On A Fooler's Errand: The Cyrusi Invasion

By R. Aaron Thompson

Fifteen years after The Rapture, Sheel embarks upon a mission to save the Earth from the notorious Dracs, lizard men who run the dreaded Administration.  Fortunately, he is a Fooler, capable of subtly manipulating the minds of others.  Unfortunately, Sheel has no idea what his mission is because, in order to maintain the secrecy of the Resistance, he has managed to fool himself into forgetting it almost entirely.  In a world where everyone has wings, tails, or claws. Sheel and his telepathic partner Azura navigate a world of flying pigs, pirate dragons, and elven royalty to deliver a message of dire importance, though they know neither what the message is nor what their next stop will be.

Meanwhile, Nanki, a Hindi Indian girl who “died” in World War II, is traveling through space to reach Earth ahead of a different enemy.  She’s on a mission of her own to warn the inhabitants of Earth of their impending doom. 

Two messengers with two messages.  Through the chaos of aerial dog-fighting, shootouts, and sword duels all set against the backdrop of zeppelins, spaceships, and crystal towers, our heroes must learn that trusting one’s friends is important, but trusting oneself is paramount.

• Language: English
• Publisher: R. Aaron Thompson
• Release date: Jun 27, 2016
• ISBN: 9781533786944

R. Aaron Thompson

Robert “Aaron” Thompson spent time as a sailor in the US Navy, as a soldier in the Pennsylvania National Guard, and as an inner-city high school teacher in Baltimore, so he ain’t no joke.  He has been a bartender, a bouncer, an actor, a short-order cook, and a costumed character.  He builds and performs with puppets, makes videos, does cosplay, and occasionally writes novels.  He has a BA from York College of Pennsylvania and a Masters in Fiction from Johns Hopkins.  Aaron currently lives in Maryland with his wife Erica and their two dogs. 

Book preview

Chapter I

Red means stop.

I had a dream.

He reclines on a couch of red leather. Stop. It’s not that shiny, fire truck red, like cheap vinyl, but rather a deep, bright red like bloody candy apples. Stop or else.I was in a firefight.

You were fighting a fire? Deep voice from behind. Scratch of pencil on paper.

No, I mean there were bullets flying by my head and I was shooting back.

Scratchety-scratch. Interesting. Go on. Scratch.

The walls are also red, a hue that denotes deliberate permanence. Stop forever. He is wearing red leather pants and a red leather jacket staring at a red leather ceiling. No escape.

It was weird. I was flying. There were these people that . . . weren’t people. They were changed. He squirms. It makes creaking sounds, a saddle on a demon. He can move but not really move. Stopped.

Changed? Scratch-scratch. In what way?

Sweat rolls around inside his leather shirt that has no zipper, no buttons. He is ensconced in disagreeable clothing in an unsympathetic room. All kinds of ways. There was this girl there. She was all in blue.

Let’s get back to the people, shall we? How were they changed? Tap, tap.

Well, like the girl, they –

Ignore the girl. It’s hard to read emotion from just a voice. Disgusted? Tell me about the people. No, not disgusted. Excited.

Well, you know, like in the news reports? People changing? Like that. Sorta. But it was much more severe. They were monsters. They had wings. Some had horns. But, it was the girl who –

Please. Commanding this time. Do not mention the girl again. Desperation?

Why? She was a big part of it. If it wasn’t for her –

We’ll get to her. There were horns? Wings? Aroused. Go on.

Ok, there was another girl, a different girl, who had a tail. One guy had tentacles instead of arms, and there were these turtle people, not with shells, but with turtle-lookin’ heads. Everyone was in pain and dying and I couldn’t help them.

Amusement. My, that is strange. Sarcasm? Derision? Satisfaction?

What do you think it means, doc?

It means you’re sleeping. Bored? No. Resigned.

I knew that.

No, I mean you’re currently asleep. Forced tolerance. Right now. You’re dreaming about the world that no longer exists, a world in which things like tails and horns are abnormal. You’re old enough to remember the time before, but you can’t reconcile a past that is just as idiotic to you today as today would have been years ago. A sigh. Fulfilled. Now, tell me about the girl.

