Author's Preface
The police cruiser tore down the highway, sirens screaming into the night. Mark gripped the steering wheel tightly as David's voice crackled through the phone.
"They're here, Mark." His voice shook. "They're fucking here."
Mark's stomach dropped. "They shouldn't be." The words left him before he could stop them.
His mind immediately raced through the possibilities. The safe house location wasn't in any database. No paperwork, no digital records, no official reports, nothing, and yet...
Other than him, only a single person knew where David and his family were hiding. Linda, his partner.
The thought surfaced, but he shoved it aside. Impossible. What was he thinking?
"David, listen to me," Mark said. "We've prepared for this. Both the doors and the windows are reinforced. Keep the blinds shut and stay away from them. I'm five minutes out. Patrol units are already on their way. You can hold on, trust me."
"I can't believe this." David's voice cracked, shaky and uneven. "You promised me. You promised my family would be safe until the court date."
"They will be." Mark stressed.
"It's just a fucking door, Mark. What can they..." David's voice suddenly stopped in its tracks. "Wait, that's... there's Linda. Thank god."
"Wait." Mark frowned, accelerating even further. "Linda?"
The name hit him like a slap. His thoughts froze, and for the briefest moment, everything stopped.
'Could it be?' The possibility he had just dismissed surged back to the surface, making his pulse spike.
"David?" He called gently.
Footsteps echoed through the phone, but the answer he was waiting for didn't come. Mark's grip tightened around the steering wheel, knuckles whitening.
Only more footsteps, and a distant chatter he couldn't really make out. Then the sound of a lock turning.
His eyes widened as he yelled. "David, talk to me."
The handle moved.
"David, don't you dare open that fucking door."
The door opened.
Three gunshots cracked through the phone. David screamed. A woman screamed.
Mark's heart stopped. "David? David talk to me."
Nothing.
"David!!!"
Another shot fired, thundering through his empty car like fallen glass in an empty house. A loud thud echoed through the line, followed by complete silence. Cold silence.
"David, talk to me!!" He screamed again.
Unfortunately, only a mechanical Beep answered his call. The line went dead.
"No, no, no..." Mark mumbled, thoughts firing in his brain before he dialed Linda.
No answer.
Again.
Nothing.
Straight to voicemail.
The cruiser ran through a suburban street, tearing apart its mundane silence. The neighborhood was quiet. Too quiet for a place that just experienced a barrage of gunshots.
A few lights had turned on. Curtains shifted. Faces watched from behind windows.
At the far end of the street, a dark sedan accelerated away.
Mark barely noticed it; his attention was fixed on a particular house, and he parked beside it. The front door stood wide open. He drew his weapon and moved.
Training overriding panic.
Inside, blood covered the pale gold marbled floor. David lay sprawled near the entrance, the pool of blood underneath him growing by the second. His wife was crumpled against the opposite wall behind a sofa. Shot in the neck. A horrified expression was frozen on her face.
Their daughter lay beside the staircase. A tablet hanging on for dear god in her lifeless hands, one earbud atop the first stair.
A bright, sharp-witted fifteen-year-old girl. Dead.
For a moment, Mark couldn't breathe.
He had looked David in the eye and promised. He could still vividly remember that day, when he gave a grand speech about how much good his courage would create in the world. How he didn't need to have the slightest of worries about his safety.
The police officer vanished. The detective vanished. Only the man remained.
A man who had failed where failure cannot be afforded. When the price was exactly the sight before him.
Mark swiftly caught himself on the very edge of a spiral, and then instinct took over.
Clear the scene. Find the shooters. Back door.
He moved through the house and burst into the kitchen. The rear door hung open. Outside, tires screeched, forcing him to quicken his pace even more.
Mark stepped into the yard where he saw a woman sprinting toward a waiting car. Linda.
Under the street light, her sharp blonde ponytail glistened. The same grey vast, the same one-inch scar across her chin, the same face he's been looking at for the past six years.
"Why?" He mumbled under his breath.
She threw herself into the passenger seat, and the car immediately sped away.
Mark froze where he stood. Split seconds seemed to stretch into seconds, and those spread even longer. His mind refused to process it.
She had sold them out. Sold him out. His arm dropped to his side in defeat.
For one terrible moment, he simply stood there. Before he gathered himself, now isn't the time for emotions.
Call it in.
Get the plate.
Get...
A sharp crack split the night.
Something slammed into his neck. Small, sharp, explosive.
Mark hit the ground hard, his face crashing into the dirt. His gun skidded away as pain exploded through his body.
His hand flew to his throat reflexively, and blood poured through his fingers, dyeing them bright red.
Yet, even in the midst of this gruesome scene, his mind was still thinking of what to do. His phone!
His hand clawed toward his pocket.
He only needed one message, a single name. Linda.
A shoe stepped on his wrist, black and unforgiving. The phone was kicked into the darkness.
Mark looked up. A man loomed over him with a handgun fitted with a suppressor.
