The honking of geese (a notebook)

You couldn’t escape the smell.

Even in a nightclub packed with gyrating sweaty youths, Sheila Crest could not shake the smell of Gotham. The city was suffused with it, a thin layer of fear and garbage and tired determination that had carried the city through conflict that would have seen most urban centers burned to the ground. It had punched her in the face the moment she’d stepped off the plane and like a prize fighter working the speed bag it never let up.

She was a long way from her usual turf: National City. Sometimes the mission took you to far off places. Exotic places, like deep inside The Bat Man’s territory. Incredibly smelly places, apparently. Superhero-ing: not as glamourous as it sounds.

She wondered if she’d meet him. Or if he’d heard of Nightsky. She fit more or less into the urban ninja archetype, so he was sort of the max-level living embodiment of her class. It had been both daunting and thrilling to think he might be nearby as she’d unpacked and donned her gear. He could be out prowling his streets right now. Just meeting him would make this trip amazing. Even flying coach, the no-days in advance cross-country plane tickets and big city lodging were kinda rough on Team Nightsky’s budget. She was hoping some of the elders of Underside might exercise a little gratitude when she returned home with the missing artifact.

The Millennial Codex had been stolen from the National City Cultural Museum last night. Part of a larger collection of Greek and Amazonian artifacts on loan from Gateway City, some of Sheila’s contacts in the Underside had warned her the Codex (which sounded like an boy-band to her) was actually a forgery, used to disguise a much smaller, much more dangerous document: The Vile Passages of Arageen. The passages were said to contain several spells that drew upon the orange light of Avarice. While maybe not traditional black magic, it was still nasty, nasty stuff. As morally corrosive as any demonic pact.

Acting fast, she’d been able to track the thieves from the museum with a series of simple auguries… the Vile Passages left a trail of dharmic slime even a novice like her would have no difficulty following until sunrise burned it away. Before dawn that trail had led her to what was equal parts lair and slaughter house. She found blueprints, scheduling documents, a whole workshop dedicated to fabricating the tools used in the heist. And bodies. The quartet of museum thieves had been coldly butchered, presumably by the patron who had commissioned the theft. A patron who evidently knew enough about what they were after to mask it quite effectively from her divinations. Magically speaking the trail was a dead end.

Her ‘man in the chair’ and friend with occasional benefits, Jayce “Ghostjack” Colt had saved the day. The only official member of Team Nightsky (though her mother surely knew of Sheila’s calling), he’d electronically tailed the one person to walk out of the lair alive after the theft. Followed him all the way to NCX airport and on to a non-stop bound for Gotham. She’d lost half a day waiting for the next flight.

She’d crafted and presented the customary offerings of visitation for the local Underside, but she’d yet to receive an answer or formal acceptance. The Fae of Gotham were old and …erratic… even by the standards of most of the Underhill. She was both disquieted and grateful to not have heard back on that front. ‘Recover the Passages and get the hell out before they took an interest’ sounded like the best of all cases to Sheila.

Now she was working her way around the perimeter of a local dance club. Even maintaining one of her best glamour – one that made her face seem extra forgettable – she felt naked without her mask up. Normally, her white hair made the spell troublingly costly, but in this lively and diverse crowd exotic hair colors were already forgettable. Her low-profile body armor was concealed under an oversized hoodie and a long skirt. Easy enough to overlook as long as she didn’t bump too vigorously into anyone. And even on a floor as crowded as this, nobody more than brushed her. Urban Ninja: it has its privileges. Keeping her weapons in a kind of fairy hammerspace was SoP for her, which on this occasion had saved her undue embarrassment with the door bouncer. “Well of course that’s a sword in my pocket…” She whispered under the throbbing beat of the music. She smiled. She had the tools. She had the training. She could do this.

Somebody had broken the seals or taken the tome out of the box or whatever. Here, in this building. Good, because she’d been able to track it again. Bad, because the amount of magical ‘signal’ needed to tip her off from halfway across town meant the Passages were being actively used. Her contacts had been annoyingly vague on what the spells it contained might actually do.

She felt frustrated and alone. Ghostjack had warned her the odds of him being able to spoof Gotham cellular towers to ride along in her ear were about nil. Along with being The Bat’s domain, Gotham was also the presumed meatspace address of Oracle, the reigning God-Queen of Jayce's archetype. A hacker extraordinaire. She’d likely have her home networks buttoned up tight.

