One World: The Iron Corpse
A couple of weeks ago I posted about projects I was working on. One of them is One World: The Iron Corpse. This is a young adult novel about wizards, aliens, and a serial killer immune to magic. My goal is to have this be a trilogy, but I need to actually finish the first one before I make any promises. I wanted to post the first two chapters (the prologue and chapter 1) and get some honest feedback. Please read and let me know what you think, either via social media (see the buttons above) or on the “contact me” page. I am more concerned about content over grammar at this point, but any help is appreciated (for example, I do not understand why the formatting is different in the two sections, please forgive me).
Thanks again for reading, and enjoy the beginning of One World: The Iron Corpse.
Anderson smiled to himself, quietly enjoying the rhythmic tapping of his shoes against the polished stone. A shadow stretched across his path and, looking up, he saw an enormous version of the Landed Species Peace Keeping Unit, which was a human hand reaching out to the bulkhead of several alien styles of spacecraft. It was an older symbol, one made centuries ago when humans first contacted other planets. He slowed his pace as he read the words, we will never again be alone.
He straightened his posture, holding his importance at the forefront of his mind. Not many people will recognize it, but today was the most important day in history. If he played his part well, no one would even know the impact he made, but the universe as a whole would enjoy the fruits of his labor.
Much to his disappointment, the pleasant tapping was dampened as the flooring transitioned to the carpet. Anderson soaked up another signal of his own importance as he passed security with nothing more than a nod of recognition. Even the secretary opened the doors quick enough that he did not break his stride.
After an elongated elevator ride, and passing a biometric scanner, he crossed the threshold into the main headquarters, a room lined with projected screens blinking with the kind of information that beings across the planet were actively killing to learn. Information was always key, the kind of weapon that kept Earth’s citizens into mindless zombies believing that world peace was an option.
More doors opened to his excellence.
“Ladies, gentlemen,” Anderson said, “welcome!”
The room went silent.
Pointing to a man in steel gray fatigues Anderson spoke, “Update.”
“The second is officially down. The spell still holds, but there are holes.”
Anderson interjected, “If there are holes then we have no defenses.”
The man swallowed, “Absolutely, we have found vulnerable areas, but without her, we cannot shore up the vulnerabilities.”
“What are the holes?” Anderson asked, his voice cutting above the frantic tapping of fingers on glass screens.
“Shadows say that implantation is possible, even control. But likely only in person. Proxy implementation is impossible.”
Anderson gave a stern look to the man, who turned to a female colleague for help.
“We can confirm that. The tests are conclusive,” she said her voice carrying more authority than her male counterpart.
Anderson turned around the room, finding a group dressed in more casual attire.
“And the replacements?” he asked the sub-group.
“The best we can say is that they are alive, but there has been no contact. Which makes locating nearly impossible,” one man said.
Anderson pushed his lips into a thin line, inhaling deeply, “What leads do we have? Is there any sign that one has landed?” he put just enough emphasis on the word ‘one’ that it was clear what he meant.
“The Eunuchs say that the typical patterns are not being followed. Yes, the planet is at risk, but we have no reason to believe that they are here, or if they are that they have any idea of the opening they have. We are still in control.”
Anderson smiled, “You are the best this world has to offer.”
He reached a hand into the coat of his jacket and pulled out an old-fashioned pistol, the kind that loaded the magazines from the bottom and shot metal bullets.
Outside, in the room lined with monitors, several agents heard loud cracking. They froze in their work, exploding into action when the creams started. One reached out and slammed his open palm onto a red circle, calling security into the room. Several men and women came sprinting into the room, dressed in the gray fatigues and weighed down with the latest weaponized tech.
The lead guard began typing into the security pad at the door, punching in a complicated series of numbers, letters, and other symbols. He finished, stepped back, and raised his weapon. As a white circle rotated on the screen, the rest of the guards followed his example. A heartbeat before the screen turned green the screaming and cracking stopped, leading to a moment’s hesitation when the doors slid open.
Security came in, ready to fight, but was met with dozens of frustrated faces, twisting in their chairs to see the intruders. In the center of the room, Anderson stood with his hands on his hips.
“Can we please have an explanation for the breach in protocol?” he asked, the temper clear in his voice.
One of the guards lowered his weapon, and all but the lead man copied the movement.
