Project: Magnus

This came as a result of one of the Lit­er­ary+ writ­ing assignments

Min­erva Chad­wick nee Hawk leaned against the rail­ing at the stern of the Hawk Fam­ily owned and oper­ated Mer­chant Air­ship, the Valor of the Sky. She stared at the writhing scene below, cap­ti­vated by her imag­i­na­tion of what cre­ated the dis­tur­bances she could see.

“Cap­tain, what kind of crea­tures live in the Rift?”

Cap­tain Nicode­mus Hawk handed off the con­trols of the ship to the nav­i­ga­tor and walked over to join Minerva.

“No one knows”, he said look­ing out over the rail­ing, “none of our devices have ever been able to pen­e­trate the clouds that you see, and no one that has ever ven­tured in has ever returned.“

“A bit melo­dra­matic don’t you think Captain?”

“Not if it’s the truth. Why else do you think we still have these mechan­i­cal air­ships? They are the only thing that can go over the Rift. No other elec­tronic device can even get close before it shorts out. Even the ones car­ried in air­ships go dead when they get close to the border. “

“So the field, or what­ever, that dis­able elec­tron­ics extends upward from the surface?”

“For as high as we have been able to explore yes. Some spec­u­late that it extends out­side the atmos­phere itself and into space.”

“Is that possible?”

“You are the one with the sci­en­tific mind Min­erva, you tell me, “ the Cap­tain smiled, “The only other thing I can tell you is that humans can­not stay too long near the Rift with­out get­ting very sick.”

“Almost like what­ever shuts off the devices is try­ing to shut off the body as well?”

“That is a good way to look at it.”

“How very inter­est­ing. How very inter­est­ing indeed. I would very much like to know what could sur­vive in that environment.”

“If any­one can find out, I believe it is you.”

“I am look­ing for a piece of the Matrix.”

“A piece of a matrix? Why come to me with this?”, asked Talos as he

“Not a matrix.”

“Wait, you are look­ing for ‘the’ matrix? The World Matrix?,” Talos asked laugh­ing, “Son, thats just a leg­end. A fairy tale told to young bots to get them to sleep. It is not real.”

Aneil shifted in his seat. He was becom­ing most decid­edly uncom­fort­able with the laugh­ing the old shaman bot was doing at his expense. He had been to the Dark Con­ti­nent sev­eral time in the past as a researcher and infor­ma­tion gath­erer. He had per­formed his duties well enough that he had been assigned Lead Researcher for the Noble Project, which was where he had encoun­tered the leg­end of the Matrix.

At first he had dis­missed it as just another crazy story just as the shaman had, but the more research he did for the Noble project the more he dis­cov­ered ref­er­ences to the ancient leg­end. So many so that he had began to won­der if there might actu­ally be some­thing to it.

He sub­mit­ted a pro­posal to the Admin­is­tra­tors but was refused on the grounds that it was all based on here say and cir­cum­stan­tial evidence.

Which meant he was fund­ing this trip with his own credits.

The sounds of the ser­vos whirring in the old bot as he paced around the room brought Aneil out of his mem­o­ries with a start. He real­ized Talos had been talk­ing to him. He glanced up to see him star­ing down as if expect­ing an answer.

“I am sorry, I was not lis­ten­ing. What did you say?”

“I was say­ing, assum­ing this ‘world matrix’ is real what makes you think it is around here or that I could help you?”

“It is real Talos. I've found it. Well, most of it. Accord­ing to the leg­end it was …”

“Bro­ken into a hun­dred pieces and scat­tered across the world. Yes, I know the sto­ries as well”

Aneil stood and waled over to his pack. He extracted a small, intri­cately carved, metal box along with a small cir­cuit chip, ancient things he had found in an old tomb not far from here. He han­dled the chip del­i­cately over the Talos, then opened the box. Inside was red tri­a­con­ta­he­dron shaped object about the size of a closed fist nes­tled inside a blue lat­tice work cage. As Aneil removed the con­tents sev­eral places were vis­i­ble where pieces of the red inner object were miss­ing. Talos sim­ply stared.

“As you can see, it’s not quite hun­dreds of pieces. But it is real Talos. Only a few pieces are miss­ing. That crys­tal con­tains all the infor­ma­tion about the Novatun tribe that lived about 60 kilo­me­ters north of here. Within that infor­ma­tion I have found sev­eral ref­er­ences to the Matrix, or at least what I believe to be the Matrix. There are mul­ti­ple ref­er­ences to the ‘heart that rules the world’ being bro­ken and scat­tered. It con­tained a list of places where the ‘heart was kept’ once it was bro­ken. I’ve man­aged to deci­pher most of them.”

