Schism

Schism




The impact had set the forest ablaze. Smoke from burning alien wood seeped over the crater’s edge, stinging Alex’s eyes. She felt a thud in her chest as multiple sonic booms echoed through the predawn darkness, like the sounds of distant war. She looked up from the crater’s frozen floor to see three more fire balls tear through Demeter’s low clouds and burn their way down to the forest below. They were purple this time.

“Cisco, I want to take some deep scans of this. Bring a Miru,” she yelled above the wind.

“Ok. We shouldn’t stay much longer. The meteorites are coming faster now,” the sergeant replied from beyond the crater’s rim.

“Agreed,” Alex shouted. She turned to the dark enigma at the crater’s center and whispered, “I wish it was a meteorite.”

She hesitated, tugging at the chain of her Tamashii. She looked down at the black oval pendant. Multicolored symbols moved across its surface as it continually recorded her mind. It was a standard issue life line she hoped none of them would have to use. She dropped the Tamashii inside her blue OES Corp jacket. The jacket resealed itself against the cold. Alex wasn’t afraid for herself as much as she was afraid of being in command, afraid of making a mistake and getting someone hurt.

She pulled the bill of her cap down. The frosty ground crunched under her heavy boots as she approached the black shape. It wasn’t black, really. It was more like a hole in the universe. As for its shape, from the crater’s rim it had appeared as an elongated T-shape, with downward sloping wings. Up close, it was hard discern the gentle curves from the shadows. She heard Cisco’s footsteps behind her.

Cisco made a low whistle as he approached. “This looks like a good candidate, but . . .”

Alex could still feel the data from the local net through the Com implants. She shook her head. “But, there’s no hollow. The local map is still intact here.” Alex stared into the object’s unreflecting depths.

Cisco nodded. “So, if it isn’t one of the things causing the map hollows . . . what the hell is it?” He held up the transparent Miru tablet so that they could both see through it. The Miru filtered the EM spectrum passing through it. Alex watched the viewed through the tablet as Cisco cycled it from infrared up through the EM spectrum to Gama-rays. The false colors in the background shifted, but the object was black in all spectrums.

Cisco lowered the tablet and scanned the scrolling data on its surface. “It seems inert. No radiation. No readings of any kind. It doesn’t even reflect active scans. It just absorbs them.” Cisco looked at the mute object. “You can’t even see the light of the fire on the surface. It’s like the color of the void.”

“Yeah.” Alex nodded.

Cisco pointed at the icy ground. “It redirected the initial energy of the impact to damped the rest of the kinetic energy from the fall. That’s why the hole isn’t kilometers across. That takes some hellacious probability manipulation.” He slipped the Miru back into its webbed holster. He stroked his manicured, black beard and reached out to the dark surface.

“Cisco! Don’t touch it,” Alex said, more forcefully than she intended.

Cisco grinned. “Don’t worry. I do this all the time.” He let his hand hover over the surface. “Well, it isn’t hot, but I guess we already knew that.” He frowned. “It’s strange down at the most basic level.”

Alex reached out to the surface. Cisco withdrew his hand. She sent out her personal mist of microscopic machines to query the object. The Nanomechs move across the surface, tasting and feeling it at the atomic level. Even here, it was enigmatic and featureless. Alex sighed. This was going nowhere. She touched it.

“I knew you were going to do that.”

“I have to look out for your safety. I can take chances with my own.” Alex frowned as she concentrated on the feel of the surface. It was like . . . touching nothing. It was neither hot nor cold. It wasn’t smooth or rough. The fact that her hand couldn’t move past the surface was the only indication that there was anything there at all. It trembled.

The blackness flowed like water. Alex flinched. Cisco stepped back. The darkness seemed to drain into invisible voids in midair. The rest fell back into the center of the crater. It vanished to reveal a petite young girl wearing black jeans, teal top and tan sandals. Physically, she appeared about eighteen standard years old. She sat there in a lotus position for a moment. Then, she opened her peach-colored eyes and shook her long, honey-blonde hair. In an instant, Cisco drew his HV3 pistol. The red dot of the laser sight glowed on her forehead. The girl stared back at them.

Alex sent her nanomechs out again. They felt and tasted her skin, hair and clothes. Every protein and every lipid seemed right.

“She is human,” Alex said.

Cisco held his position.

