Dr. Heller never mentioned his problem, but everyone at the clinic knew about it. We were shocked by how normal he acted afterwards. He didn’t even take a sick leave or anything. A couple of days after his incident, Judy decides to bring in a vase of flowers for his office, some ugly artificial thing with a heavy cluster of lilies and roses and ferns. Dr. Heller thanks her and sticks his face in them and we all laugh because we think he's fucking with us. Turns out, he thought they were real.

Judy later discovers him in his office and we can hear her screams throughout the building.

The clinic is in a state of excitement, the staff milling around. Everyone keeps saying that he was fine all morning. We keep saying, how could this have happened. We keep talking about what we could have looked for, the warning signs. We repeat how much we miss him. A get-well card circulates around the clinic and everyone signs it from their hierarchical order of importance—the surgeons, anesthesiologists, RNs, the receptionists, even the fat, ugly custodian who only creeps in after everyone leaves for the day.

We draw lots to elect a person to go visit him. Our clinic’s been a family for more than ten years and is heavily involved in each other’s lives. We take care of our own. (Only the receptionists get recycled out every so often for newer, younger candidates. We take pride in appearances here.) Also, everyone is dying for more news about the late and great doctor.

No one volunteers to go, so we draw lots. I get chosen. They all clap my back and say, sucks to suck.

He is a beautiful man. His forehead is taut, his eyes etch upwards at the corners. The sides of his nose are perfectly symmetrical lines. With a ruler, you can measure the alignment of his eyes to his ears. Even now, hunched forward with his shoulders drawn up so he looks like a turtle receding into a shell, his flesh is smooth and hard like plastic. He adjusts his position over the edge of the bench as if uncomfortable, and his hands are spread claws digging into the wood.

Smile Dr. Heller, I say and lean closer to him. I take a picture of us on my phone, me with a huge smile and Dr. Heller looking lost.

The sun is out, but it’s cold. The sunshine deceives us. We sit on a bench on the lawn. His personal caregiver is in a chair a few yards away from us and glances at us over the cover of her book.

He is wealthy enough to have escaped the indignity of sanitariums, where they throw together the psychotic and the mentally ill indiscriminately. He has that small mercy for him. His wife is filing for divorce now, I hear, and will soon have sole custody of the kids and house, a substantial fortune built upon the splicing and reconstruction of flesh. Maybe this is his punishment for tampering with natures works, sullied as they are. Maybe this is punishment for playing God.

I take his face with my hands and kiss him. I feel his perfectly sculpted lips with my tongue.

It’s ok, Dr. Heller.

You’ll get over this.

Everyone at the clinic misses you.

Remember Mrs. Lebowitz? She threw a fit when we told her you went on vacation. She says no other doctor in the city does skin as good as you.

It’s dark when I leave. The neighborhood is unsettling in its quiet, undisturbed by traffic or people. I miss the dirty mess and the noise of the city. The stars are like dim, sad echoes of the city lights.

But, if I crane my head, I can see the city lights glow like a distant fire.

My friend has just broken up with her boyfriend of two years. 

Me: Do you want to taco 'bout it?

Friend: It's Nacho problem.

Audrey clutched her energy sword, hoping for even the slightest sliver of security she typically felt when she had it in her hand. But this time, it didn't give any.

     She looked down quickly at her armor, trying to gauge how much force it would resist and if those razor sharp claws that were digging deep gouges into the metal would rip it.

     Of course, it will! she realized in a panic.

     She backed up until her lower back rammed painfully against one of the many control panels.

     "You have to stay calm," she whispered hoarsely to herself. "You are not afraid; you are invincible and this creature can not harm you." She considered that statement for a split second before adding, "Too much."

     Muscular, scaly arms appeared, followed by a long, graceful, ever-curving neck, which supported an oval head with two large, dark eyes. Another set of legs appeared, followed by more back, so flexible it was like watching a slinky crawl out of the hole. At last, the third pair of legs came up over the edge, followed by three long, snakish tails, each one with a scythe-like blade on the end.

     Audrey identified it immediately as a Scav. A rebel Scav that would have no qualms killing her.

     Once all of its body was out of the hole, the Scav paused to lick its large poison fangs before settling its hypnotic black eyes on Audrey's green ones.

     "Ah, you're a hypnotizing one," she realized and almost smiled. Troy had once had the bright idea of trying hypnosis on Audrey. Unfortunately for Troy (but fortunately for Audrey), she was not the type of person who relaxed easily, and therefore could not be hypnotized.

