Time of the Overmen: Of Mice & Supermen

In the wake of the Event, all that remains of the Chicago Loop are the ruins of a once thriving city, now a militarized zone called Hades Ring by the denizens quarantined within, forced to face the terrors lying in wait for them when darkness falls.

But there are some, armed with paranormal and supernatural abilities, who will fight for more than survival.

For their time has come.

*********************************************************************************************************
ROCKET MAN

THE LOOP, DOWNTOWN CHICAGO
DAY OF THE EVENT

“HOW MANY?”

(“It’s hard to be sure, Lieutenant.  The Outernet array on the rooftop is playing havoc with the E-mag sensors.”)

“Ballpark?”

(“If I was to hazard a guess?  All of them.”)

“Damn-it.  How did they get up there so quickly?”

(“At least the National Guard has managed to shut down the city grid.  That should buy us a little more time.”)

“That is unless we’re already too late.”

The lieutenant craned his head back as far as his Black-eye helmet would allow.  Willis Tower rose, all one-hundred ten stories of it, into the wintry, snow-flurried night.  Gleaming from the lobby to the roofline, it still held a respectable rank as one of the top ten tallest buildings in the world, and the second tallest in the Western Hemisphere (the first being the relatively new Freedom Tower in New York City). 

He couldn’t allow this to happen.  Not now.  Not after the futureless world the colonel had shown him.

(“I don’t like what you’re thinking, Lieutenant.”)

“I wasn’t asking you.”  He removed his tear-shaped, Black-eye helmet, and immediately felt better for it.  Sometimes a man’s thoughts should remain his own. 

He scanned the street.  It was the Christmas season and ornaments the size of watermelons hung from the leafless trees lining the sidewalks.  On display in darkened shop windows were a series of holiday scenes: a life-sized Nativity empty of its fully rendered, holographic participants, an old-fashioned Lionel train set circling a painstakingly detailed miniature of Chicago—right down to the scale model of the Sears Tower before its namesake (and paint job) was changed to Willis Tower (much to the chagrin of Chicagoans everywhere). 

Looking east, he saw a staggered wall of darkened skyscrapers terminating over a half mile-long string of taxis, garbage trucks, city buses, and an assortment of other vehicles stranded in the middle of their routes or commute.  Dozens of civilians were trickling out of their cars and he could make out a large crowd of people amassing before the tank-mounted spotlights on the opposite side of an electrified perimeter fence, every one of them like so many fish in a barrel.  It was the same everywhere.  Martial law had just been declared.  Evacuation centers, set up in several areas of the downtown Loop to help facilitate an orderly exodus of the immediate area, were now instructed to deny egress and things were rapidly deteriorating.  At this point, it wouldn’t take much to tip the scales from ugly to downright brutal. 

Network News helicopters swarmed the skies over Lake Michigan, on strict orders to keep their distance.  An amplified voice addressed the restless crowd through a loudspeaker, informing them that they would be released to their homes and families just as soon as any potential threat to the populace at large was neutralized. 

First Lieutenant Michael MacRorie rubbed the whiskers on his jaw.  He hadn’t shaved in almost a week, not since the psychic’s grim vision of Earth’s future; when everything he thought and believed about the world had changed forever.  “We are no longer merely soldiers,” his commanding officer had said afterwards, the low, cutting timbre of his voice resonating with him somehow even more than the potent’s doomsday prediction.  “We are the Keepers now; the fate of the world is in our hands.” 

The gauntlet on his power-armor flashed and beeped.  It was his secondary communicator alerting him of an incoming transmission. 

“Lieutenant MacRorie, do you copy?”

The lieutenant took a second to collect himself before responding.

“Copy, Sir.”

“What is your current status and position, Lieutenant?  Over.”

“Awaiting orders outside Willis Tower, Sir.  Over.”

“Necator-One is returning to the roost, Lieutenant.  E.T.A. ten minutes.  Over.”

“We may not have that kind of time, Sir.  Please advise.  Over.”  A pause, framed in the sloshing of static, as he waited for a response.

“… Assess any potential threats, but do not engage.  Do you copy?  Over.”

“Sir, with all due respect—”

“Do not engage, Lieutenant.  That is a direct order.”

”Copy that, Sir.  Over.”

“Over and out.”

The lieutenant went to place the Black-eye helmet back on his head, but hesitated.  The night sky had emerged between a break in the cloud cover, and without the city lights drowning them out, a glittering banner of stars had appeared, shining fiercely and filling him with a momentary sense of restless wonder.

