~~~
There was a commotion surfacing around him. Alexander struggled to push out of the foggy haze entrapping him. Last he remembered he’d been in the back of a truck while white hot pain radiated through his side. Pewter gray teeth flashed across his vision. The beast had pulled him close, squeezing, and plunged its head down at his side. And munched. Flesh peeled from his muscles.
Bile shot up Alexander’s esophagus and he jerked up and rolled to the side, heaving his guts out.
He’d been eaten. The Sift ate him alive. The chewing and swallowing reverberated in his head. He’d never be rid of the sound of it.
“Easy now, you’re okay.” A soft voice crooned over his head. Hands rubbed circles along his back.
“Is he back with us then?” Edeen’s lilt curled around his senses, soothing, as he spit out the last of his vomit over the floor. Her boots squeaked across the hardwood.
“Just now,” Lenore informed the other woman. “His body made sure of it, trying to rid itself of all the shock it must have gone through.
Alexander flopped back against the mattress and squinted up at the two beautiful worried faces. “I’m right here you know.” His voice was wrecked, throat raw. A sticky coat of perspiration coated his skin, and…he rubbed his palm over the old scar along his side that lay just above the newer, partly closing wound where the Sift had taken its pound of flesh. Lenore must have healed it. It was little more than a craggy indent below his ribs.
When he’d woken up this morning he had neither scar, yet the old one, he’d had it for a lifetime. A reminder. His forehead tightened as he drifted through overlapping memories, which all seemed to scatter like vapor through his fingers.
The commotion outside had shifted closer, coming down the hall. Several voices raised, footsteps slapping. Something crashed against the wall.
“What is going on out there?” Lenore moved around the bed, but stopped short when Dez stepped through the doorway, pulling a thrashing, snarling Sift with him by the tether of a rope.
Not just one rope. The beast was locked down tight wrapped in layers of rope and cord, arms at its sides, hands clawing against its own thighs to get free. Ethan followed them in, shoving at the monster, the butt of his long gun lifted near the Sift’s bleeding temple.
Ethan grimaced. “Have to hit its head every time it attempts to open a rift. Damn beasts.”
Lenore edged back. “What are you bringing that thing in here for?”
Dez pulled at the rope that was half buried within the folds of the blubbery neck, tilting the Sift off balance. “Since Alexander’s all fired on seeing this formula work for himself, we thought we’d bring one of the beasts here so our fearless leader will be content to stay the hell out of the field and get himself killed.”
Alexander flinched, taking Dez’s fury for the worry that it really was.
Dez pulled a syringe from the pocket at the side of his fatigues and held it out. “We already took its blood to use in the Squids, so you want to do the honors or should I?”
Alexander swung his legs over the side of the bed and pushed himself up, a little unsteady, but no way was he not taking this opportunity. He’d been working on it for years, pulling all the components together, meddling with the lives of his family to get the only known Moon Sifter’s DNA here.
He felt Edeen hovering at his side, ready to steady him if his legs buckled.
Taking the syringe, he uncapped the five inch needle and grinned in the face of so much death.
Whether the Sift knew what was happening or not, it struggled, shrieking, spitting saliva at them all. It splashed across Alexander’s neck. Its sightless face thrashed side to side, seeking a target. Dez and Ethan shuffled to hold the monster in place.
The same kind of monster from his childhood. A strong memory throbbed across his eyes, of darkness and rain, falling, being trapped. He squeezed his eyes against it, then saw the glow begin behind his eyelids.
His gaze snapped open to the Sift, coalescing, preparing to shift. The butt of Ethan’s weapon lifted to stop it.
“No, wait.” Alexander plunged the needle into the beast’s chest, pushing through folds of draping sagging skin, burying the syringe until he felt the solidness of muscle. With his thumb he dispensed the anti-rift formula, watching the liquid slide through the plastic.
The Sift stiffened, chest expanding against the ropes, and screeched a mind-numbing cry that shattered the pitcher on the table, spraying glass and water.
Winching, Alexander covered his ears, keeping the beast in his sights, documenting every reaction. The glow blinked out and the Sift dropped to the floor so suddenly, Dez nearly went with it.
Everyone in the room looked at each other stunned. More footsteps rattled through the hall. Several fighters looked in, weapons drawn, stopping in the doorjamb, gazes immediately going to the Sift on the floor.
“It’s all right. We’re okay.” Lenore was the first to regain her voice.
Stumbling back a few steps, his legs buckling, Alexander sank to sit on the edge of the bed. “Check it.” His voice was a mere croak. He’d done it. He may have just taken the Sifts’ ability to rift through time away from them.
Crouching, Ethan checked the monster’s expanding and sinking chest. “It’s alive. So can we kill it now?” He looked to Dez.
Dez grinned back and then looked to Alexander, his expression clearly hoping to put the beast out of their misery.
Alexander shook his head. “Not yet. We need to make sure. Put it in a cage. I want two men watching it at all times. If it tries to open a rift and succeeds, we need to know.”
His mind was spinning with possibilities. It seemed to have worked. He knew it worked. They needed a better way to get the anti-rift formula into their system. Bullets laced with the stuff was one possibility, but if he could figure a way to distribute it on a wider scale… Without the advantage of the Sift’s DNA building rifts, the human race just might have a chance to survive.
A large palm clamped over his shoulder. Alexander looked up into Dez’s still furious features. “Next time you need one of the beasties to experiment on, you come to me.”