Apex 3: Shaylo Attacks (9 page)

Retribution at all Costs

They appeared at the scene of the crime on the street in Ault, Colorado.

Melanie’s wrecked body was ten feet away, cooling in her
own spilt blood. Jack knew better than to run over to her but he did it anyway. If Shaylo ambushed him, then that was fine by him.

Jack
took a look around for the camera that had shot the grisly footage and immediately found it attached to a stop sign next to Melanie’s body. It was small and alien, and wasn’t recognizable as a camera in any way, but it was in the right spot so he knew it was.

Sally hung back, swiveling her head around, trying to catch a glimpse of
Shaylo, but he was nowhere to be seen.

Jack
knelt down, hoping beyond hope that this was all some kind of elaborate hoax, but he could immediately tell that it wasn’t. The ruined body was his friend Melanie’s.

He touched her cheek and tears welled up in his eyes. He felt his senses tingle as he phased in and out so rapidly that he appeared to not be moving at all. He was afraid he was going to get whisked away by his powers again, against his will. He had to act quickly or else Sally would be left behind with
Shaylo as his teleportation ability dumped him in the damn desert again.

He stood up and screamed
as loudly as he could, “Come and get me, you coward.”

A figure appeared at the end of the block. It was floating off of the ground by a foot, moving their way slowly
, inch by inch.

It was
Shaylo.

The sight of him had
Jack’s hairs standing on end. In a weird way, Shaylo was magnificent. He exuded an aura of ultimate confidence.

Jack
yelled to Sally, “When I say so, wrap us all up in an inverted force field.”

“Why?”
When Jack had mentioned reversing the fields back in Alabama, she’d imagined he simply wanted to imprison or otherwise contain Shaylo inside her force field, but now she knew how wrong that assumption was. In a way she was thankful because she already knew she couldn’t keep her field up indefinitely. It always fizzled out after a few minutes. But why would he want to trap them inside with the menacing Grey?

Jack
said ominously, “I want to trap oxygen inside with us.”

She hardly knew how to respond to that so she ignored it and voiced her concerns.
“I don’t know if I can invert it. Buy me a minute to practice flipping the fields around.”

“You got it.”
Jack teleported towards the approaching Grey in three foot increments, disappearing and then reappearing just a bit closer each time.

The Grey, for his part, didn’t seem too surprised by his ability because he just kept coming forward. Guns of all varieties
sprung up all over the Grey’s armor. He was a floating arsenal of alien technology.

Jack
looked back in time to see Sally erecting a force field. Her face was screwed up into a knot as she concentrated with all of her willpower.

She touched the shield and yelled, “Ouch,” before letting it dissipate and trying again.

Jack dodged a laser blast but all that did was put him in danger when another one hit him immediately after he dodged the first one. He teleported twenty feet above but the guns must have had some sort of lock on him because they were already firing when he appeared. He phased in and out to avoid being hit but the blasts came so quickly he’d never be able to keep at it for long.

He tried to focus on
Shaylo but he couldn’t because he couldn’t stay in one place long enough.

Sally yelled, “I got it. What now?”

Jack yelled back, “Just keep it up,” right as a laser burned a sizzling line across his cheek.

His idea was impossible as far as he knew, but he’d teleported so far and wide that he had faith he could do it
again. He could make Shaylo feel his pain. He could do one thing that Shaylo would never see coming and would probably never recover from seeing.

At the last minute, he decided Sally didn’t actually need to
get more involved than she already was. It wasn’t just dangerous, but exceedingly likely they’d all die if he pulled this off. There was no reason to involve Sally more than he already had.

He tried to concentrate on
Shaylo, who was now just ten feet from him but Shaylo had him on the run with his constant barrage of laser fire.

There was only one way to teleport the Grey and that was to stay in one place long enough to focus on him.

Jack planted his feet and took hit after painful hit of laser fire. He had two impossible tasks to take care of but before he could do them he had to get Shaylo inside the force field.

He took a blast to the face but he didn’t let it ruin his concentration.
He didn’t even close his eyes as it hit him.