The youngest child of a Missouri crop farmer, he used to gaze at the heavens to while the dust-choked hours away in the cab of his father’s GPS-guided combine, his mind leaping at the boundless possibilities.  He wanted to be an astronaut more than anything in the world when he was a kid.  He wanted to be Captain Kirk, exploring distant planets and stepping foot on mysterious alien landscapes.  He wanted desperately to be part of something bigger than the thankless, monotonous role of a crop farmer, bigger than the thousands of acres of government subsidized land they scraped a living from, bigger than the depthless emptiness gaping in himself.  And nothing was bigger than the inconceivable vastness of space.  Up there, he would be free.

He had joined the Air Force with the promise of realizing his true calling, and had graduated from Maxwell Air Force Base at the top of his class.  After flight school, he became a pilot and eventual recipient of the Silver Star and Air Force Cross for having distinguished himself in the third Iraq war and again in the Iranian conflict when it first began to boil over in the Middle East.  When he had been recruited to the colonel’s team a month ago, it was just the next logical step in an already illustrious career, the penultimate goal to achieving his childhood dream. 

Then, everything changed.  It was the dawn of a new age; one that the Proto-Tech lab coats had guarded as a highly classified secret.

Until now.

Lieutenant MacRorie slipped his Black-eye helmet onto his head. 

(“I’d been wondering where you got to.”)

“Sorry.  Had some quick thinking to do.”

(“I understand.  No harm done.”)

The lieutenant steeled himself. 

“Look, I have to stop this before it’s too late.”

(“The colonel gave you a direct order, Lieutenant.  I just received it myself.  He knows the risk involved.”) 

“Maybe…”  The lieutenant contemplated the crowd of trapped Americans desperately wanting nothing more than to go home to their loved ones.  If there really were terrorists in Willis Tower, the price was too high to wait it out.  “Then again, maybe not.”

(“He’s your commanding officer.  If you do this, you’ll be lucky to just face a court marshal.  You’re relatively new, so maybe you haven’t heard yet, but the colonel isn’t exactly the forgiving type.”)

The lieutenant unsheathed his Ether-trigger from a concealed compartment on his armored hip.  He gripped the handle. 

“One of the reasons I got this assignment was for my willingness to take the initiative.  It’s why the colonel recruited me to the team, lest we forget.  But let’s skip all that for the moment and look at the facts: I’m here.  He’s not.  We could be minutes away from a national incident in a major U.S. city, or seconds.  Oh yeah, not to mention that all those people over there, less than a mile away from what could, for all sakes and purposes, be ground zero, aren’t just statistics on the colonel’s report to the Pentagon; they’re casualties, American casualties.  That’s the reality of this situation.  Now are you going to help me or not?” 

(“Well, when you put it that way…”)

The lieutenant pressed his gloved thumb into the device’s curved spine.  The meter charged, a luminous silver-white in the pitch darkness, swirling in the mirrored black plates of his power-armor.  His hand began to glow like a white-hot torch. 

“Make sure I have a way in as well as a way out.” 

(“Already done.”)

“Anyone ever tell you how handy it is to have a mind-reader on your team?”

(“Not in so many words.”)

“Consider yourself complimented, then.”

(“Will do…  Countdown initiated.  Opening pathway in T-minus, fifteen seconds.”)

The lieutenant brought his H & K 416 Assault Rifle to bear and checked the gun clip.  With his free hand, he clicked off the safety.

“Locked and loaded.”

(“T-minus, ten seconds…  Be careful, Lieutenant.”)

“Not in my nature.”

(“T-minus, five seconds.  Can’t hurt to try.”)

“I beg to differ.”  The silvery light flowed from the Ether-trigger and coated his arms, chest, and legs.  A chill spread up his spine to the base of his skull, the sensation eerily similar to the one he got when he felt like he was being watched. 

(“Two… one…”) 

Lieutenant MacRorie felt an abrupt, disemboweling tug and then vanished in a cascade of shimmering light.

THE APOSTLE

HADES RING (FORMERLY THE CHICAGO “LOOP”)
PRESENT DAY

PIO “THE APOSTLE” Bardonaro walked the forsaken city, his hands buried deep in the pockets of his jacket, head raised, mind on high alert, thoughts reaching out like tendrils.  Like fingertips. 

Turning off the street, he cut through an alleyway to make up for lost time.  The shadows slipped over him, and the faint whiff of cold decay clung to the air, stopping him in his tracks. 