Talos just stared at the crystal.

“Sorry, it is in an ancient for­mat and syn­tax, how­ever you can read it if you use your uni­ver­sal bus port. “

Talos did as sug­gested and inserted the crys­tal into a slot on his left wrist. He froze for a moment as he quickly down­loaded and scanned the doc­u­ments it con­tained, search­ing for the ref­er­ences Aneil had mentioned.

After a few sec­onds he removed the crys­tal and handed it back to Aneil, “Yes, I see what you mean. There are a sub­stan­tial num­ber of ref­er­ences in the doc­u­ments. I assume this was an ancient archiv­ing device?”

“That is my belief yes. We found it dur­ing a dig over a hun­dred and twenty-​​five years ago. At first it was just mean­ing­less infor­ma­tion and we sim­ply cat­a­loged it and put it in stor­age, not giv­ing it a sec­ond though. It was not until I began see­ing more and more ref­er­ences to the leg­end that I went back and res­canned the infor­ma­tion on this crystal.”

“Assum­ing I agree with you and I know some­thing about where the Colos­sus is, why would I help you? Telling you would bring hoards of vis­i­tors to my per­sonal paradise.”

“Because I’m not the only one looking…”

Aneil was inter­rupted by a series of explo­sions out­side. As both he and Talos started towards the door a small rust red bot cov­ered in soot and oil clam­ored through cough­ing and stammering.

Talos knelt in from of the new­comer and took his by the shoul­ders, “Tim­Tim, calm down. What is happening?”

“The Vok,” gasped Tim­Tim just before he collapsed.

“The Vok! You brought those insane bots here?” Talos turned to Aneil.

“No. I was track­ing them actu­ally, but when I real­ized they were headed in this direc­tion I rushed ahead. I had though I would have more time. We must go before they find us.” Aneil said as he turned and grabbed his pack.

“Go? I’m not leav­ing. This is my home now.”

“Old man,” began Aneil as he pulled an elec­tronic device from his pack, “I do not have time for fool­ish argu­ments. You now con­tain a copy of the infor­ma­tion on the chip. Infor­ma­tion the Vok lack but greatly desire. If you stay they will destroy you to get it. Even if you offer it up. You know them, they will assume you are hold­ing some­thing back and tear you apart, vir­tu­ally and phys­i­cally to make sure. I will destroy you myself first.”

Talos stared down the bar­rel of the Sta­tic Gun, "Fine, I will come with you. But be warned, I will not for­get this."

Mor­ton Pen­win­kle stood watch­ing the skies. He wasn't so much watch­ing them as wait­ing for them to fall and he wanted to be sure he was look­ing when it started.

He shoved his hands deep in his pock­ets, it was after all fairly cold, and stamped his feet to make sure he stayed warm. In all hon­esty he wasn't really expect­ing the skies to fall. That would have meant some­thing went right, and based on the fact this was the fourth time in as many months that the end of the world had been pre­dicted, yet had failed to hap­pen (after all, if it had he wouldn't be here wait­ing). The doom say­ers were start­ing to get as bad as the weather men.

He shook his head remem­ber­ing the global pan­demic that almost was, but wasn't. Sup­pos­edly Mad Cow dis­ease had become so per­va­sive and stub­born this past win­ter that it was going to hit everycow all at once, then mutate into a new strain. Some CDC researchers pre­dicted it would re-​​animate the cows after killing them cre­at­ing what amounted to zom­bie cows. It didn't sound so bad con­sid­er­ing that peo­ple had got­ten really good at killing cows over the last few hun­dred years until he real­ized that it meant no more steaks or ham­burg­ers. He still wasn't sure how that was going to 'end the world' (and yes, he used air quotes every time he men­tioned it) but it def­i­nitely would have meant din­ners would be a tad less inter­est­ing. Although on the whole, it was bet­ter than zom­bie squir­rels. At least reg­u­lar squir­rels stopped chat­ter­ing long enough to sleep.

Then there was the comet that was going to pass extremely close to the moon, shift­ing it out of it's orbit and, at the very least caus­ing all kinds of destruc­tion as the grav­i­ta­tional forces worked to bal­ance them­selves. Worst case sce­nar­ios had it crash­ing into the Earth itself. All the sci­en­tists were in agree­ment that every­thing would work itself out and har­mony would once again reign, but there was a very likely chance human­ity would not survive.

