dirt-covered ball back only to see she wasn''t interested. She wasn''t looking at him any more, but up into the branches. He walked back fast, before she could decide to run off, and followed her gaze. From the branches a squirrel watched them, bright-eyed and suspicious. LaVonna''d never seen one before, or been to a park or.... Jay took her hand. Chocolate squidged. From the car he guessed it was the fifties, so he''d have to be cautious, but nothing said they couldn''t take some time off before they went home. And find somewhere to clean the chocolate smears off.

 Enmeshed

    <div>


    Sand shifted underfoot as Jay stepped out of nothing onto the bright summer beach. Blinking in the sudden light he threw up a hand to shield his eyes from the sun, blinding in the clear blue skies. The sea sparkled as each ripple caught the light. It was heavenly, and all he wanted to do was lie down on the beach and nap.


    If he did, he knew he would never wake up.


    His new employers didn''t send people like him to safe places. This time he had been told only that he should remove his collar on arrival and not to get bit. Jay''s first thought had been zombies, but in this tranquillity that seemed impossible. He''d have heard them coming surely, seen some signs that they had been here. Instead it was peaceful, beautiful, and hot.


    Round the curve of the bay, he could see buildings, a dock, and a jetty which even had a rowing boat moored to it. Whatever the supposed threat to all life was it hadn''t destroyed those, but if he took his collar off he would.


    Reluctantly he reached for the metal, looking at the trees swaying in the light wind, the forest that stretched up from the shores. It was beautiful, light glinting between the trees, silver rays twinkling in the air as the wind moved the branches. But whatever this was, it was so bad that if Jay hadn''t gone they would have sent LaVonna and hoped. So bad that they hadn''t sent Salman, claiming he would make it worse since he couldn''t get the whole island at once. So bad that they would have done that even knowing there were still people here.


    Jay couldn''t do it, not without knowing, not without being sure there was no way to save anyone. The briefing said the people were part of the problem, but with the translator he could talk to them. Negotiate with them, possibly. Maybe this time there would be no murder.


    It was too hot to jog so he walked along the sand, enjoying the tropical morning. Out in the bay white lines glistened along the waves, fish tangled below the waterline. If the nets were out someone had to be here. Along the top of the nets the light brown specks he had to shade his eyes to see did little to mar the pristine whiteness of the lines.


    The skin on his shoulders was beginning to redden and Jay picked up the pace. The buildings were ahead. After he had checked them, if there was no one there he could get into the forest and out of the sun. If there was, a bottle of water and some sunscreen would be really great about now.


    Jay stopped well short of the buildings, remembering far too many horror films. Getting shot by a survivor would be embarrassing. They were in good repair, a larger building that had to be a dock office and a lean-to shed alongside it. The door of the larger was half-open, propped by a rock.


    "Hullo? Hi?" He called out, and waited. There was no response, just the tranquil silence of the island broken only by the faint rustling of leaves and the sound of waves on sand. There wasn''t even birdsong.


    Jay tried calling again, and again there was no answer. Dead silence and abandoned buildings. He tensed. He had seen enough horror films to know when he was in one. A finger ready at the collar release, he crept sideways towards the waterline, trying to get a peek through the half-open door. There were no people in there, no bodies either, just a desk with something wood and metal in pieces on it. Creeping a little closer, the smashed object looked like an old-school radio, and a smashed radio wasn''t a good sign.


    He jumped back, looking up. In the shadow under the overhanging roof, it had seemed like the shadow moved. Staring straight at it Jay couldn''t see a thing, virtually blinded by the bright sun. Since he wasn''t an idiot he wasn''t going any closer. Entering the building to search for clues meant walking under the eaves. Yeah, no.


    Picking his way round the side of the buildings, expecting to be jumped at any moment, Jay kept to the sand. The shade of the forest was nice, but he wasn''t going to risk the forest until he knew what was doing on. Out of the corner of his eye he caught sight of patches of bark shimmering oddly, shadows that seemed to be the wrong shape. It couldn''t be the sun playing tricks, he was certain: some of the darker patches were changing shape when he looked away. Almost he pulled the collar away, let his curse take the forest, but - his mother''s clothes empty on the kitchen floor - he couldn''t do it. If there were people here he could spare, people here he could save, he had to try.