A dead man armed with a foot long shard of glass slumped beside an overturned dumpster.  His wrists were slit and bloody to the crooks of his elbows, his sleepy eyes apathetic as a squirming huddle of vermin dined on his entrails.  Sensing the intrusion, the pack of rats scrambled inside the rear entranceway of an abandoned pizzeria, one of Pio’s favorites before the city’s untimely demise.  In the dead man’s lap was a faded, wallet-sized photograph of a little boy, his forehead marked by a bloody thumbprint. 

Pio kept walking.

When he reached the other side of the alleyway, a concrete pebble shot out from under his foot and pinged off the charred shell of a taxicab.

The driver was still locked inside, the flesh on his bowed head blackened and shrunken, one desiccated hand somehow still resting on the wheel of his makeshift coffin.  A web of hairline cracks surrounded a bullet hole in the windshield. 

Any moment now, the driver was going to turn around and ask his invisible passengers where they were going… 

Any moment now.

The street sign above him read Michigan Avenue (formerly the “Magnificent Mile,” now called “No Mans’ Mile” by the survivors).  Ahead, a half-crumpled newspaper blew like tumbleweed across the sidewalk, the headlines smeared beyond comprehension.  Blurred epitaphs. 

Pio stopped again and listened.  The sound was unmistakable: the keening purr of a gunship, closing fast.  His fault for traveling so close to the Rim.  He considered returning to the alley to hide, but decided to take his chances with the evil he knew.

He wiped a lick of hair from his forehead and moved his hands to the side of his face like blinders.  The sun shone low through a pall of silvering sky.  Night was falling fast.  Soon it would be no longer safe to wander the streets alone.  He had just begun to wonder about his partner’s whereabouts when the gunship appeared. 

It flew between the decapitated buildings, banked, and then hovered to ponder him.  The 30mm chain gun in the nose rotated, sniffing him out, but he stood his ground.  At times like these, fleeing the scene was a form of suicide.  Besides, he would know if he was in any kind of danger before it was too late.  He would know, and then he would do something about it. 

The gunship continued to hover, the air around it rippling with heat.  The cockpit’s windshield was opaque, but even at this range, spurts of the pilot’s thoughts leaked out to him like a voice over a radio with bad reception… 

(“That’s right… keep sti… or get perforated, motherfu…”)

“Come on.  Make up your mind.”

The gunship inched forward.  Pio did not move.  A loudspeaker squawked.  The pilot’s voice boomed. 

“RETURN TO YOUR HOME, DENIZEN!”

Flying overhead, it sent debris pirouetting into the darkening sky.  Pio covered his mouth and coughed.  Abandoned vehicles stretched as far as the eye could see here, some overturned by rioters, a few with their passengers still in them—more coffins in a mass grave. 

The helicopter vanished into the ruins of his city, leaving Pio contemplating the waning daylight, his teeth chattering as he waited on the street corner for his ride.  He was almost sorry to see it go.  The sky was noticeably growing darker, and he couldn’t shake the notion that he was sinking, deeper and deeper.

C’mon, where are you already?

The jagged bottom halves of skyscrapers gleamed like tarnished swords in the skyline—gigantic rows of broken concrete and steel no higher than the twentieth story or so, depending on their proximity to Ground Zero.

It never ceased to amaze, or terrify, him. 

A pair of headlights flashed a hundred or so yards north of where he was standing.  They flashed again and he approached, using the parked cars for partial cover in case of an ambush.  When he got within range, the driver honked the horn and waved.

“Hurry it up, man!”  The driver’s words echoed in the dead street.  “I ain’t going to wait here forever, you know.” 

Pio looked both ways before crossing—some habits died harder than others—and got in the car.  It was parked halfway on the sidewalk with the engine running.

“Jeez, man,” Pio said.  “Where’ve you been?”

His capo grinned, showing his crooked teeth. 

“What’s got your panties in a bunch?” he asked.

“Like you don’t know.”

Johnny Deluga grinned wider as he checked his rearview mirror, smoothed his receding hair, and then backed the piecemealed sedan onto the sidewalk.  A column of steam rose from a sewer grate, and beyond it, just outside of the car’s taillights, Pio thought he saw something move in the alley he had just emerged from—a shadow in retreat.  Johnny put the vehicle in drive and pulled away.

“No need to be so sensitive.”  He swatted Pio on the arm.  “I’m just busting your chops.  You know I’d never leave you out here to fend for yourself.”

Pio kept an eye on the alleyway.  There was something in there.  He could tell.  In more ways than one.

“Yeah,” he said.  “I do.  So where to now?”

“That’s the good news.  Boss wants to chat.  But first, we’ve got to make a pit stop at the Corral.  There’s a problem there that requires a little bit of your finessing.”  The car jumped the curb and they pulled onto the road proper.  The engine revved as they picked up speed.  “How’s that sound to you?”