Then of course the comet missed. Later it was dis­cov­ered that there was a round­ing error and that it had missed the moon by sev­eral mil­lion miles instead of the pre­dicted few hun­dred feet. Mor­ton always shook his head at that one. Being an accoun­tant for the Fifth National Bank of Welling­ton he always had a pro­found respect for num­ber and tended to guf­faw at the mis­take when­ever it came up in con­ver­sa­tion. Which it did. A lot.

And who could for­get the alien inva­sion. Mil­lions upon mil­lions of alien ships had sud­denly appeared in orbit just above the planet. It was cer­tain doom or so the pun­dits had pro­claimed on every talk show they could squeeze them­selves onto. No chance of human­ity sur­viv­ing this, it was most cer­tainly an inva­sion, then had pic­tures of the ships and everything.

Until one researcher had dis­cov­ered that the alien ships were in fact noth­ing more than space fleas and that the orig­i­nal dis­cov­erer had sim­ply mis-​​focused his tele­scope. Then every one that went to ver­ify it and dis­cov­ered the mis­take decided that since the gen­tle­man who had made the dis­cov­ery was so well respected and so very pop­u­lar that it must have been they that had made the mis­take and so pro­lif­er­ated the false claims for sev­eral days.

So it was with a shake of the head that Mor­ton turned around and shuf­fled back into his house when the PA sys­tem started to chirp to life and the announcer came on and stated that the launch of the nuclear mis­sile aimed at the enemy had been can­celled due to a mechan­i­cal fail­ure. He had hoped all along there wasn't going to be yet another post­pone­ment but had put a pie in the oven, just in case.

The head of the task force assigned to work with us in deal­ing with Asgard has been going over the reports and after­math of the encounter in the Boston area for the last 15 min­utes but I've tuned out.

We lost 8 of our own and only man­aged, through shear luck, to cap­ture 1 of them. None of the Asgard fell. From the tiny bits of infor­ma­tion we were able to extract from our pris­oner they not only have the force­field that I encoun­tered, they have also devel­oped a device that allows them to tele­port as well as anti-​​matter bombs. The lat­ter we think was used in the North End.

It means they can strike any­where at will and com­pletely dev­as­tate everything.

It also means they can kill hun­dreds, maybe even thou­sands of peo­ple in the blink of an eye. Ini­tial esti­mates put the loses in North End around 900. We will never know for sure because there are no bod­ies to count.

Some of the ana­lysts now believe that the bank heists and other rob­beries were designed to acquire funds to develop this tech­nol­ogy. Some­one on their side has to have an extremely high IQ. This is tech that's been dreamed of for years but no one else has been able to even come close to these kind of devices. They man­aged to do it in a lit­tle under two years.

The other thing we've learned is that their head­quar­ters is located in Que­bec. They are using one of the older north­ern cas­tles as a base of operations.

I have no idea why Que­bec would aid and abet these peo­ple but ever since they gained their sov­er­eignty the gov­ern­ment up there has gone out of it's way to piss off Canada and the US. What bet­ter way to do that then to pro­vide asy­lum to our biggest threat.

After the debrief­ing we met with the lead­ers of the mil­i­tary arm of the project to dis­cuss the next move. After some debate it's been decided that we will take the fight to them, we are to air drop into their home base and let the gov­ern­ment deal with the con­se­quences of what will be con­sider an inva­sion into Que­bec territory.

Drop from twenty thou­sand feet with­out a para­chute isn't for the weak of heart. It took me sev­eral months to get up the nerve. And like the joke says, it's not the fall that kills you but the sud­den stop at the end. 3 of us have tele­ki­netic abil­i­ties and we use them at the last sec­ond to slow everyone‚Äôs decent at the last sec­ond. We agreed ear­lier not to bring us to a com­plete stop but to land heav­ily in the stone court­yard of the cas­tle. A bit rem­i­nis­cent of the scene in Suck­er­Punch and maybe a lit­tle cliche but it was cool. Con­sid­er­ing the cas­tle looks a bit like the one in the movie it was all the more surreal.

I sent one group to work their way around the right side of the cas­tle and another to the left. Myself and the rest walked straight through the front door like we owned the place.

We searched for hours. Not that the cas­tle was very large, but we looked for hid­den door­ways, secret pas­sages, or hid­den rooms. Any­thing to explain why the build­ing was com­pletely deserted. Sad to think our show in the court­yard went unseen.

