Untouchable

I awoke this morning to a silent city. All those familiar smells and sensations of a grave, the deathly stillness of the air, the powdered concrete taste that permanently sticks in the back of your throat. But then again, a grave was what it was. And not just my city, every city. Everyone is dead…I was uncomfortable in silence. So used to human screams so tortured they were barely human, this sensation felt particularly wrong. Those screams would haunt me till the day I died. Hopefully, that wouldn’t be too long. The constant firing of those Goddamn CR-20s was so frequent, it was as natural as day turning to night and today I could not hear them…not even drifting on the wind, echoes from the distance…I could hear nothing. I wondered if perhaps I was going deaf.

That lead me to wonder how I could cope if I did actually go deaf, after rationally convincing myself that there was a reason for the lack of the sound and it was not, in fact, my hearing failing. They would probably kill me. Heh, about time. But maybe I did rely on sounds too much. On the fact that I would always hear them coming. However, they were getting further and further ahead of us each day, what with their new technology and the simple fact that slowly they were closing in and there were less and less places to hide. One day, I wouldn’t hear them coming.

It’s a strange day when there’s no blood on the street. Especially a day begun in silence. When they didn’t execute a prisoner, it was always a signal something was going to happen. Something big, big loud and bloody. I mentally prepared myself for another fight and contemplated their motives. Perhaps saving the humans for another demonstration. Maybe another trial of the new technology, the new weapons system. Whatever it is, better watch my back, for today is not a safe day. Those Rogues who call themselves warriors, wherever they are, they better watch theirs, too.

Ten years before the war, the invasion, the days of New Reality and the days when aliens only existed in computer games and horror stories, a rough-edged, rugged and hard-eyed teenage girl stood behind the truck as it shipped the pale and withered body away to the recycling plant. She had no name, her mother never cared to give her one, so when she was old enough she gave herself one. Nyx, meaning ‘creature of the night’. At the time she had chosen it because it was original. She had no idea how much that name would shape her future.

The body in the truck was that of Nyx’s mother, a twenty-seven year old woman named Jennifer, who had died of a heroin over-dose, the result of a life-long obsession with drugs. Her mother was weak, she could not survive unless it was through a semi-conscious stupor. Jennifer, like millions of others, could not handle the pressures and prejudices of today’s world, nor did she want to. She didn’t want to live, but she was far too much of a coward to die.

“Escape reality! Reality is fucked up!” she would drawl at Nyx when she was coherent enough to speak.

“Yes mother,” Nyx had well learnt to simply nod and agree with everything her mother said, for fear of triggering a schizo-paranoid rage, during which Jennifer would drag herself from the floor and stumble about the mouldy room, arms failing, screaming until she tripped and fell into another drug-induced hallucination.

“You have to…have to go!” Jennifer stammered and spat. “Get out of here! They’re coming!”

One of Jennifer’s greatest fears was that ‘someone was coming.’ Usually it was just the land-lord, come to threaten them and warn them how many months overdue their rent was, force himself on Nyx until she kneed him in the groin and then leave again. But as time went on, Jennifer became more and more convinced that someone else was coming. Something bigger. Her ‘aliens’. Perhaps Nyx should have listened. Perhaps then she could have prepared. But she had no way of knowing that what her mother said was true. No one in her right mind would believe her. It wouldn’t have mattered even if she did. You can’t stop the inevitable.

In this new time of struggle, total over-population and world-wide famine, the recycling plants were most people’s only means of surviving. It was one of these plants to which the body of Jennifer was heading after being loaded into the truck. The dead were dissected, any functional organs removed and sold on the black market for transplants or the meat market for food. The remains were liquefied, proteins and enzymes extracted and made into nutrition tablets. They didn’t put a stop to that empty, gnawing feeling in the pit of your stomach, but you could live on them for a while. This was the best one could hope for when one died. The idea of the funeral had died almost a century ago, along with the world’s flora and fauna.

Space to bury people was a luxury that did not exist, nor did cremation, when so many people were hungry. Religion died when funerals did; nobody believed in anything except finding food and keeping a job. The earth was spent now. It wasn’t even hot in the core. The only jungles were concrete ones and it had been forty years since anyone had ever seen grass. The oceans couldn’t be classified as water anymore. So thick with chemicals and oil, it had been transformed into a thick, rolling, bubbling sludge.

Almost a hundred years ago, massive atmosphere-producing machines had been set up at strategic points around the globe to keep the atmosphere breathable, seeing as the planet no longer had the capacity to do it itself. It was now the top priority to keep these machines running. The tatters of remaining government and what threads of funds they managed to suck out of the people were diverted into atmospheric maintenance. There was no money for health, education, security, defence and taxes were through the roof. But then again, there weren’t any schools, especially not in America, the hardest hit country by poverty, and the idea of hospitals was a joke! As for defence, it wasn’t necessary. No country had the numbers to form an army and no one had anything worth taking, or fighting for.

So how did things get so bad? Records of the past are few and far apart, most people don’t know, nor do they care to, but there are those out there that know. Even if there were extensive or comprehensive records or…heavens above, books, it wouldn’t have done anyone much good. A person who could read was about as rare as fresh food, that being, pretty much non-existent. Anyway, about a century ago, just before the atmosphere machines were produced, the earth was already almost dead, the oceans untouchable, species dying out at the blink of an eye. The cause of this was a simple one, over-population.

Centuries and centuries ago, when the sky was still blue and you could swim and catch fish in the sea, scientists had warned that if we kept population growing at the rate we were, we would exhaust the earth and cause an ecological collapse. Well, five hundred years and six hundred billion people later, we had not listened, nor learnt from our mistakes. On the cards was a very real ecological disaster, but humans, so supposedly intelligent, on a mass scale are stupid and stubborn and set in their ways. The entire world wasn’t about to stop having children and switch to completely environmentally friendly lifestyles just because a handful of well-paid individuals in white lab-coats told them to.

So life went on as usual. America was, for the third time in a decade, at war with China. Chinese scientists were hard at work developing an airborne biochemical virus to wipe out anyone not administered with a vaccine. The virus’s purpose was to cause an immediate shut down of the victim’s internal organs, and therefore cause a very quick and painful death. However, as things do when you mess with anything beyond your control, it all went horribly wrong. The Chinese government had planned to spike the water supplies across the country, hence administering the vaccine to the entire population, and then release their engineered virus into the world.

America was lining up their extensive nuclear weapons system and China was beginning to panic and did not carry out all the necessary tests on the weapon, nor the vaccine. The vaccine proved to be completely ineffective, but the virus was shockingly lethal. An American air-raid on the facility manufacturing the virus resulted in not only the destruction of the facility and the deaths of many misguided but brilliant scientists, but the rupturing of the containment tanks.

The lucky one were those who managed to take shelter in self-sufficient facilities intended for the possibility of a nuclear holocaust. There was enough air and supplies for hundreds of thousands of people to survive for years. In China, it was first in first served. People stormed the shelters, packed them full, and those outside, regardless of social status, were locked outside to die. In America, they had enough time for order. A selection of the most prestigious men and women, the tops of their field, were granted life, and then the remaining places were filled by means of a lottery system.

Among the Americans selected was a young biochemistry student, who, with the research, equipment and a sample of the virus that had been taken underground, managed to create an effective vaccine and release it into the atmosphere. But bad things tend to have a way of getting worse, and it turned out that the surviving people were better off underground in the shelters. In the two years spent underground, the virus topside had mutated. Every animal, bird, plant, almost every living creature had been completely wiped off the face of the planet.

It had already gone too far. What tiny percentage of surviving population had no chance of rebuilding. They’d screwed the planet over and now the planet had its chance to screw them over. And screw them over it did. The population dropped from six hundred billion to six hundred thousand in a matter of years and there was no going back after that. Those people came out onto the surface to find a barren, desolate wasteland, not a single blade of grass and an atmosphere completely unbreatheable. Which signaled the development of the atmosphere machines. But it was too late. They could never rebuild and they could never go back.

It was this chain of events which lead the world to being in the state it was when Nyx was a child. No food, no life, hardly any water and no escape. As the truck drove away, spraying her with the mud and grime caked in the gutters, it stung her skin, having been mixed with the acid rain from that afternoon’s shower. She winced in pain and hurried to wipe it off with a scrap of her clothing. The rain was annoying, to say the least. It grew more frequent every year—stronger too. It ravaged the faces of the already-crumbling buildings. Not immediately, but slowly, it ate away at concrete and tar, melted plastic and for those unable to find an awning to hide under, skin.

Nyx was one of the lucky ones. She didn’t have any possessions or much to eat, but at least she had a roof over her head. Right?

The girl jumped, tearing her eyes from the disappearing truck and turned around. There before her, gripping her shoulder perhaps a little harder than necessary stood Jimmy Carlos, land-lord, sleaze bag and all around bastard.

Jimmy was one of those guys you knew was scum before you’d even spoken to him. He radiated all those vibes of being a jerk, and more. He was the kind of guy who swindled poor elderly couples out of their life savings, beat on women and tried to seduce orphaned thirteen year old girls. Had there been a police force, they would have been after him years ago, he was a cheat and a thief and just about everything else illegal you could link with sex and money.

Physically, he wasn’t much better than his reputation. Greasy was the best way to describe him. His skin was so oily it glistened even in the dark, it was slimy and pale and acne-scarred. His black hair was greased back with motor oil, which was so thick through his hair now it was probably next to impossible to wash out. As for his eyes, they were the only part of his body that didn’t match his personality. They were blue, a blue so strikingly deep you got lost just looking at them. Colour like that was like stumbling across gems in the street—the only colours in the city those days were grey and black. However, Nyx was one of the few that paid little to his eyes. In fact, she didn’t pay attention to appearances at all, especially her own.

She was wearing the only clothes she owned, a pair of denim overalls too big (in fact, all her clothes were too big), that she rolled up at the cuffs. One of the strap-clasps was broken, so the strap hung loosely down her back and the tattered overalls hung limply from one bony shoulder. Under the overalls she wore a dark grey long sleeved shirt. Printed in black on the front was a large gothic cross. Nyx had painted it there herself. On her feet were a pair of black combat boots, three sizes too big, so she had to tie them around her ankles with small lengths of rope, but that was okay; she was still growing.

At that moment she stood at five feet four inches, quite small in comparison to Jimmy Carlos’s formidable six foot two. But size didn’t matter either with Nyx. Any man smarter than Jimmy would have known better than to mess with her. There was a spark of something in the girl’s hard brown eyes, any perceptive person would have seen that there was more to her than a scrawny girl in over-sized overalls. Her wavy dark brown hair, cut in layers while looking in a tin lid, turned about to be so ruffled it was stylish. It suited her though, not that it mattered. She kept it tied back with half a shoe-lace, the two front pieces left out and framing her face. Her skin was smooth, it would have been perfect had it not been streaked with dirt and dried blood. But Nyx was pretty—more stunningly beautiful than she would ever know.

“What do you want?” Nyx angrily looked up at Jimmy, who was looking rather distracted, staring somewhere other than Nyx’s face. “Hey!”

“Wha—“ Jimmy snapped to attention. “Eviction notice. One hour, you haven’t vacated the apartment premises and…”

“And what?” Nyx cut in. “You’ll try and rape me again? Or threaten to kill my mother? Can’t use that one anymore!”

“I’m sorry about your cheap, no good, rent-with-holding mother,” Jimmy sneered. “But you don’t want to know what I’ll do to you if you don’t get out.”

“Fine,” Nyx shrugged like she didn’t care, and she honestly didn’t. “Give me five minutes to get my stuff and I’ll go.” She turned and started walking.

Jimmy stood, bewildered, as he watched Nyx’s retreating back. He had not expected the argumentative little brat to conform. He at least expected a fight…he so loved the way her eyes flashed when she was angry…but obviously the girl had different priorities. Perhaps he could change that…

“Y’know…I’m a very lonely man. Perhaps we could come to some sort of agreement…”

About a year ago, Jimmy had gotten a little beyond lonely and dragged Nyx off to his apartment. Details aren’t necessary, but the result was Nyx managing to grab a knife from the kitchen table and Jimmy coming out of the ordeal one testicle short. And Nyx would die before letting him forget it.

“Go find some desperate slut,” she said. “If there’s one thing I have, it’s self respect.” And she left.

The first couple of weeks were the toughest, having to learn how to really fend for myself. I mean, I was used to looking after myself—it’s not like my mother ever did that. But there was always that hair-thin thread of security that came with the apartment. Like knowing you had a place to sleep that was warm and reasonably safe and it didn’t matter if outside it was raining. I was street-wise. You had to be if you wanted to survive more than five minutes out there, let alone eat. But at the same time, being evicted from the apartment made me realise how na�ve I was. There was a lot to learn, and if I wanted to see my fourteenth birthday, I had to learn it fast.

Nyx didn’t know where to go after Jimmy threw her out. She had no money, so she couldn’t rent another apartment, the only other payment method being prostitution; the thought didn’t even cross her mind. She would rather melt in an acid-storm. Nyx was a hard person to get to know, much less understand. She never smiled out of guenuine happiness, let alone laughed, and here her mother had died and she didn’t shed a tear, either. About that, or anything else.

To her, her mother had been dead for as long as she could remember, and the woman who shared the apartment with her, who she made sure she stole extra food for, was not her mother. She wasn’t even a person. Just a hollow shell that spent most its time lying contorted on the ground, struggling to breathe. Who very rarely spoke, but cried and screamed constantly. Who had, although accidentally, brought Nyx into the world. What could be a worse injustice than that? No, Nyx couldn’t mourn the loss of her mother. Because it wasn’t really a loss. It was just another day.

CHAPTER TWO

With all her possessions bundled up in a tattered grey woolen blanket, Nyx took to the streets. Night had fallen and it was absolutely pitch dark, so she couldn’t go far. She managed to make her way down an alley, where she found herself outside a ram-shackle old shed, so rickety-looking it appeared as if it would implode if the wind blew too hard. Nyx didn’t need to kick rotting wooden door in; she tried the handle and the door fell right of its hinges. Clutching her bundle to her chest, she stepped over the door, squinting in the darkness and into the shed.

After she was completely certain she was the only person there, she set the bundle down, turned around and picked up the door and balanced it against the frame. Only now, when she was certain she was alone did she unwrap the bundle and take out her supplies. In the blanket, which was her only warmth, she had a plastic bottle of water, that she had to be very careful with, and her most valuable possession, an oil lamp. In her pocket was a metal lighter with rainbow stripes, and as the handle of the bundle, an ancient, chipped, wooden baseball bat, and her only weapon. Nyx didn’t dare use the light in the street. Having light was almost as valuable as fresh water, and would draw people to her like moths to a flame. There were many people who would kill for a working lamp and lighter.

Nyx shone the light around the tiny shed and discovered it to be stripped bare, and useless. Marks on the walls indicated that there used to be shelves and a bed in the shed—obviously no more. In the middle of the shed was a pile of wood from part of the roof, which had fallen in, revealing the night sky. Nyx lit the wood on fire, blowing at the tiny flames until they were strong enough to conquer the wood alone, then blew out the lamp. Clutching the bat and the lamp, she spread the blanket on the cold concrete floor and lay beside the fire. She would be warm at least for that night, but she knew she wouldn’t always be so lucky.

Nyx didn’t usually sleep at night. The night was the only time she could get food. She usually stole it from Jimmy’s apartment while he was out on his night business every couple of days, but now she didn’t have that option, and she didn’t know anyone else she could steal from. Her stomach growled, protesting the fact she had not been able to put food into it for four days now.

Geez, what am I gonna do? Nyx wondered, as she lay on the blanket, staring up at the sky. There were no stars, there hadn’t been for nearly a century. Of course, they were still out there. They still existed, but she had never even heard of them.

But the sky was beautiful in its own way, especially at night. In the day it was a constant thick grey, a smog so thick that only the vacuum of space could remove it, if it wasn't trapped beneath the atmosphere. On the rare occasion that sunlight managed to force its way through the bars and barrages, the sky turned a sickly yellow grey and everyone rushed to find shade because the bright light stung their eyes. At night the smog turned a deep purple that dripped with red like blood slowly seeping through fabric, the constant burning chemicals of a flaming sky.

It was beautiful, Nyx admired as she lay by the fire, staring up. But of course, that was something she kept very secret, even from herself. Nyx would not allow herself to see beauty, and at that moment she cursed herself for being so weak as to slip up and think that way. She rolled over, putting her back to the fire. In her whole thirteen years, she had never loved anyone. And no one had ever loved her. She’d never had a friend, and her mother didn’t count for much of a companion. So she grew up never talking. Oh, she spoke, like she spoke to Jimmy, but only to fight. She did enjoy fighting, both physically and verbally—and she was very good at both—but she couldn’t say she loved it. If Nyx ever did find a friend—something she doubted even more than living past the age of twenty—she didn’t think they’d talk. She would never admit that she was afraid of trusting somebody, telling them how she felt and what she thought, when she knew that she would sooner or later lose them. Deep down she knew that if you have nothing to lose, you can’t lose it, if you don’t care, you can’t get hurt and if you live to die, then eventually you will. That was Nyx’s code. It was what she lived by. And what she hoped she’d soon die by.

When Nyx awoke, it was dawn and fire had gone out. She was ravenously hungry and her tongue felt large and fuzzy and stuck to the roof of her mouth. She allowed herself a mouthful of water, then packed up her small pile of belongings and headed out. There was nothing she could do about the feeling that her stomach was folding in on itself. She had no way of buying meet on the black-market, even if she did survive the encounter with the dealer, and the recycling plants were miles and miles away on the outskirts of the city.

No one ever managed to get into the outside sector. It was the only part of the city that was secure and the only place on the entire east coast to have a working electricity grid. Nobody lived there, though, it was only warehouses and factories. The very privileged and the very wealthy were the sole citizens granted employment in places as prestigious as the factories. Nyx would never be one of them. But, she had a thought, perhaps, if she could get into the sector and stay there without being caught, she wouldn’t have to be. Her only problem was how she was going to get in once she got there. The guards shot anybody who didn’t have an entry pass on sight. Nyx had no way of obtaining one of these passes. That was made especially difficult by the fact she didn’t even know what a pass was.

She would worry about this later .She had much bigger things as present to cause her concern. Like the fact that it was growing light outside and as soon as day broke, the world would become an extremely dangerous place. Nyx had heard, in stories, that hundreds of years ago, before the war, when the earth was still a semi-decent place to live, it had been the opposite. Normal, decent people came out in the day, to do whatever regular things they did, and at night, while the good people slept, the dangerous people existed. The kind of individuals Nyx encountered every day of her life only existed as characters in horror stories in the beforetime. At the time, when she had heard all this, Nyx had scoffed and turned her attention elsewhere. She found it extremely hard to believe that something good could possibly come from daylight. She found it even harder to believe in stories from the beforetime. But that was mainly because she didn’t believe in beforetime.

In Nyx’s time, in the day was when people came out of hiding to feed. And when people were feeding was a time to run, especially for a child. Oh, don’t get me wrong, Nyx was tough; she could fight and most the time hold her own, but even she had brains enough to swallow her pride and admit that against a gang of people insane with hunger, she was nothing but an easy meal. In times such as now, when no food could be scavenged, people would eat anything, including each other.

Two people from the group were nominated to fight to the death. The loser, who obviously died, provided the victor with a feast, and the others were left with the remains. It was one solid meal, enough to sooth the savage mob for three, maybe four days, but then the cycle began all over again. Nyx thought that sooner or later, they’d have to run out of people and the rituals would stop, but that was yet to be the case. Once in her life she had seen one of these feeding frenzies first hand. It was one of the few things that had ever actually disturbed her and she hoped never again. She was not that lucky.

Nyx tied her bundle to her back with the loose strap of her overalls, knowing how important it was to have her hands free. She held the baseball bat like a sword and ventured from the shed. It was a normal day, no sun, grey-yellow sky, the alley empty and deadly silent. It wasn’t really empty. In almost every space you could squash a human form, you would find one. Sometimes the same one, as it slipped from place to place, following, hunting. In these parts of the city, men were not men, they were predators, hunters. Some, the really insane ones, painted war stripes on their faces in blood and filed their teeth to points. It tore the flesh easier.

Outside, Nyx spun a quick circle. Her eyes were sharper than any hunter’s. She counted three behind her and two in front. Five crazy men…could she fight them? Nyx felt a rush of adrenaline through her veins. She began walking, pretending she was completely unaware of the two men hiding on either side of the alley behind piles of rusted scrap metal. Behind her, the other three were silently moving up, trying to box her in. She wasn’t afraid—a good thing. Animals could smell fear, and these ‘people’ were more animal than man. Just as she reached the metal, the two jumped out, snarling, and the other three suddenly appeared behind her.

The path both in front and behind her blocked, she leapt up onto the pile of metal, skidding across the top as the unstable surface rocked. She swung the bat at the head of the nearest man, who shouted and crumpled as if someone had suddenly removed all his bones. Using the few seconds of confusion she had caused, Nyx landed like a cat in front of the other four men, and, seeing the alley ahead was clear, bolted. The men followed hot on her heels, not about to give up on the prospect of a meal so quickly. They had done tougher things for food than chase a girl down an alley.

At the end of the alley was a single fork, a sharp corner turning left. She rounded the corner far too fast as one of the men caught up to her and latched onto the bundle tied to her back. The concrete beneath her feet was slimy and her balance was thrown. Nyx’s feet shot out from under her and she went careening into a pile of rubble. She rolled onto her back and realised straight away that the bundle had ripped open. All that remained was the blanket, one corner still tied to her strap. The lantern and the half-full bottle of water were gone. Thank God she had the lighter in her pocket and had managed to keep a hold on the bat.

To her surprise, the men did not come down on her and rip her limb from limb. It was like they’d suddenly forgotten about her, which ultimately they had. They now stood in a line in front of Nyx, waiting, watching. There was another cannibal gang, approaching from the end of the alley. There was no where to run, and if she were seen, she would be quickly remembered. Nyx ached enough to be able to happily lie there awhile longer, but instead she picked herself up and scuttled around behind the rubble, where she nervously clutched the bat to her chest and watched.

The approaching gang walked slowly, a cocky sort of confidence. They were dominant, with, Nyx counted, 17 members. With the same bloody war-stripes and point-filed teeth, the two rivals looked almost identical. But the hungry way they eyed each other off told Nyx they were definite enemies. They men that had been chasing her didn’t look nervous, on the contrary, they looked almost eager. Perhaps the voices in their heads had convinced them they could win this fight, which was approximately four to one.

While the two sides marched towards each other, Nyx scouted the alley-way, trying to find the lamp and the bottle in a hope that she could retrieve them after the men left. She saw the bottle straight away. It had landed on something sharp, which had pierced the thin plastic and now water was quickly seeping from the hole.

Fuck!! Nyx thought, barely resisting the urge to jump up and bash the shit out of the hunter who had grabbed her. After that encounter, she was almost unbearably thirsty, and her head was beginning to hurt like it did when she desperately needed a drink. That was a very bad sign. She had no idea how long it would be before she would get another drink. But that was temporarily forgotten as the gangs reached each other. They stood, watching each other like hawks. There was a man from each who established himself as a leader, stepped forward while his loyal minions flanked him.

They grunted to each other and made many aggressive gesticulations, like the Neanderthals of hundreds of thousands of years ago. Nyx didn’t know what a Neatherthal was, but ‘primitive’ was the still the first word that popped into her head. The two leaders both selected a member from the opposite team. In both cases, the man selected was the smallest, weakest, and looked like he would be the easiest to kill. From the team chasing Nyx, the man who had grabbed her was chosen. She hopped he lost, but knew the other team had under-estimated him.

He’s tall and thin and scrawny, but shit! Nyx thought, He nearly out-ran me!

The member chosen from the other team was a boy, barely older than Nyx—about 15, and pretending to be a man, teeth filed and pointed just like the rest.

The fight began without warning then, as the boy and the man rushed at each other. The other cannibals spread out, forming a fight-ring with their bodies. The conditions were a fight to the death, with the rules of combat abandoned. He who leaves the ring, either on purpose, or by being thrown out by his opponent was to be quickly torn to pieces and eaten.

The boy made the first move, attacking like a wild animal and going straight for the throat. But the man was quick, very quick, and grabbed both an arm and a leg and threw him to the floor. The boy didn’t have time to be stunned as the man threw himself down into a body-slam. He backrolled onto his feet and quickly moved back. Nyx was watching him closely. He was staring directly at the man. But then, as he rushed the boy again, Nyx realised he was looking at something past him. She followed his gaze, and saw, lying on the ground against the wall, on its side, her lamp.

The boy ignored the man all together as he ran at him, picked him up and threw him over his shoulder like he weighed nothing at all. All that seemed to matter to him was getting to the lamp at the other side of the ring. He turned around and stepped on the man’s chest before he could get up, and kicked him in the head. He went out cold and the crowd broke out in a cheer. All that remained necessary was a kill. Horrified, Nyx held her breath in anticipation as he picked up the lamp. The boy turned it over in his hands, examining it and tapping his finger on the glass. It was obvious he had no idea what it was, but he was creative enough to find other uses for it. He held it high above his head, while the gangs cheered him on. Even his enemies cheered him, they knew they would get a meal out of this too. Then he smashed the lamp down hard on the concrete. Nyx shrieked as it shattered, but luckily was drowned out by the resounding cannibals. The boy bent down and carefully selected a large shard of glass. He stood over the unconscious man, looking around at the starving faces of the gang members, and without hesitating, plunged the glass into the man’s throat.

Nyx did not look away as the blood pumped onto the concrete and the man choked for a few seconds before dying. She saw people killed on a regular basis, it was a part of life. It was hard to believe that it was just yesterday that her mother died. The crowd erupted as the boy, now a hero, dipped his finger in the blood and painted fresh stripes across his face. But then he knelt down and began to devour the flesh of the throat and Nyx clapped both hands over her mouth to stop the heave that followed. She could deal with people dying—that was normal. But for some reason, she could not watch people consume each other. Nyx could force herself to do almost anything. But not that.

She huddled behind the rubble, pulling the blanket still tied to her strap around her, shutting her eyes and covering here ears against the snarling and ripping and snapping of bones as the rest of them began to feed.

The lamp’s gone, she thought, feeling an unfamiliar tightening of her chest and a lump rising in her throat. No! She gave herself a sharp slap across the face. Don’t cry, you’re not a little baby!

She knew she had no choice but to keep going without the lamp. She’d learn to move in the dark, she tried to convince herself. That, or she’d move like a shadow in the day and avoid the cannibal gangs. Nyx peered up from behind the rubble, to see all the men distracted, some lying bloated on the ground and others still devouring the man. He was hardly more than a broken, bloody skeleton now and Nyx, cold as she was, took back wishing he lost. No one, not even the man responsible for the loss of water and light, her lively hood, deserved a death like that.

It was time to seize the moment. Nyx had to slip away now or she’d be stuck in hiding for hours. She glanced up at the sky, worried. The day time meant more than just predators. There were bigger things than them. Such as the storms. The clouds were starting to swirl, roll and twist and build bigger as the storm formed. On a good day, there was one, maybe two acid storms. On a bad day, the rain did not stop. Nyx stood up smoothly, pressed against the wall, and moved absolutely silently past and behind the men. She slid right to the end of the alley and didn’t even wait to see if she’d been noticed. She ran and ran and ran.

Nyx wasn’t sure which way she ran, or where in the city she was when she stopped, except she was outside an ancient car-wrecker’s lot. Piles of rusted, stripped and burnt out hulks of cars stood silently like crumbling castle towers, their shaky loose metal the only sounds, creaking eerily in the breeze. Surrounding the lot was a rusty fence, ten feet high, with a good amount of razor wire on top. Security measures such as these were some of the few remaining relics of the Beforetime.

retty pointless , Nyx thought, climbing the fence and clearing the razor wire without getting a single scratch. Any idiot could get past this, how could it have possibly been useful in the Beforetime?!

She jumped from half way and landed in a crouch on ground made of compacted dirt. She scanned the area before straightening up and then, when she was sure the immediate vicinity was clear, dashed to the cover of the towering cars. In reality, every inch of the city was enemy territory, and Nyx would be a fool not to treat it as such. But she was not the type to lose her head over the prospect of shelter and maybe even a comfortable car seat to sleep on.

Nyx knew she couldn’t possibly be the only person in the entire car-yard, and so had the idea that perhaps she could find something worth salvaging. If this was anyone’s permanent residence, even a semi-permanent one, then the owner would have to have supplies of some sort, if only the bare minimum. She didn’t want to get her hopes up—hope was a stupid and pointless waste of time, but that still didn’t stop her from searching.

Height was a valuable vantage point, s Nyx struggled and climbed her way to the very top car, a good thirty feet up. She wasn’t sure anyone had ever been up that far—the climb on the outside was absolutely impossible. She’d had to be a little creative. The roof of the second top car, as well as the floor of the top one, was nearly completely rusted through. With a little help from her baseball bat, she managed to punch a big enough hole and climb right up through the floor.

The top car, to Nyx’s amazement, still had a back seat! Most of the front was rotted or rusted away, but the back seat was made of vinyl that, besides being a little moldy, was in one piece. If Nyx knew how to be happy, she would have been. She certainly had slept on worse. She decided to use the car as her shelter for the inevitable storm. Being the highest and hardest to reach, there was less likely to be a confrontation, especially if she managed to find something.

Looking at the sky, Nyx guessed she had perhaps another twenty minutes before the storm broke. She left her blanket on the back seat, but took the bat and climbed back down. She figured, if she was going to hide something, she wouldn’t put it in one of the outside cars that could be easily accessed. So she came to the quick conclusion that in the middle of the pile of cars there had to be some sort of space. And if there was a space then there had to be a way in.

It took Nyx far too long to find it, another nervous glance at the darkening sky told her the storm was mere minutes away. A car door was used to cover a tunnel-like gap between two cars on the second floor. It was a huge risk and she was well aware, as she moved the door aside. It could even be called stupid, but still, she crawled through the darkness. There could be nothing there, she could get stuck, worse, she could run into a person, in which case, if she wasn’t good for a meal, she was sure they would find another use for her, in which case she’d have to make a quick get away and undoubtedly get caught in the storm.

Either someone up there liked her, or was playing a demented game, but Nyx found her way into the shell of a car, all the seats and carpet and dashboard gone, but, eliminating the shell with her lighter, she found a currently empty, but obviously used home. At one end, near the smashed out windshield, was a charred pile of wood, where a fire would burn at night. At the other end was a pile of blankets and a very old and tattered khaki backpack.

Gold mine! Nyx thought, without a second thought of what would happen to the person she was cleaning out. Nyx didn’t have much in the way of a conscience. Quick as a flash she tied two more blankets to her shoulder, leaving four behind, but only because they were too much to carry. She hoisted the backpack onto one shoulder. It was heavy, so straight off she knew she had found something. Without a second thought, she got back onto her hands and knees and crawled out.

When she emerged from the tunnel, thunder was rumbling, a breeze had picked up and Nyx could smell sulfur on the breeze. The sky was a deep blood red all the way across, like the blood on the concrete, flashing silver and purple against the black of the city with each incoming lightning strike. Any second now…Nyx moved faster than ever as she threw herself up the pile of cars, her already aching muscles protesting. Any second…the thunder cracked right overhead and everything shook. Any second…Nyx threw herself into the car, just as the sky, like her lamp, shattered.

C HAPTER THREE

I don’t believe in luck, just like I don’t believe in fate, but I still don’t know any other way to put it than to say I was lucky to make it to that car. I only barely had my foot through the door when the storm broke. Had I have waited in the alley, I never would have made it. I would either be a meal or a melted puddle on the floor. I didn’t check the backpack, I kept it strapped on firmly , as if at any second someone would jump out and snatch it from me. I just huddled in the back seat, all three blankets around me, trying to keep as far away from all the broken windows as possible.

The smell of sulfur was overpowering, my throat felt like it was closing up; I held the blanket over my mouth and nose. It had been years since I had seen a storm like this. Usually the rain was nothing major. It stung, sure, but only did major damage over a long period of time. Today, over the howling wind, the cracks of thunder and the rain pinging off the metal like bullets, I could hear the sizzling. The acid rain was eating right through the metal.

I was a little worried that perhaps there was another reason why it seemed no one had been up to this car. Desperate people weren’t afraid of a hard climb. Over all the noise of the pounding storm, I could hear one more. Creaking. And feel something. Rocking. The car was moving! Just as I realised that, the first drops of rain came through the roof and dripped onto my shoulder. I felt a searing pain and screamed as the drops ate into my skin. I rubbed furiously with the blanket and managed to stop it getting too far, but shit!

I wasn’t going to wait anymore, so I dropped through the floor into the next car and crawled to the front where the roof was still in tact. The top car was open to the sky now, it had happened that quickly, and I looked up to see a red so dark it was almost black. Save the lightning, it could have been nighttime.

The average storm lasted only ten minutes or so, but I had to wait over half an hour to see the end of this one. Not before everything got a little worse though. The wind blew so fiercely, it shook everything, like a child shakes a toy. I felt like I was on top of a pile of bricks with someone randomly pulling out the ones on the bottom. Realistically, the cars on the bottom weren’t going anywhere, but the top car eventually lost the battle. With a gust of wind that cracked the window next to my head, the top car slid from its throne and nose-dived straight into the ground, where it violently erupted into a blinding fire-ball, only made worse by the acid rain. Part of me thought, “shit, that could have been me in there!” The other part just thought, “damn.”

After the storm, Nyx used her car hiding place for a few hours sleep. She needed energy enough to be able to move again once it got dark. However, dehydrated and starving, her body had other ideas. With a blanket to sleep on and two more to keep her warm, the back pack her pillow, one arm linked through the strap, Nyx had never slept so well. When she finally awoke, it was pitch dark and very late.

"Shit!" she swore aloud, sitting up sharply and fumbling for her lighter. "Idiot!!"

Before she found the lighter, Nyx realised something. She could see. Not clearly, not well at all, but vaguely, fuzzy shapes. She could make out her backpack, the blankets, and the car door…Nyx wondered if she'd always been able to see like this…She thought about, but really couldn't say. Although the daytime was more dangerous, if there was a desperate need for her to be on the street, that was when she did it. At night, she ravaged Jimmy's food stores, and sometimes other apartments nearby, but she'd always had the lamp. Then she had the idea; what if she could learn to see in the dark?

Wow, I'd be unstoppable! Nyx thought, squinting hard, trying to make out more details. If she could see, she could move like a shadow in the dark. While enemies fumbled with lights and fires, she could slide right past them. IF someone tried to kill her, she'd be able to just slip back into the darkness, sneak up behind them and snap their neck. A fight. A kill! Nyx felt a buzz like a bolt of electricity run through her. She'd never killed anyone, at least not directly. She suspected one of her opponents had died from injuries sustained during a fight, but that wasn't the same. Still, the thought sure had her pumping!

It was safe enough now to finally check the contents of the backpack. In the dark, a strange sort of silence settled over everything it touched. Anything that moved seem to have a way of amplifying the sound to be far lard than the same sound made in the day time. Nyx would hear anybody trying to sneak up on her long before they got to her.

Her hands quivering slightly with anticipation, she unbuckled the clasp of the first compartment. She counted three in all.

"Oww!" without looking she had plunged her hand into the pack and ended up quickly pulling it out again. She stuck a blood finger in her mouth and much more carefully put the other hand back in.

"Oh, wow!" Nyx exclaimed, holding up something that could best be described as treasure.

The dagger was like nothing she had ever seen before, even in the dark it was amazing. She didn't have the faintest idea how old it was, but it must have been from the Beforetime or even older, nothing like that could have possibly been made in Nyx's time.

The hilt was solid silver, its once-mirror-shiny surface long faded, but beautifully intricate carved knotwork patterns were still visible. Nyx followed a pattern with her finger as it traced and twisted a path around the hilt before ending up back where it begun. As for the blade, it glistened slightly in the darkness, catching the faintest traces of light from the bloody sky. It was well worn, chipped and dented, obviously this dagger had seen many battles, but, Nyx was still sucking her finger, whoever had owned it had sure kept it sharp. She didn't know quite what it was, as she turned the dagger over in her hands and gave it a slash through the air, but there was something about it, something that made her want to protect it.

Her rational mind told her to sell it, it would be worth an absolute fortune on the black market and then she could buy some food! But a gnawing little voice at the back of her mind told her not to, that it was more important than just a weapon and she would need it. Nyx didn't understand, and she usually completely ignored that voice, even did the opposite of what it said, but for once, this time, she listened. Ration briefly kicked in and she wondered if being on the streets was causing her to lose her mind. Keeping a sharp, shiny and completely inedible thing over food?! But despite her mental debate, she kept the dagger.

The next item she pulled from the bag was another thing she had never seen before and she wondered who exactly she had stolen this backpack from. From the looks of it, someone with money, or at least good connections. She held a strange pair of leather bracelets, black and studded all the way around with sharp silver spikes. They secured with a snap-button and Nyx wasn't sure if they were fashion, or a weapon, or both, but she knew she liked them. She'd just have to remember she was wearing them, or accidentally stab herself.

That was all from that compartment, so she put the dagger safely back inside and moved onto the next. Nyx could barely believe her eyes when she emptied the next two compartments to find weeks and weeks worth of bottles of water and meal rations. Had it been safe to squeal she would have, instead she grabbed a bottle of water, sniffed it to make sure it wasn't poisoned, then chugged it down. She drank the entire bottle in one go, then dropped it, gasping for air.

Oh my God, she thought. Who is this person, where did they find all this food?!

She wished she knew. She couldn't just find them and ask. That would be like robbing someone and then going up to them and saying "hi, I'm sorry to bother you, but I just cleaned you out of house and home and I'm just dying to know, where did you get those delightful candle sticks?!"

No, instead she quickly ate one meal ration, a square block about four by two inches of synthesized proteins and nutrients, everything the body needed. Except one thing. Taste. The taste of a meal ration could best be described as burnt rubber. But, Nyx thought as she swallowed quickly, trying not to let the food touch her tongue or the sides of her mouth, it was better than the taste of human flesh. She had taken and eaten it once from Jimmy's freezer, not knowing what it was. Never again. The meat tasted rancid, stringy, acidic and far too strong, and she hadn't kept it down long.