“Better than the alternative.”

Johnny chuckled. 

“That’s what I like so much about you, Bardonaro: your dry sense of humor.”

Pio nodded, feeling better and better the further they got away from whatever was lurking in that alley.  He turned and faced the road ahead.

“Let’s hurry.”

K.I.A.

CHINESE LINE OF CONTROL, NORTHEAST INDIA
SEVEN MONTHS EARLIER

DEXTER LEGEND CROUCHED on the crest of the dune, sand shifting around him in sheets as he studied the stark blue horizon.  To the north, eclipsed by the Marine base, and more klicks away than he cared to count, was Pakistan—to the south, Nepal and Mount Everest, that treacherously steep, crumbling, and bitterly cold stairway to Heaven.  To the east was Tibet, and just little further as the crow flies, Northern China, or as the President tended to call it more and more these days: “The Neo-Axis of Evil.” 

An arid wind, sudden and scorching, blew a shock of pale-blonde hair from his whiskered face.  Sand dribbled down the dune in tiny avalanches under the heels of his boots.  He stood, narrowing his eyes behind a pair of military-issued sunglasses.  Unsure of what he was seeing, he hung the sunglasses on the collar of his T-shirt to get a better look. 

Marking the furthest edge of the horizon was a starburst of white light.  At first, Dexter though it was just his baby-blues playing tricks on him.  If it wasn’t for the tinge of unsubstantiated nervousness he was feeling, he’d almost believe it. 

He scratched his head.  A rivulet of sand trickled from his shirt cuff like a whisper.

No, there it was again—a burst of light like a second dawn.  This time he felt a slight vibration, and caught a whiff of ozone on the seared air.

“What’s eating you, Dex?” a voice asked from behind him.

Dexter’s heart skipped a beat or three.  He held his hands over his brow to shade his eyes and saw a familiar silhouette ascending the dune’s northern face.

“Maybe nothing.  Maybe something.  You got your camera handy?” 

His cameraman, David Fletcher, reached the summit of the dune.  He shrugged off his backpack and let it drop it in the sand.

“Never leave home without it.”

Fletcher stood beside him while Dexter dug around in the backpack for the binoculars.  Fletcher had just showered and shaved, and his mop of curly brown hair had already begun to dry in the time it took to walk out of their tent and get here.

Dexter nodded towards the eerie glimmer. 

“Be a pal and zoom in on that weirdness over there.  Tell me if you’re seeing what I’m seeing.”

While Fletcher got his camera ready, Dexter adjusted the focus on the binoculars.  He caught another flash in the periphery of his vision.  Within the stuttering glow were shapes of some kind, silhouetted against a pulsing dome of crackling light.

“Uh, what the hell am I looking at here?”  Fletcher had his camera pointed in the same direction as Dexter’s binoculars.

“Don’t know.”

“Storm of some kind?”

“Yeah.  Maybe.  But I’m not so sure about the breed.”

“Want me to notify the Network?”  Fletcher’s tone had taken on that eager quality it got when a newsworthy event was about to pay out.  Ever since the Feds had forced the news stations to consolidate, and every reporter, journalist, editor, and correspondent worth their salt had turned freelance, his ilk acted more and more like a pack of famished animals.

“No…  Not yet.”  Dexter returned the binoculars to his backpack.  “Let’s follow the chain of command first.  Don’t want to step on any toes.”

“I know, I know.  Dexter Legend 101: Better to build a bridge than to burn it.”

“Don’t forget, Fletcher-san: If it bleeds, it leads.”

“And if it leads, it feeds.  Got it, Sensei.  Meet you in ten.”

Dexter surfed the curve of the dune to the bottom and then sprinted in the hundred-plus-degree-heat to the military base, a joint-division affair of Marine, Army, and Air Force all working together to keep a Third World War at bay.  Had there been so much as a puddle in a thousand-mile-radius, the Navy would’ve joined in the party too. 

Dexter had just showed his clearance to the Marine at the gate when the alert sounded.

Klaxons blared.  Soldiers emerged from barracks, marching in double-time to join their squads.  Flaggers scrambled the F35’s for vertical takeoff… 

All hell had broken loose.

Dexter headed towards Command.  An officer ducked under a tan pavilion tent flap, revealing the inner workings of one of the most advanced military operations in recent memory.  The inside of the command post was abuzz with activity, and Dexter noticed the telltale digital luminescence of radar blips on the fringe of a two-story tall monitor screen before the tent flap fell shut and a soldier stepped in front of him, halting his progress. 

