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spookyspaghettisundae · 5 days

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The Impossibility of It

Chloe Grant could hear the thunder of rotors through the soundproof glass on the twentieth story of Future Proof’s headquarters.

A black unmarked helicopter, landing atop the skyscraper, had captured her entire attention.

Or it happened to be a convenient distraction from the conversation at hand. An uncomfortable conversation that Grant had sought out herself, and also been dreading all the while.

“Would you rather reschedule?” asked Rebecca Chao. She couldn’t quite finish the sentence without a hint of sarcasm.

Grant chewed on her lip until she spotted Chao observing her nervous tic, then made a conscious and forced effort to stop doing that.

She peeled her gaze from the vista of Austin’s skyline. The chopper had landed, though the noise of its thundering rotors still reverberated through the panes.

“No, uh, no,” Grant stammered out, sighing in between, “Sorry. I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to waste your time.”

Chao folded her hands on her lap. She stared at Grant with a perfect poker face.

“We’re not wasting any time here. Not to step on your toes, but I think you were long overdue for a session. There’s only so much mental stress our field operatives—or really anybody—can tolerate before it starts affecting their—our—private lives.”

Grant sighed again.

At this point in time, she wasn’t sure what her private life even was.

With the way reality kept shifting with each change of the timeline, her own life felt alien to her.

The corners of Chao’s lips twitched with the hint of a smile.

“Maybe you could… inspire Mister Carter to see me, too.”

Grant scoffed. Smiled fully.

That would be the day.

“I’m afraid you won’t get Carter in here unless you mandate therapy sessions for field ops.”

Chao’s lips curled and her eyes narrowed.

“Now, there’s a thought.”

Her pen clicked. The doctor scooped her notepad off the desk and scribbled down a note.

“It’s just… I know who I am, but I am not the me who this world used to know before I returned to it through the temporal Anomaly… if that makes any sense. Everybody must have gone through life knowing another me, and although our experiences should mostly match, I… I keep running into these… differences.”

“Like your intimate relationship with Miss Bennett?”

Grant only nodded in response.

“I wish we had more concrete insights into how the Anomalies and temporal disjunctions truly work. We are, together, exploring terra incognita here. A weak solace, perhaps, but in some ways, you are a pioneer.”

“Well,” Grant said, clicking her tongue, “I did sign up for it, didn’t I? I could just quit, couldn’t I?”

Chao stared at her. Instead of answering those questions, she scribbled down another note on her pad.

“I’m quite—not—I’m not quitting,” Grant stumbled over her words. “No, there’s lives at stake.”

“But your own life is a concern. There’s no shame in self-preservation. We all need to protect ourselves.”

Grant pinched the bridge of her nose. Felt a headache coming on.

This wasn’t what she hoped to hear in the session.

“Are you worried you are dissociating?” Chao asked. “I am very sorry—it must be difficult to negotiate the differences between the life you knew before the temporal shift.”

The helicopter on the rooftop had quieted. The ensuing silence in Chao’s office became almost ghostly as a consequence. Grant now almost yearned for the distraction of noise.

Chao’s question lingered in the air like a phantom, haunting Grant, floating around the back of her head.

Chao broke the silence and said, “As I was saying, this is terra incognita for all of us. You are under no obligation to perform as the Chloe Grant people expect you to be. You only owe it to yourself to be who you want to be. And if that’s more in line with the timeline you come from, then that is who you are.”

Though Grant found a shred of comfort buried within her words, she pursed her lips, and part of her instinctually rebelled against Chao’s advice.

“What are you… are you suggesting I should break up with Dan?”

Chao’s eyes widened and her brow furrowed.

“I was not suggesting any such thing, no. Not even close. I—”

The phone on Chao’s desk buzzed with obnoxious volume. An incoming message.

The doctor shot a glance down at the small device’s now-glowing screen.

