I raise my hand signaling for the JCB to stop pulling the scrap metal off the large section of steel half buried in the dirt. As the digger backs up, the rest of my work team walks over gas monitors, acetylene torches, and magnetic clamps on the belts wrapped around the blue jumpsuits, the back of the uniforms emblazoned with an eagle with a pair of spades clamped in their talons. Leading them all is the foreman, a rotund man with greasy black hair and scraggly goatee, one who is in bed with the Macedonian crime syndicate that runs drug trafficking on the streets.
“Bloch, cut open the hull!” The foreman orders as I pull the gas filter mask down across my nose and mouth. Firing up the acetylene torch, I begin tracing the tool over the alien slab of steel, the white flame illuminating my chestnut brown hair tied up in a bun, green eyes protected by tinted goggles. As I gut in, one of the work crew edges forwards with a gas monitor on a cord, which is then tossed down into the hole. Almost immediately the monitor sends up an alarm, one that filters up to the worker holding it.
“Blue Fog!” The man yells in accented English as he scrambles backwards. All of us have good survival instincts, a side effect of living through the Great Impact, Blight Wars, and the Dervish Collapse, as well as thousands of other smaller calamities. I just about make it out of the vent radius, just as a blast of blue-tinted steam is released.
“Everyone stand down, we have a Category 3 incident!” I order, knowing all too well that the foreman doesn’t care about his workers. For him, this is an annoyance since it means the CBTF will have to come down and neutralize the Xeno-Cyan gas pocket located within the hull of the ship. Technically we all work for the CBTF, Griffon Extra-Terrestrial Salvage is a shell company set up after the Blight Wars to strip mine the debris that crashed during the Great Impact.
“You lazy lot won’t be receiving pay until we can resume work.” The foreman sneers with a certain amount of glee. He will be getting double pay for disruption to work while we won’t be getting anything. The rest of the crew complains in whatever their native tongue is, it’s no coincidence that the work crew primarily consists of Mexicans, Hondurans, Haitians, Indonesians, and Syrians, since the US Government passed an ordinance that the populous should avoid contact with Xeno-Cyan and other alien materials.
**
The CBTF spends the rest of the day sampling the salvage and removed one hundred liters of Xeno-Cyan, as well as the canister that had ruptured. As the sun sets, I get on my bicycle and head home, while the pay is terrible, at least I’m getting paid and have a place to call my own. As I leave the compound, I see the CBTF truck pass me, almost knocking me over as it passes. The near miss causes my anger to rise to the surface, when the CBTF quarantined the city, they confiscated travel documents to avoid contamination. American citizens got their documents back, everyone else was in a lottery, if you could pay you could leave.
“Schisse!” I yell at the truck, a symbol of my imprisonment here in Indigo City. I had only come to America from my apartment in Leipzig to compete in the BMX World Championships held in the city as my last step to qualifying for the Tokyo Olympics. After the Great Impact happened, a lot of people were declared dead who were either blight, carrier, or just simply unlucky. To the world outside of Indigo City, everyone believes that I, Joanna Bloch am dead.
“I need to fly!” I growl through gritted teeth as I take a turn away from my studio apartment and towards Brooks Park. I need to cool off, and there is only one thing that can do that.
**
Flight or at least as close as someone without carrier powers can come is amazing to me. Jumping over the ramp I soar a good ten feet before I land and power towards the next jump, hitting it at speed and soaring over into the red-tinted sky before landing safely. Spinning my BMX around, I head towards a series of poles and slalom through them before coming to a drop, soaring once again into the sky before slamming down.
I was so focused that I almost miss the two figures standing at the bottom of the next ramp. Skidding to a stop, the visitors turn to look at me, their hands reaching for weapons.
“Turn around little girl unless you’re here to make a purchase.” One of the figures, an Indonesian man dressed in leather pants and jackets overlaid across a white shirt warns, his hand resting on a pistol. Nodding, I spin the bike round, silently cursing that of all the things I could run across, it had to be a Stardust deal. As angry as I was, I know enough not to pick a fight with criminals, especially when no one outside of this city knows I’m here.