“I’m sorry, sir.”  The soldier had to shout in Dexter’s ear to be heard.  “But no civilians are allowed inside at this juncture.  General’s orders.” 

Having decided not to force the issue, Dexter just smiled.

“No problem here, chief.  Any idea what’s going on?” 

“I’m not at liberty to say, sir.  Perhaps a drill.”

“Let’s hope so.”  It was the most civilized shouting match Dexter had ever had.

The F35’s engines were winding up to a roar, adding another high-pitched note to the cacophony of the klaxons.  He caught a pilot’s expression: lips in a tight, thin line, his thumb pointing upwards in an urgent gesture to be off the ground.  The flaggers were waving wildly.

This wasn’t a drill.

Dexter searched around for Fletcher and spotted him on the opposite side of the east gate leaning next to a soldier and pointing at an APC. 

“What’ve you got?” Dexter asked.

“Nobody knows,” Fletcher said.  “But I’ve hitched us a ride on the express train to Answersville.  Want to tag along?”

“That’s what the Network pays us the big bucks for.”

“Amen to that, brother.”  Fletcher grinned.  “Let’s go.”  He patted Dexter on the shoulder and they both headed to the APC.  The F35’s roared like lions as they took off.   

There was a crack like a sledgehammer hitting stone, and then a boom, followed by the piercing whistle of rocket fire.  Since it didn’t originate from the military base, Dexter knew it was already too late. 

At this great of a distance, the boom always preceded impact.

Fletcher had climbed halfway onto the APC and was staring at Dexter, the blood draining from his clean-shaven face.  Both of them gazed up at the sky.  The sun was shining in the center of it like a gold coin.  Not a cloud in sight.

It was just a little past noon when the world went up in flames.

THE STRANGER

HADES RING
PRESENT DAY

THE STRANGER’S BODY floated, adrift in the gelid, viscous darkness: naked, motionless, his mind as black as his prison. 

Then, a memory, the memory, ignited within him—a glimmer at first, then blooming, unfurling like the petals of a bright, poisonous flower. 

There was a figure, nebulous and misshapen, like a pale shadow in a dusky sea.  Then colors bled into the memory, the figure and sea took form, and he saw himself, hunting his prey in the killing field, the place where his brother had sacrificed the choicest of his flock…

To the east, an emerald horde of trees marched in place among the hill’s face, leaning in futile retreat towards the Garden.  But the Garden was lost, a paradise unmourned.  The sun blazed in a solemn sky, pouring gold into the blue sea at his right hand, and the stalks of wheat underfoot bowed before their master.  It was a new day, yet in the deepest pit of his bitter heart, it was the dead of night.  In his left hand, flashing like foxfire, was his brother’s blade, still slick with lamb’s blood…

His mind jarred to the present, his awareness becoming separate from the darkness that engulfed him.  At long last, he had awakened.

A second presence shifted in the Abyss, its lumbering movements creaking like breaking bones.  A baleful shriek rippled towards him, swelling instead of fading, as a bat might sense its prey.  Something akin to fear gripped him, clutched his chest, and then squeezed.  He thrashed his arms.  The Presence shrieked again, this time nearer.  The glimmer was outside his head now, a crimson twinkling like a distant red star in the void. 

The Presence lashed out and he was sent spinning.  His back burned cold.  His spine turned to ice.  Shuddering now, he swam, higher and faster. 

He would not look back. 

There was no looking back.

The red spark was now a halo, now an iridescent web.  Another lash flayed the flesh from his thigh.  Ancient blood seeped from the wound, felt but unseen.  Still, he swam.

The halo became a five-pointed star, scarlet and hissing.  He reached up and plunged his hand into the light. 

“YOU…”  A voice, as menacing as a shadow rising in a crypt, beckoned to him.  “YOUUUUUUUUUUU!”

He nearly looked.

Reaching with his other hand, the Stranger pulled himself through the pentagram and emerged on the other side, gasping and bleeding, but free… 

Free from his prison at last.

He rose within the hissing circle, wisps of scarlet mist uncurling about him like fingers.  Shards of broken glass were strewn at his bare feet, and as he staggered forward, the mist dispersed, leaving an extinguished halo in his wake. 

He was naked, but did not shiver.  Though he could sense the cold, it was not a part of him.  Such was the nature of his curse.

The chamber containing him glowed, luminescent in the ambient light.  A high altar took prominence in the center, its sacrifice beneath a white shroud.  Strange symbols lined the walls, etched into squares of polished metal. 

