Jake Maison
15/03/2025
Content warning: gore, violence and coarse language
Image description: a large flying saucer shaped like an insect with one purple eye.
She dreamt of fire. She would find herself standing before a house left to rot amid a waste of glass and salt, the dark night making it glitter like diamonds. First came the light, so brilliant and terrible that it seared her retinas to nothing. The pain was such that she would wake screaming as though it were real. She knew the dream would come again, revealing to her a little more each time. She knew it was trying to show her something.
Night sky, old and empty house, white light. In the brief time before being blinded, she would glean details about the house; the acrid stench of cordite mixed with molten ozone that made her eyes water, the foul odour of burned hair and seared flesh that made her stomach turn. Her senses homed in on the air around the house, catching the signal lines flaring like nerve endings from somewhere inside the house to a ring of devices around its perimeter.
The shield projectors had been awoken by the signal source, spinning up to project a protective dome of rendered lightmass over the house. A shimmering hexagonal veil of energy banished the darkness for a moment before something struck with unspeakable force. Though less bright and now purple in colour, this light was followed by a sound like the air itself had been split in half.
Pain spiked through her skull as she was stricken deaf by the sound and then ricocheted through her whole body as the shockwave threw her to the ground. With every fibre of her being, she banished the adrenal impulse in her brain to wake up. None of it was real, she had to remind herself; the pain, the noise, the heat, none of it.
As she stepped through the dissolving golden light shapes and traced the path of the purple light to its source, she became aware of a hulking metal shape sitting in the plain away from the house. Despite being obscured by the dark, she could see the vague outline of a large machine by the light of the moon; a large circular disc supported by six hydraulic legs like a giant metal insect. Her vision began to swim as she stepped towards it, the once familiar laws of the dream becoming fluid, redundant. She would awake in a sweat, her heart thundering. She knew this was a warning. The dream did not want her to go that way.
When it came again, she was mindful to keep her back to the plain and the metal beast behind her; white light, old house, empt- she willed herself to stop as the windows exploded. The smell of cordite and ozone returned, marking an exchange of ballistic and energy weapons.
The air grew furious with the howl of jets, heralding a swarm of airborne machines. Similar to the metal beast, these machines had disc-shaped bodies though were about one-tenth of the size and borne aloft on anti-gravity engines. These smaller machines – twenty in all – sported green-lit optical units flanked by twin-linked plasma carbines.
Purple bolts of plasma coursed through the house to a chorus of splintering wood, shattering glass and dying screams. The drones would strafe the house twice before retreating back in the direction of the metal beast. She approached the house and reached for the door. Before her fingers could brush the metal knob, she heard something behind her.
Despite her every instinct warning against it, she turned around. And she saw it. A shape coalesced out of the darkness, carried upon two metal feet that resounded heavily off the ground with every step. It looked like a man but she knew it wasn’t. Moonlight reflected off its metal body and cast shadows across its face, twin eyes of emerald green staring right through her. She knew the shape didn’t actually see her, but it wasn’t stopping either.
She lurched out of the shape’s path just in time to see the door to the house disintegrate upon contact. Her heart was pounding, legs firmly rooted to the spot. Her fear mingled with a nagging thought, the immutable feeling that she knew the shape, and that it knew her.
Doubt won out over fear in the end, bidding her to follow the shape inside. Almost immediately, she wished she hadn’t. The walls of the old house were soaked in gore, the floor littered with butchered bodies. She gasped and sobbed, the smell potent enough to make her sick. In the hallway to the left of the stairs lay a body rendered unrecognisable by its ruined head, sprawled beneath a wall stained by pulped flesh and splintered teeth.
Turning left towards the living room, she saw those killed by the drones. The plasma bolts had burned through their armour as if it hadn’t been there at all, their lifeless bodies cratered with smoking holes.
The hallway ended in two doorways, the first leading straight ahead into the kitchen at the back of the house where a second headless body sat slumped against the back door, pistol in hand. The second on the right led into the basement, looking as if it led into the void itself, a rectangular aperture of such perfect dark that it seemed to drink in what light remained within the house. The dream had remained intact so far and now, she reasoned, it wanted her to go down into the basement.
The old wood creaked beneath her feet with every step, careful to avoid disturbing the spent shotgun shells littering her path. She sighed as she beheld another corpse at the foot of the stairs, horror giving way to pity for whoever this woman had been before she’d been shot in the gut and stabbed in the chest.
Any other thought was driven from her head when she turned towards the centre of the basement. The room was largely empty save for the two load-bearing brickwork pillars on either side of the twelve-foot-tall obelisk in the heart of the room. The jet-black voidstone shimmered in the moonlight coming in from the basement windows.