Girl? What girl?

SHEEL

Monday morning, 6:00AM.

Sheel’s alarm clock erupted with the crooning of a male country singer. The red leather which

had surrounded him so completely as clothing, couch, and walls morphed into flannel, cotton, and stucco. He was in his room, and the encapsulating crimson was gone. He could still feel it, as if the spirit of red leather clung wetly to his world, but just outside his perception, hiding under furniture and lurking behind doors. There was still sweat. Lots of sweat. It plastered his dark hair to his forehead and trickled down his chest. He drowsily shoved the damp covers away as the sound of creaking cowhide faded into the droning of an antique fan and the twanging of a slide guitar.

Sheel preferred waking up to country music. He found that every country song fell into one of two classes: either he loved it or he hated it. With other genres, he ran the risk of merely liking a song, awakening to one he tolerated as one endures lukewarm coffee or a generic piece of gum. He would then have the option of falling back to sleep or hitting the snooze button for the nine minutes of semi-sleep that, though just tasty enough to incite desire, is not fulfilling enough to feel truly rested.

When Sheel woke up to a song that he enjoyed, he could never bring himself to turn it off. Frequently, he would turn up the volume, thereby forcing himself awake as the music pulled him to his feet. It had the added benefit of launching his day cheerfully. Let the snooze button poison some other victim, Sheel is up.

When Sheel hated a song, he hated it thoroughly. This noise would induce him to sit up quickly and smack off the alarm before some horrible track got stuck in his head. Sometimes, it didn’t work. He would then spend the rest of his day with the offending ditty buzzing in loops between his ears, turning his skull into a demented wasp’s nest. Waking up to one of these caused Sheel to explode into action. This stop-it-at-all-costs eruption, this violent thrust of determination, would set his heart pounding with the crisis which, coincidentally, jolted him awake.

Consequently, Sheel woke up every morning either loving or loathing, rejecting or adoring. Either way, he got up on time. He kept the radio tuned to the country station.

This particular morning, the little box drawled out slow diphthongs touting small town life and the joys of coming home to where Jesus rules and people lament the time when everyone was normal and dull as fuck. Sheel stabbed the off button with extreme prejudice. No sense living in the past. The red digital display told him it was 6:00AM. He had not slept much, but there was no way he was going back to sleep, not when he was this geared up and sweaty. Especially, not today.

Sheel’s stifling room was a clear indication that the steam was malfunctioning, again. He threw open the window and stood there for a moment, rubbing the sleep out of his eyes, letting the bracing chill of a winter morning fall about his bare legs. Stray snowflakes committed suicide by diving in from the orange city night to expire on Sheel’s warm floor in the eternal struggle of heat-meets-wet. Though there was no hope for any of them, they were determined to sacrifice multitudes in the cause. With the snowflakes came the smell of wood smoke and propane. It was a gritty morning. Sheel took a shower in water that smelled of sulfur.

Soon after getting dressed, he put on the shoulder rig. The gun felt too heavy, which was disappointing. In the armory, it had felt too light, made with so much plastic it could easily have been mistaken for a toy. Sheel had worn the shoulder rig home and then, as the Smarts had instructed, wore it constantly for several more hours to get used to the sensation. He had even practiced quick-drawing in front of the mirror. He had only dropped it twice. Of course, there had been no bullets in it, then. He had spent a long time loading clips. Now that the pistol was weighed down with lead and brass, it felt like he had a bowling ball slung under his left arm. The added weight of the four extra magazines on the opposite side, there for balance as much as reserve ammo, caused the leather straps to dig into his shoulders.

He slid his long, buffed-leather overcoat on over his jet-black sports jacket. Both had been custom-made and tailored specifically for his build since mass production no longer existed, and made him look like one of the elite. This one was expertly crafted and fit Sheel perfectly. He picked up his weathered leather messenger bag and left his apartment, descending the three flights of stairs for, quite possibly, the last time.

Sheel stepped out into the cold. The sky was just starting to brighten in the East. A light film of ice clung to the cobblestones along the old city street and made walking the seven blocks to the station difficult. As a native of North Carolina, he struggled to get used to cold weather. Unsurprisingly, so did North Carolina, although it wasn’t called that, anymore. None of the original states had survived the Rapture unchanged.