Sheila didn’t think she’d ever seen Jayce so humble. He’d promised her he’d try to get Oracle to look in on her, but it was above his standings. For all its crime, Gotham was borderline ‘League Protectorate’ status in the hero world. The big-time heroes took care of Gotham crime. Team Bat was the stuff of legend. She was just a National City street mask, doing her little part in the shadow of Supergirl. Cops back home knew her, and she knew which of them she could trust. Gotham’s cops were reputed to be worse than its Fae.

Well, she’d tried to be courteous, but this was still her collar. Four dead and an exotic magical archive of uncertain magnitude in the hands of a murderer. Hero time.

She still wore her earpiece, hoping Oracle would put in an appearance.

The sea of auras around her was like metallic chaff to her brand of radar. The Passages were here… But it seemed unlikely anyone was working major magic on the dancefloor. That left the basement… or one of the private rooms upstairs. As much as most dark magi loved a good dungeon, she was betting her bad guy liked the finer things. He – or she – had hired thieves rather than steal it themselves. That said money.

Sheila’s dressing down had been camouflage on the main floor, but one look at the guards posted at the bottom of the stairway to the exclusive level said her drab garb was a deal breaker. She could probably distract one of them with a spell, but two at once was beyond her. Plus, if she was about to step into the lion’s den, it was time to lose the civies and go full ninja.

She went out the front entrance and calmly but purposefully walked into the adjacent alley like she owned the place. She didn’t actually shudder, but Gotham alleys had a bad reputation. Even millionaires got murdered here.

This one was mercifully devoid of armed gunman or even rats. She pulled up her half-mask and shucked her street clothes. It was a relief to finally put her game-face on. Seconds later she’d scaled to the roof.


She always wondered if gravel-strewn tarpaper existed specifically to make lots of noise. Still, this wasn’t entirely amateur hour. The skylights were frosted, so she chose one that opened onto a dark room and slipped inside.

While the bass beat of the dance floor still reverberated through the building’s very beams, she was immediately able to make out the distinctly non-party rock sound of chanting. Likely from the adjacent private chamber.

She went to the door and peeked into the hall. There was a slightly bored looking guard in front of the door she was interested in and she could see a staircase leading down beyond him. She saw the bulge of a shoulder holster, but his weapon wasn’t drawn.

She twisted her fingers into an elaborate mudra and invested it with her breath. One guard she could handle the old old-fashioned way…

Any pretense of watchfulness vanished as the man was suddenly gripped by a ferocious need to go piss. He glanced both ways guiltily, then did the thighs clenched pee-pee dance all the way to the stairs and out of sight.

Nightsky didn’t hesitate. She darted to the door and pressed her ear to it. Definitely chanting and the volume seemed to be coming to a crescendo.

She reached between the pages of time and pulled out her sword and a trio of shuriken. She kept an ill-tempered handcannon in there too, but didn’t think gunfire was a great call in a crowded establishment.

She tried the door handle, unsurprised to find it locked. She shifted the throwing stars to her other hand and begin to reach into her stash for lockpicks. So much easier when Ghostjack could just spoof electronic locks for her remotely.

Before she could even slip the slender picks into the doorknob, the chanting was drowned out by a guttural snarl. Chanting became pleading and pleading became the sound of meat being torn off the bone.

Subtlety was officially on hold. Nightsky kicked the door in, her arm already cocked back to hurl her stars.

Candles, check. Figures in hoods and orange robes, check. Summoning circle dabbed on the floor in chalk and blood, check. Eight-foot-tall figure in tattered clothes ripping a man limb from limb… check?

It was pure instinct that sent her stars flickering through the air into the giant’s back. When the masculine silhouette didn’t even shrug as he continued dismembering the robed figure in his grip, Sheila knew this had just gone out of her depth.

The figure half turned towards her, enough to direct one lazy black eye her way as its mouth opened hideously wide, revealing needle sharp teeth.

Then it bit almost a third out of the chest of the man it was still holding one handed.

Sheila very politely pulled the rebounding door the rest of the way closed.

What the hell had she gotten herself into?

The screams continued, shifting through several different voices. It was all she could do to stay standing outside the door. She gripped her sword tightly. It had smelled of death. Not the fresh kill of moments ago but old death. The exhalation of a watery grave. It stank of treason and revenge. Powerful forces in her world. The kind that sometimes pulled the Reaper’s hood down over her eyes and ran back towards the world of the living.

The bud in her ear crackled to life. “This is Oracle. A mutual acquaintance asked me to say ‘hello’.”

“Equinox and Solstice! You picked a great time to call!” She managed to not shout in relief, but it was close. She’d grown accustomed to Ghostjack tagging along, so she knew the little voice in her ear might be watching her already. Or maybe not. “I’m… um, I’m kind of keeping an eye on what I think is a zombie about the size of a bear!”

