Optical Illusion

This is an excerpt from one of the books I've been working on for a while now,
called Optical Illusion. I hope that this at least piques your interest somewhat, so that when I finish and publish the book, you won't be able to wait to get it on your shelf! Though this book isn't my main focus right now, it's one I'm working on at the sidelines occasionally. Enjoy, Elizabeth, since you keep asking about this one! ;)


Marilyn tossed and turned all night, the vision in her head plaguing her mind. Could it be possible after the destruction and devastation they had done, that there could still be life on that campus? She didn't think so, but she couldn't risk it. If someone was still alive, they needed to be taken care of.

Now.

She got fed up and threw back the covers, jumped out of bed. She would stand the suspense no longer. She needed to know, now, and she needed to know for sure.

Not worried about her skimpy sleeping attire, the young woman opened the door to her bedroom and slipped out into the hall. A guard was walking past her. "Hello, Miss Marilyn," he said politely in a soft, low voice. She gave him the acknowledging nod and passed him, rushing past a myriad of doors on either side of the hallway. Down a set of stairs, around a corner, down another set. Down the hall, through a door, and down two more sets of stairs got her to her destination.

At the sight of her, the guards parted like a wave before her, gazing after her as she passed by. She ignored them, and walked right up to a small, little man sitting in a chair before a control panel - and hundreds of screens displaying graphs, maps, video cameras, and hundreds of scientific techniques. The heart of the beast, and the center of their power.

It was truly beautiful. It made goosebumps crawl up and down her bare arms.

She leaned against the back of the man's chair. "Just how powerful are your robots?" she asked in a hushed whisper.

"Powerful." He looked up from the screens, his eyes glazed from concentrating too hard into the illuminating screens, and his face a mixture of pale white and blue from the lights. "Why do you ask?"

One hand on the back of his chair, she pointed with the other. "Can they sense heat output in concentrated areas?"

"As a matter of a fact, they can."

"From how far of a distance?"

"A couple of miles or so."

She leaned back, a satisfied grin spreading across her face. She looked up at another man approaching them. He stood by them, arms folded across his broad chest. "Perfect..." she practically purred. "Activate it please."

The man sitting at the control panel hesitated. "Are you sure?" he asked. "It can draw attention to activate them. If there are any survivors nearby, they will be aware of it - "

"Activate them," she repeated coolly, standing back up and crossing her arms. She caught the agreeing nod of the other man out of the corner of her eye. "If there are survivors, we'll have another surprise for them before they will even be able to run."




"Omega, give it back."

She ignored him, and kept on her passive activity. Scrape, scrape, scrape, she shredded pieces of bark and wood off the stick she'd pulled out of the small fire with the pocket knife she'd lifted from her reluctant, cold, and uncaring companion, Mtu.

He sat on the ash-sodden ground on the other side of the fire, his arms resting on his drawn-up knees, his hands hanging loosely down across his calves. "Jewel Omega, come on." Normally he would have just taken it from her. No, normally his tone of voice and words worked just fine in getting him whatever he commanded. But no more. He was too exhausted, to drained, and he no longer cared. Too brain dead, he could barely think straight anymore. All the events of the day had melted together into horrifying nonsense repeating in circles over and over in his mind. Scenes that played over and over and that he couldn't get rid of, pictures and sounds that made him want to be sick.

A stick cracked from the nearby, enclosing darkness. Jewel gasped, and froze. After all that happened, and now another threat? She whimpered.

Eyes suddenly attentive on the direction the sound came from, Mtu smoothly leaned forward and easily pulled the knife out of Jewel's stilled hands. He flicked out the larger blade, and put it on the ground near him at hand. He kept his tired, aching muscles tense. Waiting.

A sound, quite like a distinctive snarl, came out of the deep Kenyan night. Fear swamped her and took her captive until she was paralyzed with fear.

The Kenyan moved to his haunches, holding a crouch, ready to spring. His fingers curled around the handle of his knife, and his left hand reached for a burning stick in the fire. He glanced over at Jewel. "Omega," he whispered. "Move closer to the fire." She didn't move, and he wasn't sure she heard him. Oh god, come on, girl! Do not make this difficult for me!

Brushes rustling. Mtu's heart pounded in his throat. "Jewel!" he hissed, trying not to speak too loudly, but wanting to make sure she heard him this time. She started and looked up at him. Even in the shadow-casting light of the fire, he could see her eyes glazed with terror. He motioned with his hand. "Kuja karibu moto," he commanded. "Get near the fire." Her head turned again to try and peer into the darkness. She had her arms wrapped around her legs and she rocked back and forth on the ground.

A growl sounding forth a battle cry, and a large wolf-like dog sprang out of the darkness towards them. A campus guard dog. Those ferocious, untamed animals were trained to kill on sight, and were not able to recognize friend from enemy. After today's events, even a loose guard dog would not want to take the chance. They should have all been dead.

Apparently they weren't.

Jewel screamed.

Mtu swung hard with his left hand to set the animal on fire. The dog dodged, and headed straight for Jewel, who jumped up and tried to run. The huge dog jumped up to knock her down and lunged for the throat to make the kill at the same time. Mtu leaped over the fire and threw himself onto the dog with the burning stick and the knife wielded in his hand, pinning it between him and Jewel. The dog yelped in fury and pain, and the smell of burnt fur and flesh met Mtu's nose. The dog turned its head and he heard its jaw snap.