Alex gently touched his shoulder. “Don’t hurt her. I don’t know what just happened, but she is human.” Cisco looked at Alex and lowered his weapon. She ran her fingers through her auburn hair. She felt like she was drowning. If only Major Zhan was here or long range communications weren’t out. This situation was beyond her competency level— but she was in command. This was responsibility. The cold winds swept green sparks from the flames into the crater.

Finally the girl said, “Is this awkward or is it just you guys?”

Cisco looked sideways at Alex. Her eyes never left the girl. “No, we can’t keep her.” There was a flash of red-orange. The lightning on Demeter was colored by the neon in its atmosphere. Thunder rumbled. A storm was coming. Alex sighed as she looked at the sky. “But I suppose we can’t leave her out here.”

She kneeled, so she was eye level with the girl. “My name is Lieutenant Alex Arden and this is Sergeant Francisco de la Rosa. He is our embedded military observer.”

“Call me Cisco.” He holstered the Pistol.

“We’re with the Orion Ecological Survey Corp,” Alex said. The girl’s eyes moved from Alex to Cisco and back again. She glanced at the silver holographic letters that hovered just above the fabric of Alex’s jacket.

“Who is Alexandria?”

Alex looked down. “Sorry, for the confusion. My name is Alexandria, but everyone calls me Alex.” She smiled. “Can you tell me your name?”
The girl looked to the upper left and seemed perplexed. “Mandy, I think. That sounds right doesn’t it? I am almost sure it is.”

“You’re not sure of your name,” Alex asked. The girl seemed to be genuinely confused, like as accident victim.

“I’m pretty sure. Almost positive, in fact.” she said with a quick nod.

Cisco leaned closer. “Do you know how you got here?”

The girl looked up at him. “No, sir.” She shivered and looked up at Alex with her large eyes. “It is getting cold, isn’t it?”

Alex couldn’t help but smile. From her delicate features to her large eyes and child-like demeanor, the girl seemed to be designed to trigger her maternal instincts. A glance at Cisco confirmed he was thinking along the same lines. Alex frowned, wondering if she should trust those instincts.
Alex looked back at the girl. Whatever her origin, leaving her in a dark forest alone with predators on the prowl was not an option. At least not one she could live with. “I guess the interrogation can wait until we get back to Skylax camp. Can you stand?”

In response, Mandy gracefully unfolded from the lotus into a standing position as if gravity didn’t matter.

“I guess that’s a yes,” Alex said, “Let’s get you back to camp where you can warm up.” Through her Com implants, Alex summoned the T30. The six-wheeled transport came bouncing over the crater’s ridge like three metric tons of happy puppy.

It came to a stop in front of Mandy. She reached out and touched the black metal, running her fingers along the side and across the stylized nebula logo of the Survey Corp. She giggled softly. To Alex it seemed as if every sensation was a first for her.

“It opens like this,” Alex said, showing Mandy how to operate the door. The T30 sat high off the ground on heavy suspension. Mandy stared up at the interior.
“It is so high,” Mandy said. Alex looked at Cisco.

“All right.” He helped Mandy climb into the back seat.

“Thank you.” She crawled onto the black leather. Alex closed the door gently. She turned back to Cisco.

“Any thoughts?”

“Fallen angel?”

She narrowed her eyes and gave him a frosty look.

“Ow, make it go away,” he said.

She couldn’t stop it; the corners of her mouth turn upward. She punched his shoulder. “Damn it, you made me smile and I’m being serious.”
“Sorry.” He glanced through the window, “Honestly, if I had a clue about what just happened, I would have shared. The local network is still intact, though. Whoever she is, she doesn’t seem to be related to the hollows.”

Alex nodded. “So it seems. I’ve never seen or heard of anything like it. I don’t know what it was, but I don’t think it was Orion Union tech.”
“Core Worlds?”

“Maybe. If so, it’s a long way from home.” Alex pulled her cap off and ran her fingers through her windblown curls. “She doesn’t seem to be hostile. She seems like a waif, in fact. I think it’s safe to bring her back to camp until we can get in touch with Major Zhan.”
“But you’re not sure it’s safe.”

Alex blinked and looked up at Cisco.

He moved a wayward curl from her green eyes, brushing her face in the process. “You play with your hair when you’re unsure.”
The warmth of the touch surprised her. She let her hair fall. “I’ll have to remember that.” She frowned as she replaced her cap. He surprised her with a light kiss.