Grant said, “No, it… it feels right, I think. Like it was going to happen anyway? The more I think about it, the more I can see it, or could have seen it, or whatever. Uh—”

In stark contrast to the rest of the session, it was almost like Chao hadn’t listened to a single word she said since the phone’s buzzing. The doctor just stared at the text message on her phone’s screen.

“Doctor? Am I… interrupting something?”

The furrow on Chao’s brow arched even higher. She looked up from the device to meet Grant’s gaze, then shook her head.

“No, I am sorry, I apologize. It’s… please forgive me. I should answer this.”

Chao picked up the phone and her thumbs tapped away at a reply.

Grant stifled a sigh and stared out the floor-to-ceiling windows.

The sun was setting on the horizon, painting the city in pink light.

Chao put the phone back down, then asked, “Now, where were we?”

Grant shook her head. “No, it’s… nothing. I think I’ll manage. Just talking has helped. A lot. That was Spencer, wasn’t it?”

The corners of Chao’s lips twitched again.

“Yes, but he can wait.” Her glance to the silent clock on the wall telegraphed her next statement. “We still have fifteen more minutes.”

On cue, the phone buzzed again. Chao’s gaze darted back down to it, locked onto the screen, reading the next message intently.

It was also fifteen minutes before the end of office hours.

But their unusual line of work here had a habit of sneaking up on them and saddling them with overtime. All the time.

Grant grinned through her final sigh of the day, as if she had run out of breath for it.

“Shall we?” she asked Doctor Chao.

Chao’s entire expression hardened. It had to be something serious.

She nodded at Grant.

“In fact, yes, we are both being called to join a meeting. Downstairs.”

A chill ran down Grant’s spine.

Like a premonition of terrible things to come.

They packed up and left the doctor’s office, cutting the session short. Grant wouldn’t be losing sleep over it. She hadn’t been lying or exaggerating about how the talking had helped somewhat, though she was skeptical if anybody could help her at all.

If anybody could even understand—truly understand—what all of this felt like.

The CEO, Malachi Spencer himself, had summoned Doctor Chao to the basement levels. Riding the elevator down with their top-clearance keycards, Grant learned that Spencer had summoned her, as well. She only missed the summons because she had switched her phone to airplane mode for the therapy session.

Spencer probably knew about the therapy now. There was no point in asking how Chao handled confidentiality. The normal rules didn’t really apply around here.

Future Proof tended to play fast and loose with morals and ethics.

To sleep at night, Grant told herself that this was in humanity’s best interests.

The two women exchanged no words as they marched down the long and harrowing hall through Containment’s sub-level.

Their taciturn walk delivered them into a forcibly sterile medical examination room. In deeper solemn silence, they slipped into HAZMAT suits. Donned the visored helmets. Ensured everything was sealed airtight.

White clouds enshrouded them, hissing, as they crossed through the airlock. Electronic seals beeped and clicked, and they entered the quarantined room.

Even with only the smell of plastic to meet her senses, Grant thought of rotten meat upon seeing the body on the metal examination slab.

That thing wasn’t human.

It wasn’t saurian, either. She wasn’t sure what it was, but she had seen such a thing before—

In the Crossroads of Anomalies. Chasing the man in ancient armor.

The sight of it up close stunned her so deeply that she failed to notice all the faces staring at her upon her entrance into the examination room.

The creature was only vaguely humanoid, featuring almost twice the body mass of a grown man. Its arms were longer than its legs, and all its limbs were wiry with hidden power, tipped in freakishly long fingers, and deadly claws. Mottled gray flesh reminded her of aliens from outer space, especially with the head’s strange form and toothy maw, and a metal, futuristic device crowning its skull—with wires and hooks clearly protruding from the flesh, attached to the organism’s head.

It had been riddled with bullets. A surgeon had extracted all of them.

“Doctor Chao,” said Spencer, every syllable cutting like a knife. “Agent Grant. Good of you to join us. We’re brainstorming here and all red-clearance personnel is encouraged to weigh in with any theories they can come up with.”

Grant sidled up to the autopsy table and stared into the exposed insides of the carcass’s open torso. Stretchers kept tissue peeled apart, and the organs reminded her of what one might find among a human body’s innards.