Every­one finally mets together in what appears to be the throne room. Along one wall, oppo­site where I imag­ine the throne would be, but where now sits a large orange sec­tional sofa, are four large tele­vi­sions mounted on the wall.

We are all milling around the room try­ing to decide what to do next, the mil­i­tary attach­ment is actu­ally look­ing a bit relieved, when the hiss­ing starts. Our first reac­tion is panic, that we walked into a trap and that an anti-​​matter bomb is about to go off. Funny how we didn't think of that before hand. Only when the tv's flash to life and we are all star­ing at the face of what has to be the ugli­est man alive do we real­ize that it was indeed a trap but that we aren't going to die just yet.

"Inter­est­ing. More of you sur­vived then I expected" says the voice from the tele­vi­sions, "I'm slightly impressed. Not that it matters."

I step for­ward and address the screens.

"You are the one they call Exo­dus I presume?"

"You pre­sume cor­rectly. And you are the son. Father would be proud."

"You do not get to call him 'father'."

Exo­dus laughs and waves his hand, dis­miss­ing my comment.

"Spare me the the­atrics. He was the cre­ator of all of us. He cre­ated the serum and the process that gave us our pow­ers, that made us more than human. He was our Gen­e­sis and I carry on ful­fill­ing my inter­pre­ta­tion of his vision, which is why I call myself 'Exo­dus'. But I don't want to upset you lit­tle one, so I shall refrain from using the term again."

"What do you want? I pre­sume there is a rea­son we are here and you are talk­ing to us?"

"Yes, there is a rea­son. I want you to run home and tell your pres­i­dent and mil­i­tary lead­ers I have a pro­posal for them."

"And what might that pro­posal be?"

"That is for them to know lit­tle one."

"You can't really expect me to tell them you want to talk and not give them a rea­son why?"

"Tell them I wish to make a deal."

I almost fall over laugh­ing. After all this he really thinks they are going to nego­ti­ate with a terrorist.

"What deal?" I ask when I finally catch my breath.

"We want immu­nity and gov­ern­men­tal sup­port to sell the Ich­a­bod drug to any­one that can afford it. Tell them that if they don't agree we will destroy a city every hour until they do and the clock starts in five hours.", Exo­dus leaned for­ward into the screen, "And you know we have the abil­ity to do just that. Now run along."

Build­ings all around where I sit have col­lapsed and the streets are lit­tered with aban­doned cars and debris from the bat­tle. From the repots I'm get­ting over my head­set we held the city but at a steep price. Cam­bridge is pretty much lev­eled, and the North End is gone. No one has any idea how. It wasn't lev­eled or destroyed, it just isn't there. Some­one said it just dis­ap­peared in a flash of light.

It's amaz­ing what passes through your mind some­times. As I sit on my knees feel­ing the pain of my dis­lo­cated right shoul­der and bro­ken fore­arm I remem­ber the last time I felt pain like this. The day I went through the trans­for­ma­tion process.

It hurts. They didn't know that at first, though in hind­sight it should have been obvi­ous. The first test sub­ject died from the pain before they fig­ured it out. The sec­ond went mad before they were able to get the pain and anes­the­sia lev­els right. Even then you feel it and it's still the worse pain you've ever felt in your life. The process causes your bones to re-​​knit them­selves so that they become stronger. Your mus­cles are restruc­tured as mil­lions of new fibers are cre­ated and your skin is reworked so that it's denser and vir­tu­ally impen­e­tra­ble. In essence every cell in your body is trans­formed. In minutes.

All this passes through my mind in an instant. Even now the mem­ory is still enough to make me catch my breath. Which the titan of a man in front of me appar­ently took as a sign of pain or weak­ness because he started laugh­ing. Frankly it's rather annoying.

I raise my head and look at titan boy. He's at least 8 feet tall and built like a young Arnold Schwarzeneg­ger. I have no way of know­ing if was like that before or if the process did this to him. Either way, he's big. The process is also what gives us our pow­ers. Every per­son is dif­fer­ent so we never know what we will end up with. Some pow­ers are, for lack of a bet­ter way of say­ing it, use­less. Hav­ing the abil­ity to grow plants well doesn't really help. Pow­ers can range any­where from telekine­sis to super speed, although not on the level of the Flash, to a super genius. And every­thing in between. I was gifted with telekine­sis. A rather strong form of it too. Where as most have trou­ble mov­ing any­thing larger than a mid-​​sized SUV, I can bring down build­ings. I've men­tioned that the process reengi­neers every cell and makes us stronger and our skin denser. Any­thing short of an armor pierc­ing shell will basi­cally bounce off. It hurts like hell, but only for a sec­ond. It's the equiv­a­lent of being smacked with a ruler for normals.