    He was glad when he got passed the buildings, back to the full width of the bay and the safety of the hot sun. The little wooden jetty stuck out here, more of the fishing lines trailing from it into the water. By the shore on the tideline, legs in the water and tangled in the fishing lines, there lay a person.


    "Hi?" Jay called again, nervously, seeing the odd glitter off the surface of the jetty. From what he could make out in the glare, the person''s legs were rising and falling limply with the waves. Corpses weren''t going to answer.


    The outline looked a bit off, softened somehow. Maybe the culprit was someone like him, a victim of a power they could not control. Someone he could help, like he''d been helped. Jay walked down, resolute, but trying to watch the buildings, the forest, and the person at the same time. He had to know.


    It was a man''s body, face down in the sand for which Jay silently thanked everything. The stink wasn''t as bad as he''d expected, even with the dark morbidities marking the limbs and darker patches under the fine silk blanket that covered him. The blanket trailed into the water, extended into the fishing lines that ran into the sea. The dark shapes were moving, running along the lines from the water onto the body. He couldn''t breathe. His mind wouldn''t assemble the pieces, allow him to recognise what he was seeing as what looked like rot moved under the skin. Each of the patches was moving as he watched, moving like the underside of the jetty in the shade, moving like the treetrunks in shadow, flowing as a rip opened in the skin and the legs extended out, like hairs, like a river of spider crawling out from under the skin, crawling towards -


    Jay screamed, ripping the collar from his throat as he stumbled back and fell on his backside in the sand. The onrushing spiders curled up and died, smoke rising upwards from the thousands of tiny corpses as more charged forward only to die and smoke in turn. Jay didn''t move, he couldn''t, as he watched the tide charge and die, a slowly expanding radius of horror as his power, the gas that gave him his name, spread on the air. The man''s corpse began to smoke, to burn, the jetty to dry and rot. There was a crash from inside the radio building but Jay could only focus on the pattern of tiny brown bodies, eight legs curled in their death throes, falling like rain from under the eaves.Support the creativity of authors by visiting the original site for this novel and more.


    He scrambled to his feet, nowhere to run, for he was the safest place on the island, but he wanted the chance if he could. He really didn''t want any part of himself touching the sand. They almost sent LaVonna, and that thought horrified him before he realised they''d have sent the child without a collar. She wouldn''t have seen any of this, just seen the island and trees dying around her.


    With a crash the first of the trees fell at the edge of the forest, burned through. Behind it the jungle''s true canopy blocked the sky, not leaves but a thick blanket of silk that blocked the sun and under it the horrors. Bird skeletons were revealed as the edges smoked and burned away, and then the first larger bipedal one swung free as its anchor ropes rotted. The people were part of the problem? That was a sick way to put it, he thought, furious at the briefing. What crashed to the floor, hands pinned behind its back, had once been a woman. His curse meant he did not have to look at it for long. It was still too long.


    The spiders were scattering, rushing upwards to cluster at the top of the trees. A cloud of spiderlings rose into the air on silken parachutes, carried on the sea breeze across the island and out over the sea. Jay laughed bitterly. They might float, the spiders might make seagoing rafts where they fell to the water''s surface, but they were driven by the same winds that carried his curse, and his curse was faster. The rear of the cloud of spiders was simply falling away as the effect spread through, and the cloud was gone in seconds. They had been right, Salman would have been worse than useless with the pressure waves from his explosions scattering the spiders far further than the wind alone would take them. Jay jumped as a crash echoed, nearly losing his footing in the sand. The remains of the radio hut''s roof fell in as the rafters collapsed, and the wooden lean-to was already gone. There was nothing here left to handle. Reluctantly, wanting this over with faster, he walked up towards the forest of dying trees.


    Jay had been more nerd than jock in school, prefering bands and vigilante posters to sports, but he was fit enough to run even in this heat. Picking up the pace, struggling a little in the sun he began to run round the beach, following the island''s perimeter. The forest, the spiders, died in his wake. He''d taken out a town overnight, without even knowing. What he was doing to the island would be much the same, but this horror deserved it.


    If he could get upwind, then he wouldn''t have to move again, wouldn''t have to see what other -


    Jay wasn''t ready for the man, already smoking, already dying, who threw himself at him knife upraised. The blade fell from skeletal fingers a second before the bones did. They were gone before they reached the grass. The hell? Were the locals actually defending these things? Jay almost put the collar back on. Almost, and then he remembered the woman''s hands had been tied. He slowed, approached more cautiously.


