Love Lost, the fastest runner in the group, Marcial steps behind, had made it maybe twenty paces from the door. Gilpatrick was forty.

As those emotions found their root in him, digging into his heart and memories, he could connect thoughts. He could pull out fragments, and in his efforts to fight the emotions, he clung to those fragments, that logic and understanding.

Rain had said, ‘it’s all interconnected. Everything about powers ties into this place’.

‘Colt was linked into it’.

There was even the repeated focus on the day the people belonging to this room had gotten powers. Returning to that over and over again.

The beast wasn’t just emotion. It was tied into other hardware and functions. Peak emotion. Worst days and moments.

Gilpatrick felt it find his, dredging them up and bringing them to the surface.

It was a fragment of the greater puzzle responsible or partially responsible for trigger events.

Weaponized.

The room incapacitated with an almost casual stroke, the beast prowled forward to devour them.

He saw Valentin, Cox, and Rain at the door, dragging Early, who was small and light enough to be dragged. Love Lost stood between the beast and three of the Patrol. Colt was off to one side.

Then he saw nothing except abstract images. A glimpse of a world beyond stars, and of wells of power he might not live to tap into.

Infrared 19.c

I’m lying on the floor. I’m as good as unconscious, vulnerable while an alien beast stalks me.

The thoughts grew dimmer, the thoughts of the scene taking over, louder than whatever he could voice in his own head.

“We need something for over the bed,” Merindah said, paging through the art. Images were printed out and blown up, each within a plastic sleeve with rigid black borders.

“I like leaving that space blank.”

Merindah reached over to place a hand on his cheek. A little bit condescending, dismissive, but fond. “It’s too spartan.”

“We have things on the shelf there,” Gilpatrick protested.

“Let’s see if anything jumps out at us,” she said, moving on. Bulldozing past him, in a way.

Gilpatrick browsed, disinterested, half of his attention on his girlfriend, half on the reams of mass-produced art, available in bed and bathroom stores, oversized furniture stores, and, here, mall kiosks.

She was beautiful, and he knew she worried. Three times this month, he’d had mobilizations. Full kit, guns signed out, briefings in the van en route. Each mobilization had ended without incident, yet he’d returned to find her waiting up for him, worrying. Two nights ago, he had hugged her, and she had started sobbing.