“I don’t want your pathetic excuses,” Merric yelled, spittle flying from his lips. “How dare you steal from me? Do you know who I am?”
Merric’s voice continued to dig into Yen’s mind, planting jagged hooks beneath the tender flesh of his brain and jerking, ripping toward the surface. Cringing from the pain, Yen watched as a single blue tendril slid from his sleeve and wrapped itself around his fingers. So fascinated was he by the power breaking free of his grasp, he didn’t notice as Merric came around the table and grabbed the front of his shirt, pulling Yen up onto his toes so he could look eye to eye with the Pilgrim officer.
“I should ruin your career,” Merric said, his eyes wide with hatred. “But ruining your career wouldn’t be satisfying enough. Instead, I’m going to take my retribution straight out of your skin!”
Yen shook his head, the lancing pain blurring his vision. “Not right now, Merric,” he said passively.
Yen’s obvious lack of concern over his predicament angered Merric further. “You don’t tell me what I can and can’t do,” he roared. “I tell you!”
His eyes flaring a soft blue in the dark room and tendrils spreading from his sleeves and from the spines on his back, Yen’s hair whipped wildly in the windless room. “I said,” Yen began, his voice augmented by the unleashed power, “not…”
The first wave of energy slammed into Merric. Though he kept his grip on Yen’s coat, his feet slid backward on the tiled floor.
“…right…”
The second wave snapped Merric’s head back, singeing the flesh on his exposed neck.
“…now!”
As Yen finished his sentence, Merric was lifted from his feet and tossed across the room, slamming painfully into the kitchen cabinets before being dropped to the floor. His forearm twisted awkwardly behind him as he landed, his mass snapping the bones. Merric cried out in pain, clutching the fractured limb, but still glared at Yen with murderous rage. He leapt to his feet, his shirt torn, exposing the smoldering flesh beneath. Small lacerations across his arms, face and chest bled freely, staining his dark grey tunic with darker smears of blood.
“How dare you assault a superior officer,” Merric stated, his own ego overriding the shock in his system. “I will end your career for this. I will have you brought up on charges and executed!”
“No,” Yen explained calmly, his body aglow with uninhibited psychic energy, “you won’t.”
The power struck Merric like an avalanche. The force stripped flesh from his body and scalded through the layers of muscle before dropping the burning coals into the organs beneath. The meat melted from his arms as Merric threw up his arms protectively in front of his face, exposing the bones beneath. Yen felt the panic grow within him and tried in vain to reel the power back, but the sentient pyrokinetic power continued to lash the officer. Merric opened his mouth to scream, but his tongue melted and his eyes boiled and burst in their sockets. Choking on his own scorched flesh, Merric collapsed to the ground, twitching only briefly before he stopped moving all together.
The power satiated, it drifted back into Yen’s body. He shivered in horror, watching the smoking body lay still on his kitchen floor. Though he felt disgusted at what he had done, there was a whispering voice that he couldn’t ignore in the back of his mind. He may be horrified, but Yen had never felt more in control of his powers than he did at this moment. His powers, once chaotic and unwieldy, seemed eager to bend to his resolve. Eager to test out his control, he reached out his hand, gently lifting Merric’s body from the floor. Yen rolled his fingers and the body moved in concert, turning in mid air in response. Satisfied, Yen placed Merric back on the ground and began formulating a plan to save both his career and his life.
Yen walked down the hallway of the ship, the air around him dancing as he headed toward the engine room in the rear of the
As Crewmen passed him in the hall, Yen reached out, the thin blue filament reaching into their minds and rewriting their memories. In their eyes, Yen walked alone with a sadistic smile spread across his face. He nodded in response to their salutations and asked about their health as he walked, all the while leaving them oblivious to the torn and shredded corpse only inches away. As he entered the elevator that would lead to the bowels of the ship, he stood beside a Warrant on his way to the engine room. Merric floated lengthwise before the two men in the lift. The pungent smell of his scorched flesh stung Yen’s nostrils, but the Warrant didn’t notice, instead standing rigid in the presence of a senior officer.
When the lift opened to the engine room, the Warrant gestured for Yen to exit first, which he did, his package in tow. Moving quickly toward the plasma port on the back of the enormous engines, Yen halted, letting the heat from the exhaust wash over him. Even from the distance, Yen could feel his cheeks grow pink from the heat emanating from the engine. With barely a flick of his wrist, he sent Merric’s body drifting toward the plasma port, the blue and purple flames licking the inside of the walls within. As his legs began to enter to port, Merric’s skin blistered and smoked, the acrid smell drifting to where Yen stood in anticipation. The body entered and was engulfed in the flames, the heat from the plasma vaporizing the skin and scoring the dense bone until they, too, crumbled to dust within.
“Ashes to ashes,” Yen mumbled to himself as another Crewman walked obliviously past.
Satisfied that the body would never be found, Yen turned back toward the lift and waited impatiently for it to arrive. He still had to clean the kitchen of any evidence that might remain. But right now, he had more pressing concerns. He allowed his face to go slack, his mouth parting slightly. His brow furrowed in concern and he raised an eyebrow.
“What do you mean he’s missing?” Yen asked quietly to the empty air.
He was pretty sure that would be believable, but just to be sure he’d practice for the rest of the day in front of his mirror.
CHAPTER 15:
At the end of the workday, the survivors shuffled wearily back to their homes, eager for a good night’s rest, yet still weary of living in such cramped quarters. With the doors locked for the night and the loudspeakers announcing that curfew was in effect, most of the rest of House 12 bedded down in the common room for the night. Keryn, however, lay awake on the floor and stared at the ceiling, marking the texture of the panel above her head for the hundredth time. Her heart raced and adrenaline already coursed through her veins. She knew she had to wait just a little while longer before sneaking out of the house, but locating the sewer entrance made her excited to the point that she had trouble holding still.
Once Penchant had shown them the opening, the trio had moved some of the existing rubble so that a fallen wall jutted two feet above the entrance like overhead cover, making the area as nondescript as the surrounding ruins. Keryn had turned in circles, marking all the major landmarks under the spotlights. She prayed then as she prays now that she would be able to find the entrance again in the dark.
Nearly an hour passed, an eternity to Keryn, before she slipped wordlessly from underneath her blanket and stepped gingerly over the strewn bodies that inhabited the common room of House 12. Her body heat in the middle of the group was hardly missed; the bodies quickly shifted to fill the gap left by her departure. She was nearly to the door when a shadow detached itself from the wall. Stifling a surprised yell, Keryn visibly relaxed as she recognized the shaggy blond hair.
“You know you don’t have to do this,” Adam said, reaching out and taking her hand. “If nothing else, I could go with you.”
“No,” Keryn replied, shaking her head softly in the darkness. “No, you can’t come with me. It’ll be dangerous enough with just me being out after curfew. I can’t risk us both on my wild whim.”
“Then just…” he paused, his big hand fidgeting with hers nervously in the ensuing silence. He finally looked up, concern reflected in his blue eyes. “Then promise you’ll come back to me.”
Keryn reached up and placed her hand on his face, her fingers caressing his cheek as he leaned