First, he teleported
Shaylo’s armored faceplate away, making it reappear in his outstretched hand. It was as heavy as a cinderblock and warm to the touch.

Shaylo
rolled with it, barely pausing to reflect on what had just happened. Jack took multiple hits now as Shaylo ramped up his output, but the Grey was already too late because Jack had a lock on him.

He teleported
Shaylo’s biological body inside the force field, leaving his protective armor, guns, and sword to clatter on the ground where he once stood.

This time,
Shaylo seemed out of his comfort zone. He rushed towards Jack but the inverted force field wall repelled him. As Jack walked to him, Shaylo seemed to panic.

Jack
stopped before him, looked past him to Melanie’s dead body, and then held the faceplate up to examine it.

He found a little black button inside the faceplate and pressed it. He spoke into it and waited to see
if it would translate for him. “I’m going to make you suffer.”

An alien mechanical voic
e came back from the faceplate, with Jack’s translated message.

Shaylo
didn’t react one way or another.

Jack
said, “You’re about to suffer in a way no one has ever suffered before for what you did to my friend.”

T
he faceplate translated again in its weird alien dialect. This time, Shaylo seemed to sneer. That infuriated Jack as much as anything had yet.

He walked forward, right through the wall of the force field. He walked up to
Shaylo and punched him in his big Grey face.

Sally asked, “What now?”

“You stay here. I’m going to try something I’ve never consciously done before. I’m going to teleport across space to his planet.”

Sally’s brow wrinkled. “That’s impossible. You don’t even know where it is.”

But he did. He’d seen a world where warlike creatures lived. They’re sole purpose was to eradicate alien creatures they deemed unworthy of life, which just so happened to be every being they’d ever come across, and then use their worlds for their own gains. The people who inhabited that world were Greys. Jack had little doubt about that. It had been only a fleeting glimpse, but he knew he was focused enough and furious enough to find it again. He just needed the guts to try.

Shaylo
reached out and snatched the faceplate from Jack’s hand. He hit the translator button and spoke.

It translated
into English, “You cannot defeat me. Go ahead and kill me because you’re just delaying the inevitable. Your world will crumble whether I lead the attack or not.”

Jack
snatched the faceplate back aggressively and said into it, “I’m about to show you how wrong you are. I’m going to break you into little pieces. Your mind and soul will beg for a mercy that I will never give.”

Then he concentrated in ways he had never done before. He had to teleport the force field, which was normally too big
of an object for him, and he had to take it farther than he could even imagine.

He couldn’t pinpoint his destination so he did the only thing he could think of and
he let his empathic ability rise forth as it had the last time he’d traversed the universe, hoping it would serve him properly. Then, just as it rose beyond his control, his teleportation ability reared its head and took over. His vision flickered and his head rang like a bell. He slammed his eyes shut when the light all around him became unbearable.

Grey
Home World

When he opened his eyes, a green and blue world spun beneath them. They were in space, in orbit around the Grey Planet. Jack had little time to accomplish his cruel task because the oxygen inside the force field would run out soon. In fact, he was a little surprised the force field had held up at all, especially now that Sally couldn’t possibly be keeping it erected from so far away. It was a gamble that had paid off so far. But he knew he was on borrowed time.

Shaylo
moved close to the wall of the force field, looking at the planet outside intently.

Then he wheeled about angrily and took the faceplate
from Jack’s grasp.

He hissed in his alien language and the faceplate translated, “
What could you possibly do to my entire species? Just a few thousand of us can eradicate mankind. What can one human do to billions of my people?”

Jack
didn’t care to argue with him, but Shaylo had already told him all he needed to know. Until Shaylo confirmed it, he couldn’t be certain the planet was the Grey home world.

Jack
took the faceplate back and said, “Watch what I can do.” He held the button down as his hands balled into fists.

His eyes widened as he focused all of his will towards the slowly rotating world. A blood vessel in his eye burst and both nostrils leaked thin rivers of blood. The veins bulged in his forehead.