He ascended a small ramp to a portal that had been torn from its hinges, its twin banging in the keening wind.  More strange symbols marked the portal.  He uttered a few words and crossed his hand over it.  The symbols assumed their rightful shape, but not their meaning.  Stenciled on the fallen door, beneath a frame of jagged glass, was the inscription MOR, and on the other, GUE.

He passed through the threshold and into a corridor flanked by a score of disconnected rooms, a distant window shimmering at its end.  Shadows abounded, shifting with a life of their own. 

The Stranger crouched and sprung forward, each footfall thrusting him quicker still, past empty room after empty room, where the darkness would not keep still.  As the shadows swept by him, discordant whispers rose in defiance of his existence. 

He leapt through the window, slivers of glass falling with him like glittering rain, and then plummeted to the ground far below. 

The impact jarred his bones, but not enough to break them.  Pain, like the cold, did not belong to him. 

He stood, regarding the night he belonged to, and grinned like a wolf.

He was home.

METEORITE

WIND, FREEZING AND violent and deafening.  He opened his eyes. 

A sloping ocean of darkness beneath him, cut by the beam of a searchlight.  Above, a constellation of stars spun out of control, the moon grinning from ear-to-ear.  In the distance, a plane glided through the twilight like a mammoth bat.  He was in a freefall, hurtling faster and faster.  A soundless scream escaped him, but the air was too thin to even breathe. 

The darkness below spread like oil.  A sudden gust sent him hurtling end-over-end.  His heart pounded in his throat.  He did not understand what was happening or how he got here, but he needed to do something about it. 

He ran his numb hands over his shoulders and chest and found he was wearing some clothing, but no parachute.

He was going to die.

The air rumbled like a convoy of semi-trucks.  He looked around.  On all sides of him black, tower-like shapes rocketed towards the sky. 

Skyscrapers.  He was falling on a city.

In a nearby column of windows, a man he didn’t recognize was falling alongside him, his face a mask of terror, amplifying his own fear even more when he realized who the man was. 

It was him.

A helicopter flew in from the west, its flight path on a collision course with his downward trajectory…

It was going to be close.  Too close.  Way too close.  It flew under, the main rotor blades scissoring the air.  He covered his head and squeezed his eyes shut, counting the seconds before he was cut to ribbons.  The hum of the blades was the last sound he was ever going to hear…

WHUP-WHUP-WHUP—

The chopper missed.  A temporary reprieve.  The ground would not.

His eyes, now open, had adjusted to the dark.  He had seconds left. 

Not remembering who he was, no life flashed before his eyes.  His sole possession in this world was the roar of the wind.  Gravity was his inheritance.

It was downright tragic.

He hit the sidewalk in excess of one-hundred twenty miles per hour.  Gutted cars in the vicinity rattled like tin cans.  A small mushroom cloud of dust and debris plumed above him and then settled back to earth.

The man with no memory lay perfectly still, framed by the pavement, eyes fixed on the starlit sky.

He coughed, blinked, and sat up.

“Holy shit!”

He was still alive.

He stood.  Concrete dust trickled from his tattered clothes.  His shirt hung shredded like a snakeskin, his left pant leg ripped to the crotch.  His ears rang and his left shoulder felt as though he had been given a hardy slap on the back, but otherwise, he was uninjured.  He wondered if he was dreaming, but then remembered that you were supposed to wake up before you hit the ground.

He coughed and took a step, his legs like jelly from the sheer absurdity of his survival.  The sole of his left boot flapped loose.  He took another step and his legs seemed to solidify.  His heart rate slowed as he began to accept the idea that he was still, somehow, impossibly, alive when a white light blinded him. 

“THIS IS THE POLICE!” a speaker boomed from on high.  “YOU HAVE ENTERED A SECURED AREA!  GET DOWN ON YOUR KNEES AND KEEP YOUR HANDS VISIBLE AT ALL TIMES!  IF YOU ATTEMPT TO FLEE, YOU WILL BE SHOT!  THIS IS YOUR ONLY WARNING!”

Dropping to his knees, the man with no memory placed both hands on his head.  Debris whipped into the air, peppering the rusted frame of a city bus and the balding skulls of the passengers still inside.

He looked around.  He was at a four-way-intersection manned by dead stoplights, the street signs torn off the poles.  A billboard on the brick face of a half-collapsed building showed a throng of people standing in a grassy field, hands joined and held skyward towards a twinkling night filled with interconnected stars.  At one time, it had read: WE ARE THE OUTERNET, except now, spray-painted across the length of the billboard’s face were the words: WELCOME TO NO MANS’ MILE.