“Sir, you’re breaking a flock of regulations—again.” Alex glanced into the back window of the T30. She could just see over the bottom edge. Mandy was curled next to the tool box asleep.

“That makes it more fun. Besides, you owed me for the Medusa stare.”
Alex felt the first cold drops of the nightly rain.
“That should dampen the fire a bit, “ Cisco said, as looked skyward.

“Tell me about it,” Alex said as she watched him, watching sky. The sprinkles became a downpour. Her nanomech mist reconfigured automatically, linking into chains to weave a semitransparent rain shield. She felt a data update. Alex stared into the distance as she sifted through the information. “A new hollow opened up next to the northwest generator,” Alex said, looking up at Cisco. “It’s on our way to Skylax, sort of, but it’ll take most of the day to get there the way the roads are laid out.”

“I guess we aren’t going home,” Cisco said.



Mandy woke. The T30’s interior was dark and cool. Her head now rested on a pillow and she was covered with a soft cotton blanket. Slowly she sat up, pulling her knees to her chest and wrapping her arms around her legs. She sat there for a moment and listened to the soft sound of rain on the vehicle’s roof.

Mandy took inventory. She knew her name--Mandy Amber-Starr. She remembered every detail of her meeting with Alex and Cisco—and nothing else.

That wasn’t quite true. She did seem to have a great deal of knowledge about the universe around her. She just knew nothing about herself. It was as if she had just begun in the crater and she knew that wasn’t right.

She felt small, vulnerable and alone. In the darkness of the T30’s cabin she shook her head. No. She wasn’t going to implode. If she never existed before; she did now. She carefully folded the blanket, placing it and the pillow on top of the tool box next to her. She searched for the door latch.

The air was cold and filled with the scent of rain and the white noise of the drizzle striking the forest canopy high above. It was lighter now, but probably not full day light—possibly dawn or twilight. She stepped onto the yellowish gravel surrounding the T30. It crunched beneath her feet, but it didn’t act like simple rock. Instead the pieces clung together, as if magnetized. Her eyes followed the boundary between the gravel and the orange moss. The gravel formed a road.

Across from the road stood trees with ash colored bark formed from overlapping scales—like a snake’s skin. The leaves varied from disk, to triangular, to tubular in shape and from orange to deep red in color. The sound of water crashing onto rocks came through the forest beyond where the road ended. Mandy stared in the sound’s direction.

“That’s Flicker Falls,” Cisco said from behind her.

She was in motion before she thought. In one blurred movement she pivoted and lashed out at Cisco. Mandy’s fist stopped millimeters from Cisco’s right eye. He flinched.

“Oh, God, I ‘m sorry Cisco.” Mandy covered her fist with her hand and pressed it to her chest. “You—you scared me.”

“You scared me too.” Cisco stepped back and frowned. “How the hell did you move so fast?”

“Mandy, you’re awake,” Alex said as she came around the back bumper of the T30.

“I’ll say she’s awake.”

“Is this Skylax,” Mandy asked. She was anxious to change the subject.

Alex shook her head. “We had to make a detour to investigate a new hollow in the Teensy-Spy map.”

“I don’t know what any of that means. What’s a hollow and what’s a Teensy-Spy map?”

A purple flash lit the sky above. A fireball pierced the clouds and streaked across the opening in treetops above the road. It had an odd lavender hue.

“One of those falls every few minutes,” Alex said, “The meteor shower has been going on for about thirteen hours. The hollows started appearing about ten hours ago.”
“We found you when we were looking into the cause of the hollows,” Cisco said.

“Me?”

Alex looked back at the meteor. “You looked like that, except you were a lot bigger and red—not purple. We followed you across the sky to where you landed.”

Mandy watched the fireball as it fell into the forest. She frowned. “Could it be,” she whispered. Was it someone like her, or someone who knew her? She realized she wasn’t breathing and exhaled as the object disappeared behind the trees. “Sorry, I don’t know what it is. I don’t remember anything before you found me.” She looked back from the fireball to see Alex watching her closely. “Really, I don’t.”

“I believe you,” Alex said, “You haven’t given me any reason to doubt you.”

“That one was closer,” Cisco said, “Maybe eleven kilometers away.”

Mandy calculated the fireball’s angle of decent. “Thirteen thousand, one hundred and eighty three meters.”

“What,” asked Cisco.