When he arrived at the old train terminal, he had to remind himself that the consistently-obtrusive automatic pistol couldn’t be seen under his jacket. Sheel got in line for the ticket window while trying to look as confident as possible. Confidence always allayed suspicion, after all. Only people who looked fearful drew attention, as did people carrying guns. He told himself over and over that nobody could see the pistol, not really.

When it was Sheel’s turn, he approached the window keeping his left arm rigid (while simultaneously trying to not look like a man keeping his left arm rigid). He made his purchase from an attractive middle-aged lady with cougar claws instead of hands. The lady used one of her razor-sharp talons to spear his boarding pass instead of merely picking it up. She dangled it like a toy mouse over the counter and snatched it teasingly just out of his Sheel’s grasp when he reached for it. She bared upper and lower cat fangs in a smile that marked him as either a potential lover or a future meal. Possibly both, judging by the way she licked her cat lips.  She toyed with him twice more before letting him have the card. Have a nice trrrrrip, she growled.

Sheel smiled back, but it wasn’t nearly as impressive.

He went into the men’s room, not as a conscious choice, but rather as a default reaction to the awful feeling in his stomach. Sheel didn’t like getting noticed. He had assumed that looking rich and successful would prompt people to ignore him out of intimidation. Obviously, some women found this attractive. Way to botch it, Sheel. He wasn’t sure what he could have done to stay in character with the ticket cat-lady, but nervous uncertainty had not been the best response. Fuck. I need to get in the game.

Sheel leaned on the sink, turned on the water, and took a deep breath to calm his nerves. Standing there, pretending to wash his hands, he stared intently at his own reflection; first, at the bulge under his left arm (which no one could see), then into his own nervous brown eyes.

Relax. You’re ready.

Was he ready? Everything about him was counterfeit, but very inspiring. His face was familiar, but his normally wavy hair was slicked back in a forthright statement of mastery. The dark suit, close-cropped goatee, and the incredible weight under his arm were all assumptions of power. He was surprised to find he was acclimating quickly to the presence of the pistol under the smart-looking black sports jacket and the all-consuming drape of the overcoat. A black oilskin duster, the coat was more like a cloak. It had the rustic odor of an old, worn saddle that mingled with the other scents of gun oil and expensive cologne hanging about Sheel’s borrowed persona. He felt awkward as hell, but he took solace in the knowledge that he looked and smelled like someone capable and accomplished. 

It was all starting to fit, as if a shiny new casing were sliding over the man underneath. Perhaps this guy, the guy in the mirror, was the man for the job. As part of the Resistance, the Smarts had trained him, teaching him what Sheel referred to as James Bond shit. He knew how to booby trap a tank, repel out of a helicopter, and kill a man with a rolled-up newspaper. It didn’t matter that all three of those things were extinct, they said. It was a process designed to teach him resourcefulness, improvisation, and background knowledge. All of that, coupled with his natural ability made Sheel ready for anything. He assumed he would have to be, since he had no fucking idea what the job was, the super-secret master plan. But it didn’t matter. He was the Marlboro Man, Our Man Flint, and the Great Gatsby.

The world may have gone crazy, but Sheel had a black belt in lunacy.

Behind him, in the mirror, Sheel watched a homeless guy with several hairy spider arms creep out of the far stall. Several sets of eyes fixed on Sheel, who once had shit his pants over a spider. He had come face-to-legs with a brown arachnid as big as his thumb when he was ten years old, poking around in his grandmother’s attic. As the man-spider approached, he held three of his hands turned upward in the universal symbol of begging.

If the man had approached Sheel at any other time in his life, or even a scant few minutes earlier, Sheel would have avoided eye contact, turned stark white, and mumbled a lame excuse as he beat a hasty retreat. Not this time. A confident man didn’t flinch at spiders. Shitting all over himself was not an option. Sheel was wearing a new persona along with very expensive pants. His newfound admiration for the man-he-could-be quickly overcame his terror. He wasn’t a ten-year-old, he was a hero. A badass. He was a man with better places to be and no time for foolishness. Sheel could feel himself getting taller as he drew up from his usual slouch to his full height, staring straight into the many eyes of the newcomer. The homeless arachnoid, who had looked seven feet tall while emerging from the stall, shrank down to a more pitiable height.

