Planetoids (Incomplete)
Ann Durden

 

“Fill, it’s kind of urgent...”
“They’ll be ready in a week,” Fill said, leaning back on the couch and refusing to
take the discussion as serious as Gerald Mick did.
“A week? They’ll be fully trained and ready for the mission in a week? For sure?”
While Fill lounged against the soft back of the couch, Gerald was bent over, resting his
elbows on his knee and supporting his head tensely in his hand.
Fill exploded with sudden exasperation. “Yes, I’m absolutely sure! Their training
programs are planned out up to the minute! They’ll be done in a week. I can promise you
that.”
Gerald’s stressed out face finally managed a smile. “Good then.” He stood up and
Fill did the same. At the door of the little apartment, Gerald added, “I’ll be back in a few
days, with the Vice President and maybe even the President.” He pushed the button and
the metal door slid open.
“The President and the Vice President? Gerald, is it really that important?”
Gerald Mick turned his head back towards Fill as he walked down the hall and
nodded. “Yes, it really is. I hope they’re as good as you say they are.”
Fill let the door slide shut again and fell back onto the couch. He lay there for a
long time staring at the ceiling and letting the excitement build up inside. He’d waited
more than eighteen years for this final week of training.

Even without the short, green trenchcoat, her peers at school would have stared at
her as she walked through the halls. Jenneva Rommel was cursed with unnaturally bright,
emerald green eyes and reddish-brown hair that never looked anything but unkept. Her
appearance, her movements and even her personality were unnerving. Jenneva had no
friends and was thankful for it.
She pushed her way through the hall with a defensive glare on her face that kept
anyone from complaining as she rudely bumped into them without so much as a backwards
glance. She hit one girl particularly hard, making her drop the binder she was holding.
The girl swung around ready to throw a fit but as soon as she saw the lime green of
Jenneva’s trenchcoat dress, her mouth snapped shut. The crowded hallway let Jenneva
through with little resistance. If she hadn’t been in such a serious mood, Jen might have
joked with herself about the advantages of being a freak when it came to passing through
traffic.
With only a few more feet to go, Jenneva could see her destination... the main
stairwell. She had to hurry. Soon the bell would ring and then, there wouldn’t be as many
people as witnesses.
She set her hands on the railing as if she owned it and glared down at the stairs
below. She’d seen it all in the dream last night. It was the most vivid dream she’d ever
had. Something better... There’s something better beyond this... It’s time to go...
“Fuck this school...” she said outloud and then spun around to face the other kids
in the hall. “FUCK THIS STUPID, FUCKING SCHOOL AND EVERYONE IN IT!!!”
With her green eyes shining maliciously and a whimsical smile across her lips, she pointed
at a girl nearby. “Fuck you! And, fuck you!” She pointed at a boy to her right who
looked rather shocked by the whole situation. “And, fuck you! And you! And YOU!
And especially YOU!” Her finger swung around, jabbing out accusingly at everyone she
saw. A crowd was gathering. She laughed with the pure joy of letting go.
“I don’t care anymore! I DO NOT CARE! I don’t care what you think of me, or
what you say about me, or how you look at me! Go fuck your parents and your dog and
your goldfish...” Jenneva smiled, laughed and closed her eyes against tears all at the same
time. That was pretty funny. Tears were seeping under her closed eyelids. She couldn’t
stop them so she just let them flow down her cheeks. They couldn’t stop her from saying
what she had to say.
“I am better than you... I am better than you all! I am smarter and nicer and I use
my brain... and you’re all such a waste of organic matter.”
Through the tears she could see the faces of the crowd trying to decide whether to
laugh or run away. A teacher came pushing through.
“FUCK YOU!” She pointed at the man she recognized as Mr. Hilbombe.
“ESPECIALLY FUCK YOU FOR FAILING ME WHEN I’M A THOUSAND TIMES
SMARTER THAN YOU’LL EVER BE!!! FUCK YOU ALL!!!”
“Now, calm down...” he started to say with panic edging into his face as he
watched the poor girl have a breakdown.
“NO!” and then her voiced changed to a whisper as she wiped her eyes. “No... I
won’t calm down or behave or shut up or be normal. NO!” Jenneva turned around and
set her hands decisively on the railing overlooking the stairwell. She climbed up onto it and
without letting any thoughts pass through her mind, she jumped.
Jenneva went head first onto the tiling below. Within a few seconds of the
sickening reaching the crowd’s ears, Jenneva Rommel was dead.