She asked, “What are we looking at here? Where did you find this… thing?”

Stantz, their PR manager, was among the people gathered around the table.

The HAZMAT suits they were all wearing made it hard to tell everybody apart, but Grant immediately recognized his smarmy tone.

“I pulled some strings. United States special forces, led by a certain Captain Dariel Rose, as you all know, took down this specimen with extreme prejudice. Unlike the wise foresight of Future Proof here, Rose and his men gunned it down, butchered it in some truck or back alley, and only handed it off to us after we, uh, twisted some screws on his thumbs.”

Grant wasn’t interested in the specifics. Especially not with Stantz’s delivery thereof. The rest of the gathering had probably already discussed it to death, anyway.

Doctor Solomon stood at the head of the autopsy table, just next to a tray harboring a scalpel and other sharp implements. He wiggled his fingers like he was antsy to cut the specimen some more.

And he said as much. “Yes. This would be the second autopsy performed on the specimen, though not by us. I appreciate the almost Victorian theatrics of having an audience.”

Doctor Burch shuffled awkwardly where she stood next to him. She stared at Stantz, expecting him to share something more about their new specimen on the table, or about the circumstances on how it ended up here.

Spencer and Stantz stood by the clawed feet of the abominable creature. Stantz’s arms stayed crossed, like he was protesting something. Meanwhile, Spencer exuded the same presence as he always did—a knife in human shape. Even wearing awkward-looking HAZMAT gear instead of his usual expensive tailored suits did little to diminish Spencer’s domineering energy.

His deathly glare swept across his employees before locking onto Solomon.

“Feel free to bring Doctor Chao and Agent Grant up to speed with your theories so far.”

Solomon shrugged and gestured in the round, urging the others to speak up.

Carter stood across from Solomon, on the opposite side of the table. He looked tired and grumpy, as usual. His gaze bounced back and forth between Grant and Mischchenko, as if he was expecting either of them to say something.

Standing right next to Burch, Mischchenko tilted her head and shot Grant furtive glances. She then cleared her throat, muffled by the HAZMAT suit, and repeated what she must have already said earlier.

“It combines physical traits of simians, felines, humans, and—this is the weird part—a shark. Note the teeth,” she said, pointing two yellow-gloved fingers at the creature’s toothy maw.

Grant leaned over the body’s head to take a closer look. Indeed, rows of teeth lined the mouth, and they looked as jagged and triangular as those of vicious, serrated sawblades.

Though the creature had no fur, she could vaguely see the resemblance to apes and wildcats both—especially with what she had seen of the creature in its living form, darting between the Crossroads’ Anomalies.

Unable to stop scanning the creature’s odd features, she asked, “Well, is that really that odd? Something from the far future could… evolve into this, on our planet. Right?”

“I said the same thing,” Mischchenko muttered with a hint of resignation. She then nodded to Burch.

Burch continued in her stead, saying, “It’s from 2,000 years into the future. I have no earthly idea how anything on our planet would evolve this fast.”

Another cold shudder shook Grant’s spine.

2,000 years into the future.

The impossibility of it arrived in waves.

“Wait,” Chao interrupted. “How do you know it’s from 2,000 years into the future?”

“Allow me to answer that,” Spencer said, cutting in. “The very Anomaly that this building was built on top of harbors a connection to that specific time. This is not the first of these specimen that we examined. Burch carbon-dated a dead one we retrieved from the future, and this predator—we dubbed it the Apex Predator—is native to that time.”

“That specimen wasn’t sporting this, though,” Solomon said, using his scalpel to tap the metal device attached to the creature’s skull.

Chao’s face twisted. She looked as insulted as Grant felt—even at their clearance level, secrets had been kept. Some people had been in the savvy about certain dealings at Future Proof, while others, like them, had been kept in the dark.

Solomon still tapped the metal device with the scalpel.

Grant jutted her jaw out at it and asked, “What the hell is that?”

Solomon shrugged.

