Excerpt:

EXCERPT - Faz's Story:

The creature that was Piotr Andravicily lay crumpled and torn. Faz fell to his knees in exhaustion and his own blood loss. The fight had gone on for hours, parries and feints, slashes and wounds. The ground had become wet with the blood of both combatants. The stains would remain on the cobblestones for some time to come. Though he knew he would soon die if he did not tend to his wounds, Faz was too tired. Besides, he had finally finished his nemesis. His fight was over and he was looking forward to seeing his family in the after-life.

“But what of the others, Anton Fazoul?” He heard a disembodied voice say. “Would you let this visit itself upon others without retribution?” Confusion passed briefly upon his face.

“Answer swiftly, Anton Fazoul, for your life wanes and what awaits you is dependent upon your answer.”

“No… no person… no family… should have this evil… visited upon them…” He forced out his lips. “I would not… see it go… unpunished.”

And then Anton Fazoul lapsed into unconsciousness and died.

EXCERPT - Aki's Story:

“Darlene Elizabeth Vargis, I can’t believe you got thrown out of yet another University for that crazy stuff of yours!” The voice on the other end was her adopted mother, Charlotte. She and her husband Bill had taken her in just before her 13th birthday. They were a loving couple and the last of her family. Charlotte was a first cousin to her father, Captain Richard Vargis before he and her mother were brutally killed. They represented all that remained.

Her mother and father, as best as she could remember, were loving parents, but frequently absent. Her father was gone due to his service in the U.S. Navy. It wasn’t something she truly understood. Her mother, Lilly, was often required to make appearances on her husband’s behalf. That left her in the care of an elderly Japanese woman who would tell her stories about the Ancient Japanese myths. These were some of the things she did not block out about her past.

But it was not the old woman who began calling her Aki, the name she preferred. That name didn’t come until after the horror.

EXCERPT - Artemis' Story

Artemis walked down the corridor at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory expecting to have to pitch in on some electronic piece that had gone haywire while in orbit or on the surface of some far away heavenly body. She had been told to report to the JPL’s Deputy Director Vance Anderson. She’d heard little about the man, and in all reality, it didn’t really matter to her. She was here because her expertise with electronics and code was second to none.

No one ever thought there might be something more to her technologic wizardry, yet that was precisely what it was. It wasn’t that she made things do more than they really could. It was just that she had such an understanding of what each thing could do and refused to let herself be pushed into the box of “that’s not what it was made to do, like so many of her peers. Circuits and electrons could be manipulated outside of the known laws, if you had two things going for you. First, you had to understand what the laws were. Second, you had to understand that they weren’t so much laws as they were guidelines.