“I hear music. Are you at the Rollcage, in South Dock?”

“That sounds right. I’m new in town.” She felt a rush of rage and ducked. The wall where her head had been exploded as a fist the size of small beer keg blasted through layers of drywall and 2x4s with equal ease.

“Welcome to Gotham, Nightsky.”

Sheila rolled away, and came up with her blade on guard about 10 feet further down the hall. The thing in the room didn’t seem to have a good grasp of doors or just didn’t care, as it shoulder-smashed its way out into the hall.

“Um, not to be rude, but I’m no longer observing. It’s chasing me and I think it’s ripped at least four people to pieces already.”

The voice in her ear became much more businesslike, the cool professionalism calming as a dozen deep breaths. “Is the zombie wearing a tuxedo? Possibly old fashioned.”

Seeing the beast from the front now, Sheila did recognize a cummerbund. “Yeah, I think so. Black and orange. Looks like he’s going to a kind of tacky Halloween office party.”

“Ok, that’s different, but it sounds like Solomon Grundy… which is super weird. Are there any civilians around? I’m still looking for cameras, but the building may not be fully wired.”

The thing –Solomon– was shambling towards her now. He had to crab shuffle towards her, his shoulders too wide to walk straight in the narrow hall. Training kicked in and another trio of stars materialized and flashed down the hall into his face. She was pulling no punches. “Yeah… There’s about 200 people downstairs

“Nightsky, I am vectoring heavy cavalry to your position. Do you think you can keep Grundy occupied until I turn the fire sprinklers on? We need people to evacuate without trampling each other.

“Run slightly faster than a zombie? Yes. I think I can do that.”

“Awesome. I need to concentrate, but I am still here with you. If things change, I am listening.”

“Copy that, Oracle. Stall for the cavalry.”

“Good girl.”

Both of them worked in silence. The next few moments weren’t a blur, but they were broken into flashes. Watching walls torn apart like cardboard. Slashing the giant’s grasping hands with her sword and seeing thin black oil ooze from the wounds. Leaping and tumbling every time the behemoth cornered her. Keeping its murderous attention focused away from the pressed masses below. Oracle had given it a name, but the thing in front of her couldn’t have been human once, could it? Somewhere along the line she heard the rumble of rarely used water pipes and a chorus of angry squeals from the club below. People were calling it a night, shuffling out of the indoor rainstorm and none the wiser to the game of mouse-and-bull-hippo taking place above them.

For a moment she actually thought she had this. And then in a fit of rage her stalker pounced. His dive came up short as she backed out of his looming shadow but the floor gave way, sending them both tumbling to the dancefloor below.

She shook her head to clear the ringing, but Grundy didn’t pause at all. The next broken flash she was being held over the zombie’s head and his mouth opened impossibly wide, boney needles surrounding total blackness.

Above them both a skylight imploded and a rippling, fluttering silhouette plunged into the room almost as fast as the falling shards of glass.

Sheila thought she saw some kind of gun inside the silhouette and heard the gentle chuff of heavy projectiles being fired. The air in the room turned bitter cold, even through her insulated armor. The beast let out a pained howl and squeezed her, sharing its pain. Her ribs cracked in the thing’s grip and her desire to scream produced no more than a wet gurgle.

Blackness swallowed her.

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Not Safe For work. Almost certainly a work of fiction (No, that’s just what THEY want you to think!). Certified 100% Real News. We miss you, Stan
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Part 1: Tale as Old as Time...  
The glossy booklet hit his desk with a soft ‘thwap’, almost drowned out by the fevered tapping of keys that filled the bullpen.

“What’s up?” he asked distractedly, only momentarily glancing up from the article he was reviewing.

The cartoonishly bright title read ‘Uber-something-something’. The picture filling the cover was a typical urban freeway running above a tree-filled neighborhood with a well-developed skyline in the background. Probably shot right here in town. The only oddity was the lanes were clogged with obvious Friday rush-hour gridlock, hundreds of cars stuck like flies on a fly strip. Probably some new brand of ride-sharing bus route schedule.

“New breed of disaster prepper, Caine. Peril! Destruction! Coming to a city near you!” The movie-announcer voice on the verge of laughter informed him his source for this supposed hot tip was Kiera Grey, a freelance photographer he’d worked with many times over the last two years. Sort, semi-cute, and capable of drinking him under the table at the office Christmas party (and still steady enough to take the pictures to prove it, damn-it-all). He wasn’t quite her mentor but he was her biggest champion at the paper.

“Could be a big story in it…” she wheedled in something more akin to her regular voice.