“Just a rough guess,” said Mandy, shaking her head. “I still don’t understand. What is a Teensy-Spy and what are hollows?”

Alex glanced at the space between them. Mandy watched as Alex’s invisible mist of microscopic machines reconfigured to create a glowing display. “This is the Teensy-Spy map,” Alex said. She snapped her fingers and held her hand out. In seconds, a small black insect landed on her hand. She held her hand up and it jumped from finger to finger. “This is a Teensy-Spy. It’s a machine. They fly around and see, hear and taste everything in the area. The forest is filled with millions of them. The data they gather is composited to make the map.”

Mandy stepped through the display and leaned over to examine the Teensy-spy closer. It turned and seemed to regard her as well. She held out her hand and the Teensy-Spy jumped to her palm. Mandy smiled at the tickling sensation as the Teensy-Spy crawled across her hand. She turned back to the display. “That’s a topographical map of the area.”

Cisco nodded and smiled. “Yes, but it’s more than that; we can remotely focus the Teensy-Spies attention and examine things down to the molecular level.”

“We’re part of the 134th Orion Ecological Survey Team,” Alex said, “It’s a paramilitary group helping to prepare Demeter, this planet, for colonization. We gather information on the climate, flora and fauna and how they interact. The Teensy-Spy network is a major tool for us. We can’t afford to have it go off line.”

“I can imagine.” Mandy looked down at the Teensy-Spy.

“But, that is what is happening,” Cisco said. He made a swiping gesture and the map scrolled. Mandy frowned. She could feel the metal commands they were using to manipulate the map. The map stopped scrolling and revealed an area with several dark circles. “These are the hollows,” he said, “We think the meteorites are related to the holes in the network.”

Mandy frowned. It was incomplete, but to Mandy there seemed to be a pattern to the placement of the voids. Was it a search pattern? She shook her head. “Maybe the impact or the resulting fires wiped out the bugs.”

“When you hit, there was a massive explosion,” Alex said as she tapped in the air where the image was projected. An area near the voids expanded to take up the whole display. It showed a deep teardrop shaped depression surrounded by burned tree trunks that pointed outward from the depression like spokes on a wheel. “That is where we found you.”

Staring at the image gave Mandy goose bumps. This was where her memories started. It was so clear that even on this scale, she could see the T30’s tracks. She looked up from the map. “The area has filled back in, but not at the other sites.”

“Right,” Cisco said, “Something in the hollows is continually destroying the Teensy-spy as they enter, so the map never regenerates. The hollow we’re about to scout is right on top of the northwest Teensy-Spy generator.” He moved the map back to their current location and took out his Miru. In the map, Mandy could see herself from above. She seemed small next to the others.

“So that is where things stand, Mandy,” Alex said, “The Teensy-Spies have some regenerative abilities, but they are meant to biodegrade. Without the generator, the map will degrade further.”

Cisco crossed to the back of the T30 and patted the back cargo hatch. Mandy followed. With a hydraulic hiss, the hatch opened. He held his hand over metal floor of the cargo compartment. It rippled and two black rifles with wood handgrips rose to the surface.
“A matter printer,” Mandy said.

“That’s right,“ Cisco said, “It can reproduce any object it has a stored pattern for. I can give it production orders through my com implants.”
Mandy reached for one of the rifles and Cisco made a playful attempt to slap her hand. “These are HV6 Pulse rifles. They’re hyper velocity rail guns. Unless you’re highly trained to use them—which I doubt—it is safer for everyone if you don’t carry one.” He gathered up both guns, along with the spare magazines that had surfaced with them.

“Ok,” Mandy sighed. Cisco handed a rifle to Alex, who turned checked it like an expert. Both of them had their backs to Mandy and the T30.
While watching them, Mandy held her hand over the metal. The surface rippled, but nothing appeared. She closed her eyes and concentrated. The surface rippled again and a red sucker surfaced. She snatched the sucker and shoved it into her pocket. The hatch began closing on its own. Mandy stepped back.

“Uh—exactly what are the rifles for?”

Alex turned. “There are a few big predators and large, ill-tempered herbivores. And we don’t know what is causing the hollows.” Her voice was even and seemly unconcerned, but Mandy noticed that she held the weapon ready.

Alex put her hand on the T30. “This can generate a pain-inducing maser field that will keep the animals away. I thought we could take a look around and be back before you woke, but since you’re awake, I’ll give you a choice to come with us or not.”

