(Not alone.)
A rattler slithered close, warily keeping the coils of its body out of reach of Jak’s blade. The unmistakable cluttering of the rattle at the end of the snake’s tail provided accompaniment to the reptile’s sinuous movements.
“What? Thought heard-”
(Not alone.)
“Hear you…in head,” Jak said softly.
(Yes.)
“Where are they?”
(Not safe not yet no one is safe not yet.)
“Not safe?”
(No one, not even you.)
And the rattler started to grow in height and bulk, a combination of inflating and expanding, stretching and elongating, pulsating and reaching that raised it to a height of thirty feet.
(You die now, you die.)
“No. You do,” Jak replied, and leaped to one side as the massive head of the reptile came striking down, incredibly fast. White fangs bit into tan sand and stone, and the entire landscape seemed to rock from the impact. Jak was once again sent tumbling, but this time he was expecting the fall and he quickly rolled and regained his footing.
The serpent, momentarily dazed by the missed strike, didn’t bring up its huge head, but instead kept it close to the ground as undulating coils pushed it toward the waiting Jak. Hurtling like an air-to-surface missile, the head picked up speed and came directly for its intended target like a launched arrow from a bow, and again, the agile albino was able to sidestep the attack.
Even as he avoided being struck, Jak released his own offensive, bringing his sword above his head in preparation.
As he swung the sword down in an elegant reaching arc, the entire blade seemed to glow with a translucent blue, and before he could react to the appearance of the unexpected light the blue grew past the weapon and crawled up his arm and across his shoulder and up and down his body, coating him in blue, obscuring his sight, his mouth, his mind.
(No peace.)
“Peace,” Jak said.
The oversized head of the rattler was sliced off neatly and a spray of blue blood squirted outward, lifeblood as blue rain pouring through the halo of blue light surrounding Jak, and he was frozen in place in the dark of the desert, alone and helpless.
Helpless in blue.
MILDRED WAS DREAMING. She was wearing a Greek toga or some sort of filmy outer garment that rippled around her body. She was adrift in blue. Ice blue. Icy cold. Her keen physician’s mind reminded her that Greek for icy cold was kryos, the study of cry-onics, the preservation of the living dead. The only part of her body that seemed to be work- ing was her eyes, so she looked around frantically, managing to catch a glimpse of herself in a mirror. Again, she was blue-lips, face, hair. All blue. Then, she heard a voice. Dr. Victoria Blue’s voice. The voice of her colleague and friend. They were active in the cryo program together.
Mildred was confused. Why was Victoria looking down at her with a strained, sad smile?
“The cyst!” Mildred wanted to scream, and immediately she knew she was in for abdominal surgery on an ovarian cyst, or rather, what they believed to be a cyst. It was December 28 of the year 2000-on the cusp of the new year.
“We’re losing her!” Victoria said. “There’s no other way. The cryo process is experimental, but we’ll have to make the attempt.”
Mildred blinked, and the bedroom was gone, replaced by the neutral blue tones of a hospital ward. The walls were whipping past her, faster and faster. She tried to speak, but found her voice missing. She still couldn’t move. She looked down her prone body and saw her bare feet at the bottom of the gurney. Mildred tried to wiggle her toes. They stayed frozen. Then, she noticed her feet and her toes were blue as the twin doors looming up in front of her parted like stage curtains, and she was inside, and through.
Then came the large tub, made of metal, fabric and naugahide.
Then the underwater pump and the distribution system.
Mildred recognized the system other cryo special- ists had coined “Squid.” After a person was placed inside the tub, a couple of hundred pounds of ice were added along with numerous buckets of water- then with a flip of the switch the squid would start circulating the water very rapidly around the body. The process dropped the temperature much more quickly than just packing a person in blocks of ice.