Marcus Cemere could hear the argument echoing down the hall and through his
closed bedroom door. Goddamn his sister. She brought it on herself. He refused to care.
Marcus could hear her saying, “Dad, I thought I asked you... I mean, I thought you
said I could go...”
“Zariann, I told you I don’t like that boy...”
Marcus knew their dad had been watching t.v. and drinking all evening, but Zariann
didn’t. This wasn’t a goodnight to have come home after curfew, especially after being out
with Zack. Marcus didn’t like Zack. Actually, Marcus didn’t like any of Zariann’s
boyfriends and neither did Zariann.
What a fucked up family, Marcus thought. He could still hear the voices, they were
getting louder now.
“Dad, you said I could go! You said...”
“Do you know what I found in your room, Zariann?!?!? Do you know what I
found... I found... I... I will not have you staying out all night!!! I will not!”
“It’s only 11:30! You stay out this late sometimes...”
“Don’t smart off to me, Zariann!”
“Why the hell not,” and then it came. Marc tried not to listen as he could hear his
dad charging across the room to unfurl his wrath against his daughter.
Marcus leaned across his bed and opened a drawer in the dresser nearby. He
clattered around in it to block out the noise and finally his hand emerge holding a pocket
knife. He layed back on the bed and just examined the knife in the light of the lamp on his
bedstand.
“Don’t fucking run away from me!”
And then all he heard was indecipherable sobbing and stuttering from Zariann.
I don’t care, Marcus told himself. I don’t care what happens to Zar... I don’t
care. He ran his fingers along the smooth, vulnerable skin of his wrist and then he put the
knife to it. He just let the sharp metal rest against his flesh without cutting. Tonight I’m
going to do it for real. He was hardly aware of his sister screaming as he ran the knife
from the crook of his elbow down to his actual wrist.
It hurt, but somehow the pain was muted. It almost felt good, like scratching a
mosquito bite even though you know you’re making it bleed. He cut the other arm too,
and kept thinking that it should hurt more than that. He was cutting deep, deeper than he’d
ever cut before.
He lay there on the bed letting it bleed out onto the blankets, and an idea came to
him. He pulled his shirt up and stared down at the smoothness of his stomache, tight with
muscles until it disappeared beneath his pants. He unbuttoned and unzipped his pants,
letting the fly fall open. Starting an inch or two below his belly button and ending just
below his ribs, he cut a deep incision with the pocket knife. That time it hurt, but still not
as much as it ought to.
He lay back down and stared absently up at the ceiling with the backdrop of his
sister and father’s voices mingling together in yells and screams.
Marcus hadn’t really expected to die. It was an accident that he managed to cut a
major artery in his forearm and bleed to death that night. It was equally unexpected that
Marcus’ father would knock Zariann into the coffee table hard enough to crack open her
head against the sharp corner.