Sheel jauntily tossed the man a dollar coin and a compassionate smile, vowing to himself that this would be the last time an oddity would take him by surprise. He stepped back onto the concourse and, by way of desensitization, marveled at the diverse creatures milling about the station. Few looked human.

Fifteen years ago, the Rapture had been the beginning of the trouble. It had caught everyone by surprise, including the many doomsday cultists who had cropped up since the millennium. Despite being certain that the world was going to end on such-and-such a date, many would-be profits instead sought deliverance from the obvious and evident apocalypse happening right before their eyes. This weirdness had to end so that they could get back to predicting a more proper Revelation. It was understandable, since the fire in the sky had been completely unlike that for which the Christian dogma taught in Sunday school had prepared them. It had been purple and shot through with veins, like an electric version of an old man’s scrotum and appeared just as secular. It had been a distinctly unholy event, by all accounts. Nobody could argue that it hadn’t been awe-inspiring, but most had chosen to believe that it was either a natural, albeit rare, weather system or a man-made astrological effect.

If it had happened during the Great War, it would have been blamed on the Evil Axis. If it had occurred during the Cold War, it would have been blamed on those damned Russians. Since it had happened during America’s Great Cold Civil War, both political parties had attempted to use it as one more reason why the other side was completely irrevocably wrong about its every position. God was pissed at them.

The purple sky lasted about six months, during which time most people learned to just ignore it along with the raving pundits who blamed it upon everything from global warming to welfare reform. The human race had had thousands of years of dealing with things both impossible and unchangeable and had adapted accordingly. They asked themselves: How can we make money off of this?

Makeup companies made a fortune putting out colors that worked well when applied under a lavender hue. Wide-brimmed, tin-lined hats became fashionable, since it was unknown what purple radiation would do to an exposed scalp. Window blind businesses made a killing, as most people found it difficult to tell day from night. Insomnia ran rampant, capitalized upon by twenty-four hour shopping and late-night, prime-time television. Pharmaceutical companies made billions on sleep-aids.

A big percentage of the population became depressed due to lack of sunshine and the subconscious effect of an uncertain future. At the box office, romantic comedies with feel-good endings were serious money-makers. Multitudes escaped reality into theaters that now only closed long enough to scrape gum off the seats and give the popcorn machines time to catch up to the demand. The biggest draw were movies that featured transcendent experiences. The Universe Loves Us, a film featuring mankind’s deliverance from its own evil ways via a merciful alien race, spent four weeks in the number one spot. Its closest competitor, a drama called I Can’t Wait To Die, featured a scientist finding a way to visit every conceivable afterlife and returning in time to reassure his terminally ill wife that everything’s gonna be alright, just before she succumbs to her disease. Both films left viewers with a strong sense that, somewhere, a benevolent being of great power is looking out for us. Everyone knew these movies were fiction, but one does not poo-poo good vibrations. The afterglow of these movies typically lasted a day or two. The films, and many like them, were never released for private viewing. The thrifty Hollywood producers, instead, opted for a bigger percentage of the ticket sales as the flicks were shown again and again to people willing to pay to see them again and again.

There was great joy when the sun returned, or the moon and stars, depending upon one’s hemisphere. Without a doubt, there were many who proclaimed that they knew it had been temporary all along, but nobody took them seriously. Sociologists predicted another baby boom, both from the long period of darkness and uncertainty as well as the rites of the Super-Spring. After all, how could one resist making love under a blue sky when, while filled with rapture and hope, a sunshine-drunk girl with flowers in her hair suddenly threw herself at you? The date became a new holiday, and greeting card companies immediately started drawing up plans to mark the occasion the next year with such slogans as Happy Rebirth Day! and Joyous Rejuvenation Celebration!

Surprisingly, all crops had survived to be harvested. Animals still procreated, gave milk, or produced eggs. Only humans were affected psychologically and, in the long run, physically. Within a fortnight after god’s balls had faded from the horizon, reports came in from everywhere of people changing.