It was then she realised that she was not alone. She felt a jolt of panic as she saw a woman running towards her, fist raised and face contorted in a sneer. The woman stumbled as she was opened hip to shoulder by an unseen attacker, the shape materialising from the dark between them. With shaking hands, the girl stepped tentatively towards where the woman lay as her white coat stained red.
There was nothing to be done for a wound like that, real or otherwise. The woman, with what little strength remained in her, lifted her head from the floor to regard the shape as it moved past her towards the obelisk.
‘I’ve already won, monster,’ she said, chuckling and coughing up blood. ‘I won the moment you set foot in this house.’ The woman’s head tilted back, her red grin growing slack as she sighed once and never again.
The girl turned her attention back to the shape, which seemed to have been given pause by the woman’s words as an orange glow began to emanate from its centre. The light came again, brilliant and terrible as ever but she was ready for it this time.
With hand outstretched, she reached towards where the shape must have been, her fingers brushed up against a core of excited matter. Tongues of atom-splitting fire licked her skin as she took the core in her hand and, curling her fingers into a fist, snuffed it out.
All was blackness, a nothing stretching out into forever in all directions, as if the dark of the basement had swallowed all the light in the world.
She fought to keep her breathing under control, insofar as there was air to breathe in this place, as she got her bearings. She became aware that she was neither standing nor falling, merely drifting in a place where gravity held no sway. She knew this was the void.
‘Not quite,’ came a voice in reply as if she had spoken aloud. Craning her neck upward in the direction of the voice’s origin, she beheld a strange sight. A figure drifted, seemingly with ease, through the fathomless black towards her.
They were covered head-to-toe in an environment suit designed to protect the wearer from radiation or hard vacuums. The jumpsuit was orange and white and the opaque visor of the domed helmet reflected her face back at her. They looked like those ancient astronauts from the old world.
‘So, where am I?’ she asked in response. The astronaut considered her as they oriented themselves directly in front of her. ‘You are in the space between resets,’ they replied, their voice slightly muffled by the helmet. ‘I was able to tamper with the program enough to bring you here.’ Something about this figure was familiar to her. The voice, tone at once firm but kind, evoked comfort. A sense of family. Or what she imagined family might be like.
‘Who are you?’ she asked, her voice audibly tinged with unease. The astronaut turned their mirror-gaze back on her. ‘I’m the one who’s getting you out of here,’ they said. Before she could retort, they gestured with their hand towards the back of their neck. ‘You… you’ve got a little something there.’ the astronaut added, chuckling again.
She frowned, tentatively reached towards the back of her neck. Her heart skipped a beat as her fingers closed around something cold and metallic embedded in her neck. ‘What is that?’ she demanded, not bothering to keep her voice level now.
‘That is one of the last things keeping you here.’
She paused. ‘One of?’ she prompted, her fear giving way to anger.
‘What’s your name?’ the astronaut asked instead of answering. She frowned again, ‘Who’s asking?’ she countered.
They sighed ‘You don’t remember, do you?’ She was taken aback by the ridiculous question. Of course she knew her own name, it was… her name was… ‘Oh, god.’ she whispered, tears rolling down her cheeks.
The astronaut rested their gloved hands on her shoulders, then. ‘It’s not your fault,’ they said soothingly. ‘They took your memories from you but I’m going to help you get them back.’ She looked up into her own reflection in the visor, to where their eyes must have been. ‘How?’
‘Okay, listen to me carefully. The simulation will reset soon and I can’t be here when it does.’ The astronaut said, an edge of urgency in their tone. She nodded in confirmation. ‘Now, when you’re back in front of the house, you’ll need to pull that interface plug with both hands.’ She obeyed, gritting her teeth against the sudden ache in her spine. ‘That plug is linked to your central nervous system, so pulling it will hurt like fresh hell.’
‘Just repeat your name over and over as you do and you’ll be able to pull yourself out.’ She blinked at him, the ache refusing to abate. ‘Do you know my name?’ she asked, arms shaking. ‘Your name is Mira,’ the astronaut said. And then they were gone. She blinked, and so was she.
She dreamt of fire. She would find herself standing before a house left to rot amidst a waste of glass and salt, the dark night making it glitter like – ‘My name is Mira.’ she said. Fingers curled tightly around the metal of the interface plug. ‘My name is Mira…’ She pulled. The plug’s connector shot waves of liquid fire down her nervous system in protest, forcing her to bite down on her tongue to stop from screaming.
‘My name is Mira…’ she panted, her strength waning. She fell to the ground, tears streaming down her face but hands still clutching the plug. She became aware of the sound of metal feet resounding against the ground; not two, but six powerful hydraulic legs thundering towards her. ‘My name is Mira!’ she screamed, pulling with all of her strength. The connector slipped free and the world fell away beneath her.
