took in each individual figure and concentrated on all of them as though they were one. He teleported them and his vision turned black. The last thing he saw was the Grey’s vanish from the skies.
He felt Sally and Hank hold him up as his body slumped, powerless. He heard Hank gasp and he felt Sally shudder uncontrollably.
When his vision returned, he saw a hellish scene all around him. Grey body parts jutted out of the ground at his feet. A head poked out here and a leg wriggled around there. Some were buried right side up and others upside down. He’d somehow managed to teleport them back to him, and fused them in the dirt and rocks at his feet. Most of them had died instantly, but a few still struggled weakly before succumbing to death too.
A single Grey figure hovered in the distance. It was the leader. He’d made a conscious decision to allow her to live to see the consequences of her betrayal. She hovered for just another couple of seconds and then she turned away and flew off.
Sally and Hank were speechless. Sally had to let go of Jack so she could vomit. She’d seen much bloodshed in recent days but she wasn’t immune to it yet the way he was.
He felt Hank’s body start to quiver. Their reactions brought him to his senses. He had just done an awful thing to dozens of intelligent creatures. The sight of the Greys lying dead at his feet didn’t bother him the way Hank and Sally’s reactions did.
He felt his senses flutter again as his vision blurred. And then he felt nothing at all.
Gory Intel
Shaylo watched in awe as those humans achieved the impossible. One of them could release some type of explosive emission; the other had an invisible shield that she used to cleave her opponents into pieces, but the one that interested him the most was the one who could simply appear wherever he wanted. Several times he disappeared from view as they watched. His First Mate was going nuts trying to pinpoint each new location.
They’d already ascertained that the humans had odd abilities and had even documented some of them, but to see them used in battle was altogether different.
Watching them kill his people supplied him with droves of information. He wasn’t too worried about the explosive human or the one with the invisible barriers. They would be easy enough to kill. The one who could teleport intrigued him. Teleportation was only theoretically possible and only for subatomic particles. He’d never before seen an object teleport.
That human would be troublesome, but hardly impossible to defeat. And if he couldn’t chase him down, he’d have to find a way to lure him to his demise.
He said to his First Mate, “That’s encouraging.”
She wondered if he’d been watching the same footage she’d just seen. What she saw was a being so powerful he could kill dozens without lifting a finger. “What do you mean?”
“He was shot and he fell. We can hurt them.”
“I see.”
“How soon can the troops deploy?”
She said, “They’re still recovering from stasis but I could send them now anyway.”
“No. Wait until they’re at their best before dispatching them. They’ll have their wok cut out for them.”
Enemies to Friends
Jack awoke in a familiar place, but it wasn’t his home in Ault. He was inside the Cheyenne mountain bunker in a hospital bed. He sniffed the air and was relieved to find out that he wasn’t still reeking of sweat and fear. He’d been cleaned and redressed.
Sally was in the room with him. She was wearing a white tank-top and shorts. The first thing Jack noticed was that she wasn’t wearing a bra underneath her shirt.
Then he gathered his senses and said, “What the hell happened?”
She dipped a folded cloth in a bowl of cold water and laid it across his forehead. She was gentle about it. Maybe she didn’t resent him anymore but he wasn’t hopeful about that.
“You passed out. We had no choice but to catch a flight back here. Luckily for us, we were