Within half an hour of her meal, Nyx began to feel better than she had in a whole week, and she resolved to leave her temporary car yard home and continue on to the factories. She bundled up all her blankets and stuffed them into the backpack, along with the bottle. She strapped it on, then, holding the bat in one hand and climbed down from the tower of cars. The ground was still damp from the storm and Nyx walked quickly with light steps as not to give the acid time to eat into her shoes. As she walked, she glanced at the tunnel entrance into the cars. To her surprise, it was not covered, and a pair of bright green eyes stood out from the darkness, watching her. Nyx glared at the disembodied eyes, watching with satisfaction as they flickered in uncertain fear and then continued on her way.

When I saw those eyes, I realised, I'd stolen from a child, someone not unlike myself. I was not certain they were alone, but I suspected. The very large majority of children were alone. But then again, so were most adults, if they lived that long, so the children were not that special. Friendship was a very rare concept. I did not feel guilty, not that that surprised me. A person stupid enough to leave items of such incredible value unattended, even in a "safe" place, deserved to be stolen from. I knew what it felt like to lose possessions of value, I had watched the destruction of my lamp and I knew those eyes had seen me wearing the backpack. They knew. Yet still I did not care.

Moving in the dark wasn't nearly as difficult as Nyx once thought. She found her way to the fence, scaled it, dropped down and continued on her way without any problems. She could not see for miles, but distant shapes eventually made themselves clear to her. One of the shapes, she noticed, as she walked down the broken concrete of what once was a street, looked very much like a truck. Nyx proceeded with caution, keeping close to the walls. If there was a truck, there would be people, and if there were people, there could be problems.

Yes, definitely people, Nyx observed, sliding down behind a barricade of metal crates, opposite the truck. Two people climbed out, opened the back door and removed a stretcher. They then proceeded to enter the crumbling building they had parked outside of. It was another death truck, identical to the one that had shipped Nyx's mother away just a few days earlier. A death truck with its back doors open.

She ran forward and made a bee-line for the door, threw herself in. Perhaps, had she looked before she leaped, she wouldn't have been so keen. The truck was packed with bodies. They lay in rows on top of each other, seven across, five bodies high. Nxy swallowed hard. If she wanted to get inside the factory sector, this was what she must do. She could not lie on top, for she would be seen, her backpack taken, herself probably killed. So she picked up the smallest body, that of a teenage boy, and rolled him aside, trying to ignore the fact that his throat was cut. She then slid herself under, her skin crawling, put her backpack over her face and rolled the body back.

All in the nick of time, too. The two men returned, carrying a stretcher between them. They carelessly threw the body in, one went to start the truck while the other stayed to lock the door. He paused for a moment, looking over the bodies and did a quick count. Nyx froze, hardly daring to breathe.

He hesitated, then slammed the doors and got back into the truck. Nyx flopped with relief.

The drive to the factories was a long, exhausting one. Twice more they stopped to pick up bodies, both which were dumped on top of Nyx. After about fifteen minutes, she began to feel breathless from the one hundred and fifty kilograms of dead weight stacked on her back. She couldn't even move them, the annoyingly observant man surely would notice that supposedly dead bodies had been playing musical chairs. Even the dumber of the two would realise they had a live one! Nyx knew she had to stay focused. There would come a moment where she would have to grab her things and run. She wouldn't have an extra second to realise that the time was upon her.

So instead, she focused on her breathing, taking deep breaths—through her mouth, so she would not smell the gut-wrenching aroma of death—and tried to ignore the stabbing pains in her chest growing more and more frequent.

I didn't know what I was going to see when they finally opened the truck up inside the factory sector. No one had ever returned after trying to sneak in, so there were not even stories of what lay beyond the boundaries. I prayed I could find shelter, if only temporarily, before the next acid storm broke. If it was anything like the last one…

Would I even make it through the security check points? The thought had crossed my mind more than once; would they check the cargo of in-coming vehicles? They must, they'd be stupid not to. Surely, I can't have been the first to attempt sneaking in as a piece of human cargo! When the time came, would there be a chance for me to run? Or a place to run to? Would I leap from the back of the truck, clutching my few belongings, and straight into the arms of waiting guards? Perhaps there would be no chance for a break at all, I wouldn't be able to get away unseen, the result of that being them thinking I was dead and throwing me into the machine with the rest of the bodies. Where I would be crushed and then liquefied, proteins extracted and made into meal tablets for the countless others just like me. All these thoughts and more ran through my head. I could have backed out, it would have been easy to. But something kept me there, more than just the fact I couldn't' lift three dead bodies off of me. Stubbornness? Pride? I dunno, but for once it served me well.

Eventually, many long and exhausting hours later, the truck came to a final stop. Nyx, who was peeking through the filthy back window from her hiding spot under the bodies saw the endless rubble landscape come to a halt. They had left the city areas she recognised very quickly, as soon as they picked up the other two bodies. She had never been this far out before, past the buildings and the broken roads that lead to nowhere. Nyx knew the buildings didn't go forever, and not everywhere was in as good as a condition as the area of what once was New York City was, but she never expected this.

It was, most simply put, a wasteland. What used to be buildings, roads, houses, cars, was nothing but rubble. It was as if a bomb had been dropped, big enough to level half a city, and maybe it had, Nyx didn't know. They could have easily dropped a bomb here, to keep people out, and then build the sector on the outskirts of the blast. The wasteland went for miles, countless miles, a concrete desert of twisted metal and broken slabs. A road had been cleared through, a thin, windy, very well hidden road. There was no way through otherwise. No one could make it past the endless mounds of rubble towering three and four stories high. No wonder no one had ever come back.

Once the truck stopped, the two men got out and Nyx heard snatches of their muffled conversation as they walked around to the back and opened up the doors. Nyx held her breath, shut her eyes and tried to lie as stiffly as all the other dead bodies. The guard did a quick count.

"Thirty nine," he scribbled the number down. "Good haul today. Are you carrying any other cargo?"

"Good, proceed to the next point," he slammed the doors shut and went to activate the big electric gate. It clanked open and they drove through. Nyx slowly let out a breath. She was inside.

Nyx watched through the window as the guard moved from sight and the massive twenty food tall black metal gate slowly rolled shut. There was no way she would ever be able to climb it. It was impossible to see anything else around her as the truck drove slowly in a straight line. She wanted to get a feel for where she was, it was bad enough it was the dead of night. But she noticed something strange about the sector. It was dark, but she could see the gate, the details, colours of the guards uniform. They had light! Which must mean the rumors were true…they had electricity!

The second and third checkpoints were much the same as the first. They would stop, a guard would glance in the back and they would drive through the next gate. After the third checkpoint, the truck turned and one of the bodies slid off Nyx. Through the back window she could see a fence, the same tall, black metal as the gate, and the edge of a grey, concrete wall, one of the factories. The truck turned again and Nyx was blinded by spotlights as they actually drove inside the factory.

She heard doors slam, stiffened again, this time keeping her eyes open, and the two men, along with a worker, appeared in front of her. The worker was pushing a large steel crate on wheels, Nyx assumed to load the bodies into. She listened intently and heard the whirring humming of the machine, the thumps as the bodies hit the conveyor belts, the grinding of bones and then eventually a sickening slosh as they were liquefied. The extraction process that followed was a silent one, as proteins, vitamins, minerals and everything else worth taking was sucked from the black, syrupy liquid. Nyx could hope for no better when she died.

The worker began unloading bodies, filling the crate, then emptying it into the machine. The two drivers disappeared out of sight. It took one row of bodies to fill a crate. Nyx was in the third row. Would she have time to jump from the truck and run? The worker had finished unloading the second row and began pushing the crate towards the machine again. No time left for thinking. Nyx swung her backpack on as she clambered off the bodies and onto the metal grate floor. She reached back in for the bat and then realised the worker was unloading the last body into the machine. There was no time to run, certainly no time to carefully conceal herself.

Nyx spun a quick circle, her mind running at two hundred miles a minute. Where could she go?! She couldn’t have come all this way just to get caught! And then everything clicked. The truck! She threw herself to the floor, throwing the backpack and bat out in front of her and scrambled under, grabbing the bat again just seconds before it rolled out the other side and pulling her feet in just in the nick of time. The worker returned then to load up another row of bodies. Would he notice?

"Thirty-nine," Nyx heard his voice above her head and assumed he was back in the truck.

"What do you mean we're missing one?!" Stan angrily got out of the truck and slammed the door.

"Are you sure?" Stan asked, and Nyx watched his feet as they walked around the back. "Are you sure you didn't just count wrong when you put them into the machine?"

Nyx didn't know what a computer was, but Stan seemed to as he walked over to and momentarily stared at a very peculiar glowing square of glass.

Then he turned to look at the worker and said, half in surprise, half in annoyance; "you're right!"

"How is this possible?" the worker asked. "Dead bodies don't just get up and walk away!"

"They do if they're alive," it was the second truck driver, returned from where ever he had been. Now he was crouched on the floor, looking directly at Nyx. "Oh, she's definitely alive!"

CHAPTER FOUR

The second time in two days I had been caught by an enemy. God damn, I wasn't doing well. I saw that man almost the exact same time he saw me. Pathetic! I had to be better than that, faster, more alert! More focused! I was watching Stan and the worker so intently that the world around me almost ceased to exist. If I kept up that sort of carelessness I would be killed very, very soon. I could fight my way out, of course, even with the odds stacked against me three to one. And the fact I loved, almost lived for, a good fight, aside, I should be good enough that it wouldn’t have to come to that. I expected no less of myself.

Nyx had no other choice. They had seen her. She stared in momentary shock at the man, eyes wideand fixed like a rabbit caught in car headlights, frozen both in body and in mind. But then Stan grabbed her ankle, began to pull her out. And just like with her alley-way attackers, she reacted.

Nyx was still holding the bat, swung it smoothly backwards over her body and smacked it down hard on Stan's wrist. There was a loud crack—she wasn't sure if it was the bat, or the bone in his arm—but Stan screamed and recoiled, launching back into the worker, sending them slamming both into the steel create. Two temporarily down, and the other man's shock at her lightning fast brutal attack, Nyx had that fraction of a second necessary to make a quick get-away. The man was on her left, so she rolled right and jumped to her feet.

Bat in one hand, backpack in the other, Nyx spun. Behind her, Stan was on the ground, whimpering and clutching his arm (it must have been the bone) and the worker was dazed and struggling to get up. Running around the truck to confront her was the other man. She smiled to herself as she securely strapped the backpack on and leveled the bat. Time for a fight! The man, who's name happened to be George, hesitated momentarily when he saw she was armed. But Nyx just smiled, a bring it on kind of smile and casually swung the bat by her side.

George made the same mistake most people made, the stupid mistake of underestimating her. She was no "little girl", she was closer to being a soldier than she ever was to being a child. Not yet was she a fighting machine, but soon, soon. Already she was strong and creative with her movements, with lightning-fast reflexes and a battle-hardened mentality that made her quick on her feet and very unlikely to give up.

Nyx didn't wait for George. It was one of the rules that she lived by. If an enemy is hesitant, that's their problem. Don't give them—or anyone else around—any extra seconds to think of a strategy to defeat you. She went straight for the attack, running at him, holding the bat above her head. He reacted quickly, bringing his arms up to block the blow, but Nyx suddenly whipped it away. In the brief moment of confusion, she leapt into the air, using her momentum to propel her forward and kicked hard into his throat. She turned after she landed to be horribly disappointed, the fight was over before it had begun! George lay unconscious in a crumpled heap, a large red boot-mark across his neck. Annoyed, she gave him a sharp kick in the ribs.

Behind her, Nyx heard a frightened whimpering and glanced over her shoulder to see the worker cowering against the steel crate. She passed the bat slowly from hand to hand, grinning at him, showing her teeth, a wicked glow shining in her eyes, like she was a mad scientist and he was her latest experiment. She'd barely taken three steps before the cowardly (but smart) man jumped up and bolted.

Not about to leave anything to chance, Nyx immediately ran outside. Day was breaking now, the sky making its ugly transformation from the beautiful reds and purples of night to the unpleasant greys and yellows of the day. There was lime green smudged in today, Nyx observed. That meant the storm would be early. There had better be a hiding place soon.

Now that it was properly light, and she was outside, Nyx could fully see the size of the sector. And it was mind boggling! They said it was a part of her city, but couldn’t possibly be. It was twice, three times bigger than all the remaining New York put together! She looked to her right, about a hundred meters away and there was the perimeter fence. But when she looked to her left, the edge of another factory…and then another, and another, until the line of factories just blurred into a point of nothingness. She could not see the fence.

Another quick glance at the sky told her she had perhaps another hour until the storm, so she decided to take a chance. The men in the factories had not come after her, either too scared or too injured or both, and even so, after seeing what she was up against, she wasn't particularly worried. She craned her head back, looking up at the processing plant she'd just come from. It was three stories high. That ought to give her a good enough view for now. The factory wall was not smooth, in fact it was jagged bricks, laid unevenly and obviously in a rush, and up one side running right to the roof was a drain-pipe. Nyx gave it a shake. It didn't move. Perfect! She tied the bat to the loose strap of her overalls, then tackled the pipe and began to climb.

On average, three stories wasn't all that high. But it could have been the world's tallest mountain, the way Nyx felt when she finally hauled herself onto the pocked concrete roof. If she was ever to do that again, she resolved, she would leave her backpack behind. But she got what she had come for, the view. And what a spectacular one it was! The roofs and upper stories of factories stretched on further than she could see, an endless field of grey concrete and partially rusted metal. Nyx couldn't even count them all! Which lead her to wonder, how many people were here?! How many lived, worked in this massive sector? She couldn't comprehend it! All her life she had been told that the factory sector was nothing but a few factories, maybe eight or ten, located at an unreachable compound and manned only by the cr�me de la cr�me of society.

But no story, nothing she had ever been told in her entire life could have prepared her for what she was seeing. It wasn't a compound. It wasn't a sector, it wasn't even a city! It was a world within worlds! A world so unimaginably different from her own it was like stepping into a dream. The factories spread evenly before her, spaced in rows and columns, all of them with roofs, all of them maintained, in tact, and as clean goes when you're in a factory. Between them all were roads—roads!!—of compacted dirt and randomly she got a glimpse of a car or truck puttering along. Fueled by what, she wasn't sure—she'd been told the fuel stores were reserved only for the death trucks, but obviously that wasn't so. Perhaps they synthesized it themselves, she didn't know. But she did know one thing; everything she had been told, everything she had come to believe and understand about the world she lived in, had all been a pack of lies.

Once again Nyx had been too busy watching the immediate vicinity to notice anything further, but on the roof she'd have to be blind not to notice them. The atmosphere machines. But they weren't machines. They were factories too, factories so huge they stabbed the sky, countless stories of endless rows of monstrous sky scrapers.Unlike the other factories, they were made of metal, a black semi-shiny metal that glistened dully in the morning light. They were not square, but cylindrical, no windows, no visible entry points at all, besides the massive funnel chutes piercing right into the clouds from the roof. And gushing constantly from the chutes were thick white plumes of gases; oxygen, nitrogen and carbon dioxide, streaming into the yellow-green sky.

It can't be true, it can't be possible, they were the first two thoughts as I fell to my knees, staring at those atmosphere towers. The size I could get used to. It was true I'd never seen any building, any area, anything even remotely close to the size of the world laid out before me, but eventually my mind would come to grips with it. What I couldn't, I don't think ever, understand, was how this other would could exist, and all this time no one knew. What's more, how could anyone say, how could anyone possibly decide who was good enough to be able to live inside that that fence while the rest of us rotted on the streets, living like cannibals and savages, or barely living at all.

At that moment I hated them, every single one of them, and I didn't stop hating them. The cannibal gangs were not my enemies anymore, we were on the same side. I had new enemies, the population of workers, and I would treat them as such. Who were they to deny us food and water, to release so little to us? Who were they to condemn us to eating human flesh and exchanging unspeakable favors for a mere bottle of water? And who were they to say that just because they were born behind the gates they should stay there, while the rest of us died?

Nyx had seen enough, more than enough, and shaking, she slid down the pipe to the ground. Her legs were like jelly and barely held her, she was weak at the knees and she stumbled but managed to hold the wall and get a grip on herself before she once again knew what she must do. She would go on to the towers. It was the last place they would expect—if they thought she'd go anywhere at all, and even though she was behind enemy lines, those towers were the safest place in the entire city.

Her head snapped up at a distant rumble of thunder and she knew there was no way she'd make it all the way to the first tower before the storm broke. She'd need a more…unconventional…means of transport. Nyx had never driven in her life, in fact she'd never even seen inside the driver's compartment of a truck, but by the gate, a vehicle rested alone and unattended. She ran over to it, found the door to be unlocked and climbed in. She sat in what once might have been a padded drivers seat, the padding now so worn she was sitting on the plastic base.

Before the war, before the accident, there weren't cars at all, but voice controlled, solar powered hover vehicles. Those lasted no more than a few months after the survivors came top-side and realised they had almost completely blocked out the sun. They all became scrap metal, and the people were suddenly thrown centuries into the past, forced to build replicas of the museum antiques truck drivers drove today. Of course, Nyx knew nothing of the technical advances the human race once made, so to her, this truck was an incredible piece of machinery. One that she had no idea how to work.

She had seen men drive by from a distance, everything appeared to center around the large wheel in front of her. Nyx put her hands on it, tried to turn it; it required a lot more effort than she expected, but eventually she felt the wheels grinding in the dirt.

To her right was a strange key sticking out of the dash board. She knew that the very lucky had keys to open and close locks, but she rarely saw them. Perhaps the car was locked. She turned the key and almost jumped back in shock as the motor revved to life.

Now, how do you make it go? She looked around her immediate space. She had already checked the dash, and seen that it was just numbers and dials, no buttons or controls. The key was on the right, the wheel in front. She looked to her left and saw two levers. The hand brake and the gear stick, but she didn't know that. She released the hand brake. The truck began to roll backwards. Shit! She yanked it up again. A little more reluctantly, she moved the gear stick. Nothing happened. Hrmm…

Nyx tried to picture in her mind someone driving. All they seemed to do was sit in the chair, making light adjustments to the steering wheel. Then, for some reason, she remembered one of them skidding to a stop, the way his body lurched forward before the momentum forced him to. As if he was stamping his foot on the floor. The floor… Nyx stuck her head under the wheel and finally discovered the peddles.

Ten minutes later, she got the right combination of peddles and levers and the truck lurched forward. Nyx pulled the wheel hard to the right, her foot flat to the floor and was thrown against the door as the truck went into a wild spin. It took a good ten seconds of grinding already-worn tires into the dirt for her to react enough to slam her foot on the brake. She jerked to a hard stop and sat gasping in shock.

A lot more carefully, she eased her foot back onto the peddle and let the truck roll forward in short, jerky movements. Her spin out had left her facing in the right direction, towards the atmosphere towers, so she let the car crawl along, not needing to steer, besides making slight adjustments to the wheel. As she moved along, she gained confidence and began to move faster, and she hardly noticed the breaking of the storm, big acid drops splattering on the windscreen and eating into the already peeling paint of the car's gun-metal grey body.

The storm didn't seem to mean anything to the people of the factory sector, Nyx observed as she watched their activities as she drove by. Those outside scurried back in like ants returning to the nest, but then reappeared a few seconds later wearing bulky acid-proof suits and goggles and breath-masks that made them look like giant alien insects. The atmosphere towers weren't so far now, Nyx marveled at the way the truck completely cut her travel speed down. But she still wasn't close enough that she would let her guard down. The storm raged on outside, and Nyx, having not yet discovered the windscreen wipers, decided to pull over and wait it out.

Not strong this time. Unless they've re-enforced the truck, but I doubt it. I should have thought to steal a truck years ago, this is brilliant! Transport and shelter in one! Not that I'd be able to fuel it; I can barely fuel myself. I wonder if they had acid storms in the Beforetime. I kind of assume they didn't, because the stories tell of people living in the daytime. The people of the factory sector live in the daytime. Could it be possible that everything stopped…at least slowed down at night? It would be great for me if it was! I was much more comfortable moving at night. In one of these factories, protein tablets were manufactured and water was purified. I was going to find it. And for the first time in my life I was going to be able to eat and drink whenever I wanted!

The storm couldn't really be described as a storm today. Just a shower of acid rain, and it only lasted twenty minutes, during which I forced down half a protein tablet and allowed myself a few mouthfuls of water. I guess it was careless of me to assume that they would not notice the truck missing, and notice the fact that sitting in the drivers seat was a ratted and battered thirteen year old. And of course, it had been far too long without incident. Something was bound to happen. And it did, and I didn't see it coming. Damn it, I never see it coming! I was beginning to think I never would.

A guard in another truck slid smoothly to a stop next to Nyx as the last splatters of rain ceased and the storm dissipated.

He rolled down the window. "Passes?" he started to request, before he actually got a good look at her. "Who the hell are you?!"

Nyx gasped in a brief second of shock, before fumbling with the ignition, trying to restart the truck.

"Hold it right there!" the guard was pointing a weapon at her. Nyx recognised it as some sort of gun, although she had never seen that kind before.

"Intruder alert!" Nyx heard the guard scream into his truck's radio speaker as Nyx slammed her foot on the peddle, trying to pump life into the suddenly defiant engine.

"You want me?" she also rolled down her window and smiled at the guard, who was still pointing the weapon at her, although hesitantly, as if no time soon did he want to confront her. "Come and get me."

"Just then the engine gave a final splutter of protest but finally revved into life. Nyx smacked the hand break down, threw the car into gear…and went nowhere.

The guard seemed ever so slightly more confident, waved the gun at her and demanded, "turn off the motor and get out of the car!"

Nyx wasn't particularly worried, she knew he was too much of a coward to shoot an unarmed girl, even if she was a car thief.

She realised the faster she spun the wheels, the quicker she dug herself into the mud, so she tried to roll herself out slowly, to no avail.

Nyx had by now picked up on the fact that the gun was for scare-tactics and completely life-threatening situations; nothing more. Ammunition was far too scarce to go wasting rounds whenever a guard couldn't get his way.

The guard's eyes flickered to his rear-vision mirror. Nyx heard the grating motor before she saw it, she craned over her shoulder to see another truck screaming up behind her, spraying acid-soaked mud in its wake. She was glad the storm was mild—today she was lucky. Any other storm and the mud would have eaten her tires.

She watched through the mirror as the truck rushed up behind her, showing absolutely no signs of stopping. The smug expression of the guard told her he had no intention of it.

"Oh shit, this'll hurt!" Nyx held tight the steering wheel, bracing herself for the fierce impact that followed as the on-coming truck smashed into her, metal crunched as the back doors and hollow back compartment crumpled like a plastic cup and she was violently thrown forward.

She assumed the guard had planned to injure her, at least shock her to a stand-still, she was sure he hadn't intended to help her; he didn't know she was bogged. But the impact forced her out of the mud and she slammed her foot down. The wheels spun again and for a frightening second she thought she was still bogged, but then the tires gripped the dirt and the truck pitched forward.

"Yeehah!" she propelled the truck along and sped off. The two guard trucks didn't hesitate to give chase as she headed for the atmosphere towers. She didn't know how she would escape them, she certainly wasn't a good enough driver to out-run them. She didn't even know what she should do once she made it to the towers. All she knew is she had to get there.

Nyx drove like a maniac, swerving all over the road, skidding down the smaller side streets, trying to throw them off. But they pursued her like wolves after blood, relentless hunters. She barely kept the truck under control, at one point she nearly rolled it as she went around a corner, two wheels coming off the ground. Blood pumped in her temples and she was breathing heavily, even though she was not running, a sheen of sweat coated her brow. She came back onto the main street, the two guards still right on her tail, and finally saw the atmosphere towers looming in front of her.

They filled up her entire field of vision, looking up through the dirty windshield she could no longer see the sky, just the massive expanse of black metal, and a thick fence with an electric gate like at the perimeter entrance. Another guard ran out of his tiny booth and stood waving his arms above his head in front of the gate, wordlessly shouting for her to stop. But Nyx, adrenaline flooding her veins, put the peddle to the metal and forced the already exhausted engine to go a little faster. The massive thick gates approached in seconds, she hoped the truck was strong enough to make it.

She could half see the truck crumpled like a soft-drink can and the gates still standing, dentless and defiant. But she'd come too far, there was no turning back now. She was going too fast to be able to stop in time, and even if she weren't, the guards would be upon her in seconds. The guard in front of the gate threw himself out of the way and landed on his stomach in the mud. Nyx plowed through the gate, knocking it right off its hinges with a resounding clang, and drove through into the compound.

She was stunned, the windshield was shattered and she had at some point hit her head on the steering wheel. But she managed to keep going, and pretty soon she found a very lucky break. There were four trucks parked in a line at the base of the first tower. Four trucks almost identical to the one she had stolen. Nyx added her truck to the line, grabbed her things and jumped out. She hadn't noticed at the time, but now she moved she realised she'd been banged around a bit; she ached all over! But she'd worry about that later.

The other trucks all had windshields, which Nyx quickly took care of with her bat. By the time she was done vandalising, she could hear the guards approaching. She wondered why they had waited at all to follow her. Was it because of the guard at the gate? Had she hit him? She could not remember. Everything about her escape seemed blurred, as if she was living a dream, but wasn't quite sure if she was awake. She'd suddenly snapped out of it as her breathing and heart-rate began to slow, and she found herself crouched behind the line of trucks, watching the guards drive right by, bat in her hand, head bleeding, at the base of the first atmosphere tower.

CHAPTER FIVE

Oh geez, my head hurts! Nyx thought, as she staggered from behind the truck and closer to the tower. She prayed it wasn't serious—a serious injury, if she weren't able to hide, would make her a sitting duck. If she was able to find some cover then at best she might have a few days. Either option didn't seem too good, she would die.

Nyx contradicted herself, a constant tug-of-war going on in her head as she contemplated and fought with her own mind. She wished for death all the time, an end to the monotonously painful suffering existence she endured. Barely a day went by when she didn't think about taking a sharp object, holding it to her neck and pushing. But yet she fought it, fought for her life, battled for survival, every second of every day scraping in the dirt for handfuls of small mercies that just barely made it possible to go on for a few more days.

But for what? Why did she fight it? Why did she even run just then? What was the point? She could have easily handed herself over to the guards. They would have killed her. Or worse; tossed her back over the fence into the wasteland. She would never make it back to the city before the next storm. Someone once said that there were worse things than dying. Nyx hadn't believed it, like she didn't believe anything else. She had never seen it, therefore it didn't exist. What she didn't realise though, was how soon it would be before it would.

It took her awhile to find it—she had to circle the tower, and with a diameter of almost a mile, that was no short stroll—but eventually she stumbled across a grate-covered service vent, nothing more than a crawl-space, really. With no front door or other easy-to-access entry, it was obvious the atmosphere towers were intended to run full time and virtually unmanned. Nyx used the blade of the knife to loosen the four rusting screws that held the grate in place. She could have kicked it in, but she wasn't about to make the mistake of being completely careless again.

A lot of swearing, a few cuts and a scattering of bruises later, the grate was in the dirt beside her. She wasted no time crawling in, then secured one corner of the grate back on, so if she needed to get out in a hurry, it could easily be swung up like a hinge, yet to anyone on the outside it would look completely normal. The other three screws she stashed in the front pocket of her backpack, never knowing when they might come in handy.

And then she crawled, and crawled and crawled. The service vent was so seemingly endless she wondered if it lead anywhere at all! Yet it was the cleanest place she had ever been in her entire life, that had to mean something! The outside grate was rusted, but on the inside there was not a spec of dust nor hint of rust and the metal was so smooth she was almost slipping. She was not even inside yet, but never had she breathed air like what was inside before!

Eventually, half a painful hour later, knees raw and bruised and back aching, she fell out of the vent and onto an ice cold metal grated floor. She staggered to her feet again, looked up and could barely believe her eyes! The tower stretched up like a stairway to a bleeding heaven; she stood on the ground floor against the wall and stared up at the black metal that stabbed through the clouds and continued up. She could see, between the massive white gushes of air, where the sky begun, but she could not see where the tower ended. She wondered if it even did.

On the inside, around the edge, a black catwalk spiraled like a metallic snake for about forty stories, to the base of the tower's reactor core, a pulsing, honey-combed silver-black cube unlike anything Nyx had ever seen before. The cube was wrapped in constant bolts of blinding blue electricity. They traveled up and down, sliding themselves through the honeycombed body before building up to a blinding flash point that lit up the whole tower, and during which the next gush of air would spurt out. Nyx would not dare climb that catwalk and be fried by the electricity. She could barely comprehend how something as technologically advanced could have ever been built while the rest of the world existed in a state of one thousand years before. Did humans scrape together the very last crumbs of their technology and resources to build these towers, and then leave themselves with nothing at all?

Nyx tugged the backpack up a bit and began to explore a bit. She could stay here, she knew, in the base of the tower. The cube must have somehow been resistant to the acid rain, because while the tower was open to the sky, the cube, and in fact everything else inside, was unmarked. She wondered if there was some kind of invisible force that kept the storms out? Did the high concentrations of oxygen and nitrogen in those points in the sky somehow counteract the sulfur? Even if it didn't, she could climb back into the service vent.

Either way, she wasn't about to pitch a tent right then and there. The base alone was massive, she had to look around first. The pack weighed heavily on her shoulders, but she wasn't about to take it off and leave it somewhere. That would make her about as stupid as the person she'd stolen it from. Nyx began to walk in a straight line across the diameter of the tower. Her boots clunked dully on the metal, though drowned out by the almost overwhelming sound of the air. She wondered if she'd ever get used to it.

Nyx didn't really expect to find anything, what else, really, could there be in the middle of an atmosphere tower? But amazingly, she stumbled across something. About half way across the base, just lying there, covering a hole in the floor, was a sheet of metal. It wasn't screwed down, or anchored in any way, it was just…there. If they hadn't bothered to screw it down, then people mustn't come here very often at all. Perhaps so infrequently that the only reason the hole was covered at all was so people wouldn't fall down it when they forgot it was there.

She picked up the metal and threw it behind her. It hit the ground with a resounding crash which echoed deafeningly up the tower before it was drowned out by the next air gush. Before her lay a ragged hole, as if someone had punched their way through from underground, gaping at her like the unpierceable darkness of a black hole. Punched their way through, in fact, was exactly what had happened, although Nyx didn't know that yet. She lay flat on her stomach, took the lighter from her pocket and held the tiny, flickering flame out to the darkness.

It was a pretty futile effort, she couldn't see the bottom, or the walls, or how far down the hole went. She was sitting on the edge, feet dangling over the edge, contemplating just jumping, when she noticed her feet were actually resting on something solid.

What the… she rolled onto her stomach and held the lighter out again. There was a ladder! A very old, rickety metal and wire ladder, which she had completely missed, because it was underneath her. She swung her legs over the edge until she felt her feet touch the ladder again. She climbed downfew more rungs, then reached up and pulled the metal back over the hole. Leave no trace.

Nyx climbed down for a few more meters, then stopped, wrapped an arm around a rung and held the lighter out again. Still, she could not see the ground, just the unnerving, endless inky blackness below her. The wall the ladder was against, she could see, it was rough grey concrete, but on the other three sides, nothing, just more blackness, closing in on her, wrapping itself around her, smothering her. She clicked the lighter shut again and hug out into the darkness, trying to reach another wall, but if there were others, they were beyond her recognition. She signed in resignation and resumed climbing down.

In the end, she'd made the right decision in not jumping. She was not one hundred percent glad she'd made it, but there were better ways to die than being splattered after a one hundred and fifty foot fall. Her arms and shoulders burned by the time she finally reached the ground, her hands were blistered when she let go of the final rung. Nyx held the lighter out again, trying to find something—anything— that might give her some clue as to where she was. The lighter's pathetic flame was completely swallowed up, it seemed even darker down below, if that were possible. Not daring to walk forward and lose the ladder, Nyx held on with one hand and extended the other one out. It was so easy to lose one's sense of direction underground, and in total darkness, Nyx knew that if she lost the ladder down there, she would never find it again.

Unexpectedly, her hand hit something, so unexpectedly she jumped back. There was a metallic crash from the first contact and then a continuous rhythmic squeaking, like a door opening and closing on a rusty hinge, both magnified many times by the underground, the ladder shaft, and the darkness itself. Curious, and not quite afraid, Nyx tentatively reached out her hand again and this time gripped the metal. She brought the lighter up to it, not expecting to see anything, but thinking it was at least worth a try. Quite by accident, there was a blinding explosion of sudden light and Nyx fell to the floor, clutching her eyes. She dropped the lighter and it skittered away.

"Fuck!" she shouted, but could not scramble after it. But the lighter mattered not. When her eyes finally adjusted and she stood again, an entire new world opened up before her.

I only barely knew the rough and sketchy outlines of the severely uneducated, but it was enough to realise the significance of the place I'd stumbled upon. It was the original bomb shelter, one of the few places in the world where people actually managed to survive when the virus destroyed everything else. It seemed that, ever since my mother died, ever since I left the apartment and Jimmy, my luck had been incredible. A horrible, heartless thing to say (but then again, I wasn't far from heartless), I could not ignore the obvious.

The fact I'd repeatedly nearly been caught by guards and rabid cannibals, nearly been melted in various acid rain storms, lost my only water source and my precious lantern aside, everything had gone my way. I found shelter in the car yard, as well as my newly acquired backpack completely with months worth of supplies, I was lucky enough to find the truck and I managed to get into both the factory sector and the atmosphere compound. Unfortunately I could not say undetected, but we're working on that.

As soon as the lantern was lit, she could see almost everything around her. Before her stretched a long tunnel, rough grey concrete walls, built to be strong, but with absolutely no regard to design. The end disappeared into darkness, but now with only one possible direction to go and absolutely no fear of losing the ladder, Nyx eagerly unhooked the hanging lantern and proceeded down the tunnel.

About five hundred meters in front, Nyx came to a pair of air-locked doors, but they were half open, frozen as if the power had been cut just as they were opening. On the wall beside them was a simple keypad with two sections, one red, one green. She held the lantern up to it, studying it.When the power was running, it would have been brightly lit, but now it was just dull. She took off her backpack to squeeze through the gap in the doors, pulled it through, then found herself inside the shelter complex.

She was at the rear door, standing at the top of a set of stairs looking down into a circular main room, shrouded in shadows, dim structures visible only as foggy outlines. Two tunnels lead off on either side, and a fifth tunnel lay behind a set of double air-locked blast doors, these ones tightly sealed. Behind these doors, although Nyx didn't know it, was the original fully sealed entry to the world above. Of course, it was completely concreted over now, the factory sector was directly above. She wasn't sure, but Nyx suspected, from the look of the rough tunnel and make-shift ladder she had just come down, that the people had sealed themselves in, and had, when it was finally safe to come out, had to punch their way through. They had built the tower in that exact spot, or so it seemed.

The air was getting more stale now, Nyx noticed, as she walked down the stairs and began to explore. Stale, but still far better smelling than the sulfur saturated atmosphere she tolerated top-side. The circular room was stark bare, once white concrete now pale grey with age, the floor covered in a fine powdery dust that stirred around her feet when she walked. She wondered how long it had been since anyone had last been down here. From the looks of the dust, a hell of a long time. But the complex's previous owners hadn't left in a hurry, they'd meticulously taken every last take-able item with them.

Now all that remained was a skeleton of a complex. Did anyone else know about this place? Or did the complex lie cold underground, waiting to be accidentally stumbled upon like Nyx just had? In the middle of the circular room was a strange dark shape. She approached, holding the lantern up to it, trying to figure out what it was. It was a smaller version of the cube in the tower, she realised. Only this one wasn't switched on. And it was contained in a clear box. At the top was a tube, also made of the clear material, travelling up into the ceiling and disappearing through a hole.

Nyx tapped the clear material. It was so strange, it made no sound at all! It wasn't glass, it wasn't plastic, it wasn't anything she'd ever seen before.

Nyx circled the cube and noticed that one of the faces of its clear container had a keypad just like the one she'd seen next to the door, also with two sections, the red and the green. Nyx reached out and touched the green.

It was like the entire world just exploded as a massive bolt of lightning came down through the tube in the ceiling and hit the cube. The clear material contained it all, but the black cube glowed blue with a pulsing, resonating energy. When Nyx regained her senses and her sight, she realised that she didn't need the lantern any more. The complex had light; it had power.

What is this technology?! She asked herself. It must have been new as far as its placement in the complex was concerned, because as far as Nyx, or anyone else knew, the complex was built long before the towers. She glanced around the room; there were lanterns hanging everywhere…they mustn't have had power before the towers.

Instead now, light came from strange elongated plastic squares, attached to the ceiling in strategic places and all linked together by thin tubes linked to the main tube.

Nyx was still unsure if she was alone in the complex, she wasn't about to risk leaving her things behind, not until she'd explored every last inch of this place! There were four tunnels, and the locked doors in the fifth, she decided she'd start with the first tunnel on her left and work her way around. Everything looked so different in the light. It was brighter than the brightest day Nyx had ever seen top-side, and it hurt her eyes, although she was already getting used to it.

The tunnel was exactly the same as the one she'd come down, with the exception of three doors, one at the end and two branching off from the sides. Next to all three doors were keypads exactly like the others, only now they were alight, the red section highlighted. Curiously, Nyx approached the first door and touched the green section of the pad. The door slid open with a hiss, revealing another room. She stepped inside and gazed around. Barracks. Rows and rows of barracks, stretched out like a steel forest. Many people had once lived here. On each bed was a bare white mattress, white pillow and folded at the end, some more neatly than others, a pile of sheets and blankets. All this white was a sharp contrast to the black steel foundations.

On the wall beside Nyx were two more keypads. The top one, she knew, closed the doors from the inside, but she pressed it just to be certain. Obediently, the doors closed. But what was the other switch? At the moment the green was highlighted. Nyx tentatively reached out and touched the red and was suddenly engulfed in darkness. She gasped in shock and slammed her hand back down again, turning the light back on. It took her a few seconds to get over the feeling of being swallowed, but then things began to fall into place.

The stories had told that the people of the Beforetime had lived in the day and slept at night, and up until now Nyx had thought it ridiculous. But now it suddenly made so much sense! Before they were underground, they used the lights to simulate the day. But then they turned them off to sleep as if it were night. Perhaps it was true, Nyx pondered as she walked between the barracks. Perhaps good people could come from daylight.