“The alarm was triggered, we heard screaming,” the man explained.
Anderson held his arms out and looked around the room, which remained as calm and immaculate as it was when he, Anderson, entered earlier.
“If there was some sort of incident in here, will you please let me know where? As it seemed to have happened under the nose of every senior officer in the LSPKU,” Anderson said.
The guard looked around the room, lowering his weapon as he confirmed that everyone was in good health, and clearly irritated.
“My apologies, sir,” he said, and the guards trudged out of the room.
“Now,” Anderson said, “Let’s get back to saving the world.”
1
Confidence was the key to breaking any rule. So long as you acted like being there was as normal as a sunrise, rarely did anyone say anything. Sam didn’t skip along, nor did she crouch in the shadows. As simple as it sounded, she just walked along the sidewalk, enjoying the open air like a bird in the sky. If she let people see her, they wouldn’t think she wasn’t supposed to be seen. Sam gave a polite nod and smile to the lady pulling weeds in her yard, just polite enough to be completely forgotten.
Plus, in the off chance that someone remembered her, magic was good for a quick escape.
Sam didn’t think she was one of the more powerful witches, but she was very cunning, and no one knew she learned magic. As a girl, her parents forced her to go to one of those academies that helped young ones open their minds and see with their third eye and all that bull. The whole process was just too much fluff. There was no trick to magic, it was just a result of science and evolution. Humans had evolved as far as they could internally and now learned how to evolve by extending themselves outside of their physical form. So simple. Her teachers at The Academy for Evolving Arts thought her ideas were radical, most of them belonging to The Church of the Mind, and threatened to kick her out. Well, Sam cut out the middleman and left.
That was two years ago. Living on her own she learned four spells, one more than she was promised at the Academy. Gravity, Senses (she sometimes called that one drugs because of the far-out way it switched her senses), Bullet, and Food. They weren’t too complicated, but they were all bred from her lifestyle and had proven useful. Gravity allowed her to manipulate gravitational pull on herself or objects. It was hard to control, and potentially deadly, but helped in life-threatening situations, a quick blink and she could send a mugger falling backward as his gravity pulled horizontally across the earth. Senses made sound visible, and light hearable, and so on. Think of how easy it is for your eyes to distinguish objects and locations, imagine being able to do that with sound or smell. No one snuck up on Sam. Bullet essentially turned gaseous air into a solid, and launched said projectile at varying degrees of lethality, much like a bullet. Food allowed her to eat anything, it was one of the rare spells that were always on and didn’t have to be activated or cast. Once the object touched her tongue it would turn into whatever type of nutrients she needed most so long as she could chew it. The taste was hard to get right, but she was doing better.
So, she spent her days walking around using her spells to sneak into empty houses, rest, eat meaningless objects, and sneak away when the owners returned. Rich neighborhoods either had very busy houses or houses that remained empty most of the day. She just needed a place to sleep and a few socks to eat (everyone blamed the dryer for that) and she would be gone before quitting time. It was an existence so blissful that memories of school and family just faded away. This was her life.
“I’m looking for number 1284,” a deep voice said, pulling Sam out of her thoughts. It was a mailman of some sort; he wore a wide-brimmed hat that covered most of his face. Sam swallowed her a scowl, damn aliens.
“Just around the way,” Sam said, giving a noncommittal gesture to nowhere. The man went on his way and a bubble of worry started to rise in the feeling part of her stomach. Was she polite enough to be forgotten? If that were an Angel, he easily could remember. Angels always avoided the sun, right? Damn off-worlders ruined everything.
Sam planned to be in the busiest part of the city today, but the second most important rule to fitting in is never to have too strict of a plan. The excess violence downtown had led to a higher police presence from the PKU and those were the people she was trying to avoid, even if the bigger crowds were easier to hide in. She knew that she needed to find some different clothes, which was risky. Most people had clothes that they kept around that they never used, the trick was figuring out which was which. A burglary investigation with an Angel witness was no ideal for blending in.
