Artifact by Shane Lindemoen

sense!”
    “You have to go, Lance!” Patrick yelled.
    “Go where? How?”
    “I don’t know, but you have to go. You’re not safe here – and my job is to keep you safe.”
    “Bullshit,” I said. “Patrick, that’s a load of bullshit – are you insane?” I leaned the gun into his head and clenched my jaw. “You put this gun against my head, just like this. You remember?” It took every part of me not to pull the trigger. “Make me safe? Explain how that makes sense.”
    “Because I may have been compromised too,” He sighed, brushing the sand out of his collar. “Listen, I don’t have time to explain, they’re going to be here any minute. But you have to keep working, you understand?”
    “No, I don’t understand.”
    “Take the gun and go.”
    I stood looking into his eyes, searching for an answer that I knew wasn’t there.
    “Did I find something? Are they trying to cover something up? What, Patrick – what is it!?”
    “Did you find something?” He repeated, “What the hell happened, Lance? How damaged are you?”
    “What do they want? Did I find out something I wasn’t supposed to know?”
    He looked back at the sirens. “They want you, Lance. They want you in pieces.” He rolled to his knees. “I don’t know where they came from. I don’t know why. I just know that they’re here, and that they want you terminated. They could have been piggy backing on the artifact’s frequency, or they could have come from something else,” He took a deep breath. “Just keep working. Keep digging for answers. But you have to run now. You have to go.”
    He got to his feet. “I will try to hold them off for as long as I can, but you have to go – now!”
    I stepped into him, pulled the hammer, and pointed the gun at the back of his head. “Give me a reason why I shouldn’t. Two seconds.”
    He turned to answer, but something else in the water caught his eye. I looked to see what it was, and at the end of a trail of rainbow colored oil, the intact part of Joseph’s head rose out of the lake. His remaining eye locked onto mine. The other half of his head was a gaping flap of skin and empty space – he was obviously dead, but something was animating his body. Something was allowing the empty shell that was Joseph to wade through the water toward the beach.
    Patrick stepped between Joseph’s corpse and I, which suddenly lurched out of the water and reached for me.
    “Because I’m the only chance you have,” Patrick said, shoving me in the opposite direction.
    I stumbled back, trying to tear my eyes away from Joseph’s body as it staggered out of the water.
    “Go!” Patrick screamed, pulling a hooked blade out of his boot.
    Tires skidded to a halt in the roadway nearest the beach, and men in suits poured out of a series of black vehicles. They pulled guns out of hidden compartments in their clothing and began sprinting toward me.
    The last thing I saw before I turned to run was Patrick grappling with Joseph’s headless corpse in the oily surf.
    I couldn’t think. I couldn’t do anything but run.
    4.
    I crashed into a stainless steel wall with handles. The lake was gone, replaced by a cramped walkway that was stacked floor to ceiling with alphabetized filing cabinets. Alice flicked through a cabinet, occasionally pausing to pull out a folder and toss it onto her trolley.
    I was soaked, and in my right hand was a silver handgun.
    I collapsed against the filing cabinets and let myself slide to the floor.
    “Three antennas at equal spacing around the platform,” Alice said, finishing a sentence that I didn’t hear. She looked at where I was standing, and then traced the wet streak on the cabinets to the floor. “Lance!”
    She dropped the files and collapsed at my side, reaching out to me. After taking in my wet clothes, my heavy breathing, she pulled her hand back, confused.
    “What happened?” She saw the gun in my hand and stumbled back onto her haunches. Her eyes grew wide and