Faintly intrigued he plucked up the surprisingly heavy leaflet.

Oh. He had misread the title entirely:

UBERGIRL PREPAREDNESS HANDBOOK

The subtitle was even cheesier:

(Surviving the She-Storm)

At that point, he knew Kiera was messing with him. “Yeah, I’m not sure we’re stopping the presses for this one, Kiera”

“You never know… This peril could strike at any time! Only the prepared will sur–“ She couldn’t keep a straight face any longer and dissolved into giggles.

He waved the flyer at her. “So where’d you come by this… crucial warning the free press has been heretofore blissfully unaware of?” He chuckled.

“Now that’s a funny story. I was walking across town to clear some things with payroll after that last architecture shoot I did uptown and I met, like the best Indian Jones cosplay you've ever seen. Guy seemed a little out of it. You know, dazed. Looked a little scared, like he thought he was being followed. I kind of talked him down and figured out he was looking for the Met. So, I gave him directions and we went our separate ways.”

“And?” he inquired, noting she hadn’t told him a thing about the flyer.

“Well, like two blocks later the same guy runs up to me and presses it into my hands. He’s really freaking now. ‘They’re here! Take it! Kindness is the only key. But they were cruel. So very cruel.’ And then he runs off. I think I spent the next five minutes looking for the cameras, because damn, hell of a prank. I’m sort of expecting all this to be on the internet any time now.”

“Well, it came with a nice prop. Why pass it to me?”

“I don’t know. I read most of it on the way over afterward – it’s silly but fun. What to do if rampaging ubergirls were just roaming around in wild herds or something. It says they're the real reason Atlantis sank. It just seemed like something you’d enjoy.”

He finally smiled, which made her face light up even more. “Besides, he also gave me… this!” Her voice dropped into a conspiratorial whisper before she revealed her prize with a magician’s flourish.

It was a rock. No, a crystal. Golden yellow and big enough to nearly fill her palm. And while Kiera might be a bit short, her paws managed some pretty serious video hardware with ease. So, not at all a small crystal, he realized. It was also intricately cut in a pattern he’d never seen before.

It was fascinating. He whistled despite himself.

“Aw, don’t tease. It’s gotta be glass, right?”

“Maybe not… It looks like a citrine, and those come in 'wee', 'not so wee', and 'friggen hyuuuge'.”

“Really? Because –I mean– he just gave it to me.”

“I don’t know, but if that’s a citrine, it’s easily worth a couple grand. Even if it’s glass, it’s lovely.

“You should have seen it when he handed it to me. I swear it was glowing in the sunshine like it was on fire.” The golden nimbus surrounding it was entirely absent now. She looked around the office. “You know the light in here is terrible, right?” She grumped, disappointed she couldn’t show off her rock better. “You should at least raise the shades.”

“Writers. Pale creatures. We live like moles, you know.”

She laughed. “Anyway, I’m taking it up to the roof. If I hurry, I can still get some photos in real light. The 'Golden Minutes', you know?” she waved the gem playfully, “and besides, I’ve been feeling like I need to get more sun.”

“Have you now?” he feigned shock. Kiera was definitely a night owl. Her jet-black hair was practically natural camouflage during her usual hours.

“I have… Well, ever since…” She looked at the now dull stone again and shook her head. “You should come too… Prove you’re a mole and not a vampire. An extra set of hands would make it easier to photo the–” she switched into her movie voice again “The Eye of the She-Storm, said to have consumed the lost powers of a thousand Atlantean ubergirls!”

“Ooo. That is catchy.” He acknowledged.

“Wish I’d made it up. That’s what the handbook calls it, I think. It’s in a picture right at the back.”

“Way to come full circle. I’d love to take up on the offer but…” He waved at his cubicle and his personal to-do pile.

“Your loss, vampire. You'll show in ten minutes when the sun's down, won't you?” She batted her eyes at him.

“Are you flirting with the undead, Miss Grey? We bite,” he warned with a ridiculously prim vampire accent.

She leaned forward, showing off her petite but not entirely absent cleavage. “If I say ‘yes’ it’s not flirting anymore, now is it?”

A soft shadow fell across Keira, blocking the light from the faintly humming fluorescents.

“She has a point, Caine” Jenny Magrath smoothly inserted herself into the conversation.

Then realizing she’d inadvertently agreed with someone ten rungs down on the newsroom pecking order, she added more than a little imperiously “Alright, move along shutterbug. Only stringers and sources in the bullpen.” The tall, blond Texas-transplant didn’t need heels to loom over Kiera

“I’m here on business!” she insisted. “and Caine doesn’t mind, right?”