At the end of the room, after Nyx had counted over two hundred and fifty barracks, she came to another door. This one she didn't hesitate to open, and she stepped into an entirely white-tiled hall. It was divided into three rows of cubicles; one of showers, one of mirrors and basins, and one of toilets. A bathroom. One unlike anything Nyx had ever seen before. Nyx pulled open a plastic door, revealing the first shower. It looked like any other shower, nozzle, taps, soap dish…except she had never seen one before. She had heard of them though, in her mother's stories. When Jennifer had been a child, there had still been enough water to run showers. But it didn't last long enough for Nyx to ever seen the benefits of it.

Remembering the stories, Nyx stood aside from the nozzle and turned the tap. For a few seconds, there was nothing, and she assumed the water had been long since cut off, but then there was a groaning which echoed throughout the ancient pipes. The nozzle began to vibrate and suddenly a cascade of water spurted out.

At first the water ran murky and grey, but a few minutes later, the pipes had been sufficiently flushed and it cleared. For a moment, all she could do was stare in utter disbelief. Water. Clean, running water! Nyx let it run over her hand, and when her skin didn't burn, she tasted it.

And then she was standing under it, gulping like there was no tomorrow. The water was centuries old, yet Nyx had never tasted anything fresher.

Nyx didn't know it yet, but under the complex was a massive water tank holding millions of gallons. So long as the complex had power, the water was continually filtered, anything used was recycled. It would virtually never run out, at least not in her lifetime, if she stayed that long.

Besides the drinking potential, she knew the showers were to clean oneself. But there was still a lot to check, and she didn't quite feel safe yet, certainly not safe enough to strip down and stand under a blasting stream of water. Perhaps she could wash her clothes too. They'd been longer without a wash than she had!

Not wanting to waste too much time in one place, Nyx turned the water off and moved onto the next row of cubicles, the basins. These were even more of a shock than the showers. But not the basins themselves, the large mirrors behind them. In all her thirteen years, Nyx had never truly seen her face.

At first she did not even realise what she was seeing; she did not recognise herself. Suddenly a strange girl had popped up from behind the basins and stood before her. Nyx shouted in shock and swung her baseball bat, just as the girl swung her own. The girl shattered into a million pieces after Nyx hit her, the mirror erupted into a spiderweb of broken glass and she ducked on reflex, although nothing hit her. As she slowly rose again she realised. A mirror. Another thing, like the showers, that she had heard stories of, but never seen. The superstitious believed that the mirror trapped the soul, which is why it mirrored one's movements, and the only way to free it is to smash the mirror. But Nyx had a frightening memory and had once heard the truth. The mirror was a Beforetime relic, used by the vain people o centuries before to admire their own appearance. Nyx thought it rather trivial.

Yet she could not help but stare. She had seen a fuzzy resemblance of herself once, as she cut her hair a few months ago, the first and only time.

I'm filthy! She thought in disgust, touching her hand to her dirt-streaked face. The girl in the mirror mimicked her. Down the left…or was it right…side of her face, blood trickled from a cut across her forehead, the price of her wild ride through the factory sector. But it was drying on her face and mixing with dirt and soon it would be just another layer on the filthy mask.

Her hair hung limply, greasy and dirty, her natural colour was brown, but it came up black now. Her clothes weren't as bad, they were stolen only a short while ago, and only just starting to need a wash. She would give them one, soon enough. Nyx looked up at the mirror again. And looked into her own eyes. Long lashes and big, sparkling dark eyes, they looked alive, like a single blade of grass in a desert looked alive. Alive, but scarred and battled hardened, she was glaring out of nature, yet she'd stumbled upon paradise and she was appearing to be the only one there. Nyx tried to soften her expression, but it felt awkward so she didn't bother.

The third row of cubicles was nothing new to her. A lot cleaner, actually working, with plumbing, but a toilet was a toilet, even if she hasn't seen a working one in awhile. There was one in her old apartment, but it was completely screwed, no way would Jimmy fix it for her, and it wasn't like they could just call a plumber.

Nyx smiled to herself, it should have been a joyous grin, but it came closer to a bitter grimace. What should have been a happy moment—no more shoving it down with the plunger or going in the gutter—was more like the realisation of just another convenience added to her life. It seemed as if Nyx was forgetting how to be happy.

She left the bathroom then and checked the rest of the rooms on that side of the complex. She found three more large bathrooms and barracks after checking the second main tunnel branching off from the central room. They were identical to the first. But then she found something different. A small tunnel branching off from the rest. And at the end, a single door. Nyx walked down it and pressed the keypad, expecting another barrack, but instead she discovered a single room. She stepped inside. It was roughly rectangular, a single barrack against the far wall, in the corner, a metal table and chair against the wall to her left, and against the wall to her right, a six foot tall grey metal locker. In the wall at the foot of the bed was another door, leading to the room's private bathroom. It took Nyx a few seconds to realise, but this meant the complex must have had a leader.

CHAPTER SIX

Wow! Nyx breathed, looking around. Without a second thought she decided that this would be her room. She would have to be an absolute moron not to stay in the complex now, after what she'd seen. She didn't care if there was no power at all! She would have cared if it were nothing more than a burnt-out shell! Running water… The complex belonged to her now. It was only natural that Nyx should have the room intended for the leader.

She dropped her bag and bat on the bed, and strided with new found confidence to the locker. Nyx was confident as a rule, but there was a certain edge that came with knowing you had fallen upon the last remaining shards of paradise and it all belonged to you. She opened up its single unlocked door to find yet another treasure trove. There were four shelves. Four shelves packed with personal belongings. And due to the room being sealed all this time, they were perfectly preserved Beforetime relics. Although they held no monetary value, the discovered items just screamed history. Nyx was no archeologist or historian, she was more interested in the practical uses, but she was still interested enough to pick up little clues about the world before the virus.

In her hands she held a heavy coat. Black leather. Nyx didn't know it was leather, she, in fact no one, in her time would have. All she knew was it was the same material as the spiked wristbands she wore on each arm. When she put the coat on, she couldn't help but breathe in that unique but wonderful smell that came only with real leather.

She looked in the mirror in the bathroom and was disappointed to see that it was too big for her, but not by much. There was no way the coat could have fit a man, the shoulders were much too small. That meant…that meant the leader of the complex must have been a woman!

How?! That was the first thing I wondered. In the Beforetime, did people really let women govern?! It's unheard of! A man today would sooner slit his own throat than let a woman tell him what to do! Sex and body head in winter, that's all we're supposedly good for! But some women, the rare ones, the strong ones, they think the feeling's mutual. I'd never met one, perhaps something to do with the fact I've met only two women in my life besides my mother. Seen lots of dead ones, but rarely a live one. But there had to be others like me, fighting their own private battles. There had to be. I couldn’t be the only one.

Nyx found a lot more in that locker than just a coat. In fact, most of it was clothing. The coat was actually part of an outfit, with fitted leather pants and a long sleeved black lycra top. The clothes weren't fitting right that second, but soon enough they would fit her like a second skin. There were a few more outfits besides the leather; tracksuits, a few T-shirts, underwear, and a pair of denim jeans similar to her overalls. She hadn't had this many clothes in her whole life! All of them were fabulous, but the leather pants and that tight black top, combat boots and spiked wristbands, the black coat that fell like an inky waterfall and swept like a cape out behind her when she walked. With her dark hair and dark eyes and milk-pale skin, even at 13…wow!

On the very top shelf, Nyx found a book. The leader's diary. Nobody knew, she barely even admitted it to herself, but Nyx could read. Not fluently, not even well, but enough that eventually, painstakingly, letter by letter, she could sound out the words. This one skill put her miles above 99% of the population, yet she still refused to call herself educated. She would not label herself something she was not. Not when she knew nothing about history or geography or science or mathematics or all the other fascinating branches of Beforetime knowledge.

So how did she know how to read? Believe it or not, a long time ago, Nyx had a father, and he wasn't just some guy that Jennifer fell pregnant to. His name was Alexander and he stayed with them for the first six years of Nyx's life. Nyx could barely remember him. She had forgotten his face. But sometimes when she closed her eyes she could still see how tall he was, listen to his deep, laughing voice. She remembered he had blonde spiky hair.

The world was already in its current state when Nyx was born, although it didn't seem to matter to Alexander. He wanted an education, he didn't care if the world and everyone in it were going down the gurgler. His most prized possession was his collection of books, which he practically knew word for word. He used to read to Nyx from them and tell her fantastic stories. Sometimes about a prince and a wicked queen and a sleeping princess…

When Nyx was three he began teaching her to read and she had three years to practice until…It was early, before dark…he should have waited, but he wanted to scavenge early and get back in time to read to Nyx. The cannibals got him…Nyx and Jennifer didn't even find his clothes. Just cracked and bloody bones. Jennifer couldn't bear it, burnt all his books. And then she found her first drug, cocaine. Nyx lost both her mother and her father within a month of each other. From six onwards she was fending for herself.

She put the diary in her backpack and kept the coat on, just in case, and then she continued on. She made her way back to the main room and proceeded to explore the next tunnel. She found that it was the main entrance, what would have been another tunnel, but it had been concreted over. She tapped it with her bat. Rock solid, not even hollow, there wasn't much chance she'd be chipping through anytime soon. With a small shrug she shut the door and moved on to the next tunnel.

The fourth tunnel, the one she had just entered, broke off into five doors, two on either side and one at the end. Nyx didn't even bother entering the first room when she saw what it was. With a groan, she slammed her palm back down on the keypad. More barracks! Was that all this place was?!

Opposite the barracks, Nyx found what appeared to be a storage room for equipment and supplies. Four long shelves broke the room into corridors. She put her bag by the door, but kept the bat in her hand, decided she'd pick one side and work her way down. She picked the first row of shelves on the left. Weapons. Thousands of them. Weapons Nyx had never seen before in her life. Beforetime technology! The rumors were true!

There were only four different types, but they looked powerful as hell, and there were enough to supply a small army. Attached by a thin chain to one of the shelf's support poles was a four page flip booklet of safety instructions. Nyx nearly laughed at the irony of having safety instructions for weapons, but the fact she had never seen Beforetime weaponry, or barely even technology before, made her glad of their existence.

The first page of had the title CR-20, or Compression Rifle 20. Nyx matched the picture with the a gun on the rack. It was sleek, long and silver with shiny black trim, rounded barrel like a large cylinder with a small, currently closed metal nozzle in the center. It narrowed back into a handle and a traditional underside trigger, and on the top was a small dial and a panel matching dial selections with the letters V, OFF and ON. Nyx looked curiously at the gun on the rack, then put her bat down and took one.

She expected it to be heavy, but it wasn't, it was a comfortable weight and it fit perfectly in her hands. She wished she'd had a gun like this a week ago. Some how then, she couldn’t see Jimmy kicking her out. He might have even fixed their toilet. But then, if he hadn't, despite almost being killed three times in the process, Nyx never would have found this place. Holding the gun in one hand, she slowly read the information on the CR-20.

The CR-20 is a light-weight laser rifle ideal for heavy artillery battle. It compresses an ordinary strength laser 20 times to produce an extremely dense and powerful energy burst which will instantly kill any living thing it touches. The CR-20 also has an optional extra strength that will fire a burst effectively strong enough to vaporize anything it comes into contact with. The CR-20 is self powering and has a battle life of ten years, meaning it will not need recharging until the equivalent of ten straight years on the front line.

Holy fuck, it's unlimited ammo! Nyx thought, barely believing it, when she finally made her way through the information. She was grossly out of practice. She read on to the safety instructions, hoping to find out how to activate the gun.

Hold the weapon with one hand on the handle, two fingers on the trigger and the butt under your arm.

Switch the safety on by turning the switch on the body of the gun to ON. Now hold the gun out, making sure the barrel is pointed away from your body and anyone else in the immediate vicinity you don't want to shoot.

Squeeze the trigger. You should hear a metallic hiss as the weapon charges. When the weapon has charged there will be a ping and the side panels will light up. At this point switch the safety either to OFF or V, point and shoot. Note: Do not fire vaporizing blasts at targets within a twenty foot radius of your body.

OK, Nyx held the trigger down and listened as the gun hissed and a few seconds later pinged. The shiny black trim now glowed purple and the gun was ready to fire. She flicked the safety off, aimed at the back wall and fired. A blinding purple beam erupted from the gun and hit the wall.

"Woah!" She almost dropped it from the sheer force of the blast. On the wall was now a massive scorch mark and a sprinkling of ashes fell like black snowflakes. After witnessing that, she wasn't about to try vaporizing anything, and put the gun back on the rack.

Nyx figured she'd look properly at the other three guns later, there was still much to explore. The rest of the shelves contained basic items—endless bottles of shampoo and bars of soap, piles of towels, spare blankets, emergency items such as lanterns and flares (Nyx wondered what use a flare was underground), and other miscellaneous items, such as stationary. Nyx swiped a bottle of shampoo, a bar of soap and a towel and was about to move onto the next room when something caught her eye. A big, rectangular, white machine stood behind the last shelf in the far right corner of the room. She'd almost missed it.

Nyx walked over to it, in awe of the technological level humans had once reached before ultimately destroying themselves. Through the middle of the machine was a conveyor belt, on which an item was placed, fed through the machine, where something was done to it, then it was spurted out the other end. On the middle panel facing Nyx was an activation keypad like the doors, and besides that, a large display screen.

She touched the green section and the screen instantly lit up, the machine hummed into life and words scrolled across the display.

Welcome to the washer. Please select the item you would like to wash by touching the screen and place the item on the conveyor belt.

A list of clothing items popped up, as well as a few others; pants, skirts, jackets, overalls/coveralls, shoes, underwear, jumpers, towels, sheets, blankets. Nyx tugged off one of her worn, scuffed and mud-encrusted combat boots and placed it on the conveyor belt. She selected shoes and watched in wonderment as the machine sucked in her boot and began to whir.

About a minute later, the boot came out the other end and Nyx nearly fainted when she saw it. The broken shoelaces were completely repaired, the polish was as black and shiny as the day it was made, the holes in the sole were gone, in fact the sole was as thick as as if they were brand new! Nyx could barely believe it, she couldn't even begin to comprehend the level of technology at hand. But then again, she didn't really have to comprehend it, just so long as she could use it.

Five minutes later, Nyx walked out of the room wearing a perfect, clean, pressed and repaired set of clothes. She smiled to herself. They hadn't been in that good a condition when she got them! There were only three more rooms and then one more tunnel to clear, and Nyx was glad, for she was getting tired. It had been almost two days since she'd slept, and now all she wanted was the shower that awaited her, a bite to eat, and sleep.

Down the tunnel a bit further, Nyx opened another door to find a dark, and completely empty kitchen. She switched on the light and discovered it to be huge, a massive, institutionalized hall. The room was divided up again. The majority of it was tables. Long, silver metal tables, six of them in fact, and benches on either side, enough to seat the entire population of the complex, which, from the barracks, Nyx had worked out to be around 1500 people. Behind the tables was a cafeteria-like set up, and behind that, the kitchen itself. Nyx just scanned around quickly. There was nothing of use to her here. They had cleared everything long ago. And even if she did find some food, she wouldn't eat it. God only knows what would happen to someone who ate something that was almost two hundred years old.

Two more rooms and a tunnel to go, good, Nyx thought. She was tired and thirsty and beginning to get hungry. She realised, as she walked across to the next room, that she didn't have to be thirsty anymore; there was as much water as she could ever want, and se took a bottle from her back pack and drank all of it—something she couldn't imagine herself ever doing just hours ago.

It was a medical bay, the next room, but if not for the sign on the wall, Nyx wouldn't have known. Up there, if you got sick, you prayed to God it wasn't serious, or you killed yourself before someone else did. She walked around, there were five beds lining one wall, an office on one side enclosed by a three walled cubical. Against the far wall, it took up half the room in fact, was a science-lap set up, massive long white benches, piles of now-clean equipment at the back and in the glass cabinets above it, medical equipment and ancient, yet incredibly advanced drugs.

I wonder if this is where they developed the vaccine for the virus, Nyx pondered, rifling through the cabinets. There were plenty of things, she just didn't know what to do with them, so she moved on.

Nyx was onto the final room of corridor four. She was trying to imagine what other kinds of rooms could be down there. Hopefully not another barracks, but really, there couldn't be anymore. She'd already found so much more than she'd ever expected. Nyx's bat clattering on the concrete floor was the only thing to pierce the silence of the deathly still room. Shelves. Endless shelves, facing her and stretching back into the darkness, so many that the end merged into nothingness. Shelves of books. A library. Slowly, Nyx crouched and picked up the bat, not taking her eyes off the shelves, as if the second she looked away, they would disappear.

She turned on the lights and then cautiously walked along the narrow aisle separating the shelves from the wall. Leaning against a shelf here and there was a ladder on wheels, so one could reach the top-most shelves, which were right up against the ceiling. She looked up. Nailed to the side of each second or third shelf was a label. Categories. First, fiction, and within that, children and adult, and the genres of action, mystery, thriller, romance, comedy and drama. And then non-fiction. And on the category labels, Nyx saw all the things her father used to study. History, geography, math, English, science, art, music literature and much more. There were things she had never even heard of in this place. Now was not the time to read books, she would return tomorrow if that were possible. But already, as she walked out of the room and down the corridor, she itched to go back.

Nyx signed with relief as she entered the final corridor and saw that it only had one room, a single door after only a few feet. Not bothering even to guess what the room was, Nyx opened the door and hit the lights. This time, she was completely astonished! This room was bigger than the entire complex put together. It was big enough that 1500 people could live comfortably in it and not bother each other. It appeared as if some items were missing, of course, Nyx couldn’t imagine what, but even what was left…

The room was long and rectangular, it appeared to be some sort of recreation room. From left to right, Nyx saw firstly a massive screen against the wall, and hundreds of lounge chairs in rows in front of it. Behind them, on a tall pillar was a silver metal cube, with a small hole in one face. A very high-tech movie projector. Of course, Nyx didn't know what any of the items where at the moment, but she would find out in time.

A bit further on, away from the movie set-up were about twenty stand alone couches, and some wooden tables and chairs. Next to them, against the wall, were a row of classic, although very futuristically jazzed up, arcade games. Beside the games were a few more pillars, like the projection pillar, although much shorter, and atop them sat items Nyx nor anyone else from her world had ever seen before. Virtual reality headgear. Between each pillar was a square pen for the occupant of the headgear to stand in, while using it, so they wouldn't hurt themselves or someone else.

Moving on was a gymnasium, weight machines, bikes, punching bags, a martial arts training figure and much more equipment, to prevent toe occupants of the complex from going completely stir-crazy. The final part of the rec. room was a basketball court, one ring behind the gym, the other against the far wall, as well as a rack of about fifty orange basketballs, and a ball pump. On two sides of the court were rows of benches, to watch any games that might be taking place.

CHAPTER SEVEN

The next morning, Nyx awoke with a start in pitch darkness in a soft bed in clean clothes. She sat up, flailing her arms around before realising with a shaky breath where she was. She climbed out of bed and found the light-switch and looked around, wondering how long she had slept. Time took on entirely new dimensions underground. She didn't know if it were day or not, frankly, it didn't matter, she just knew it was the best night's sleep she'd ever had, and she was starving.

Nyx dug around in her backpack and devoured an entire protein tablet, not the usual half or quarter she restricted herself to. She didn't even mind the taste today. It was finally beginning to sink in that the complex belonged to her, and there was no one--no guards, no Jimmy, no cannibals--no one who could take it from her. Suddenly there were one hundred things she wanted to do, but she couldn't just abandon all the rules of survival she'd spent her entire life leaning. There were plans to be made, she needed food--the supply in the backpack wasn't going to last forever.

Nyx put on her boots, went to the bathroom for a drink and then picked up her bat, which she had left lying against the bed. She had all the time in the world to read the diary of the complex leader, and go through all the books in the library. There was all the time in the world to learn of the Beforetime. But right now she decided, as she walked along the tunnel and began the long climb to the surface, she would hunt.

Nyx came out of the service vent to more darkness. She looked up at the blood-streaked purple sky and guessed it was around midnight. So she had a good six hours before dawn. As she moved closer to the factories, she noticed something. It was quiet. Far too quiet. Until it struck her that the entire sector had been shut down. The people of the sector, like the people of the Beforetime, existed only in daylight. Beside this seeming very odd to Nyx, it was perfect, she could raid the storage rooms without having to worry too much about being caught.

It was easy to get right up to the factories--they hadn't fixed the gate yet, and Nyx managed to walk right up to the dark shape of a building before she saw something that caused her to throw herself up against the wall and hold her breath. There was a light, a steady beam of light floating up the street beside her. That was something she hadn't anticipated; security.

Stealth was Nyx's specialty, she had spent half her life sneaking around in the dark. So it wasn't all that difficult for Nyx to sneak around the back of the building without getting caught. She came out behind the security guard, then ducked behind the next building. Nyx wasn't sure which building was which, she knew there was a protein factory at the entrance, but that was on the other side of the sector.

Nyx would leave it to trial and error, she assumed that the factory itself would be the front part of the building, the storage room the back. She wondered where all the people lived--she had seen no shelters, until a light flicked on in the upper story of a distant building and caught her eye. It made perfect sense. The workers and possibly their families lived above the factories they manned.

As Nyx slipped around the factory perimeters, she observed that some of them had back and side doors. She decided to just try her luck and open one of these doors--from what she could see, they had no locks, she just hoped there weren't any alternative security measures.

Her features frozen with caution, standing on an angle as not to expose her back, Nyx opened the door a slither and waited. When she heard no shouts, no alarms, no pounding footsteps, she pushed the door further and slipped into the room. Even with her growing abilities to see in the dark, the storage room was too dark for her. She took the lighter from its home in her pocket and shone it around. On one side of the room was a door leading to the main factory, beside the door was a conveyor belt coming from the factory through a square hole cut right through the wall.

The rest of the room (Nyx's jaw dropped) was boxes. Boxes, countless boxes stacked in rows and columns right to the ceiling. In this one room, smaller than her old apartment, was more food that all the door she had eaten in her entire life! When she recovered, she pulled the nearest box down and ripped it open. Within it were hundreds of protein tablets. But these were different to any she had ever seen before. They were…pink! Curious as hell, Nyx picked one up. By firelight she could see the label read "strawberry flavored."

She cocked her head to the side. No protein tablet she had ever seen before had any kind of label at all. She was lucky if they were even wrapped! And what the hell was "strawberry"?! No protein tablets were flavored. They just naturally tasted like burnt rubber. Now confused as well as curious, Nyx opened the wrapper and took a bite out of it. The mouthful barely touched her tongue before her entire mouth exploded with flavor. It was beyond words…incredible…the only things Nyx had ever eaten were the rubbery protein tablets and the horrible sections of human flesh she'd been reduced to in her most desperate moments. But this…this was intense!

She couldn’t bear it once she had swallowed, she stuffed the entire tablet into her mouth and did something she'd never done before--savored the taste. A few seconds after she'd resignedly swallowed, Nyx felt a very strange sensation in her stomach. It felt as it was slowly expanding, like someone was blowing up a balloon from the inside.

Eventually it stopped and Nyx felt as if she'd eaten six protein tablets, not one. Then she realised, that was what they were supposed to do. They somehow made you fell full! But then, what had she been eating all these years? What were the foul-tasting squares that barely kept her alive? It didn't really matter, there was plenty of time to find out, but now she had to get herself and her new-found food out of there before she was caught. Nyx pulled another box off the stack, this time the label said "apricot flavored", but now was not the time to taste-test. She awkwardly held the two boxes against herself, and while holding the bat with the other hand, opened the door.

Holding her breath again, she pulled it ajar enough to see the street in front of her…and the floating beam of light that told her that the security guard was coming back. She quickly moved to close the door again, but to her horror, the hinges did something they had not done before; they screeched. Nyx stood perfectly still in the pitch darkness, trying to force her breath not to come in ragged gasps. She could not see the beam of light, but it wasn't necessary as she heard the guard shout, "Hey Marve! Back me up!" and then the crunch of another pair of boots running over the compacted dirt. She had to move, or she was definitely going to be caught.

But there was nowhere to go, all she could do was stare at the door, waiting, as time stood still, for it to fly open.

Snap out of it Nyx, this is what you've been waiting for! A voice in her head told her.

She must stay and fight, or they would catch her; there was nowhere to hide in this place, even if she went into the factory itself, they would find her. She must stay.

"Intruder," said the guard. "If it's the girl Stan's been babbling about, then I ain't about to go in there alone, who knows what she's capable of!"

"So you called me over so I can go in first and get my head kicked in? Thanks a lot buddy, you're a real pal."

Meanwhile, Nyx had left her two boxes right by the door, where she could grab them on the run, and was climbing to the top of the boxes. From here she would have a good vantage point and probably manage to take out one of the guards in a single move. The other…well…she needed some hand-to-hand practice anyway.

The two guards had decided to try and use the element of surprise, by throwing the door open and hitting the lights, flooding the room with noise and light. Problem was, they had lost the element of surprise, Nyx had beaten them to it. She was temporarily blinded by the piercing lights, but it didn't matter, the guards were too. She could still hear perfectly, one of them had moved to the far side of the room, the other was moving closer to her. Neither of them had seen her yet, and wouldn't, unless they were well trained. Humans, on instinct, never look above their own level of sight.

Nyx's sight began to return and she saw that one guard was stalking through the aisles between the boxes, while the other stood nervously below her, looking apprehensively from side to side and turning anxious little circles, apparently keeping watch. Nyx chose then to descend, bringing her bat down over her head and connecting it with the guard's. The only sounds were the crunch and then a thud as he went down like a ton of bricks. Nyx didn't make a sound as she landed, she was hidden behind another tower in seconds. The doorway was clear, she could have made a break for it, but she was too wrapped up now, all rational thoughts were abandoned to her intense craving for battle.

"John? Hey man, this isn't funny! You're gonna leave me in here with one of her kind?!"

Nyx doubled back behind the main tower of boxes. She was waiting for Marve to return to the front of the room, where he would find John on the floor. He did just as she predicted, with a horrified expression dropped to his knees and started shaking his fallen comrade.

Whisper-silent, Nyx moved to the other side of the room and knocked a box from the top of the pile. It slapped the floor and Marve jumped up and whirled around. Nyx moved again and dropped another box, all the while watching him. His fear was invigorating! She considered him as an opponent, didn't consider him all that much of a threat. He had dark hair and a stocky build, with his figure came a balance and grounded strength not found in taller, lankier people. But Marve was obviously scared, when the second box dropped he jumped even higher, breathing so hard he was nearly hyperventilating. While fear made a person aggressive, they also lacked control, and within that lack of control were many fatal flaws.

As Nyx dropped the third box, Marve began to whimper, still kneeling beside John's unconscious form. Though Nyx was greatly enjoying toying with him, she couldn't help but notice how terrified he was. No guard, no one, in fact, had ever been afraid of her. Except Stan. So what, exactly, had he and the other works said to everyone? Surely an exaggeration. It was flattering, yes, and Nyx was strong and vicious, but surely she was not worth this fear. Well, there was only one way to find out. Nyx resumed her position atop the boxes and waited to be spotted. The way Marve's eyes kept darting around, it wouldn’t be long.

Finally his eyes locked on her and the blood drained from his face. He gaped, his mouth forming silent, terrified words.

But at that moment Marve decided to bolt and although Nyx jumped down and began to chase him, she decided that it wasn't worth the effort. There would be plenty of other chances for information. In the mean time, she had food to get back to the complex. Seizing a third box and picking up her other two, she began the run back.

Back underground, Nyx sat at one of the long tables in the kitchen, sucking at a bottle of water, the three boxes spread out in front of her. It was one of the strangest sensations of her life; she was still not the least bit hungry, and she had no foul taste in the back of her throat. She took one of the boxes and tipped it upside down on the table. She then counted all the tablets, stacking them back the box as she went. They totaled to one hundred and forty nine; one hundred and fifty minus the one she had eaten. That meant…in one night, in under an hour…she had come close to stealing a year and a half's worth of food.

Still reeling from the number, Nyx did another calculation. If she got six boxes a night, over a period of, say, five or six months, she would acquire enough food for far more than her lifetime. Nyx drained the contents of her bottle then jumped up and prepared to move out again.

And so that was the way Nyx’s life went. In the days she slept, during the first part of the night she skulked around the factory sector, stealing boxes, and knocking the occasional guard around, and during the second part she read. The first things she planned on reading were about the Beforetime and the virus and how everything had gone so horribly wrong, but something else had been gnawing at the back of her mind. A scene kept playing itself out, over and over, like a movie on repeat.

What is an Untouchable? What am I? Am I some sort of freak? How could it be possible that I’m something I don’t even know I am? I know nothing about the world, but I took console in the fact that I at least knew myself. And now I don’t even have that. Should I find out the truth? It will not put me back on stable ground. But there is little of that now days anyway. Untouchable. One word. I don’t even know what it means, but it makes everything change. Everything is different now. I don’t know why. But I feel it.

Nyx scoured the Beforetime section, book after book, searching every index for the one word, all other content ignored. She would come back to it when she knew what she was.

Days later, she finally found it, in a fat, leather-bound volume titled “War and consequences.” She scanned its information on the virus, how it had mutated, destroyed life, how the bombs had scorched the sky and in turn destroyed the atmosphere. She scanned through the human race’s desperate attempt to save itself from the apocalypse. And then she came to a chapter on a young bio-chem student, Paul Blake. Young, but brilliant. He was the man solely responsible for saving the human race from extinction.

Nyx read about Blake and the development of his vaccine in the complexes underground. She knew that eventually one had been developed and released successfully, and the book told her that. But it also told her something else, what she wanted to know.

The development of Blake’s vaccine in total took five years to become completely successful. During that time it went through experimental stages. Each time he thought he had it, he tested it. Strangely enough, Blake had no shortage of people willing to be injected with the vaccine and then the virus. Maybe the volunteers shared the mentality of, if they were stuck down here forever, get death over with rather than wait until the food runs out. Or maybe they just wanted to be heroes.

The first six subjects died, Blake’s vaccine had been as effective as the original. But then he made a break-through. The subject didn’t die. The vaccine had worked. It also rearranged his genetic code. Within days of being injected, drastic changes had occurred. Blake had not invented a vaccine, but instead unintentionally created a retro-virus. The subject began to gain skills impossible to anyone. Super human strength, endless stamina, incredible agility and balance to name a few. But he also lost most of his humanity. His emotions, his compassion. And gained a blood-thirsty desire to kill. The retro virus had made him a killing machine.

It could easily have been a single, controlled incident. The subject did not become insane. He did not intentionally set out to harm others. It was only when he got into a brawl with another man did anyone see the full extent of the changes. His skills were incredible, instinctual, with no training, he moved like a cat, but something took him over. During the fight, it was said, that something changed in his eyes and he killed remorselessly. But as soon as the fight was over he reverted to his normal self and killed himself out of guilt.

Now that the word of Blake’s retrovirus was out, a band of about fifty individuals of the more rebellious nature took an interest. They injected themselves and they too underwent the same genetic mutation as the original subject. However these people did not let their consciences get in the way. Within days they had formed a tight renegade group of almost paramilitary level and calling themselves the Untouchables, they over-threw the complex leader, Annabelle Croft and took over the complex itself.

Luckily their reign did not last more than a year, Blake created a successful vaccine two months later and after the building of the atmospheric towers, the people were free to return to the surface. As for the Untouchables, after the people tried to rebuild a society they became an underground tag-team which would surface for various raids or to work as an army for hire. It was theorized that the effects of the retrovirus would weaken with each new generation until eventually they could not even be noticed, but obviously it is unable to be proven at this point.

So that was it. Nyx was an Untouchable. The result of an experiment gone wrong. A genetic mutation. A freak. Any normal person would have been devastated. Nyx was excited. This made her practically invincible. It also explained a lot. Her emotional struggle, for starters. It was in her genes, she was a natural born killer. Yet she was not pure-bred, which was why she felt strange, untimely bursts of various emotions; fear, confusion, sadness. It was why she could not be happy. It was why she felt no sadness at her mother’s death. And it explained how she could so easily get angry.

But then…to be an Untouchable, Nyx had to have had at least one parent an Untouchable. She had very obvious characteristics, the parent would have had even stronger ones, but neither of her parents did. Her father, from what she could remember was a quiet, bookish, gentle man. It was, really, no wonder he was killed. Even now, at thirteen, Nyx could fend off a band of security guards or a pack of blood thirsty cannibals with no major difficulties. So it couldn’t have been her father. And Jennifer? Nyx didn’t even have to think about that. Jennifer was no Untouchable.

So which of her parents were real? Physically, Nyx resembled neither, and she could not identify any traits of Jennifer’s in herself. Irrational, emotional, weak? No, Nyx was the direct opposite. Calculating, cold and strong. But then if she thought about her father, she had inherited his interest in books, his love of learning and his quiet nature. Not his gentleness or compassion but Nyx never had much liked talking. So he was her real father. Jennifer had somehow come into the picture, but she was no relation. That was why she had felt sadness over his death but not over hers. Somewhere, out there, Nyx had a mother, or once did. An Untouchable. Just like her.

Time went by, as it did, and Nyx continued as she had planned. The nights were for hunting, the days were for sleeping and reading. Nine months had gone by, she had turned fourteen and grown into both her shoes and the clothes of the complex leader. Every night for those nine months she had taken six boxes, giving her a total of one thousand six hundred and twenty boxes, two hundred and forty three thousand tablets or six hundred and ninety four years worth of food. She planned to continue with her raids for three more months and then call it quits.

During one of these raids, Nyx managed to capture and question a guard. She had snuck up behind him and knocked him out with her bat, then dragged him into a factory, tied and gagged him. When he came to, she showed him the CR-20, explained its capabilities to vaporize, even demonstrated on a box of protein tablets.

“When I remove the gag, you make a single sound other than the answers to my questions and you’ll join the box!” Nyx had threatened, waving the gun at him.

“You’re the girl who’s been stealing boxes and attacking the guards for the last year,” the guard said angrily, some of his fear dissipating.

“Drop the tone! Start an attitude with me, I’ll vaporize you and find another guard.”

Nyx raised an eyebrow. “So that’s what you call us. Very well, but what…am…I?”

The guard swallowed hard, not failing to notice the murderous gleam in Nyx’s eyes.

“If you know what I am, then you know how I think, so don’t be under the mistaken impression that I won’t kill you! Answer me!”

“Every guard I’ve seen has recognized me. Even the workers know. But none of the…Renegades…know. Explain.”

“One of the first things we learn his how to recognize your kind,” he said it with disgust.

“The world lies in ruins today because of the Untouchables! Every time anyone tried to rebuild, they would destroy it! All they left alone was the atmosphere towers. By the time we gained any ground, it was far too late! We managed to establish this sector…we had to drop a thermonuclear weapon on our own fucking city! You saw the rubble—you must have, it’s the only way in. We held the sector ever since, for hundreds of years. My great grandfather fought them, my father told me the stories, we’ve been brought up drilled with the characteristics of an Untouchable. Anyone here would recognize your kind in a second!”

“No one out there is an Untouchable!” Nyx said coldly. “If my parents were then they’re dead anyway. I’ve lived on the streets my entire life…have you even been beyond the sector?”

“Of course I haven’t!” the guard spat. “Only the body collectors would dare!”

“Then they’ll be able to tell you! Pimps, prostitutes and cannibals, that’s all that’s out there! And what the hell is wrong with the food?!”

“We throw out the defective food and contaminated water,” the guard said it matter of factly, like he was talking about throwing scraps to stray dogs. “And if you were out there, then there are others like you.”

“If there are, then they’re probably dead!” Nyx argued. “There’s barely anyone left! Most of them live like savages, they can’t even talk!”

“Don’t waste your breath on empty threats,” Nyx warned. “This sector isn’t that secure if I, a late generation Untouchable child managed to infiltrate it. Now answer me another question. What characteristics do I have that make me so obviously recognizable?”

“An Untouchable is characterized by things such as super human strength, above average intelligence, an aptitude for on the spot creative tactical calculations, superb balance, high speed movement and a darkening of the eyes during a fight,” the guard sounded as if he was rattling off a passage from a textbook. “The first thing any of us noticed is that your eyes turn black. But you have the strength of two grown men already. You’ll only get stronger. You already killed one of us, who’s to say the rest won’t follow? That is why you…must…be…destroyed!”

Nyx tried to hide her shock, instead she snarled. John had died? The strength of two men? Was she really inhumanly strong? Now that she thought about it, it made sense. She was able to break a hole through the underside of a car and she had been fast, she’d climbed that massive tower of cars in seconds before the storm had broken. She turned to the guard; she had plenty of information now.

“Hope you and your people are satisfied with the fact that there’s barely any people left as it is and you’ve managed to wipe out most of them in your completely out-dated hunt. There are no Untouchables left, really, I wouldn’t be surprised if I was the only one left. I have no interest in destroying you. I don’t want anything from you.”

With that, she gave him a good whack around the head, knocking him out cold and returned to the complex. It would be a long time before she returned to the surface again.

CHAPTER EIGHT

Nine years passed quickly, one year blurring into the next and Nyx opened her eyes one morning to find herself twenty three years old, a woman, and a formidable one at that. The complex truly belonged to her now, she knew every last inch of it and the functionings of almost everything, and after nine years of reading, she had a wide range of knowledge, especially in Beforetime History. She had read the diary of the complex leader over and over, how it begun with her anxiety about being elected leader in such a crisis, talked of the suffering of everybody who had lost friends and family, and ended with the Untouchables’ take over. What the guard and the history books had not mentioned was the fact that during the take over the Untouchables killed a few hundred of the people underground and locked the rest of them in barracks like cattle.

As for Annabelle Croft, she and Paul Blake and a few other scientists had managed to take and hold the lab, although it was tough. The only reason they survived at all was because the scientists were able to synthesize their own food. The last entry, Annabelle talked of her plans to do a kamikaze run through the complex, drawing the Untouchables away so the scientists could release the vaccine and alert the other complexes to come and release the prisoners. The release must have been a success, but there were no following entries. Instead, someone had written in messy block letters on the next page, RIP Annabelle Croft.