    "Quickly!" It was the first human voice he had heard since arriving and the translator handled it effortlessly. "Quickly, we must save the Little Sisters. Get the egg sacs to the canoes." Yeah, people were trying to save things that ate people. Why''d he suspect their plan involved putting other people on the menu? Not happening.


    Jay ran towards the voices, not even thinking anymore, through forest that smoked and burned into nothing before he got close, trees trunks that fell towards him and were smoke and nothing before they hit.


    Skidding over rocks and loose soil, the leaf layer underfoot gone before his feet touched down, he saw the wooden canoes as he came to the widening edge of the forest. The canoes rotted and burned. The spiders that covered them died instantly.


    "Monster!" A stone hit his back lightly, fell away smoking as Jay turned. The men glared furiously from beyond the forest''s retreating edge, inching backwards as more of the greenery began to smoke. They had stone-tipped spears slung across their back, and the one who had thrown his glared furious resentment at Jay. "You will not rob me of my vengeance!"


    The men behind him were holding clay pots, the lids sealed. Jay could guess what was in them, but it was the sea of spiders massing at their feet yet giving clear space to each man, that set Jay''s skin crawling.


    "Who are you?" Jay called, across the increasing distance.


    "Naeta," the leader said, readying another spear. Jay braced himself to dodge, even if he didn''t need to. The wood would be gone before it reached him. The fringes of the forest pushed back as he waited, forcing the islanders to give another step.


    "What are you doing with those spiders?" Jay called again. If they could talk, maybe they could negotiate. Maybe the vengeance was justified and he was going after the wrong people. Maybe he wouldn''t have to kill anyone else. Naeta drew himself up, speaking in English as his mouth movements suddenly matched his words.


    "They are my little sisters, born from the body of my brother, Nokiki. When we were forced from our island he cursed this place and came back here to die." There was an implacable hatred in his words, and it sounded justified. All Jay could think of was the body at the tide-line, the woman with bound hands. Without his curse, he''d have died screaming too.


    "But the people here?" He hoped that had been the spiders alone, an accident, because the alternative was downright creepy.


    "The invaders who claimed to love the island? To want peace here." Naeta drew himself up regally "They have died from the curse." And the spiders smashed the radio and tied the woman''s hands, Jay thought. An island full of human-eating spiders and a psychotic fanatic trying to help them.


    "And what are you going to do with the uh-" Creepy as hell spiders - "your Little Sisters?" If the guy really thought he was preserving his family, then Jay guessed he could understand. Even if Naeta needed serious psychiatric help. Maybe they could negotiate a way to give the island back to him, since the spiders could obviously tolerate the locals. He sure as hell didn''t think anyone else would want to live here.


    "Send them. Every country. Every city. Everywhere not of this island. The curse shall spread to all who did not help us. All not of the island will die screaming." There was a fanatical light in Naeta''s eyes and Jay''s sympathy evaporated. If it had been LaVonna here she didn''t have his range, didn''t speak any language, couldn''t destroy dead matter like spears. They would have murdered the child without a thought.


    "And the people who''ve suffered just like you?" he demanded, kind of guessing that reasoning from a man claiming his sisters were deadly spiders wasn''t going to work. "The Native American reservations, the genocide survivors, the -"


    "They did not help us!" Naeta''s bitter shout condemned the world. It wouldn''t be the people responsible who''d suffer though. The normal people, Jay thought, like him, like his family and friends, all dead because of this guy. His hometown, not waking to a nightmare of ghosts and empty clothes, but screaming, convulsing, bodies being webbed in silk as the Little Sisters crawled industriously across birds and pets and people. It would be a new nightmare for him and he wasn''t grateful for it.


    "Wait until he turns his back," one of the men said, dropping back another pace, "and then I shall throw my knife in it."


    Jay looked up sharply, saw the incredulous expression on the men''s faces and gritted his teeth.


    "Yeah, asshole, I understood that."


    He stepped forward.

 Spring Break

    <div>


    Spring Break


    "So, relax, enjoy yourselves. There''s nothing human here but you, if you need to take your collars off." Jay said sardonically, as he stepped out of nothing into a bright summer''s day. LaVonna bounced up and down, clinging onto his hand as Salman joined them. "Nice briefing."