Figuring now was as good a time as any, Sam took a deep breath and switched her hearing and seeing. The world transformed into a psychedelic flowing picture of waves. Hearing as sight is difficult to describe, everything made a soft sound that grew louder the closer it got, the louder the noise the brighter the object is shown. If an object were totally silent, she could only see a black outline of the thing, and only if she looked directly at it. After several falls, scrapes, and bruises Sam was quite used to the strange effect. She slowed her walking just a little bit, pretending to look around and take in the nice day. She paid very close attention to each house as she passed by, looking for any sign of sound. It was surprising how much you heard but didn’t process. Unlike sight, hearing blended together (think the harmony of a choir). Sight had more defined edges, it wasn’t that she heard any better, just that she could better decode what she was hearing. While Sam could see sound there was no sound that she missed, the faint noises that blended into white noise now had definite shapes. Walls may dim the noise, but a room would have to be completely soundproof for her to not see the sound. Thinking about the logic of all this started to make Sam’s head hurt, she just knew that it worked well enough for her to see/hear the old man snoring in the house to her left.
Across the street, maybe three houses down from the mailman seemed empty. No waves of “color sound” seemed consistent with human presence (it’s funny how different humans want to be, but when their sound patterns are analyzed, they are just the same animal in a different place). Fixing her senses Sam gave a quick glance to see if the mailman was paying attention and walked straight towards the door.
This is when confidence was most important. If Sam looked like she shouldn't be there people would get suspicious for sure. Once on the red cement twisting sidewalk trail that led to an oak door with an oval glass window, Sam turned her attention to the lock. She reached in with her gravity and started pushing on the small levers inside the door. With nearly two years of practice, she was able to pick the lock before her hand touched the door, and she walked in without any pause.
“Wow,” Sam said to herself. The room looked like a dream home for a single man. This must be bachelor pad central, maybe the type of place that rich frat boys would stay, not that she knew very much about that. The entranceway was simple enough; a large spiral staircase outlined the room and where there should have been some type of chandelier hung several inflatable animals. To her right was a game room, filled with dozens of oddly shaped cushioned seats, two old-fashioned pool tables, a foosball table, and a ping pong table relics from ancient university environments. The antiquities clashed mightily with the top-of-the-line entertainment system projecting silent images on the wall. There were several extravagant-looking hard drives that were sure to be the most modern video games that Sam knew nothing about. Walking through the room, she grabbed a ping-pong ball and ate it, wondering what type of video games and movies they would have hidden away here, but she didn't have time for that. Maybe she would try and stalk the place for a bit, find out when the tenants were gone so she could have a little vacation.
She ran upstairs, taking them two at a time, which was probably her weirdest habit other than eating strangers’ socks. Walking up a single stair at a time was a huge waste of life. Americans alone wasted nearly six months of their lives walking upstairs, and that is with most of the population taking the elevators.
Yes, that was made up, but she was at the top floor faster than most people would have been.
Upstairs, each room was decorated with classic boy decor; the walls were covered with posters of sports teams and action movies. One room had women of all races dressed in basically nothing at all, showing off bodies much taller, skinnier, tanner, and sexier than Sam’s. At least he was diversified.
Sam avoided the rooms without dirty clothes on the floor or made beds, seeing as there was a greater chance that a missing sock or two would be noticed. The last door in the hallway was propped open with a pair of dark-washed jeans poking through the crack.
“Jackpot,” Sam said, letting her hunger come to the forefront of her mind. She pushed open the door and started grabbing at clothes on the ground. She draped a couple of socks across her arm, along with some of those strange bracelets made of twine and cheap plastic beads. Even though she could change the taste and nutritional value of everything she ate, eating different-looking things made her feel healthier. She could have raided the fridge, but boys were way more likely to notice a missing pizza than a missing sock. Not to mention she worked hard for her magic and she wanted to use it.
Sam noticed that the walls had an inappropriate amount of bright colored pop art, and after a deep breath, she could smell a faint trace of weed poking through the stench of dirty laundry. She really hit the mother load. Not only did the guy who lived here seem to be small enough to own clothes that Sam would probably find something to wear, but she was also sure that he would never notice something missing from this mess. After scouring through the closet, she did in fact find a few tee shirts and a pair of stretchy jeans, a trend she assumed died decades ago. Leave it to druggies to bring back useful retro fashion.
