Excerpt: Harbinger (Working Title)

That night a siren awoke the medical team, the patient had gone into cardiac arrest; his life support systems were being disrupted by his own lungs and heart coming to life on their own. Frantic to save their career’s work they removed the life-giving system, one piece at a time, trying desperately to keep him alive.

Once the last piece had been removed the defribulators pressed down on the patient’s chest, sending a shock into the heart; there was no response. The small room was bustling with men and women screaming at each other in Russian. Again! Again! Again! Again!

“We have a pulse!”

Outside, despite the time, the sun still shone. The guard’s breath hung in the air, frosting the cold black metal of his weapon. His radio crackled; in the wind it had been hard to hear and when he answered it the message he was given had made no sense. A security threat was on the inside of the building.

He pulled at the metal door behind him, before he could twist the door open it buckled and busted off its hinges, hitting the guard hard cold onto the ground. He pushed off the heavy door, reaching around for his weapon when he froze still. Some hand held him in place, as if he were encased in ice. He could control his movements as he lifted up off his feet and into the air. He could only stare at the shriveled figure before him staring him down. The face stared at him frozen, emotionless. With the mere flexing of a thought the figure began to make the guard feel his blood vessels constrict from an invisible force. The agony was short lived.

Blood coming from the guard at nearly every orifice froze before it hit the snow around him. The figure tossed the corpse aside like a tiny toy as he stepped out into the frigid cold, appearing as if the cold meant nothing to him. He walked out into the fresh air, painfully breathing in the scent of freedom. He began to walk away when he stopped and turned to look at the place he had been kept captive for all these years.

Electricity fires across synapses, funneling a new kind of energy. With a thought steel began to buckle and groan. Before a minute had passed, the building collapsed. A gas tank exploded soon after, bathing what had remained in flames.

The patient breathed, turned and walked, heading west, the wind seeming to simply bend around him.