Christopher B. Wright's Blog, page 29

Triple Helix: Part Thirteen

Exertion

He stares straight up at the triangular lights, unable to blink. He can feel—the hard back of the gurney, the sting of the leather straps as they cut into his flesh—but he can’t move. He’s not sure the straps are necessary: whatever they gave him has paralyzed him completely. He can’t even move his head.

“Jack.” His voice is hoarse. He barely recognizes it as his own.

“Save your strength, Thomas.” Jack sounds tired. Defeated.

“What the hell is your problem?” He tries to get his voice...

Triple Helix: Part Twelve

Circumspection

“Good news and bad news,” Street Ronin says.

“Yeah?” Jenny peers over his shoulder, staring down at the screen on his ruggedized laptop. She’s a little relieved he decided to do the work himself, because she finds using it frustrating. It doesn’t come close to the power of her own rig.

On the other hand, my rig won’t resist energy weapon fire…

“Well it looks like their delete protocol started with the most important files first, so that’s bad. But something interrupted the proce...

Triple Helix: Part Eleven

Whatever the thing is, it isn’t obviously mechanical. While it appears to be made of metal, it has no seams anywhere—no joints to allow the arms and legs to move. But it does move, and it moves with unexpected fluidity and speed: it leaps away from the group, landing in front of the ruins of Warehouse Six, and sinking low into a battle-ready crouch.

It moves like a living thing, CB thinks. The arms and legs don’t just move back and forth, they rotate like actual limbs, and even the torso bend...

Triple Helix: Part Ten

Riding the Waves

Jack Barrow and Vigilante stand in front of Warehouse Two’s heavy outer doors, arms crossed, wearing almost exactly the same frown.

They completely ignore the sound of Red Shift destroying Warehouse Six. They react only when it finally goes down and dirt, stone and dust roll over them in an immense cloud—even then, all Vigilante does is wipe a layer of grime off his visor, while Jack shakes some of the dirt out of his hair.

They ignore CB’s warning of the soldiers on the roof,...

Triple Helix: Part Nine

Escalation Games

Phase One.

There are eleven buildings in the warehouse complex—four to the south, four the north, one east, one west, and one much larger building at the center. To simplify communication, they refer to the buildings by number. The southeast warehouse is one, and moving west is two, three, and four. Four is the first building they came to when they emerged from the storm—the one CB is standing on. The next row, east to west, is five, six, and seven. Six is the large building i...

Turning 44, and the State Of Various Things

Usually when I have a birthday I do something silly like post my age in binary, or hexadecimal, or occasionally I post a link to a cause I'd like people to support. Once I asked people to review my books as a birthday present. I'm not doing any of that today, though I will note that 44 doesn't actually feel like 44. It doesn't feel like 34, either. It certainly doesn't feel like 24. I don't know specifically what it feels like, it just doesn't feel like the vague idea I had of 44 when I was e...

Triple Helix: Part Eight

Warehouse Complex, Above

The Sorrel-Eades warehouses, a small complex just north of the Farraday City Boardwalk, has been abandoned for years. It was declared an EPA Superfund site a decade ago, when a truck dangerously overloaded with industrial chemicals exploded outside the center warehouse building. It’s well known among the locals that anyone who goes in the S-E complex dies, and some of the earliest examples of that death were graphic and frightening. But the EPA never actually sent anyo...

Triple Helix: Part Seven

Farraday City, Midtown

“Christ Almighty. What the fuck happened to the sky?”

Agent Grant stares in amazement as rain pounds against Hu’s car. The city is a mess: cars are abandoned in the road, along the side of the road, sometimes even on sidewalks as streams of people slog through the rain, heading for any building they can find. The only people actively driving on the road are Hu—who is clearly unhappy about it—and, based on occasional glimpses of flashing red light, a few emergency respons...

Triple Helix, Part Six

Warehouse Complex

In hindsight there had been no need to ask about the weather—Plague knows the moment the storm starts. He stands in the observation room, looking into the now-crowded cell block as doctors and lab techs crowd around the Prodigy Harness, going through the steps to revive the man imprisoned within. He can see Horace Preston within, lying on something that looks like a coffin bed, and as he stirs he feels the temperate drop, ever so slightly.

Dr. Wallace looks up from a small ha...

Triple Helix: Part Five

Atlantic Ocean, Day

By day the ocean is an endless blue expanse, flecked with shades of darker blue as the waves roll up, casting shadows over its own surface. There are no clouds today; the sky is as unblemished as the ocean is mottled.

There is no sign of land, nor sign of any ships. The compass has started working again, but the two-way radio is still just a constant stream of static, white noise turned so low it barely registers against the sound of the engine as it labors to keep the boat...