“Mr. Sampson, if elected to the position of High Minister, how will your foreign policy differ from the previous administration? Will we still declare war on all other intelligent species?” – From the first debate, May 2, 3265

  “We’ve located the package,” Jack sent to command after they found the research lab on the fourth sublevel. “Unfortunately, it isn’t exactly in one cohesive piece, and we’re still very hot.”

  It had taken them nearly two hours of constant searching to locate the laboratory. And, as it turned out, armored soldiers stomping through alien halls were not silent. Sadly, it forced them to kill every alien they encountered.

  The practice turned Jack’s stomach.

  “Reassemble it as fast as you can, but be ready to throw parts through a Gate if need be,” Hawkins answered tersely.

  Not wanting to deal with an active firefight any longer than they absolutely had to, Alec got to work putting the machine back together. As he did, Warren directed his attention to the computer in the corner of the room and located a schematic in a few brief minutes. It wasn’t perfect, nor was it in English, but it was something.

  To the best of their ability, the two men determined that most parts were intact. It only appeared to be a total disaster because of the casing strewn about the floor. They were lucky. If the Oteric had disassembled it much more, they would’ve needed to take the Lieutenant up on his offer to toss parts through the Gate and hope they could reassemble it later.

  For their part, Jack and Thea knew their place was not on the front lines of this fight. Especially considering the amount of data that needed to be transferred from these computers before they tried to escape. Unfortunately, when they got to the alien terminal, all they could do was stand there like lost puppies in search of their owner.

  “Jenkins, we are at the terminal. What now?” Jack asked the squad’s secondary Possessor.

  “Just put your hands on the thing that looks like a keyboard and don’t fight me.” He said, casting his mind into the terminal and commanding it to transfer all data to the suits of armor. “I can’t pull the long-range crap that Warren can. You two need to stand there and let the system do as it must. I need to help in the hallway.”

  “How long?”

  “At least five minutes without interruption or the data might get corrupted.”

  “Ya’ll need to hurry on up in there,” Dave said, standing in the hallway like a knight bracing a shield, occasional pulses of Light expanding out in waves to bolster the existing barrier, “I can’t hold this shit all day you know.”

  The Aegis was impressive to watch, but what he said was true. Every time he sent out another wave of Light, the hallway would dim slightly from the power consumption.

  “Yes, because holding a barrier against enemies that have yet to test it in the first place must be so tiring.” Nessa quipped as she ripped through another pair of charging Oteric.

  “Don’t get cocky,” Jack warned, casting his senses out to watch another group of aliens come for them. “Eight more incoming.”

  “On it,” Diego responded.

  As the enemies turned the corner, he met them with a pair of yellow threads that grabbed the first two and tightened. The pitiful creatures struggled to break free, but the strength of the Light infused wire was just too much.

  They would’ve eventually died of strangulation if the Binder gave them that much time. Instead, he tightened the strands until the thin metal wire cut through flesh and bone, leaving them a headless warning to every other creature that stepped into that hallway.

  “At this rate, the whole complex will be empty by the time you guys are ready to get out of here,” Diego laughed, the high of battle not letting him process the horrific scene.

  “That may be true, but there is still a chance they have some sort of special forces on the way,” Thea reminded, trying to keep the squad at least semi-serious.

  “Hate to add fuel to the fire, but there is another wave of ten inbound,” Jack informed, irritated that he couldn’t do more, while understanding the necessity of remaining where he was.

  Just like before, a group of Oteric tried to charge down the hallway. Unfortunately for them, their primitive weaponry didn’t stand a chance when faced with Jenkins’ Crawler drone.

  The spider-like drone was just as ruthless as the other tactics used against the lizards, with the added bonus of lacking the very human emotion of empathy. After receiving its commands, it truly didn’t care if the enemy was trying to run, it would kill them just the same.

  All but one.

  When it tried to spear the last soldier in the pack, the final Oteric caught the leg and ripped it off with ease before smashing the drone to pieces against the wall.

  “Umm, Jack?” Dave asked, an uncharacteristic tremor in his voice. “You sure you counted that wave right?”

  “Yeah. A pack of ten, just like the others.”