Kyler handed his sister twenty dollars. “Here Gena. Mom said to buy bread, milk
and anything else you think we need.”
“She asked you to get it. Why do I have to go in?” Gena said stubbornly.
“I don’t feel like it. Come on, just go.”
“No, practice was hard today. I’m tired,” she stared out the window refusing to
move.
“I was at the soccer game all night; we lost... Gena, please, just go...”
She knew that game had been a big deal to him. “Okay, fine,” she turned to him
with a bright smile on her face. “But, will you please come with me?”
He sighed with annoyance. “Gena...”
“Please, Kyle... I had one of those dreams... Please come with...”
Those words grabbed his full attention and he looked into her face. The neon
lights of the convenient store cast a shadow across her auburn brown eyes and her perfect
golden hair that framed the bright skin of her face. Kyler deeply loved many things, but
none more than his little sister... and if she’d had a dream, he couldn’t very well say no.
“Fine,” he smiled and shook his head, annoyed with himself for giving in. “You’re
such a little brat...” he said, but his adoring tone outweighed the meaning.
“I know,” she said and hugged him as they walked into the store.
Within minutes they were both in line together waiting to pay. To Gena, there was
always something eery about the contrast between the vibrant neon lights inside a store and
the darkness outside. No matter how many artificial rays shown into the cool night air,
Gena could never feel like it was truly lit up.
“Sir, that’s really all I have...” she heard the clerk say nervously and it pulled her
out of her thoughts. There was a stack of money on the counter. The man in line ahead
of them suddenly pushed it onto the floor and yelled in desperation, “Put your hands up.
Get away from that button.”
Then, he turned towards Kyler and Gena. “DIDN’T YOU HEAR ME! PUT
YOUR HANDS UP,” and a gun emerged from his pocket to be aimed at Kyler’s head.
Gena screamed without thinking and the gunmen fired with equally as little thought. Kyler
hit the ground with rivlets of red staining his golden blonde hair.
The ground fell away. The room spun. Gena was no where and everywhere all at
the same time. She screamed and screamed and screamed staring at her beloved brother’s
body. The gunmen finally gave up trying to hush her and sent a bullet through her head
too.