With that said, physics is still physics. If I hit him with some­thing big enough, and with enough momen­tum, it won't stop him, but might put him down long enough to get away. Instinc­tively I reach out and grab whats left of the side of a 7 story build­ing behind me. He sees the wall start to shake, places his hands on his hips and starts laugh­ing even louder. Not exactly the response I expected but he's start­ing to piss me off so I don't bother restrain­ing myself and fling it at him with every­thing I've got.

The impact is tremen­dous, I feel it from where I'm sit­ting sev­eral hun­dred yards away. It's enough that a cou­ple unsta­ble struc­tures near us start to col­lapse and fall into them­selves in response. I head the crack­ling and tin­kling of small stones falling back to earth after the impact sent them sky­ward. I strug­gle to stand, when a tremor shakes the area and knocks me back on my ass. Trou­ble is it doesn't feel like a nor­mal tremor, nor does it come at the right time. There was too much time after the impact for the two to be related.

That's when I real­ize the crack­ing sounds I heard ear­lier weren't stones. Now that the dust has set­tled I see him kneel­ing on the ground with his left fist on the ground. He has caused the tremor by pound­ing the earth. And he has a force­field sur­round­ing him. That's new.

He grins and picks up the burnt out remains of a car next to him and heaves it at me. Can't dodge with my arm and shoul­der so I push myself up and over using my gift, som­er­sault­ing badly over the car. I land wrong caus­ing pain to flair in my shoul­der and wrench my ankle. No dam­age is done but it puts me off bal­ance long enough for him to uproot a light pole and swing at me. I can't recover in time and the impact throws me across the street. When I land the impact shat­ters my head­set, how­ever my only thoughts are that I'm glad he doesn't play for the Yan­kees and that he's left handed.

He launches him­self into the air directly at me. It's one hell of a leap, but based on the dis­play so far noth­ing for some­one with his strength. As he's in the air I real­ize where we are and using my power grab him in mid air and slam him into a con­crete build­ing in the cen­ter of the street. It's the build­ing where the Red Line goes back under­ground so I put every­thing I have into forc­ing him as far down as I can and pil­ing debris on top.

It won't hold him for­ever but should long enough for me to get away.

I go north, plan­ning to cross over the Charles at the museum head­ing for the Gar­den where our HQ is set up. They need to know that the game has changed.

It shouldn't be such a nice day

We buried my father today. A man con­sid­ered by many as the bright­est mind that ever lived. Oth­ers called him the har­bin­ger of doom. Appar­ently that's the way it works with men who are super geniuses. If his death had been nat­ural I might not hate the sun­shine and cool breezes blow­ing around me as I stand here on the bal­cony over­look­ing the grave­yard where his body now lies.

My girl­friend is with me and has been try­ing to con­sole me all after­noon. Unfor­tu­nately this is one of those sit­u­a­tions where unless you've expe­ri­enced it, you can't even begin to under­stand what it's like. She kept remind­ing me that her father was killed when she was 12, and while that is true, her father wasn't killed by a ter­ror­ist orga­ni­za­tion that was cre­ated specif­i­cally to destroy his work. She can't under­stand that because of his work in genet­ics and biol­ogy, and because of the pow­ers he gave me and oth­ers like me, he was tar­geted from the beginning.

I don't blame her. I can't. Of the 10 bil­lion peo­ple liv­ing on this planet and the moon only 15, the ones dad chose for the Ich­a­bod project, would even begin to have an idea of what it felt like. Of those, only five had a par­ent in the project. Then of course only I was lucky enough to have the man that started it all, the man that dis­cov­ered how to give ordi­nary peo­ple what amounted to super pow­ers, as a father.

Right now she is in the other room try­ing to absorb every­thing I told her. In this case I can imag­ine what she is going through. I went through some­thing sim­i­lar 5 years ago when dad told me all about the Ich­a­bod idea. He told me about how he had worked out how to alter a per­sons phys­i­ol­ogy and bio­chem­istry to give them super human abilities.

He had got­ten FDA approval to begin test­ing on humans, and wanted to know if I would be will­ing to be part of the trials.