A strange emptiness settled in Nyx’s stomach the first time she had read that. Annabelle had given her life to save the lives of others. Would Nyx have done the same in her position? She really couldn’t say.

Nyx had had to make a choice about the person she wanted to be. Really, she was too young to make the decision, yet she made it anyway. If she were to assume the role of an Untouchable, she could be powerful, dangerous, even unstoppable. But it would mean forsaking most of her humanity. Or she could try to be just a “normal girl”, who didn’t fight, who didn’t use her “powers,” who just lived out a peaceful life underground with her books. She could have had the best of both worlds. She was a human when she wasn’t fighting. But there were consequences. A man had died at her hands and Nyx had thought it to be all a matter of course. She had barely felt anything.

That had made her decision for her. If she could kill a man and keep going as if she were just picking flowers; if she could watch her mother pump poison into her veins, go into a coma and die, like it was just another day, and feel nothing…She was not human. She had read, in the thousands of books, how a real human with real emotions should have reacted to such a situation. Terribly, a complete break down should normally follow such trauma. No, she was an Untouchable. It was too much a part of her. And she didn’t think she’d change it if she could.

Among the education she’d received from the books, she had learnt the workings of various things, such as the other guns, the clothes cleaning machine and the virtual reality sets. The first gun was small and squarish, a short handle and a short body with nothing but a single button on the upper side of the handle. It was an ADSG, attack/defense stun gun, which Nyx dubbed “stun gun,” a hand-held weapon which fired a laser beam which would render the victim unconscious without harming them. She could see no use for such a weapon, but nevertheless she surfaced long enough to test it on a guard.

That was after two years underground. Nothing had changed, not a thing. The air underground still smelt better, the Renegades still died beyond the sector walls and the guards still patrolled the streets. She had snuck up onto the roof, picked a guard and sniper-style took him out. He completely froze all over when the blue beam hit him between the shoulder blades, and fell to the ground.

The third gun was a plasma grenade launcher, a weapon that launched capsules of blast-plasma, a particularly volatile, not to mention intensely powerful substance that, even in small quantities, could unleash a blast similar in magnitude to a nuclear weapon. The grenades contained not even a millilitre of the plasma, yet still were the size of tennis balls, and when fired would level everything within a ten meter radius. Nyx wasn’t about to go leveling buildings, even though the sector people deserved it. It would be foolish to destroy anything of potential use.

It worried Nyx ever so slightly that the final gun was stored in such large quantity. Wouldn’t only one blast from only one gun be necessary? What was it? A weapon so deadly that a single shot produced a bomb so powerful that it would not only wipe everything off an expanse about the size of America, but would throw the planet into nuclear winter. The gun was so complex it contained a micro-processor, which made it possible to program a timer into the bomb, or allow it to detonate on impact. Why had a weapon like this been produced at all? Not even in the last war had they been used!

As for the clothes cleaner, it was simple enough, with little to no potential to destroy the world, however it did have the ability to replicate items of clothing. Nyx, who had begun to wear the complex leader’s black garb like a second skin, didn’t hesitate to make herself a few sets more.

And finally, the virtual reality sets. As it turned out, one of them was a fight and training simulation. It was programmed to be boundless, it responded to the user's abilities and increased in difficulty and if the training program continued, was supposed to take them to the peak of their strength.

It had taught her some different techniques, but it just wasn’t fun when a program crashed because you surpassed it.

Nyx had thought she had seen the end of suffering. She thought, after almost a decade undisturbed in the complex, that she was safe. In truth, she had merely been lulled into a false sense of security. She barely remembered it, all those years ago, Jennifer’s paranoid delusions. Someone was coming. She was right. Someone was coming.

The initial explosion completely rocked the complex. It was so strong it threw Nyx out of bed, even though she was hundreds of meters underground. Fully awake before she hit the floor, she still didn’t get up once she had landed; the ground trembled violently beneath her. What was it called? She had read about it…earthquake? No, that was impossible. The last recorded Earthquake was over 500 years ago. As the mantle and the planet’s outer core hardened, it made it impossible for magma to force its way through the thousands of kilometres of solid rock to cause surface quakes.

Something must be happening on the surface , Nyx thought, as the ground continued to buck wildly beneath her. When, at least a minute later, the deafening roar and stomach churning movement had not stopped, she began to grow concerned that the complex would collapse before the shaking stopped. She knew it could withstand direct assault from nuclear weapons, but did that include anything continual, such as this?

Her concern was quickly forgotten though, the shaking stopped as quickly as it had started. The sudden stillness and familiar silence this time felt particularly eerie, foreboding. Nyx hesitantly got to her feet, quickly got dressed and went to arm herself. She took a CR-20, and the silver dagger. It had been seven years since she had been to the surface, and this time, she had an extremely bad feeling, but something huge had just happened and she had to see what it was. Later, she would wish she had just gone back to bed.

Nyx came out of the service vent to air choked with dust, day turned to night, the sky completely blacked out. What on earth had happened?! She looked up, coughing, the powdered concrete sticking in the back of her throat. The atmosphere tower was still in tact, pumping out white plumes of oxygen like never before, trying to compensate for the dust. It was pointless, as she looked around, she could see nothing more than the bursts of oxygen and the gravely ground in front of her.

Nyx withdrew back into the vent, took off her leather jacket and draped it over the grate to keep the dust out. She would wait until the dust had cleared. While she waited, her mind rushed with a thousand thoughts. What the hell had happened to cause dust like that?! It was pitch black outside. It wasn’t even that dark during the storms. The storms…she hadn’t seen one since the day she’d infiltrated the sector. She sure didn’t miss them, either. The sector had put life back into her. It had given her a kind of freedom she never thought possible. No one had found her, and she had spoken to no one for nine years.

A sudden roaring jolted Nyx from her thoughts. She covered her ears as an intense sound caused the vent all around her to start vibrating. It was as if someone was ripping the world and everything in it apart. With a final boom, that shook the ground further, everything was still and silent once more.

Nyx crawled out of the grate again and looked around. The dust was clearing and the tower had reverted to its regular oxygen production. She looked out beyond the gate onto the sector. There was nothing left. The entire city, everything single factory, every building, every truck, had been wiped off the planet. Nyx could do nothing but stand, horror-struck, her mouth hanging open, staring at the destruction before her. The explosion she had felt…something had completely decimated the sector. But who? And why?

The rubble stretched on in all directions as far as she could see. Except one. The field of atmosphere towers stood unscathed. But the rest…twisted metal, warped steel and jagged concrete slabs covered the ground. It looked exactly like the wasteland between the outside and the sector. Like someone had dropped a bomb. Nyx gave a bitter chuckle and began to climb her way into Ground Zero. Strangely fitting that the people who had destroyed so many by dropping bombs had been destroyed by the same means. Had they been destroyed? Nyx would search briefly for survivors. And then, regardless of if there were any, she thought, she would return to the complex.

As Nyx climbed higher onto the rubble, she began to see something on the horizon. So far she had seen absolutely no signs of life—no one alive, but no bodies either. But that was all forgotten as she moved on, getting closer to see what the strange black shape was. An hour and a half later, Nyx stood atop a shaky pile of concrete, remnant of a building foundation and looked out over the wreckage. The dust had almost completely settled now, the towers were in the distance and the thing she had seen was now completely visible, only a mile or so away. She flattened out on her stomach. If she could see it, whoever was there could see her, and she wagered that she probably didn’t want to meet whoever had done this.

So what had she seen that had compelled her to walk all that way? Masses of black metal; hundreds of arms radiating out on countless levels from a central cylindrical block, all linked to one an another by vertical and horizontal passages. On the perimeter at the ground level were, attached to the building itself, strange, glowing crimson orbs, currently steaming, throwing the whole building into a strange, misty crimson light. It was massive, as big as the towers and endlessly wider; she guessed perhaps three miles and two hundred stories high. That had been the second roar she had heard, the boom. It was not another explosion, it was this massive complex, no, this fortress landing.

The minute she saw it, and it all clicked in her head, she knew. Whoever did this was not human. No, not whoever, whatever. Aliens? And apparently hostile ones. She had read everything there was on them. The debate on whether or not they existed, were they intelligent, friendly? The debate was about to be answered, and Nyx was about to find out how horribly wrong, yet sickeningly accurate the world had been.

Nyx detected movement in the corner of her eye and her attention was drawn from the alien fortress to the ground in front of it. It was not rubble-strewn like the rest of the sector, but clear, compacted dirt, like the roads had used to be. It was amazing, she looked about herself in horrified awe. The atmosphere towers stood untouched, as did the clear spot of land where the fortress stood; even the crumbling outline of the outer city on the distant horizon lay in further ruin. Nyx wondered if she were the only one left alive. But then, the movement she had seen…

She looked down at the ground and saw them; hundreds and thousands of them, moving like a giant swarm. She could not make them out in detail, but could tell they stood on two legs at approximately nine feet tall, and looked as if they were made out of the same black metal as the complex. Their bodies shone dully in the waning light. They had the same basic body structure as a human, two arms, two legs, a head, although the head was elongated and there was an addition—a long, segmented tail with lethal-looking spikes protruding from the end.

All of them were armed, with what she could not tell, and why, she couldn’t figure out. No human stood a chance against a monster that size, they were already drastically outnumbered and no doubt there would be thousands more aliens in the fortress. The humans…Nyx had found them. The aliens had them lying on the ground, all lined up. That was why she had found no bodies. Were they dead? They weren’t moving. Then she realised she could hear them, the sound drifting faintly on the wind. They couldn’t move but they could still make sound. They were screaming. It was then she noticed something else on the wind. A strengthening smell of sulfur.

Nyx moved over that rubble faster than she had ever moved in her life. She made it back to the service vent in under half the time it had taken her to get to the fortress. Needless to say, just in time. The sky was completely blood-red by the time she got back and erupted just seconds later. Brutally. The storms hadn’t gotten any calmer in the time past, but clearly had strengthened, like Nyx’s Untouchable abilities. She had never been able to run like that when she was a child. She had effortlessly leapt concrete and pylons almost her own height and kept running as if they were not there. And when she dove into that vent, she had barely broken a sweat. She had never pushed herself to the limit before, Nyx almost wished she had an opportunity to test herself. She should have been more careful about what she wished for.

Back in the complex, Nyx collapsed on her bed, the strength that overtook her as an Untouchable receding and leaving her completely exhausted. But she could not sleep. Her mind was flooded, pounding with thoughts.

Aliens are real…aliens are real and…here! Are they going to take over the earth? If there are still people on the other continents, did they get to them too? Why here; why this sector? Is it because of the towers? Were we really the only ones left? When I die, if they're all dead…is that the end of the human race?

Would that really be such a tragedy? We, no, they came so far only to destroy themselves…really these aliens would be mopping up around the edges. Humans killed so many of their own kind, and every other kind of life on this planet. But the aliens are going to kill us. It's obvious, blowing up a sector bigger than what used to be New York is not a peaceful arrival. So who are the monsters? Humans, or aliens? Aliens who are more intelligent than us? Humans who, in all their years of apparent brilliance never made it past Mars? And then returned to destroy the sky they spent so long trying to reach? They're going to kill us. Yet I can't help but think that it is we who are the monsters.

Why do I have this nagging feeling that I should fight them? Do I want to die that badly? Or is it that I want to go out in some stupid, heroic blaze of glory? Why can't I help but wonder what happened to the people they captured? How did they even catch them? Are they being killed? Tortured? Experimented on? Why do I even CARE?! Why can't I stop thinking about it?! Why don't I just forget about it and just stay in the complex where it's safe? It's not like I ever go to the surface anyway. Where it's safe…what if this place becomes unsafe? What if they found me? They obviously found everyone else easily enough. That's why I can't stop thinking about it! I must fight to protect what is mine!

But what can one girl, Untouchable or not do against tens of thousands of aliens? One girl couldn’t even fight her own kind. Maybe I'll just die and it won't matter.

With those thoughts running through her head, Nyx finally fell into a restless, dream-filled sleep.

The next day Nyx awoke with her energy restored to begin drafting a plan of attack. Usually she would just wing it, but it was always on familiar territory. A human, if hit hard enough, will fall down and die. Nyx did not have the faintest idea how to fight these creatures. The first thing she must do, she decided, was to get close enough to properly scope everything out. Once she had a good look, she would be able to try and find a possible weakness, both in the aliens, and the fortress.

She made the trek across the broken remains of the sector for the second time. It was an arduous climb, one she chose to make at night. She was more comfortable in the dark, her abilities allowing her to see perfectly well. Usually, Nyx would have moved by night to avoid guards. Now she wondered how well these creatures could see in the dark. If they could not, then she would have found the perfect weakness. But if she were wrong…it was quite possible she were being stalked, prey. Nyx sensed the movement before she heard it; a crunch off to her left, like someone stepping on a carton of eggs.

She launched into attack mode, leaping backwards onto a higher slab of concrete, and glared down towards the sound, clutching her CR-20. She waited…but nothing more. No sounds, no movement, just the deadly silent night and purple-streaked sky and its whispering, sulfur-streaked breeze. No alien that size could hide in the space she had focused on.

Must have been the rubble shifting , Nyx dismissed it. She jumped down, slung the gun back over her shoulder and continued on. With all her abilities, she had not noticed the pair of striking emerald eyes, not blinking, watching her.

When Nyx began to get closer, she noticed immediately that things had changed. She was sure there was a burnt-out car next to where she had spied from yesterday…but she could find none. And wasn't the fortress…smaller? Within twenty four hours of arriving, the aliens had cleared the rubble and expanded the fortress by two miles! How was that possible?! As Nyx climbed down into the cleared area, she realised exactly how.

The people…all the people she had seen frozen in front of the fortress, marched in two lines, one towards a device Nyx had never seen before, the other towards the edge of the endless rubble. The device was incredible, there was no other way to describe it. She'd thought the equipment in the complex was advanced, but the aliens far surpassed it. There were four thin beams, each about a metre long, forming a metal square and being supported by two more beams attached to the frame from behind. It wasn't the square that interested Nyx. It was the field of energy created with in it. A swirling, purple vortex. Somehow the strange metal was able to harness the power, and even contain it.

It was this vortex that seemed to be the centre of the activity in front of the fortress. The humans had been made slaves, men, women and children alike, they moved like drones, back and forward, as if already their spirits had been completely crushed. Each would move along in the line, pick up a piece of rubble and join the new line travelling back towards the vortex. When the person at the front of the line had reached it, they would throw their load in and return to the end of the first line.

Meanwhile, piles of rubble disappeared into the swirling portal and after so much had gone in, an alarm ripped through the scene and everyone stopped. The slaves all moved back, as did their alien captors and the vortex expanded like a giant mouth. It was as if the barrier between dimensions was being broken through--within seconds an entire new section of fortress had broken out and merged itself with the main one. Nyx did a double take.

There were several of the aliens standing around supervising, one of them holding in its massive taloned hand what looked like a silver cylinder. But as soon as the new part of the complex had fused on, it screeched and out of the top of the cylinder blasted three blinding tendrils of neon blue electricity. It lashed them out at all the slaves, the tendrils just kept stretching until every single one of them was held in violent suspension by the fierce current.

When the alien finally drew its lightning whip back, several people lay dead, and a thin smoke hung in the air. The smell suddenly brought back memories of cannibals and Nyx fought the urge to retch. One woman fell to her knees from the shock. The aliens didn't miss a beat. Within seconds every single one of them was upon her. The air was filled with screams, both human and inhuman, and the sounds of tearing flesh and snapping bones. In under a minute the aliens drew back and Nyx hesitantly looked down to where the woman had fallen. A massive pile of blood, it looked like every last drop from her body, was seeping into the dirt. All that remained.

Nyx swallowed hard, her mind reeling at the speed of the attack, the constantly growing fortress, the strength of these creatures. This was the first time she'd seen them up close, and in action. Their intelligence was incredible, yet they were primal, brutal, merciless. If she thought they'd looked lethal from afar, she hadn't seen anything. They towered over their human slaves, their backs arched forward, heads down and watching. They appeared to have both an internal skeleton, and an external, natural armor, like giant, demonic insects; down their backs were huge, grooved, vertebrae-like plates that extended into a long, muscular segmented tail. The silver spikes at the end, Nyx noticed, could be controlled, as she saw the alien she was watching turn on another slave and throw him to the ground, where he lay bleeding. The creature then bent the spikes under his body, lifted him up on them and flung him into the vortex. It was a very different reaction to the rubble. It was as if the alien had thrown him into a moving propeller blade. Blood splattered over everyone nearby, but then with a sudden pop, he was gone, and once again only blood remained.

The aliens' elongated heads seemed almost featureless until they snarled, revealing countless rows of jagged silver teeth, identical to the tail spikes, set in a long fierce muzzle. A thick, gelatinous drool, thick and silver, like mercury, dripped from the corners of their mouths. And their eyes…black and cold and empty, huge black pools of oil, sunk into either side of their demented heads.

Their chests and stomachs seemed to be protected by the same body armor, although it was smooth and a thin crack ran down its middle. Nyx wondered if this exoskeleton was really natural, as it appeared, or some sort of battle defense they chose to wear. The arms and legs were both long and extremely well muscled, they almost seemed to ripple. Long, thin, three-towed feet finished after backwards facing knees, like birds, which caused the creatures to bob when they walked, and gave the impression that they were able to leap great heights. She prayed to God they couldn't fly. The aliens had cruel, four-fingered hands with massive taloned claws like the tail, and, as Nyx had seen when the alien had handled the whip they had great dexterity.

So where did this leave her? As the last remaining human who wasn't even really human, destined to fight an impossible battle to save the very people who chose who lived or died in the very world that they had destroyed. The aliens had taken over the earth, or at least America. Nyx didn't know if there were still people on the other continents. None of her books ever said if anyone else had survived the virus. If there were, she didn't doubt that it would be only a matter of time before they were taken too. She had seen how quickly they were to torture, to brutally murder. It could easily have been her on the receiving end of that whip. She must fight. Not to save them, not to save the world, but to save herself.

CHAPTER NINE

Every night for the next three nights she went, and every night the journey shortened as the fortress encroached on the towers. It was becoming more than a fortress, it was transforming into a hellish city. There was more than just a central pillar now, massive walkways lined entirely separate structures and she was beginning to be able to identify different uses for each building. There were at least twenty now, the original one appeared to be the control centre, all entries were guarded. Somewhere further out appeared to be a factory, making what, she didn’t want to know, but it was manned by human slaves—she saw them enter and she saw them leave.

Linking the factory to another building, possibly storage or assembly, were two huge green tubes. She was unsure of their functioning, like she was with most else in the fortress, but she assumed—she could think of no other use for them. And then there was a third building; a building tiny in comparison to the rest, two stories and one walkway and more heavily guarded than the control centre itself. There was only one way in and around the base there were strange grates open to the outside. The humans went in, but none came out. It took her a whole day watching to fully understand its purpose.

The humans were filed in like cattle, about ten or so at a time. A small cluster of the creatures followed them in and Nyx was left to wait in the dark, crouched behind a galvanised iron sheet, enshrouded in shadows and silence. She could see nothing beyond those black steel walls, there was not a single window in the entire fortress. But suddenly like a clap of thunder on a clear day, a single scream pierced the darkness. Within a minute Nyx realised what the grates were for. They weren’t grates, they were drainage tubes. And from those tubes gushed in waves a thick fluid that pooled on the dirt and only partially sunk in. Fluid that smelt like flesh and copper and stained the ground. Nyx didn’t have to be close to know. Blood. About five litres. That building…torture, experimentation and slaughter.

There was no time to do anything more that night, with the sky turning red, then grey, she knew the dawn was approaching and she must get back inside before the storm broke. She wondered how the aliens responded to the storms, whether they too were forced to seek shelter, or if their armour was impervious to acid too. On her return to the complex, in plenty of time, Nyx showered, ate and went to bed. But she found it difficult to sleep, a problem she had never had before. She was too on edge, too unnerved. How could she sleep when above her, a city was being built in mere days. Within seconds the human race had been enslaved, thrown from supreme rulers of the planet, to nothing but ants.

Nyx was sure she was the only one left, the only one left to watch the blood gush on to the streets, the result of God knows what, the only one to watch the people force their broken, battered bodies perform the laborious, menial tasks set for them. Within three days, all had appeared to have aged sixty years. There were two things she must do; pick off a lone alien and confront it, and try to get inside the fortress. The success of these two objectives were her only hope.

Tomorrow I will fight, she thought. And then…who knows?

*****

She had come properly armed today, with both a CR-20 and a stun-gun. If stunning the creatures didn’t work, then she’d try to blast them. If that failed, then vaporize. If that didn’t work…she was screwed in a very big way. Nyx was lying on her stomach, she propped herself up on her elbows. She picked out a lone guard walking by, watching the eerie green perimeter lights play over its body. Lights. They couldn’t see in the dark, or at least not very well. Good. She finally had a weakness she could try to exploit.

Nyx barely needed to aim, the night and the adrenolin had made her Untouchable again. The laser streaked blindingly through the darkness and hit the alien smack in the side of the head. It screeched in fury and spun in the direction of the shot. Nyx flattened out again, but nothing more happened. This weapon, that could render a human unconscious, had absolutely no affect on the aliens at all! The alien she’d hit furiously stalked off, and about a minute later returned with another. Or was it two different ones? She couldn’t tell, they all looked alike.

Regardless, they were both looking in her direction now, with weapons raised. They mustn’t be able to see her, or else they would have fired. She couldn’t get up again, and risk being shot, instead she slid her hand and the CR-20 slowly over the edge and blasted another alien. This time she hit it in the chest, and it reacted as if something as minor as a pebble in its shoe had been discovered. They, of course, did not wear shoes, but they didn’t like being shot, even when it didn’t hurt them in the slightest, and seconds later, flaming orange bolts were streaking over Nyx’s head.

There was only one more option; vaporize, but she hesitated in using it. Not because her conscience forbid her from kicking some alien ass, but because if this didn’t work, then she was really and truly out of options. Biting her lip and waiting for the alien fire to cease, she flicked the switch and took aim. Held her breath…fired… The beam burst from the gun and ripped through time and space into the creature. Nyx looked down in horror as the alien raised its gun towards her again…

No…

Driven by irrational fury, Nyx leapt from her hiding place and tore down the face of the rubble to confront the aliens. If she couldn’t kill them with weapons, then she’d just have to do it the old-fashioned way, she thought, grabbing her knife from the back of her pants. She’d never used it, not once, yet she had felt compelled to keep it all these years. Maybe it was part of her irrational human side. Maybe it was destiny. No. Nyx didn’t believe in destiny.

The aliens had most definitely seen her coming now, tearing towards them bearing the glistening silver blade. It was two to one and she had lost the element of surprise. She had seen how quickly, how viciously they had torn into that woman and left nothing but blood. Perhaps it would be her blood which would stain the streets tonight. She didn’t think they really knew what to expect, she doubted there would have been much resistance from all the others captured. They seemed to spread out, one backing up the other.

Nyx had two plans of attack, she only hoped she would survive long enough to try them both. She wasn’t about ready to give up on the vaporize function just yet. The armour was resistant…but it wasn’t the whole creature…there had to be a way around it. At that moment the alien stretched open its massive, merciless jaws and let lose an ear-shattering screech. Nyx wasn’t going to wait. All within a millisecond she got an inspiration, fired the CR-20 straight into the drooling mouth and backflipped her way back to the rubble. If her theory was right, the armour would contain it, but even so, she wasn’t quite prepared to be vaporized.

It was the most amazing thing she had ever seen, it was too bad she’d missed the beginning landing, but the creature didn’t even have time to scream, it just…disintegrated.Its mercury blood began to squirt out but it too was caught up in the blast before it had even started on an arc. Within two seconds, all that remained was the hulk of its armour, lying on its side on the dirt, no blood, no bone, no tissue, not a single piece left at all. Nyx just stared, gaping. The other creature was having a pretty similar reaction, just standing there, stock-still, looking at her.

They both seemed to realise at the same time, that they both had better move if they wanted to survive. Nyx was right about those legs, the alien sprung into the air and before she could blink, it had landed on top of her, leaving her pinned by the legs flat on her back. It snarled down at her, drool dripping down in strings onto her jacket, already knowing better than to open its mouth. So she would test her second theory. That crack down the front of its armour…it was the only obvious opening over its whole body…the alien lunged down at her with its massive opening jaws just as Nyx thrust the knife upwards into the crack. The alien stopped as if it had been frozen.

She wasn’t about to wait, she turned and tore and ripped the blade through the soft flesh between the armour and managed to slice right down the torso. The mercury blood gushed all over her, soaking through her clothes and splashing on the ground. As for the alien, it wasn’t dead, but now she was more than capable of pushing it off her. It lay on the ground, twitching and bleeding, its armour gaping open, exposing the mottled brown flesh of its real skin. Nyx got up, dripping with blood and jumped back to the top of the rubble. She had had a small victory tonight, but she knew how lucky she was to walk away. She would not tempt fate, so to speak, and began her return to the complex. This time, however, as she walked away, she noticed something. She was being watched.

On return to the complex after making incredibly sure she wasn’t being followed, by aliens or otherwise, she dumped her clothes in the cleaner and headed for the shower. The blood came right off with soap and water, thank God. In her room, with no idea why, she picked up Annabelle’s diary and began thumbing through its many pages. Something compelled her to do so, as if it was a book she had begun reading but never finished. The pages at the end were blank, faceless. Yet she felt as if there were words she could hear in her head as she read. A voice, somewhere urged her to write.

What is it about this book? Is it the fate of the leader of this place to leave their mark between these pages and then die a martyr, in an attempt to save the world? I don’t believe in fate. I don’t believe in martyrs, either.

It’s the last thing I want to admit, but Jennifer…mother…was right. They were coming, they came. Almost a pity they didn’t come earlier so she could come around long enough to drawl out an “I told you so.” But they would have got her anyway, so I don’t know. It’s all so hard to grasp, it seems so unreal, like I’m reading a book and all I need to do is close it to make it stop. But it won’t stop. Within a week…no war, nothing, just a clean invasion and the world belongs to them. A week ago there were factories, guards, a broken city of Renegades. Today there are monsters in a fortress and a street filled with blood. It’s such a bitter irony.

I can’t stop what’s coming, but I’m not scared. If I learnt one thing out there, what may come, will come. Even with what I did tonight…I can’t win this. The inevitable will come. But I’m not scared. I’ve seen enough to be ready to die.

It almost became a routine. Nyx, destined to fight, destined for darkness, destined for death, became a true creature of the night. She existed only in shadows; every night she would appear as if out of thin air and swoop like a bird of prey, an assassin. She killed countless numbers, yet they didn’t fear her. She wondered if they could even be afraid. Nyx wondered if she could ever be afraid. Over the months there were no differences, until the fortress finally reached the field of towers. She had been able to come up, fight and go back down with relative ease.

Until one night, Nyx slipped into the fortress’s massive blood-soaked streets to miss her head being blown off by a hair’s breadth. Security. They had security. Bristling from the lower stories of all the buildings surrounding her were guns that fired neon green lazers, so similar to CR-20s that they could have been them. In her immediate vicinity she counted four security guns, while erratically zigzagging down the street so they could not lock onto her.

It wasn't terribly difficult, she took out all four and then another seven in the street in front of her, with the CR-20 vaporize. Then she stopped, waiting, the sudden silence wafting around her like a fog. The two buildings on either side of her loomed forever upwards, their seemingly endless height blocking out the sky. The fortress made the atmosphere towers look like building blocks, Nyx couldn’t even begin to comprehend how something that high could stand without imploding under its own weight… Suddenly Nyx was struck by an inspiration. There were better ways to go about fighting…killing them was getting her nowhere; no matter how many she killed, it wasn’t even denting their numbers. But if she destroyed the fortress…it might not bounce back so quickly, and it was possibly she’d kill thousands of the monsters in the process.

Resisting the urge to race, she slipped her way though the streets and between the buildings back to the complex. She made sure she took a different route every time, going further into the field, weaving around and doubling back. She was incredibly careful to leave no trace, not even footprints. Her top concern was that at some point they would track her, find the complex and storm her. Nyx could never allow this to happen.

As soon as she was underground she sprinted through storage, traded her CR-20 for a plasma-grenade launcher and like a shadow at sunrise reappeared in the streets of the fortress. There were four aliens waiting for her. Nyx grinned sadistically. She had only ever taken on two at a time, but she was always up for a challenge. She strapped the gun to her back before taking out the silver dagger and awaiting the attack.

The aliens formed a line, single file but spaced out, and the front one lunged straight for her. She pounced into the air as if she could fly—she almost could—and leapt clear over the creature’s head. The second creature in the line had never anticipated that, and, quick as they were, could not react fast enough to stop her jamming the dagger into its chest and slicing it open. She had near perfected that now, the alien literally fell apart, its mercury blood gushed like a split dam, but Nyx stepped away with not so much as a drop.

The other aliens were now well aware of what she was doing, and not even she was quick enough to avoid being flung into the side of a building. She managed not to beak her neck though; as she was flying she managed to hook onto one of the pipes along the side of the building. And there she hung, five stories in the air, her shoulder aching from the gut-wrenching stop.

An alien sprung up from below, its mouth opening to tear her legs from her body. She saw it before it jumped and she knew she only had one option. It had been stupid to leave the CR-20, she suddenly realised, but it was too late now. She tore the grenade launcher off her back, breaking its synthesised leather strap in the process and exploding a grenade down the alien’s throat. The grenades had a preset two second fuse, Nyx didn’t have time to watch, she desperately began scaling the building. She was still far too close when the alien exploded, a column of white fire screamed past her as she pressed against the building.

A few seconds later, she dropped down, singed and now a bit hot, but generally okay. She took off her leather jacket, examined a gaping hole in the back.

As for the aliens, not a trace of all three of them remained. There was nothing but a huge blackened scorch-mark in the earth. She was about to test out one of the plasma grenades on one of the buildings, when she noticed something. Actually this time it was a few somethings. Those damn eyes again. And this time they weren’t alone.

Not bothering to suppress her anger, not even bothering to look at them, Nyx knelt and began levering the cover off one of the hundreds of air vents that bordered the base of every building. Then she did something she hadn’t done in nine years. Spoke.

“I’m about to bring this building down, get the hell out of there!” Her own voice sounded strange to her. Different to how she remembered.

Instantly four people appeared beside her. None of them moved. Still she would not look at them, just moved onto the next vent cover.

“I said go!” she snarled. “I’m not gonna say it again, get the hell out of here!”

They left then, running through the open back towards the towers. Nyx gave them a minute, then fired six grenades, one into each vent…and ran for all her life was worth.

Once again, she was too close when the world was rocked by the explosion. There was no fireball this time, it was contained within the building, but Nyx was still bowled over regardless and landed with bone-jarring force. She had no time to lie around, three hundred stories of steel, concrete and God knows what else were collapsing a mere one hundred meters away from her. She barely made it out of the fortress, it started raining chunks of metal the size of cars, and the building managed to collapse in two different directions, taking out the whole of the building next to it, and half of the one on the other side.

When she finally stopped to survey the damage, she was almost shocked at the weapon’s effectiveness. Huge hunks of rubble were strewn around a five hundred meter wide crater, almost six stories high in some places, a burning mass of warped, twisted steel. Black smoke rose in plumes against the red sky, and Nyx began to notice bodies. Not whole bodies, but thousands of pieces of bodies. None seemed to be human, but due to the intense heat generated by any type of plasma-based bomb, Nyx wondered if there would be any human tissue left to find.

But now was not the time to go scavenging for miscellaneous limbs. Any second now, every alien in the fortress would be surrounding the crater. Even Nyx knew that that was a fight she had no hope of winning. She disappeared into the field, and decided it would be wise to take a very long detour before returning to the complex. She was about a kilometre and a half away from the fortress when she realised she was being watched again. Nyx sighed heavily and turned around to fully face the four humans.

There were three men and a woman; the woman appeared to be in charge, she stood in front, her posture implied a subtle confidence. She was the youngest of the four, but slightly older than Nyx, she guessed perhaps twenty four or twenty five. Nyx recognised the woman straight away, or at least part of her. She was the owner of those dazzling emerald green eyes, the ones that Nyx had caught watching on so many occasions now. The rest of her didn’t look so good, about as grubby and starved as Nyx had been when she had first come to the sector. Her hair, she guessed, would be a deep auburn red when it was clean, but that was about all she could tell. Her only clothes were a pair of filthy torn shorts and a once-white-now-grey T-Shirt that hung off one battered shoulder and was split half way up one side. None of them had shoes.

The men were just as bad off…all of them were in their mid-thirties, one dark haired and two blonde, all of them were in dire need of a hair cut and a shave. The dark haired one and one of the blondes had blue eyes, the other brown. As far as clothing went, she was in high fashion. Only one of the guys had a shirt—the blue eyed blonde—but it wasn’t much of one, and a pair of pants that looked like they once belonged to a guard’s uniform. The other blonde one had a very tattered pair of jeans, and the dark haired one had nothing but a pair of shorts like the woman’s. Nyx could count every single one of their ribs.

She didn’t speak, just stood there, waiting. They must want something if they’d spent so much time following her. She wondered where there base was, frankly she was amazed they’d managed to survive so long.

“You’re incredible!” the woman said. Her voice was smooth, low, yet feminine. “Who are you?”

Nyx nearly burst out laughing! What the fuck?! It was just too bizarre! Here these people who had been watching her, yet looked like they would die if the wind blew too hard wanted her to lead them?! In what? A war?!

“Look, I know what you’re thinking,” the woman went on. “But we…there’s ten of us…we’ve been trying to fight for months and gotten nowhere! You!” she flung her arm in the direction of the fortress. “You must have killed ten thousand of them tonight!”

“Whoopee,” Nyx said. “And you don’t know what I’m thinking, or need me to lead you,” she threw a bottle of water and a tablet—the usual supplies she carried—on the ground and began walking. “Go back to where you came from and stay there. You’re gonna get yourself and your people killed.”

Looking at the supplies, one of the men yelled after her, “We don’t want your charity, bitch!”

*****************

Back in the complex, Nyx lay on the floor in the rec-room, staring at the high ceiling, trying to stop thinking. She could not get any of the night’s events out of her mind; she had had her biggest victory since the invasion had begun, yet she was completely unnerved. There were people out there, people who had somehow managed to escape capture and survive all this time…but who were they? Where were they staying? Did they come from the sector? The outer city? And what were they doing? Did they fight too? If they did, Nyx had seen no evidence of any other sabotage, nor had she ever seen them.

Did they know she was an Untouchable? How many had been watching her? Just that woman? Those eyes…they haunted her. Why did she persist in watching her? Unable to stop thinking about it, she got up and prepared to do the only thing she could do that would take her mind off it. Go back again.

****************

When Nyx stepped out of the service vent, she saw a very disturbing sight. Down in the fortress, a war had been waged. Those four strange people were scattered around the crater, taking cover behind the various pieces of scrap. The aliens were out in force, there would have to have been at least thirty, the humans were out numbered more than seven to one. They were a motley crew, they had no real weapons, they didn’t even have proper clothing. The three men each appeared to have picked up their weapons straight from the ground, each wielded various lengths of twisted metal from the explosion. Or maybe they were from another explosion; the rubble and the crater were still steaming.

The woman had the best weapon, it was an ancient gun, readapted for life post-virus. Best described, it was an assault rifle, closest to the AK-47s of the late 20^th early 21^st century. Nyx wondered how much ammo she had for it, if much at all. She must have been pretty low, because she wasn’t firing much from her cover, or maybe she’d just realised that pretty much all weapons were useless against the armour. Nyx didn’t join the battle straight away, instead she stood in front of the tower and watched the strange Rogue group fight.

The woman with the eyes wasn’t going to be taken easily, even when the three men stood in a circle of aliens back to back, she was still on the outside, lunging at one of them, trying to get her gun into its mouth. But she made the fatal flaw of not watching her back and before she knew it she was pinned to the ground just as Nyx had been. Nyx picked up speed, the alien was bearing down, opening its jaws, preparing to rip out her throat. Nyx saw her feeling above her for her gun while the alien trapped her legs, but it was futile, another alien stepped on the weapon, crushing it to pieces.

It all happened so fast that Nyx was the only one that really knew what happened. Knowing that there was no way she’d make it, she slid through the dirt like a baseballer sliding for home and skidded in from the side underneath the alien. Her hip and shoulder bumped the other woman’s and she looked over to see Nyx’s snarling face as she raised the CR-20 and fired, then grabbed her by the arm and leapt clear as the alien disintegrated.

It was as if someone had paused the fight then, the woman just stopped and stared at her, even the guys forgot about their alien captor.

Holy shit!” one of them muttered.

But it seemed the aliens had forgotten about them too, they all rushed towards Nyx and the woman.

“Get out of here!” Nyx shouted at the men.

They refused to move.

“Get them out of here, they’re no use to me!” Nyx shouted at the woman.

“Just go,” the woman shouted, ducking as the alien tail came swinging for her head. “We’ll work it out later!”

“Take this,” Nyx threw her the CR-20 as the men disappeared. “Aim for their mouths,” she unsheathed the knife and begun slashing middles in quick, fluid movements.

“How much ammo?” the woman asked as she caught it at a run.

“Unlimited.”

Out of the corner of her eye, Nyx saw the woman’s jaw drop in amazement, but she soon forgot about it as the aliens began dropping around her. She was slashed and hit and thrown countless times, but her human side was far too recessed to feel any of it. The woman impressed her, she got knocked around a fair bit herself, but she took down her fair share and managed to hold her own.

Twenty minutes later, covered in both their own and alien blood, the woman looking exhausted, Nyx beginning to ache, the aliens that weren’t dead were beating a hasty retreat. Nyx didn’t wait, she started back towards the towers at a run.

“Let’s go, there’ll be more.”

“Who the hell are you?” the woman followed after her. “A better question would be what are you?”

Nyx didn’t answer, just kept running ahead.

A few minutes later, the woman said, a tinge of hopefulness on her voice. “Billie.”

Nyx stopped, turned to face the grubby, but obviously tough woman that insisted on following her. “What?”

“My name…Billie.”

Nyx turned and began walking again.

“Nyx.”

“Where are you going?” Billie asked.

“Nowhere. But if you’ve been watching me as long as I think, you should know.”

Billie trotted up and started walking beside her, jogging to keep up with Nyx’s long strides.