Caine grunted, momentarily distracted by a typo he'd just noticed in his second paragraph.

“John’s not actually paying attention to you, squirt.” She made a point of using his first name. “Because he’s –you know– working. Besides, we’ve all got deadlines. The rest of us can’t just stand around talking to secret agent archeologists who can’t find the crosswalk.”

Kiera turned quite red as she realized Jenny must have heard their entire exchange. Still, she was in good spirits and not even Jenny fuck-you-too Magrath was gonna rain on her parade. Even if the agonizingly competent blonde did look nine-tenths of the way to being a proper ubergirl. Kiera was at least a five on that scale! Or no worse than a four…

"'On business', huh?" Jen held out her hand and hooked her fingers a few times. Reluctantly Kiera passed her crystal over.

Jen hefted it in her hand a few times, held it up to the overhead lights and peered through it. Her frown at the poor light was an echo of Kiera's. Shifting to where she could stand in a nearly horizontal beam of sunlight slipping through a gap at the side of the blinds, she held it to her eye. As soon as she stepped into the bright natural light, the jewel began to sparkle in her hand, its inner fire restored. She gasped with startled delight as the effect made a lick of golden fire roll off her hand to a bit of jewelry at her wrist, a trick of the light making her bracelet glow with reflected glory for a moment. Still wordless, she stepped from the light and ran her fingers over the facets carefully.

She returned Kiera's prize, finally rendering judgment with a slight smile, "Congratulations. That's not glass. Much too heavy and there are no casting lines. It's definitely a cut stone." She paused. "I'm not sure what kind though." She held up her arm, showing off a slim silver-wire bracelet with three yellow stones each about the size of a nickel. "One of the November birthstones, probably."

"Hey. now. I'm a November too! ...Huh, too big for a bracelet. It might make a dazzling pendant though."

Jen smirked. "It might. If you had a little more heft to frame it." Jen shrugged her shoulders, displaying a cleavage more in line with her suggestion. Then before Kiera could get worked up and retaliate, she cut her off. "Out! Take pictures. Go." She shooed the smaller woman away.

“Alright, I’m going... Shit! Almost sunset. Going now. Going!” She glanced upward then winked at Caine. “You know where to find me.” She gave a thumbs up just to be sure he got the message before beating a hasty retreat towards the elevators.

“Freelance! Box of Christmas meat” Jenny called out, quoting the first Spiderman movie.

Kiera flipped her off without looking back as she rounded the corner and vanished.

Jenny made a seat for herself on the corner of Caine’s desk. “You shouldn’t encourage her.”

He saved the last of his critical changes, finally at liberty to give his full attention to the leaflet on his desk. “Yeah, I should. Her spreads are excellent and her instincts aren’t bad. A lot of people are going to know her name someday.”

Jenny snorted. “Romantic.” She teased, standing to return to her own desk.

“Pragmatist!” Caine countered stridently. An old battle, often replayed.

Jenny strode away rolling her eyes. Caine picked up the leaflet -pardon- Handbook.

He started to examine Kiera's offering more closely with a publisher’s eye. No obvious printer’s mark or ISDN. No author acknowledged. 32 pages including the covers. Laid out with new topics on every facing two-page spread. Lightly illustrated with some decently photoshopped images of some decidedly sexy cosplay models frolicking in the ruins or engaged in various acts of super-mayhem. Less superhero and more 'angry Greek fitness-nymphs', he decided. The word 'maenad' briefly tugged his sleeve, but he couldn't remember why that might be. Overall, it wasn’t quite a professional release but it was high-end for amateur publishing. A rather expensive joke then.

He did own copies of several “Zombie Survival Guide”-style books so Kiera had been right: this was right up his alley.

The first few spreads were the usual prepper mantras: What to fill your go bag with. Proper fire suppression using an extinguisher. Plan your escape route before shit hits the fan. Designate a rendezvous point for your family.

Other bits like "She'll Bring the House Down!" seemed lifted from earthquake preparedness: stick to stairwells, stay out of tunnels, especially ones that could flood. He had to admit from that point on the topics were hilarious. Finding himself drawn in, he thumbed through them in no particular order.

“Flashbangs: Friend or Foe?”
“She’s Newly Ascended? (they grow up so fast!)”
“Groveling like the Pros”
“Separating Fact from Fiction: Does she always win?”
“The Ubergirl Arsenal: Earth Wind and Fire”
“Your Heartbeat – can it be muffled?”
“No Surrender: Thinking Outside the Box”
“Good Witch or Bad Witch: Know the Signs”

The whole tone of the screed was so damn earnest you had to admire the unfolding layers of the joke.