Sebastian Avery saw faces. He saw names. He saw emerald green eyes
shimmering out from beneath shaggy red hair. He saw sweet peace in eyes behind glasses
set in a pale, brown face. He saw smiles and frowns and names and more names. Even
when the faces seemed friendly, they were ghostly and frightening. His fever was high; his
dreams were haunted by sweat and restlessness.
One face emerged from the slide show of the others. It was a man with brown eyes
surrounded by a freckled face. He smiled with parental love towards Sebastian through the
haze of nightmares. Sebastian moaned out his name, “Fill... Fill... Fill... Fill!!!”
His parents were at his side, leaning across the white hospital blankets to hold each
of his hands.
“What’s happening to him? What’s he saying, nurse?” He didn’t have to see his
mother to know she was panicked and near tears.
Eighteen years... 18 years... I’ve been sick for 18 years and I’ve fought it off...
No, not like this... not to a silly flu... no... Even with his premature birth and weakened
state all his life, Sebastian had promised himself he’d die of old age, or some fluke
accident. He didn’t want to die in a hospital bed... not from a fever...
Then, the bright, white light of the hosptial gave way and he was standing alone in
a dim room. Sebastian was amazed to find himself on his feet, with his eyes open and his
body in as good of health as it ever was. He didn’t feel dead at all. He felt more real and
alive than ever before, as if everything before that moment had been an amazingly realistic
dream.
The wall opened up and a person entered, dressed in gray. Sebastian wanted to ask
it where he was, but something about the person warned him not to. He allowed himself to
be led by the arm through the opening in the wall and down a corridor.
The walls of the hall were gray, and there was no divine light. He didn’t feel like
he was being floated off to heaven and it was beyond Sebastian to think he was going to
hell, so he concluded that he wasn’t dead at all. He just didn’t feel dead.
The person in gray led him to a door and indicated for him to open it. There was
no handle but instead a button. Either way, the door slid open and Sebastian was shocked
to see a well-furnished little apartment where ten or twelve other kids were already seated.
“Welcome Bastian,” said a man sitting in a chair at the head of the room. It was
the man from Sebastian’s dreams and he was hailing him with the name he’d heard himself
called in the dreams. Sebastian sat down at the end of the couch, as close to the man as he
could get.
“Is this hell?” a young woman asked in all seriousness. Sebastian thought that she
looked like she belonged in hell maybe more than wherever they were at the moment. Her
face was pale, rigid and might have been beautiful if she’d been smiling. Tight spiral curls
of dark brown hair fell around her face and ended below her shoulders.
“No, Zariann,” Fill, the man seated at the front of the room, said. His eyes ran
over her face and body with pure joy that seemed to radiate out from his smile. He almost
looked proud.
Zariann saw it and answered with a glare of caution from her dark brown eyes.
“So, where are we?”
“My apartment.”
“Oh,” Zar said sarcastically. “That makes sense. I die and wake up in some guy’s
apartment, along with my brother and a few other random teenagers...” She pushed a curl
out of her face and mumbled, “This is too wierd.”
“Shut up, Zariann,” the young man sitting beside her said. Sebastian was fairly
certain they were related because except for the man’s short, straight hair, they looked
almost identical.
“No, but I’d really like to know where we are,” Jenneva spoke up, letting anger
and threats show in her voice.
“Well, maybe Fill would tell us if you’d shut up,” a girl advised softly and
concluded her words with a quick smirk towards Jenneva. Jen sneered back.
“Mia... Jenneva...” Kyler had leaned forward on the couch and was now giving
them both disapproving looks. The girls shut up. “So, where are we and why?” he
demanded gently of Fill. “And, why do we all know each other?”
It was then that Sebastian realized he recognized everyone else in the room.
Marcus, Zariann, Jenneva, Mia, Calvin, Gena... He’d seen their faces in his dreams.
Their names just came to him as if he’d known them all his life and he found that he knew
other things about them too. He had predisposed feelings for each of them.
Fill sat at the front of the room grinning widely at everyone. He looked too happy
to speak. “You’re exactly how you should be... exactly... Everything came out perfectly.”
He didn’t look older than 25 yet there was something fatherly about him. “Now, I’ll
explain everything if you just stay quiet for a few minutes... This is planetoid D273-348.
The universe is filled with space stations just like it,” Fill sounded bored with his obviously
over rehearesed speech. “You all have been living in Earth based simulations. Earth is still
the social and political center of the universe that all the planetoids report back to...” Fill’s
speech went on for hours. It’s not easy to explain to eight kids that they’ve been living
computer simulated lives for the last 16-18 years.
Jenneva interrupted with a simple, concise question that everyone was wondering in
one form or another. “Why?” Her glowing green eyes dared him to answer and explain
why she’d been living a nightmare for the last 17 years.
Fill sighed, and prepared to be as honest as he could. “We breed and raise human
beings that are perfect for certain tasks. This group is LMNT320. You’ll be working for
Earth...”
By the end of Fill’s long explanation, Sebastian didn’t feel like he understood the
situation anymore than before, but fortunately he was too tired to care.

Group LMNT320 was led out of Fill’s apartment into one of their own and he sat
down infront of a psycholator to keep an eye on them. Gena had stayed especially quiet
since coming out of the simulator and that was odd since she was suppose to be the leader.
Every aspect of their little group was so carefully balanced and checked. Any tiny mistake
during one member’s childhood could ruin everyone now that they were interracting
together.