    "Extremely helpful," Salman said with deep insincerity, "but, it is beautiful here."


    Jay had to agree. The summer sun glittered off the lake waters as wavelets rippled in the light breeze. There were rowing boats tied to the short wooden pier, and a set of painted chalets faced the water. LaVonna pulled free of his hand, bending down to examine the grass with obvious delight. He pulled his jacket off, enjoying the warmth.


    "Rowboats, a maintained pier, and painted chalets. Whatever got rid of the people here it was recent." Jay shifted weight uneasily, surveying the glorious sunlit woods behind the chalets with suspicion.


    "Or this may merely be a place they send agents to relax," Salman said optimistically.


    "Yeah, or they''ve got something they want nuked, disintegrated, and soul-drained."


    "You are a cynic," Salman reproved and then laughed, raising a hand to his torc, "and probably correct."


    "Anyone bring suntan lotion?" Jay joked. Salman shook his head, lifting the bag he had brought with him.


    "Only clothes. We are in cabin twelve. Let us see what supplies we have be-ah!" Salman lunged, an instant ahead of Jay, scooping up LaVonna as she jumped up and ran towards the lake bank. She struggled, reaching out towards the water with both arms.


    "Do you think she can swim?" Jay asked, and Salman grimaced, patting her head to try to distract her from her determined efforts to get to the lake.


    "I think we had best teach her." He fell silent, and Jay did the same. How to teach someone who spoke no language at all? Giving up, Jay shrugged.


    "I''ll look for a shallow bit. She can learn to float first," he said. "You have the keys?" Awkwardly, Salman tried to fumble them out without letting go of the squirming ten-year-old, and throw them to Jay. He missed as she kicked out again, the keys rolling towards the water.Love this novel? Read it on Royal Road to ensure the author gets credit.


    "Fornicating. Damnation," he cursed, wrapping both arms round the determined child. If she''d been wearing shoes those kicks would have hurt.


    "You mean fucking hell," Jay muttered, edging carefully down the lakebank towards the keys.


    "That is what I said." Salman grimaced, shrugging expressively. "The translators."


    "The translators," Jay agreed, resigned. The devices were very good, but they had their limits. He had no idea at all what language LaVonna heard, or if she just got their untranslated speech.


    Scooping the keys up, Jay scrambled back up to the level ground, wiping the muddy metal off on his jeans. He hurried up the path towards their two-week home-from-home, opening the yellow door to let Salman get LaVonna inside and hastily closing it before she could run back to the lake.


    With the door closed, the girl stopped struggling and started looking round intrigued. It was a decent chalet, one large room with bunks and kitchen area and a smaller one off to the side. Whoever stocked the place had left in a hurry. The sheets were folded in a pile on top of bare mattresses, ready for them to make the beds. The kitchen stock was piled on the table.


    "Let her roam?" Jay asked, glancing around the two rooms and rushing across to close a window.


    "It seems safe." Salman agreed, putting her down with obvious relief. Immediately she scurried up the ladder to the top bunk, surefooted as a cat. As she peered down at them, beaming, they began to check the rest of the chalet. In the bedroom drawers, Jay found more clothes, and grinned.


    "Nice. Swimsuits are poly-nylon. They won''t dissolve if I-" Jay put a finger to his collar and Salman nodded from his examination of the kitchen side.


    "Good. The food that is here is in airtight containers. So long as we are careful to reseal it, it shall also be preserved." He checked the taps. "Running water, and it is marked drinkable."


    "Seems like a great place. I wonder why the people left?"


    From the next room there was an ominous creak. Jay''s hand flew to his collar. Salman did the same. Exchanging a quick glance, both of them walked towards the door to the next room. Carefully they peered round.


    LaVonna grinned at them brilliantly from the low bed, the springs creaking as the bed flexed under her weight. Jay let out a sigh of relief, looking at Salman sheepishly as he lowered his hand. LaVonna jumped experimentally, giggled, and began to bounce. Peals of laughter rang out, along with the creaking of springs.


    "It was inevitable," Salman said and Jay nodded.


    "If there is a bed," Jay replied, with heavy gravitas, "little sisters will bounce on it."


    They looked at each other and burst out laughing. Jay recovered first.


    "We have the bunks. She takes the bed."


