Oshun Mayes's Arc

Chapter 2 of 3

Oshun reached Fort Meridian as the reports flooded in. Screens lit every wall of the command room. Sirens bled through the concrete. He pressed through the crowd of officers, his wife's test strip still over his heart. The eastern district glowed red on the big map. Dozens trapped. He gripped his field comms unit and steadied his voice. "Give me the status." Marcus Drake broke from the map and crossed to him fast. Marcus was his major, his oldest friend, the man he trusted to hold the line. He looked wrong now. His hand shook as he held out a small data drive. "Commander. This isn't a quake." He fed the drive into the console. "Watch." The footage played. The eastern district buildings stood whole one second. Then the street cracked. Pink and green light tore up through the pavement. At the center knelt a man, alone, hands pressed to his skull. The light poured off his body. Every pulse of it buckled another wall. He wasn't a victim of the collapse. He was causing it. "That's impossible," Oshun said. "I know," Marcus said. "But he's still there. Still screaming. And every minute the circle gets wider." Oshun stared at the shaking man on the screen. Not a bomber. Not a soldier. Just terrified. The power ran wild because he couldn't hold it. Oshun made the call. "No strike. No armor. We rush him, he panics, more of it comes off him." He keyed his comms. "I go in alone. On foot. Everyone else holds the line." "Oshun, no." Marcus grabbed his arm. "You've got a reason to come home now." "That's why I'm going," Oshun said. He pulled free. He walked into the eastern district through warped steel and broken stone. The light stung his eyes. The ground hummed under his boots. The man knelt at the center, sobbing, tearing at his own hair. Oshun stopped close and lowered his hands. "Hey. Look at me. I'm not here to hurt you." The man looked up. A wave of green light rolled out. It threw Oshun flat. His ears rang. He climbed back to his knees and kept talking, slow and steady. "Breathe with me. In. Out. I've got you." The man matched his breathing. The light dimmed. Oshun crawled forward and closed his hand over the man's wrist. "You're not alone." The glow died. The man went limp, unconscious but alive. The ground stilled. Medics ran in. Oshun knelt in the sudden quiet and felt something hard under his knee. A fractured shard of strange material, part of it glowing faintly, lay buried in the rubble beneath the man. He picked it up. It pulsed once against his palm, warm and wrong. Marcus reached him and stared at the shard. "What is that?" Oshun didn't answer. The man had knelt right on top of it. That was no accident. The collapse was over. Something worse had just begun.