That's when every­thing went to hell. A group call­ing them­selves 'The Asgard' broke into the lab in Boston, stole all the serum and notes and research and blew up the lab. Injur­ing my dad in the process. They began to exper­i­ment on them­selves. No one is sure where their sci­en­tist came from, or if they even had one, but sud­denly they began to acquire abil­i­ties that were unsta­ble and dan­ger­ous. Well, more dan­ger­ous. Espe­cially in their hands.

Dad went into self-​​imposed exile to recover from his injuries. The worst of which was a shat­tered spine which left him unable to walk. 'Very Pro­fes­sor X' I always said, teas­ing him about it. At least it made him smile.

When he recov­ered to the point he could work again he ded­i­cated him­self to devel­op­ing a serum that would counter the orig­i­nal drug, hold­ing him­self respon­si­ble for all the death and dam­aged caused by Asgard.

Then a year ago they changed course. Some said that the lead­er­ship within Asgard changed, that there had been a coup of some kind and that was why the change of phi­los­o­phy. Oth­ers said it was because they had found out about dad's lit­tle fail safe. That those given the treat­ment became ster­ile and could not pro­duce off­spring. He had said it was to pre­vent the pow­ers from get­ting out of con­trol and evolv­ing into god knew what.

Either way they went from com­mit­ting crimes like theft and extor­tion to ter­ror­iz­ing the gen­eral pop­u­la­tion. I'm con­vinced that they did it inten­tion­ally, know­ing dad would do some­thing and it would bring him out of exile.

And they were right. He came out of seclu­sion and, with the help of the gov­ern­ment, formed the super-​​human group he dubbed 'League'. He kind of named it after the 'League of Extra­or­di­nary Gen­tle­men', but also, as a pri­vate joke, because the train­ing part of the pro­gram would be called 'The Minors'. He did love his baseball.

Because I was his son I was recruited to join. Train­ing was bru­tal. Not only did we get train­ing in using our pow­ers but we went through the stan­dard Marine basic train­ing. Only it was accel­er­ated because no one felt we had a lot of time to fig­ure it out.

We held our own the first time we face Asgard. No one died and no one got seri­ously injured. How­ever in retal­i­a­tion they attacked and lev­eled Atlanta. Sher­man would have been proud, and prob­a­bly a lit­tle embar­rassed. That was six months ago. They are still search­ing for miss­ing peo­ple. They announced a cou­ple weeks ago that they were tar­get­ing Boston next since that was where it all began and where League had setup it's headquarters.

When the announce­ment hit the news dad jumped on a plane from LA, where he had been work­ing to setup a west coast divi­sion, and headed back to Boston. They attacked his plane some­where over Kansas and brought it down. They pulled my father from the plane, tor­tured him for fun then fin­ished the job they started back when they first attacked the lab. I'm told he died quickly once they decided to kill him. Small consultation.

Steph came out after a cou­ple hours and is stand­ing next to me. We stay like that, nei­ther of us talk­ing for sev­eral min­utes until the sirens start­ing going off, announc­ing Asgards arrival in Boston, and my sig­nal that it was time to met the rest of the team.

I really wish it wasn't such a nice day.

This is the last of the twisties for a lit­tle bit. Have a cou­ple other ideas queued up for the next few weeks. As always, enjoy!

p.s. Every­one should feel free to use the 'High­lighter' thing if they feel the need. I'm still give it a test to see if it's worth it.

He thought back to the inci­dent as he fell to the ocean floor, the water slow­ing his decent to almost noth­ing. The other had man­aged to work their arm under under­neath him, and as he shifted his weight to move the coral he had attached to broke away caus­ing his cur­rent predicament.

On the way down he had hit another piece of coral that had been razor sharp, slic­ing off a por­tion of one arm. There had been very lit­tle blood and the pain had already began to sub­side as the wound had closed itself off fairly quickly.

As he hit bot­tom he was able to glance back the way he came and saw the other sit­ting on the top of the coral in his old spot, most likely obliv­i­ous to the events that had tran­spired. He bore no ill will toward the other, they prob­a­bly hadn't intended to knock him off the reef after all. Besides, no one could have pre­dicted it would have given way just then.

He sighed inwardly and took his bear­ings, try­ing to deter­mine the best path back to the top where he had been. Once he located the route he set his mind towards the goal and began the long trek.

He hoped the arm would grow back before he reached the sum­mit. Scars were cool and all, but try­ing to explain this to the other starfish wasn't some­thing he was look­ing for­ward to.