    "Unless she has nightmares. And then she will have the bunks and we will be kicked out of bed entirely." Salman smiled, and Jay rubbed his forehead ruefully. They had both had experience of waking up with the girl curled on their pillow, or under their bed, or on their feet. Usually they woke up on the floor.


    "Somehow we''ll cope," he said dryly, and grinned. "This should be a great holiday. Where are we anyway?"


    "I am unsure," the older teen said with a shrug, "but the pamphlet on the table said it was called Camp Crystal Lake."

 Oasis

    At the first fruiting of the fig tree the man appeared on the branchpath, slipped and fell to the broad green leaf below. Lily-yo cursed, whistling for a dumbler seed as she ran. No adult should fall to the Green and no rare male could be lost to the tribe. As green teeth pierced up from below through the leaf she released the dumbler seed. It was too late.


    For all plant reflexes were fast, animal reflexes were faster. The trapper-snapper''s jaws closed, smoking and falling apart as they did. The man stood up, clipping a silver thing to his belt, but the leaf below him was already smoking, decaying. Ignoring the risks as the nettlemoss fell apart, he climbed down swiftly towards Ground, vanishing into the green dark. Lily-yo climbed to a higher branch.


    By the second fruiting, the branches were parting and falling. Daphe had stepped too close to the place with no branches. She became smoke and then nothing. All knew a burnurn focusing its rays to burn branches was to be avoided. This one must be huge. Then the nuthuts began to fall. The cement still held the dwellings to trunks, but the trees beneath were unsound. Clat, small, light, who had seen five fruitings, went back for her soul. Her hut fell with her in it. The remaining tribe left their souls behind when Lily-yo moved the tribe on.


    In the third fruiting the flyman came. Knowing their enemies'' routes, Lily-yo took the tribe on the perilous journey around to the other side of the larger not-plant-patch. The flymen saw them on the other side. They tried to go through the patch. They did not come out.


    In the fourth fruiting, at the edge of the not-plant-patch as it pushed the tribe back further, Lily-yo saw Ground for the first time. Her youngest, born this season, would never see a world without it.


    In the fifth fruiting, Lily-yo, now old, knew it was time to pass on, for she had lost Clat and Daphe and five others. She could not lead. For her and the adults, the tribe prepared to climb to the Tips for sky-burial, even though they could not carry their souls with them. But as they climbed they saw that the path had been severed. The Tips were gone, the treelake at the topforest out of reach, cut off and taken by the no-plant-patch. Lily-yo did not cry. They returned and she led the tribe as she must for she was eldest.


    In the eighth fruiting, Gren noticed something long cutting through the no-plant-patch. It was yellow and black with strange stripes, the colour of poison, and light to touch. It was not plant and when he tried it anyway it was not good to eat. It stretched and broke easily. Throwing nettlemoss across showed that to walk on this side was to live. The younger of the tribes dropped to Ground, swam in water without crocksocks, cut the youngling plants that sprouted. Lily-yo was cautious. To cross the yellow and black vine far in any direction was still death.Stolen from Royal Road, this story should be reported if encountered on Amazon.


    In the nineth fruiting the man Haris found something hard, not wood, not growing, in the Ground. With a man''s skill to carve souls, he shaped it with other things like it. The blade he shaped cut better than any wooden knife or sharpened branch. Embedded in a stick, the tribe could kill the nettlemoss without being stung, cut the tough hides of trapper snappers. Ground was a strange place.


    In the tenth fruiting, the first of the immense grey traverser threads anchoring earth to moon snapped. The great spider-like traversers already on their voyage through vacuum were knocked astray, the plants'' seeding journey never to be completed. Through the void in the trees, Lily-yo held her new-born and watched the great grey web in its slow fall to earth. Those that fell towards the no-plant-patch smoked and fell to dust. Now she could never be sky-buried, for the sky was out of reach.


    In the twelth fruiting, the no-plant-patch had pushed back further. To see the red orb that hung in the void above the trees was to fear it would fall. The gap in the Green was huge, and the tribe had grown used to the red light, twining creeper with leaves to shelter skin when it reddened and blistered. Ground mixed with water made mud to smear over skin, and mud-covered skin did not burn. With the crush of berries, colour was possible. Lily-yo did not indulge. She had to lead.