“Hey STOP!” The second Indonesian man yells causing me to freeze, looking over my shoulder I see the two men looking into the forest and an ominous red glow coming from the understory. Almost immediately a dagger flies out of the brush and stabs into the forehead of the drug dealer, causing the second man to open fire.
“Vierhundertzwölf.” A horse, almost metallic voice stated as the dagger wiggles before flying back towards the brush, just as a figure dressed in a mixture of military fatigues and metal plating, its face covered in a metal helmet with a single red eye emerged from the woodland.
“Die Carrier scum!” The remaining Indonesian yells as the dagger flicks out and slashes him across the throat before embedding into one of the jumps. That is my cue to leave, I don’t want any part of whatever this is.
“Vierhundertdreizehn.” The figure buzzes as I head around the slalom poles, heading for the exit of the park. I dare to look back, only to see the figure running after men, the blood-soaked blade clamped in its hand, its monocular visor fixated on my BMX. I look back in time to see that I’m heading towards a grind rail, causing me to steer hard right and head towards one of the larger jumps. Hitting the jump, a dagger stabs into the back tire of my bike, causing the BMX to buck and throw me off of the bike and send me rolling down the jump.
“Schisse!” I swear as I get to my feet and stagger towards the chain link fence and a hole that has been forced open by either the drug dealers or a street gang. Struggling through I feel a new sharp pain stab through the steel toe-capped boot I’m wearing. Pulling myself through the hole, I turn to see the stalker standing on the top of the jump and the dagger stabbed into the sole of my boot, the pain flaring up as the carrier opens its hand and the dagger flies across the fifty meters back to its master.
Each step is painful as I head to where the taxi rank for the park is located. It should be bustling with commuters and taxi drivers but now it is vacant, suspiciously so. Part of me thinks that maybe this thing has been around for a while, killing whoever crosses its path. Behind me, a sickening screech sounds as my pursuer cuts through the chain link fence to consider its pursuit of me.
Crossing the road, I feel something hard strike me in the back of the head before falling down onto the asphalt below. Groaning I see the dagger, its hilt covered in blood, possibly from the strike to the back of my head. Grabbing the knife, I feel a powerful almost alien force try and tug it back from me.
“No please!” I yell as the pursuer removes a second knife and walks over, towering over me as it looks down, its face emotionless.
“Vierhundertfünfzehn.” The figure stated as it brings the knife down into my stomach, black tinted blood spraying across its face, my screams echoing around the empty streets. My scream is answered by the sound of a horn, light burning my eyes even as the carrier rips its first dagger from my hand and aims them towards my eyes, seemingly oblivious of the SUV bearing down on us.
With the sound of screeching tires, I see my attacker slam down into me, before rolling off into a quadrupedal stance, its arm bleeding a mixture of hydraulic fluid and blood.
“Ziel für die Vernichtung sperren!” It snarls before darting into the shadows just as a man dressed in a suit gets out of the driver’s seat, an anesthesia mask in one hand and a canister of gas in the other.
“Thank you.” I gasp as the man, an Indian or Pakistani man dressed in a suit with his well-groomed black hair tied back into a ponytail, approaches and places the anesthetic mask over my nose and mouth. Immediately my relief becomes panic and then outright terror as he shakes the canister, the contents spinning like a blue maelstrom. Lashing out in desperation, the man connects the canister to the mask and opens the valve, blue smoke rushing onto my face like an acrid hand scratching at my skin and throat. Seconds later it feels like my blood is boiling, the toxin spiderwebbing through my veins turning them blue.
And that’s when the adrenaline, already pumping through my blood, cuts out causing me to collapse. I feel hands lift me, hear an engine start-up and taste blood and vomit rushing up my throat…and then nothing else.
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