Free Future Winds by Kevin Laymon Page A

Pisces fell to the ground, dissolving in the acid and causing her stealth cloak to vanish.
    She fell to her knees in pain and shock, not knowing what to do as she watched her arm quickly become a gooey string of useless muscle. The tendons and fibers liquefied before her very eyes and dripped right off the bone.
    She acted quickly, using her blade she ran it up against the backside of her shoulder blade and sliced her arm clean off. Hacking off what was melting away, she began to lose a lot of blood. She felt dizzy and sick. Succumbing into a state of shock, she fell backwards and passed out.
     
    ***
     
    Aries was forced to halt her assault as her laser weaponry had overheated from such rapid fire. Her guns radiated a bright red glow, excreting tremendous heat and forcing her to retreat back with Tyler.
    Aisha lay on the ground ahead missing her left arm entirely. She was turning pale and beginning to flail about the ground intensely. Vomiting on herself, she was covered in her own blood, sweat, and puke.
    “Aries! Save her!” Tyler shouted out as he tossed an energy grenade up over the rock he sought shelter behind.
    Four large locust were ripping Abram’s drone, Taurus, to pieces. Dissecting the bot’s internal wiring as if it were a man and his intestine. In their frenzy, the insects paid no mind to the grenade drifting towards them. It had an LED indicator that was pulsing a bright green color as it landed and slid to a stop just below their feet. It’s green blinking halted and it pulsed a redness three times before detonating.
    Time and space bent inwards. Within seconds the energy explosive rapidly pulled in all matter around them ripping apart the atoms that made up objects, then it mixed the ingredients and combusted them.
    Within a six-yard radius, bits and pieces of matter, unrecognizable to the naked eye without a microscope, fell. All fibers of being that once existed in that location were now apart on the ground--collectively a mesh of dark, red mush.
    Aries zoomed over to Aisha and homed her overheated lasers in on the shoulder blade that was quickly draining the girl of all the blood she held inside. The bot overrode the overheat failsafe and set the lasers to a short, immensely hot, burst that quickly cauterized the wound-- turning it to a large stinking, black scab that ultimately sealed it off. Then Aries levitated the girl up into the air and zig-zagging between gunfire, escorting her back towards the carrier ship.
    Leon was off ahead getting swamped. Tyler advanced forward behind his cover and began laying down some of the bugs ahead but he knew he would never reach Leon in time. Then a shot pierced through the air that bellowed a war cry of death and decay.
    Tyler knew just what this was. This was an ultra-high powered UIGN issued sniper rifle. Before him ten of the bugs disintegrated into body parts and blood. Leon had a full path to retreat back and, in doing so, the chaos seemed to settle ahead.
    The assault was ceasing.
     
    ***
     
    White lights subtlety blinked through the corridors, casting eerie shadows within the blocks nestled away in New Horizon. All civilian personnel were in a state of lockdown that night following the events of the evening prior. People were calling it ‘the day one massacre’. With no official word given, everyone was left to speculate in fear over the survivor's’ recollection of events.
    Ness remembered all too vividly watching helplessly as those creatures stole hundreds of lives just hours before, dragging them off into the ground. Those people were gone forever.
    It all happened so fast: thousands of people running back towards the ship, most of which didn’t even know what it was they were actually from, merely followed the rest of the frenzied flock to safety.
    At one point his younger brother got caught in the stampede, fell to the ground, and got trampled. Ness had to double back and fight through the scared horde, pushing and getting tossed around like