Anthony DeCosmo - Fusion

She gasped but before shock could chase her from the nightmare, Anita saw something more. She saw another of the Mutant creatures, this one not dead but standing among the cadavers with its bulky arms raised toward the sky as if praising whatever devil he considered a God.

It finished giving praise and found her eyes.

And spoke.

“The Universe is empty.”

Anita Nehru woke; her arms flailed across the desk in impulsive defensive strikes knocking over a stack of books and sending an empty coffee mug rolling across the floor. Her breath changed from a quick cry to deep and heavy gasps. After a moment she rubbed her baggy eyes with the palms of her hands.

In and out her breath calmed with each cycle, but a constant shaking remained, along with one very strong impulse.

Anita opened the lower desk drawer. Inside she found a jumbled pile of note books, some plain old tablets, others made with fancy bindings or leather covers. The presentation did not matter, only that each of the notebooks offered sheet after sheet of paper begging to be filled with her thoughts.

All but one of the notebooks was full from start to finish in handwriting, some in cursive, some in print; some neat and proper but the majority jagged and rough; yet all from her hand.

Anita wrote a description of her dream. A description that was repeated dozens of times throughout the notebooks. And as she wrote about the new twist to this dream, an idea formed.

She wrote faster. Her pen ran dry of ink. She threw it across the room and yanked another from the top drawer, mixing red ink now with blue. Faster and faster she wrote. Her tired eyes grew wide with crazed fascination.

I will only be sure after I look into their eyes. The answer is there.

The Mutant stood in a room about half the size of a racquetball court but with a lower ceiling. Anita Nehru sat face-to-face with the thing, separated by six inches of safety glass leaning forward with her arms fidgeting. Her tired eyes alternated between fast blinks and bouts of wide-open stare.

A technician flanked her; a short fellow with chubby cheeks and wire-rimmed spectacles wearing a white lab coat. After nearly an hour of sitting next to her doing nothing, the technician inhaled deliberately and summoned the courage to ask, “Um, Mrs., Nehru, what is it you wanted to see the specimen for?”

She spoke, but instead of responding to his question she asked herself, “Why are these things from Region 8 so different? These Mutants, the Wraiths, even those Roachbot-things. How could the Stick-Ogre change from purely organic into some kind of mix? It’s not possible. When I look at these things under a microscope-their dead molecules look familiar-a shadow of something else. I should know-I should see it…”

“W-what’s that, Mrs. Nehru?”

“Most of the species are similar to us. DNA. Carbon-based life. But not Voggoth. And not these things that come from his world. Or does he even have a world? I look at this thing and I see something-an answer is here. It knows the answer.”

Anita’s fists clenched and unclenched. Her face grew red. She stood and paced in front of the glass, watched by the creature’s tiny eyes situated on its nearly egg-shaped skull.

“What happened to the Feranites? What happened to the animals from their world?”

Images from her dreams of dead soldiers and charred battlefields played in her mind.

The Universe is empty.

“What are you? Damn it! What are you?”

A child of Voggoth.

At that moment Anita saw the eyes of a human being on the face of the Mutant. She saw an abomination.

Her left hand slammed down on an oversized yellow button.

“Mrs. Nehru!”

A dozen nozzles situated throughout the holding cell sprayed a fine vapor into the chamber. A light panel above the observation wall flashed WARNING: CHAMBER STERILIZATION SEQUENCE ACTIVATED and a sharp klaxon burst to life.

Her hand slammed down again, this time on a red button. The vapor ignited in a contained fireball of orange and yellow that engulfed the creature, charring the body first black and then to ashes.

Bits of burning flesh lay on the floor of the smoke-filled room. The glass grew very hot causing an aroma similar to singed wiring to drift through the observation area.

“I KNOW WHAT YOU ARE!” she shouted at the pile of remains.

“Mrs. Nehru! Anita! What are you doing?”

She held ultimate authority over Red Rock, but her behavior now moved beyond the eccentric and into unreasonable.

Yet the force of his protest fell apart when she grabbed his collar and screamed into his red face, “Don’t you see? It’s all a deception! We never had a chance! All of our guns and tanks would never be enough!”

“What are you talking about?”

“The universe!” She shouted. “The universe is empty! And I know why!”

Omar followed Lori Brewer around what had once been a garage housing Ferraris but now served as his personal laboratory. Since the earliest days of the post-Armageddon struggle, Omar worked in this shop to understand the technologies brought to Earth by the invaders.

Over the years he had grown accustomed to interruptions. Sometimes General Jon Brewer, occasionally Gordon Knox, and often-times Trevor Stone. On this day Lori Brewer-the Imperial Administrator-visited his habitat. As usual during these interruptions, the accent in Omar’s voice grew more pronounced the longer she lingered.

“I do not know what it is you are wanting me to be saying.”

The short-haired brunette stopped at a glass case displaying a de-constructed Chaktaw rail gun. A half dozen assistants in various combinations of lab coats, overalls, and casual dress tinkered with items at work benches and tables around the garage.

She explained to him again, “My job is allocating resources. And then people make things from those resources. And then I have to make sure that those ‘things’ get put on trains or in trucks and make their way to where they are needed. So here’s the point, Omar. You get a lot of resources. You get technical people. You get lab equipment. I spend a lot of Continental dollars on your storage depots, on your personnel, on the recovery teams, even on the power you use. The question is, what am I getting for it?”

She gave him an opening and Omar replied from what he perceived as a position of strength: “What do you get from my humble efforts? Let us see here-hmmm-have you noticed those really big fancy ships with aircraft upon them? What do we call them…”

Lori tapped her foot and rolled her eyes but allowed Omar to vent.

“Oh, yes, the Dreadnoughts. And then there are the active camouflage suits if I am recalling correctly, and the Eagle transports that have been known to pitch into the effort.”

“Omar,” her patience ran out. It usually did. “What have you done for me lately? Our resources are running out. The matter-makers down in Atlanta are running full-bore for bullets and fuel. In a few weeks those facilities may be in The Order’s bombing range. Meanwhile, I’ve got the Excalibur over in Pittsburgh that isn’t back in the game yet because we don’t have the people or the parts to finish its repairs. I’ve got to start making some decisions on what gives us the most hope of staying alive. I hate to say this but-“

One of Omar’s assistants cut dared cut in to the conversation, “Dr. Nehru?”

Both Omar and Lori shouted with dueling aggravation, “What?”

The man held a phone. “Phone call. It’s Red Rock. They say it’s an emergency.”

Omar’s cigarette dangled from his half-open mouth. As he reached for the phone his expression turned into one of dread, like a soldier’s parent receiving a phone call from the army in the middle of the night.