Mandy peered into the forest. Just meters from the road the light was lost in the shadows, swirling mist and dense foliage. “Be safe alone or go into the dark forest with company.” Mandy held up the Teensy-Spy and blew gently. It flew away. “I’ll go with.”

Alex nodded. “Stay back and out of the way.” She said as she began walking towards the forest.

“Yes ma’am.” Mandy hurried to catch up.

Cisco glanced sideways at her and smiled. “Don’t stay too far back. I am counting on you to keep us safe, killer.”

Mandy walked quietly for a moment. “I don’t think I’m a killer,” she said seriously, which made Cisco miss a step.

The light filtering through the leaves high above gave the forest floor a scarlet-orange hue with black shadow. The humid air was heavy with the bitter aroma of alien plants and the mist limited visibility. Unseen creatures clicked and murmured in the twilight world. Mandy clenched her fist as she heard things rustle in the underbrush, always just out of sight. Several times Mandy thought she saw movement in her peripheral vision. She didn’t dare share her feelings that they were being stalked. She would only appear foolish. Instead, she followed closely behind Cisco and Alex as they wordlessly moved toward their goal. There was a small clearing ahead formed by massive fallen trees. They stopped.

“What,” Mandy asked. Then she saw it too. Around the shards of broken technology in the clearing—something moved. Something purple writhed and flowed. As Mandy examined the scene further, she saw that the metal was being eaten away and the trees were also being consumed. The air was filled with a purple haze and a mass of interlocking purple spikes was growing from the ground. Steam streamed from the spikes. Dark shadows moved within.

“Back up, quickly,” Alex said.

They retreated quickly through the woods. “That looks like some type of nanomechs,” Alex said, as they moved through the undergrowth, “If any of those microscopic machines get on us or we breathe them in, they’ll start dissolving us to use as raw material for whatever they’re programed to build.”

Mandy stopped. Something wasn’t right.

Alex paused and looked back at Mandy. “What’s wrong,” Alex asked. Cisco stopped.

Mandy looked around at the quiet shadows and back at Alex. “I don’t hear anything,” she whispered.

Something big fell through the trees and hit the ground ten meters away with a heavy thud Mandy could feel in her feet. It rose among the falling leaves. It was a twisted mass of tubes and geometric shapes with no symmetry. Panels opened. Blue jets of fire flared behind it as it charged along the ground.

Cisco was the first to bring his weapon up. He fired a three round burst. The flechettes were small triangular blades of superconducting ceramic, but they had fearsome velocity. The projectiles vaporized on impact and burned deep into the thing—but it kept coming. Cisco squeezed the trigger hard. The flechettes came in a steady stream. Now Alex had her weapon and in full auto mode as well. The thing had no obvious vulnerabilities: no head and no eyes. They just fired into the charging mass.

It lunged for Mandy. She was out of the way as soon as it left the ground. Alex dove into the moss, but it struck her a glancing blow. She was thrown three meters back and bounced on the mossy ground. Cisco fired into the side of the thing as it passed him. It landed and struggled to turn. The damage was finally slowing it. Mandy looked across at Alex. She was sprawled on the ground and unconscious.

The thing floundered on the orange moss. Cisco emptied his rifle into it. There was another burst of blue flames. It lunged again, but couldn’t cover the distance to Cisco. He changed magazines and brought the rifle to bear again, but it was still. Cisco stood for a moment gasping and covered in sweat. Wisps of smoke floated from the HV6’s barrel. Popping sounds came for rifle as it rapidly shed heat.

He quickly scanned the trees for movement. Mandy instinctively followed his lead. There was nothing but mist and shadow. There were no sounds in the forest now.

They both went to Alex. She was already waking. Cisco knelt down and cradled her head. She seemed confused, until she saw the dark form on the ground. She sat up and wiped blood from the corner of her mouth.

“Are you ok,” he asked.

“Yeah.” She looked from their attacker to Cisco. “What the hell. Seriously—what the hell.”
Cisco looked at the disorganized heap. It was leaking a purple gel that slowly flowed uphill towards them. “Whatever it was, it’s finished.”
Mandy knelt beside the purple pool. It formed blunt tendrils that reached toward her. Mandy stared in awe of the questing goo. Was it sticky or slimy? Would it move in her hands? She reached out.