Calm and unbothered as if he had just caught a fleeing receipt. The shooter touched an earpiece.
"The detective is down."
A brief pause.
"The other one is uncompromised."
Mark's vision blurred, his consciousness fading.
The man lowered his weapon, and for the first time, Mark truly saw his face.
Recognition flashed through him, delaying his passage by a moment.
Blood filled Mark's mouth as only two words escaped.
"Fuck you."
The gun fired.
Darkness swallowed everything.
----
Mark wasn't much of a believer in anything.
Although he worked in a dangerous line of work, he had never considered his own mortality. Not due to some unfounded conviction of his own greatness, but because he believed in the words of the great Epicurus, "If I am, death is not. If death is, then I am not."
For a man who was married to his job, where his cases were his children, that was thoroughly, and completely, the extent of his thoughts about the topic of ceasing to live.
Well, until now when even the great Epicurus's words proved to be laughable as he stood with death in the same line.
Here he was consumed by an all-encompassing darkness, of which he was certain was the great beyond. Why? He didn't know.
After a moment that he wasn't entirely certain whether was an instant or a year, as time seemed to flow according to rules beyond his understanding, if it flowed at all, a change occurred.
His sense of self in that darkness suddenly started to move. It was very warm at first, slow, and comforting like how a tired mother would push the stroller of her baby who had just fallen asleep, and then just as suddenly, extremely fast.
A moment later, a loud whooshing sound exploded in his ears before a familiar feeling spread through his body.
Blood, sensation, body parts...control.
What greeted him first was the manic and almost deafening cacophony of birds screeching.
His eyes fluttered open, and he found himself consumed by a dim, dull orange, thick smoke. Visibility stretched no farther than a few feet in any direction.
It was nighttime, that much at least he was sure of as he glanced up through squinted eyes. What felt unsettling to him, however, was the unexplainable quality of the smoke. There was no smell of ash. No heat. No weight in the air.
Instincts sharpened by years navigating danger screamed at him, something is wrong... and that's when it happened!
His still muddled awareness was suddenly invaded by a shadow. A gigantic figure in a dark green hooded cloak loomed over him, consuming much of what he could see.
The last time someone had stood in such a manner before him, things didn't turn out well for him. Needless to say, panic pulsed through every inch of his body as he froze, watching the figure before him intently, not missing the slightest movement.
The stranger's hand moved, pulling the hood just enough to show his face, and the first thing he noticed was the green.
Piercing emerald green eyes stared back at him. Mark has seen his fair share of green eyes. Not this.
A young man, he continued observing. Strands of dark hair shyly peeked from underneath the hood. Soft, elegant hands. Black boots.
The other person seemed to be without words, too, in that moment. He stared back. Restless, but also, curious, something that oddly comforted Mark.
"Quick," The stranger urged in a hurry, voice laden with urgency. "Follow me."
"What?" Mark mumbled, still unaware of what was happening. Was he dreaming? What is going on? Wasn't he shot? Hadn't he died? He did die!
"Detective Mark Robinson." The young man said with a patient intensity, his lips not forgetting to showcase a gentle smile. "If you don't follow me now, we'll both die in less than 20 seconds." And without waiting for the confused man to follow, he just bolted, before the latter felt compelled to follow the person who had just called out his name.
Mark finally had a better look around him upon standing up. The first thing that caught his attention was the street lamps, or rather lanterns in this case. The source behind the dim orange coloring much of the smoke.
"Hmm," He hummed in confusion. The street lamp felt strange to him.
Too tall, too beautiful, and too eerie. That was his first impression. "That's not electricity," He mumbled, puzzled by the moving source of light.
Walking out from the immovable, dense plume of smoke, Mark was dumbfounded by the scene that greeted him.
They were standing on the shore of a stunning, tranquil river stream, a view that Mark would have sat to appreciate no matter the circumstances. Well, except for this very one.
Blood, organs, severed heads, and, most striking of all, bisected torsos lay everywhere. Corpses lined the riverbank, their blood dyeing the grass a dark crimson.
"What the hell is happening..." Mark muttered, sucking a cold breath into his lungs. He froze for one second, eyes glued to the shocking sight. The sight of blood, so much blood, stunned him.
The stranger's soft footsteps across the grass pulled him from his daze. He swallowed the blood in his mouth, his gaze lingering on the green-cloaked stranger before drifting back to the carnage before him. His lips parted to speak, but the words died in his throat. With visible effort, he tore his eyes from the scene and followed.
They stopped beneath a broad, stocky tree whose dense canopy blocked most of the moonlight. The young man suddenly turned, facing him, and held out a hand.
Mark frowned in confusion. "What?"
"Just take it."
Unsure still, but he obliged.
The moment their hands touched, the young man reached beneath his cloak and took out a talisman. It was old, no larger than a palm, its yellow paper shriveled and brittle with age. Strange, black, eerie characters crawled across its surface.
It stirred to life, and with it something was came to life.