While she was no expert in history, Sam could feel the stagnant nature of humanity in full force in this room. It had been literal centuries since humans found they could send brainwaves outside of the body, the next step in evolution. That created endless possibilities that really put a damper on developing tech; there always seemed to be someone that was willing to sell their skills that was better than a robot. Of course, this was the only world Sam knew so she could not really be a judge the definition of the word ‘progress’ changed. No big deal.
With the massive exception of aliens. They sucked.
She flopped onto the bed and took a bite of a sock, staring at the ceiling. She noticed a blank poster and felt a slight chill roll down her spine. She had seen that poster before. Locking her eyes to the white square and sliding off the bed she pulled the blinds closed and shut the door. All the other posters darkened with the room, but that one blossomed into a beautiful, detailed drawing of a flower. She wasn’t sure what the flower was called, but she knew what it represented. That flower had been brought by the Angels when they first landed as a sort of peace offering. Initially, they gave actual flowers to every human that showed them kindness, when the flowers died, they started giving out these drawings, meaning that Pothead personally knew, associated with, and was kind to aliens.
“Damn you, sir,” Sam said, “Damn you to hell.”
Angels were one of the four breeds of aliens that the first Wizards had contacted. Turns out that brain waves, when forced from the body, can travel up to several thousand times the speed of light. Angels were the first to understand the waves and discovered a way to ride them back down to earth, or something like that. Angels had an unnatural relationship with light and waves. Shadows were next, though few stayed on earth, and even fewer left their compounds. Mutts and Eunuchs had already contacted each other, so they came together and colonized nearby all the bigger cities.
Angels inserted themselves into society, acting as if they had always been there. Apparently, their home planet worshiped light, which wasn’t a common thing there, and so the fact that Earth got a full blast of sunlight every day made the planet very inviting. Staying out of the sun as they did made them so transparent that Angels were difficult to see during the day, thus the wide-brimmed hat and long sleeves on the mailman.
Sam hated them all.
As soon as the aliens came, which was a very long time ago, humans just sort of agreed that everything before 2100 was good enough. Just like technology, fashion and literature stonewalled, though in very different ways. Wearing clothes from literally any earthly era was acceptable, nothing was out of style. Literature, including games and movies, was basically blackballed. It started with books, movies, and games about aliens since they mostly painted our new planet-mates in negative lights. From there humans decided that any sort of art created before the first landing was unimportant, unimportant grew quickly into outlawed.
So human history was no more, making room for the stories of these species that she did not care for and were gladly eating up the planet’s resources, coming by the thousands. On top of that, it was only humans that seemed to be able to project their brainwaves, aka do magic, so it was expected that every magic-user would use their abilities to serve the entire population of Landed Species.
Blood boiled in Sam’s ears. She never did well living inside of boundaries set by other people. She was not around when these aliens came, why would she have to use her talents to help them? Because of this expectation, it was common practice, especially in the underworld, that witches and wizards did not disclose their spells to one another. Sam could make things fly, she could barely fathom the thought of working in public transportation. She knew her spells made her a hot commodity with the Landed Species Peace Keeping Unit, essentially the world government, so she stayed off the grid. The coexistence didn’t make any sense. Humans just opened their arms to these aliens when they fought over tiny strips of land since the beginning of time? Why were there never colonies of humans going off-world?
Sam saw right through all the bullshit and lies. No species could coexist without demanding some sort of payment. In the animal kingdom, even peaceful animals were either similar enough to breed, or relied on each other for support, like the birds that hung out on the backs of hippos. Protection for a place to stay. Mankind's relationship with these aliens was too friendly, too kind. Something had to give.
Piano playing from the bottom floor pulled Sam out of her trance. She was not a music buff, but the classical tune sounded perfect, too perfect to be played in a man cave like this. She felt some ideas connecting in the back of her mind and swallowed the half-eaten sock that was hanging out of her mouth.
Hearing voices she switched her sight and hearing again. Sure enough, mixed in with the beautiful waves coming from the piano were two other sources of sound, a jagged brown wave that looked like a toddler trying to draw mountains, and another that looked like the air was braiding itself.
Even though she couldn’t understand any speaking when her senses were switched, she was able to recognize the difference in vibrations between languages, and she was not hearing (seeing?) human English. The braid was probably an Angel, which meant that the jagged brown waves had to be a Mutt. A pairing like that was all too common when chasing after wizards. Mutts were physical wonders, able to hear and smell things beyond human comprehension. That, along with their heightened endurance, lean bodies, and elongated snout reminded people of dogs… thus Mutt. Angels were more patient and intellectual, so they could interpret what the Mutts found. The pairing was deadly for a runaway.
