A Day Of Faces by Simon K Jones Page B

low and scampered forwards on all fours, flitting from one fallen row of shelves to another, tasting the air, closing in on Marv’s scent.
    I found him underneath a stack of cases, leg trapped and arm bleeding profusely. “What the hell?” I shouted over the weapons fire.
    He grabbed me and pulled me close with his uninjured arm. “There’s somebody else here. Gotta be. I sure ain’t a threat.”
    Risking a glance around the cabinet I caught a flash of movement and two soldiers evaporated, leaving behind a shower of blue sparks. The others turned and re-aimed their fire, but my view was blocked.
    “We need to get out of here,” I said.
    “Captain Obvious,” Marv said. “Get my leg out.”
    I helped him prop up the cabinet and he rolled clear. Slinging his arm over my shoulder we moved as fast as we could back through the smoke-filled records room, where sounds of gunfire were being replaced with screams of soldiers.
    We reached the gaping hole in the wall and scurried back through into the white room. It was now emptier than before: the device remained in the centre, as if nothing had happened, but Cal was nowhere to be seen.
    The sounds of fighting from beyond the hole slowly diminished while I moved around the room, hunting for an exit, or a hidden door. The walls were clean and featureless, and yielded no escape.
    A frightened shout from the hole turned our attention back, just in time to see a terrified soldier running towards us, covered in blood. Before his feet touched the floor he erupted into vapour and sparks and vanished before us. Through the mist-that-was-man another person was revealed, stepping closer and holding some kind of weird gun. He looked unlike anybody I’d ever seen, and bore no discernible genoform markings. No horns, or fur, or wings, or scales. No tentacles or additional limbs.
    His defining feature was his face, deeply scarred from chin to forehead.
    He grinned crookedly. “Hello, children,” he said, “I’ve been looking for you. 16 ”

apex predator
    noun
    ECOLOGY
    An apex predator is a predator residing at the top of a food chain on which no other creatures predate.
     
    “I should be more precise,” said the man with the scarred face, speaking with a weird accent that I couldn’t place. “I’m looking for him . Your friend.”
    Marv stood next to me, one hand placed on my arm. I wasn’t sure if he was trying to warn me not to try anything, or gripping me out of his own fear. This guy in front of us had just vapourised the entire room. That kinda thing gets your attention.
    “Don’t know who you’re talking about, man,” Marv said, shaking his head so much that I was worried it might fall off.
    The scarred man made an adjustment to his weapon, turning a dial, then aimed and fired at Marv. Now, the thing about guns is that you don’t get that slow-motion scream or cry of anguish, as you lunge across the room trying to push someone out the way or take a bullet for them. Hell, I was standing shoulder to shoulder with Marv and still had no time to react. One moment his arm was gripping mine; then he didn’t even have an arm. Half of it was simply gone, the forearm and hand still gripping mine, but nothing connecting it back to its owner.
    At first Marv didn’t really react. He jerked a little, maybe, at the initial impact, but that was about it. As the blue embers that had been his shoulder fizzled to nothing, he glanced down and his brain tried to register what had happened. Instead, he turned a little and, using his remaining arm, pulled at the disembodied hand, removing it from my arm and holding it up in front of him. Blood pumped from his shoulder.
    He looked up and into my eyes. “Really want to make an unarmed pun, Kay,” he said, not smiling. Then he collapsed to the floor and started convulsing.
    “You’ll want to do something about that blood loss,” the man said. He threw something onto the floor in front of me. It was a bandage of some sort. “Put it