Prologue
"... they won't know. They won't know. I-I-I disabled the tracking. Yes? Yes! I did. I did."
Lynn's voice faded in and out. She'd frantic whispered that last bit to herself. Eyes rimmed red from days of fear and no sleep rendered the pupils to pinpricks. She cast her wide paranoid gaze about the lab as if she were an unwitting guest in a SAW movie. The confines of the screen limited my ability to snoop. Trying to make sense of what could rattle my sister so badly.
My sister was scared of nothin'. A no-nonsense kind of woman. She'd opened her first frog at seven, punched Dwight Greene at the middle school dance when he tried to feel her up, went to college at seventeen, and secured two different bachelor's degrees before her twenty-fifth. Needless to say, nothing rattled her.
Lynn shifted, shoulders tense as if she'd heard a noise. She moved just enough for me to catch a glimpse of a steel table behind her... and a blood-stained sheet covering something.
A body?
It didn't look big enough. Parts of the sheet had pooled at the center to cascade over the side in a blotchy red fall. The bits beneath were too small. Animal?
A toe peeked out at the end. A human toe. The whole picture sunk in. Human. Whoever it was had been human and their body rendered into lumpy meat chunks and not all there.
Christ!
Who was it? I'd only ever met Greer Harkaway, an engineer and something, something, MD something. I'd never bothered to remember his creds, only his tattoos had been worth a second glance. As for the rest of the crew, I only knew a handful by name or face.
Thankfully, I couldn't see the face beneath the sheet.
"Listen-" Lynn's focus came back to the screen blocking my curious roving. "-I've sent you a special supply crate. It's all automated. Not a rescue." She moved in closer, black halos of sleep deprivation drained the life from her face, eerily outlining her orbital sockets. "Things are bad, Audrey. Really bad. Stay away! Stay as far away as you can-" Her gaze dropped. Tears welled and ran freely down slightly hollowed cheeks. Then, her gaze jumped to me, and a glimmer of her old self returned. "Don't come looking! You hear me! Don't return to urban areas! Stay away from cities and towns- anywhere people group together. And for once, you better fucking listen to me, Audrey!"
The vid message stopped. My sister, Lynn, stared out at me. A piercing warning rode the grim line of her lips.
I stabbed the 'Play From Beginning' option and pressed pause. The sheer helplessness and anger burned the backs of my eyes. A thousand questions coalesced at once and I couldn't think straight.
What the hell had I just watched?
Not a rescue? Who needs rescuing? Me?
What the hell had happened to my sister?
And why a supply crate? Are we talking COVID mayhem again? God, fuck no!
What the hell had she and her team dragged out of the ice?
Lynn had been in the middle of a six-month expedition in Antarctica. And I was stationed in Mount Darwin, California as a fire watcher. The nearest Ranger Station was eight miles SE of my position and required a day's hike and a high-clearance vehicle to get to. My sister might as well be on the moon.
Normally, nothing would keep me from my sister, but the Antarctic was a tall order. And-
"Don't come looking for me!"
Frustration hooked into my heart and tugged me around in circles of anguishing indecision.
Go!
Stay! Lynn said to stay!
Air hissed between my teeth as I dragged in a ragged breath. "Come on. Get a grip, Odd!"
I dropped into a chair. Unsure when I had gotten up and started pacing. A caged animal. Barred in by hopelessness and frustration with anger as a cellmate.
No. I've missed something. Mouse in hand, I scrolled through the rest of our correspondence over the last couple of days. Its there. The answer's here. It has to be.
"Don't come looking for me!"
"Sorry, sis." Determination loosened fears stranglehold. "Never was good at taking orders."
An icon blinked at the bottom of the screen. A message. I could feel my brows take a shocked hike up my forehead. The hell?
I clicked on it. A weird fluttering unease in my gut. The message opened and a still shot of a vid filled the screen.
Fear-fueled adrenaline shattered my momentary levelheadedness and sent blood whooshing through my ears. Despair burned up the oxygen. I couldn't breathe.
It was Lynn. Her face contorted in agony. Mouth open and screaming. Arterial blood arched to spray part of the screen. And something... something bursting out of her right eye... teeth?
Are those... teeth?
No illusions here. My sister was dead.
The world collapsed around me, my vision tunneled until I saw through a dark straw. Still, part of my cognizance functioned and it chose to hit play.
Someone should witness her death. Someone would need to remember. And I needed to know what thing robbed me of my sister so that I could shoot it in the face.
A/N: Once again I'm getting sucked down the rabbit hole of a new story. Yes, I've got a problematic pattern when it comes to writing, but I'm working on it. Once summer ends and school starts, I'll try to be a bit more dedicated to my writing. Hope you guys enjoyed the teeny-tiny teaser for Scorched Skies. AvP fans, you probably see where I'm headed ;) Thank you to everyone who's stuck by me this long and I also say welcome to the new readers. Also, if you're new to reading my stories, I use a blend of canon and non-canon Yautja words which I include at the end of each chapter.