He received the all clear sig­nal, banked left and began his approach. It was a move he and hun­dreds of oth­ers had done before, yet at no point did he relax his con­cen­tra­tion. Too many times he had seen or heard of a sud­den gust of wind catch­ing some­one off guard and knock­ing them either off track and they had to cir­cle around and try again, or slammed them into the sides.

The humil­i­a­tion that came with being tossed around because you weren't pay­ing atten­tion was some­thing he wished, very strongly, to avoid. Espe­cially since the inci­dent last year. Besides, with over 50,000 oth­ers in the hive, it wasn't like there was a place for a Bee to hide when the mock­ing became too much.

Allow me to intro­duce myself, my name is Zif­fer Elroy Drumkins. And yes, I believe my par­ents hated me. Most peo­ple just call me Zed.

I'm 17, from Boston, MA and I'm a Zom­bie Hunter.

Trust me, it's not as glam­orous as it sounds. In fact it's kind of messy, but I do get to travel to remote and exotic places and met excit­ing peo­ple. Not.

I've learned a few things about Zom­bies over the years.

They main­tain full func­tion of any­thing not destroyed when they die. That includes the brain. For exam­ple, if your brain is dam­aged but your arms are fine you could hit a base­ball. Assum­ing you know what a base­ball is. Or what a bat is even for.

They can speak. Sorry to say it but George Romero got it wrong. Maybe he knew and left that part out in his movies because it's too ter­ri­fy­ing. It may not seem like much, but trust me, when a hor­ri­bly dis­fig­ured crea­ture sham­bling about is call­ing your name, it's not pleas­ant. Espe­cially when said per­son is your mother. Of course you're prob­a­bly use to her sham­bling about call­ing your name or maybe that's just me.

They have an hier­ar­chy of sorts. There is a mas­ter zom­bie all the way down to slaves and drones. Drones are usu­ally the ones that have had a sig­nif­i­cant por­tion of their head (and sub­se­quently their brain) dam­aged and are basi­cally stu­pid. Mas­ters are strong phys­i­cally, very strong. They have to be to make it up the food chain.

They aren't all that com­mon. There is prob­a­bly 1 zom­bie for every 100,000 peo­ple on the planet, give or take. They tend to gather in groups (clans, covens, flocks, gag­gles???) and hold up some­where away from people.

They don't actu­ally 'hunt' peo­ple. True, they love the taste of human flesh (eww!) but they are actu­ally attracted to move­ment. Stands to rea­son when your eyes are glazed over that you can't see very well. So if you were to stand stock still they'd walk right by you. Not that many peo­ple will stand still while a pack of flesh eat­ing mon­sters are strolling by.

There are actu­ally 2 types of zom­bies: Dead and Infected. The names are mis­lead­ing, but then again they didn't ask me my opin­ion when they named them. Dead zom­bies are peo­ple that died and then con­tracted the virus and were rean­i­mated. These are usu­ally the ones you see bum­bling around. Infected con­tracted the virus and died as a result (mean­ing they are un-​​injured) or were bit­ten. Kind of like Werewolves.

Finally, there is a cure. If you can get to it within the first 12 hours after infec­tion it can stop the virus. And yes, I real­ize how much that sounds like vampirism.

I've also learned that none of these rules mean a damn thing when your stuck on the roof of a park­ing garage in the mid­dle of the night, your only weapon being a sand pail of not-​​quite-​​ripe peaches that you just (ille­gally) picked and your best friend, Sixx, is stand­ing next to you in a fuzzy pink hos­pi­tal gown with rab­bits on it, all the while sur­rounded by a band of rea­son­ably intel­li­gent zom­bies who were actu­ally out look­ing for you specifically.

Trust me, pink is not his color.

Oh, and Sixx is a zom­bie as well.

"Explain to me again how you ended up wear­ing a ping hos­pi­tal gown."

"Really? You think now is the best time to bring that up again?"

"Well yea. It gets fun­nier every time you tell it."

"Oh hardy-​​de-​​har-​​har. What are we going to do Z?"

"I called Stephanie, she and Mike are on their way over now. They only live a few blocks from her."

Stephanie and Mike are the other half of our team. Steph is actu­ally my ex but we've remained friends. She's 5' 7", very much a tomboy and can kick the ass of just about any­one I know, includ­ing me. I've seen her take on 3 strong Infected at once and not even break a sweat.

Mike, her part­ner, puts Steph to shame. She is very fem­i­nine but is a bet­ter fighter than any of us. The belts in Judo, Aikido and Capoeira help. Don't let the blond hair fool you though, she doesn't take crap from any­one and doesn't suf­fer fools period. Imag­ine Char­l­ize Theron with a ninja sword and an atti­tude. And the fact that Mike and I get along bet­ter than Steph and I has noth­ing at all to do with my praise. Honestly.