    In the fourteenth fruiting, Lily-yo, now ancient and soulless, dared a berrywhisk''s tendrils to cut free its seeds. Placed on the ground in patches, they took fruit quickly, and were cut back as quickly. So long as they grew, the tribe was fed and here they could gather in safety in numbers. Lily-yo doubted herself. Mistakes were death and she was not teaching the new ones to survive the Green.


    In the fifteenth fruiting, the not-traverser landed in the not-plant-patch. Great and silver, with strange fixed silver leaves and flames beneath it, the wind knocked the nuthuts rolling. When something opened in its side and a silver figure stepped out, Lily-yo challenged it as the tribe hid. It removed its head to show another head, a man''s. A rare thing to see a man. They were too rare. "What tribe do you come from?" she asked. He paused.


    "The sky," he said. She knew that.


    "Why are you here?"


    "The-" he said a word that meant nothing, pointing to the red light in the sky "- will no-patch-plant everything. And you. We are here to take your people to the sky."


    Lily-yo, ancient, leader, soulless, seer of thirty-five fruitings of the fig tree, looked at the sky where she had thought she could never be buried, and at the man who was young and healthy and at the void of the no-patch-plant. The time she gave to thought would have killed her in the branches before she knew her answer, and spoke it.


    "We come."


    And in the belly of the great silver not-traverser as it lifted, through the transparent panes that were harder even than burnurn seedpods, she saw in the centre of the now-huge not-plant-patch, the man from fifteen seasons before. He was folding something yellow as the streamer, stowing it as the tribe had their leaf-shelters. He turned, raised a hand to the craft in farewell, and was lost to sight against the Ground.

 Changing Things

    All irregularities will be handled by the forces controlling each dimension. Transuranic heavy elements may only be used where there is no life. Heavy atomic weights are available: Arsenic, Caesium, Francium, Lead, Mercury, Plutonium, Radon, and Uranium.


    Arsenic has been assigned.


    MacReady''s flask was empty. It had been for hours, maybe minutes, since Childs drained the last of it. Had Childs changed his jacket? It didn''t matter now. A condemned man got a last drink.


    The flamethrower was virtually empty. One shot left, or they''d both freeze, which could be what Childs wanted because only MacReady would really die. If he could get back to his sleeping bag he had a torch, a flare, in it but if he went for them he''d give Childs the chance to kill him. Unless Childs was human. How could he tell? He could see his own breath in the cold, but was Childs'' breath gusting? He started to laugh. He started to laugh because it didn''t matter anyway, because everything had been for nothing. It didn''t matter that he''d burned the base, it didn''t matter that Childs might be a thing. It didn''t matter that he was probably going insane from cold and exposure.


    It didn''t matter at all because in the storm and the cold there was another person walking towards them.


    Another human, almost certainly another thing. He only had one shot.


    "The hell?" Childs looked as shocked as a person would be. Maybe he was human. It didn''t matter. MacReady climbed to his feet, wearily stretching fingers he couldn''t feel any more inside his gloves. They just had to work well enough to pull a trigger. The figure stopped.


    "Stay back." A woman''s voice. There weren''t any women on the team, unless the thing was impersonating one of the Norwegians. He halted, as Childs did. If she wouldn''t let them close it argued for her being human, or for seeing the flamethrower and trying to get their guard down.


    Or she was a rescuer, and the Childs-thing was about to escape. He brought the flamethrower up, realised he couldn''t cover both her and Childs, and swung it back to Childs as the man shouted.


    "You with the rescue team?"


    "A rescue team has been dispatched. The helicopter will arrive in one hour." Her voice was precise, accented in a way he hadn''t heard before. English as a second language.


    "We can''t be on it." MacReady''s throat hurt from the cold, and his voice cracked from fatigue, but that fact hadn''t changed.


    "Can''t let this get out." Childs agreed, and that was a first, "but the blood test. We do the blood test, find out who''s human-" Childs took a few paces towards her and she jumped back athletically, feet landing unerringly in the snow.


    "Do not approach." The warning was clear in her voice, and he stopped. Silver glinted in her pocket, frosted with ice. If she had a gun it was a pointless threat. At forty below the mechanism would be frozen solid.


    "There''s nothing to do the test with." MacReady gestured to the ruins with the flamethrower, not caring how Childs took it. It didn''t matter if they were human, he couldn''t be sure they would stay that way.If you encounter this narrative on Amazon, note that it''s taken without the author''s consent. Report it.


