Intercepts

by T.J. Payne

Red lights flashed in the room and in the corridor outside. People in the hallway screamed and shouted orders. But Bishop kept digging. Her face remained blank. Her eyes continued to roam around her head, unable to see or lock onto any object in particular. And down she dug. Through skin. Through muscle. Through tendon. Through bone.

Riley often worried if such weird, old-person, stress-avoiding bullshit was also in her future.

Tariq felt it was like being in a mental institution, prison, and morgue of reanimated corpses all at the same time.

She lifted his entire skull through her vice-grip on his eye sockets, and then she slammed his head forcefully against the door.

They didn’t just kill him. They wanted to hurt him. It was a fury and viciousness that didn’t exist in nature. That is what we have created, Hannah thought. Something outside the bounds of nature.