Sam knew magic, giving her a distinct, even unfair, advantage. Keeping her senses switched Sam jumped in the air and pulled herself towards the ceiling. Now down was up and up was down for her. She crept out of the room, stepping over the door jam, and down the hall. At the balcony to the stairs leading to the bottom floor, she jumped, again rotating her own gravity, swung from the banister, and landed on the ceiling of the first floor with a thud, and the music stopped. The front door was ahead of her, all she needed to do was position herself perfectly and drop through the oval glass window. A few cuts wouldn’t slow her down much and the officers wouldn’t know what hit them.
San took a deep breath and switched her senses back to normal.
“Got her,” a growling voice said.
A deep feminine came next, “Stun please, Regikan.”
Sam swallowed, took a deep breath, and flexed her hands a few times. Why would the mutt need to be reminded to stun? Not wanting to give the officers time to enact whatever they had planned, she dropped from the ceiling, shot bullets at the oval window, and pulled gravity towards the door. Unfortunately, the air bullets disintegrated on impact, meaning Sam basically did the same thing but in more of a bone-crunching, knee tweaking sort of way. She landed in a heap, now feeling the soft buzz that meant they set up a shield over the exit.
“Step off the door sweetheart,” the Angel said. The thing was slender and long and wearing a wide-brimmed hat with the intergalactic shipping logo. Its face was calm and more masculine than the voice it produced. It wore a blue truancy uniform with a useless golden badge pinned to the front pocket. The body shape alone was enough to make Sam shiver, add the taser, one of the new ones that stopped external brainwaves, and this was a very frightening situation, without the growling beef of a Mutt standing on her other side. And, of course, he was holding one of the updated tasers that were really more of a portable power plant that dedicated all of its energy to pain.
“Damn -you,” Sam said, a whimper breaking up the two tough-sounding words.
“I know, but we need to take you in,” the angel said.
The mutt stepped forward, crouched like an old school coach, and said, “We just want you to be safe.”
Imagine a hairless dog with human quality skin wrapped in s dull blue uniform and you have Hound, the alien that had been working Sam’s case the longest. Being the only officer to put the cuffs on Sam seemed to give him some sort of clout, but he never had been able to get Sam back to the academy, so she still saw it as a win.
Sam gathered her thoughts, rose to her feet, and stepped onto the normal ground.
“How about,” Sam said, gathering air into her hands, “not.”
That was not cool enough, Sam thought as she launched the bullets towards the officers.
Hound dodged his in time, rolling out of the way. Angels aren’t as fast, and the thing took the non-lethal air bullet right to the chest. Sam flipped onto the railing, switching her gravity again, and ran around the side of the spiral staircase to the second floor. Remembering a window down the hall from the pot-head room, she dove at the banister and swung on the railing to change direction. Hound ran behind her, panting. Just as Sam went to jump to escape the mutt grabbed her ankle and tried to pull her onto the ground. This created the biggest downfall of that spell, Hound’s gravity pulled him in the regular direction as Sam tried to fall down the hallway. Sam was heavy enough that Hound slid along the carpet but hanging from her ankle was not ideal and very painful. She could push his gravity the other way, but the thought of adding more pressure to her ankle was not pleasant. She could pull Hound’s gravity along with her, but the goal was to create some distance, so she dropped to the ground.
Sam built her entire life on avoiding hand-to-hand combat. Sure, in her time she had handled a few punks in the park, but a trained officer, who also happened to be a Mutt, was an impossible task. He wrapped his arms and legs around her like a snake strangling a mouse. Sam threw gravity all around the hall, bouncing the two of them off the walls, but Hound held tight and Sam thought she would be crushed. It didn’t take long before she was pinned against the floor with Officer Hound on top of her trying to cover her mouth.
“Shut it, human,” he said. His attention locked downstairs, his features sharpened like a predator on the hunt, or a wolf defending its territory. Sam froze, but let out a disgruntled noise. The bigger-than-human-sized hound crouched right over her and growled as if Sam had just insulted his family’s honor.
“One more peep and I will let him kill you,” Hound said through clenched jagged teeth.