Kyler and Gena sat across from each other on the couches in the living room,
becoming automatically, without meaning to, the center of the apartment’s social world.
Sebastian naturally gravitated towards them and ended up sitting on the floor near Kyler
discussing everything that had happened that day.
“So, Bastian,” Kyler said, having sprawled out on the couch, “how did your
simulation, or whatever Fill was calling it, end?”
Sebastian was laying out on the floor with his pale face resting childishly on his
arms. “I died I think. I got really sick... a really high fever and then I was in an empty
room.”
Although Sebastian couldn’t see him, Kyler was nodding. “That’s just about what
happened to us. Except we were shot.”
“Yeah, it was the most horrible thing I’ve ever experienced,” Gena added. “I
wonder why it had to end like that?”
“Completion I bet,” Bastian answered. “If I hadn’t died, I’d still be wishing to go
back and finish up my life.”
“That makes sense,” Gena replied as she stared up at the ceiling half asleep. She
felt something suddenly sit down on the couch by her feet. It was Zariann.
“Hey,” Zariann said, smiling lightly and quickly. “What’re you all doing?”
Kyler turned over on his side to look at her. She was at least an inch taller than
him and he’d always liked tall girls. “Talking about how our simulations ended.”
“What happened to you, Zar?” Gena asked. Somehow they didn’t feel out of
place talking to each other like they’d been best friends since they were five. All eight of
them seemed to have met each other in the simulated dreams.
“My dad...” she lost herself in the pain of the memory. “I’d rather not tell you
about it. It doesn’t really matter now that we know none of it was real.”
That sentence gave all four of them something to think about. Years and years
worth of memories and all of them fake.
Across the room, Marcus sat down by Mia infront of the computer she was
working at. “What?”
“Huh?” Marcus questioned.
“What? What do you want?” Mia asked calmly.
“I don’t know... to talk to you. Is that too much?”
Without glancing away from the computer screen, Mia replied, “Yes.”
“Why do I keep feeling like I already know you?”
“I don’t know,” Mia answered without so much as a shrug, even though she knew
what he meant. “I keep feeling like I know you too... and I don’t like you.”
Marc laughed and let her see out of the corner of her eyes that he was looking at
her. Beneath her glasses, she had a beautiful face and flawless olive white skin.
Everything about her was so calm and conservative. He reached out to touch her straight
brown hair but before he could, she stood up and walked away. He smiled to himself and
let her go. She hadn’t looked at him once. That was the first time in his life he’d ever
been rejected quite so completely but that wasn’t what made him smile. It was that she’d
rejected him before he’d even made an offer.
Mia walked between the couches and sat down on the floor beside Sebastian. The
conversation had long since stopped because Kyler, Gena and Zariann had fallen asleep.
Bastian had been almost gone when Mia sat down.
“How’d your simulation end?”
There was a pause for a moment before Mia answered. “I got electricuted I think.”
Sebastian laughed. “You’ve gotta be kidding... electricuted...”
“Yeah, by my computer, I know...it’s wierd...”
Calvin Stile had chosen to remain silent and virtually invisible for most of the
evening, but for some reason he slipped into the chair beside Marcus to watch him at the
computer. Marc glanced over at him once, taking in his height, red hair and freckles, but
then turning back to the computer. Calvin and Marcus sat in silence, and eventually began
to take turns playing different computer games.

From his own apartment, Fill lay hooked up to the psycholator switching from one
person to the next, seeing what they saw, hearing what they heard and thinking what they
thought. Everything seemed to be going perfect. Kyler was asleep on one couch. Gena
and Zariann were curled up together on the other couch. Sebastian and Mia were asleep
side by side on the floor. Marcus and Calvin were asleep at the computer. Poor outcast
Jenneva was the only who’d bothered to venture down the hall and discover the eight
bedrooms. Certain that everything was going well, Fill switched the psycholator over to
Gena. Her dreams were full of volleyball games, dance classes, boys and schoolwork; the
perfect little angel. Fill could see nothing wrong in having a favorite as long as he didn’t let
it affect the way he acted towards the other seven members of LMNT320.