In Sheel’s apartment building, everyone took ill at once, debilitated by either severe headaches, violent nausea, or spasmodic muscle pain. Sheel went about his business, but had noticed significantly fewer people on the street, less of a crowd on the subway, and significantly more-than-usual moaning coming through the walls of his building.

One night, Sheel purchased a bottle of wine on his way home only to realize he didn’t own a corkscrew. He knocked on Drake’s door, his next door neighbor, then let himself in when no one answered as he had done hundreds of times before. Throughout his entire life, no one had ever minded Sheel coming and going as he pleased. He rarely left any evidence behind and it he always made it easy to ignore his intrusions.

When he entered Jake’s kitchen, he discovered just how wrong things had gone.

Jake, a man about Sheel’s age but with less hair and more personality, had grown a pair of antennae. They weren’t the cute My Favorite Martian antennae that looked like a car aerial and conveniently retracted into his head. These were big, bristly, chitinous appendages that never stopped moving, constantly jerking and waving about. Jake’s eyes, too, had become larger and more almond-shaped. Delirious with fever, he barely recognizing that Sheel was even there. But, judging by the large pile of sweet pastries strewn about the kitchen table, he was still capable of feeding himself, so Sheel saw himself out and decided he would need something stronger than wine.

It was the same in the rest of Sheel’s building as well as throughout the rest of the world. People grew wings, developed webbing between their fingers and toes, or sprouted tails. Some simply died. Scientists proclaimed that the whole planet was no longer where it should be, but everyone was more worried about Aunt Kate’s extra head or their spouse’s unsightly crab claws to take notice of such things as constellations or the color of the moon. All of the smart people eventually went silent, probably due to the population’s massive soul-crushing indifference to all things newsworthy.

Hope had been snatched away. Again.

Despite this, things slowly got back to normal after the multitude of suicides and general chaos. People gradually accepted change the way they always have and got back to the business of feeding themselves, fornicating, and keeping up with the latest style for horn-adornment and pseudopod-piercing. Thin was still in, but now many skeletal fashion models could flaunt both high cheekbones and six-inch natural spiked heels. It was the same old world, simply a bit more colorful and a hundred times more deadly.

At least there’s still sunshine, went the saying. That, too, was to be short-lived. The sun was a shade more orange and the sky several shades more grey. All climates became eccentric. Along with seasons that lasted about six months each, the current precipitation included both spontaneous ash falls and wild blue snow that glittered with quartz crystals. Rain came down in many different colors and viscosity. Fog could be either benign, making it hard to see, or malicious, making it impossible to breathe. There were also reports of meteor showers that drove people indoors. There was no explanation for any of this, but if there had been, no one would have paid attention since people had stopped listening to officials some time ago. This was weather from Hell, both metaphorically and in actuality.

Steam power took over. This reversal of technology had as much to do with the strikingly small number of people who were still capable of fitting into in a mid-size SUV as it had with the complete severing of the oil supply. Even if there had been a way to get fuel, the most spacious of sedans didn’t have enough headroom to accommodate antlers. No manufacturer had exhibited the foresight to design seats that could comport with tails.

Sheel hadn’t owned a car at the time of the change, but, one year later, he could have had his pick of the thousands abandoned by the roadside, left at the exact spot where they ran out of gas. Eventually, they too disappeared, cannibalized for raw material.

Streets and roads now catered to hooves and wagon wheels. The world became much larger as distances became untraversable and infrastructure deteriorated. Highways fell to disrepair, and air travel was relegated to the biologically-winged. Only the railroad offered any sensibly safe conveyance. Safety was a concern since, beyond the border of what one could reasonably traverse and still make it home by sunrise, the land became Unknown, and the Unknown was to be feared. The Known was to be feared as well, but at least it was a dread to which one could adapt, over time. The devil-you-know was always preferable to Did you hear that? and What the fuck is out there? uttered by many travelers right before they were never heard from, again.