Despite his piqued interest he had to quickly skip past what looked to be the Only NSFW topic of the bunch:

“Uberlust: Yeah. You’re Fucked.”

He browsed back through the miniature volume again, chuckling at the details. The chapter on newly ascended girls assured him that freshly minted ubergirls mastered their full suite of powers in minutes. The takeaway being 'if you were at ground zero, prioritize warning your loved ones. You weren’t going to be one of the ones to get away.'

Finally, he found a picture with a yellow jewel, as Keira had mentioned. On the very last spread.

“A Goddess Foretold:
She’s a Thousand Times Worse”

That had him momentarily barking in laughter before he managed to stifle himself. In the spirit of any good fantasy Survival Guide, the booklet had been decidedly optimistic, promising at least the possibility of victory. Scenario after scenario where you might just barely beat the cast of gorgeous supergirls, despite their being able to overturn busses, smash windows with a shout, and slow roast an entire SWAT team with an angry glare (and without breaking a sweat). Detailed strategies for outwitting the vixen/amazons when they couldn’t be confronted head-on. But this chapter revealed those were only handmaidens of the Final Threat…

In the final spread, the author had decided to toss in an extinction-level event with nice tits. “The Eye of teh She-storm” (yes, there was a typo there) was the greatest weapon of the ancient Atlantean uber-hunters, able to drain an ubergirl’s unearthly strength until she was merely mortal again. But after the continent sank, the hunt had continued for centuries until Ubergirls were no more. Cue the photoshopped image of a nearly-naked raven-haired supermodel cowering before a young man holding Keira’s gem as a prop and wearing vaguely medieval garb. The last of the lithesome superwomen cursed her killer and every tribe of men descended of Atlantis: one day the legacy of all The Daughters of Autumn would be bestowed on one who held the only key. With the failing of the light, she would be reborn not just as an ubergirl, but as a sensual Uber-Goddess who would restore the Eternal Season through her 1,000 handmaidens.

The author seemed to think the gem would once again be mankind’s only hope (literally Man-kind, because a thousand lucky women were going to be feeling great in this version of the apocalypse). But Caine couldn’t help but notice the gem was also probably the catalyst for the
awakening of this so-called “Uber-Goddess”.

Amused, he dropped the booklet on his desk and leaned back stretching. Quite a Tale. He wasn't sure ending with something right out of a fantasy novel made or broke the gag. Maybe the booklet was worth running down, after all. Do a piece on whoever had put so much work .into it. He could pitch it to his editor as something about to go viral with the millennials. And if the author had any other fantasy survival fiction or a second volume of the Ubergirl stuff he’d be happy to pay full cover price. Cheerfully.

It was only then he noticed the intermittent pecking sounds of typing had completely stopped...

Part 2: Sunset...
Caine looked up, feeling a faint seismic tremble roll through the building. It always swayed a little in high winds, but this felt different. Like it was being shaken from above. He glanced around the office, quickly following the line of everyone’s gaze up to one of the overhead monitors in the newsroom. The big screen was permanently set to their agency’s channel and had an unedited feed, which meant they saw it about two seconds before the outside world did. The boys in television upstairs had made the case the print team should always keep an ear open in case they needed to be fact-checked ASAP. “Synergy” they called it, though Caine had always assumed it was really just swinging their dicks around.

The feed was live from Sky Three, one of the station’s traffic chaser helicopters. Instead of hovering over the evening commute, the camera was turned on the west side of their own building, gleaming in the afterglow from the setting sun. Caine could just make out the windows of his own department down on the seventh floor at the bottom of the shot. At dead center on the screen was the corner of the building’s roof where there appeared to be some sort of explosion or fireworks going off. Steamers of yellow-orange light streaked and swirled out of a sizzling gold-white mass of light.

The building shuddered again and moments later the image on the screen showed the churning cloud belch forth another half dozen bolts of colored light. Caine couldn’t help but notice the streaks were almost exactly the color of Kiera’s jewel.

The camera panned up jerkily, tracking the newest wave of bolts streaking off toward the far corners of the city. The commentator’s frenzied description of the event was a meaningless drone in Caine’s ears. Instead, he was struck by how much the pulsing release of yet another wave of curling bolts reminded him of the scene in Ghostbusters. That moment when the containment grid failed and the city was swept up in a storm of paranormal mayhem. Which was apparently happening almost directly above him.

Caine’s gut wasn’t 100% A+accurate, but it certainly scored a strong B when it came to recognizing a deep shit tide rising. He was just reaching for his “journalist go bag” when the office was filled with a collective gasp. The chopper’s cameraman had turned back to the roof just in time to catch an orange bolt coming straight at the chopper!

