Chapter 6
The exact same blue glow emitting from the device in the stranger’s hand.
The mother looked down at her own arms and let out a horrified, guttural scream.
She started clawing frantically at her own skin, scratching at the dark ink as if trying to rip it right off her forearms.
“Get it out!” she shrieked, her voice tearing at my soul. “Make it stop! Please, God, get it out of me!”
The officer risked a quick glance over his shoulder.
When he saw her glowing, shifting tattoos, all the color drained from his face.
“No,” he whispered, a sound of absolute, devastating defeat. “They didn’t just map it on her. They embedded it.”
He turned back to the man in the trench coat, his eyes burning with a murderous rage.
“I’ll kill you,” the officer roared. “I’ll kill all of you.”
The man in the trench coat just laughed. A cold, echoing sound that filled the diner.
He raised the metallic device higher.
The humming grew to a deafening pitch.
“You’re too late, General,” the man smiled. “The download has already begun.”
And then, all the lights in the diner violently blew out, plunging us into total, absolute darkness.
CHAPTER 3
The darkness was absolute, heavy, and suffocating.
When the fluorescent lights of the diner violently shattered above us, a chorus of terrified screams erupted into the pitch-black air.
It wasn’t just that the power went out.
The bulbs had literally popped, showering the checkered linoleum floor with thousands of tiny, razor-sharp shards of glass.
I was pressed so hard against the greasy wooden panels of the front counter that my ribs ached.
Terry, the manager, was curled into a tight, trembling ball right next to my legs, sobbing openly into his apron.
“Oh God, oh God, we’re going to die in here,” he kept repeating, his voice a wet, pathetic whimper.
I wanted to tell him to shut up, to stay quiet so the man in the trench coat wouldn’t hear us, but I couldn’t find my own voice.
My throat was bone-dry, paralyzed by a level of fear I didn’t know a human body could endure.
The diner was plunged into an inky void, but it wasn’t entirely dark.
And that was the most terrifying part.
From the back corner booth, a sickly, unnatural blue light was pulsing rhythmically.
It cast long, distorted shadows against the back wall, making the diner look like a slaughterhouse in a nightmare.
The light wasn’t coming from the metallic device anymore.
It was coming directly from the young mother’s skin.
Even from twenty feet away, through the chaos and the darkness, I could see her heavily tattooed arms glowing with a deep, radioactive intensity.
The thick, jagged black lines that everyone had judged her for were now illuminated from the inside out.
The humming sound in the air had grown from a low vibration to a high-pitched, teeth-rattling mechanical whine.
Hummmmm. Hummmmm. Hummmmm.
It felt like a physical pressure inside my skull.
Over the deafening hum, I could hear the mother screaming.
It wasn’t a scream of fear anymore. It was a visceral, guttural howl of pure physical agony.
“It’s burning!” she shrieked, the sound tearing through the dark diner. “My blood is boiling! Help me!”
Then, the sudden, deafening crack of a gunshot ripped through the room.
BANG!
A massive burst of yellow muzzle flash illuminated the diner for a fraction of a millisecond.
In that microscopic window of light, I saw a frozen frame of absolute violence.
The senior military officer wasn’t standing by the booth anymore.
He had launched his massive body entirely across the aisle, tackling the man in the trench coat directly into the center tables.
BANG! BANG!
Two more shots fired blindly in the struggle, the muzzle flashes strobing like a horrifying disco.
One bullet shattered the front window display, sending a cascade of cold rain and broken glass blowing over my head.
The other tore into the ceiling, bringing down a shower of drywall dust and plaster.
I covered my head, pressing my face into the filthy floor, praying a stray bullet wouldn’t find my skull.
The sounds of the struggle were sickening.
Heavy fists hitting bone. Boots slipping on wet glass. Grunts of pure, animalistic exertion.
“You’re not taking her!” the General roared in the dark, his voice ragged and breathless.
“You’re a relic, old man!” the trench coat man spat back, his voice eerily calm despite the brutal physical fight.
“The protocol is locked. The transfer is happening right now!”
I risked lifting my head, squinting through the dust and darkness toward the back booth.
The blue glow from the mother’s arms was getting brighter, shifting from a dull pulse to a blinding, continuous light.
And then, I realized something that made my blood run cold.