“Actually, you’ve done such a good job wandering around that you’ve managed to throw me off.”

Secretly, Nyx was pleased, but she wasn’t about to let it show.

“I came from there!” Billie flung her hand out towards the fortress. “But in case you haven’t noticed, it’s not there any more!”

“I should have guessed. The sector. Now, had you have been a Renegade I might have considered helping you. But if I help you now…and we win…I like things a lot better now than before,” Nyx turned from her and began walking in the other direction.

“I know what you are!” Billie called after her. “Do you really think if I cared I’d still ask for your help?”

CHAPTER TEN

Every night now, when Nyx came out to fight, Billie was either waiting for her or would appear soon after. She didn’t know how she managed it, she came at random times, but Billie still managed to be there. None of the other men were ever there, she always came alone. Nyx preferred to be alone but while Billie insisted on being on the battlefield beside her, they had a silent agreement. She would give her the CR-20 until the battle was won, they fought hard and watched each other’s backs.

Nyx tried to do as much damage as possible with her plasma grenades, but she could really only get one building a night. As soon as she fired, she had no choice but to run, to escape the explosion and the hundreds of aliens that would soon flood the area. The first explosion there had been only thirty. More came each time until now there were closer to a thousand. She knew she had no chance at fighting that many. When it was finally safe to return the next night, the building had been replaced, all the damage repaired and she was back to square one.

One night, Billie came chasing after her, covered in alien blood as usual, after another fight. This routine had gone on for about a month now, in that time Billie’s clothes had gotten far shabbier, her skin dirtier and herself thinner.

“Nyx, you need to come. I pulled my men out of the field to get you on side. They don't know what's going on, they don’t even know why they’ve been pulled out! They’re getting restless; we’ve been invaded and they want to fight!”

“We need your facilities, your weapons, your knowledge! And don’t tell me you have nothing because you come up here every night with perfectly clean clothes and weapons we’ve never even seen before!”

“So that’s it,” Nyx said bitterly. “I wanted a meal and your people tried to kill me. Now you want help and you just expect that I'll be gracious and happy to give it to you! Do you have any idea what it’s like to live beyond the sector?”

“Understatement!” Nyx snapped. “And you don’t have a clue about my life!”

“It’s not my problem!” Nyx said coldly. “The first one that dies will be a feast for all of you, I’m sure!”

“It’s my dagger,” Billie said suddenly, indicating the knife sheathed at Nyx’s hip.

“You took a backpack full of food, a knife and those,” she pointed at the spiked wristbands that Nyx wore. “From a hiding place in a car yard. So maybe I do have a clue about what it’s like out there.”

They stood there then, in an angry silence Nyx never thought she’d be the one to break. She could barely believe the words that came from her mouth. “I’ll go with you.”

Billie just looked at her for a moment, with an expression that showed she never really believed it would work. Then she turned and began to walk. Nyx followed.

During the journey, Nyx took a tablet from her jacket pocket and began to unwrap it. Now was the time she usually got to eat, and she was hungry. Out of the corner of her eye she noticed Billie’s ravenous glances, but the woman didn’t say anything. Nyx gave her a bit of credit for that. She took a bite, then spoke around the mouthful.

As of late, Nyx found herself doing things she never in a million years thought she would do, and handed the other half to Billie.

It was at least another hour and a half before they reached the end of the field, the place Billie called Dracmier. Nyx had sometimes wondered what was beyond the field…another sector? More rubble? Another city? However, as she was just about to find out, it was none of those. Land ended, just suddenly stopped and broke away. It was the ocean. Or at least, what once was, the ocean. Nyx found herself standing on the edge of a headland--she had never realised, but the field of towers and the factory sector were at least two hundred feet above sea level.

Stretched out below her raged a war of the elements; the ocean was a thick, broiling, bubbling, tumultuous sludge, slick and black like oil, but dense and gluggy. Towering waves pounded the side of the cliffs, black, semi-solid walls of deadly chemicals rushed up underneath Billie and Nyx like an oncoming freight train.

Nyx unconsciously took a cautious step back as the wave broke and splattered all over the jagged cliff face.

Nyx gave her an icy glare and took two steps forward. As if the raging sea wasn't enough, the sky mirrored the blackness, huge, heavy clouds, about a mile out, hung in the sky, so low they looked as if they could drop. But they didn't, they just sat in the sky and threw down blinding lightning bolts, there were barely five seconds between them, a pretty much constant bombardment of the ocean.

Nyx gave a curt nod. Strong sulfur dioxide fumes rose from the sludge, and although she would never say it, it felt as if a hand were squeezing her lungs. Billie seemed okay though--they were the lowest oxygen levels Nyx had been in for quite awhile, but apparently they were livable.

Nyx paused, looking out over the disgusting pile of toxic waste the ocean had become.

"It didn't always look like that," Nyx said, more to herself than to Billie. Then she tore herself away and began to follow.

Billie stopped at the final tower, a single one breaking the conformity of the rows and columns the others followed at the base of the hill leading up to the headland. She knelt and removed a vent cover identical to Nyx's tower, and they crawled through. She wasn't sure what to expect, not that that was anything new, but this was different somehow. She was…she didn't know…nervous?

Billie turned around in the vent and whispered to her, "Look, they're not expecting this…"

"Those men with you realised what I am! So you know they'll refuse your idea!" Nyx turned. "Well screw that, I'm going home!"

"Wait!" Billie grabbed her arm. Nyx's eyes flashed black, but Billie did not let go, a true sign the woman had no fear. "Please. Just one chance."

Nyx looked at her, considering. She could barely believe she was thinking about it, much less sitting in a service vent, yet she seemed to be doing it anyway, almost as if she had lost control of her own actions. It wasn't like she couldn't handle the hostility being an Untouchable generated; it was unnerving her more that Billie seemed not to notice.

Nyx couldn't hear her address the men over the roar of the tower itself, but a few minutes later she was following Billie again.

Nyx stood and looked around. This tower could not possibly be any more different from her own. For starters, there was no complex under this one, as far as she knew. But the rest…Billie hadn't been kidding when she said they had nothing, basically it was just the clothes on their backs. The floor was littered with piles of rags, made up of scavenged small bits of fabric that had managed to survive the explosion. There were also various twisted metal bars; make-shift weapons, and a few water bottles with dirty water from God knows where. But that was it.

She looked from the base to the nine men standing defensively around the tower, all filthy and starved, dressed in varying stages of shabbiness. She recognised the three she had seen before, but they just glared at her with the same hatred as all the rest.

Billie had just opened her mouth to say something, when Nyx cut her off. Something had caught her eye.

"What's that?" she pointed to an elongated, chipped silver cylinder, lying in one of the piles of rags.

"Beforetime weapon," Billie walked over and picked it up. There were two buttons at the bottom, and at the top, a strange fat bulb. "Found it scavenging, look."

She aimed it at the wall above her and pushed one of the buttons. The bulb fired out, a long coil of black rope snaking out behind it. It hit the wall with a clunk, where it locked on and refused to budge. Billie swung off the rope, then pushed the second button. The bulb released from the wall and automatically recoiled back into the cylinder.

"It's magnetic. And bloody strong. Can't really find a use for it, but I haven't found a metal it won't stick to."

"What do you think you're doing?!" one of the men finally spoke, a guy with brown, shaggy hair and mean dark eyes.

Brodie glared coldly at Nyx, but made no move to stop Billie as they traded weapons.

Nyx glanced at Billie, a "now what?" sort of look, well aware of the nine men, all keeping their distance, their eyes burning into her, very much enjoying her unease.

"Nyx, the Rogues, Rogues, Nyx," Billie knew she would have to be the one to break the ice. She felt as if she were chipping at a Beforetime iceberg with a toothpick. "You any good with names?"

"Okay, Frankie, Jake, Brodie, Bailey, Kevin, Steve, Aine, Blaze, Max," Billie pointed along the line.

Nyx regarded them all. Brodie stared at her with a hatred like no other. The others hated her too, but it was nothing like that. Bailey was the ex-guard, the blue eyed blonde, but she noticed that Brodie also wore the remains of a guard's uniform. Jake was the dark haired one, and Aine was the other blonde, although none of them were blonde now. They all looked the same to Nyx; dark and angry and dirty.

However she ignored their murderous glares and repeated the names without missing a beat.

"Well Billie, you sure trained it well," Brodie sneered. "Does it jump through hoops too? Now we know where our fearless leader has been going all this time."

"Shove it Brodie!" Billie shot back, not the least bit intimidated. "We need her or we're going to die!"

"Woah, woah, let me get this straight," Bailey held up a hand. "You brought that here to help us fight?!"

"It's lovely," Nyx had read enough sarcastic and cynical novels to know sarcasm when she saw it, and she could see already that this would never work. If they were going to be crucified though, they might as well go down fighting.

"You've compromised our base location!" Jake put in. "You let that thing in here armed!"

"Oh for fuck's sake!" Billie burst out. "If she wanted to kill you then you'd already be dead!"

"They don't even bleed!" Frankie snarled. "They're less human than the bloody aliens!"

Nyx's eyes flashed black again, her anger beginning to seethe. Some of the men stepped back in shock and fear. She took her knife from her hip, gave it to Billie and then held out her hand, palm up.

Billie took Nyx's hand and sliced a shallow cut across her palm, then gave the knife back. Nyx walked calmly up to Frankie, who suddenly didn't look so tough, gulping, his pale eyes glistening. She held her hand in his face, blood trickling down her arm. Frankie held his ground though, until Brodie shoved between them.

Before anyone, especially Brodie, could react, Nyx's arm shot out and grabbed him by the throat. She lifted him a good four feet off the ground and then threw him effortlessly twenty feet through the air. He crashed in a crumpled heap and lay where he landed, moaning. Frankie rushed over to him.

"Once again," Bailey said, trying to keep everyone just a little calm. "Why is it here?"

"There's a war going on out there, or at least there will be. Armies need leaders."

"Holy fuck no!" Max exclaimed. "It's bad enough we're being lead by a woman, but an Untouchable bitch…"

There was a unanimous agreement from the rest of them, including Brodie, who was still on the floor.

"You seriously expect us to take orders from one of their kind?" Kevin asked. "We might as well volunteer for slave duty!"

"I can't believe this, especially from you three!" Billie glared at Bailey, Jake and Aine. "She killed over ten thousand in five minutes and you saw it!"

"Oh, it's so heroic! Explains why they killed so many of us! How did it even get into the sector?"

"Who gives a fuck?!" Billie shouted. "There are aliens out there! We are going to die if we don't do something! You should all be wishing we had an army of Untouchables, at least then we might stand a chance!"

"If the choice is between siding with one of them, and the way things are now," Blaze said. "Then I'm happy here, thanks."

"Y'know what?" Nyx finally spoke up. "I don't need this. I didn't ask to do this.Really, the last thing I need is nine slow, inept, inexperienced, pathetic warrior-wannabes roaming around the fortress! So, if we've all come to a unanimous agreement, then fuck the lot of you, I'm going home." And she walked out.

CHAPTER ELEVEN

I always considered myself socially na�ve, Nyx wrote. But now I watch these people and I see that you can be surrounded by people your whole life and yet still know nothing about how they work. I want to go back up and fight…it's really all I can do, I'm too restless to stay underground. But I lost tonight to those so-called Rogues. Rogues and Renegades. Billie knows that we've entered a New Reality now. We're all on the same insignificant level, whether or not they accept it, there's no way we can win this, whether they have me or not.

What's the difference between them and me? I know we're going to die, I just wish they'd hurry up and kill me. I want them to kill me, yet I fight. My life revolves around cheating myself from the one thing I really want. I am drawn like a moth to the flame to the battles, the pain of the hits, the aching bruises afterwards, they're the only ways I know I'm still alive. Those men out there…they're shell-shocked and angry because they've suddenly realised that none of us has any reason left to live. The difference between them and me? I knew it all along.

Nyx awoke hours later, lying face down on the diary, still sitting at the desk in her room.

At least I fell asleep , she thought, standing up. She put her hands behind her head and arched her back, wincing at the various vertebrae cracking in protest of an uncomfortable night spent. Her neck ached, but she ignored it as she walked to the storage room to gather weapons--the magnetic rope, now known as a mag-rope, the plasma-grenade launcher and her knife. There was no reason to bring a CR-20 now that she had traded one to Billie. Billie…Nyx wondered if she would see the gutsy Rogue leader tonight. She wouldn't have really cared if she never saw her again, but she'd kind of gotten used to having her around.

Gradually, the creatures were tightening their grip. The security lasers had proved ineffective, so instead there was a visible increase in the number of perimeter guards. They weren't a major problem to Nyx, all it meant was a few more bruises and a little more time spent fighting before she was able to penetrate their line.

Tonight, she had a new tactic. She had seen the mag-rope stick to the inside of the tower. Nyx fired the magnetic bulb up into the air, let the rope reach the end of its length and then locked the magnet on. She put a little weight on it, to make sure it would hold, then pressed the button for auto-recoil. Five seconds later, she was dangling by one arm one hundred feet in the air at the end of the metal cylinder. She had a perfect view. In fact, if she hadn't seen this from above, she would have walked straight into an ambush.

They'd, on occasion, tried to ambush her before, but she was always capable of fighting her way out. But tonight…even Nyx knew when to admit she was out-numbered.

From ground level, it would have looked like any other night, around ten guards strolling the immediate perimeter vicinity. But, in the streets behind them, obscured by the buildings, an army of over two hundred of the creatures stood lined up, each clutching their massive alien guns, awaiting some sort of signal. There was absolutely no way she could get in and place timed bombs tonight. They must have been doing something important though, even if the aliens kept rebuilding. Nyx must have been viewed as a pretty big threat for them to send over two hundred troops after one girl.

Nyx hung from the tower and watched. She had to accept that she could do nothing tonight. She was out of range to try and scatter them with a plasma grenade, and if she were to go in on foot she would bring the whole army down on herself. Tomorrow night, now she was aware of this, she would devise new tactics and try to penetrate the line undetected, so as not to trigger the army's attack. She was about to drop down, when she saw a familiar figure emerge from behind the tower to the right of the one she hung from. She had wondered when Billie would show up.

But she stopped wondering fast when she realised that Billie was about to walk right into a trap set for her and there was no way she could warn her. There was no way she'd make it back to the ground in time, in fact she wasn't even sure the rope would lower her down. She couldn’t shout to her, or fire a warning shot. Sure, it would get her attention, but that of two hundred monsters as well.

Nyx grabbed the knife with her spare hand and flung it towards Billie, hoping it would hit the dirt in front of her, and not behind, and it wouldn't actually hit her. It was either luck or an Untouchable's aim, but the knife embedded itself less than two inches away from Billie's left foot. Billie obviously felt it, she gasped and leapt back, spinning wildly. But then she saw the knife in the dirt, bent and picked it up. When she looked around and couldn’t find Nyx anywhere, saw nothing, she immediately retreated back to the towers.

Nyx pressed the button to release the rope and plummeted toward earth. A few seconds before impact, she pressed the button again and the rope locked, wrenching her from the fall. She unlocked the magnet, dropped to the ground, recoiled the rope and disappeared into the darkness.

She found Billie a few rows in, crouched behind a tower, waiting. She stood up quickly when she saw Nyx. What little human side there was of Nyx nearly gasped when she saw her. Her face was torn and swollen and bruised, caked with old blood, slick with new. The rest of her body didn't look much better, in the darkness Nyx could see bloody welts all over her, each at least half a foot long. Her right arm was completely limp, she had used a length of rag to bind it to her body to keep it still.

Billie gave a slight smile, painful around her split lip. "Knew you'd find a use for it. How many are there?"

Billie sat back down against the tower, quite obviously at a loss for what to do now.

After a few hundred meters, she looked back and sighed grudgingly, seriously wondering if all these strange actions were the result of some unknown alien brainwashing techniques.

Nyx begun the usual winding journey she took before entering the tower. At best it was tedious; today she was less than five minutes from her tower, yet it took her twenty minutes. Usually it was closer to an hour, but Billie wasn't looking so good. Many times during the short, awkward trip back, she thought about backing out, disappearing and leaving Billie to fend for herself. Here she was, with maybe two minutes of thought, letting someone find out about the complex. The one place in the world she was still safe. It was barely three months ago that humans were the enemy.

Billie gasped, looking over at the fortress a mere five hundred meters away. "You live on the front line?!"

As soon as there was space, Nyx climbed in and shut the grate. Billie crawled as fast as humanly possible with one arm out of action and eventually they emerged at the other end.

"There's…uhh…there's nothing here," Billie looked around, a bewildered expression on her face. "This isn't like a set-up or anything, is it?"

"You may not hate me like the rest, but you still have your doubts. Untouchable motives and all."

"If you wanted to kill me, you would have left me in the building, right?" Billie asked.

Nyx walked away from her across the tower and lifted the cover off the ladder. Billie walked over, looking down at the dark hole in awe.

Billie did as she was told. Nyx followed her down and pulled the cover across, engulfing them both in pitch darkness. Billie gasped.

"Yeah," Nyx slid past Billie. "See you at the bottom," she pulled her jacket sleeves over her hands and slid all the way down.

Nyx just watched her for a moment, so vulnerable, so helpless. She could have so easily just walked away and left her there in the darkness; she could have killed her with a single hand movement, and all her problems would be solved. Once again, no one would know there was an underground base hidden under the towers, once again it would be just her against the world in what seemed like an endless final showdown. But she didn’t. It wasn’t that she couldn’t. She just…didn’t. Not this time. She didn’t need Billie. She didn’t want this war, this crusade brought down along with the Rogue leader. But it seemed this time that killing just wasn’t an option.

Nyx caught Billie’s arm and the girl jumped. She latched tightly onto Nyx’s sleeve.

A minute later they reached the airlock doors. Nyx pushed the green touch-pad and they hissed open.

“There’s some steps,” Nyx warned her, closing the doors behind them. She led Billie down to the central cube. “I’m going to turn the lights on. It's bright.”

Even with her eyes shut, when Nyx hit the power, Billie flung her arm over her face. Nyx gave her a few minutes for her eyes to adjust. Soon enough she was able to bring her head up and look around.

Once there she opened one of the huge storage cabinets she had used to keep the tablets in. It had taken four of these cabinets to fit them all.

“You can have as much water as you want,” Nyx sat on the edge of one of the long, metal tables, her feet on the seat. “But one tablet a day, we’re rationing.”

Billie didn’t bother to sit down, Nyx didn’t even look away for a second, but when she did look back, there was an empty bottle of water and no tablet to be seen.

“You ain’t seen nothing,” Nyx took a towel from the shelf and handed it to her. “Take off your clothes.”

Still a little confused at this peculiar request, Billie turned her back to Nyx’s and struggled out of what was left of her clothes, her face burning. She then turned around, wrapped in the towel.

Nyx cocked an eyebrow at her. “I don’t do sexual favours, if that’s what you’re thinking.”

“You’re easily shocked,” Nyx observed. “Interesting, considering you’re so fearless.”

“Really. Get dressed,” Nyx handed her her clothes back, fresh from being repaired and cleaned.

They actually turned out to be a pajama set—the shorts were blue satin boxers with purple swirly patterns and the top was a white T-shirt with the message “This bitch bites back.” Nyx smirked. She guessed that the alien attack had happened at night, while everyone was asleep.

As for Billie, she nearly dropped the towel in shock, she stood gaping like a fish, staring at the clothes.

“It’s a Beforetime machine. If the clothes are dirty, it’ll clean them. If they’re damaged…” she held up Billie’s shirt.

Nyx mischievously cocked that eyebrow again. “Unless you want me to help you? Or we could see what happens when a human goes through that machine.”

Nyx showed Billie to one of the sets of barracks. “You can sleep in here later. Bathrooms and showers are through the door,” she handed her a bottle of shampoo. “I’ll wait for you here.”

When she had gone, Nyx climbed onto one of the top bunks and lay staring at the ceiling.

What the hell am I doing?! She thought in desperate confusion. There’s a human in my showers! There’s a person in my showers! I let the bloody Rogue leader know the location of this place! Now what’s to say that in a week’s time I won’t have the whole lot of those bastards come traipsing down here?! Mind you, they’d probably kill themselves in the dark, but still…

She said they kicked her out. And she could easily look like that after an alien battle, but if they could hurt her that badly then I doubt she'd walk out alive. So did those men really bash the crap out of her? It's the only other explanation. In which case it's my fault because they never woulda done it if they hadn't seen me. They were her loyal troops until they saw me.

Is that why I'm inexplicably helping her? Because I feel guilty? Can I even feel guilty? Why doesn't she drive me crazy? Why don't I want to kill her? Why does she trust me, why doesn't she hate me like all the others? I bet if I'd offered this place to those men, despite their predicament, they'd still have spit on it. Not that I care. It's just the way things are.

About half an hour later Billie emerged from the bathroom, an entirely different person. Nyx dropped down from the bunk and looked her up and down. She never would have recognised her. Compared to the dirt, Billie's skin looked milk-white now, it would have been smooth save all the cuts and bruises. As for her hair, it was long and wavy half way down her back, a striking, fiery auburn red. She had unstrapped her injured right arm and now cradled it with the left.

Nyx noticed that despite the shower, she was still bleeding, and her arm really didn't look good.

A few minutes later, she strolled into the medical bay, a red hardcover book under one arm. Billie seemed to have found it okay, she was standing by the doorway, looking around, afraid to enter as if her intrusion would shatter the silent scene.

She walked to various cupboards and took out the things she knew--disinfectants, gauze, bandages. She still wasn't particularly keen to mess around with the Beforetime drugs and instruments.

"Sit," she dumped the book and what she had gathered on the end of one of the beds. Billie reluctantly sat, and to her surprise, Nyx sat beside her.

"It's okay, I think it's just a torn muscle or something," Billie kept brushing her off.

"See, if it wasn't hurting you then you wouldn't hesitate," Nyx said reasonably. She didn't wait for Billie to reply. "Trust me, okay?"

Billie looked away, not wanting Nyx to see her pain. "I was hoping it was just bruised."

"You've got enough of those already. I don't think it's bad, your wrist is still straight. But the other break…"

Nyx flipped open the book and started reading a section. A few minutes later she snapped it closed and looked keenly at Billie's arm.

"What are you going to do?" Billie was getting very nervous. "You only read a paragraph!"

"Lie down. I'm going to twist your arm to fix the bones and it's gonna hurt like hell when I…"

"Oh, I don't need an excuse! And would you have rathered I left you in the dark?"

"I have," Nyx felt the bones move at her touch. "Maybe you should shut your eyes, you don't want to see this."

Nyx didn't understand fear, but from the look of absolute terror painted on Billie's face, it seemed very real to her. Nyx didn't know if she should try and say something of comfort, or even what she should say; human interaction was the one thing she could not learn from books. Sure, she had read plenty of novels with characters in all sorts of emotional situations, but she well knew that there was a great distance between real life and fiction.

She reset Billie's arm then; she barely had to move anything, just a quick upward thrust and a sickening crack and it was done. Nyx had expected her to scream, or at least shout. People always shouted when something hurt them. But she didn’t make a sound, just lay there, shaking uncontrollably, pale and sweaty.

"It's done, you can sit up," Nyx said, referring to her book again. She glanced over at Billie a minute later and found she hadn't moved.

"Sorry," she murmured. "I'm not good with this sort of pain. I think I'm going to faint…"

"Please…don't…" Billie protested weakly. The pain had taken a lot of out of her. Nyx ignored her, swung her legs over the side of the bed and pushed her head down. "Trust me, just breathe."

"It's a good book," Nyx tapped the cover and grabbed a thin metal rod and a rolled up bandage. She quickly strapped up Billie's arm, using the rod to keep it straight.

"We won't be fighting for awhile anyway, not until we figure out how to get around that army."

Billie nodded and Nyx lifted it up to expose a painful painting of bruises and bloody welts. She dolloped some disinfectant onto a gauze and began dabbing at them.

"Don't make excuses for them. From the look of you, you were lucky to get out of there alive."

Nyx moved onto her face, dabbing carefully at her split lip and the gash across her cheek.

Billie awoke with a shout and then fell back in pain, gasping for air. She looked around in confusion for a few seconds, before realising where she was. In the lost complex with an Untouchable who's ancestors had tried to take over all civilisation. An Untouchable who, despite everything, had saved her, cleaned her wounds. She looked down at her clean, neatly bandaged arm. It felt a lot better now. Actually, all of her did.

She sat up and contemplated. What was she supposed to do now? Would Nyx let her stay down here? It wasn't as if she didn't have the space, or the resources…but after everything humans had done to her…she wouldn't have really blamed her for kicking her out. What about the rest of the men? She knew Nyx would sooner ally with the aliens than let them down there, and after yesterday, she agreed with her.

They only had another week at best before they'd die of starvation. Would that make she and Nyx the only two left? Were the aliens even bothering to keep prisoners anymore? As for the war, why did Nyx even fight? Why risk her life every night to save a world that spent all those years trying to kill her? She would ask her, if she didn't already know what her answers would be.

But Billie couldn't really blame Nyx for being so defensive. Years of solitude, God knows how long…Nyx was very much used to relying on herself. Not that Billie expected her to rely on her. But she hoped that eventually she could get her to trust her, maybe open up to her and then their conversations would consist of more than just Nyx's directions and Billie's ignored questions.

But she had to admit there had been some progress. In the beginning, it had taken days to get her to even tell her her name. And all of Billie's questions and comments would be met with a murderous glare. But now…Nyx would answer uninvasive questions, and even threw in random bits of information about herself. She knew now that at one stage she had broken bones, Nyx had hinted she'd had her fair share of beatings and Billie had a feeling that Nyx was more than a little interested in history. The world had been seriously wrong in their assumptions that Untouchables were nothing but brainless killing machines. She could tell already that Nyx was very intelligent. Was it more than a coincidence that it had been Nyx that had stolen her bag from the car yard all those years ago?

Billie reacted as if she'd been cattle-prodded; she leapt backwards out of bed and tumbled onto the floor in a tangle of sheets. Nyx, sitting cross-legged on the top bunk beside her, watched her struggle to free herself, the corners of her mouth quirking in amusement and ruining her stone-cold expression.

Billie eventually gave up with the sheets and lay in a heap on the floor, trying to catch her breath.

"The whole alien army could have stormed on in and you wouldn’t have even noticed."

"I did, you've been dead to the world for thirty two hours," Nyx dropped to the floor.

"Holy…well it is pretty damn hard to sleep with those damn towers and the storms over Dracmier."

"I meant that you actually trusted me to be in this place alone?" Billie stopped walking.

"Don't get the wrong idea," Nyx stopped too. "I don't trust you. But especially now, there's nothing you can't throw at me that I can't handle."

"Realistic," Nyx shot back. "If I can take on swarms of aliens and come out without a scratch, an injured human isn't much of a match."

"Oh just admit it!" Billie led the way this time. "You trusted me and I proved okay!"

"Sure you didn't," Billie knew she was winning. "And I bet I could throw something at you that you couldn't handle."

"You seriously don't…oh boy…" Billie looked at Nyx for a moment. "I'll show you. I'll put my arms around you, okay?"

She paused for a moment, trying to gauge Nyx's reaction, but found she couldn't read her. So she took a step towards her.

After she had eaten, in icy conditions, Nyx restricted Billie to the barracks and the central area and disappeared. Billie didn't really mind, she knew it was Nyx's way of punishing her for what she had said, and she was grateful it hadn't been something worse. She was curious as hell to explore the other rooms of this complex, to see if she could find so much as a hint that might tell her about what really happened down there.

Billie had always held a passion for history, but it wasn't until five years ago that she assembled a small team and went off in search of the lost complex. There were three, two small ones and the larger one, the one Nyx had found. She had spend every day of those five years searching, been to Dracmier and back countless times and all along, an Untouchable held the key.

In the sector, there were only two books of written records. All the others were rumored to be in the larger complex. At first glance, she had thought it had all been made up, but then Nyx had produced that ancient, accurate first aid book, seemingly out of nowhere. The truth rushed in like an incoming tide. There were records down there. It was amazing enough there were still artifacts in storage, but…Billie didn't dare go off on her own, and she certainly didn't dare ask Nyx. She had a pretty good idea that Nyx wouldn't hesitate to kill her, or worse, toss her out. Billie would try and talk to her again when she'd cooled off.

Billie was sitting on the step in the main room before the cube when Nyx appeared. It was unnerving the way she moved as if she were invisible; you didn't even see her until she was a meter in front of your face. Nyx was dressed unlike Billie had ever seen her. She wore short, cut-off denim shorts, a red crop-top and no shoes, her hair pulled back in a high pony-tail.

She couldn't help but stare. Her whole body glistened with sweat, but that only added to the whole amazing affect. She didn't look disgustingly over built like a body-builder, but Billie had never seen anyone better-toned before. She could see each muscle bulge and tighten in Nyx's arm as she moved to brush a loose strand of hair from her face. She had perfectly sculpted abdominal muscles--really, there was not an ounce of fat on her.

But she was not sickly thin, on the contrary she held an athlete's body, and Billie wondered if it was Untouchable blood or the hard lifestyle that had shaped it.

"Put your eyes back in their sockets," Nyx drawled. "I already told you no sexual favors."

Billie blushed scarlet and immediately looked to the ground. She didn't not look up again. After a minute of Billie's embarrassed silence, Nyx sighed and said,

"Well…broke the arcade scores…beat the virtual reality challenges… but other than that…"

"Did you bring me down here just to kick me out in a few days time?" Billie asked.

"Not even I'm that cruel," she said quietly, looking at the floor. "And it's not because I think you're like them, it's because I…"

Nyx let out a long breath, resting her head against the cold tiles and letting the steaming water pound on her back. She was confused, she felt as if she was losing her grip on reality, losing control of her world.

I told her she could stay… and I almost…. That's twice now I've nearly slipped. Why do Ihave this feeling that's what I should be doing? Slipping. Am I supposed to talk…to trust her?

She trusts so easily…yet she has secrets of her own…but I think I could get them out of her. Must be a human trait. She says that I'm human…but I think I'm just going insane…the fact I even want to know this so-called secret, the reason she was in the car yard all those years ago…. Why do I even care?! Why did I take her in? Why did I tell her she could stay!? What's happening to me?! She can't be right. I can't be human. I'm an Untouchable.

When Nyx finally dragged herself from the shower, Billie had figured out how to use the movie screen and was staring in fascination at a Beforetime movie. It was not so much the plot that had her mesmerized, but the beautiful forest landscapes, the birds, the animals, billions of years worth of life that she had never seen and would never see.

Nyx scooped the remote from Billie's lap, clicked the movie off and perched on the back rest of the couch in front of her. She was about to protest when Nyx cut in.

The fact that Nyx was willingly speaking to her caused her to forget all about the movie.

"What do you want to know?" Billie asked, utterly surprised but trying to act casual.

Billie let out a long breath and Nyx knew then that despite her masking perkiness and questions and general happy acceptance of everything, Billie had been hurt and it went a lot deeper than being physical.

She looked at her with wounded eyes. "I can't…" Billie took another breath. "I don't think you'll know what to do with the information once you know it."

"Just because I'm Untouchable doesn't mean I'm stupid," Nyx was a lot more perceptive than anyone ever gave her credit for. "You're scared but because you know I can't feel it, you think I'll react badly. Your own men turned on you and besides the shock you don't know how to react. And you're worried that if I find out what they really did to you then I'll go after them."

Billie just shook her head. "Eleven years by yourself and you know more about the human mind than anyone I've ever met."

"Humans wear their emotions on their faces. And those that don't…look at their eyes. Look at my eyes…you can't read me."

Billie looked into Nyx's eyes. "I think it's in your eyes…just a lot deeper than everyone else's."

Billie sighed. "All hell broke loose after you left. The other men weren't happy, but I told them you wouldn't be coming back and they were satisfied. But bloody Brodie…he just wouldn't let it go. He couldn't get over the trade, he took the gun from me," Billie ducked her head in fear.

"The next day he started pulling them away, one by one. I was planning a new assault but he said my planning couldn't be trusted, he thought I was conspiring with you. I told him I was in charge and if he didn't like it then he could leave. Didn't do a lot of good, by the end of the day we had a full-blown mutiny. He had seven of them on his side, the other two were sitting on the fence…"

"They said it was bad enough a woman led them, it was why we'd made no progress. I told them it wouldn't have made any difference which one of them had led us, we'd still be in the exact same position, maybe even worse. Then Brodie said he refused to share a side with an Untouchable sympathizer. He said I should be punished appropriately," she glanced at Nyx, but as she had said, found her impossible to read.

"Yes," Billie confirmed. "And I knew he would, he's insane enough. But I challenged him, it was the only way I could think of getting out alive. I said he could fight me, and if I lost, the army was his and he could kill me and wage the war on his own terms. If I won, I lived. He didn't even let me pick up a weapon," she shook her head. "He just lunged at me with a crowbar. Next thing I know, Frankie's calling the others forward and they're all on top of me…" she took a shaky breath.

"I managed to grab a bit of metal…they threw me…I think that's how I broke my arm…but I conveniently landed on a piece. I managed to get up before they got to me again and I just went for the nearest face," she smirked a bit. "Took Brodie's eye out."

"Don't sound so surprised! Anyway, that broke the fight up pretty quickly and I ran for my life," Billie stopped; although she had held herself together through her story, she was shaking now.

Nyx moved from her perch at the back of the couch and sat beside her, although still keeping her distance. "I'm…I'm sorry."

Billie looked up in surprise, her eyes glistening. "It's…" she looked away. "If it wasn't for you, I'd still be rotting with the rest of them in Dracmier."

"Aliens…or so it seems…are edible," Nyx gave a wry smile. "Not even I sunk that low."

"You're not low, Nyx!" Billie exclaimed in frustration. "You're better than any of them!"

"The ten of us…we might be the last humans left. Which would make me the last woman, not including you. They were still going to kill me! You took me in even though I'm supposed to be your enemy!"

"You're not my enemy. Although sometimes I think it's not the aliens I should be fighting."

"In three weeks your arm will be better," she said quietly. "Until then I'll go topside at night and scout. We'll wage our war once and for all."

"You're right," Nyx stood. "I don't know how to react. But I won't go after your men. But if they come after me, I can't be held responsible for my actions. I'm going up. I'll be back before day-break," she clicked the movie back on. "Enjoy the film."

Nyx glanced over her shoulder. "I won't kick you out, y'know. Because I don't…I don't mind you being here."

CHAPTER TWELVE

Has it really been two weeks already? Feels like she's been here for far longer , Nyx scrawled in her diary. She looks different now. Her face is healed. And she cut her hair, just below her shoulders. Neither of us talk much, but I don't think it's because she has nothing to say. Maybe we should. But how long do you have to know someone before you know to trust them?

I let her roam the entire complex, minus the library and my room. And she's respected my wishes, she does what I say, she tries so hard to make this easy on me. Guess I gotta give her credit for that. She treats me like a person though, I don't think I'll ever get used to it. Is it proof enough that I can trust her?

Nyx strolled into the barracks one afternoon, half looking for Billie, half just wanting to go for a walk to clear her head before tonight. She found her there, sprawled on her stomach on her bed, sketching in a notebook Nyx had let her take from storage. Billie, as usual, didn't hear her coming. It was not until Nyx's shadow loomed over her page that she saw her and nearly jumped out of her skin.

Nyx slowly took it, looked it over. It was a half completed sketch of one of the rainforest-scapes from the movies she had been watching.

"It's…it's really good," Nyx awkwardly handed it back to her. In truth, it was better than good, it could have been an illustration in a book!

Billie smiled, both at the compliment and Nyx's awkwardness. "Do you need something?"

To her surprise, Billie laughed. "Nyx, relax. You look about as comfortable as you did standing in front of my men!" she tugged her arm, pulling her onto the bed. "Sit down, tell me what you were going to say."

Nyx looked at her knees and mumbled, "If you let me check your arm…will you scout with me tonight?"

"Maybe,' Nyx was able to take charge again, and without realising it, relaxed a whole lot more. She started unstrapping Billie's arm, the first time since she'd been there.

"A little stiff," Billie rotated her wrist a few times. "I think it's okay though."

For the previous few weeks, Billie had worn the pajama set she had come down in, but now that alternative means were available she agreed with Nyx that she should probably wear something a little more suitable.

"Wait here," Nyx left Billie in the central room and disappeared down the corridor to her room.

Nyx reappeared a few minutes later, carrying an arm-full of clothes and a pair of green and white sneakers.

"The grey shirt, overalls and boots were mine, the rest was here when I got here. What do you want?"

"Um…" Billie sorted through the various clothes--jeans, overalls and random pieces of gym-wear. "This," she held up a tight, short sleeved olive green T-shirt, "the overalls and the sneakers."

"I think so," Nyx left the rest of the clothes on the floor and headed towards storage.

She dumped the overalls on the conveyor belt and started bringing up options screens. "Ah, here we go, how much smaller do you think?"

Nyx punched it in, then held up the new pair of overalls against Billie. "Better."

"Good, get changed and I'll meet you back here," Nyx took the old overalls and went to put the other clothes away and grab some food. A few minutes later she returned, two tablets in her hand, another in her pocket.

"Here," she handed one to Billie, shoved hers in her mouth and started pulling weapons off the shelf. "You take these," she gave her a CR-20 and a stun-gun. "And I'll take these," the knife and the magnetic rope.

"It's completely useless against the aliens. But it'll knock a human out for a few hours without hurting them."

Fifteen minutes later, Nyx cautiously emerged from the service vent, knife up. She flattened herself against the tower, blending perfectly. Her continuous scans both around the towers and the fortress boarders turned up nothing, neither Rogue nor alien, not even perimeter guards. She beckoned Billie forward.

"Exactly," Nyx took the magrope from her shoulder strap and fired it into the air. "I don't know if you can usually hear it, but usually there's weapon's fire, screaming, machines…it never stops. Tonight, there's nothing…it's wrong."

"I don't usually hear anything besides the towers. But maybe this is a good sign?"

"Oh no," Nyx shook her head, watching the perimeter. "It's too easy. No, something's going on."

"I actually think they experiment on them more than they kill. Torture them till they're an inch from death, nurse them back to health and start all over again. I'm going up, coming?"

Billie glared and looped her arms around her shoulders, legs around her hips. Nyx pressed the button, holding the cylinder and they shot into the sky.