    "So we got no way to prove we''re human?" Childs slumped. She shook her head, not lowering the eyes that glinted darkly under the parka hood. Childs shook his head, smiling without humour as the situation dawned on him. "What about you? Who the hell are you?"


    "I am called Miss. Jackson. You would not be familiar with my organisation." MacReady swore. Some government must''ve found out what happened, got half the story and wanted the damn thing as a weapon. He couldn''t let that happen. If it got out, humanity was dead.


    "So what''re you here for?" MacReady asked uninterested, knowing the answer. He just had to get a clear shot on her and Childs. Had to make his last shot count. She lowered the parka hood, showing neat rows of cornrows above the high forehead, frosted at the front with snow.


    "I was sent here to ensure it did not escape." There were ice trails glistening on her cheeks, frozen tear tracks. The base must have got to her, all the bodies. If she was still human.


    "Damn good trick when no one knows we''re here," Childs growled. How the hell was he so lively when MacReady was ready to drop?


    "You missed Blair''s radio. It was easier to create than his transport vessel, so it was built first. He signalled the shore for aid." He cursed, coming to his feet and heard Childs do the same. "The rescue helicopter was dispatched and, due to the danger to humanity, so was I." Blair would never have said anything about a danger to humanity. Was she lying? Had one of the Norwegians got a message out?


    "Then you got to turn them back!" Childs shouted. "You saw what happened here."


    "I have already swept the base and made it safe." Her face was calm but another tear began to fall. "Forgive me. It is the first time I have found something alive to speak to." Rescue had to be a fucking awful job, if you were a human doing it. She had to be lying, because anything that had swept the base would have been infected.


    "You can''t be sure it''s gone," MacReady said in exhaustion, knowing what he had to do. "I burned the base, and then he walked out of the storm."


    "Me? You saying I''m the fucking thing?" Childs turned on him.


    "I know I''m me." MacReady rebutted, frozen tongue sticking to his teeth. "Don''t know shit about you."


    "Yeah, so you say."


    "I burned the thing." The tip of the flamethrower waved wildly around the ruins of the base.


    "Yeah, covering your own tracks. Leave a pretty looking human corpse no one will look twice at."


    "That your plan, Childs? Glad you shared it."


    "I passed the blood test," Childs said into his face, and then turned away sharply and raised his voice. "Hey, lady I passed the blood test, ask about his, eh? He goes off alone with Gary and Niuls and then only he comes back."


    "Are you saying I-"


    "I''m saying you murdered them like you did Clark."


    "You son of a -" MacReady froze, his clenched fist pulled back to punch. What was he thinking? Hit it, get it on his gloves, split his knuckles in the cold, get infected. Carefully he backed away, swinging the flamethrower back to ready position.


    "You got a radio, lady?" he asked, and she shook her head slowly.


    "One is not required for my duty."


    "Your duty? Fuck your duty," Childs said, bitterly, staring down the flamethrower barrel. "What good are you anyway?"


    "I am good at problem solving. I had hoped that something that could speak would negotiate." She looked at Childs for a long moment and Childs started to laugh.


    "Can''t negotiate with that." Childs rubbed a forehead that had turned dull and grey in patches where frostbite was setting in. MacReady scowled. It really didn''t know when to drop the pretence, or it was trying to get the drop on both of them. He had to agree with the statement.


    "Not a chance, sweetheart, it will just eat you." She looked from one to the other of them and then sighed and nodded once. Just once.


    "I understand."


    "Good, then warn the fucking rescue team off," MacReady said.


    "There''s no need. The base is safe. They will not be infected."


    "You can''t possibly know that," Childs scoffed. "Not like there''s any way of detecting the damn thing."


    "Yes. There is." Her fingers tightened round the silvered metal in her pocket. MacReady blinked frosted eyes clear. A detector? That changed everything.


    "Then which of us is-" Childs demanded wildly.


    "Me, him?" MacReady spoke over him.


    "Neither of us?" Child''s voice broke with sudden hope.


    "I am so very sorry," she said quietly, as their voices quieted in expectation. She lowered her hand from her pocket. A silver circlet glittered with frost in her gloved fingers.


    "Both." She took a step forward and was alone in the ruins.