"Get­ting into trou­ble again I see?" Steph says through a giant grin on her face.

"You know me," I reply as Mike tosses me my sword.

We wade through the first wave of grunts, slic­ing and hack­ing and the occa­sional thwack when I heave a peach at a zom­bie. I take the heads of a cou­ple of twins, Mike takes out three local busi­ness men. Sev­er­ing the head is the only sure way to guar­an­tee that a zom­bie is dead. Romero got that much right. Then again it works for just about every other crea­ture on the planet as well. There are a cou­ple excep­tions but that's another story.

I glance over and see Sixx beat­ing another zom­bie into sub­mis­sion with their own arms, hoop­ing and hol­ler­ing the entire time. At least he enjoys his work.

He takes a break from the beat­ing to look up at me just as I cut off the left arm of a zom­bie still hold­ing a broom.

"Any one else notice they aren't really putting up a fight?" he asks.

It's then that I notice the leader stand­ing off in the dis­tance. He real­izes I've seen him and steps forward.

"I come with a message."

"And what might that be?"

"The Matri­arch would like to speak with you."

With that the remain­ing zom­bies turn and leave. Some­thing I've never seen hap­pen before. Not exactly a good sign to be honest.

We all stand and stare at each other for a few min­utes, Steph is the one to finally break the silence.

"What do we do Zed?"

I pause for dra­matic effect, "Let's go find out what my mother wants."

The entire room was bathed in bright light. ¬†Not so bright as to be blind­ing, but bright enough that it was wor­ry­ing to try and nav­i­gate through the room after being in the dark hallway.

As his eyes adjusted he could see shad­ows mov­ing around behind the lights in all direc­tions, their pur­pose and goals unknown to him. ¬†Across the room was a beau­ti­ful girl stand­ing just inside the door­way. ¬†He knew her, or felt he should. ¬†At the very least he wanted to.¬†Occasionally sounds came drift­ing in, soft enough and low enough that he couldn't quite under­stand the words.

His first instinct was to won­der if they were talk­ing about him, look­ing across the now lit room he could see the girl stand­ing by the door, maybe the voices were talk­ing about her

He chose his spot beside the couch and looked care­fully around the room. ¬†It was an aver­age sized room with aver­age fur­ni­ture. ¬†It was mostly in line with his tastes, enough so he wasn't repulsed by it, but he knew it was all fake. ¬†Noth­ing he could see was real, noth­ing belonged to him. ¬†Look­ing around again he couldn't remem­ber what his own fur­ni­ture, or even his room actu­ally looked like.

He licked his lips as his gaze passed over the shad­ows mov­ing around behind the lights. ¬†The whis­pers again pass­ing by him, not quite understandable.

How long would they stay away, how long would the light keep them out.

He glanced over to the girl again and noticed that she seemed more con­fi­dent, more sure of her­self than he felt. ¬†He won­dered if she was even real and fought the urge to walk over to her to touch her, know­ing it would pro­voke the Direc­tor in the shad­ows and cause him­self anguish.

Instead he sat on the arm of the couch, sens­ing his time was com­ing.¬† Instinc­tively know that soon the lights would begin and every­thing would change.

He was sup­posed to do some­thing, or say some­thing… if only he could remember.

He started¬†fidgeting, shak­ing his hands and feet. He closed his eyes try­ing des­per­ately to remem­ber what it was he was sup­posed to do. ¬†It was some­thing impor­tant, that much he remem­bered. ¬†Some­thing about…

Sud­denly his head rose up, every­thing came flood­ing back to him in a fran­tic rush.

He sorted it out in his head, took ¬†a deep breath and felt his con­fi­dence grow.

He was set.

He was ready.

Ready to play his part. Ready to tackle the role before him in this grand drama.

He smiled briefly at the girl across the room, and she smiled back.  His confidence rose again.

Another deep breath.

He faced the light, ready.

The shuf­fling in the back­ground qui­eted, the lights began to dim. The shad­ows stilled.

Now.

Now was the time for him to do what he had come to do, to stand on his own and face all his fears and demons. ¬†To give the per­for­mance of his life.

Sud­denly a face¬†appeared¬†across the room,¬†distorted¬†by the lights and shad­ows into a mock­ery of a man. ¬†The face seemed to take a deep breath and shouted:

"ACTION!"