Free The Harbinger Break by Zachary Adams

far–you can still catch him!"
       The other cops ran out immediately, yelling orders and repeating what Sam had said. Two medics rushed in.
       "Can you walk?" the first medic asked as the other checked his pulse and swabbed the blood on his chest.
       "Yeah," Sam responded. The medics unbound his feet, neck, and hands, and scanned him quickly as he stood. They walked him out of the bathroom and onto their stretcher. Strapping him in, they rolled him out of the room and carried him down the steps to the ambulance.
       A cop with a notepad approached as the medics put copious amounts of gauze, antiseptic, and pressure on Sam's wounds.
       "Mr Higgins, can I ask you a couple questions?"
       "Yeah," Sam said, then grimaced, immediately regretting his affirmative answer.
       "Thank you. You're very brave. So, tell me what happened? What's the last thing you remember?"
       Sam took a deep breath. The aching and burning of the cuts on his body helped him sell his anguish. A sudden thought amused him, and he hid a creeping smile. He pictured the cops spreading out to find Pat, all the while their target hid underneath a bed in the room upstairs. It was kind of funny, in a sick way.
       "He attacked me, almost drowned me, then kidnapped me. He thought I was an alien, and had been torturing me the past few days, trying to get me to admit it."
       "Who's he?"
       "Pat Shane."
       The cop nodded and jotted a note.
       "That's enough for now. Thank you, Mr Higgins." The cop patted one of the medics on the back, and they loaded Sam into the ambulance and flew him to the emergency room.
       Ambulances were the first vehicles to be upgraded to ground/air thrust compatibility, and Sam found flying via positive thrust soothing to say the least. He fell asleep during the flight–the events of the evening had been traumatic, albeit much differently than how law enforcement suspected.
     
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       Excerpt from Pope John Paul II's "Redemptor Hominis", May 4th, 1979. Part 12, The Church's Mission and Human Freedom:
       In this unity in mission, which is decided principally by Christ himself, all Christians must find what already unites them, even before their full communion is achieved. This is apostolic and missionary unity, missionary and apostolic unity. Thanks to this unity we can together come close to the magnificent heritage of the human spirit that has been manifested in all religions, as the Second Vatican Council's Declaration Nostra Aetate says. It also enables us to approach all cultures, all ideological concepts, all people of good will, all life by God. We will approach them with the esteem, respect and discernment that since the time of the Apostles has marked the missionary attitude, the attitude of the missionary.
       …
       The mission is never destruction, but instead is a taking up and fresh building, even if in practice there has not always been full correspondence with this high ideal. And we know well that the conversion that is begun by the mission is a work of grace, in which man must fully find himself again.
       For this reason the Church in our time attaches great importance to all that is stated by the Second Vatican Council in its Declaration on Religious Freedom, both the first and the second part of the document. We perceive intimately that the truth revealed to us by God imposes on us an obligation that man must now transcend. We have, in particular, a great sense of responsibility for this truth. By Christ's institution the Church is its guardian and teacher, having been endowed with a unique assistance of the Holy Spirit in order to guard and teach it in its most exact integrity. In fulfilling this mission, united with man, we look towards Christ himself, the first evangelizer, and also towards his Apostles, martyrs and confessors, to give us strength, through space, in our obligation to God.
       …
       Jesus Christ meets the man of every age,