A sensation unlike anything Mark had ever known spread through the air around them. An invisible presence settled over his skin. He couldn't see it, couldn't touch it, yet he sensed its shape and boundaries as clearly and vividly as if he stood inside a sphere of water.
This intimate, and undeniable knowledge, or rather sensation of something that could neither be seen, smelt, heard, nor touched confused him.
Just as quickly, another source of energy from within Mark's veins answered its call.
A pulse rose from within his body, beating in a strange rhythm, resonating with this unseen energy around them.
Mark's breath caught, thoughts short-circuited, unable to process the sight before him. His hand, still gripped by the young man, had turned translucent before his very eyes.
"What the he..." Mark reflexively tried to pull his hand and step back in fear.
The green-cloaked stranger, hidden once again under the hood, immediately strengthened his grip and whispered in assurnace. "Wait, please."
When their eyes met, Mark felt an inexplicable seed of trust bloom from within him, as inexplicable as the process he was watching unfold.
His skin faded further. Muscles, veins, and bone became ghostly and transparent.
Just when he thought that was going to be the end of it. Actual matter poured out of him. It seeped from nowhere and everywhere at once, flowing like liquid glass before gathering a single step away from him. Flesh, bone, and cloth formed in an instant, weaving themselves into the shape of a man.
Within seconds, the figure stood complete.
Mark wide-eyed stared at this figure.
The stranger wore white-silver armbraces on thick, ripped forearms, leather armor, and a light-blue surcoat embroidered with two crossed swords.
The man's face was unfamiliar, but for only a heartbeat. And, to Mark's horror, a realization struck him. That wasn't a stranger. It was the body he now inhabited as they had the exact same clothes, the same silver armguards, the same red scar on his left wrist.
A tall man in his early thirties, athletic without being imposing. A strong jaw, straight nose, sun-darkened skin, and short brown hair that looked neat without seeming deliberate. A permanent shadow of stubble framed his face.
A second movement nearby drew Mark's eyes away.
The same thing had happened to the young man. Another body entirely identical to the original had formed beside him.
Without warning, both newly created figures burst into motion.
They sprinted away with unimaginable speed, their footsteps cracking against the ground. Mark's analytical mind was soon to notice another anomaly. Footsteps on a grassy, soft, and well-watered land would never be able to produce such a sound.
In a blink, the newly created clones had already crossed half the clearing. Mark could barely track them with his eyes as their speed was simply superhuman.
Urged by the strength still clutching his hand, Mark and the green-cloaked stranger ran soundlessly in the opposite direction.
Just as Mark began hitting his stride, a loud explosion thundered behind them. The shockwaves flew past his back with a hot whoosh, increasing his speed even further.
They ran and ran for several minutes, sticking close to the river beside them. Strangely, although they encountered several people along the shores, and though they were running so fast, none seemed to pick up on their presence.
Above them, the still unseen birds filled the air with harsh, screeching in a way unlike anything Mark had ever heard. Their relentless chants echoed between the trees, seeming to follow them wherever they went.
The green-cloaked young man in front of him merely reached into a hidden pocket for another talisman. This one is different, more immediate. The moment it made contact with the air, it flew into the sky as if it had a mind of its own. The pursuing birds' presence disappeared.
No screech, no explosion, no sound of wings flapping, nothing. Just like that.
At last, they reached a narrow stone bridge spanning a shallow, running river that wound its way through the city. The bridge sat low over the dark water, its weathered arches casting deep shadows beneath. Without slowing, they scrambled down the embankment and slipped under the bridge.
The space smelled of damp stone, stagnant water, and scum. Large rats scattered at their approach, claws scratching against the masonry as they vanished into cracks and crevices along the riverbank.
Gathering himself, Mark, finally unable to hold himself, exploded, "What the hell are you? Why are we even running? And who killed all of those people? Did you do it?"
The green-cloaked person before him, however, was unresponsive, as if Mark's yells echoed in a separate dimension.
He had his eyes closed, index finger swimming around as if touching the edges of a painting none could see but him, with extraordinary focus.
Mark frowned at being ignored. He took a deep breath and cried out, enunciating each word, "I know you heard me."
Unfortunately, all that bounced back was a frustrated, "Sshh."
"You..." Mark was about to start insulting the young man's nine generations before he calmed himself down. This person, as unreliable as he was with words, made up for it in other ways. Not to mention, he was his only lead to get some answers.
Seemingly finding a satisfying conclusion, he started inspecting this body more thoroughly
It was very tanned compared to his. Long fingers, scars where they shouldn't be, and none where they should. Strength not of his own, and a strange energy coursing through him. It was then that the fact of everything that was happening was slowly sinking in, and with it, too many emotions. Lost in thoughts of both confusion, fear, and most importantly regret, the voice echoed beside him, "We should be safe for now, I think?"
"For now, I think?" Mark repeated the words that wouldn't be able to inspire comfort in the most naive of children almost unconsciously, but it did take his mind off things. "Now, would you mind please explaining what is happening?"