The next morning, LMNT320 was woken up early for a series of tests and
scenarios to make sure they were working perfectly together. The eight of them were
shuffled into a small, empty, gray room.
“This is a simulation room,” Fill said, raising his hands up into the air as if the
empty room were some grand sight. “The moment you walk in here, the computer is
connected to all of the most complex parts of your brain. It can make you see, feel, hear,
taste, smell and sometimes think things that aren’t real.” He looked out into the faces of
his audience. “This morning you’ll be running through some teamwork scenarios. They’re
both tests of your abilities and learning experiences. While you’re working, you’re team
Element, and each of you has a codename.”
“TEAM ELEMENT LEARNING SCENARIO ONE OF TWENTY,” said a
computerized voice. The empty gray room disappeared and Gena found herself standing
in a office with Calvin and Zariann. An older man stood behind a desk saying “Team
Element’s mission today is to steal important files from a top security computer network
and deliver them safely to headquarters. Gena; codename SHINE, Calvin; codename
BURN, Zariann; codename FLOW, your individual mission is to obtain the layout plan
and access codes necessary for Shift, Drift and Glow to enter the security building. Do
you need me to repeat your mission?”
Gena glanced at Calvin and Zariann. They both shook their heads. “No, I think
we understand.”
“That’s the building,” the man indicated out the window toward a building right
across the street. “It’s called the Security Center. You may leave now.”
Gena looked at her companions again before walking out the door. Calvin was the
last one out and he shut it behind them.
“What’d we do now?” Gena asked.
“This simulation doesn’t look very big... Maybe we should just go out to the street
to see where else we could go,” Zariann offered. Her f
The three of them headed out to the street outside and sure enough, besides
headquarters and the Security Center, there was only a bar.
“I don’t think we’re old enough to go in there,” Gena said smiling.
Calvin spoke up for the first time since Gena had met him, “Different planetoids
probably have different laws.”
She nodded in agreement, and they entered the dim bar. Gena felt instantly
conspicous... “What now?” she shouted over the muisc, only to find that Zariann and
Calvin were right at home. Zariann’s black curls were receding into the crowd, dancing
occasionally with a drunk guy and bumping somtimes into a cute, sober one. Calvin was
making his way up to a table surrounded by men drinking and laughing, apparently
engaged in some kind of gambling.
Gena looked around nervously and wandered over to the bar. She sat down and
kept her eyes on Calvin, feeling absolutely excluded and worthless to the mission. Only
Cal and Zariann seemed to know what the plan was.
“You don’t look like yer drinkin’ anything,” the guy besides her said.
“I’m not really thirsty,” she answered honestly.
He seemed to find that funny and soon had her drinking all kind of strange liquids
that burned as they went down.
A while later, as Gena was telling the guy a pretty strange story that made sense
only to two people who were drunk, a voice said, “Excuse me, Shine. Got a second?”
She turned and the sight of Zariann’s serious brown eyes seemed to immediately
sober her. “Yeah, what’s going on?”
“Burn’s found someone who knows about the building. Meet us upstairs...”
Five minutes later, Gena was making her way up the decrepit old stairs of the bar.
She followed Calvin’s voice into a room at the end of the hall.
“So, how much for the map?”
“Fifty.”
Calvin glanced back at Gena. She slipped her hand into the pocket of her skirt. If
the two bills she felt were twenties, then they only had fourty dollars. She met Calvin’s
eyes and shook her head lightly.
“Twenty-five,” Cal said.
“Twenty-five? You want to buy this high quality map for twenty-five? Did I
mention that I’m the only one in town who has one? ... Thirty-five.”
“Thirty,” Calvin said with a malicious smile on his face.
“Fine.”
“And, what about the access codes?”
The man shook his head. “Only a guy downstairs named Juan knows the most
recent ones. Good luck getting him to tell you something like that.”
“Show me which one he is.”
They all followed the man downstairs and as soon as he’d pointed out Juan,
Zariann was making her way toward him.
As they watched her go, Gena stood on her tiptoes to whisper in Calvin’s ear, “We
had forty dollars, ya know, Cal.”
He nodded. “Ten left, right? Give me half. I’ve done my job today, now I wanna
go have fun in this scenario before they turn it off.”
Gena allowed herself to grin and slip the money into his hand. She would have
never expected this from silent, invisible, red-headed Calvin Stile. He dissappeared into the
crowd to go drink or gamble or whatever else men do in bars.
Meanwhile, Zariann was on the otherside of the room getting friendly with Juan.
Gena watched them casually until they dissappeared upstairs, and kept her eye on Cal, until
Zariann finally reappeared.
“You didn’t?”
Zar handed her a folded up napkin with access codes written on it. “Didn’t what?”
Gena eyed her companion with a disbelieving smile.
“Whatever you choose to think I did... Just keep in mind, Shine... It’s only a
simulation.”

