James Axler – Rat King

glasses. Despite this, his acute sense of survival impelled him to try. A

slim-to-nothing chance was preferable to no chance at all. The Trader used to

say that there was no such thing as no chance, only people who couldn’t spot it.

As J.B. flexed his muscles, some of the stickies stumbled beneath him. One

caught a foot on a stone and lost balance, careering into others, who also lost

balance. Among the unintelligent creatures, this caused a mass panic, and J.B.

was pitched forward into their midst.

He landed on his feet and hit the ground running. Vague shapes and blurs stood

in his way, but were soon knocked aside by sharply aimed blows.

He was off and running, but didn’t know where.

The ground was bumpy, stones rolling under his boots as he ran, trying

desperately to put some distance between himself and the stickies. His breath

came hard, and he could feel the blood pounding in his ears. It was pounding so

hard that it took a few seconds for him to realise that he wasn’t being

followed. There was no sound from behind him.

That was even more worrying than being chased by the stickies.

What was stopping them from following? The answer came to him as he slowed. His

feet began to sink into the marshy earth, which became more of a quagmire as he

continued, dragging one painful leg after another, until his calf muscles began

to tear.

“THAT’S REALLY INTERESTING, sir,” the small tech said to Wallace.

“Is it? Explain, boy. This tech stuff isn’t part of my duty.”

Pulling back one of his sleeves so that his tiny hand could point to a series of

flowing lines on the monitor, the tech turned to Wallace and Murphy.

“As you may know, sirs, our ancestors were in charge of developing new weaponry

for the cold war between—”

“Spare the history lesson and cut to the chase, runt,” Murphy snapped. “The

military has work to do.”

The tech sighed and continued in pained tones. “Well, before skydark and the

great isolation and the time of recycling, there was only a certain amount of

the preliminary work that was completed. There are only so many image stimuli

that can be fed to the subject for them to feed and respond to. The idea of the

swamp has been fed to this subject and the boy we were watching a while ago. And

both seem to have interpreted this stimuli at different points in the cycle.”

“So?” Wallace asked blankly.

“Well, it suggests… It… It’s just kind of interesting to us down here, sir,” the

tech finished weakly.

“Son, it don’t matter bodiddly-squat how they see it, as long as it gets us

results,” Wallace said blandly.

Murphy suppressed a smile. He still believed that his methods could have

softened the outsiders with greater speed, but the Gen loved his toys.

Wallace turned to Murphy. “He’s ready now. Just the red-haired bitch to go.”

GAIA, BUT THESE NIGHTS were cold.

Krysty huddled into herself, trying to preserve some body warmth in the

darkness. She could feel that her flowing red hair had tightened like a steel

spring until it was close to her scalp, coiling tightly against her nape.

She didn’t need this sign to tell her there was danger about. She could hear it

in the rustling of the leaves, the scratching of the undergrowth as it moved,

disturbed by the predators that were always just out of view.

They weren’t human. She knew that because she had never heard any sec men or

hunters who could move that quietly. If not for the fact that so long on the

road had attuned her to danger, she would have taken the noises for nothing more

than the movement of the night air.

But this night there was no movement. Despite the cold, it was as still as the

hottest summer day. So still that the air seemed to solidify around her.

Krysty knew that she was on her own, that she was outnumbered. That the odds

were against her making it to morning.

Even more so when she checked the pockets of the bearskin coat that, despite its