“You came looking,” the boy repeated in shock. “You came looking—” Kasse faltered atop his CO, quaking tremor like surrender, the inevitable conclusion of his and Eo’s decision having come to a final pass. No more discussions on absconding North, no more returning to the wild, no more choices: there was just their squad who’d […]
044. whorl
In the orange and violet blaze of impending sunrise, the truck broke down. Their journey lasted only a few quiet hours in the ragged night. Conversation had been spare, even after Kasse puked his guts out from his overzealous reunion with cigarettes, nervous chainsmoking putting him square in the midst of a short lived surrender […]
032. iruvayon
Adrien’s lake blue eyes were muddy in the truck as he looked at the screen, tapped on Eoran’s face and waited as the phone’s AI tried to identify him in the thousands upon thousands of photos the whole ODA had managed to jam into that overworked piece of technology. When he’d found success, he tapped […]
031. photostream
“Don’t forget: print whatever information you find. Where they were being taken to, any details on where they were last seen, anything relevant, anything that may not be relevant—just anything that mentions them, okay?” Brint leaned out the truck window, hollering at his medical and intelligence sergeants as they were walking away from him. “Yeah, […]
030. 2 dead, 2 missing
An hour passed since the ambush. When Brint came to, he was engulfed by the metronomic perturbations of a helicopter’s blades beating at the air like a filthy rug. He glared up into the smooth face of his intelligence sergeant, Dev, dazed and disoriented. The man stared back down at him, looking glass reflection an […]
029. a poison’s purpose
Dev took a deep breath, a pitiful gasp in the midst of the adjunct’s snowsheet. “Kasse, come on—“ “What’re you guys doing?” Eoran asked on the other side of the rooftop’s door, voice a hum in the static of a slowly unfolding catastrophe. He crossed the roof to his boyfriend and their squadmate. Moving the […]
025. ± [NSFW]
to him, it was everything all things, alight—tails his moments alive, persistent pernicious, pervasive boy trapped against infinity it was nothing broken and empty—heads lots cast asunder, chance tempted, fate a tempest in the stillness of their crypt to be swaddled in night held in the hands of a city […]
024. obsidian dark, ophidian crisp
Eo? he queried where Brint couldn’t hear his sudden trepidation, how worried that boy had suddenly become. How common are bone darts?
023. the red desert’s varaket ghost story
“Varakaiso,” said a trembling yelp, a plea from the man kneeling in the shrapnel littered roof of Eoran’s crumbling building. In Port Haven, Ossans were characterized by a near toxic level of bravado, but this man before 18B was cowering, face wet in the wake of the impossible. “Sirai, Varakaiso—“ “He’s saying Va-something, I think […]
022. the sound of your cruelty
“But seriously: if everything’s a threat here, if the ability is limited, if the end result matters… why not try to deconstruct the whole building? It’s already falling apart. Let the weight of all that concrete do the work. Could you just use your sight like a stud-finder and dissolve support structures? Or sections of […]