One of the most radical of the unforseen changes was the change in values. This unnerved Sheel more than his neighbors becoming monsters. Survival became everyone’s number one pursuit as they gave up the quest for material possessions. The claws and fangs that so many had lamented as they faced the mirror every morning became valuable assets in a world where hunting and violence were key to living another day. Sheel’s talent for going unnoticed saved his life more than once as he stole away with food and avoided altercations.

Corporations sank, taking the mobile phones, home computers, and the entertainment industry down with them. Electromagnetic interference had fried all of the major satellites, anyway, and there wasn’t enough money, technology, or concern left over to revive them. There wasn’t a shortage, however, at first. A large percentage of those people either no longer had a use for them or died leaving them behind. Over time, they faded away.

All governments collapsed. The only successful far-reaching control was achieved by various Guilds. A guild was a group of experts specializing in any particular field who were also successful in shutting down any and all competition either through carefully-guarded trade secrets or force of arms. In some cases, many arms. The Vehicle Guild was adept at creating hand-crafted, custom conveyance to suit your specific transportation needs as long as you were capable of paying their exorbitant fees set at extortionists’ terms. The Steam Generators employed burly men who were, in many cases, biologically immune to high temperatures or could conveniently breathe scalding hot water. Farmers were still Farmers, but now they had cooperatives powerful enough to starve any geographic region who upset them. They pulled their own plows, literally.

It was a fairly simple system. If one wanted fair administration, one had to deal fairly with the guilds. The only other governance that had any success was strictly local, consisting of like-minded, well-organized community groups such as mini-republics and city-states.

That is, until the Damned took over.

They universally called themselves The Administration. Alternately also known as the Dracs, Reptiles, or collectively as The Lizard. Sheel never understood when or how they had officially gained power. Speaking with some amateur political scientists, Sheel found the most plausible answer: The Administration won influence by telling everyone that they, and only they, would protect them from an uncertain future. They persuaded everyone that, as long as the Dracs were in charge, everything was going to be okay.

It wasn’t.

The Dracs had taken over like lava sliding down a mountain, deliberately and inevitably. At no time was there a convenient moment to point and say No, you can’t do that. In a world of chaos, the people had naturally, although inadvertently, chosen organization over emancipation. What started out as protective services turned into martial law. A necessary police force became an occupying army. What was presented and accepted as efficient regulation slowly evolved into a ridiculously redundant system of checks and balances. In some areas, a person could find it difficult to cross the street without showing papers, flashing a badge, or filling out an application.

The shocking truth: it wasn’t very difficult. A person forced through an unfortunate, miraculous, cosmic event into accepting a third eye found it quite undemanding to accept a new regime. Any control over the madness was considered a good thing by almost everyone. Within a few years, fear of the future was supplanted, ever-so-gradually, by fear of the Administration. Politics were still us versus them, except that one found every reason to convince them that you were one of us.

With a population so completely persuaded, the Lizard didn’t even bother to win hearts and minds, anymore. Lawbreakers, those who would make waves or object to the status quo, were vanished, often turned in by friends or family members. Under the Dracs’ dominance, one learned to keep his head, or in some cases, heads, down.

Sheel was concentrating on doing just that. He approached two Drac guards standing to either side of the stairs leading down to the boarding platform. They looked a hell of a lot more competent than Sheel felt. Even if they hadn’t been half reptile, their proud, black BDU’s, emblazoned with the flaming red A on the left breast would have marked them as Administration soldiers. Not all guards were Dracs and not all Dracs were guards, but all Dracs were Administration, and all Administrators were nasty.

They held their short-barreled sub-machine guns in a relaxed-but-ready grip. Guns were one of the things that were never in short supply Post-Rapt, and the Administration had reopened several munitions factories. They didn’t quite have a monopoly on firearms, but it was a very near thing. It would take several more decades for what had once been the United States to completely run out of guns. In the meantime, all weapons were banned, but nobody paid attention, since metal detectors were a thing of the past, police response times were lower than they had been in the 1800's, and the black market thrived on a brisk weapons trade.