"Are you sure you can hold us?" Billie asked, while Nyx dangled from one arm. This time it was Nyx's turn to give Billie a look.

"They finally got to the Renegades," Nyx said. "Look at the horizon, the city is gone."

It was true, what few remnants of the crumbling Beforetime city was now nothing but metal fortress.

"So they have between three hundred thousand and half a million people now," Nyx calculated.

"Shit," Billie clung harder to Nyx as they swung in the breeze. "There were really that many people in the city?"

"That night you found us in the building was the one and only time I'd ever really been inside the fortress. We usually just attacked the perimeter."

Nyx couldn't have been more on the mark. No sooner had the words come out of her mouth when the roofs of about twenty buildings in front of her began to open. Panels folded out like the opening of ugly steel flowers until there were twenty hexagonal holes open to the purple-red sky. A mechanical whirring, followed by a metallic clanking, like gears turning, resounded throughout the fortress.

Billie watched on in both fascination and fear, while Nyx just watched, analysing every passing second for some sort of weakness, anything that could help her. She already knew now that at least twenty buildings, maybe more, had a possible alternate entry via the roof.

Countless aliens were emerging from the buildings and flooding the streets, congregating around and looking up at the roofs as if waiting for a show to start.

From each of the holes rose two metal poles, just over a meter apart. Strung up spread-eagled between each was a human. Billie had realised too.

"We're too close," Nyx whispered. "We won't be able to get down without being noticed."

In the time it took for that brief exchange, another hole had opened between all the others and a frame now stood over it.

Nyx recognised it. It was a vortex, just like the one she had seen create the fortress…only five times bigger.

An ear-piercing screech, equivalent to a human cheer arose from the crowd as the vortex powered up. The humans, who up until now hadn't moved, begun to struggle, despite the futility of their situation. Their clothes barely covered them, tattered grey strings of rags. Their skin was brown with filth, the results of months of captivity and torture, their hair so long and filthy that Nyx couldn't tell males from females. But despite this, they seemed relatively unharmed. She could see no injuries, and they hadn't been starved, or else they would look like Billie first had when Nyx had found her. In fact, she had only just started to put weight back on.

"When I've been past the torture buildings in the fortress, the streets are soaked with blood. I haven't seen inside, but I saw what one of those could do when they were building the fortress."

Their conversation was cut short by another resounding screech, indicating the vortex was at full power. And then, one human at a time, the show began. The first human began to be sucked towards the vortex, the chains pulled taught, the body suspended in the air in a deadly tug of war. And then, like a snake shedding its skin, the human's skin was torn in one piece from its body and sucked into the vortex.

Nyx felt Billie's fingers dig into her arms. What happened next was very quick; the chains snapped and the body was sucked through the air and disappeared into the vortex, before it erupted into a fountain of blood which rained down onto the cheering alien crowd.

The humans were insane with fear by now, screaming and struggling like wild animals; they all knew they were a part of this demented demonstration. Regardless, one by one, they were all sucked to their deaths. Billie couldn't watch any more, she buried her face in the back of Nyx's shoulder and clung so hard it almost hurt.

Within ten minutes there was nothing left but blood, so much blood the buildings dripped with it, it oozed down the walls, the aliens below were drenched in it. The whirring sound began again as the metal poles and the vortex disappeared back inside the buildings and the roofs closed over with a concluding thud. A final cheer arose from the crowd and they began to dissipate, filing back inside various buildings.

"It's over," Nyx said, glancing back at Billie. "We're going to free fall, hang on."

She pressed the button and they plummeted, before coming to a jerky stop about a meter above the ground.

"Get off," Nyx dropped down. Billie didn't budge. "I'm not carrying you all the way back!"

When Billie made no move to get off her, or even give any indication she had heard her, Nyx prised her hands from her shoulders. Billie fell to her knees in the dirt, covering her face with her hands, sobbing.

"So help me Billie, we're two hundred meters from the fortress, if we don't get out of here it's gonna be us chained up to those poles!"

The slap snapped her out of it instantly, Billie reeled and fell back, looking up at Nyx with huge, shocked eyes, a vicious red handprint coming up on her cheek. Nyx immediately realised that she had gone too far, but now was not the time to feel regretful.

Billie scrambled to her feet and ran for the service vent. Nyx didn't say a word to her the whole way down the ladder. As soon as the airlock was safely sealed, Nyx just left her in the central room and walked away.

Oh God, what'd I hit her for? I'm as bad as those freaking Rogues! Wait a minute, why do I care that I hit her? Why'd I even wait for her?! I've hit hundreds of humans! I've killed them without a second thought! What is this horrible feeling?!

Ten minutes later, she could not forget, she couldn't think of anything but the look on Billie's face when she'd hit her. She'd looked so…hurt! Almost as hurt as she'd looked after her men had turned on her.

Nyx played the scene again. After the first one, Billie had stopped watching, but just because she didn't see didn't mean she didn't know what was happening. Nyx tried to understand. Watching helplessly as your own people were slaughtered, knowing there was absolutely nothing you could do…it was just as brutal as any physical torture.

And then, by the time they had reached the ground, Billie had gone into a complete state of withdrawn shock…and really, what could anyone expect? Nothing in her whole life could have ever prepared her for what she had witnessed.

Nyx could not remember the last time she'd cried. She must have been extremely young, she couldn't even remember crying when her father died. But Billie…it had thrown her to see her cry, she seemed as if she could handle anything. She was the strongest human Nyx had ever seen, the first time she'd seen her fighting on the line. She, unaware and quite unintentionally, had taken solace in that. And then Billie had broken down and she'd suddenly felt helpless, desperate and angry all at once.

Nyx got up again. She doubted she'd do a very good job, but she'd try and be some comfort to Billie. She found her in the rec room, sitting on the floor, her back up against one of the couches, her knees drawn up. She was shivering uncontrollably, the tears still fresh on her cheeks, she looked so…so lost.

When she noticed Nyx standing a few meters away from her, she leapt to her feet.

"I-I know," she murmured, her voice rough from crying. "I'll show myself out. But can I keep the clothes? Please, because winter's…"

Billie froze, looking at Nyx in confusion, as if the situation was playing itself out in the exact opposite to what she had expected.

Billie nodded and did so. Nyx dropped down beside her and they sat in silence. Eventually she swallowed her pride and looked Billie straight in the face.

Billie shook her head. "I don't blame you, Nyx… they just looked so scared! And I couldn't…" she broke down again.

Nyx shrugged, well aware of Billie's little tactic to shift the topic off herself. "I've seen cannibals rip people limb from limb and eat them. Outside the sector, people murder each other for sport. I've seen people thrown into those vortexes before…aliens converging on and devouring a woman…I stood in the streets while they drained blood off the torture room floor…"

Nyx reached out and touched the bruise coming up on Billie's cheek. The touch brought tears back to her eyes. Nyx quickly drew her hand away. "I'm sorry, I hurt you."

"No…it doesn't hurt…it's just…the nicest person left in the world is the person the world hated the most."

"I can't remember the last time I did. When I was about thirteen there was a time I wanted to, but I don't think it counts."

She must have looked pretty horrified, because Billie lightly slapped her on the arm.

Nyx wouldn't look at her again, but this time Billie lifted her head and forced her to.

"Nyx, listen to me. If there is ever a time you let your guard down at all, then please, let it be with me! Trust me! You answered just then without even realising, you wouldn’t have known at all if I hadn't said anything! And it didn't hurt you…I won't hurt you, do you understand?"

Nyx just nodded, for some reason she couldn't get the words to come out. Untouchables were supposedly unreadable, but just then Billie had read her like a book.

Nyx shook her head. "You want me to trust you…then trust me and believe me when I say I'm not going to throw you out."

"You've changed so much! You just said that outright to my face. But if you want me to be honest then okay. I don't think just how much that impacted me has sunk in. I mean…there was just so much blood and…" her voice cracked. "…their faces…I'm sorry. I don't want to cry any more."

"I didn't even watch…yet it plays out in my head like I think it would have looked…"

"You said you were searching for this place so you could get information…on what?"

"Anything. Beforetime history, the war, the complex…" she shrugged. "It's lost though. The books must have disappeared somewhere between the first Untouchables and the sector."

Nyx let out a shaky sigh. She had never had such a personal conversation in her life. And seeing Billie like that still threw her. But she had somehow slipped into trust without realising it. Billie was right…it hadn't hurt her. Which was why she was about to do what she was about to do, and give Billie what she wanted so badly.

When Nyx walked into the barracks, Billie lay on her side, her back to the door, an arm wrapped around her pillow. Nyx, who had begun to enjoy sneaking up on her, didn't think she should put her through any more tonight.

Billie looked over her shoulder in surprise. "Thought you had something you had to do."

"I'm doing it," Nyx walked over to the bed. She held out to her an ancient book, the cover cracked, the pages thin and yellowed with age, the title, World History from 1890 to 2190.

"What the…" Billie sat up in confusion, before she realised what she was seeing. "Oh…my…it's…it's…" she was so shocked she could barely speak. "Can I…read…"

Nyx put the book in Billie's lap. "Goodnight." And left her sitting in bed, staring between the book in her lap and Nyx's retreating back.

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

When Billie didn't come to breakfast the next day, Nyx poked her head in the barracks and found her asleep with her head in the book. She suspected she'd spent the whole night reading, and decided to leave her there and go up on another scout.

She ate on the way, taking the rope and the CR-20 and climbed to the surface. Nyx emerged from the surface vent to see something she never expected to see. An army of men, dressed in full black body armour and armed with CR-20s, in the middle of an all out shoot-out with a pack of aliens. They weren't even one hundred meters in front of her, so she ducked out of sight behind the tower and moved to the next one to set up her rope.

From the air she properly assessed the situation. The nine of them had spread themselves out, using three towers for cover, the three men in front leading the main attack, the other six laying down cover fire. The aliens stood out in the open along the perimeter, firing continuous rounds of laser fire. Neither side was being particularly successful, the aliens hadn't hit a single man, and while the aliens had been hit plenty of times, none of them had been vaporised. They'd all learnt to keep their mouths shut since Nyx had come along.

The men could be none other than the Rogues, Billie's men. But Nyx could not recognise any of them, she could only pick Brodie because he was missing an eye. Their armour…weapons identical to hers…clean…fed…there was only one explanation. The Rogues had found another complex.

Billie pushed her hair back. "Obviously not all night…did you wake me up just to ask that?"

Nyx gave her a look. "They've found the other complexes. Or at least one of them."

"They're up there now, dressed in armour, armed with CR-20s, running an assault on the perimeter."

Billie shook her head, running her fingers through her hair. "I don't believe this."

"Calm down, it might not even be true, but apparently each complex has in it a book with the location of the other two."

Nyx grabbed her arm. "Don't be an idiot. One, you don't know where you're going. Two, you meet your men and you're dead, and three, in case you haven't noticed, there's a war!"

"But you know! Nyx, I know there's a library down here, I know there's so much more than you'll ever tell me…I knew the second I connected you with this place! For God's sake, you're wearing Annabelle Croft's clothes!"

"She's a legend!" Billie exclaimed. "Nyx please, even if you won't do it for me, do it for yourself! We have to get down to both those complexes and take the books! The second they know were we are, they'll storm us and you know it!"

"The last week or so I've been up, the perimeter ambush hasn't been there. I'm starting to think they think we've given up. But either way, I think we can infiltrate the fortress without drawing too much attention. Even better, if the Rogues keep attacking, we can use them as a diversion."

"The plasma grenades have optional timing. I didn't realise until just recently. But it means I can set up a whole string to bring down as many buildings as I want simultaneously."

"We can work it out later, as you said, first we have some complexes to raid. But before that," Nyx stopped outside the library. "Maybe today I'll surprise you." She opened the door.

For the first minute, Billie could do nothing but stand in the doorway and stare.

"Yeah, you're welcome," Nyx leaned against the wall, watching Billie's ecstatic, excited expressions. She bounded into the library, trying to look in twenty different directions at once.

Nyx was almost amused at how happy she was at the sight of it all. She didn't really understand it, like she didn't understand a lot about Billie. But in truth, she really didn't know anything about her. She didn't know about her life in the sector, or why she had been in the car yard that day. She didn't know why she and the other men had been the only ones not captured…all she knew was that she was obsessed with history and a search for the lost complexes. At that moment, Billie rushed back over to Nyx, threw her arms around her, gave her a kiss on the cheek and disappeared back behind a bookshelf before she'd even realised what had happened.

"Where'd you learn to read?" Billie looked up from a meter-high pile of books on the table in front of her, a good few hours later.

"Taught myself, mostly," Nyx shrugged, not looking up from Shakespeare's Othello. "Were there any books at all in the sector?"

"I like Shakespeare," Nyx said absent-mindedly. "It was written so long ago that the words have different meanings, but still…"

"I've heard of him. But anything of his must have been destroyed, because I've never seen it. Apparently his works were studied for over one thousand years after they were written. God, I'd love to have that kind of impact on the world."

Billie smiled to herself. More progress. Nyx had never given her a choice before.

"If you do though," Nyx went on. "It might be in your interest to bring a backpack or two."

Billie put her current book--How Viruses Mutate-- down and laced her hands under her chin.

"I understand why you didn't want me to know about this place. You had to have something that was yours. But understand this. This is a library. People borrow books, read them and bring them back. But it all still belongs to the owner of the library."

"And the place where you sleep, where ever the hell it is, say I were to see it…"

"Shut up. Say I were to see it, it wouldn't change a thing. It's still yours. If I were to barge in, throw you out and never let you in again, that would be a different matter... but I think I have better chances with an alien than of that happening!"

Nyx gave a shrug. "I'll answer a few of your questions if you answer a few of mine."

Nyx leaned back in her chair, put her feet up on the table. "I can't believe I'm doing this, y'know."

"Just everything...showing you the base, helping you, dragging you back down here the other night...the library...I mean, you're human!"

Nyx glanced up at her. "I'm doing what I spent my entire life promising myself I wouldn’t do."

"There's nothing wrong with change, Nyx. There's certainly nothing wrong with trying to trust somebody."

"Things certainly changed," Nyx glanced up again. "Are you going to interrogate me now?"

"Okay, let's see, what should I ask you?" she watched Nyx. She continued to lean back in her chair, staring up at the shadowed industrial grey ceiling.

"Anything…I always felt as if I never knew what was going on in the world beyond my front yard."

"Hey!" Billie protested. "Don't turn it around on me, I was asking the questions!"

"Fine," Nyx took her feet from the table and lent forward on her elbows. "It sucked. You could only get water on the black market, and only if you had something to put it in. The death trucks distributed those faulty tablets every so often, other than that, people ate each other."

"They ruled the streets. Basically, there were four kinds of people. The cannibals, the druggies, those that tried to just lead a normal life, and those that exploited them. I knew them all. Learnt to fight off the cannibals, my mother…stepmother was a druggie, my landlord was an asshole, and that just leaves me."

"I used to get food by raiding other peoples' houses. Usually the landlord, Jimmy. Once I took meat by accident. Biggest mistake of my life."

"Well, let's face it, I woulda died out there. I never knew my real mother. But she must have been like me. My father was killed by cannibals when I was six. Which left me with Jennifer, who I could only guess to be my stepmother. Anyway, she died when I was thirteen, about half an hour later, Jimmy kicked me out, I had nothing to lose, so off I went. Must say though, I've done harder things than break into the sector."

"The security is as much to keep us in as the rest of you out," Billie said. "Those who manage to make it past the wasteland are usually so weak the guards can pick them off with one shot."

"So how did you get out?" Nyx asked, once again trying to shift the focus off herself. "What was a nice sector girl like you doing in the Renegade City?"

"Ahem! Okay, a little background history. It was expected of every child when they reached fifteen that they were assigned a breeding partner until the girl got pregnant."

"To keep the population growing. They wanted every person to have at least three kids, so they made it an unwritten law."

"Not in the slightest. For one, my breeding partner was an absolute prick, two, by then, all I wanted to do was search for this place, and I couldn't do that with two kids in tow and another on the way. Besides, why would you really want to bring kids into a world who's only goal is to keep the economy alive, yet it could barely feed the people it already had?"

"If it were under better circumstances, I'd almost be glad," Billie said grimly. "Anyway, we had a tiny collection of things from the complexes, but the ones I really cared about were the arm bands and the knife, because they both belonged to Annabelle Croft. So I took them, hid them in the back of a Death Truck and got out."

"Well," Billie smiled. "On my first night in the big scary world, a young Untouchable came along and stole my backpack. Three days later I was so thirsty I got myself picked up by a Death Truck. After all that, they still got me pregnant."

"Result of which; I pierced a major blood vessel, had to have emergency surgery and now I can't have kids."

Twenty minutes later they were climbing the ladder to the surface, about to begin their long journey to the next tower. Nyx was armed only with the knife, Billie had a backpack, and stuffed inside was another the machine had created for her.

"All we need to do is shut off main power and they'll get so lost trying to find it again that we'll be in and out before they even know."

"Uh…Nyx, how will I see?" Billie climbed out of the shaft and pulled the metal over it.

"Until we get to the library, I'll be your eyes. After that…" Nyx took her trusty rainbow lighter and tossed it to Billie.

"Oh, wow…" she turned it over in her hands. "Where did you get one?!" she flicked up the flame in awe.

"No idea. Doesn't really matter. I've always been just that bit stronger than I should have been, but I didn't start to be able to see in the dark until I was thirteen."

Even above the roaring of the towers she could hear the endless piercing gunfire, both human and alien, distinguishable only to her by slightly different frequencies. She doubled back behind the tower, out of sight, and ran until she could see the line again. Three men fought alone against a small patrol of aliens; it seemed that their assault still had moved no further beyond the perimeter.

Nyx returned to the vent and signaled Billie to follow her back behind the tower.

"The second tower is in the third row east, twelfth north," she whispered. "So three miles towards the ocean, twelve that way," she pointed north. "We'll have to move fast to be back here by dawn."

"Three on the line, six for us to deal with. All we need to do is cut the power and it'll all work perfectly."

"Anything…how come you were the only ones not captured? And how'd you all end up together?"

"It's a little hard to explain…most of them were out here for maintenance, looking after the towers. Jake and Aine were with me when it started, searching for the complex. Bailey was a guard, although I don't know what he was doing outside the sector."

"If you were all out there for various reasons, then what happened to your equipment?"

"Y'know, I still don't quite get this, I was sleeping when they invaded…but it was as if they transported all the people out of the sector before dropping a bomb on it. I was in a vent at the time, I'd dumped everything else outside. The explosion just ripped right through the field. Only thing that saved any of us was that we were all inside various towers at the time."

"Oh, far more than that! Haven't you read about them? Not only will they come out without a scratch, but they're designed to cut down fallout so drastically that if someone dropped a bomb, we could safely go back topside within a year!"

"Nothing," Nyx waved her hand absent-mindedly. "At least it makes sense why you people are still out here."

"What do you think will happen if we win this?" Billie asked. "I mean, there's nothing left to rebuild with."

"There's nothing else we can do. Even if we somehow kill them all, how can we save the people? They're already dead."

"I don't want to kid myself. I know I'm being harsh, but if we launch the full-blown assault we've been talking about, we have to be realistic. If we truly go to war…"

"No. No friends. I wasn't like them. And my family was all dead before they came."

"I don't think anything could make this easier," Billie shook her head. "Is this hard for you?"

"The invasion? No. Humans, aliens…I've always been up against something; it's all the same to me."

"How do you know this is the right one?" Billie whispered. "What if you counted wrong?"

They crossed the tower, identically to Nyx's, in search of the entry to the complex. Nyx found it, Billie couldn't see in the dark all that well, even with Nyx's lighter.

"Okay," Nyx laid down the final bits of information as they stood above the gaping hole in the floor. "Hang on to me the whole time and not a sound. They have to think it's a technical fault. If something happens and we get separated, stay where you are and I'll get you. Stay away from the walls, that's where they'll guide themselves. Got it?"

"Good, let's go," Nyx swung her leg over the edge, grabbed the ladder and slid all the way down to the ground.

At the bottom, Billie latched on to the bottom of Nyx's jacket and they approached the air-lock doors. The only sound was Billie's nervous breathing, and there was not a single speck of light.

"I'm going to open the doors and make a rush for the cube. Stay put, I'll come back for you."

Nyx pushed the button to open the doors and launched into the complex, knife up. She wanted it to be a technical fault, but she couldn’t see through an airlock. Luckily, no one was there.

Light flooded the tunnel and Billie was blinded worse than she was when she was in the dark. But it was only for an instant, Nyx reached the cube and the blackness swallowed them up again as the complex shut down. Almost immediately, she heard the shocked outcries of men throughout the complex as their surroundings suddenly disappeared from around them.

They crept along the main room and into the first tunnel, before Nyx stopped suddenly. Billie crashed straight into her. Nyx grabbed her and pulled her against her. She put her mouth against her ear. "They're coming down this tunnel," she breathed, barely a whisper. "Stay absolutely still."
Billie nodded again.

She was scared but exhilarated at the same time. Scared to be in such close vicinity with her men again, even if they couldn’t see her, it was too soon. She was pretty sure that if she was doing this alone she would have curled up in a corner by now. But with Nyx's perfect night vision, in the second of the lost complexes…it was thrilling. She had to concentrate on that.

Nyx, on the other hand, didn't feel anything in particular about their mission. It was just another night time raid, like the times she would steal food from the sector. Nothing could go wrong that she couldn’t handle. Realistically, nothing could happen that Billie couldn’t handle either, but the girl was still too shattered to deal with a confrontation with those men. Nyx's only real feeling was that of unease; Billie was so close she could feel her breathing.

Two men were creeping their way down the corridor, one behind the other, plastered to the wall.

"We could do this forever if we get lost," the first one, Aine, muttered angrily.

"We won't get lost," Max replied confidently. "Just follow to the end of this tunnel and we can turn the power back on," at that, he stopped, not even two feet away from Billie and Nyx. "I think we're nearly there!" he shouted to the other men.

But they didn't stay long, a few seconds later and they were on their way back down the tunnel again. Nyx started moving again and stopped outside the library.

Billie did so and Nyx began work on prising the doors open. About five minutes, lots of broken nails and two hands of bleeding cuticles later, she pushed Billie towards the gap and squeezed through after her.

"Okay, hit the light," she said, stopping them behind the first shelf so no one would notice them.

"I'll find the complex book, you take whatever you want, we have five minutes, we really should be gone before they get to the cube."

They both went their separate directions, Billie grabbing everything she could find on the Beforetime and their technology. Nyx, while searching for the complex book, took any titles she didn't recognise.

She held up a thin blue notebook on top of a pile of others. "Got any room left in your bag?"

"Yeah," Nyx took the books into her own pack, eyeing Billie's bulging one. "Good find, let's go."

Smiling at the compliment, she followed Nyx again and put the lighter back in her pocket. Nyx stuck her head into the tunnel, then squeezed through the gap. Billie followed and they moved quickly past the men in the tunnel and into the central room.

"I'm going to have a little fun," Nyx whispered. "But I'll let them see me. So if you want to go, I'll take you to the ladder and meet you on the surface."

Nyx quickly led her to the airlock, then rushed to their storage room. It was quite similar to her own, although not as well-stocked, and the only weapons they had were CR-20s. This was a good thing, she was a bit worried about what they would do with plasma grenades and nukes. She took a few of the CR-20s, returned to the central room and placed the weapons carefully on the floor in front of Aine.

A few seconds later, he tripped straight over them, pulling down Max, who was hanging onto him, and they both landed flat on their faces. The clatter and then the crash echoed up the tunnel.

"I tripped on something!" Aine was on his hands and knees, feeling around for what he had fallen over. He grabbed one of the guns.

At this moment, Nyx hit the button to repower the complex, her eyes burning at their instant adjustment from dark to light. The two men threw themselves to the ground again, covering their faces from the light, and there was a unanimous pained shout from the men in the rec room.

Before he was even standing up straight, Nyx had rendered him unconscious with her stun gun.

"Oh, I've already got what I came for. But I noticed you've been attacking the perimeter."

"Is that why you're here?" Aine asked, angry, but not afraid. "To criticize our battle techniques? How did you even find us?"

"That is none of your concern. But because I'm such a nice person, I'll warn you of something. In a few days I'll be doing some demolition work. If you or your men happen to get in the way, then it's your problem."

"Where's your bitch?" he spat. "Dead? Never thought I'd see the day. Untouchable filth trying to save humanity!"

"Pity it won't extend as far as you," Nyx hit the button and threw them all back into darkness. "Come near her and you're dead men."

"You and her will be the first to die when we win this war!" Brodie shouted into the darkness.

"You haven't taken anything from us," Nyx lunged forward and grabbed Brodie's throat. "But she took your eye and I'll take your life if you force my hand!"

Silence. Nyx let him go and returned to the surface, leaving Brodie to simmer in his hatred and hate her all the more for the humiliation.

"Why does Brodie hate Untouchables so much?" Nyx asked Billie, who she found sitting against the outer wall of the tower, next to the service vent.

"Brodie hates everyone," she stood up. "But his father was killed by an Untouchable when he was a kid. Still, don't let him get to you, it gives him no excuse."

"Not even a pin prick. Let's go. We can probably make it back to the third tower before dawn."
"Where is it?"

Just as Nyx predicted, they crawled into the vent of the last tower just as the sky began to fade to grey. Billie yawned.

"I think you'd rather I didn't," Nyx said, looking around the blackened shell of the central room.

The central cube was scorched but still in tact, the rest of the room was nothing but blackened walls and ash. Burned beyond identification, but still recogniseable were the charred remains of at least thirty bodies.

"So it's true…it was said that an Untouchable beat the messenger to the third complex and burnt everyone alive. I didn't believe it. Turn on the lights."

"I'm okay with bodies, my uncle used to run a death truck. Nyx, please don't think I'm going to freak out at every little thing. Seeing people skinned and then ripped to shreds," she gave an involuntary shudder, "is very different to seeing people that have been dead for two hundred years."

The library, they found, was completely unsalvageable, there certainly wasn't a hope of finding any books left. Scattered across the floor were piles of charred pages, blackened shells of bookcases the only things left standing.

"Well, so much for that," Billie scooped up a handful of ashes and let them float to the ground again.

"One less book to worry about," Nyx walked down the aisle between the shelves, stepping over skeletons. "No, definitely nothing left, let's go."

Back up in the tower, Billie dropped her backpack full of books to the floor and slumped against the wall. "God, I'm so tired."

"Someone needs to stand guard. Anyone, I'm okay, I can go awhile without sleep," Nyx sat down and picked a random book from the bag. Billie made a small noise, lay down, put her backpack under head and fell asleep.

Nyx opened the book (America as an Economic Power) and began to read, but found she couldn't concentrate. She put the book down with a sigh and looked at Billie. The ex-Rogue leader was so trusting of the world that she could fall asleep anywhere.

How could anyone seem so innocent? Seem it, but really at the twelfth hour transform into a skilled fighter, a leader? I think her being with me is making her go soft. Because, for whatever reason, she feels safe with me, she lowers her guard a little more each day. I never wanted to protect anyone, I still don't, not really, even if she isn't half bad, for a human.

But she's got to know that no matter what, I can't watch her back all the time. She was ready to lead a war before I came. I mean, she's strong by nature, she even broke out of the sector, but can she really just spend the rest of her life going through all those books? What's it going to accomplish? And when they run out? Then what? Oh, I don't know! Maybe it's just me. Maybe I just feel like we should have made some progress by now.

Nothing's changed for us in four months. We haven't gained any ground, but they keep expanding. I have to make a move, Billie and the Rogues aside, or we're never going to end this. If we take down one building, they'll just rebuild. But what if we take down fifty?

Two days had past since their trip to the other two complexes and Nyx had not said a word to Billie about her plans to attack. But in her mind she had formulated a detailed plan, even worked out the time her theorised run would take, as well as the timing of the bombs.

"Are you kidding me?" Billie snapped her book shut. "I wouldn't miss this for the world!"

"It's going to be pretty tight," Nyx began explaining. "But it has to be; the longer we stay, the bigger the risk we'll be seen. We haven't hit anything for months, so I'm thinking the strongest defense will be of the perimeter."

"If we go north or south far enough, we should be able to bypass it completely. The Rogues have only ever attacked one spot on the line, so the aliens will have concentrated their defenses there."

"Anyway," Nyx went on. "Once we're in, we go to the back of the area we're going to take down and zig zag along the rows with plasma grenades until we get to the towers. If we run out of time at least we'll be close enough to the towers to make a run for it. Hopefully."

"So which buildings exactly are you going to be blowing up? And how do you know there won't be any people there?"

"I'm hoping to take out the control center, even though it's heavily guarded. It's pretty close to the perimeter, so we can cut our losses if we have to. If we take that and enough of the surrounding buildings, hopefully we'll isolate the outer sections of the fortress. As for the people…you have to understand…they're already dead."

Billie swallowed and nodded, even though the expression on her face told Nyx she didn't want to accept it. Nyx decided to leave it alone, she'd rather not open up a can of worms before an attack that could be a major turning point in the war.

"Get some rest, have something to eat. I'm going to scout, when I come back we're going."

She's got to understand, Nyx thought as she changed her clothes and picked up various weapons. No matter what happens, if we win or lose, no one they've captured is going to survive. If the aliens don't kill them, they'll starve to death anyway; there's not enough food to sustain all those people.

One tablet each from my stores wouldn't feed half of them, and I'd be completely cleaned out. No, if she wants to survive this, she has to accept the fact that the human race is doomed no matter what. She can't save the world. Nothing can. The only people we can save are ourselves.

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

There was a sharp bite in the air when Nyx cautiously emerged from the tower. She sighed at the bad timing. Winter was on its way. There were really only two distinct seasons--winter and not winter. Winter was unpredictable, all anyone could say was that it would occur around the end of a standard calendar year, but that was still give or take a few months either way. It was long, harsh and lethal.

During winter, the daily acid rain storms were replaced with acid blizzards, and though while the acidity itself was neutralised with ground contact, the snow itself was still quite toxic. The worst thing though, was that the storms were not confined to the daylight hours. No one knew why, but they could occur at anytime without warning. The temperatures plummeted drastically, and although Nyx knew this wouldn't be a problem for them in the complex, it would be a disaster if they were going to fight.

If they were going to be holed up for at least three months of winter, then God only knew what the aliens would do during that time. Nyx doubted very much that creatures immune to a blast that could vaporise all known matter on earth would be bothered much by the cold.

Nyx was quick with her scout; there wasn't much she needed to see. From the top of the tower, she could see that there were no men on the line as yet, and no perimeter ambush, just the guards and a scattering of aliens moving around the streets. She never saw any humans, she hadn't see any since the demonstration on the roof tops. But they were still there, somewhere. She could still hear the screams.

Underground, Billie paced the kitchen, gearing herself up. She had fought some good fights in her life, she had fought beside Nyx. But this was different. This would be elite.

She's probably been planning this forever, but God it feels spur of the moment! One minute we're sitting here, another and its battle stations! This is a potential suicide mission. But she knows that. I'm not scared, but I don't want to die. Nyx wants to. Well, it doesn't make sense. On the surface she wants to, but deep down I know she mustn't, or else she would have just let them take her years ago.

Can't say I'm particularly looking forward to this, but I can't just hide down here forever. The day an Untouchable brings down fifty buildings is one for the history books.I was willing to lead the Rogues before, but every day is more confirmation that I wouldn't be capable.

The fact that those bastards just can't be lead aside, all we'd be doing is what they're doing now, pathetic perimeter assaults. No, our only chance is Nyx, her abilities, her equipment, her 'no-shit let's have a staring contest with death' attitude. Both of us will be staring death right in the face tonight. I just hope death blinks first.

Emotions ran high as they climbed to the surface. Now an attack in broad daylight, Billie wasn't so confident. Nyx was feeling right at home, knife in hand, plasma grenade launcher over her shoulder.

"Yes," Billie gave a nod. "Infiltrate the fortress to ten buildings, set the bombs in a zig zag position until we've covered fifty, I get back behind the line, and you take the control center…Nyx, leave the control center, please…"

"If you're sending me out, then you can't watch my back. And if you can't watch mine, it means you're too busy watching your own. Do you really want to risk a capture within minutes of the detonation of fifty plasma grenades?"

That ended it. A no from Nyx meant no and Billie knew it. She began to get a very bad feeling that the only reason Nyx was doing this was to get herself killed.

"Take point," Nyx whispered, pointing out a building over the line. "Go there. We're going to leap frog all the way in."

"Then we'll group and deal with it. You used to do this without me. You can still do it without me."

They were a mile and a half south of the complex; the perimeter was left wide open here, Nyx had been right.

The aliens obviously weren't particularly threatened, now that they held the fortress, they weren't launching attacks, just minor defense. Billie knew they were a formidable enemy. The thing that worried her was that she thought they knew it too.

Nevertheless, she made it over the line and pressed up against the building, her heart pounding in her chest. In a few minutes she would be in farther than she had ever been before, and a few minutes after that, past the point of no return.

Nyx rushed the line a few seconds later and Billie saw her flash past, heading for the building in front. There were no aliens here, or at least, they were staying inside the buildings, and no humans were in the vicinity. But Nyx knew they would only be able to go so far before they met resistance.

The second she saw Nyx stop, Billie took off towards the building ahead of her. Again, an empty street, the perimeter disappearing behind them, in front of them an endless city of black metal, glowing red and green lights, and towering structures bigger than anything man had ever created.

Billie looked above her, craning her head back and around. She hadn't noticed it from the towers, but each of the alien buildings was linked to each other via an enclosed aerial passage way, made out of the same material as the buildings. Passages joined other passages, some rose above others, but the end result was an intricate, extremely complicated transport route that looked like it spanned the entire fortress. That explained why they never saw any humans, and there weren't thousands of aliens roaming the streets.

Billie turned around and looked back at Nyx, gave her a questioning look and pointed up at the passage ways. Nyx nodded in response that she already knew and started running again. They continued like this for a little while longer, until they were six buildings in, but this time, instead of running to the building ahead, Nyx stopped at Billie's building.

"What's wrong?" Billie asked, a little breathless. "We only have to go in four more buildings."

Nyx shook her head. "Call it a hunch. Take that side," she indicated left. "If we come at them from both sides, we might have an easy fight."

Billie ran like nothing else to match Nyx's speed. Timing was important, it was vital that they come around the building together. They were perfectly in sync, they came around the building to find…absolutely nothing. Billie looked at Nyx in confusion.

"Where…" she was cut off when something tore just centimeters past her head and the ground on which she stood was ripped apart. She was suddenly tossed into the air, before she landed, thirty feet from where she started, winded and dazed.

By now Nyx had realised what was going on and rushed over to Billie. Around them the ground kept exploding, as if they had walked into a mine field. She stood over Billie, firing cover fire into the air.

Billie realised what Nyx was shooting at, there were about twenty aliens lined up along the top of one of the passage ways, bombarding them with explosive charges.

She rolled to her feet, ignoring the pain shooting through her battered body, and both of them leapt clear as one of the aliens fired on their position. Both of them knew, they ran directly under the passage, it was the only place they could not be hit in an area with no cover.

"Are you okay?" Nyx shouted to Billie over the relentless gunfire as she edged back and forward, trying to return fire. Even from the cover of the passage way, they were showered with the dirt that blew out in all directions from the explosions.

"I'm fine!" Billie shouted back, even though it wasn't one hundred percent true. She had fallen hard and she sure as hell was feeling it now; she was pretty sure being hit by a truck would have hurt less.

Nyx pressed against the side of the building where Billie had stationed herself.

Without another word, Nyx threw herself onto the wall and began pulling herself hand-over-hand up the rough metal surface, underneath the passage as to avoid most of the fire.

However, as she neared the passageway itself, the aliens began to notice her and turned their attention from Billie. At about twenty feet up, she was able to grab an alien by the tail and pull it over the edge before it could react.

She may have managed to get one out of the way, but that still left her nineteen more to deal with.

She attacked like a machine, mechanically, coldly, calculated. She slashed down the torso of the nearest alien as if it were programmed into her brain. The few that defended themselves well enough against her lethal blade ended up thrown to ground for Billie to deal with. The width of the passage roof was against them, they could only attack in single file, or risk leaping clear over her and getting slashed in the air. Soon the grating of the passage dripped with silver blood, but the numbers didn't seem to be thinning.

"Billie!" Nyx shouted, twisting her knife between the alien armour with a sickening crack. "Run!"

Billie was in the middle of her own battle, she ducked the whip-like tail that nearly took her head off.

Billie abandoned her fight and leapt into a run, heading deeper into the fortress. The alien she was fighting gave chase, but Nyx dropped to the ground in front of it and opened its insides to the world.

As the other aliens began firing on her again, Nyx blasted a plasma grenade into the air on a thirty second fuse. She caught up to Billie and grabbed her arm, pulling her along faster.

"Go, go, GO!!" she could feel the explosion building behind them until at the last second she threw them both behind a building and the world around them erupted into a violent white-hot fire-ball, the force throwing them hard to the ground.

"Oh my God," Billie breathed, when she could finally get to her feet again. The building in front of her lay in partial ruin, the explosion had channeled through the passage and erupted inside. As for the one Nyx had shot the grenade over, there wasn't very much left.

"Wait till you see all fifty," Nyx brushed herself off. They were both a little crispy around the edges, but generally unscathed. "We can't stay here, they'll be back."

The buildings blurred as Nyx and Billie flew past them, no longer bothering with stealth, the aliens knew they were there long before the explosion; they had been waiting for them.

Nyx stopped running almost as quickly as she had started. Billie had no idea where they were now, she couldn't even see the towers.

"If anything goes wrong, you run," Nyx said firmly. "I have a far greater chance of getting out of here than you do. They can't follow you into the towers. Now cover me," Nyx knelt in front of the tenth building and began opening a ventilation shaft. She set the first of them bombs--exactly two hours until detonation-- and fired it in.

Nyx didn't even bother to cover her tracks, there wasn't time, there was even less now that they knew she was there. She moved like a soldier, efficient, all her actions pre-programmed, focused on nothing but the task at hand, but with all the fluid motion of an Untouchable.