The entire planet flickered before his eyes.

Shaylo
said, “What the hell are you doing? Stop that!”

But it was too late.
Jack’s powers were rising to incredible heights and there was no going back.

Jack
stammered, “So, you enjoy destroying worlds, do you? Well how do you feel watching me destroy your planet?”

Shaylo
struck him in the face but Jack didn’t feel the blow. He grabbed him by the collar and said, “Please don’t do this!”

Jack
laughed maniacally. He said, “I wouldn’t stop even if I knew how.” And then he screamed as a palpable yet invisible force radiated all around him.

And in that instant, the Grey home world vanished.

He fell to a knee inside the bubble, but he quickly regained his composure. Blood now streamed liberally from his nose. He stood up and glared at Shaylo.

Shaylo
sobbed, which was odd to hear translated. He said, “Where is it?”

Jack
lifted his arm up and pointed off to the circular sun that the Grey world had once orbited. He said, “Let me show you,” and teleported closer to the star.

As soon as they reappeared, it was clear what Jack had done. The dark blotch on the surface of the star was the Grey World, being engulfed in flames and radiation. It was already being broken down by the star’s immense gravitational pull.

Jack couldn’t feel the overwhelming despair which meant the Greys were already all dead.

He wanted to feel terrible for what he’d done but he couldn’t. He couldn’t get the image of Melanie’s dead body out of his minds eye.
He kept seeing a vision of Shaylo bringing his sword down on the top of her head and her expression turning to one of surprise right before she fell over dead.

Shaylo fell to his knees sobbing. Jack had destroyed the alien leader in every imaginable way. He reveled in the power it gave him. He wanted to kick the alien in his stupid head while he was down on his knees. He wanted to spit on him and laugh
like a lunatic.

But when he turned back to the bright circular disc of the star and saw that small dark patch on its surface, a guilt like no other washed over him. Had he really just caused mass genocide because he was angry? How could he do such a terrible thing for nothing but revenge?
He knew deep down that Melanie wouldn’t have wanted him to do such an awful thing in her name. She was better than that and she had truly believed he was too.

That was when he felt the anguish of a hundred billion crushed souls rush through him, tearing him apart from within. He felt the heat of the sun evaporate his body in a second in the same way the Greys must have felt it, except he
felt it times a hundred billion. He felt the finality of their deaths. He felt the absence of hope as though it were a real, tangible thing that could be quantified. The pain of every creature that had died on that planet was now his burden to live with and all of a sudden he wasn’t sure he could do it. How could he live with himself after what he’d just done?

His anger propelled him to commit another wicked act, as it had so often lately.

Just then Shaylo shakily got to his feet. He gave Jack a look filled with knives and hatred and nuclear weapons. If looks could kill, Shaylo would’ve killed everything in a ten light-year radius. And then he did something Jack hadn’t expected. He started to gasp for air, clutching his throat as he fell back to one knee.

On nothing but instinct, Jack took a step closer, maybe to help him, or maybe just to ascertain what was going on. Shaylo held his hand up to ward
him away.

Jack did the only thing he could under the circumstances and teleported
them both back to earth.

He wasn’t sure how he’d managed to find it, but he had. He felt the force field diminish the moment they arrived. They were beside Melanie’s body, Jack standing there with blood from his nose all down his
shirt and an eye that looked like it had been beaten with a tenderizing mallet for a few days, and Shaylo still struggling for life on his knee.

Sally rushed forward and put a hand on either side of Jack’s face to inspect the damage, but it was all self-inflicted. She barely gave a concern to the fact that Shaylo was kneeling right next to him.

Shaylo looked up from his crouched position, but he wasn’t looking in their direction.

Strangled alien words hissed forth from him in angry outbursts and then he
collapsed, dead.

It wasn’t until Jack took a closer look that he realized Shaylo had been speaking into the camera h
e’d positioned on the stop sign earlier to broadcast the murder of Melanie.

He tried to ponder what Shaylo had
said into it. He tried to second guess him. But all he could do was shake his head in confusion.