“Amazing, isn’t it,” Norris whispered, as if for Blake’s ears only.

Blake spun, horror on his face. Norris simply smiled, stared up at the creature. “The last of the rejects,” he said, louder this time.

Barbara, who’s face reflected awe versus the stark terror Blake felt, turned to face them. “Rejects?”

Mad C, who had been standing by the door quietly, stepped closer. But not too close, Blake noticed. “One theory we are postulating. All of this, all of these samples … they are the ones who didn’t make it. God’s waste bin, I suppose,” she said, laughing nervously. “For our planet, at least.”

Blake looked away from her, disgusted, and brought his focus to the impossible monster creeping up the wall before him, the bloated skull a dim cloud in the higher recesses of the room. “That theory has one very important flaw,” he said, walking toward the wall, past the spotlights, hoping that seeing the thing’s bones up-close would make it more logical, less maddening.

Barbara approached close enough to stand beside him, her head tilted upwards, as if trying to somehow capture the sheer scale of the beast. She put a hand on his arm. He did not pull away. “The others,” she said, speaking out loud the very thought that had been hiding in the shadows of Blake’s reason, just waiting to step into the light and announce itself. “We’ve seen, well,” she paused, searching for the right word, “…variations, at least, of the others. The giraffe, the dinosaurs … those animals are all ones we know about, have seen or studied. But this … this doesn’t exist.”

Blake abruptly shook his head. His thoughts felt fuzzy, as if he’d just had two shots of whiskey. He turned to find Mad C and Norris, but they were on the opposite sides of the lights, nothing but shadows. He started to call out to them, but the words seemed disconnected from his brain, the meaning behind them slippery.

He closed his mouth.

He barely registered the large sliding door of the chamber sealing shut. He turned to Barbara, hoping for assistance, for grounding. He hadn’t noticed her hand leaving his sleeve.

Her face was waxen, her jaw sagged; her eyes were glazed over, trance-like.

“You will both be given instruction,” Mad C said.

Blake unzipped his jacket. Sluggishly, as if moving underwater, he reached inside, found the cold metal of his sidearm. The buzz of the spotlights grew louder. Too loud. He felt it vibrating through his teeth, crawling through him. Infesting. He squinted into the bright spotlights, the beams grew halos, the room beyond them darkened. Tunnel-vision pressed in on his senses,

He pulled his sidearm free. Pointed it toward the spotlights.

“I assure you that won’t be necessary,” he heard Norris say, his nasally voice coming from beyond the lights, but also from inside his head. “Mankind has no further need of weapons,” Norris added in an arrogant, hateful tone. Then he laughed—a hysterical, choked sound that chilled Blake’s spine.

Then Blake heard another voice. This one came from deeper in his consciousness, buried beneath layers of reason, speaking in a language he could not understand, could not fathom. He blinked rapidly, pressed one hand to his temple, tried to will the voice away, to focus his thoughts, stay inside himself, stay himself.

He saw the blur of a blue outfit. One of them was moving behind the lights.

Mad C.

Blake raised the gun and fired. One spotlight exploded, the thick surface of the light blew outward in a cloud-like spray of glass dust, but the light continued to shine blindingly.

He fired again, into the shadows.

The voice inside him grew louder. He stopped firing, staggered, dropped to his knees.

And he understood. Understood his role. His instructions.

For the coming.

He squeezed his eyelids shut, the last fragments of sanity flayed like ripped curtains, his mind now fully occupied by the voice. The instructions. The visions shown to him.

He forced his eyes open, the world a blur through the sudden rush of tears. Barbara was standing once more, her eyes clear. She studied the bones of the creature, the one only slightly different than the ones already on Earth, ready to reveal themselves with the flickering of a dimensional gap, a light-switch effect that would finally unveil the horror, enable the merging.

Norris and Mad C, or at least the things they were now, suddenly stood before him; stared down at him with pity.

Mad C kneeled, looked into his eyes. “This will be easier for you if you open yourself to the inevitable. We are ready to evolve, commander. Can’t you see that?”

Blake steadied himself with one hand. He had the creature’s instruction.

But he also had his training, the only thing that kept him sane for a few more critical seconds.

Blubbering like a child, he raised the gun and fired it into Mad C’s face. A burst of spray went up behind her head, dissolving the strength of the light’s beam. She slumped toward him.

The voice was no longer a voice. It was a command. It was pushing him out.

He sensed more than saw Norris running for the door. He lifted his gun to fire again, but it was too heavy, the voice too loud.

Damn them all, he thought.

He felt a hand rest gently on his shoulder. He looked up into Barbara’s face. She was smiling. She got on her knees beside him. She pulled the gun from his hand, now weak, now beaten.

He looked into the eyes he once knew so well, saw the unshakable calm there. Saw the understanding. He shook his head, tears rolling down his cheeks.

“I won’t do it,” he said. “I’ll die first.”

Barbara put a hand on his cheek, still smiling. He thought about their time together, the beauty of her. For a moment, the voice went away, his head filled by a sudden rush of humanity, of all that it once was.

He felt the cold metal under his jaw.

“We know,” she said.

MY FATHER'S ASHES

I WAKE WITH THE SUNRISE. As always.

I shift inside the coffin, not yet ready to meet the day.

Then I hear his voice in my head.

Time to wake up, Jake.

I moan in protest but open my eyes, relishing the darkness. I yawn, take in the comforting smell of ancient wood surrounding me, the earthy fragrance of oak mingled with the musky scent of my father.

After a moment, I press my palms against the underside of the lid and push, the hinges smooth and silent, opening myself to a different darkness, that of a wide-open subterranean space. I sit up. Cool air prickles my nerves. My eyesight is well-acclimated to the lack of light, enough to easily see my path. I climb out.

“See ya later,” I say to the brass urn settled at the foot of the long coffin, then close the lid tight.