Shapes appeared against the backdrop of the spotlight.  The ringing in his ears had faded, replaced by the whirring of the chopper’s blades—the same one he had nearly collided with in midair.  He could tell by the shape of its nose, the length of its tail, and the signature pulse of the main rotor.  It was a Bell UH-1H.  He didn’t know how he knew this, but he knew it all the same. 

The helicopter touched down and policemen in tactical gear exited the cabin and fanned out, surrounding him, SIG 556 assault rifles at the ready. 

“Lie down and keep your hands where I can see them!”

“Listen officer, I’m no threat to you or your men.  I don’t even know how I got—”

“I said, lie down!  Now!”

“Alright, alright!  I’m lying down.  I’m not resisting.  I’m not resisting.”

The officer pinned him to the ground with one knee and cuffed him. 

“That’s too bad.  I was hoping for more of a fight out of you.”  The officer stood him up and escorted him to the chopper.  Two policemen pulled him inside and sat him down on a bench.  The rest of the cops piled into the cabin.

“Am I under arrest?” the man with no memory asked.  He had to shout over the whirring of the Bell UH-1H’s main rotor.  The cops regarded him in silence.  “I’ll take that as a yes.” 

The helicopter pitched forward. 

“Aren’t you going to at least read me my rights?” 

A cop poked him with the barrel of his assault rifle. 

“Shut-up before I shut you up.”

The city seemed to sink as they rose into the sky.  A small constellation of fires dotted the black stumps of skyscrapers.

The man with no memory wondered if he had made it too easy on them, but until he knew more, he would just play along and keep pretending that there was nothing he could do. 

JONSUN

FROM THE COLONEL’S vantage point, the ruins of the city gaped like the maw of some titanic beast with a great whorl of teeth that threatened to puncture the sky. 

Something had fallen into it. 

The government had stopped delivering care packages months ago due to the riots that ensued in the drop zones.  Such was the way of the world these days.  Let survivors do what they do best.  He was, if nothing else, a practical man.  Outside help only complicated things.  At best, it gave the illusion of hope when the reality of strength was needed more.  At worst, it sustained desperation in those on the verge of accepting their fate. 

“Sir?”

Jonsun did not turn to face the soldier, but continued to stare into the blackness looming at his feet like Nietzsche’s Abyss.  The vastness of the space beneath him steepened, seemed to beckon to him, tugging at his body as though it contained a gravity all its own.  A chill hop-scotched along the colonel’s spine, and his heartbeat quickened.  He was fearless of heights, but still felt his head go light. 

A wind, frigid and howling, whipped the crop of ivory hair on his head like wisps of pale grass. 

He stepped away from the edge.

“Report.”

“We’ve sighted a Resistance member.”  The soldier’s voice was tinny through the Black-eye helmet.

“Where?”

“Vector Two-point-six, heading north.”

“Is it her?”

“Undetermined at this time.”

“Let me know if that changes.”

“There is more, Sir.”

Colonel Jonsun gazed at the vault of stars burning holes in the canvas of night and wondered if somewhere up there God was watching, or if some other, more sinister entity was prowling the labyrinth of his mind.

“Tell me.”

“We’ve detected an E.M.S. in the same vicinity, Sir.  The signature is… familiar.”

Regrettably, the Event, as the rest of the world dubbed his handiwork, had not gone far enough to do what was required.  In retrospect, he had simply delayed the inevitable.  It was a mistake he did not intend to repeat.

“Send Necator-One ahead, and summon the rest of the men.”  He turned at last to face the soldier, the joints in his power armor whirring to facilitate his movements.  “We will follow.”

ANTIGRAVITY

THE LOOP, DOWNTOWN CHICAGO
DAY OF THE EVENT

TANK-MOUNTED SPOTLIGHT beams burned glowing rabbit holes into the clouds.  Angry civilians held their fists in the air, immobile as statues.  A half-stirred snowdrift curled beneath a gunship touching down on the other side of the perimeter.  The streak of stars above twinkled no more.

The world had frozen in place.

Lieutenant MacRorie was drifting upwards in slow-motion, moving further and further away from his dissolving body, towards the light at the end of the tunnel.  Only his shadow remained, temporarily separated from its owner in the backwash of Ether-light.

His shadow lengthened to monstrous proportions, sliding across the sidewalk and upwards along the building wall, the fingers like the bars of a jet-black cage.  As the lieutenant looked on, he could’ve sworn they were reaching up for him. 

A sudden lunge skywards and he appeared in a blast wave of electric-white light on the Willis Tower rooftop, more than a quarter of a mile above street level, the shrieking wind thrusting him towards the ledge.