“Mandy stay back,” Alex said sharply, “It may be dangerous.”

“You’re probably right.” Mandy withdrew her hand and stepped back from the oozing heap. Still, it was disappointing that she couldn’t touch it.
Alex reached out to Cisco. He took her hand and pulled her to her feet. She looked back to the purple mist. “The mist and that thing must be connected someway. Nothing like either one has been seen on Demeter before.” She looked back at the carcass and frowned. “It can’t be a weapon. The Enforce Corp prevents interstellar war. No one would dare.“

Cisco shook his head. “I don’t know if it is a weapon, but it is hostile. We should warn Skylax. There might be more of these things.” He stared into the distance for a moment. He frowned. “I can’t make contact with anyone at Skylax.” He looked back at Alex.

She closed her eyes for a moment. She shook her head and whispered, “Me neither. I can’t get voice or data—I can’t even pull up the Teensy Spy map.” She looked up at Cisco and said, “We’re being jammed. It’s not just white noise. Someone is reading our signal and instantly generating a signal that cancels it exactly.”
“Guys, can we leave now,” Mandy pleaded as she began watching the shadows again. It seemed to be getting darker.

“Yes,” Cisco said. He led the way, swing wide around the carcass and the widening pool of goo. They moved quickly as they could in the gathering gloom.

“At least we know what’s causing the voids in the map,” Alex said as they moved through the still forest. “That violet mist was made of assembler/disassembler nanomechs. If a Teensy Spy flew into that, it would be ripped apart.”

“The question is what they are making,” Cisco asked.

“Monsters. They’re making monsters,” Mandy said as they approached the edge of the forest. She could tell by the sound of the falls that they were nearly to the road.

“You’re right, but—” Cisco stopped and dropped to a crouched position. Alex immediately dropped and brought her weapon to the ready. Mandy instinctively pulled back into the shadows. Through the foliage, she could see the rear of the T30. Something was moving around the T30, keeping a constant distance of two meters from the vehicle.

Alex quickly changed to a fresh magazine. Cisco nodded to her. The armed surveyors crept closer to the road with Mandy trailing behind.
Two mechanical creatures the size of large dogs prowled around the T30. Each creature was like collections of geometric shapes that clung together. There was no symmetrical and no clear pattern to their construction. The arrangement of parts silently flowed and changed shape as they moved.

Cisco was watching Alex. She looked back from the intruders. Her jaw muscles tightened. “Right,” she said, “I’m in charge.” She shifted her position. “We have to hit them before they know we’re here. We each take one. Full auto.”

Cisco nodded. “I’ll get the one on the right.”

“Ready,” Alex said. Cisco nodded and gripped his rifle tighter. “Go,” Alex shouted. She stood and fired into her target, moving her rifle in a circular pattern as he fired. Cisco fired at his target and tract it as it moved. The flechettes ripped into the two creatures. Tiny pieces were blasted free. The bits of monster bounced across the road. The creatures charged, but the momentum of the flechettes caused them to stumble. It was over in a moment. The creatures fell into disorganized heaps that scattered across the road.

“These look like a different model or species—I guess you would call it,” Cisco said as he walked onto the road. That was when the thing hit him.
The force of the blow sent him tumbling to the gravel. The squirming wade of metallic tentacles struck again. He brought the rifle up in time to block the second blow. Its tentacles latched onto the rifle. The wooden stock cracked. Cisco clenched his teeth as struggled to hold it back.
Alex moved out onto the road. She tried to line up a shot with the thing, but Cisco was too intertwined with his attacker. Mandy clenched her fists, frustrated at how useless she was. She looked to Alex for some sign of what to do.

That’s when she saw the other two. These were different than the others. The conical creatures bound down the road in a peculiar way they caused their bodies to rotate a third of the way around with each leap. Their heads were covered with red tented blisters. They would be on top of Alex in two jumps.

“What can I do,” she whispered. Mandy stepped back. Her sandal scraped on something. It was a large stone. Mandy snatched it up. She estimated that it massed seven thousand and six two grams. Focusing on the lead creature behind Alex, she threw to stone with all her strength—which apparently was considerable. The stone flashed over Alex’s shoulder and shattered against the thing. It went tumbling back. Alex was stunned by the near miss. The other two creatures changed their posture. Mandy knew they were reevaluating her threat level.