“Some sort of bio-mechanical implant. Perhaps a cerebral augmentation, or something to control the specimen. It’s not transmitting or responding to Wi-Fi signals, however, so your guess is as good as anybody’s. Once we extract it, I’m excited to pick it apart and find out what makes it tick.”

He smiled.

Mischchenko said, “I’m more concerned about what it suggests, because it—”

Spencer cut in again. “The future of our planet looked bleak on every one of our early expeditions through the Anomalies, Agent Grant. Apocalyptic, one might say. And this implant on the specimen’s head, suffice to say, it tells us beyond a shadow of a doubt that there is someone in the future who is experimenting on these feral animals. A perplexing outlook, given that that the future is arguably unsuitable for human life.”

Early expeditions? Again, with the secrets—Grant couldn’t stop a frown from surfacing.

She asked, “Why isn’t any of this on record anywhere? Why weren’t we briefed about these… things?”

Was this why Ruiz was leaking information to Corsino and Celeva?

She glared at Spencer. The fire in his eyes matched hers, yet ever so coldly.

Carter arched a brow. He had been thinking what she said out loud. He locked onto Spencer with shades of the same burning intent.

Spencer fired back, “Everything we do is on a need-to-know basis, and now you need to know.”

Grant almost spat her words out. “As I reported in my last debrief, and described to the best of my ability, this is exactly the kind of specimen I sighted in the Crossroads. Would have been good to know about these things, you know, before they kill us. This thing, how powerful is it?”

A dark chuckle escaped Carter and he nodded at Stantz. “Bozo over here says it managed to gut three ex-Marines like fish before they took it down with a couple hundred high-caliber rounds.”

“Not how I put it,” Stantz said, “but I am neither a pedant nor do I feel like correcting the talent.”

Carter leered at him with a toothy grin. Though he stared at Stantz, his grumbling was directed at Spencer when he asked, “You rethinkin’ that no-exploring-beyond-the-Anomalies rule now, boss? Seeing as you used to send people through, all willy-nilly. Or did I misunderstand that just now?”

All he garnered was a thin-lipped smirk from Spencer. The CEO spared him no remark.

“Though my curiosity is overwhelming,” Solomon said, “curiosity, as we all know, killed the proverbial cat.”

Spencer broke eye contact with Carter to fixate on Solomon next. “You? You out of all people are now recommending against Anomaly expeditions, doctor?”

Solomon gingerly placed the scalpel back down onto the tray and shook his head.

“No, not at all. Though the consensus is—and I’m inclined to agree with Doctor Trémaux on this—that anything we do beyond the Anomalies could bear disastrous consequences for the present. Disastrous. I don’t think we can stress this enough.”

“Duly noted, doctor. The—”

“Hey,” Mischchenko interrupted them.

Everybody’s gaze followed where her index finger was pointing.

To the tiny, blinking red light on the creature’s cranial implant.

“It was doing that,” Grant said. “The one I saw in the Crossroads.”

Then it all happened so fast.

Yelled someone, “Restrain it!”

But the thrashing had already begun. All reactions followed too late to prevent disaster from unfolding in their midst.

The creature—despite its open chest cavity—began lashing out.

It was alive. So deadly, and alive.

Spindly limbs, ending in sharp claws, thrashed about. People fell, stumbled backwards, raised arms in defense, only to see the yellow-suited material on their arms get slashed to ribbons. And blood sprayed.

Blood sprayed everywhere.

Shouts of confusion and agony and panic all competed for attention, and all of them lost that competition in the explosive chaos.

The yellow of Doctor Solomon’s HAZMAT suit was splashed crimson from the chest down. The head of engineering screamed at the top of his lungs.

Before Grant could even blink twice, Carter was on top of the monstrosity, catching it by its thick neck in a powerful chokehold. His other gloved, meaty fist pried at the strange cranial implant, like he was trying to rip it off the creature’s skull by hand.