  “Then why am I lookin’ at this huge bastard that looks like he’s been dipped in oil?”

  At the end of the hall, a massive alien walked toward them. True to Dave’s description, its skin and armor were black as the space between the stars. There was absolutely no haste to its movement, almost like it knew it had already won the battle.

  It just needed to close the distance, seemingly unbothered by the massacre, to do so.

  “I got this one,” Candice said, whipping her four threads down the hall to bind the new enemy.

  Instead of being ensnared, all four threads lost their Light the moment they touched its skin. Without the infusion of power, it easily ripped them apart without a second thought. The more she tried to reanimate them and bind it, the more it simply destroyed her attacks.

  This story has been taken without authorization. Report any sightings.

  An unearthly sound bubbled softly from its toothy grin as it continued to approach.

  Seeing her struggle and knowing they needed to stop this creature, Diego joined his partner. Despite their best efforts, it drained every string of power that made contact.

  “Jack?!” Dave shouted, constructing a series of barriers in hopes that his power could stop the creature.

  Alarmed by the tone in the normally unflappable man’s voice, Jack switched to Dave’s viewpoint to see what was happening. To both men’s horror, the first barrier only lasted long enough for the creature to look at it in amusement. Instead of being blocked by the shield, it simply walked through as though there was nothing there at all.

  In her terror, Nessa lay into the creature with everything she had. Round after round from her pistol struck the target, but failed to slow it. Desperate, the Breaker pulled a series of short tubes from a compartment in her armor, formed them into daggers, and threw them with unerring accuracy.

  A bright flash of crimson signified Cecile’s contribution to the fight, but it ignored both attacks as if they were nothing more than a breeze.

  “You got to know how uncomfortable that makes me,” Dave said, pushing the barrel of Cecile’s rifle off his shoulder.

  As residual Light from the attack faded, the Aegis was shocked when he saw that the pitch-black Oteric was still coming.

  In a bid of desperation, Diego rushed through the barrier in a final attempt to bind the thing. This time, the cables didn’t immediately become inert on contact, darker, but not inert. The two threads of metal-wrapped fiber optics wound their way around the creature, pinning an arm to its side and offering the first taste of victory they’d seen.

  But the cables didn’t stop darkening.

  After just a few heartbeats, they’d lost all color and continued to darken, not stopping until they were the same deep black as the creature itself.

  Diego tried to sever the lines with his combat knife, but the weapon simply passed through them as though they didn’t exist. Panicking, he ordered the armor to disconnect the bracers, but by then, the blackness had spread all the way to his shoulders.

  That same unearthly laugh burst from the creature’s throat as its bound arm lost cohesion, and turned into a mass of writhing tentacles. With its other arm, it grabbed the dark stands and held them in an unbreakable grasp.

  Yanking hard, the massive Oteric pulled the Binder toward it in a horrific reversal of the earlier fight.

  Dave constructed barrier after barrier as he tried to save his friend. But no matter how many he made, each shattered into nothingness as blackened armor came in contact with the blue shields. As Ortiz drew closer, the creature’s body changed.

  The relatively harmless appearance of the Oteric melted away as it grew in size, unnatural tentacles stretching and reorienting until they made a completely new form. No longer small or diminutive, the eldritch creature towered in the cramped hallway. The reptilian face was gone. All that remained was a featureless mask.

  Featureless, except for the twin rows of wicked-looking teeth.

  “Jenkins, how much longer?” Jack yelled, refusing to move despite the dire situation unfolding just outside the door.

  “Too long. Leave Olfson there and save Ortiz!”

  Hesitantly separating himself from the computer, Jack sprinted into the corridor to witness the creature with his own eyes. By all logic, it should have died several times over by now.

  But it was still standing.

  Diving into the Light spectrum, he tried to see if he could understand why the squad’s attacks weren’t touching the creature. But everything was normal. The surrounding Light touched every surface, just as it always did. Frequencies that were supposed to reflect were reflected, and ones that were supposed to be absorbed were absorbed.

  Except for one place.

  Jack stared at the creature in stunned disbelief. The blanket of Light was there, encircling it like it did all things. But instead of being reflected away, all Light that came into contact with this creature was stuck, unable to escape.