“Nice doggy—thing,” Mandy said as she backed up. It only now occurred to her that she had no plan. The injured creature began to stir. The other two moved as one. They bolted in her direction. She turned and ran. In a leap she was past the end of the road and into the forest. She was fast. The trees were a blur, but she could hear the pursuers behind her. At least Cisco and Alex were safe for the moment.

The rumbling sound of the falls was growing louder. She glanced at the trees. Could these things climb? The other one certainly could. In the gloom ahead, she could see a steep rock outcropping. Two leaps brought her to the top. She stopped—trapped. Flicker Falls blocked her path. She stood on a massive rock that projected into the river where the water fell over the cliffs. She would have to backtrack. She turned. The thing hit her.

The momentum of the strike threw her off the rock and towards the water below. It held her with a tentacle-like tail. She stared at her distorted reflections in the red tent blisters that were just centimeters from her face. Time seemed to slow.

“Am I like you? Are we kin,” she whispered. Scythe projections sprouted from the thing’s back. Something bubbled up from within her, a frightening anger that acted where she hesitated.

“Enough,” she screamed and slammed her right fist into the monstrosity. Metal gave way. The tail loosened. She hit it again and again. Debris flew. It shuttered and fell away into the mist below. The anger faded as fast as it had come. It was only then that she realized that she was floating above the falls, spinning slowly. She looked at her delicate hands. They had shredded metal without her willing it and there wasn’t a scratch on them.

“That can’t be normal.”

As she rotated she saw the second thing, the one that had attacked Cisco. It seemed to be watching her from the edge of the rock. She cringed as her momentum rotated it out of her view. When she could see the rock again, it was gone.

She floated helplessly in the gathering gloom. The falls actually were beautiful. The water sparkled with blue bioluminescence everywhere it was turbulent or struck the rocks. There were sounds in the forest again. Something clumsy was moving slowly towards her. She heard voices.
“Here! I’m over here,” she yelled. There was movement on the other side of the rock.

“You can fly,” Alex asked in disbelief.

“I don’t know. I guess so. Apparently.”

“It looks more like you’re neutrally buoyant,” Cisco said, “We finished the one you damaged. Where are the other two?”

Mandy looked down. “One fell over the cliff. The other went back into the forest.” Alex started scanning the forest.

“I’ll be back,” Cisco said to Alex. He climbed down out of Mandy’s line of sight. He called back to Mandy, ”Stay right there.”

“Very funny.”

When Mandy rotated around again, Alex was watching the dark forest. She had removed her cap and was running her hand through her hair. She looked sideways at Mandy and grinned sheepishly. “Apparently, this is a nervous habit I need to stop.” She replaced her cap.
“If it helps any I think the other one really is gone.” Mandy didn’t say that she thought it had gone to get help.

Alex looked back. “I’m not afraid, if that’s what you’re thinking. At least I’m not afraid for us. Without communications, no one knows we’ve been attacked. Skylax could be in danger.” Alex turned back to the forest again. “And with Major Zhan gone, everyone is depending on me.”

“Who is Zhan,” Mandy ask as she faced the falls again.

“She is the expedition leader. This is her command.”

“I thought you were the leader.”

“No honey. Major Tosha Zhan is the expedition leader. I’m just in command by default. She went back to the Artemis city build site to pick up a mark eight construction bot. I should have been the one to go.” Alex frowned. “She thought I need to ‘stretch myself’. Well, I’m felling plenty stretched now.”

Mandy moved where she could see Alex again. Alex was facing Mandy with her rifle held pointing upward. “I guess, I don’t exactly inspire confidence. Sometimes I keep talking when I should stop. Let’s keep what I said between us.”
“I think you’re doing a good job, if that helps.”

Alex half smiled. “Thanks.” There was noise behind her. She turned.

Cisco returned with a freshly cut branch. “Grab this.” He stood on the edge of the rock and extended it to Mandy. She caught it on her next rotation and he pulled it until her feet touched the mist dampened rock.

“Thanks.”

“Thank you for getting them off of us. You have quite a throwing arm,” he said.

Mandy flexed her bicep. “Yeah I—“

“We need to get back.” Alex was staring at the sky above the forest. Mandy followed her gaze. A dozen purple flares lit the night. With a glance Mandy calculated their trajectories and plotted the landing sites against her memory of the Teensy-Spy map. The pattern and purpose had changed.

Mandy sighed. “Containment. Definitely containment.”