Sam thought about responding but a whimper and a crunch changed her mind. Hound pulled her into a corner and crouched defensively, switching his super-powered taser for a real firearm. The kind that did not have a stun mode.
Footsteps tapped up the stairs. Whoever it was did not seem rushed or worried. The taps came rhythmically, more terrifying than threats or words. Sam gathered air in her hand, ready to attack if needed. Mutt noticed and stepped to the side, giving her space to throw, something that must have broken several officer codes. The abrupt change from enemy to partner sent a chill down Sam’s spine.
The newcomer crested the final stairs. He wore a black button-down shirt tucked into finely pressed slacks of the same color. Huge pectoral muscles threatened to rip the buttons free. His arms looked more like tree branches than human limbs, even under his long sleeves. He was bald and his face was scarred on one side, though a shadow made it hard to see. He looked up and smiled, and Sam thought she noticed a hint of blue around the edges of his lips and eyes. The physical threat this man posed made Hound look more like a teacup poodle.
“Please put that away, you know why I am here,” The giant said, his voice was clear but rugged.
“I have my orders. One more step and I will fire,” Hound said. His voice broke a little and Sam felt her shoulders drop.
“Kill me then,” the man said, stepping towards them, “death would be welcome now.”
Hound hesitated for a second, maybe looking for another option, then he emptied his magazine into the man’s face and chest. Eight gunshots echoed through the air accompanied by eight ripples across the giant’s clothing. His shirt ripped but Sam couldn’t see any blood. The giant just laughed and ripped the shirt free revealing his bare chest, showing more pale, nearly blue skin. Small metal disks fell to the ground, the bullets. Sam noticed the welts. Bulletproof skin was the earliest form of magic, used by ancient monks, but this was different. The man didn’t need to focus or breathe, it didn’t seem like magic.
Hound made a grab for a knife hidden at his ankle, but the giant was too quick and grabbed the officer by the throat—showing the same slight shade of blue around the edges of his fingernails—holding him completely off the ground. The giant grabbed Hound’s knife and stabbed it against his own throat, shattering the blade.
Sam screamed and shot her bullet at the giant's face. She saw the air ripple against his clothes. He should have had a fist-size hole in his cheek.
“Wizard,” he said. His voice now tense with anger. He dropped Mutt who crumpled to the floor like a broken doll, “I am Samson Reincarnate, ordained to free the people from your plague.”
He stepped forward, still with that same patient pace, into the light from the window. His eyes were electric blue contrasted against pale skin, with a smile that put him right on the edge of sanity. He stood, crouching in an athletic stance.
Hound stirred, flopping onto his back, and looked Sam in the eyes, his finger pointed to the window. She tried to throw Samson’s gravity as Hound suggested, but the man didn’t budge. Sam tried a second time, but she already knew the outcome. Her spells wouldn’t work on him.
Samson’s laughed sounded like the giant lost control, sending shocks of terror through Sam’s body.
“Through my obedience, I will be blessed,” Samson said, pride dripping from his words, “Your witchcraft has no place here.”
Samson sauntered towards her, stepping past Hound, his pace so certain that Sam would never getaway. Her ability to survive seemed to be linked with the length of the hall. She walked backward, eyes locked with Sampson, stopping only when her heels reached the top step. Tearing her eyes away from her predator she looked at the oval door that she nearly broke her legs on earlier. She could hear the faintest buzzing and knew the shield was still in place.
An electric crack sounded, followed by the sound of cracking glass. Samson turned to look at the window, calm as ever.
“Go!” Hound yelled, “Go!” His taser gun still pointed down the hall.
Sam rolled between Samson’s legs and pushed her gravity towards the window. She heard the thumping steps of Samson running behind her but refused to look. She launched her bullet into the glass, dove through the storm of shards, and broke into the afternoon air. She angled towards the ground and tried to pull back to slow her descent but was falling too fast to regain control. She hit hard and rolled onto a grass lawn thirty feet or so from the house. She wanted to writhe in pain, but she heard Samson land on the rocks below the window. Standing she pulled herself into the air to fly away, though it was a little more than a fall.
In the air she saw Samson, staring at her, flashing that same patient grin. Scattered crowds were starting to gather to investigate the commotion.
So much for not being noticed.