Night had submerged the besieged city in utter darkness, its skyscrapers barely discernable against a canopy of pitch-black clouds.  Bordering neighborhoods surrounded the Loop in a bright ring.  Sirens wailed in the distance, twinkling red, white, and blue.  The bellies of clouds scrolled past, charcoal-gray and brooding and close enough to touch.  Halfway down the building’s sheer face, a flock of pigeons flew against the wind.  Within the temperature-controlled confines of his power-armor, it was seventy-degrees.  Outside readings, however, indicated that the temperature was holding steady at three degrees below zero. 

The horizon in every direction could be seen from this height, if there had been a horizon to see.  The lieutenant switched to night-vision mode, and the screen inside his helmet visor changed everything to varying shades of Day-Glo green. 

Nestled between the Willis Tower’s twin antennae, wind turbines, and rows of solar panels, was a massive satellite dish array.  The array swiveled on its track, the periodic clacking of its movements all but muffled by the wind as it communicated with the Outernet satellites orbiting the planet. 

From up there, the view of the Earth would be breathtaking, terrifying, and exhilarating all at once; it would change a person forever.  From down here, on the brink of World War Three with a unified China and Iran, two countries whose leaders despised everything America stood for, it was just terrifying.

After returning the Ether-trigger to its concealed hip-holster, Lieutenant MacRorie double-timed it to the roof access door, the stock of the modified H & K against his shoulder.  His Black-eye helmet relayed potential threats in a constant stream of targeting data, but none were detected anywhere on the roof.  The door was locked and he blew the latch apart with a controlled-burst from the rifle. 

He kicked open the door and entered, sweeping the H & K to the left and right of the broadcasting room.  The monitors were blank, and only a single red light blinked on the control panel.  He threw a few switches, hoping that the back-up generators still had enough juice in them to function.

The score of monitors flickered to life. 

It was worse than he had expected: no movement on any of the Proto-Tech Labs security feeds. 

The lieutenant slammed his fist on the control panel.  He was too late.  The intruders were already inside.

He didn’t know who he was up against, or exactly how many, but one thing was for certain now: this had been an inside job.  There was simply no feasible way these people, whoever they were—be they political radicals, ill-informed environmentalists, or genocidal terrorists—could have breached the security measures in place in the lab without someone with direct access on their side. 

Only one way in, or out. 

He rushed down the adjoining stairwell.  Six floors down, he entered a long hallway, one floor above the Willis Tower’s Skydeck.  In the ambient glow of his helmet’s night vision mode, were a series of framed, black-and-white photographs of the city as seen from the observation deck.  He followed the gallery down the long stretch of corridor leading up to the main office.

A crescent-shaped receptionist’s desk stood before him like a low wall of milky glass.  Above it, the Proto-Tech Labs logo—a digital, three-dimensional amalgamation of the first three letters of the name—hovered from the polished marble ceiling like a ghostly shield crest, reflecting the lab’s emblem in gilded light on the mirrored floor.

He passed through the lobby to the double-ended corridor behind the secretary’s desk, perpetually sweeping the rifle as he moved forward and past the windowed research laboratories without incident.

At last he came to a sparsely furnished room roughly the size of a basketball court.  A few uncomfortable couches were tucked in the far corners, the tempered glass coffee tables accompanying them adorned with magazines. 

The Proto-Tech’s mission statement twirled in the air above him like a flock of luminescent birds.

Our mission: to create, shape, and secure the future of the human race… always.

According to the plaque mounted on a slender podium in the center of the room, the scrawl of glowing, free-floating blue letters were powered by the solar panels on the Willis Tower’s rooftop. 

Lieutenant MacRorie crossed to the podium, his heart slugging away at his chest.  Even in the temperature-controlled environment of his power-armor, he was beginning to sweat. 

The podium rotated, as if to greet him.  The plaque flipped over and the words spinning in the air alighted on the floor like a fall of burning leaves, each igniting in sequence.  How the intruders had gotten this far was beyond the lieutenant at this juncture.

He removed his helmet and waited for the scanner on the podium to identify him.  To the layman, the reader would appear to be your run-of-the-mill retinal scanner, like the ones you’d find on any ATM on any given corner of the city, but the beam of crimson light scanning him was looking much more deeply than that; it was identifying the most fundamental and unique feature about him.  The lab coats had labeled it an “E-mag Sig,” shorthand for an “Electromagnetic Signature.”  If the lieutenant had been a religious man, however, he might’ve called it the human soul. 

The sequence of letters had completed, and a silver-white light once again engulfed him.

Only one way in, or out. 

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