On instinct, Grant had shoved Chao out of the way, sending her flying into Stantz and Spencer, sending them all crashing into the floor like a set of human domino pieces. Lucky for them that she has acted without thinking, because clawed feet had threatened to slice their bellies open in the creature’s thrashing rage and rampage.

Carter’s swearing was cut short as something slit his throat—

It all happened so fast.

Instead of intelligible words, he emitted guttural choking while he choked out the creature, and yellow-gloved fingers, stained red, slipped from their grip on the monster’s cranial implant.

He staggered away from it, unable to hold on any longer.

Burch stumbled away with the horrifically injured Doctor Solomon, pulling him away from the specimen, while Mischchenko sprung into violent action. She yanked a heavy microscope off a nearby table, and slammed it down on the creature’s head. Two blows was all it took, cleaving the red-blinking device from the Apex Predator’s skull, to the tune of tearing flesh and cracking bone.

She ducked away before a flailing claw could eviscerate her.

The heft of her blows had torn off what Carter had been trying to rip away by hand, and the bloodied piece of mysterious tech clattered onto the floor, spraying puddles of blood and scattered brain matter. Then the tiny red light atop the device winked out. Went dead.

The Apex Predator thrashed around one final time, then its deadly body fell limp on the metal slab again.

Carter had landed on his ass, gripping his neck, and Grant was quickly upon him. She applied pressure, but it all happened so fast—the blood pumped out between her gloved fingers at an alarming rate.

His wide eyes—piercing blue eyes—stared into Grant’s. Then they stared through her as the life faded from them more and more, fading more with every pumping squirt of blood from his neck.

Though the circumstances had changed, she watched Carter die.

Again.

Not in Midland’s desert. In the basement levels of Future Proof.

And as she’d admit in her next session with Chao, she dreaded the thought that it wouldn’t be the last time she’d watch him die.

At the very least, she would see him die in her dreams.

Over and over again.

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spookyspaghettisundae · 12 days

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Too Afraid to Protest

With a twist of the keys, the lock clicked into place.

Evening’s growing dark turned the window panes of the store’s front door into reflective surfaces. Maisie Williamson, owner of Amazing Maisie’s Beauty Salon, lost herself in the mirror image of her store.

It looked great. She looked great, too. Felt a way to match.

It had been a good day.

Little did she know what awaited her that eve.

She flipped the sign on the storefront windows.

WE’RE CLOSED.

Maisie’s feet were killing her, despite her feel-good comfortable sneakers. A short night’s rest and a long day had been making her eyelids as heavy as lead for the past hours since noon. Oh, how she yearned for a hot bath and her cozy bed.

The tips they had earned all day made up for the toils. The words of encouragement, the good news she had heard for herself and others… it had just been a great day all around.

She shuffled about her empty store, ensuring everything was in its proper place. Words from conversations and compliments still echoed in her mind.

With a smile on her lips, she wrapped up her last chores, locked up all cash in the safe, and finally slipped on her winter jacket.

In the back office, where she paused, her hand hovered over a pack of cigarettes on her desk. Habit made this motion natural, but she resisted the temptation.

Maise had been keeping that unopened pack around to keep resisting that temptation. It had been working out well enough.

Instead, she grabbed her pack of spearmint chewing gum, and popped a stick into her mouth, before rolling up the wrapper between her fingers.

The smile on her lips still, she shuffled on out to the back of her store, shutting off all lights along the way, until the entire salon had gone dark.

Time to go home.

Just as she reached the salon’s backdoor, she froze. The balled-up wrapper from her chewing gum reminded her—she needed to take out the trash, as Lily had probably forgotten to do that.

Again.

With a sigh, she turned around and to the other door nearby.

The door to the basement.

Its brass knob was cold to the touch.

It was always cold down there.

The brass knob squeaked. The old door creaked. She descended into darkness.

The fluorescent tubes downstairs flickered to life, with significant delay after flicking the light switch, while she thumped down every wooden step, with a cheery rhythmic bounce to it all.

Maisie was eager to go home. That the previous tenants of the building had believed it was haunted, well, that was the farthest thing away from her mind in that moment.