     Audrey forced herself to keep staring into those deep, black holes, however, and managed to keep her burning eyes from blinking for a minute or two. She smiled inwardly as the Scav relaxed, thinking it had hypnotized her.

     Keeping eye contact with Audrey all the while, the Scav moved forward, its body curving like a centipede's. It stopped a few steps away from her, and Audrey found it increasingly hard not to blink as it slowly shoved out its front right hand, claws upward.

     Since she wasn't actually hypnotized, she didn't know what the Scav wanted. Her hand? Her weapon? Her armor? She decided the most logical choice was her energy sword, so she slowly brought her arm forward, like she was going to hand the Scav the energy sword.

     At the last possible moment, she brought her energy sword swinging upward with all of her strength, the beam of energy ripping up its scaled chest and neck, finally scalding the scales of its chin. It leaped back now, as its three tails whipped around its sides, one of them smacking firmly against Audrey's right side.

     She winced, but bit her lip to keep her exclamation of surprise and pain from seeping out. It was never a good idea to let your enemy know just how hurt you were or were not.

     She moved backward, letting the other two tails hit the air harmlessly. She viewed first her own wound, which was just a slight cut where the tail blade had sliced through the armor, before checking the damage that she'd inflicted on the Scav. 

     The energy blade had sliced through the first layer of thicker scales, and through the second layer of much thinner scales. But it had drawn only a little blood and inflicted minimal pain.

     The Scav launched itself forward, using the muscles in the back two pairs of legs. Audrey hit the floor and rolled as fast as she could, before springing back up into a fight ready position as the Scav sailed harmlessly overhead.

     Well, mostly so. One of the tails whipped in a sweeping motion faster than Audrey could move, slicing off a clump of red hair and leaving a very small scratch on her neck. She almost went faint, realizing that right now, her head could be severed from her body.

     "This is going to be a bit harder than I thought," she muttered, as she slowly inched backward as the Scav twisted sharply, landing lightly on all three pairs of legs, and turning around to face her.

     Audrey took another step backward, the black hole coming into her peripheral vision. The mainframe was down there, so if she could get the core...mission accomplished. As far as getting the core, not the "getting it back to us in one piece" part. Because she couldn't do that if she were dead.

     She smiled brightly at the Scav, watching uncertainty and confusion flash over its face before being replaced with sudden realization and sheer panic as it understood what she was going to do.

     "Bye-bye!" she grinned, doing a back-flip into the dark oblivion.

Be-fucking-have young one. 

I don't think I need to say much more than that. 

And try your best to not accidentally set fire to the girls toilets at school. That's not good young lady behaviour. And don't smile as two teenaged boys fight over you. And don't lie. Because it causes problems for you in years to come. 

And don't hide. Don't ever hide.

Be-fucking-have young one.

People steer clear when the danger signals show. It's correct behaviour. Self preservation, right?

So why does her heart pound harder when she feels the dark tingling sensation of danger? Why is it not fear that runs through her veins, but excited adrenaline? 

I don't know. 

And neither do you.  But she does, and that's all that matters. She doesn't care that it could end so badly.

And as she walks up the dark alley to meet the second stranger that week,  her danger signals rise just as fast as her heart rate.

Excitement overrides any warning bells ringing. She wants to feel alive, and she knows she can this way. 

It's such a shame that her need to feel alive will ultimately end in her death.

A drunken man will stumble upon her broken body one early Saturday morning. His need to release his bladder taking him to the alley that she so loves. 

Danger signals should always be accompanied by warning bells. ⚠ 

The first thing Audrey noticed were the red words Critical flashing on the screen. The ship was badly damaged, and taking the core of the mainframe would most likely damage it more. Thankfully, the Allegiance would never get the information they needed from the core about the newest sector and the strange energy transmissions found there.

     Audrey looked around her slowly, knowing that patience and cautiousness was the best option here. Secondary control panel there...airlock controls over there...gravity controls to the left...hyper and warp drives on the right... She drew in a deep breath. The ship was huge, and it might take a while. And who knew how many guards were left? Or where Troy was now, since she'd left him...

     "It's here somewhere," she whispered to herself, squinting with concentration. Her eyes tracked slowly around the massive bridge before finding the main control panel. That was a start. She headed over that way, her shoes making slight noises against the metal floor. 

     She let her fingers brush lightly over the dials and buttons, but she already knew the mainframe wasn't right here. 