  It was as if the creature stood in the epicenter of a black hole and simply had too much mass for Light to escape.

  By now, the creature had Diego by the throat and was lifting the human soldier off the ground with ease. He fought for all he was worth, firing round after round into the beast with his pistol.

  But it had no effect.

  The shots only stopped because the alien’s head stretched forward like putty and wrapped its mouth around Ortiz’s weapon hand. The scream was so clear over the comm, Jack was all but certain it would haunt his dreams until the day he died.

  The Binder acted on pure adrenaline, ripping a bloody stump out of the creature’s mouth to hammer on it with the only thing he knew could touch it… his own body.

  Enraged by the pitiful human, the creature let loose a scream like fifty children playing instruments for the first time. Its free arm unwound, breaking into hundreds of tentacles and wrapping around the soldier’s helmet.

  “Diego!” Nessa screamed, firing blindly at the alien, screaming as she begged for the Binders’ life. “We aren’t done talking, you bastard! Don’t you dare die!”

  They could only watch in horror as the appendages flexed, slowly increasing their squeezing pressure.

  “Looks like you were right,” He said with a mirthless chuckle, “It turns out that Binders really are useless without Breakers.”

  “Dammit, Diego, fight back! Jack, do something!”

  A crack filled their ears as the comm picked up the faceplate shattering under pressure. A stoic grunt of pain came across the radio as the man tried to hold back a scream.

  “I’m trying, but I don’t know what to do,” Jack said, horrified.

  “I’m sorry Ness, I’m sorry Spier.” Diego said, the pain in his voice more than a little clear, “Thank you… for being my… only real family.”

  As the last of his words tumbled from his pained lips, a crunch ripped through the comm as the helmet gave way and crumpled in on itself.

  In that first heartbeat, they thought they could lie to themselves, that their friend had somehow survived.

  But the truth was evident as thick, dark blood dripped from between the tentacles and down the creases of his armor.

  Diego Ortiz was dead.

  Jack screamed, reacting out of a mixture of rage and fear. He forced himself to follow the lines of Light that sunk into the creature’s flesh and into the cluster of nerves that passed for its brain. He had to complete the circuit. Knowing this, he pulled on the nearest thread and tried to bring it back to himself.

  But the thread wouldn’t come, no matter how hard he pulled.

  This is the secret. His instincts screamed, and Jack knew they were right.

  He pulled on that single thread, dropping all other connections in a desperate bid to force it back into himself. It took everything he had, a herculean effort that he’d never even considered possible or necessary.

  But slowly, the thread came.

  Like an arrow loosed from the string, it slammed into Jack and he could suddenly see thousands upon thousands of viewpoints.

  He only needed one.

  When he heard the faceplate crack, Warren knew he needed to be in the hallway. While Jenkins was perfectly capable of handling the next part, he wasn’t sure that his counterpart could compartmentalize well enough to get this done.

  Warren dropped the equipment he’d been working on, sprinting through the door and into a war zone. Bodies lay strewn about the floor like dolls in a macabre playroom. Near the end of the hall, he saw the crumpled, headless form of his friend.

  Not wasting a second, he reached out to Diego’s AI and forced the machine to copy all its data to Warren’s armor. He wouldn’t have much space remaining for the equipment manuals, but this was much more important.

  Only Possessors truly understood why the AHF made the Vis-HUD such a vital part of the uniform. Yes, it was a convenient way to relay orders and establish communication when an optic was not present, but that was only half of the answer.

  Soldiers spent the majority of their time wearing a computer that could interface with their minds. Most people thought they only used hand gestures and voice commands. But in reality, they mapped the brain and could read users’ thoughts after just thirty days of continuous use.

  Every memory, every skill, and every desire was recorded and transmitted to the nearest server core.

  Essentially, it recorded the soldier perfectly and stored the mind in a place where it couldn’t be lost… that is, as long as the soldier died on the ship.

  But Diego hadn’t died on the ship and his most recent upload wouldn’t have been saved in the system. There was a temporary backup stored on his HUD, but it would rapidly lose power the longer the host was dead.

  He couldn’t save his friend’s body, but he could at least save his mind.