Pavel Kravchenko: Project Antichrist

The human gasped, trying to draw the air back in, and he squeezed harder, but not too hard. He wanted him to be alive. To feel what was happening to him. Sure, this was the end, but just this once a Seeker’s quarry would not die quickly. As he continued to squeeze, the human’s eyelids began to flitter and close. Yet even as the consciousness was leaving him, as his lungs were prevented from refueling his life force, the human continued to resist. His muscles, feeble as they were, remained tense. His veins bulged. There was no hope, but still the human fought.

The Seeker squeezed too hard. The body in his embrace suddenly went limp. The fight was over. Over too fast. The human’s head, lifeless, fell forward. In a second, the white strands would disperse like fog. Stunned, he relaxed his grasp momentarily.

Then something else happened. Something that was impossible. The head moved. The eyes of the human snapped open and a steady, determined gaze confronted him. Furious, automatically resolving the problem as misinterpretation of symptoms on his part and discarding the solution immediately, before he remembered that Seekers didn’t make mistakes, he squeezed again, discovering that this time the flesh would not give. In fact, he suddenly realized, he was no longer touching the flesh at all.

He saw the white strands, those that no human could see, wrapped around each of his tentacles, holding them at bay as easily as though he was a human. It could not be! Another cry echoed across the fields. Fear rose again: three threads inside the helicopter, twenty-seven from humans down below, who could not see him, but none of it came from the target who was no longer in his grasp. Engulfed in fury and simply unable to comprehend something that was impossible, the Seeker squeezed with all his power, snapping at the human’s head at the same time with his maw. It did nothing. His maw, open and wide enough to swallow the entire skull, froze inches from the target’s face, as those eyes continued to watch him calmly.

After a pause, the white strands that held him started pushing him away. He struggled and tossed, managing only to leave two of his tentacles in the white clutches, spraying steaming bodily fluids on the roof. Ignoring the lost limbs he continued to try to free himself, until a loud and clear voice spoke in his head in his own language.

“You cannot defeat me, Seeker of Sobak. Go and tell them what you saw here.”

The human’s eyes closed, and the Seeker was thrown backwards. He slammed through the top of the squat concrete box directly behind him, causing pieces of stone to burst in all directions. The impact interrupted his momentum, but only that. His flight continued until, at last, the fiery remains of the other helicopter stopped it.

In an instant he was up again, prepared to resume the battle he could not understand to be already over. The human was inside the flying machine, which was rising up, beyond his reach. He rushed ahead anyway, but was stopped dead in his tracks by a sudden command.

“Do not reveal yourself to humans on the ground, Seeker.”

The Guard. Four of them rose and landed on top of the black roof. Not five. Their target had somehow evaded them, too. As he, they returned empty-handed. The helicopter was receding in the distance. His target was inside, but the seeker would not follow. Because a Seeker obeyed. For now.

I was flying. That was the only thing I knew for a long time. Years, maybe. I suspected I was dead, and it occurred to me that it wasn’t so bad after all. Unless what I had taken for flying was really falling.

As I pondered that possibility, another truth was revealed to me. My head was pounding. As though it was bulletproof and someone had shot it from a submachine gun, I thought. Then it all came back to me in a single large wave, and I opened my eyes and ran. Tried to run, really. I was flat on my back, so my heels kicked at the floor. Hands grabbed at my shoulders and I screamed.

“Luke! Luke!” a familiar voice was calling. “Calm down, man. It’s over. It’s over.”

It’s over. That short sentence popped the stopper and I slumped to the floor like a deflating air-mattress. It was over. We were in the helicopter. The blades were rotating. We were in the air. We made it. But why does my head?

“You tanked and conked the back of your head on the edge here,” Paul said. I must have asked it aloud. He was seated above me, pale and jacketless, shoulder tightly bandaged. He pointed where I had conked my head. I examined the spot and found nothing particularly enlightening.

Propping myself up on the elbows, I looked around. Iris was behind me by the window, a black cashmere jacket over her shoulders. “You okay?” I asked. She nodded and smiled.

I sat up. From my vantage point I could only see the uninterrupted blue of the sky outside. It felt like we hovered in place.

“How long was out?” I asked Paul. “Wait, don’t tell me. Three seconds?”

“Almost ten minutes,” Iris answered for him. Paul attempted to grin, but it came out one-sided and distorted his face. Giving him a glance, I crawled into an empty seat.

“Did I miss anything?” even as I asked it, I felt how still the air was inside the cabin.

Iris smiled again, but didn’t answer. Instead, she sort of half-shrugged and looked out of the window. I followed her gaze and there was the lake, brilliant in the sun. To the right, downtown rose to meet us like a huge castle built by a race of pacifistic artisans, all towers and no walls. Agent Brome guided the helicopter up, over the first buildings.

“Might not be over yet,” he suddenly said, pointing to the right. Approximately three hundred feet in that direction a military plane appeared and assumed parallel course. On the left, another fell in formation.

“They won’t let us leave the city,” Brome said. “Quiet now.” He flipped a switch.

“Brighton, this is Brome. Do you read?”

“Like a book,” a dry voice replied. “About time you decided to tune in.”

“What’s with the boys on my wings?”

“A formality. They’ll escort you straight to HQ. The welcoming committee here is anxious to see what you’re bringing.”

“You’ll see soon enough. ETA two minutes.” With that he turned the radio off.

“You’re dropping us off at the FBI?” I inquired politely, as soon as he did.

He thought about it.

“Seemed like a safe enough place, but now I have a bad feeling about it,” he finally said. “Call it a hunch. Don’t know what else to do, though. I really didn’t think they’d call in fighters. If you have a plan, let’s hear it within the next thirty seconds.”

I closed my eyes and rubbed my temples. Whatever it was they were acting weird about would have to wait. But how was I, having just woken up, supposed to come up with…?

I opened my eyes and saw it.

“There,” I shouted, pointing.

“What?”

“There, land us right there.”

Iris looked at me with a curious expression on her face. Even Paul was stretching his neck to see what I was pointing at. Neither of them understood, but Brome did.

“You sure?” he asked, turning to face me.

“Let’s do it,” I confirmed. He studied my face for a brief moment, nodded and turned away. Taking a sharp left-sided dip, the helicopter plunged towards the white “H” painted on the roof of a 90-story, double-horned skyscraper.

Christie Lane had seen her share of weird. Like that new security guard down in the garage who kept staring at her eyes . Or like when they killed Malcolm Tenner on that episode of “Barlow and Warden.” Or the couple of days of weirdness, when Luke Whales was a fugitive from justice.