     It was slow, frustrating work as she tediously tried to find entrance to the system and track the date streams to the core, and then use a sort of GPS to track the data transmissions from the core and pinpoint the location of the core in the ship. Easier said than done.

     "Finally!" she whispered triumphantly to herself, closing her eyes burning eyes briefly. She wiped a little bit of sweat off of her forehead before turning to look behind her and at the floor. 

     Her eyes instantly found the round oval in the center of the floor, which was probably six feet in diameter. She knelt down, her fingers probing around the surface, searching for a way to get it off. 

     "Well, I can't lift it," she told herself. "There's no trigger. Must be on that stupid control panel. Aargh! I did not sign up for this." She paused. "Well, actually I did. Okay, moving on..."

     Once again, Audrey returned to the control panel, but it didn't take nearly as much time now that she knew what was what, and knew the general grouping of the controls.

     "Here we go," she smiled tiredly, her fingers skittering over the keypad with the last code Jolie had given her. For once, she was certain that the code would work.

     With a mechanical whirring noise, the metal oval slowly lowered into the ground, revealing a pitch black hole that seemed to draw Audrey into it. She blinked once before stepping slowly forward, eyes still locked on the black oblivion.

     Reaching the rim, Audrey pulled out her energy sword, letting its light illuminate some of the dark space beneath her.

     "Ahh!" she yelled, jumping backwards as red, luminous eyes glared back at her.

     She scrambled back even farther as she heard the distinct sound of scales scraping against metal, and claws on steel as huge talon like appendages latched themselves to the edge of the hole. 

     Horror clutched at Audrey's stomach as she realized that whatever was down there...was coming up. 

     For her.

I don't want to harm you, please believe me of that. I wouldn't dream of harming you. I will grow off of your dreams that you dream every night; I will grow off of your brain energy. But it won't kill you. You humans never use the brain energy anyway, so in a way, I'm just cleaning up liter so to speak.

     Perhaps you've had your brain scanned. Or had an MRI. (Well, those are the same things, but you get my idea.) Perhaps your doctor has noticed an abnormality. Sometimes it's a cancerous tumor. Well don't worry--that's not me, and you really should have removed.

     But if it's not cancerous, chances are, that lump of abnormal cells is...me. I'm nothing special, really, except that I enter your head while you're sleeping. I'm not a slug, like the Yeerks, or some weird snail or anything like that. I'm like a vapor, one that you can't see and can't feel until I'm in your head. 

     You'll really feel me through the adjusting period, usually a week or so after entry. You'll have headaches, fatigue, maybe some dizziness or vomiting. You'll think it's a sickness, and eventually it'll pass. The bizarre dreams might last a little bit longer, but eventually they will go away.

     And I'll be in your head, watching your dreams, and feeding off of them.

To whom every it may concern;

I was hacking deep into the heart of the Internet when I saw your add. At first, I wasn't interested; it's not like I need money when I can drain someone's bank account in under half a second. But I could use a decent thrill every now and again.

     Now I must warn you before we go any farther, that I have been trained by the best and the baddest, and that my fighting styles are quite different then those of any assassin you have probably met. Let me explain.

     I can kill people without ever leaving my house. In fact, without even leaving my desk. All I need is a computer.

     You may be doubtful now, but look at the newspaper; my killings typically cover the front page at least once a week. Now are you laughing?

     I didn't think so.

     The way it works is this--I can hack people's minds as long as they are staring at that computer, tablet, or phone screen. I can reverse the way the screen works so I am seeing them. I see their brainwaves as data streams, and I hack them like I'm hacking a computer. Deeper and deeper I get, until I reach the brain's matrix. And I simply shut it down. All body functions cease and the person is instantly gone. Dead.

     So I can assure you, not only do I kill with efficiency, speed, and without leaving a trace, double-crossing is not an issue for me. I wish you good day.

Sincerely,

Khloe Riana 

P.S. Might want to get a better firewall for your computer. I was able to access some very embarrassing stuff you probably don't want people seeing.

Name; You can call me C.

Age; unknown. 

Position ; You already know. 

I will soon be working under your command. You and I both know that I will be chosen. I need not give reasons nor theories. 

Your wife and child will also be put under my protection. For an extra fee of course. And obviously if you also want the 18 year old beauty you've been having a secret affair with watched too, that can be arranged. 

All secrets are secrets for a reason.

But with the right person on the job, all secrets, just like weaknesses can be found.

I am the best.

And I always will be.