Billie knew exactly what to do, she ran far ahead, scouting, but Nyx still caught up with her quickly. By twenty buildings, they had been discovered four times, one of those times, Billie had been so badly outnumbered that Nyx had had to stop and fight, but the rest Billie had handled quickly and professionally--she was becoming quite skilled with the CR-20. Their lives depended on it.

Nyx had finished twenty five buildings, with fifty minutes to go, when Billie came rushing back to her.

Billie, not hesitating, climbed in beside the live grenade, Nyx followed and pulled the cover closed.

They both heard them before they saw them, heavy marching footsteps, the sounds of a coordinated, organised effort. Nyx heard the whip of their tails slicing the air, the clatter of their weapons as they banged against their armour. And then she heard something else. Something different. The sound of something opening behind them.

Billie quickly passed her the small, but volatile bomb. "Nyx, what's happening?"

Billie looked at Nyx in horror, her eyes wide, lower-lip quivering, all the while knowing there was not a thing she could do, she couldn't run, she couldn't make a sound. Three hundred alien monsters were marching past them, hunting them. Nyx, meanwhile, the grenade now in her jacket-pocket, forced her arms and legs out, wedging herself in the tunnel. She'd just gotten into position, as the deluge began. Billie was washed against her, but that was her intention, keeping them both from being washed out into the open fortress again.

Billie just held on to Nyx, it was too late for anything else, concentrating on the thought that this was leading to a major turning point in the war and soon they may be able to take back some ground. She needed something to keep her going, that moment was lower than any other point in the war for her. Lower than the Rogues' mutiny, lower than the demonstration…she was swimming in the blood of her own people!

In truth, it only lasted about thirty seconds, but in Billie's mind, an eternity had passed. The blood flow weakened and then only trickled between them. Billie spat, tried desperately to wipe it off her face, to no avail, she was saturated.

"You did good. Blood made them leave," she put the grenade back in the tunnel. "We have to go."

At first they moved in the opposite direction to the patrols, but their zig-zag formation eventually brought them back into the danger-zone and twice more they found themselves diving into the ventilation shafts, along side the bombs.

Their wet, heavy clothes weighed them down, and their skin felt as if it was stretching as the blood dried. Almost as quickly as it had disappeared, the towers loomed into view and they found themselves back at the perimeter. Nyx ran along the line, planting the last of the bombs, while Billie continued watching her back.

"Take these and get underground," Nyx stripped herself of her wristbands and knife and forced them into Billie's hand.

She knew she didn't have five minutes, at best she had three, but she still ran for all her life was worth. She didn't even have time to fight the first level of guards around the control center, she shot a grenade into the thick of them and leapt through the flames.

The aliens were all around her, on top of every passage way, they towered over her; outnumbering her at least one thousand to one. But for some reason they didn't shoot. Perhaps they were in shock over the fact a person, Untouchable or not, had penetrated the most heavily guarded section of the fortress. Or maybe they were waiting for something else, something bigger to happen.

Nyx fired grenades all around her as she ran. The passage ways fell, aliens disintegrated, screamed and burned. Yet still not one of them would shoot and she ran through it all. The world was in flames when she slid to a stop on her knees and pulled the cover off the nearest vent.

The blast hit her in the chest like a bolt of lightning as the alien that awaited her there fired, it's snarling, drooling face lunged out at her as it sprung from the vent. It pinned her to the dirt and she struggled to get up again as hundreds more surrounded her, but she was paralysed. The last thing she remembered was being shot a second time, before hell rose up from beneath the ground, and heaven fell from the sky.

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

The force of the explosion was so fierce it threw Billie to the ground as she ran across the floor to the complex entrance. It was so loud she could hear it over the towers. She jumped to her feet again and stood, rooted to the spot, the ground shaking as the buildings fell, her eyes locked on the service vent.

Minutes passed as she watched, shaking with anticipation, but with every second, her worst fears were further confirmed.

Without so much as a thought for her own safety, Billie rushed outside. There, she looked on in amazement, not since the aliens bombed the sector had she seen such devastation.

Flames fifteen stories high licked remaining walls, and stained the sky with veins of orange blood, blue-black plumes of smoke billowed into the atmosphere and plunged the waning afternoon light into darkness.

It was hell on earth, thick, jagged black shapes rose up from the ground, swarms of flaming demons ran between the dagger-like wreckage, all set against the burning backdrop of the explosions. More than half the fortress was gone, reduced to nothing but twisted scrap metal and ashes.

Billie stood and surveyed the damage, trying to force her already over-shocked system to take it all in. Everything on the south was completely gone, destroyed beyond repair. Buildings right up to where she stood were damaged--half collapsed, roofs caved in, smashed walls. Then she looked out to the first building to the north that was in tact. The control center.

She blindly crossed the line, ran right up to the building. Aliens rushed past her, too panicked to pay her any attention at all. Humanity had finally hit back, and hard.

Then something caught her eye, something on the ground next to one of the vents. She ran over to it. It was Nyx's plasma grenade launcher. And in the dirt beside it, splatters of blood. But Nyx was long gone. Shaking, she knelt and picked up the gun, then straightened as the first snow-flakes of winter began to fall.

Such was the bitter irony of it all, acid snow in a world of flames. Fire and ice trapped in a single frozen drop of acid. Billie knew she couldn't stay above ground for long now, the first of the blizzards wasn't far off. She would obey Nyx's last orders--return to the complex and wait.

"You did this, didn't you?" a voice behind her made her stop as she walked back into the field.

He was about to say something, but changed his mind when he saw her, soaked in blood.

"She's not dead," Billie did everything she could to keep her voice level. "She's just got some things to do, she'll be back in a few hours."

They looked about ready to cheer, but knew better than to push Billie's buttons when she held in her hands the weapon that had done all this.

"Go on, have your little celebration!" Billie spat the words out. "Go have a little salvage, there's so many dead aliens; my, won't you have a feast!"

"Thought you said it wasn't dead," Frankie sneered, moving to stand beside Brodie. "Or does being blown up still classify as alive for their kind?"

Laughter rippled through the group; Max and Blaze slapped a high-five at the back.

"Hey guys," Brodie gave them a wicked grin. "Better back up, sounds like Billie-Baby has her period!"

"Oooh," the others stepped back, then began to mock her, rocking back and forward with laughter.

"Truth is, babe," Brodie walked over and put his arm around her shoulder. "You're the lower life here. Because after we kicked you out, the only thing that would take you in was an Untouchable."

Billie carefully lifted Brodie's arm off, barely touching it, as if it were contaminated. The Rogues began to laugh again. Unbeknownst to them was just how much stronger she had become since meeting Nyx. She tightened her grip suddenly, flipped him in the air and let go just in time for him to land painfully hard on his back. Frankie gasped in the middle of a hysterical, cackling laugh and began to choke, and Brodie, who'd had the wind knocked out of him, wheezed something incoherent. Billie knelt over him, spoke just loudly enough that everyone could hear.

"If you'd like to keep that other eye, you stay the hell away from me!" She gave him a sharp kick in the ribs and walked away.

"Turn off the light, turn off the light, turn off the light!" Nyx muttered, tossing her head painfully from side to side. When no one adhered to her request, she screamed it out.

She hadn't even opened her eyes, but it burned right through her closed lids, as if they weren't there at all. She felt the pain deep in her head, as if the lights were lasers scorching right through her skull to the back of her brain. She tried to turn her head away, but the light came from all sides; she could feel its heat radiating underneath her.

Then she became aware of the rest of her body, up until then all she'd been able to feel was her disembodied head. She tried to move, but she was bound to a hard metal surface at her wrists and ankles. Her arms and legs burned from the inside, as if acid flowed through her veins.

Around her ribs she could feel a metal band, squeezing her chest, restricting her oxygen intake. She suspected she had broken ribs, her lungs stung with every struggling gasp. The light burned even brighter on her face, and she went to scream again, but no sound came out. It was then that she realised that she couldn't open her mouth, something had already forced it open, she could feel more metal grating against her teeth. Nyx opened her eyes, just in time to see the alien force the tube down her throat and plunge her into darkness again.

She can't be dead, Billie dragged herself from the showers. She's an Untouchable, she's not dead! She had scrubbed for almost an hour to get clean, to cleanse herself of the alien blood, strip off the layers of dirt and ash from the explosion, and scrape away the filthy feeling that came with being soaked in liters of human blood. She shuddered at the thought as she eased clean clothes over her burnt and battered body.

Brodie had seemed so happy. All of them had. Even when they'd seen just how much Nyx had managed to destroy. So many lives lost. One too many, sacrificed.

Billie knew that if Nyx was still alive then she'd been captured or at best was in deep hiding. But the fact that the control center still stood, untouched, defiant, was not a good sign. How long could an Untouchable survive in there? How long did anyone survive? There was no way to know. No one had ever come back.

Billie tried to shake it off, and went to find some food, even though she doubted she'd ever be able to swallow it. Despite the shower, the smell of blood and charred flesh was strong in her nostrils. She could taste it at the back of her throat. She didn't want to think about how much she'd swallowed; she was already an inch from being sick.

Billie was right, she couldn’t swallow, she couldn’t even put a tablet in her mouth. The sweet smell, intermingling with the smell of blood was enough to make her give up quickly. She went to the rec room and put on a Beforetime movie, hoping to distract herself. At some point, she slipped into a restless, nightmare-infested sleep.

Nyx hit the ground hard, she felt her teeth rattle, the jarring force shooting lightning pain through her jaw. She didn't move, she didn't think she could even if she wanted to. She heard the alien leave, it clunked across the floor on its bouncy legs and with the rumbling of the metal blast door closing was gone.

Eventually she managed to roll onto her side, and forced her eyes to see. She was in a small, black cube of a room, about five meters by five. There was no furniture, no objects, just the snatches of shadows thrown across the room by the eerie red lights that cut the ceiling in half diagonally.

Crouched still against the walls were several figures. It took her a few minutes to realise what they were. People.

But they seemed to ignore her, they didn't look at her, didn't move from their positions against the walls. She wondered if they had died in that position.

Her mind seemed to be working fine, she was conscious and alert, although she couldn’t remember the last God knows how long. The last thing she could remember was waking up on a table, and an alien shoving a tube down her throat. She swallowed and was suddenly aware of how much her throat burned. She could taste blood on her tongue.

She tried to move again, but it was as if her brain was sending signals her limbs weren't receiving. But she wasn't paralyzed, she could feel the floor radiating cold through her. For whatever reason, though, she didn't feel pain until she made her conscious mind aware it existed.

About half an hour later, she had built up the strength to sit up, and after that she was able to move her arms a little easier. Her jacket was gone, she noticed, as were the sleeves of her shirt. Her arms glistened with veins of blood that ran from three punctures on each of her wrists. There was also a gaping hole in her left forearm, right down to the bone, where a segment of muscle had been removed. But it wasn't bleeding, it was as if all the blood was being diverted around the wound.

She looked down at her legs. Her boots were still there, but they had sliced her pants in half from the knee down. Her left leg was unmarked, but her right was patterned with vertical slices, so clean they looked surgical. Blood trickled from them, they must have been fresh.

Her lungs still burned beneath her broken ribs, and the back of her shirt was wet and sticky with blood, but there wasn't much she could do about either. She looked around the room again. The people still hadn't moved. There was no way out besides the door, the walls, floor and ceiling were completely smooth.

She tried to stand, but she was too weak, her legs would not support her weight, and she fell again. Instead, she dragged herself away from the doorway, over to the far wall, where most of the people crouched. She could see their logic. The furthest from the door would be the least likely to be taken a second time.

Up close she could see the people as people, not shadows. There were six, four men and two women, each shabbier and sicker looking than the last. They were all covered with injuries similar to her own, cuts and punctures and deep wounds. One man seemed to have had all the muscles in his shoulder removed.

"What is this room?" Nyx forced the words out. It wasn't much more than a crackling whisper, like a breeze blowing over dry leaves.

The man without the shoulder slowly turned his head to her. His throat had been cut ear to ear, but somehow the aliens had healed him and all that remained was a grisly scar.

Nyx did a double-take. Those eyes…that voice…she would recognise them anywhere!

Nyx chuckled. "I could never forget you, after everything you did for me, Jimmy."

Jimmy Carlos, Nyx's ex-landlord, had been captured along with everyone else. Small world.

"You used to rent an apartment to a lady and her teenage daughter in the Renegade City. She died of a drug overdose."

Jimmy chewed on this for a moment, then his eyes lit up. "Nyx!" he grinned at her. She was repulsed, his teeth had rotted to blackened, broken pieces.

"So it's true then? There are still people on the outside? Attacking the fortress?"

Jimmy began to laugh, but it disintegrated into a rough, hacking cough. He spat a glob of blood onto the floor.

"I don't know where they've been keeping you, but there's no way you would have survived out there this long. Rumour has it there's a rogue Untouchable roaming around."

Nyx forced her eyes to blacken and smiled sweetly at Jimmy. He gasped and scrambled back against the wall.

"Now," Nyx laced her fingers together. "Are you going to tell me what this place is?"

If only Nyx had known she was an Untouchable as a child; she would have had so much control over Jimmy…

"It's a holding room," Jimmy told her, his voice quivering. "I don't know if you were awake or not, but from the looks of you, you came from the experimentation labs. I don't know what they test, but they dump us in here to recuperateuntil we're strong enough for them to drain us."

"What's the point of this whole invasion?" Jimmy asked. "No, they use it…they filter some chemical or something out and chuck the rest. Something in our blood they need."

"The ones who are drained don't die. They put them in a chamber, it forces rapid regrowth of blood cells. The weak ones, their hearts won't restart, but the rest of them end up in recoup until the next rotation. They only kill the ones who try to escape. Big demonstrations to scare the rest of us."

"There wouldn't have happened to have been one of those about a month ago, would there?" Nyx asked. "On the roof?"

"Yeah," Jimmy cringed. "They opened up panels so we could all watch. First time most of us had seen outside since it started.

"I'm not staying here," Nyx said confidently, despite the fact she still couldn’t stand.

"You'll never get out. Even if you got out of this cell, you'd never make it out of the building, let alone out of the fortress. Do you hold any ground at all?"

"Give them time. Up close to the towers there's some sort of field, magnetic or something. We don't even notice it, but it hurts them. They'll figure it out eventually."

"I can't believe that creatures immune to particle weapons are hurt by an invisible field."

Every morning Billie would climb to the surface, but every morning the vent was buried and she couldn't get out. There was no way for her to look for Nyx. If she was out there, in toxic snow that deep…All she could hope was that she had taken shelter in another tower and it was snowed in too.

Billie's days consisted of forced feeding and anxious waiting by the airlock for Nyx to return. But after two weeks, she had begun to accept the fact that realistically, Nyx wasn't coming back. If she was in a tower, she would have died of thirst by now. If she was in the snow, hypothermia. But if she had been captured, she was long dead. There was no way the aliens would spare the life of one who had slaughtered so many. No way.

Two weeks passed for Nyx in the little cubic room. But she didn't know it was two weeks. Jimmy was right, you couldn't tell the difference between two days and two months. Slowly the wounds began to heal, itching beginning as broken bones began to knit back together, but there was no opportunity for escape.

At random intervals, a small chute opened in the wall and food was dispensed to them. People came, and then were taken away again. Most went quietly, resigned to their fate. Others kicked and screamed for all they were worth, while all the while deep down knowing there was no one who could help them.

At about three weeks, or what she called three weeks, they came for her. This was her chance. She let them take her quietly into the hall--there were three of them, but as soon as she saw the endless open passage-way ahead of her, she shoved her weight into the alien holding her, tipping it into the wall.

Perhaps these guards had been warned about her speed, but she didn't even manage to break into a run before she felt a searing pain in her shoulder, blood running down her arm. She looked down to see two bloody tail spikes protruding from her shoulder. The alien who owned them twisted her around and there was a snap as her collarbone broke like a twig. Now unable to move, writhing in agony, the alien lifted her off the ground and dragged her down the hall.

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

Billie stared down at the pages of the thick, dusty old history book, forcing herself to read.

In the lead up to the turn of the millenium in the year 2000, there was a rising global concern over what was dubbed 'Y2K', the…

She had not been able to concentrate in all the weeks past. She hadn't slept for two days. Her numerous attempts to dig herself out of the tower had failed. She had even tried to vaporise the snow, only to have it avalanche back in on itself. There was no closure, just the endless winter and the insane pacing of circles in the central room.

If she knew for sure that Nyx was dead, then maybe she'd be able to move on, wait out the winter and fight alone. She told herself to just give up, but something inside her refused to let go. Billie sighed, put her head down on the book and cried herself to sleep.

Nyx awoke again to unfamiliarity. She couldn’t move again, but this time it was because she was chained down, flat on her back on a metal table. She couldn't see it, but behind her head was a large machine, a clear domed tank, through which her blood would be filtered and then discarded. She wasn't in any pain yet, besides that in her shoulder, from the talons and the broken collarbone, but she had a feeling she soon would be in a whole lot more.

All she could see clearly was the ceiling, it was black and smooth like the holding room. Out of the corner of her eye she could see the blinking green and red lights of large, box-like machines up against a far wall, and on the other side movement. They were in here with her.

She heard their dexterous fingers moving over the machines, programming settings, pushing buttons. There was a snap as her restraints tightened, pressing her limbs down on the table, squeezing her lungs. Then they punctured her, six mechanical tubes whipped out from behind her head and burrowed themselves into her skin. One in each arm, one in each leg, one in the side of her neck and the last one into her aorta. It was all Nyx could do not to scream.

Then the suction started, Nyx watching in horror as her own blood disappeared out of sight through the tubes. She very quickly forgot about the pain, she was fast getting light-headed. After that it was far too quick for her to do anything--even if she had the time there was no way she could escape. Within thirty seconds, Nyx lost consciousness, her body going into convulsions, before she went into cardiac arrest and died.

In the complex, Billie awoke with a shout, tipping off her chair and landing on the floor, clutching her chest. There she lay for a moment, breathing heavily, her heart racing, the excruciating dream slowly fading. Carefully she got to her feet, testing her body, but all the pain in her chest was gone.

She shook herself, picked up the chair and sat down again. The pain had felt so real, like her heart had exploded inside her chest. She tried to remember what she had been dreaming about…

She was on a table…she'd been captured, they were doing something to her, some kind of experiment. Nyx was standing over her, reaching down to help her, but when Billie tried to reach up, she couldn't move her arm and suddenly Nyx was gone and in her place, a pair of alien jaws plunging into her chest. She shuddered.

What if the dream meant something? Billie asked herself, walking quickly to the showers. The dream had made her very uneasy. What if she's still there and that's what they're doing to her? All that blood…it's got to come from something! But she wasn't dead in the dream, she was still alive, she looked okay…Oh God please, let it mean something!

The first breath burned as if she was breathing acid, then she began to cough as her heart started beating again. Then the pain hit her, every last inch of her body screaming in agony and she screamed too, the pain of every vein, artery, capillary being crushed shut and then re-dilated as blood instantly regrew between them.

She was on the other side of the room now, in a chamber like a glass coffin. She wasn't tied down, she couldn't move if she wanted to, she was paralyzed all over. She could see the table, six aliens working at the machines around it, the machine slick with her blood. One of them stepped away, clutching a vile of a semi-clear liquid, about fifty milliliters. It handed it to another, who tipped it down its throat.

Nyx channeled all of her strength into watching, hoping finally she might learn the purpose of all this. The alien stood for a moment, waiting for some kind of effect, before it started shaking, the vile slipping from its fingers and shattering on the floor, the shards glinting red in the blood. It collapsed, convulsing, and died.

Nyx blinked in confusion. They captured, enslaved and tortured the human race just so they could die?! It occurred to her that it wasn't supposed to happen like that. The other aliens looked at the one on the floor, lying in the puddles of her blood, then started towards her, drool oozing from between their snarling teeth. The blood…there was something about her blood. The chemical they took from her blood didn't help them, it hurt them. They didn't realise she was an Untouchable, they didn't know that her mutated genes had also mutated her blood. But if they had no use for her, if they couldn't harvest the chemical from her, they'd kill her.

When Nyx awoke again she was in yet another black metal room, lying on her side on the floor. It felt as if she was lying on ice, she was freezing! She didn't even try to move this time, she knew she couldn’t, not even being an Untouchable could save her from the pain.

They hadn't healed her this time, hadn't stopped the blood flow now that they knew she could do nothing for them. Her right arm was limp and completely useless, a snapped collarbone and massive puncture wound still fresh and bloody. Blood trickled from the places where the tubes had gone in, except her aorta, which seemed to have been healed when she was in the glass chamber. It was hard to comprehend that the blood flowing through her now wasn't the same blood she had an hour ago.

But it was still her blood, she was still an Untouchable, she could see perfectly well in the dark room, save the blood running into her eyes from a gash along her hairline. They must have hit her with something, attacked her; she was beginning to feel bruises, more wounds, a deep, three-clawed slash across her side. She could taste blood in her mouth, but it felt dry, she was desperately thirsty.

Slowly Nyx turned her head to look at the ceiling, wincing at each agonising pop as her neck cracked. This room wasn't anything like the room she had been held in before. In fact, it couldn’t even be classified as a room, more like a freezing space between two floors. If she could reach up, she would have been able to touch the ceiling. At least the cold was keeping her heart rate down, giving the bleeding from her countless wounds time to stop.

She looked at her hands. They were torn and battered, three fingers and her right wrist broken. She looked as if she had tried to defend herself. But she couldn't remember; she couldn't remember anything after the aliens had charged towards her.

I gotta get out of here, Nyx knew this was no holding room. They're not keeping it this cold so I won't bleed to death, it's for something else. If they still wanted me for experiments then they would have healed me!

She held her breath against the pain and rolled onto her back. Her stomach felt as if it were full of broken glass, but she forced herself to concentrate, forced herself to be Untouchable to the deepest level.

She looked. The walls and floor were perfectly smooth, but what about the ceiling? She reached her good arm up, shaking, and touched the metal. It wasn't smooth, there was a groove! Barely noticeable, but there. She traced it with her finger as far as she could reach. She didn't need to feel far to realise what it was.

A hexagonal-shaped groove in the ceiling. The cold wasn't intentional, it was the winter raging on above her. She was in a space under the roof! Underneath one of the holes she had watched the demonstration rise from. Nyx's mind flashed back to the day she and Billie had hung from the tower-top, panels opening one at a time like a flower until the whole hexagonal hole was gaping at the sky. She didn't need the whole opening, just a space between the panels…she could escape!

The exhilaration of her discovery was enough to give her strength, a new rush of adrenaline pumping the pain away. She pushed on the ceiling with her legs at where she guessed to be the hexagon's center, the weakest point.

Her muscles burned under the strain, weakened from the lack of use over the weeks, but the panels didn't move.

C'mon!! she shifted her weight, putting her back into it, fighting gravity. There was a creaking noise as somewhere, something in the metal began to shift.

Gritting her teeth together, she swung her legs back and kicked out hard. The metal screamed as it buckled and one of the panels flipped back. Nyx lay on her back, gasping for air, looking up amazement at the sky she'd never thought she'd see again. It was black as ebony, stark contrast to the snow the fierce wind whipped across it. The rush of bitter cold ate into her, tearing at her skin with icy fangs.

Clutching her dead arm, she struggled to her feet. Twice she nearly fell, but eventually managed to drag herself onto the roof. Nyx began to shiver uncontrollably. She was wearing about as much as Billie had been when she'd first found her. She had to move quickly. There was only so much time before they realised she was gone, and she froze to death.

She strained into the storm, endless swirls of white in the howling wind. She knew she was close to the towers, the demonstration buildings were on the perimeter. She would never see through the endless blinding white, so she stopped, listening for the rush of oxygen being pumped into the sky.

There! Behind her. She spun. Nyx knew she didn't have the strength to climb down, but if she remembered correctly, the demonstration buildings were only two to four stories tall. Hopefully the snow would break her fall…

It was like landing on a pile of bricks, the impact jarring every bone in her body, shooting white-hot pain down her spine. She struggled to her feet again, hurting, but okay. She floundered through the deep snow towards the sound of the towers, leaving a red trail behind her, bloody hand prints on everything she touched. She didn't worry about being followed though, the blizzard had already covered her tracks.

No one would ever guess that the planet supported life; within the constant violence of the storm was a deathly stillness, a crashing silence in the screaming wind. There was no life between the looming black metal giants. No humans, no aliens, just the wind and the acid trapped in ice.

Nyx had to get back to her tower, even if she couldn’t make it all the way to the complex. Shaking uncontrollably, clutching her arm to her chest, she staggered through the snow, sinking up to her waist with every struggling step. The acid stung her wounds and within five minutes she couldn't feel her legs.

She managed to cross the perimeter, she was only one hundred meters from her tower now, she could see its foggy outline, grey against the white. The numbness was spreading up to her waist now. She was completely exhausted, the exhaustion bringing with it a deep, death-like sleep. With sleep would come the end of pain.

No! Nyx's mind snapped back like a toy on a string and flashed to a book she had once read. The exhaustion she was feeling was her body shutting down against the cold, billions of enzymes denaturing. If she fell asleep, she would die. She got up again, started walking, and suddenly, with no idea how she had gotten there so fast, she was outside the tower.

The service vent was buried beneath four feet of snow, but Nyx, already up to her waist, dropped down and began burrowing with her one functioning arm. Five minutes later, burning from cold, she fell into the service vent.

It took Nyx over an hour to get from the vent to the bottom of the ladder. By then she could barely stand and couldn't stop shaking, she dragged herself along the wall to the air lock. The whole three weeks Nyx had been captive, it never crossed her mind that Billie might not have made it back. But the air lock was open. Nyx had left it open. But Billie wouldn't have left it open if Nyx was gone. She would have known to seal herself in and wait.

Nyx dragged herself in and sealed the door behind her. The bright lights felt as if someone was tearing her eyes out. Shielding her face, Nyx began making her way to her room. Nothing else mattered, so long as she could sleep. Just as she made it to the corridor, Billie appeared from another, a pile of books in her arms, thinking she had heard a noise.

The books clattered to the ground, sliding across the floor and Nyx spun. There they stood, staring at each other across the room, Nyx dripping poison and blood all over the floor, tears streaming down Billie's face.

"NO!!" Nyx sat bolt up-right with a scream, before sucking in a sharp breath as her body stabbed her repeatedly with the hot needles of pain. She looked around wildly before realising she was in the medical bay. A shiver ran down her spine. She felt cold all over, from both her time in the snow and the nightmare she couldn’t remember.

It was hard to believe she was back in the complex, even harder to believe she was still alive. When she had decided to run the assault, she had decided her fate as well. She didn't challenge it, just accepted it as what must be, she knew what she had to do, and she knew what she wanted. But if she really wanted to die so badly, why didn't she just lie down in the snow? Why even make it to the snow, why not just wait for the demonstration?

"Nyx…?" Billie stood hesitantly at the door. "I heard you scream, are you okay?"

"I didn't scream," Nyx tossed back the blanket covering her and jumped down from the bed. She was shaky on her feet, but tried to hide it. She had collapsed in front of Billie. Glancing down, Billie had tied off the major wounds to stop the bleeding. All while she slept. Suddenly she felt covered in a sticky shame. She was weak! An Untouchable needed no help from a human!

She walked over to the cabinets as quickly as she could without falling and began pulling out packs of gauze, bandages, disinfectant, a needle and a tangle of surgical thread. Balancing it all precariously in one arm, she retreated to her room, keeping her eyes ahead of her, refusing to let Billie catch them.

She went in and closed the door behind her, leaving Billie standing in the corridor.

Nyx went straight through to the bathroom, dumping all her supplies hard on the sink. She felt angry and sick, like her head was spinning, she just wanted to smash something. Nyx gasped when she saw her face in the mirror. She didn't recognise herself. And she thought Billie had looked bad! There was so much blood…

She was soaking gauze in disinfectant when she noticed Billie in the mirror, standing a few meters behind her.

"Nyx," Billie took a few steps forward. "You're hurt real bad. Please…let me help you."

"You think you can save us…me…you can't. You can't save any of them, you can't save this planet, you can't even save yourself!"

"This is your human side trying to deal with what your Untouchable side can't," Billie went and got a chair from Nyx's room. "Now sit down before you fall down."

"I don't have a human side," Nyx muttered. "And there's nothing to deal with." But she sat down.

"The more you try to bury it, the more it's going to hurt when it finally comes out."

"Trust me on this, okay? Even as an Untouchable, I can see it in your eyes. In all those months you never let anything come that close to the surface. And now…"

"As for being ashamed," Billie went on. "You've seen me in some pretty bad states. Just because you're an Untouchable doesn't mean you're not allowed to be hurt."

Billie sighed, took the damp gauze from her hands and held it against the gash on her head. Nyx tried to pull away, but when Billie wasn't deterred she gave in and let her.

"I know what you're thinking," Billie cleaned the blood off her face in streaks, revealing bruises on bruises. "Don't."

"I thought you would have. But then I thought if you went up again the Rogues would get to you."

"Winter started the day of the assault. I was snowed in since then. But I saw them all before I went under. Celebrating your death."

"You said you didn't know anything about medicine," Nyx's voice held the slightest hint of humour.

"Give it here," Nyx took the needle and leant forward into the mirror. Biting her lip, she pierced the skin and drew the wound closed, tied the tread off. "Hope you got that," she handed the needle back.

"You know, there's probably some skin-healing device up in the medical bay," Billie said, all the while admiring Nyx's guts.

"I'm ambidextrous," Nyx gave a small smirk. Then she caught herself. "Look, Billie, I'm fine. If I can stitch my head I can do the rest. I don't even need to justify it! Would you just go?"

"Don't give me that shit Nyx!" Billie wouldn't hear any of it. "You're good at covering up, but you're not that good. I'm not leaving you. You want to hate me for it, go right on ahead."

Nyx sighed, then winced as her breath caught painfully in her chest. "Can you get me another shirt?"

Billie blinked in surprise and went to get another. There were several more of the black ones Nyx usually wore in a pile on the desk. Meanwhile, Nyx had taken off the old one and was in the middle of packing gauze into the massive wound in her shoulder.

"Jesus!" Billie stared. She hadn't seen half the wounds that Nyx was painted with. She knelt and fingered the deep slashes under Nyx's ribs. Nyx breathed in a sharp breath of pain.

Billie began trying to stitch it up, copying what she had seen Nyx do. A few minutes later she had three uneven and a little messy lines of stitches, but at least the wound was closed.

"What are those?" Billie took Nyx's arm, ran her fingers over the three punctures in her wrist. They had stopped bleeding, so she left them be.

Nyx was staring distantly into the mirror, not at herself, not at anything, her eyes glistening. Billie touched her arm; she didn't even notice, she was shaking. As concerned as she was, Billie used the opportunity to get to the rest of the wounds Nyx insisted were "fine." Sixty-two stitches in the lashes across her back, almost thirty in both her legs, forty-five to close up the exposed bone in her arm and over an hour later, Billie had as much blood on her as Nyx did and Nyx hadn't moved an inch.

Nyx gasped and jumped back, coming violently out of her trance. If Billie hadn't been holding her, she would have tipped the chair over backwards.

Nyx shook her head, her eyes as wide and horrified as Billie's had been as she watched the demonstration. She didn't know.

She realised where she was and what was happening at the same time she felt Billie's hand on her arm. She glanced down, noticing all the stitches and then looked up at Billie, fear dancing in her eyes.

Billie laughed. "Exactly like me. After we were trapped in the vent with the blood…I sat and thought about it, and the next thing I knew, two hours had passed as my mind relived it. Perfectly normal reaction of shock."

Nyx nodded again, still looking quite scared, but then she pulled herself together and held out her left hand.

Confused, Billie did so, watching as Nyx felt her wrist. Then she took a deep breath, held it and jerked her arm to the right. The bones crunched as they reset and Billie gasped, gaping at what Nyx had just done.

"Strap it up, quickly," Nyx said hoarsely, her pain threshold very close to its peak.

"Oh Nyx," Billie tightened the bandages as gently as she could, noticing Nyx's subtle cringes each time. "That must have…"

Nyx didn't wait for an answer. "Stand behind me. Put one hand on my shoulder and the other here," she put Billie's hand on the break in her collarbone.

"Don't worry about that, what you're about to do is going to hurt a whole lot more."

Billie knew. Nyx was trusting her enough to let her see her in the torturous clutches of pain.

When Nyx gave her the signal, Billie didn't hesitate. The crack of the bone and the pop as her shoulder was pulled back into its socket was drowned out by the chilling scream that escaped Nyx. Nyx grabbed Billie's arm and dug her fingers in hard.

"Woah, easy Nyx!" Billie prised her iron grip open. "It's okay, I'd just like to keep the feeling in my arm!"

"Sorry," her voice was like thin, crackly paper, her face was as white as a ghost and beads of sweat glistened on her forehead.

"You can't. Just stitch up my shoulder and make a sling out of bandages. There's nothing more you can do."

Another half an hour saw the end of the stitches, Billie gently lifted Nyx's arm into the sling and tied it at the nape of her neck.

"Damn, this means I'm going to have to restrap your arm! But I think you're entitled to a shower. I'm going to have one too," Billie looked at her arms, red to the elbows and a wide stain across her front.

About forty minutes later Nyx limped into the rec room. The hot shower had relaxed her aching muscles, and for the first time in hours she didn't feel chilled to the bone. She was dressed in a baggy pair of sweat pants and a crop-top, keeping material from rubbing against the stitches. Her damp, tangled hair framed her face in twisted waves.

Just as Nyx sat herself on the couch, leaning into the arm and tucking her legs underneath her, Billie walked in, carrying a bottle three quarters full of a frothy pink liquid. She was wearing her old pajamas, a blanket draped over her shoulder, red hair in a loose plait.

Billie flopped beside Nyx on the couch. "It's what you get if you put a bit of tablet in water and shake it up. The twenty second century's equivalent to a twentieth century milkshake."

"You need food and you need a drink. If you can just get a few sips of this down…" Billie shook it up again.

Nyx accepted the bottle and took a wary sip. To her surprise, it was delicious, smooth and sweet and thick. After the first mouthful hit her stomach, she realised just how empty she was.

"Not bad for someone who wasn't hungry. But let that sit first, you'll make yourself ill."

There was an awkward silence, Billie picked at the frayed edge of the blanket. She took the bandages Nyx had brought and began restrapping her arm.

"Fine," Billie tied off the last bandage and began remaking the sling. "I did what you told me and went back to the tower. When you didn't come back after the explosion, I went out to look for you. Did you get to see it?"

"It was amazing! The sky…the air around the fortress, it was all on fire, it looked as if the whole thing had been engulfed by this massive drop of blood! And then it started snowing…"

"Still standing. But everywhere you put the bombs is completely leveled. And the ground's been covered in at least three feet of snow each day, so I doubt they've rebuilt anything."

Nyx's shoulders slumped a little. She barely listened to the rest of what Billie said. The control center was still there. The explosion hadn't spread that far. Had it all been for nothing?

"What does it look like they did to me?!" Nyx snapped. "Why do you think there's a hole through my shoulder the size of my fist? Why do I have puncture wounds over all my major veins and arteries?" she waited for Billie to answer.

"You wanna know why?" Nyx went on angrily. "So when they hooked me up to the machine and stabbed a tube into my aorta, my own heartbeat killed me, pumping my own blood out of me! Anything left they sucked out, but not before I stopped breathing and my heart stopped beating and I died!" her voice rose and cracked.

Billie's hand rose to her mouth in shock; Nyx looked away. After everything she had seen, she never thought she'd see this. Billie said nothing. The only sounds in the room were Nyx's shaking, rasping breaths as she struggled to cry.

Nyx put her face down on the arm of the couch and cried silently. Whatever life she had left in her had been sucked out of her along with the blood.

But Billie would do no such thing. She reached out and gently pulled Nyx against her, folded her arms around her.

To her ultimate surprise, Nyx didn't resist at all, she practically fell against Billie. Her head found her shoulder, she hid her face and sobbed.

"Shh," Billie rested her chin on the top of Nyx's head and stroked her damp hair, working through the tangles as she went. She could feel each gasping, pained sob and she couldn't even begin to imagine what Nyx had been through to get a reaction like this.

"Come on Nyx, you're okay," she whispered. "You might have died, but bloody hell, you're not dead now. The wounds will heal. You'll fight another day."

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

It took Nyx at least half an hour to be able to take control of herself again, after which she quickly got up, muttered something about being tired and retreated to her room. Billie tossed the blanket over the back of the couch and sighed. She wanted so badly to help her, but she knew there wasn't a lot she could do. Especially now, she suspected Nyx would withdraw even further into her shell.

Nyx wouldn't just sit down and talk to her. When she was burying things, Billie couldn’t even beat them out of her. But now…The blood on the torture room floor was her's yesterday. They had used her own heart to pump it out and she claimed to have died. Yet she was alive today and quite full of blood, but her reactions definitely meant something. Wounds told a story of their own. But what?

Puncture wounds from the tubes…slash marks down her side and across her back…claws? The massive hole through her shoulder, dislocated and broken collarbone…She couldn't imagine what had done that. As with the square of exposed bone in her forearm…it made no sense. But she had no burns, so they must have captured her just seconds before the explosion.

She had given her the wristbands and the knife because she had known. It was an amazing person who could so calmly stare certain death in the face the way Nyx had. Amazing or crazy. No, Billie didn't think Nyx was crazy. She doubted she'd ever been shocked, even phased by anything. The aliens invaded and she didn't bat an eyelid. Billie invaded, and once again, nothing.

Was she really hiding everything that deep, or was there nothing there? Billie didn't want to believe that there was nothing. Nyx could be compassionate when she wanted to be, she had a wicked sense of humour, when she cared to show it. But was it all her intelligence, or was there emotion there?

There was no denying she'd been emotional today, no matter how hard she had tried to hide it. But Nyx had lost control, screamed in pain, cried. Been so scared that she forgot to hate the world, if only for a moment. Billie didn't know what to think, let alone what to do. She threw her hands in the air in frustration, but just as quickly dropped them to her sides, knowing it wouldn’t help anything.

She could look after Nyx as much as she'd let her, slowly trying to draw snippets of information out of her, but really, until Nyx figured out how to deal with what had happened to her, there was nothing she could do.

Something aches inside of me , Nyx scrawled with a shaking hand. Something burns. It's not from my injuries. It's something different. Is it even pain? I've never felt anything like this before.