The second time he wasn't so lucky, and the teeth closed around his flesh. Mtu yelled as he stabbed, again, again, with the knife, into the side of the dog. He dropped the stick to have a free hand to attempt to grab the dog's head. He wrapped a thickly-bleeding arm around the dog's neck and squeezed to try and get control as he kept stabbing. Grappling. Wrestling, the dog fought hard for life, and to get a fresh hold on its attacker, but Mtu's knife struck something very vital, and with a final yelp the dog stopped fighting.

Breathing hard through his teeth in pain from his wound, Mtu struggled to free the knife from the body. It made a sickening sound as it came out, the sound he hadn't heard all the times before in the heat of the battle, Jewel's screams, and the dog's vicious noise.

He cast the knife aside and rolled the blood-gushing body off the girl. He touched her, shook her. "Omega? Jewel!"

She uncurled from her ball, lifted her head. Her crazed eyes flew around him to try and find the dog. He touched her shoulder, grimaced at the mark his bloodied hands left on her clothes and hair. "Jewel, it's okay. It's just me. The dog's dead." As if it wasn't obvious. He was covered in a mixture of the dog's blood and his own.

Her eyes rested on his face, and she started shaking uncontrollably as sobs overtook her body. Unsure of what to do, he tried to comfort her with his words. "Hey, Omega, it's okay. It's over; I killed it."

She rose up to a sitting position and put her arms around him to cling to him as she cried. Mtu hesitated for a minute, disgusted, but then pulled her closer, tight up against him. "It's okay," he soothed roughly, cringing at the burning in his arm, and ignoring it afterwards. "It's okay," he said through his panting breath. He did not know this girl, yet here he sat, holding her, comforting her, after saving her life?

The situations he managed to get himself in... He cursed himself, but he refused to let himself let the girl go for quite a while longer. But then after a few minutes he'd had enough. He put her from him and said not too gently, "Alright, get a hold of yourself, Omega."

She started to try to control herself as he stood up and scrounged around for his knife. He wiped it on the grass and then proceeded to use it to cut a long strip off the bottom of his shirt to wrap around his bleeding arm. They were farther away from the firelight, but he could still see enough to know the wound was deep. He subconsciously decided not to tell Jewel for now. The girl might freak out or something.

"Come on," he held a hand out to her to help her to her feet. She gripped it with surprising strength and he pulled her up. He instantly let go of her hand. "We have to find a safer place for the night." He glanced at the body lying on the grass not two feet away. "I'd like to think that was the only guard dog that got loose, but I can't risk it. We have to find a better shelter."

She shivered in the night, and simply nodded.

He cautiously put out the fire he had worked so hard to build, then nodded at her. "Alright, come on."

She obediently followed him as they penetrated deep into the unknown darkness.




Marilyn knocked on the closed door, and pressed her ear against the wood to hear the awaited response.

"Come in," came his voice, carrying no hint of sleep with it.

She turned the door handle easily enough and walked into the dark room. He was sitting on his bed, shirtless. The small lamp on the bed-side table was turned to its lowest setting - just enough light to cast on the pages of the book in his hand. Somehow it wasn't weird that this genius of a murderer, the head of this whole monster they'd all built, sat calmly on his bed enjoying the simple pleasure of reading a book at night before going to sleep.

"Hello, Marilyn. I wasn't expecting you tonight."

She waved it off, approached the bed, and offered him the papers in her hands. "We found evidence of life." At his confused look, she clarified, "The boarding school campus."

"Ah." He nodded, marked the place in his book, and set it down. He patted the mattress next to him and Marilyn sat down. He took the papers from her and glanced at them after turning the power of the lamp to a higher setting. She glanced around while she waited for his response to the information. She caught sight of the guard standing calmly in a dark corner, and she also knew there was another one behind her. It made shivers crawl up her spine. She tried to ignore them and focused back on Joseph.

He frowned, and looked over the top rim of the papers at her face. "The code simply defines it as a dog," he said, his voice implying "so-what's-the-problem?" type question.

"If you keep reading," she said, "and look at the chart, you'll notice that's not all it found."

"But it's all it identified," he said with a raised eyebrow.

"Right. There's another source there that they couldn't identify. There wasn't enough data for the code to read it. It could only define it as a living being. If the dog made it out alive, should we really take our chances?"

He set the papers on the small table with abandon and reached for his book again. "There's nothing to worry about, Marilyn," he said effortlessly. "Relax. The bombs did what they were supposed to. Why are you so tense?"

She reached for the papers. "I don't like it, Joe," she said, trying to keep her eyes off him - though it was temptingly hard. "I don't like it at all."

"Relax." He tapped her knee with the book playfully. "There's no way anyone survived that."

"The dog did!"

He didn't seem to hear her. "Calm down and celebrate a job well done." He returned to his book to signify the conversation being over.

She opened her mouth to say something else, but he looked up from her book. "If you're wanting to stay, I'll ask you stay the whole night."

She closed her mouth. No, she didn't feel up to that. Not tonight. She shook her head.

His eyes fell back down to the page. "Then you may feel free to leave."

She took the hint and left, quietly closing the door behind her.


Stay Tuned...!