Chapter 1
Prologue:
I couldn’t breathe.... I kept running.
My throat burned. I could hear the Pulsar rifles firing, their beams hitting trees, pavement...people.
I heard the screams...they stretched and distorted as the people who got hit by those beams were burned up from the wound outwards.
The smell of pulse-burning flesh, sinew, and bone...there was no other smell like it.
Moma told me to run, and I didn’t want to. I wanted to be with her.
She screamed at me the way that she did when I spilled juice because I wasn’t paying attention, and I got so scared that I clamped my hands over my ears and ran.
My heart was pounding so hard that my chest hurt.
When Moma screamed like that, it scared me so much that my brain wouldn’t work.
I had to take my hands off of my ears as I ran.
I ran.
I ran and ran and ran until my legs gave out.
I didn’t know where I was, and the panic set in as I curled there on the cold ground.
There were trees and bushes as far as I could see...I was lost, and I didn’t know how to get home.
And then I remembered that there wasn’t a home to go to.
I wanted to cry. There were so many emotions inside my chest that the tears just exploded out of me.
I had to be quiet.
I just stayed there in the brush crying and trying not to make a sound.
I was so scared.
I passed out after a while.
When I came to, there was a light in the distance...it was warm and amber-colored.
It felt.....safe.
My muscles sang as I got up and walked toward the light.
As I got closer, I saw that it was a huge old house. Pretty and dark, except for that glow.
I walked up the porch steps and went to knock, then decided to try the doorknob.
It turned, and the large heavy door opened.
And instead of a small glow...the whole inside was bathed in that amber light.
It flooded out from something on the bookshelf deeper inside the house.
The house was covered in papers in stacks and stuck to walls and such.
I should have wondered who lived here, but I got the sense that...that person was me.
It felt like I was exactly where I was supposed to be.
I walked softly to the bookshelf and saw that the glowing book had words along the spine...Things Are Not What They Seem.
I slipped it off the shelf and heard that old, deep British voice from everywhere at once.
“Well then, shouldn’t you be waking up right about now?”
There was a slight edge of that dry humor that I remembered so well.
“Soren!” I called out to him.
The book in my hands resolved into the semi-translucent image of a man in period clothing, his short tousled white hair and blue eyes filled with both sternness and warmth at the same time.
The knowing smirk, the flair for the dramatic, and his eccentricity.........it was all there.
Soren...my mentor, the scholarly gentleman, with wit and cynicism to spare.
Soren...I missed him so much.
The crinkles around his eyes softened a bit, and he gave a gentle smile.
“Remember, Win...things are never as they seem...”
With that, he faded out.
Chapter 1:
I jolted awake as the transport carrier went over a particularly steep bump in the road.
I stretched and groaned. I hadn’t remembered dropping off, and now my mouth tasted like dirt.
Uck.
Well, it might be a rough-around-the-edges colony world, but at least I could get a shower and brush my teeth.
Syntho coffee would have to do for now.
I took a long pull from the canister in my hand. Blech, it tasted a little worse and had gotten cold, but it was better than nothing.
Caffeine acted as a blocker for me when I was around people, and there were plenty on this transport—there were so many thoughts and feelings pouring off of people that it made it hard to function, curse of having extra abilities, I guess—so I was never without it.
No wonder I fell asleep with it in my hand.
Everyone here was scared, stressed, and looking for work.
Not a fun emotional soup to sit in by any stretch.
The bleariness of sleep faded away, and my mind turned back to the reason I came out here.
I flicked on my comm band and pulled up the news report that had come across the wire two nights ago. I scanned through it again.
This one had caught my eye.
Something seemed off about it....the colonists suddenly going mad...the batches of missing kids, and in another report from a smaller news outlet, they mentioned the elderly going missing in batches too.
That had started a full month and a half before the bouts of rapid-onset insanity.
It didn’t sit right with me.
The report was theorizing a new toxin in the soil, but I really doubted it.
I would love to think it was something that innocuous...but I knew better.
I had seen something like this before...well, a few times before.
And I had a feeling these folks were in real danger that they were completely unprepared for.
So I was going to look into it.
I was officially here to look for work....I learned early that you can’t just walk up to people and ask if their problems are related to the supernatural.
Hey folks, seen any ghosts or demons lately?...that is not a good way to go.
So I would look for work, make a few credits, and see if I could find those missing kiddos.
And the missing elders...I halfway hoped that they were all together so the kids had somebody to watch after them.
I hoped I was wrong, but my gut instinct screamed it had nothing to do with the soil.
I sighed and clicked off the holographic display of the report.
I leaned my head back on the seat’s headrest. It was uncomfortable, hard plascrene, but it would do.
All transport ships and ground vehicles were practically printed out of the stuff to stop bugs, parasites, and vermin from making a home in the vehicles and spreading.
I looked down at my left arm where Vox was coiled around it.
He was nice and warm—that was a plus.
He was in low, low power mode...the artificial intelligence version of deep sleep.
I ran a finger along his midnight-colored scales. He moved in his sleep, showing off the slight indigo-purple shimmer that went unseen when he was still.
If he was super still, he almost looked like a tattoo up my arm...he had been mistaken for it once or twice.
I smiled.
I had actually stolen him by accident from a scrap heap.
Well, his A.I. consciousness anyway.
We had fashioned a body for him—his pick—once he came online.
We both figured it would be easier to cart him around this way...and he could also move and hover on his own if I got into trouble.
It was a good deal.
I was always surprised at how warm he stayed.
He said it was his power cell venting...I had found the specs and seen that he had built a low-heating unit into his body model.
Awww, Vox was seriously the best!
On second thought, I flipped my comm cuff to a livestream of rain on a stream and clicked the link to the implant behind my left ear.
It would only project that sound to my ear.
It was how I relaxed and stayed grounded in a crowd.
Leaning back, I checked the time—I still had roughly a two-hour ride to the Outpost 37 waystation.
Judging by the terrain, it was only going to get bumpier.
Ehhh, I wouldn’t be sleeping again anyway. My thoughts were too restless.
If I was home, I would have gone for a long walk.
But I was stuck in my seat...so I mentally took a walk.
For about the ten billionth time, I wished that Soren was here.
My old mentor would have been able to psychically scan the outpost from his living room and tell what was going on.
He was just that good.
Of course, he was pretty old...he had had a lot of time to hone his skills.
I petted Vox’s back.
It’s funny—when I ran into him as a kid....I had no idea Soren was a ghost.
It took me a few years to figure it out.
Well, to be fair, I had had my mind on other things...
It was after the invasion, and during the years when the six factions that took over Earth were busily negotiating and carving up the planet into their territories.
My fingers went to the amulet around my neck and polished it thoughtfully, an old habit when I got stressed.
Reminiscing on those days made Soren’s absence heavier.
The amulet’s smooth surface always made me feel better.
It had been Soren’s first gift to me.
It had been his originally, a long, long time ago.
A simple, smooth, thick amber cabochon set in a simple silver bezel.
Baltic amber, he had said.
I shut my eyes with it pressed tightly between my fingers.