She was in such a good mood, she didn’t even harbor any resentment for Lily forgetting to take out the trash. Maisie snatched up the tied-up two plastic bags and swiveled, ready to leave with the same fluid motions that had taken her down into this cold, cold basement.

Those movements ceased. All happy thoughts of that bath and warm bed vanished in the blink of an eye.

Her heart skipped a beat.

A wave of alien warmth washed over her. As that surge of sudden warmth clashed with the cold of this basement underneath some Seattle city building, the colliding temperatures flushed her body with uncomfortable heat.

Yet Maisie froze.

Her lips stopped smacking from chewing gum. This time, she was frozen in shock. From a mouth agape, the wad of chewing gum fell onto cold, concrete floor.

A shimmering orb of brilliant light had appeared in the middle of her salon’s basement.

Hovering inches off the ground, it was made of pure light. Like she was looking into the shattered splinters of the sun. Floating triangles, refracting the light, circled in the clustered shape of a large sphere.

And the strange phenomenon, it… chimed. A beauteous melody, accompanied by a steady hum that thrummed all the way down to Maisie’s marrow—the sphere chimed. A mystical music emanated from the sphere, as breathtaking and serene as the apparition itself.

Maisie stared into the light of this… Anomaly.

It flashed brighter yet as a man’s silhouette appeared. He stumbled into the basement from the sphere’s blinding light. An unfamiliar shape that defied instant recognition, as she would only register later on what she was looking at.

He wore armor. Ancient armor, with shoulders shielded by metal pauldrons, and a breastplate articulated in rings to guard the man’s chest and belly, all the way down to feet clad in strapped sandals.

From head to toe, he was covered in blood. His eyes bulged, wide with terror. And a seething rage curled his lips.

When he lunged at Maisie, she screamed at the top of her lungs.

Her scream did nothing to stop the man. The trash bags dropped from her hands and she flailed helplessly against his iron grip. The man in ancient armor, covered in blood, wrestled Maisie around, and her sneakers scraped against concrete as he dragged her, pulling her away from the glowing sphere.

A hand as coarse as sandpaper clamped down over her mouth, and the taste of grit and copper soon admixed with the flavor of spearmint on her lips.

Only now did she recognize the sword in his hand—tipped by a crimson-caked blade, now raised to her neck, a silent threat to what he might do to her throat if she didn’t stop screaming or struggling.

On instinct, she went limp in the ancient warrior’s grip, and he dragged her farther yet away from the glowing orb in her basement, pulling her into the shadows behind a set of shelves, where even the fluorescent tubes failed to shine. He dragged her down with him, and they cowered in the gloom, seeing the gleaming sphere only through the little spaces afforded by items lining the shelves.

Her heart pounded with dread. The impossibility of this all had long shut off all conscious thought. The man held her tight. Squeezed her mouth again, as if to remind her not to scream another time.

Yet he lowered the blade in his hand, retracting its deadly edge from her neck.

Just when another figure emerged from the glowing sphere.

This new, second silhouette looked nothing like a human. The shelves between them only further obscured its strange shape.

To the beat of her pounding heart, its bulbous head jerked around. Against the backdrop of shimmering light, a ferocious maw opened, and revealed rows of shark-like fangs. Glistening until that maw snapped shut like a bear trap.

Spindly limbs contracted and flexed, then the creature’s back arched violently.

It screeched at the ceiling.

A raged screech. A horrific, alien screech, nothing like any animal was capable of emitting, at least not in Maisie’s imagination. So hateful and deeply twisted that it froze the very blood in her veins.

On the creature’s forehead, something blinked. Blood-red.

Not an eye but a light. A lamp, or a lantern. It pulsed.

Was it attached to its head somehow? Or part of it?

The red light pulsed as the creature emitted guttural sounds, pouncing on cardboard boxes, and spraying their artificial insides all over the place. Bottles of makeup and glitter exploded where the beast thrashed around in the basement, in search of its human prey.