Mira awoke to a shock of cold across her entire body, she gasped and thrashed in what must have been ice water, her elbows knocking painfully against the sides of what looked to be a large metal icebox. Gripping both sides of the box, Mira used what little strength remained in her arms to haul herself out of the water. She blinked hard as her vision began to swim, her breath coming in shudders as the cool air kissed her naked skin.
Stepping gingerly out of the icebox and onto the cold hard metal floor, Mira blinked again as her vision came into focus. Before she could take stock of her surroundings, Mira heard a door whisper open to her left.
A man in security fatigues stood in the doorway, already reaching for the pistol holstered at his side and levelling it at her. Mira screamed and threw up her hands. The guard screamed as he was torn apart at the molecular level. She stared in horror at the red smear on the wall in front of her, only snapping back to reality when the alarms sounded.
Mira ran, snatching up the guard’s fallen pistol as she did. Pure adrenaline drove her forward as she sprinted through hallways flashing red with emergency lights and blaring with alarm klaxons.
Heedless of her stark nudity and the gun in her hand, Mira barged through the nearest door, eliciting a yelp of shock from the besuited man on his way out. The man had little time to register the naked woman in front of him before she aimed the pistol at his head. ‘Clothes,’ Mira barked. ‘Now!’
The suit was comfortable but slightly ill-fitting; a grey-on-black blazer, a white shirt, black tie, slacks and shoes. After forcing the man to lock himself in the nearest cubicle, Mira inspected herself in the mirror. She wouldn’t fool anyone up close, but it would have to do until she came up with an escape plan.
Escape from where? She asked herself, and where to? Mira left the bathroom, tucking the pistol into the back of her waistband. Turning a corner, a blur of movement registered across her periphery before something slammed into her like a speeding truck. Mira left the ground for a moment before hitting the mirror-glass wall hard enough to drive the air from her lungs.
Fighting to breathe as she got her hands under her, Mira faced her attacker and froze. The shape appeared in the hallway before her, coalescing into a metal body covered in matte-black microplated armour. Something approaching a human face stared back at her, one set like a death mask without a mouth, twin emerald eyes boring into her soul.
The Inhuman raised its left arm, the air around it crackling with charge. Mira swore as she launched herself to the right just in time to feel the brush of displaced air on her cheek. The ferromagnetic slug punched clean through the mirror-glass wall behind her, tearing into some unseen machinery in an explosion of sparks and wrenching metal. Rolling to her knees, Mira drew her pistol and fired at the Inhuman, each of the four shots scoring harmlessly against their dark metal body as they stalked towards her.
Hastening backwards and firing off two more shots, Mira screamed as the Inhuman closed the distance between them in an instant, metal fingers crushing the pistol’s barrel with ease. Mira leapt backwards, pain blossoming across her chest as the tip of a monomolecular blade sheared through her tie, the front of her shirt and the skin underneath. Mira hissed with pain, blood already trickling from the shallow cut across her sternum.
The Inhuman raised its left arm again and fired. Mira flinched, threw up her hands and waited for death. Mira opened her eyes and felt her breath catch at the ferromagnetic slug suspended mere inches from her face, held in place by a wall of rippling air. The Inhuman paused, green eyes flickering as they processed this new variable. Lip curling back in a snarl, Mira bared her teeth as she composed herself and, with a snap of her wrist, gave the Inhuman their slug back.
The ferromagnetic slug connected with the Inhuman’s left shoulder, warping the seam between the composite-metal microplating before tearing clean through the actuators beneath. The Inhuman reeled from the impact, fighting to maintain balance as they inspected the damage. The arm was hanging on by a few threads of titanite-fibres, completely unresponsive. The Inhuman tore the malfunctioning arm free with their right hand and tossed it aside like dead weight before returning their attention to Mira.
Mira was quick enough to dodge to the left as the Inhuman surged forward, driving its blade into the wall, but not quick enough to avoid the savage kick levelled at her ribs. Mira screamed as she felt at least two of her ribs break and crumpled to the floor. Crawling back as she clutched her side Mira watched as the Inhuman freed their blade from the wall and renewed their assault.
Mira howled with pain as the Inhuman brought its armoured foot down on her stomach and pinned her to the floor. Her vision darkening, Mira grabbed the Inhuman’s armoured foot in a feeble display of defiance. Monomolecular blade poised, the Inhuman reared back before driving it home.
The blade hovered over the scar it had made, held in place by hands unseen. Mira’s right eye radiant like a small emerald star, her fury rippling through her hands and up the Inhuman’s endoskeleton. ‘Fuck you,’ she spat. The Inhuman’s body seized up as, with hand outstretched, Mira reached up towards the motive force seeded between the brain matter and bio-chips. A distant green light screamed at her to stop as she took the seed in her hand and, curling her fingers into a fist, snuffed it out.
The End
Paper Road Magazine 