Exit Exam

Killian woke up naked next to the entrance hatch of the maze. He knew the hatch would be sealed but tried to open it anyway. You never know until you try, he thought. Maybe one time it will be unlocked.
The walls, floor and ceiling of the corridor that marked the beginning of the maze were covered with the same silver metallic material that lined his cell. Harsh white light glared from slits along the ceiling.
The layout of the maze was different every time he was sent there. This time the corridor went straight for about sixty yards then turned left. He rounded the corner and collided with the alien coming from another branch of corridor.

3 AM Demons

Nick usually didn't have any trouble falling asleep.  He went to bed every night at eleven, even on the weekends, and was usually fast asleep within minutes.  The trouble started when he woke up in middle of the night and tried to get back to sleep.  After a quick trip to the bathroom he would lie down on his bed and the demons would visit.  He had several demons and they took turns tormenting him.

150 Seconds

This would be my 14^th death.  I studied the drone imagery of the target site one last time before Becker took the tablet from me. 

“We have to do it now,” he said to the rest of the people in the room.  In his dark suit Becker looked out of place among the medical staff in their pale blue scrubs as they strapped me down to the table.  He looked nervous as he spoke into his encrypted phone.  If something went wrong his career was through.  I would be dead too but that wasn't his main concern. 

A heavyset nurse swabbed my arm.  Her expression stayed neutral as she injected me with the drug mixture that would stop my heart.   She was the only one who had ever done the injections and I couldn't help wondering how she ended up with the task. 

I concentrated the target site in the seconds before I lost consciousness.

When I could see again I was looking down at my body on the table.  It was still weird to be outside of it like this.  But I didn’t have time to dawdle.  The medical staff was already getting the defibrillator and other items ready to bring resuscitate my body two and a half minutes after my heart had stopped.  I visualized the target site and then I was there. 

It was an enclosed compound on the outskirts of a city.  Tarpaulins covered the courtyard and blocked observation from outside.  I zoomed down to street level and passed through the compound’s outer walls.  Guards openly carrying automatic weapons walked around the covered courtyard and among the half dozen expensive vehicles parked there.  The guards couldn’t see me of course.  I checked license plate numbers.  So far everything looked good but I needed to see more.  I guessed I had about a minute left.

I drifted past a guard at the entrance to the main building.  He jerked and quickly looked around.  Some people can sense my presence when I’m out of body.  I’ve mentioned it in my mission reports and the eggheads of the Delphi Project are stymied trying to explain the phenomenon. 

All the targets gathered in a large room on the ground floor.  Time is running out and I quickly went through the rest of the building.  I had just finished going through the living areas upstairs when everything went black.

The shock of resuscitation was the worst part.  I was completely disoriented at first.  Becker’s voice cut through my mental fog.  He pushed aside one of the doctors and leaned in close to me.

“Are we good to go?” he asked again.

My mouth felt like it was stuffed with cotton but I managed to croak out two words.  “Targets confirmed.”

Becker stepped away from the table and spoke into his encrypted phone.  “Missile strike has a green light.  Do it now.”

150 Seconds was inspired by this post on io9.

The Land In Between

It was the fifth year of the Great War.  There had been rumors the Americans would enter the war a couple of years ago but they stubbornly maintained their neutrality instead.  The spring and summer offensives of 1918 left us and the Germans in about the same positions we had started the year.

2014 Mid-year Reading Overanalysis

The year is half over so I've crunched the numbers and analyzed my reading so far for 2014.  As you can see in the chart above, I've read mostly fantasy so far.  Warning: math ahead.

From Dusk Till Dawn: The Series - Not quite like the movie

I missed the first episode of From Dusk Till Dawn: The Series when it aired but caught the second one.  Since I have seen the movie and there was a lot of exposition I quickly caught up to what was going on.  Spoilers for the movie and show ahead.

Some Pacific Rim fanfic

Sasha didn’t even like Pavel Verinsky very much at first.  She was a pilot in the Russian Air Force, following the tradition of her great-grandmother who had been one of the famed Night Witches of the Great Patriotic War.  He was an engineer in the Russian Army.  But they had tested as compatible and selected as the pilots of Russia’s first prototype Jaeger. 

Contingency Plan 327

            “The meteor is approximately twelve kilometers in length,’ said Krensky, the colony’s chief scientist.  “We have twenty-nine days until impact.”

Death is Served - Part 2

     Katya and the other servers gave statements to the uniformed policeman then again to the homicide detectives who showed up a few minutes later.  She noticed Thorne took aside the detective in charge, Lieutenant Drumm.  The two men spoke in whispered tones and shot glances at Katya.  The women were then taken to a police station for further questioning. 

Death is Served - Part 1

It's been a while since I've written and even longer since I've written about the Hidden Ones.  To refresh you memory on who Katya is read this first.  You can also read this but you don't need to read it first. 

     It was very inconvenient that a man Katya wanted to kill was murdered.  Inconvenient because she wouldn’t have a chance to interrogate him or search his place for information about his Hunter friends.  And inconvenient because she ended up being a suspect in his murder.

Cleansing Fire

     It had taken Holden a while to find the creature’s lair.  The underground section of the city had been forgotten by most people.  Holden only knew about it because he remembered his grandfather talking about it when he was a kid.  The underground section wasn’t on the current city plans he had initially checked online.  It had taken most of a day looking through microfiche archives in the basement of city hall to find it.  The section was adjacent to the subway system but could only be accessed through the storm drain system. 

The Long War - Part 6

Memories

     I lay awake in bed sorting through the new memories running through my head.  I knew that the persona I had now was fictitious but it was easier to think of the Peter Rudko in those memories as someone else. 

The Long War - Part 5

Flanagan Revealed

 Olga listened in astonishment as I described my encounter with the alien.  “So it pushed a button and sent you back here?”

     “That’s what it looked like.  But I’m not sure if I was there by design or by accident.”

     “What do you mean?”

     “I wonder if I woke up in the other place because of the pain or maybe because I was dying.”

     “I don’t follow.”

     “Maybe the machinery or whatever that keeps us here doesn’t handle pain well.  Maybe pain interferes with how the interface processes signals from the brain.”

     “Interface?  Processing signals?  What are you talking about?”

     “Those words just came to me.  Maybe the other me knows those terms and the memory broke through.”

     “That’s a lot of maybes, darling.”

     “True, but it’s the best theory I can come up with.”

     “You aren’t thinking of doing something foolish to test your theory, are you?”

     “Of course not.”  I think Olga knew I was lying but she let it go for the time being.

On Space: Above and Beyond

I’ve been rewatching Space: Above and Beyond and have some thoughts.  I’ll avoid revealing major plot points but some spoilers are unavoidable so consider yourself warned.

The Long War - Part 4

The Village

     The regiment was assigned to a different sector of the front line.  My detachment was given a small slice of the regimental sector that only needed one platoon to man it at a time.  This gave me more time to prepare the men for the upcoming offensive.