Kyler, Mia and Sebastian had been waiting an hour since the computer told them
their codenames and explained the mission. Quite a while ago, Kyler had run out of
enthusiasm to keep running them through the plan. Just when Sebastian was about to fall
asleep sitting in the hall of headquarters, the sound of footsteps awoke him. Gena, Zariann
and Calvin came bounding down the hall to give them the building lay out and access
codes. Without a word passed between them, Kyler, Mia and Sebastian were sprinting
down the stairs. The scenario was starting to take on the air of an Easter egg hunt.
They snuck around to the back of the big building. The entire town was done
western style with big adobe walls. Sebastian was just waiting for a hunk of drift wood to
bounce by. The access codes on Zariann’s napkin took them through three security doors,
but the final one was locked from the inside
“Now, what’d we do?” Kyler said with frustration. He was hungry.
Sebastian started to look around and within seconds found what he was looking for.
“See that vent up there, Glow? Give me a lift.”
“Um, okay...” Kyler was ready to give anything a try. Kyler boosted him up and
with a screwdriver that Bastian found in his pocket, he pulled off the vent. To everyone’s
amazement, he actually fit in it. Within seconds of dissappearing into the darkness, Kyler
and Mia heard clattering inside the room and the door swung open.
Mia rushed in and got to work downloading the file onto a disk.
“Glow, can you hear me?” Gena’s voice echoed into the room. Kyler pulled a
walkie talkie out his pants pocket.
“Yeah, Shine, I’m here.”
“The police are coming. They’re rushing into the building right now.”
Marcus’ voice broke in on the walkie talkie. “They must have followed us. We’re
waiting right outside the room.”
“Mia, are you done???” Kyler yelled.
“Yeah!” She pulled the disk out of the drive and tossed it to Kyler. Sebastian
swung open the door and Kyler threw the disk to Marcus who was standing outside.
Marcus and Jenneva set off at a run down the corridor. The police were coming in
the backdoor so they’d have to get out the front. That plan might have worked if the
police hadn’t caught up with them halfway there. Jenneva didn’t have to see them to know
they would be able to see her in just a few seconds. She could hear their footsteps
trampling behind her.
“Shade, hold still!” she shouted softly enought so that the oncoming police
wouldn’t hear.
Marcus stopped running, mostly to see what Jen was doing. She jumped up and
grabbed a large pipe running across the ceiling of the hall. In one swift swing, she had her
legs wrapped around Marc and lifted him up to wear he could grab a pipe on his own.
They hung there while the authorities ran past.
Jenneva grinned at Marc as he hung there breathing heavily. “Ready? Time to run
the other direction.”
He nodded before dropping down. His pulse was racing. Simulation or not, it all
felt real. He was terrified of being caught and he nearly screamed when a security guard
stepped out from around the corner. Jenneva let out an unnatural little shriek as the man
started to pull out his gun.
Without thinking, Marcus pulled out his pocket knife and stabbed into anything he
could reach. Whatever he did, it was enough to prevent the security guard from ever firing
his gun and the two were able to push past him.
They barely made it out the building, across the street and up the stairs into
headquarters. Marcus threw the disk down onto the desk just as the police outside started
to fire into the room. Marc was hit twice, but the simulation turned off before the pain had
a chance to take hold.

 

 

Copyright © 2000 Ann Durden
Published on the World Wide Web by "www.storymania.com"