?Time stopped flowing. It coagulated into a thick, cold molasses that trapped every breath.
Alex felt the metal of the gun pressing against the bare skin above his left ear, the dead one.
"Five," Lydia had said. But time was up.
?Tony took a step forward, hands raised, face twisted in helpless desperation.
"We don't have a key! I swear! The elevator was working when we got here!" he screamed.
?Lydia didn't lower the weapon. Instead, she tightened her grip, pressing the barrel deeper.
"Pity. I hate waste, but perhaps terror will help the other two remember."
She imperceptibly moved her finger to the trigger. Her eyes were icy.
"One."
?CLICK.
?The sound of the firing pin snapping was deafening in the silence of the woods.
Alex heard it reverberate inside his skull. He closed his eyes, waiting for the dark.
But the bullet didn't fire.
?The space around Lydia's hand stopped obeying the laws of physics.
The air rippled violently. A wave of visual distortion wrapped around her armed arm, bending light itself. The gun seemed to liquefy, stretching like molten rubber, before vanishing into nothingness, swallowed by a fold in reality that shouldn't exist.
?Lydia let out a strangled scream, clutching her empty wrist, stumbling back in pure horror.
"What the hell..."
?"Contact!" the squad leader yelled. The tone wasn't tactical. It was terror.
?He didn't have time to shoot.
From the thick darkness of the woods, a frequency hit the clearing.
It wasn't a sound. It was a physical pressure that cracked bones.
BAM.
An invisible shockwave impacted against the halogen headlights of the armored vehicles.
CRASH.
The reinforced glass exploded in unison. Darkness fell instantly, broken only by the nervous beams of tactical flashlights dancing crazily in the smoke.
?The contractors opened fire.
There was no perimeter, no formation. There was only the instinct to survive something they couldn't see.
The woods became a stroboscopic hell.
Something moved among them. Not a person, but a visual error. A glitch in the air diverting light.
The first contractor was lifted off the ground as if gravity had stopped working beneath his feet. He was hurled with inhuman violence against the side of the Humvee.
The others fired toward the distortion.
TA-TA-TA-TA.
Muzzle flashes illuminated a shadow that wasn't there.
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Then, a grunt of pain, human, too human. The invisible figure stumbled, becoming visible for a second: a boy holding a bleeding arm, cursing through gritted teeth.
They bled. They could die.
?Then, the second figure entered the game.
A girl emerged from the shadows.
No theatrical gestures. She just opened her mouth and emitted a vibration that made everyone's teeth rattle.
She pointed her palm at the two advancing contractors.
BOOM.
The sonic wall hit them like a freight train. They flew backward, disjointed, weapons ripped from their hands. One rolled in the mud, dazed, dark blood trickling from his ears.
?Cristy, crushed in the mud between Tony and Alex, felt her head explode.
The chaos was unbearable. It wasn't just sounds. It was raw, unfiltered emotions.
The cold rage of the soldiers. The sharp pain of the wounded boy.
Her overloaded mind sought an escape route. And stumbled into an open door.
?Suddenly, Cristy was no longer in the mud.
She was standing.
The world was taller. She felt the suffocating weight of a ballistic helmet and the acrid smell of cordite. Her hands—no, large, gloved hands—gripped a warm rifle.
She was inside the squad leader.
She heard his thought: Target down. Kill them all.
Cristy panicked. That alien, murderous mind disgusted her.
NO! she screamed mentally.
She forced that man's muscles. It wasn't a heroic act. It was a violation.
The squad leader, eyes wide with horror as his body revolted against him, turned the rifle. Not toward the enemies. Toward his men's legs.
"Sir?!"
?The finger pulled the trigger. He didn't want to do it, but she was doing it.
TA-TA-TA.
Screams. The contractors fell, mowed down by their own commander.
?Cristy was spat out of the connection violently.
She returned to her body, in the mud, gasping. She rolled over and vomited bile onto the ground. She felt dirty. She had just used a human being like a broken toy.
?The squad leader stood petrified, staring at his smoking weapon.
The sonic girl took advantage. She emerged from the smoke and hit him with a kick to the chest, a dry impact powered by vibration. The man collapsed.
?Only Lydia remained.
She was on the ground, trench coat ruined. Crawling toward a fallen soldier's gun. Her fingers closed on the weapon's grip.
She turned toward the wounded boy, eyes full of pure hatred.
The boy, Theo, looked at her. Pale, hand pressed over the wound on his arm.
He said nothing.
He just made a gesture with his good hand, as if crumpling a sheet of paper.
Space around Lydia twisted. The woman's eyes widened, her inner ear went haywire, the world flipped violently upside down. She fainted before she could even aim.
?Silence.
Only muffled groans and the smell of ozone.
?The two strangers turned to the kids.
The girl, Abby, ran a hand through her purple hair. She had a cut on her cheek and was breathing hard. They were hurt, dirty, tired. They didn't look like superheroes. They looked like soldiers fresh from a bad ambush.
?Theo ripped a sleeve off his jacket and tied it tight around his bleeding bicep. Gritted his teeth in pain.
He approached Tony and Alex.
"Are you getting up or do you need a written invitation?" he asked, offering his good hand to Tony.
?Tony stood up with effort, pulling Alex up. Cristy staggered to join them, pale as a ghost, wiping her mouth with her sleeve.
"What are you?" Tony blurted, stepping back. "Are you with them?"
?Theo finished the tourniquet knot.
"With them?" He pointed at the unconscious Lydia. "No. They are the problem. We are the exterminators."
?Abby looked at Cristy. There was a mix of suspicion and fear in her gaze.
"What you did to the squad leader..." she murmured. "Don't ever do that again unless you can control it. You'll burn your brain out."
Then she pointed at Alex. "And you. You heard the firing pin before the snap. Impressive."
?"What do you want from us?" Cristy asked, trembling.
?"We want to stop you from getting us discovered," Theo replied dryly. "I'm Theo. She's Abby. And we're here because you made enough noise to wake up half the state."
?A sound behind them froze them.
Lydia Vance was pulling herself up.
She clung to the wire fence, heels sunk in the mud, face dirty with blood trickling from her nose.
She wasn't stumbling anymore. She was still.
Theo moved to act, but sirens were close. Blue lights were already filtering through the trees.
?Lydia wiped her lip with the back of her hand. She didn't scream. She didn't laugh.
She stared Tony in the eyes with the calm of a reptile.
"Go ahead, run," she said. The voice was low, perfectly controlled.
She gave a minimal nod toward the bicycles on the ground.
"I have your faces. I have your names."
Lydia sketched an imperceptible smile.
"There is no home to go back to anymore."
?The message hit its mark like a bullet.
Tony looked at Lydia. Then looked at his bike on the ground.
It was over. No warm beds, no school, no parents. If they went back, they'd be taken before dawn. Lydia had just erased their civilian existence with two sentences.
?"Let's go," Abby said, yanking him. "Now."
?Tony tore his gaze away from the woman.
"Move," he ordered the others, voice hard.
They left the bicycles in the mud. They dove into the darkness of the woods following the two wounded strangers, while behind them Lydia Vance stood watching, motionless, knowing she had already won the psychological war.
Author’s Note ??