For the Post-Rapt citizens under the Administration, it was a choice of either facing a hostile and unpredictable world armed with only the tools the Rapture had given you, which, in many cases, were very formidable, or risking the displeasure of a government that had proven time and again that it did not particularly care for your well-being. Although being caught with a firearm was a vanishing offence, most thought it worth the risk. The basic consensus was, If I have to use my gun, the Dracs will be the last thing on my mind. Shootouts happened all the time, and only those unwilling to part with their weapons during the chaos immediately following the discharge were ever caught. Drop it when it’s empty, see the Dealer in the morning, went the slogan for Post-Rapt gunfighters.

The guards’ snake eyes scanned the crowd menacingly. Even their green-grey scales glistened arrogantly. Their wings were tied back with a black ribbon in order to keep them out of the way while walking around intimidating the passers-by. Only a minority of Dracs possessed wings, and none of those could fly. They could glide, though, and often situated themselves somewhere with a height advantage, ready to swoop down upon enemies if the need arose.

Once, Sheel had seen a flight of Dracs leap off of a six-story building. They had floated down to strategic positions on the street, then used their huge wings to corral a group of suspected citizens. It was a very intimidating sight, those large wings flapping and herding pedestrians into a tight group like sheep. Sheel had been lucky enough to be outside the circle. Those inside had nowhere to run, no escape from the darkness. As it turned out, the person or persons for which they had been searching were not among the crowd, and, after a few hisses for everyone to move along, they had returned, clumsily, to their perches above. Sheel had almost laughed out loud watching them bang into each other as they stuffed themselves back into the building, presumably to take either the stairs of the elevator back up to their post. Which, was, itself, an amusing image.

The winged Dracs had become even less intimidating to Sheel once the Smarts had taught him their limitations. Turns out, the higher up a Drac climbs, the more of a risk that swooping down breaks his ankles when he lands, due to the hollow bones that typically come with flight. Also, their huge, frightening wings that so easily confuse and torment their prey are paper-thin, easy to puncture, bleed profusely when injured, and, because they are difficult to manage when extended, work as much as a hindrance to the Dracs as a benefit. Once you get behind the wings there is almost no way for a Drac to easily turn around to attack. The most difficult part of dealing with winged Dracs, according to the Smarts, was remaining calm and level-headed as flapping, leathery wings fell upon you. It’s not easy.

Fear was the primary weapon of the Administration, both actively and passively. All Dracs could smell fear. It was one of the ways in which they caught dissidents. If you were afraid, Drac logic dictated that you were probably up to something, and thereby worth investigating. Everyone was afraid of the Dracs, so the Administration was never short of suspects.

Unless the Dracs also had the ability to smell awkwardness, Sheel didn’t have anything to worry about. The Smarts had done many tests on their agents, many of which were designed to terrify any sane person. It didn’t take them long to figure out that Sheel’s secondary ability was that he just didn’t get scared. Although he had more than his share of insecurity, he was fearless, except for the evolutionary knee-jerk reaction to spiders. Putting their big brains together, they hypothesized that because Sheel had spent his entire life in the shadows, he intrinsically knew that bad things only happened to those in the limelight. He had always been a man who kept below the radar. Before the Rapture, he had blended into every crowd, rarely stood out, and tended to stay towards the middle of the herd. It was more difficult for him these days because his change was of the rarest kind, he looked perfectly normal.

Not everyone had changed outwardly. In most of these cases, the normals developed a powerful internal ability. Sheel had met a few during his time with the Smarts. He had met a woman who could mimic any sound, a boy who could detect the weak points of any structure, and an old man who was able to walk through walls. Sheel’s primary ability only furthered his deep faith that there was nothing to be afraid of, there is nothing to fear when you’re invisible.

More specifically, Sheel was ignored. It wasn’t the kind of indifference that comes from the mundane, workaday events that were no longer noticed by those who see them frequently and consistently. Sheel was ignored the way people ignore a magician slipping out of a deathtrap while the voluptuous blond assistant gestures seductively in her skin-tight costume that really only covers her nipples. People didn’t simply not-notice him; they found themselves intently acknowledging something else. This was by design. Sheel’s design.

Sheel was a Fooler.

Boarding passs? The guard stepped in front of Sheel, holding out his clawed hand.

Two seconds later, the guard was intensely watching a moth flit around the overhead florescent bulb, convinced that the insect was up to no good.