The traffic commentator squealed like a schoolgirl as the light shot towards them, then cut off in a strangled ‘gurk!’ as it suddenly stopped just inside the open door. Suddenly frozen in place, the blur of light resolved into a flat glowing hexagon filled with a twisting line that might be some sort of script.

A breathy, awestruck whisper intruded on the man’s growing terror, “Radiant…” The feminine voice came from someone on the chopper’s internal channel but not in the field of view. Then a slender arm reached from over the top of the camera towards the glyph, fingers splayed as if to palm the alien symbol.

“Gail? No! Don’t touch it!” The man yelped. Caine vaguely remembered his name was Denis. They’d met once or twice during the company party cycle. ‘Kind of a grabby douche’ popped into his head.

The camera jiggled, now being steadied with at most only one hand as the camerawoman Gail reached out and pressed her free hand into the symbol. It melted into a wispy streak then reformed on the back of her hand as a luminous orange tattoo.

A powerful moan filled the channel,“OOOOOoooooh! I feel so warm!”

The camera jerked and rolled on its side, the tilted shot showing Denis’s face go from fear to surprise to awe in rapid succession. “Gail? Are you ok? Your face… Your whole… Damn, that is crazy hawt!” The angle also revealed Denis was quickly developing a monster boner. Both his arms swung up as he reached out to something behind the camera, presumably Gail. The camera jerked and spun again, only this time it seemed like it was because the whole chopper was shaking violently. Metal groaned and a muffled alarm tone sounded.

“Denis! Fucking pervert! Don’t you touch me!!” Which was followed by a series of metallic crunches and the sound of screaming. There was a new faint voice in the channel, “Paws off, dickhead. She’s yanking the whole bird around!”

The screen abruptly when white as the light values in the chopper maxed out its glare filters.

The building shook as a concussive blast rolled across the glass. Outside the windows, there had been ongoing pulses of light reflected from the surrounding buildings as the strange phenomena on the roof had continued to disgorge more streaks, but the bright flash that accompanied the rolling boom was clearly an explosion.

The view from the camera returned, a dizzying swirl as fell. but each time the lens spun upwards Caine thought he could see a glowing silhouette through the rest of the falling debris that had been Sky Three, hovering where the chopper had exploded.

A very feminine silhouette. With a limp man held loosely in one hand and what might be a blackened, almost skeletal arm in the other.

As the room broke into screams and sobs at the seeming death of their co-workers only a few hundred yards up and away, John again reached for his bag. Definite shit tide.

He didn’t look up again until he heard Jenny Magrath matter-of-factly announce, “Fresh, feisty, and Fulsome? What the hell is that supposed to mean?”

She was standing in the common area where she could see the helicopter drama unfold. Only now three of the hexagonal glyphs were floating over the desk in front of her. And evidently, she could read them…

Don't keep her waiting...

“Not Kansas?” I asked brightly.

“Thank God, no.” Melody shot back, slapping a magazine into her battle rifle, startling some birds nearby.

We’d unzipped our shelters to find ourselves in our familiar little valley on a beautiful sunny day. The birds were singing, the bees were buzzing; it was serene and pastoral with not a cloud or contrail in the sky.

Which was exactly the problem.

Hiro sniffed the air. “Spring, late.” I don’t know how the compactly muscular Asian managed to look both serious and delighted. Maybe the broad grin even as he finished prepping his marksman’s rifle.

I don’t know what kind of flower he smelled or the particular color of the grass around us that tipped him off, but I believed him. Readers and talkers might pride themselves on their education compared to our fighter counterparts, because even cliques as tight as Striders have their own cliques inside them, but I didn’t doubt Hiro’s judgment for a second. If he said it was Spring, I’d believe him until someone hit me in the face with a snowball. A fighter, a gentleman, and these days, a trusted friend.

Mace was already walking a quick counter-clockwise perimeter around the injection point, Melody doing the same directly opposite of him. Even after they each finished their half, they’d keep going, fresh eyes on the entire 360° around our stockpile.

I nodded in companionable silence as Thomas, my back-up for social contact work, laid out our body cameras, checking the charge. They were fully charged when we left, of course, but sometimes they acted funny in the field. Electronics were sensitive to the most minuscule changes in the physical laws we were accustomed to. Command had insisted that they be packed away from personnel after some camera batteries had exploded in the tents with their owners and flushed a mission in the first seconds of their Long Night. Five of them had lived until Dawn, but they’d barely managed to secure their own perimeter.  A ‘No loot today. Maybe loot tomorrow’ result. Because striders learn by dying.