The man in ancient armor stayed still. Kept his hand clamped around Maisie’s mouth, and she knew better now than to struggle anymore—he was hiding from his beast, and may have saved her life in doing so.

That was the only coherent thought she could form in those breathless, horrified seconds.

The beast’s thrashing claws tore through the basement, destroying more boxes, knocking over cans, and obliterating a different fixture of shelves like it was nothing against the monster’s raw power. The shelves’ contents flew all around, and stray debris shattered a fluorescent tube, followed by spraying sparks from exposed electric conduits.

The monster emitted another guttural sound in response.

Then it sniffed. Sniffed the air.

The man’s arms tensed, but the grip of his hands on Maisie loosened.

The world exploded into chaos again as she was sent flying—shoved aside, thrown almost. She tumbled against the wooden steps of the stairs, their sharp edge digging into her lower back with painful impact.

The beast swiveled to face its prey. Its misshapen head darted back and forth between the woman prone against the stairs, and the ancient man covered in blood, brandishing his sword against the monster. Another ear-piercing screech escaped its toothy maw. The man in ancient armor yelled in fury—indignant rage—with his sword raised, and defiant of the creature’s sheer monstrosity.

In the shimmering light of the glowing sphere, it was clear now: the monster was twice his size and mass.

No thought guided Maisie as she scrambled, slipped, tripped, fleeing up the stairs with reckless abandon. Acting on pure survival instinct, she ran, thumping back all the way up, skipping several steps as she escaped.

The last thing she saw of the man in ancient armor was him leaping at the monster with his sword’s tip pointed at the creature. The creature in turn had far more reach with its spidery limbs, all ending in razor-sharp claws, and lunging at the man with dreadful speed.

Without ever looking back, the wet sounds of blood splattering blended with shouts of fury and screeches of feral rage, as the ancient man and the horrid creature clashed in Maisie’s basement.

She slapped and cursed and finally ripped the backdoor of her darkened salon open, fleeing into the back alley, where—

Light.

Blinding light engulfed her. The cacophony of helicopter rotors deafened Maisie, and drowned out any noises of carnage echoing up from the bowels of her salon’s basement.

People shouted at her. Flashlights shone into her eyes, forcing her to alternate between squinting and screwing her eyelids shut. The shadowy figures of people dressed in black overwhelmed her entirely.

She tried to run past them, past the silvery rifles pointed at her, but someone seized her in another hold like the man in ancient armor, wrestling her around, then shoving her past, where she tripped, and another person caught her before she fell, only to shove her farther along.

Before she knew it, she was being evicted from the premises. An uncomfortable gloved grip around her arm squeezed and tugged and pulled her along, past thumping jackboots and jingling metal.

Under the floodlights from a helicopter hovering above Seattle’s buildings, casting the alleyway behind her salon in bright light, amidst a small army of figures in modern black armor and terrifying masked helmets, Maisie was shoved one way, then the other, unable to parse what anybody was telling her.

Yelling at her.

“Move!”

“Get her outta here on the double! Secure the neighboring buildings!”

Soldiers in black ushered her away. Others stormed past, jackboots tromping as they marched in a jog, futuristic weapons raised, and flooding into her salon’s backdoor.

“Go-go-go!”

Before she knew it, she was shoved yet again, forced down into the backseat of an unmarked, black van.

A beautiful red-haired woman, dressed sharply in an expensive-looking navy-blue three-piece suit, stared Maisie in the eyes with a smoldering intensity that stood at odds with her otherwise calm demeanor, and a fearsome smile—a sharp contrast to the chaos she had just been whisked away from.

“Hi there.”

A soldier slammed the van’s backdoor shut, muffling the noise of helicopter rotors and militaristic orders being barked back and forth outside.

What would follow Maisie’s questioning was a series of unpleasant instructions.

Maisie needed to forget whatever she had just witnessed.

Or there would be consequences.

Serious, serious consequences. For herself, and the rest of the world alike.

For now, and the days to follow, she was far too afraid to protest.