If you’d care to start our story at the beginning:
Part One: Desert Stray
Part Two: Fragile Hosts
Part Three: The Final Ride Of Joe Pesci
Part Four: Hunter and Prey
Part Five: Low Voltage
* * * * *
J.J.’s Garage
4:13 p.m.
The creature’s psyche throbbed in rage within its meated walls. Fate had granted it life in a spectacularly fortuitous manner, only to have this ignorant manform squander away the opportunity to lie low and feed with an emotional outburst.
Eons of life and it would need twice as long to understand humans.
Still, it continued to have a link with its former manform host as well. Maybe it could unite the two. Feed on both simultaneously to bolster its strength, increase its power.
With a little more focus it may even be able to enslave manforms through their conscious minds. Just a touch more . . .
Blake & Summers Building
Fourth Floor (Remains)
100.3 FM
7:25 p.m.
Tiffany came to slowly, her conscious mind emerging just behind a cough of smoke escaping her lungs. Her left hand rose to explore the wet on her face and came back red with blood.
She wasn’t sure if it was hers.
“Tiffany!” Eric was yelling from somewhere in the dark. Small fires scattered shadows among the smoke-filled air, and an alarm was blaring.
“I’m here,” Tiffany started.
“Ugh,” Christopher blanched from behind Tiffany. “Is that — oh my god, is that an ear?”
“Focus!” Marcus clapped his hands once, then pointed at Tiffany. “Help her up while I find the boss.”
“You okay?” Christopher asked Tiffany before offering his hand.
“Eric!” Tiffany cried out, choosing to remain on the floor.
“Over there,” Marcus was telling someone. Eric limped from out of the smoke. He fell to Tiffany, and the two hugged.
“Are you okay?” Eric asked.
“I’ll live. What the hell happ-”
“Somebody get this piece of shit off of me!” Ayasha yelled. Tiffany looked over and saw her friend’s legs stuck under some debris from the ceiling.
Marcus and Christopher ran over and helped pull her out.
“Somebody talk to me,” Ayasha said through gritted teeth, holding her limp right arm cradled in her left.
“We’re stuck,” Christopher barked. “The blast took out the elevator, and the stairwell is blocked by, well, explosion leftovers. And I don’t know about your cell, but ours are–”
“We’ve got a plan, though,” Marcus thumped Christopher in the arm. “Cops were already crawling around downstairs. I think we can rig up things in here through the system, try and get ‘em on their radios. The north windows could make a serviceable exit.”
“Get on it,” Ayasha told them.
Blake & Summers
Streetside
5:45 p.m.
“REPEAT, OFFICERS IN NEED OF IMMEDIATE BACKUP! WE’VE GOT A BODY DOWN IN THE STREET AND SHOTS FIRED! SHOTS FIRED!”