Did I mention how lucky Echo has been, lately?

Marcos looked up from inventorying our food, calling out softly to Mace, “Stay camo or switch to civvies?” Echo’s famous reader always looked like the fatigues we transported in didn’t quite fit his lanky frame. Which was strange considering how fastidious he was. There was no doubt he was hoping the answer was ‘civvies.’

“Camo.” Mace answered, not raising his voice at all. It carried just fine in the still air. “I don’t like this. I smell old smoke. Ash.”

Hiro suddenly spun like a coiling snake, rifle coming to shoulder and cheek as he sighted in on movement on the ridgeline above us.

It was a deer. A young buck. It froze, looking down at us. A silent moment passed and then it bounded away.

Melody growled, almost drowned out by Hiro, “Definitely camo.”

The three fighters all nodded at each other. I was about to ask but Thomas beat me to it.

“What is it?”

Mace walked back through the knee-high grass to the circle crushed by our gear arriving. He pointed up without looking up. “No planes. But that deer knows what people are. It knew what a rifle was too. No taste of smog, but there is ash.”

“So?” Thomas asked, still not seeing the issue.

“There are people here. But they’re either kind of primitive or very not primitive.”

Thomas paled slightly. “Camo.” He agreed softly. Marcos nodded with him.

We quickly finished loading the bikes and shrugging on our own personal backpacks, walking them up to the ridgeline to look out at the Bay.

We crested a saddle of the ridge a few hundred yards north of what would be Berkley in our world. A spot that gave us a commanding vantage to confirm the existence of the narrow opening of the Golden Gate in this world and to take in a good twenty-five miles south along the San Francisco peninsula. To the north, we could see the marshlands where the Sacramento delta poured into this most famous body of water.

I think each one of us gasped as we secured our bike and then really looked at it all.

It looked like a fantasyland of impossible crystal spires. Each of the cities of our Bay Area were still faintly recognizable but dominated by the tall narrow blades of super-buildings, some at least 2,000 feet tall.

The dazzling reflections of sun-on-crystal gathered our eyes but soon we began to pick out the other feature that dominated this futuristic landscape: vast black scars between the spires. The skeletons of more conventional architecture. Whoever lived in the spires might have been spared, but the commoners huddles around the bases had been ravaged.

It was hard to be absolutely certain from so high up the hillside… but it all seemed still and silent as the grave.

“Jackpot,” Marcos whispered, breaking the solemn silence.

“Are you kidding?!” I blurted out.

Marcos didn’t even turn to look at me, his eyes on the prize. “Obviously high tech. A populace either isolated inside the surviving structures or simply extinct. This is a treasure trove and we may be completely unopposed as we loot it.” Still not looking at me he raised his arm and rubbed his knuckles on my arm affectionately – Echo’s good luck charm.

Mace rumbled. “Obviously high tech enough to have automated guardians for those pretty towers. Or dug-in combatants still fighting. Those burns aren’t that old. We’re probably walking into the still-hot embers of a warzone, and I have no idea what passes for landmines here.”

Melody joined in, “So it’s high stakes. We go extra careful. We keep our eyes peeled and we’re ready to play nice with anyone we meet. Marcos is right. This could be a real prize.”

Hiro looked at Mace. “Two-step?”

Mace tipped is head side to side a few times as if physically weighing options in his skull. “Two-step.”

That was code for one of our formations. It put me, Marcos, and Mace in a front group; Talker, Reader, and our best In-Fighter. Melody, Hiro, and Thomas would hang back and watch over us for trouble, our best shooters and the spare Talker. It was efficient but it was also insurance that somebody came home alive to tell the tale. If the front three got too deep in the poop, our back foot was supposed to cut and run.

We spent a few more minutes documenting the scenery while Mace and Hiro discussed which of the spires to approach, setting on the slightly farther, but seemingly less damaged ones to the north. We were just about to set out under a high noon sun when–

Tuuuuuuunnnnng!

The air rang out like some massive crystal wind chime had been struck with an equally massive hammer. The tone rattled out teeth and made our joints tingle uncomfortably. That sound was simply massive.

Only as it began to die away after those long startled seconds could you tell the direction it came from. South, seemingly right along the ridgeline. A direction obscured from the saddle by a thick stand of California black oak.

Mace swore under his breath. “Well, I guess we can’t ignore that.”

Marcos nodded. “Activity, of some kind. Maybe our Talkers will get to play twenty questions with the locals after all?”

Melody added, “Doesn’t change anything about our need to take it smooth and slow.”

And that was that. We started two-stepping our way south along the ridge.