But today is full of strange sensations, strangest of all the warm tears slipping down my cheeks…why am I crying? Why do I wish Billie was here so badly right now? Why do I hate her for making me trust her? Why do I hate myself even more? I can't think of two days ago. It's like it never happened because I'm back in my room as if I woke up from a bad dream…but then I see myself in the mirror and I remember how I got every last bruise…my legs don't hold me any more. Oh God, what's happening to me?!

"Nyx?" Billie rapped her knuckles on the closed door and waited for a response. She didn't expect one, but she still waited. "Nyx, please answer?"

It had been thirty six hours since Nyx had come out of her room. In any other circumstance, Billie wouldn't have thought anything of it, but today she constantly had a sick feeling in her stomach, like she had swallowed something heavy and alive. A brick with legs.

Billie was hesitant about just walking in. She'd done it yesterday but although Nyx hadn't said anything, she knew she was skating on very thin ice. All she'd cared about was the fact that Nyx was alive, she hadn't even noticed that she was standing in Annabelle Croft's quarters. Even now, standing outside them, the thrill of discovery had gone.

"Nyx?" Billie knocked a third time. "I'm not going to go away, either you let me in or I'll come in anyway."

So much for thin ice, she thought. At this rate I'll have fallen straight through.

She waited a few more minutes and when Nyx still didn't answer, pressed the green keypad and stepped into the room.

Nyx was lying flat on her back on her bed, staring up at the ceiling, not moving. Her eyes were open, but she looked dead, pale, the only sign of life the laboured rising and falling of her chest.

"I was ignoring you for a reason," Nyx said, her voice cold and detached, eyes never leaving the ceiling. "Go away."

Billie sat herself on the desk opposite Nyx, swung her legs underneath it. "No."

"You've seen my room, it's Annabelle Croft's if you haven't already figured it out. Now you can go."

"If I wanted to see this place, I've had the whole month you were gone. But as you can see, I haven't set foot in here!"

"But you didn't think you'd ever be back, did you?" Billie went on. "You knew from the start that you'd be killed, that's why you gave me the knife and the wristbands," a pause. "In your mind, you were already dead. You can't even begin to accept the fact you're still alive, let alone whatever they did to you."

There was a long silence, broken only by a dull thwack as the heel of Billie's shoe bounced off the table leg as she swung her legs back and forth. Then Nyx sighed angrily.

"Stop trying to get into my head, stop trying to analyse me! You don't know what I'm thinking! You don't know me at all!"

"Okay, you're right, I don't know what you're thinking, so why don’t you tell me?"

"And here I was under the impression you were actually intelligent for a human," Nyx spat venomously. "Try this. I don't want you to know. I don't even want to know! I don't want to speak, I don't want to think, I don't even want to breathe! I just want to close my eyes and stare into the inky blackness until my mind shuts down and I can slip away."

But Billie stood her ground, despite very well knowing that she should definitely shut up at a look like that.

"It's bullshit Nyx! If you really wanted to die, you would have let them have you at the first opportunity!"

"Get out," Nyx's voice shook dangerously, yet she had not moved from the bed, her eyes had not so much as flickered from the ceiling.

"You don't know what you want anymore," Billie had no intention of leaving. "Shattered realities…" she trailed off, waiting for Nyx to say something, but she said nothing more.

"You do. You knew you were going to die, you left me the complex. If you didn't trust me you would have killed me first! And you let me see you in pain, that was big, especially for you!"

"Trust me on this; if you tell me what happened, you'll be able to get up. When winter's over, you can scare the shit out of the Rogues and kick some alien ass."

Billie sighed and hopped down from the desk. "Will you at least eat something?" she paused in the doorway.

She's stronger than I ever gave her credit for. Really, she's done it all by herself, I've never been any comfort to her. She cries, I slap her. I cry, she holds me. What sort of monster am I? Heartless beast demon slayer. I'm practically killing my own kind.

I don't understand her, the way she places so much importance on trust. I don't understand the way she trusts me. She pushes further than I'd ever push with her, she walks on very dangerous ground, yet she knows I'll never hurt her. And somehow I've slipped into trusting her, despite my attempts to stop it.

art of me wants to tell her, talk and talk until my voice is gone, but if she's right then it would shatter my resolve. I can't fight anyone if this is what will keep happening to me. But then…she said if I tell her I could make a choice. Somehow I get the feeling she won't let me make this particular choice easy.

I've experienced more emotions these past few days than I have in my entire lifetime. Now all I wish is that I could go back to the cold clinical ways of feeling nothing. Does it make me human? Can it, when my blood kills them? I have poison running through my veins. Really, I am nothing more than the result of a botched laboratory experiment performed two hundred years ago.

Nyx eased herself up on one elbow and sat up and grudgingly took a sip from the bottle. She was hungry, but she didn't want to be, trying to block out even the most basic of her feelings. Billie returned to her seat on the desk. "I can understand why you want to try and block it all out y'know. But take it from me, it won't work.

"Okay fine," Billie moved and sat on the floor, her back against the bed. "If you won't tell me, I'll try and piece it together myself."

"Okay, you obviously didn't make it to the control center because it's still standing. And you have no burns, so you must have been captured just before the explosion," she paused, thinking. "So how did you end up captured? You're too good to be ambushed…so how?"

Billie whirled, shocked. "Why would I think that?! Why would you think I think that?! Bloody hell Nyx, look at what they did to you!"

"Now do you understand?! The Untouchable warrior, slaughterer or hundreds of thousands, brought to her knees by one!"

"Nyx, you don't have to care what I think. One or one hundred thousand, it doesn't matter! But if you weren't quick enough to get away, then no one else in the world ever stood a chance."

"You got out!" Billie turned around and got up on her knees. "It's been almost a year and no one else has!"

"They realised we used the vents to plant the bombs," Nyx said, her voice hollow. "I ran a gauntlet, there were thousands guarding the center. I kept firing bombs to scatter them. But now when I think about it, none of them attacked me because they knew."

Nyx shook her head briefly, still staring at the ceiling. "It shot me. Those weapons they have…paralyse you all over. They surrounded me…the explosions started just before they shot me a second time. Last thing I remember was watching the sky catch fire."

"Nyx, you had no chance," Billie gently touched her arm. "You had no way of knowing…"

Nyx glared at the ceiling. "I woke up. I was on a table…I just remember burning. I couldn’t tell if it was the effects of being shot, or this light…they had lights from every angle, so strong I could feel the heat through metal. They shoved something down my throat," she swallowed unconsciously. "Then I was out again."

For the first time since Billie had come in, Nyx looked at her, eyebrow slightly raised in amusement. "I didn't need to know that."

Billie smiled to herself. It was working. Drawing information out of Nyx forced her to focus on it, after which she could focus on something else.

"If you're thinking what I think you're thinking, then don't even think about it!"

"If I shut up, then I won't be able to tell you what happened next," Nyx said innocently.

"Yeah. He didn’t recognise me at first. I couldn’t move at all, I was all cut up…" Nyx trailed off. "Billie I don't want to talk about this."

"Please? Just get it all out in the open, then it'll truly be over with and I promise I won't bring it up again."

Nyx turned her head slightly to look at her and once again Billie got a rare glimpse at the pain in Nyx's eyes. "Sometimes I think if I could just sleep for a really long time it'd stop…but when I close my eyes I can see it, and when I do actually fall asleep, I dream about it."

"I keep hearing things…but they're not really there…that triggers stuff inside my head and suddenly I can hear them marching along the corridor to take me…" Nyx's voice broke.

"It's all perfectly normal Nyx, everything you're thinking, nightmares, noises…some people don't come out half as good. If the aliens did ever leave and let everyone go, I assure you, 90% of them would come out completely insane."

"Remember I told you the first time we bombed that the people were already dead? Well it's true. Every day they come and take the healthy ones away and replace them with the dead ones that they revived. If it wasn't for their technology keeping everyone alive…"

"There's a chemical in human blood that makes them stronger…at least I think that's what it does. They extract that and the rest is just by-product."

"I died," Nyx's voice caught again. "Even though I thought I was unconscious…just somehow I knew my heart had stopped…" she put her hand over her eyes.

"Aww Nyx…" Billie sat up and pulled her hand away from her face. "This is good y'know."

"Good?!" she sat up too and rubbed her eyes. "Twenty three years of training and self control, gone in an instant!"

"Pfft, self control…there are times when self control is important, sure…but then there's times like this when it all goes out the window."

Billie smiled. "Nothing anyone ever created in their wildest dreams could have."

"With you there was nothing to deal with. The first week didn't even feel real. But you were just too…amazing…to be scared of."

"I'm not amazing," Nyx said. "But what did I say before about you and your fearless personality?"

Billie shrugged. "There's too much at stake here to give it all away to petty fears. I can be scared when it's over."

Nyx subconsciously straightened up, her eyes hardening. Billie must have noticed because she said, "Nyx, whatever it is you're scared of...the fact that you're even scared...not petty, okay?"

"You put your head down and you keep going. Convince yourself it's all okay because there's no other option. But you can't do that, it'll hurt you a whole lot more in the long run, I promise. You have this winter to deal with it…believe me when I say take it, because I need you to fight with me in the thaw," Billie got up. "I need you to be okay, because it's our only chance. I'm going to get some sleep. You should too… You've been through far too much more than anyone ever should."

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

The winter dragged uneventfully on until three and a half months later the first of the scorching acid rains began to melt the ice. Nyx spent the winter in her room, lying on her bed, long after the physical wounds had healed. Billie had eventually drawn the whole story out of her, but regardless, she wouldn’t get up. She didn't talk much either, and if Billie didn't bring food to her, she wouldn't eat, but all her previous signs of shock and pain seemed to be gone.

It frustrated Billie to no end, nothing she could say could convince her to get up, yet when she talked now it was as if nothing had ever happened.

"Take a gun," Nyx said absent-mindedly, her eyes on their usual fixed spot on the ceiling.

She was met by a rush of frigid air when she opened the airlock and at first she thought the winter storms continued to rage on above her. But she made the long climb to the surface anyway. As she reached the top rung of the ladder, she reached above her head to push the metal away, only to find it frozen to the ground. She slammed her weight into it a few times, the clangs resounding down the tunnel, but it didn't move.

Instead she slid down a few rungs and hanging by one arm, leant back to fire the CR-20's laser to melt the frozen metal. A few minutes later she slammed the butt of the gun into it and the metal sheet flew from above her and clattered somewhere behind the hole.

She cautiously climbed into the tower, keeping the gun up, and dashed across to the service vent. The temperature progressively dropped as she neared the outside and just as with the metal sheet she had to melt the ice around the vent before she could get out. Night was falling, the sky a twisted web of green washing into a deep purple that dipped with blood amidst the last hints of silver as the winter melted away.

Billie slipped out and quickly got out of sight. The snow had melted, save a dirty grey splattering here and there, but the air was still sharp with a bitter chill, the ground raw and hard and wet from a recent storm.

Wisps of steam rose from the earth, giving the impression it was boiling hot, as opposed to nearly frozen. Keeping a close watch on all fronts, Billie ran down to the perimeter. She gasped, really now only seeing the extent of the damage for the first time. If they planned on rebuilding, they showed no signs, but their attack had been incredibly powerful.

The control centre had been spared by a mere five buildings; before it, stretching miles in its diameter, was the crater. Nyx was right, it had successfully isolated the outer sections of the fortress, making them vulnerable to attack. She needed Nyx to get up. They had to act now or there may not be another chance. The further they extended the crater, the further they would break up the fortress, until it existed only in pockets. They could potentially win this. If only she'd get up…

The crater itself was hundreds of meters deep, it looked as if a huge fiery mouth had risen out of the earth and tried to swallow too much. Twisted, cracked and charred metal, the only remnants of the formidable alien structures lay scattered, protruding half buried from beneath the earth. The buildings directly around it hadn't been spared, they were now lopsided and crumbling, warped like a surrealist painting from the intense heat. Being dressed for temperatures a cut above what she was in, Billie turned around and headed back.

"Just about," Billie replied, blowing on her hands and mildly surprised at her interest. "The attack did massive damage, no signs of rebuilding either…look, I'll come back and tell you in a few minutes, I want a shower to warm up."

The steaming water pounded on her back, she leaned her head on the tiles and let it work on reheating her.

There was a strange sound, sudden and out of place, a low, echoing moan that sounded as if it was coming from within the ceiling above her. But that was impossible. The ceiling extended into hundreds of meters of solid rock…

Must just be the water in the pipes, she dismissed it and began lathering her shoulders with soap. But a few minutes later the entire complex shuddered with a clanging vibration, like machinery coming to a grinding halt. The water turned off and the world was thrown into un-penetrateable darkness

Billie gasped in shock and reached out for the slick tiled walls. Feeling her way along them she made her way to the front of the shower, where she had dropped her towel and wrapped it tightly around her.

The velvet black encapsulated her, her eyes burning, trying to adjust, to no avail.

But then she heard something that made her blood run cold. An all-too-familiar screech. And there was no way that sound could have come from the surface.

Doing everything she could not to panic, she backed herself into the corner of the shower and crouched down, her hand clapped over her mouth and nose to silence her frightened gasps.

Here she was, naked, unarmed, completely blind and very much alone. She didn't dare move again, she had already shouted twice and if they really were down here then there was no way they hadn't heard her. What about Nyx? Would she lie in the darkness, resisting all of her Untouchable instincts, waiting to be found? Or would this be the kick in the ass she needed to get up?

Her question was answered, an eternity of five minutes later, when without warning, a hand was clapped over her mouth and Nyx hissed in her ear.

Billie swallowed the scream that had risen within her. She had never been so happy to see her… or not see her…in her life.

As Billie pulled her clothes over her wet skin, still damp with cold, she remembered.

"Oh shit Nyx! I left the airlock open!" she ducked away from the hit she expected to follow, but Nyx just took her arm and led her out of the shower.

Billie felt faint with horror, she grabbed onto Nyx with both arms, terrified of being swallowed up by the darkness. "What do we do?!"

"I hate it when you're right," Nyx whispered grudgingly. "It was my choice to get up and fight."

"Calm down, you're breathing too fast. There's only three of them, when they power went out I went to see what was happening and they were heading down a corridor. I have a feeling they can see in the dark, they had a strange membrane over their eyes," Nyx strapped a CR-20 to Billie, who clutched it tightly. "Let's go."

"Kill the three down here and then get up to the surface and turn the tower back on so we can close the airlock before any more of them get in. We've gone bigger things than this."

"Stay here," Nyx whispered, putting Billie's hand on the central cube to give her some bearing.

She ran to the airlock, gripped the door tightly and slowly wrenched it closed. Without the power it was the only way. When she'd finally sealed it, her arms and shoulders burned, but at least they could track down the aliens inside without fear of more coming in.

Billie stayed as close as she could to the cube without huddling against it. She trusted Nyx to watch her, but that didn't stop the fear flooding through her. Sure, she could hold her own in a fight with numerous aliens, but when she couldn't see or hear them, it was an entirely different ballgame. Even if she never stopped moving, she was a sitting duck.

She flicked the CR-20 settings to vaporise and held the gun at the ready. Billie doubted somewhat that if one of them got close enough to her that she could hear them, she couldn't have time to get a shot off, but holding the gun was still the slightest of comforts.

Billie didn't hesitate, she threw herself to the floor, mere nanoseconds from being blasted by the orange beam that streaked over her head.

Billie leapt to her feet and fired a rapid volley of shots in the direction Nyx had given her, the laser fire painfully bright in the darkness.

There was a screech and then the thwack as the creature's hollowed exoskeleton hit the ground, then nothing.

Nyx looped her arm through Billie's. "If you trust me, then trust me when I say I've got your back."

"What about all the other sides of me?" Billie asked quite seriously. "I really don't like the dark."

"It was different. They couldn't see us either. These aliens can see us, they're armed and we both know how fast they move."

"Billie, I can see for you. I know where they are, I can hear them. At least trust the Untouchable genes."

"One's near the rec room…the other is heading right for us," Nyx grabbed her knife. "You're not going to like this at all…but I'm going to use you as bait."

"I promise," Nyx took her by the shoulders and positioned her in front of the corridor, "I won't let anything happen to you."

She heard a snarl, fast swishing movements of shapes cutting the air and wondered for the millionth time if she hadn't found Nyx if she'd have found the strength to mount operations like this alone. Nyx seemed to believe she had it in her, but Billie wondered if she was really seeing the truth, or just what she wanted to see.

Still standing in the centre of an endless black void, Billie heard Nyx shout, the sound both on top of her and a million miles away, and a body crumpling to the ground. She heard the crack of the exoskeleton splitting as Nyx wrenched her knife out, then a few seconds later, felt her hand on her shoulder.

"Just a scratch," Nyx brushed her concern aside. "One more, then we go topside. You okay?"

Nyx hunted the alien down, by sound rather than sight, she could hear its silent footsteps, sounds Billie would never hear. She wondered if it could hear them too, or only smell them. If it was relying on sense of smell alone, then it wouldn't have much precision, the whole complex must have reeked of them after winter.

Nyx held her arm out to stop Billie. They were outside one of the barracks now and the door had been wrenched from its track.

Nyx reappeared atop a barrack, above the alien's line of sight, it was tearing blankets from the bunks, searching.

The alien spun towards the sound and Nyx fired directly into its face. The device that allowed it to see suddenly ate itself away and the alien flailed blindly. She leapt clear over it and grabbed its tail, confusing it. It veered towards her and she leapt back onto the bunk. The alien decided to charge her, instead it charged straight into the metal frame and knocked itself off its feet. Nyx took the opportunity; dropped on top of it, slit it open and stepped away.

"I think we better leave the lights off in here," Nyx muttered, picking up the remaining tatters of a sheet.

"Hopefully," Nyx latched onto Billie and headed back to the main airlock. "Either way we have to go get the tower back on."

Nyx wrenched the airlock open again and they cautiously made their way down the tunnel to the ladder. She looked up, craning back. Almost a mile above her she could see the faint light of the sky. The silence was eerie; the constant gushing from the tower no more.

Billie blinked and rubbed her eyes as they began their painful adjustment process. They began climbing the ladder.

Nyx didn't say anything. It was odd and she had a bad feeling about what may await them on the surface. She would die before letting them capture her again.

Yet they came out into the tower to find it completely deserted, no signs that anything was there, or ever had been. They both unstrapped their weapons nevertheless. The only thing out of place was the suspended cube--no longer pulsing with electricity, it was black and silent.

Nyx craned her head back again, looking up at the suspended walkways, forty stories of stairway leading to the metal cube. She took the magrope from her shoulder.

"Come on, we don't have time to climb stairs," she fired the rope at the underside of the cube, waited for Billie to grab her and shot them into the air.

"A better question would be how do we turn it on and get away again without being fried.

"Maybe its got a safety mechanism? It'll wait a minute before actually starting?"

Nyx was leaning over the edge of the railing around the far side of the cube. There were still no keypads or anything that could be used to turn it back on.

"Wait," Nyx held up a hand to silence her. She could hear something…the faintest vibrations; evenly spaced, like objects landing on the side of the tower, one by one.

"…what?" But Billie did as she was told and Nyx suspended them a few meters below the tower's rim. And not a second too soon--twelve aliens fell past them and landed on top of the central cube and surrounding walkway.

"Go back, we can take twelve!" Billie protested as Nyx disengaged the magnets and sent them free falling towards the ground before she fired across to the other wall.

To both their horrors, the aliens were climbing from the walkways to the walls of the tower themselves. And sticking to them.

"They build flying fortresses and inter-spatial vortexes Billie, I'm sure they can figure out magnets," Nyx brought them to a sharp stop, hanging against the wall. The aliens were closing on them from both sides, springing towards them in looping zig zag formations. They had definitely planned this!

“I’m going to let them get close and then I’m going to try and get us to the ground on the opposite side of the tower,” Nyx spoke quickly and quietly. “We can try and fight it out there, but if more come, get underground and seal the tunnel with a plasma grenade.”

“I can’t see underground! And no way in hell am I leaving you to be captured a second time!”

“I will get the power back on! And I won’t be captured, I’ll be dead.”

Without warning then, Nyx pressed the release button and sent them free falling until the rope hit the far wall and they swung on a pendulum arc towards the ground. There were a few more thuds on the walkway behind them and Nyx glanced back just a split second long enough to see them raise the exact same guns they had used to paralyse her. And fire.

Three shots hit Billie in the back and Nyx heard her gasp of shock before she fell away. Nyx grabbed desperately for her, but, a slave to momentum, she was already meters out of reach.

The last thing she heard was her terrified scream before the impact that broke her neck.

CHAPTER NINETEEN

Nyx, forgetting to lock the rope, smashed into the wall, and only three meters from the ground now, fell the rest of the way. When she jumped to her feet two seconds later, knife up in anticipation of a brutal attack, her left arm hung limply by her side, broken at the elbow.

But nothing attacked. Instead, the aliens were springing from the walls and converging on Billie's broken body, flat on her back, dead eyes staring open at the empty sky. But they weren't attacking her. They picked her up. Nyx didn't stop them. She had died and their technology had brought her back. They began climbing, one of them spearing Billie on the end of its tail. Even though she was dead, they took her. And then they were gone.

They left as soon as they had her, as if Nyx didn't even exist, jumping out of the tower from the rim. Nyx knew what she had to do--get the power back on, fix her arm, and then pay a little visit to the Rogues to kill time. As much as the thought pained her, she had to leave Billie there for at least a few hours, long enough for them to bring her back.

She was confident in her assumption that they wouldn't kill her--she hadn't seen an execution in the whole month she had been a prisoner. She took off her jacket and used it to bind her arm to her body, shivering with pain and cold, weakened muscles long since used, complaining.

She used the magrope to get herself back up to the cube, the short stop painfully jerking her arm. There was no button to activate it, but a lever, atop the cube. It had taken aliens descending from the sky for her to see it.

The problem she now faced was getting out of the vicinity quick enough to save herself from frying. She climbed up and looked down. The angle was far too steep to attempt another swing. Billie must have been right, there must have been some sort of delay mechanism, something to give the person time to move. Nyx could think of no other alternative for the Beforetimers to have done it.

Ready to attempt a risky swing, Nyx kicked the lever down with the toe of her boot. But nothing happened. Curious, she knelt, wondering if she had pushed it all the way.

"Warning! The core has been activated. Three minutes until primary activation sequence! All personal clear the area immediately!"

Nyx leapt back, it took her a moment to realise that the booming male voice was an automated warning from inside the cube, or core as it appeared to be known as in the Beforetime.She jumped down, her feet clanging on the metal catwalk, jarring her arm again. Rather than running down over forty flights of stairs, she secured the rope to the bottom of the core, let it all out and then slid to the floor. The voice was counting down in twenty second intervals.

"One minute forty seconds to primary activation sequence! All personnel clear the area immediately!"

"All personnel, clear the area, core activation in ten, nine, eight, seven, six, five…"

It was as if the air had split; electricity erupted from the cube, blinding bolts crawling up and down the walls, before the core ignited and the electricity began weaving through the honey-combed interior.

There was a low hum that shook the air as the power came back on, before the neon blue bolts formed a peak of super-charged energy that gave way to the first new gush of oxygen.

Nyx let out a relieved breath then and slowly made her way back to the complex. Underground, the first thing she did after repowering everything was close the airlock. In the medical bay she carefully unstrapped her arm before performing the all-too familiar painful maneuver that nearly rendered her unconscious. It was funny though, she mused. It hurt a whole lot more doing it to yourself.

It's the fate of the complex leader to fight. There's no denying it. Can we really win this if we strike hard before winter's end? How vulnerable did we really make them? Nyx yanked the bandages tight with her teeth, the pain bringing tears to her eyes.

She gathered up the two sliced-open aliens and the hollowed exoskeleton and used the magrope to send them up to the tower. Then she strapped a CR-20 into the hand of her broken arm, leaving the other hand free for the knife and anything else.

There wasn't a reason, really, to go to the Rogues, other than to kill time. Nyx didn't think she could stand just waiting in the complex, pacing back and forward around the central room. Some hostile banter, maybe an easy scuffle, would clear her mind.

The hollowed-out shell she discarded on the other side of the deserted perimeter, a sign to anyone who saw it that the war was not over yet. The other two she slung over one shoulder, heads and arms dragging through the dirt. She did not worry about being followed. Not her complex, not her problem.

She did wonder how the aliens had found them though, the realisation that their location had been compromised beginning to sink in. She wondered if it was Billie's admitted carelessness--she had forgotten to close the airlock, would she let herself be followed? Despite the fact that Billie was only human, Nyx tended to doubt it. Unlike all the other humans she'd encountered, Billie wasn't stupid.

No, it seemed more plausible that they'd found or developed some sort of resistance to the field the towers generated, as Jimmy Carlos had mentioned in the holding cell. As for figuring out which tower, even primitive Beforetime infrared technology would have detected that. However, she wondered if they had such technology.

In no way did they have mammalian attributes, if there were any similarities at all to the extinct life on earth, they would have held with reptilian or insectosoid forms of life and thus Nyx assumed them to be exothermic--cold blooded.

She made the trip to the Rogue base in good time, the fact she was carrying two dead aliens and her arm was broken not slowing her at all. She sometimes wondered why they called themselves the Rogues, they weren't…well…Rogue. They never attacked, they had no strategies, all they did was sit underground, just as two days ago Nyx had still planned to. They may have been Rogue under Billie's command, but that had gone the second she had.

Their tower was still working, she noted. The aliens didn't fit through the service vent, so she shot herself up to the top, dropped them over the rim and lowered herself a little more carefully. Laid out in a row on the floor were skeletons, five to be exact. Nyx wasn't surprised, it wasn't unexpected. There were no scratches or breaks in the winter-blasted white bones. Whichever Rogues these were had starved to death over winter.

She dropped the aliens down through the hole in the floor, and when she had gotten down there herself, opened the airlock with the touch of a button. Rather than hunt them down within the complex, she turned the power on and off a few times to get their attention.

The four remaining Rogues rushed to the central room and Nyx held up an alien to shield herself from a volley of fire. Brodie, it seemed, much to her disappointment, was very much alive.

"You did a good job faking your own death. Covering that whore of yours in blood and sending her over all charred after the explosion? Nice touch, I almost believed it."

"Now why would I fake my own death?" Nyx dropped both aliens on the floor in front of her. "No, I had a little peek at the aliens' gracious hospitality. My 'whore' is sampling it right now, in fact, I'm going to pick her up a little later. I see you've all pulled your belts in a few notches."

The remaining Rogues; Brodie, Frankie, Aine and Blaze were as starved as she'd once been. It seemed that winter had hit them hard and unexpected and they hadn't been able to stock up. She wondered if they'd resorted to eating each other.

"So what exactly are you doing here?" Frankie asked, coughing. His voice was rough and weak. He sounded like he had a pretty severe chest infection. Nyx wondered instead if that was what had killed the others.

"Well, you see," Nyx gave one of the aliens a kick. "These were cluttering up my living room, so I thought I'd pop around, y'know, visit the neighbours, do the polite thing and bring some food…" she smiled, wishing Billie was here to see the disgusted look on Brodie's face.

"Manners make you sick? My, Brodie, I think the confinement may be getting to you!" Nyx paused, briefly rubbed her chin. She leaned against the central cube and folded her arms across her chest. "Or is it the thought of an Untouchablewith manners that disgusts you? The realisation, no matter how deep down it is, that really we are just like you."

“Did those men get completely stripped of all their flesh and internal organs by the cold air in the tower?” Nyx wondered aloud. “Maybe you don’t have to live beyond the sector to be a Renegade. And maybe it’s not the fact that we are just like you that disgusts you,” Nyx let the sentence hang for a moment. “Maybe it’s the fact that you are just like us,” she turned on her heel and started for the airlock.

“You haven’t so much as made a dent in one of the fortress walls since they came. If you ever got the guts to mount an attack, you’d all be killed. And what about the rest of you?” she addressed the other men, standing silently in Brodie’s shadow. “Hungry? I can see the way you’ve been eyeing those aliens off. Or does he speak for you about that too?”

“If we had have recruited you, we’d have all died a long time ago,” Frankie said.

“Don’t I know it. All it would take is one of you taking one wrong step to wipe us all out.”

“Oh, that’s where you’re wrong. You see, I got out. I’m the only one on the entire coastline, as far as the fortress goes, who did,” Nyx pretended to look at a watch on her arm. “Now, if you don’t mind…the aliens will be annoyed if I’m not there in time to pick up your fearless leader.”

“I hope she’s dead!” Brodie looked close to lunging. “And I hope you never make it out alive. Is ‘fluke’ a word in the Untouchable vocabulary?”

“There’s no such thing as a fluke,” Nyx observed Brodie’s white knuckled clenching and unclenching fists. “You wouldn’t attack an injured woman, would you?” she smiled at him and left. As she closed the airlock behind her, she heard Brodie lash out, probably at one of the aliens. “I’m going to make it scream for mercy if it’s the last thing I do!”

Nyx saw for the first time truly the damage done as she stood before the line and took it all in. Billie was right, the fortress had been broken into vulnerable pockets, the strength that once came with its size snapped like a tree blown over in a storm.

So where to find her? Nyx assumed that she’d be where the majority of the injured prisoners had been, in a demonstration building not far from the control tower. Perhaps they’d move her when she’d recovered, but they certainly hadn’t had time for that.

Even now, with winter over, there were no ground patrols, no perimeter guards, and Nyx was able to walk freely between the buildings. Once she got Billie out, it would be so easy to bring the rest of the fortress down.

She wondered if the aliens were able to define between the people inside and those attacking them from the outside. She tended to doubt it, she was treated no differently from anyone else. Which would make the only reason the aliens hunted down the remaining humans for just one more person to suck the life out of. So why had they left her? They had taken Billie as if they’d got what they came for.

Nyx didn’t want to admit it, but she felt somewhat relieved at this realisation. It meant they would not try to capture her again. She didn’t think they’d hesitate to kill her though.

Nyx stared up at the building she had escaped from a few months ago. It looked a lot less menacing from the outside. She had no way of knowing if Billie was there. She could hear people, but that meant nothing; she could hear people in most of the buildings.

There were many entrances to the building; an airlock on ground level, several more at the ends of the branching raised walkways. And then there were the less obvious, like the roof. Unlike the Rogue encounters, Nyx was not here to cause a scene.

Nyx was fully armed, short of a nuclear grenade launcher; she was prepared to use whatever force was necessary. Trying to keep her broken arm against her, she whizzed up to the roof. Nyx was anxious to see the extent of Billie’s condition. It had been almost three hours. What could they do to her in three hours? What had they done to Nyx? She couldn’t remember, she’d been paralysed and unconscious.

Nyx was about to do something she never believed she would do, never even thought she’d want to do. She was about to risk her life to save a friend, a move that could end with the both of them chained to poles on the rooftops in front of a churning vortex. But at least Billie would know she’d tried, she thought, holding the CR-20 out.

No sense in wrenching the roof open and doing anything else to my arm , Nyx stepped up to the edge of the large hole she’d made and blasted out the floor below as well. Then she was able to drop down into a corridor with a grated metal floor, her boots connecting with a resounding clang.

The corridor was silent and empty, save the hum that seemed to resonate throughout the whole building, like bees. There was something about the interior; it looked a whole lot bigger than you’d expect, looking at the thin, cylindrical building from the outside.

She was tempted to shout Billie’s name and wait for a response for a split second, before she mentally backhanded herself. She was inside a torture building, swarming with aliens who knew their job very well, and if they were capable of human emotions, would have loved it.

Fearing for a moment that her Untouchable instincts had deserted her, Nyx began to move very quickly away from the holes she made, keeping close to the wall. Her footsteps made not a sound on the metal.

So, where to search for Billie? She wasn’t sure how long their technology took to revive a person, but the machine was in the torture room. The torture room was on the bottom floor, along with the drainage vents. So that’s where she needed to be.

Nyx stood outside the first door she came across, holding her breath as she listened. She could hear her heart pounding, but nothing from behind the door. The aliens had a keypad disturbingly similar to her own, only without colours. One simply glowed, the other did not.

Eyes black, knife up, ready to attack or disappear, Nyx tentatively pushed the button. Behind the door was a strange shaft, dropping right down to ground level. At regular intervals, about every ten feet apart were platforms protruding from these walls. Between these platforms, going down, were the doorways to the three other floors of the building.

Having seen the aliens’ jumping abilities, Nyx took a guess that these were their equivalent to stairs. Her guess was correct. She looked over again to see two aliens, springing from platform to platform towards her. As far as she knew, they hadn’t seen her yet. Rather than wait to be discovered, she dropped down onto the first platform, holding tight her knife and pressed back against the wall.

As the first alien rose through the air, everything in slow motion to Nyx, she dashed forward and slit it down the torso. It all happened so fast that the alien’s body wasn’t even level with the platform yet. Its body and all the blood fell in two pieces just as the second alien sprang towards her. A few seconds later, it was falling too, but it had gained a little more height and Nyx could not avoid being splattered with its mercury blood.

Checking again that the shaft was clear, she herself dropped from platform to platform right to the ground. She found herself in another corridor, only this one curved around two blind corners. The wrong direction could add hours to her search time. But her decision was made for her. She could hear footsteps. Lots of footsteps.

Clutching her arm, aching from the jarring drops down the shaft, she moved quickly in the opposite direction. In a couple of seconds she came to a fork, with two doors at the end of each. No time to be choosy—the aliens would know she was here as soon as they found the bodies—she chose the left and dove inside…

They all turned to her as the door hissed closed. She counted nine. She also counted one familiar body chained to a table in the corner. Could she take on nine with one hand? Another glance at Billie. She had to.

The air filled with their screeches and her shouts as they converged on her at once, immediately abandoning whatever they had been doing. She flung her knife into the farthest, jumping into the air and sprang off the nearest and with her landing motion, grabbed the knife handle and brought it down with a sickening crunch.

An alien behind her screeched in indignation, obviously not versed in her tactics on the frontline. She whirled and fired a single shot from the CR-20 strapped to her broken arm. The alien went down and crumbled.

A lashing alien tail caught her behind the legs and dropped her to her knees. She thrust the knife up instantly into the palette of the second alien who’s jaws were coming down on her head.

They’re working in pairs! She thought, as she jumped up again and split the alien’s head open. She didn’t like that at all.

There were six to go—no, make that five, she managed to vaporise her second. Three decided to tackle her at once and succeeded, she could only stick the knife into one at a time. She pulled the blade out and was drenched in blood as if someone had tipped a bucket over her. Seeming to sense her injury, one of them pinned her by standing on her arm.

She shouted in pain, throwing her head back, and within seconds she was surrounded completely by the remaining four. Dizzy and sick, the pain going straight to her stomach, she saw one tail raised in the air, preparing to slice her open like she had done to so many of them. Three gaping mouths, gelatinous drool oozing from between their putrid teeth, shimmering in the flickering lights of the torture room.

So this is it, she thought, as the world around her froze. The droplets of drool stopped falling, the lights stopped flickering, all that remained was the spear plunging towards hell to skewer her pounding heart.

In that second she remembered the CR-20 strapped to her broken arm. It took all of her training to endure the pain, her eyes two infinitely dark oubliettes glistening with pain induced tears as she forced muscles to move over broken bones to squeeze the trigger and hold it down.

Endless rapid shots, bouncing off aliens and hitting walls, machinery, benches. She hoped to God she didn’t hit Billie. By the most incredible stroke of luck, one of her frantic shots hit the lights, or the power source controlling them, and the room plunged into darkness.

Not about to give up her second chance, she rolled towards the alien standing on her arm, the movement enough to dislodge its footing in the dark. Free to move, she backrolled to her feet and moved like a wild cat to the other side of the room, mere seconds before the dull clang of the alien’s tail hitting the metal floor where her heart used to be.

From then on, it was easy, the aliens, so technologically advanced, were completely helpless in the dark. She slaughtered them all in under a minute. Nyx bent over to catch her breath, then straightened to restrap her arm. Maybe it was just the injury and the fact that she hadn’t eaten or slept in a hell of a long time, but she hadn’t felt this sore and drained for a very long time.

Nyx vaporised a hole in the floor above a drainage pipe through which they could escape. Then she could finally turn her attention to Billie. She was lying splayed on a metal table, spread-eagled and tied by chains around her wrists, ankles and chest, just as Nyx had been. Her stomach churned at the flashback her mind provided her with. Billie’s head was pulled back, the metal tube down her throat, three tiny tubes coming out of her right wrist.

There were a series of cuts along her thighs and she could see blood seeming through her shirt from the wound in her side when they had speared her. The laboured rise and fall of her chest beneath her chains was her only proof of life. They had brought her back to life, but they hadn’t healed her wounds.

Nothing. She began to quickly unchain her, no way of knowing how long she had until she would be discovered. She dropped the set of chains to the floor with a clang. There were bruises where they had been. Billie mustn’t have gone down without a fight.

Her head now leaned against her shoulder, Nyx pulled the tubes from her wrist and let them fall. They swung from the machine they were attached to and tapped against the legs of the table, a clear liquid dripping from the end.

The drug in the tube was all that was keeping Billie unconscious. Her eyes, bloodshot, fluttered open and began to dart around, terrified, her whole body stiffening in silent panic. But then her eyes focused on Nyx and she relaxed ever so slightly.

“Oh my God,” Nyx had noticed she was awake. She glanced nervously over her shoulder. “Don’t talk…” she put her hand over the tube down her throat and used her good arm to pull it out. It came easily, but Billie gagged before being able to take a breath for herself.

“Can you get up?” Nyx looked desperately over her shoulder. “We don’t have much time…”

In the distance she could hear the hiss of airlocks opening and the pounding of footsteps along the walkways. They were coming, and they were coming in force.

Nyx pulled her up into a sitting position. She flopped forward, she had no control of her body.

“They shot you, it just hasn’t worn off yet,” Nyx tried to reassure her, praying that was all it was.

“No way, I know where they’ll take you after this room! I can’t just walk away knowing what would happen to you,” she swung Billie’s legs off the table and somehow managed to get her onto her back.

Untouchable

by

Sarah

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

C HAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER TEN

CHAPTER ELEVEN

CHAPTER TWELVE

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

CHAPTER NINETEEN

CHAPTER TWENTY

CHAPTER TWENTY ONE

EPILOGUE