Images from her dreams of dead soldiers and charred battlefields played in her mind.
The Universe is empty.
“What are you? Damn it! What are you?”
A child of Voggoth.
At that moment Anita saw the eyes of a human being on the face of the Mutant. She saw an abomination.
Her left hand slammed down on an oversized yellow button.
“Mrs. Nehru!”
A dozen nozzles situated throughout the holding cell sprayed a fine vapor into the chamber. A light panel above the observation wall flashed WARNING: CHAMBER STERILIZATION SEQUENCE ACTIVATED and a sharp klaxon burst to life.
Her hand slammed down again, this time on a red button. The vapor ignited in a contained fireball of orange and yellow that engulfed the creature, charring the body first black and then to ashes.
Bits of burning flesh lay on the floor of the smoke-filled room. The glass grew very hot causing an aroma similar to singed wiring to drift through the observation area.
“I KNOW WHAT YOU ARE!” she shouted at the pile of remains.
“Mrs. Nehru! Anita! What are you doing?”
She held ultimate authority over Red Rock, but her behavior now moved beyond the eccentric and into unreasonable.
Yet the force of his protest fell apart when she grabbed his collar and screamed into his red face, “Don’t you see? It’s all a deception! We never had a chance! All of our guns and tanks would never be enough!”
“What are you talking about?”
“The universe!” She shouted. “The universe is empty! And I know why!”
Omar followed Lori Brewer around what had once been a garage housing Ferraris but now served as his personal laboratory. Since the earliest days of the post-Armageddon struggle, Omar worked in this shop to understand the technologies brought to Earth by the invaders.
Over the years he had grown accustomed to interruptions. Sometimes General Jon Brewer, occasionally Gordon Knox, and often-times Trevor Stone. On this day Lori Brewer-the Imperial Administrator-visited his habitat. As usual during these interruptions, the accent in Omar’s voice grew more pronounced the longer she lingered.