Time to Integration (Phase One): 357 hours (plus or minus 72 hours)

  Exemplars Chosen: 698

  Surviving Exemplars: 579

  Exemplars Remaining to Be Chosen: 6,239

  Nemeses Selected: 220

  Nemeses Remaining to Be Chosen: 2,780

  “I can’t believe she dumped you for saving her life,” Cousin Bob slurred. “So darned ungrateful.”

  Roland Webb grimaced and kept his eyes on the road. Being the designated driver on a Saturday night sucked. Being sober two days after the breakup sucked worse. Drinking and driving was not an option though. Never an option.

  “I didn’t save her life,” he told Bob, who was slumped down on the passenger’s seat, drunk as a skunk. “Just her purse. And my wallet.”

  “Who knows? Guy had a knife! If you hadn’t been there, he woulda, coulda, you know, gone crazy on her.”

  “I shoulda just given him my wallet,” Roland said, parroting Elle’s words from three nights before.

  Instead of giving his wallet to the knife-wielding mugger who had jumped Roland and Elaine at the parking lot behind the New Haven Theater, Roland had kicked him in the shin, his old Krav Maga and Escrima moves coming back to him as if he were still taking daily lessons in Sergeant Martin’s dojo. He’d pulled the collapsible baton he used as a keychain while the guy was distracted by the surprisingly painful impact. A flick of the wrist and the five-inch ‘keychain’ had become a ten-inch metal stick.

  He relived the event. The mugger staggered back, favoring his damaged leg. Roland kept moving, weaving the short baton into a quick feint-strike combo. He didn’t go for the guy’s knife hand but for his head. His aim was off – he was out of practice – so instead of hitting the guy on the temple, he got him on the cheek and nose. Probably for the best, because a hit on target might have killed the guy and then there would have been hell to pay.

  The mugger squealed like a stuck pig and spat out a couple of meth-rotted teeth. Elaine screamed. Roland grinned.

  It wasn’t a happy smile. He felt cold inside, full of the icy rage that came over him when somebody pissed him off. The mugger met his eyes and recoiled, his free hand clamped over his face, trying to staunch a gusher of a nosebleed.

  “Come on, then,” Roland told him, moving the stick in a sinuous pattern.

  The mugger ran off; Roland began to chase after him. He might be out of shape, but the bastard was limping. A swing to his knee and he’d be down and easy to finish off…

  “Stop! What are you doing?” Elle had shrieked behind him.

  Roland had moved several steps before realizing what he was doing. He’d turned back and seen her there, trembling like a deer in the headlights. When their eyes met, she covered her face with her hands and swooned. He had to run before she fell, helping steady her until she recoiled from him.

  She’d wanted to call the cops or an ambulance, but Roland had gotten her into his car, and they had driven away. After muttering that Roland should have just given the guy his wallet, Elle had sat silently in the car all the way to the apartment she shared with Roland’s sister. He’d gotten the text breaking up with him before he was back at his place.

  For all Roland knew, she might call the cops on him, or one of many cameras scattered throughout the city might have caught the event. He’d heard enough horror stories about people defending themselves and ending up in jail to trust the justice system. The mugger was gone and nobody had gotten badly hurt, mugger included. Hopefully that would be the end of it. If it wasn’t... well, nobody told him to get into a fight. Life wasn’t like the movies. You went up against a guy with a knife, the most likely outcome was getting badly hurt, possibly killed. He’d reacted without thinking, following some instinct that demanded he met violence with even more violence.

  “Can’t really blame her, with the way I scared the crap out of her,” Roland muttered.

  An E-2 in his old unit had summed it up: “When somebody peeves you off, Sergeant, the look in your eyes is ice-cold. Like you’re measuring them for a coffin.” The cold rage happened very rarely, but when it did, Roland stopped caring about anything but ending whatever had triggered it. And when people looked into his eyes while he was in that state, whatever they saw in there frightened them into running away or freezing. When dealing with a mugger, that stare was great. Not so much when he happened to turn that murderous look on someone he liked.

  “You saved her life, Rolls,” Bob repeated. His cousin was the only one who used that nickname, or at least the only one Roland wouldn’t kill for using it.

  “Sure, whatever.”

  “She’s, she’s gonna miss ya, cuz. With all the weird… the weird shit going on, y’know. She’s gonna wish she kept ya around, y’know?”

  Roland shrugged as he took the exit. Things had been getting strange lately, even before the mugging incident. Lights in the sky that the experts claimed were nothing but some unusual aurora borealis effects. Animal attacks. Couple hikers upstate had gone missing, and a State Trooper, too. All in the last three or four days. Bob was sure all the weirdness was linked together, but Bob was a conspiracy aficionado. He always believed that something was going on.

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  “We’re here, cuz. Time to sleep it off.”

  Roland drove up the driveway of Bob’s place in Stratford. His cousin staggered out of the car, clearly having trouble walking, so Roland grunted and got out himself to help half-carry Bob to the front door. He noticed that besides Bob’s old, beaten-up Land Rover, there was a red Mazda in the driveway. Ohio plates. Probably one of Bob’s strays. His cousin liked to pick up people in need and put them up at his house. Mostly women who rarely stayed for long.

  “Almost there. Stay on your feet,” he told Bob as he kept his cousin from tripping and doing a header into the patchy grass of his front yard. “Who’s the new roommate?”

  “Old Army buddy and his sister. They’re good people but don’t like to go out much.”

  “Got it.” The lights were out, so they must be asleep, so was Bob’s big pit bull, Goliath; Roland could hear the big dog snoring from the back yard. “Here we are.”

  “You’re too good for that bish, Rolls,” Bob said as he fumbled for his keys.

  “She’s working on her Master’s at Yale. I’m an ex-Army E-5 who manages a GameDrop store. Some might say she’s too good for me. And don’t call her a ‘bish.’”

  Roland had only met Elle – she hated her full name Elaine – through his sister Mandy, who was also attending Yale and was Elle’s roommate. He worried that the breakup was going to cause trouble between him and his sister, which sucked. They were all that was left of their immediate family since a drunk driver mowed down their parents when Roland had been fifteen. Mandy had been eleven.

  Bob didn’t seem convinced. “Whatever. Ungrateful bish,” he said over his shoulder as he stepped inside. “Mark my words, she’ll rue the day she dumped you.”

  “Keep it down, you’ll wake the roomies.”

  “Oh, sheesh. Sorry,” Bob said in a somewhat lower voice.

  “Good night, cuz.”

  The sound of the door slamming closed loudly enough to wake everyone inside was the only answer. Roland sighed and headed out just as Goliath began barking.

  Leaving the mess behind, Roland drove off, getting back on I-95 and heading back to his place in West Haven. His evening plans were simple: down a couple slugs of rum, play some Call of Halo, and go to bed when he was ready to pass out. He had Sunday off and had every intention of sleeping in; working at GameDrop wasn’t exactly all fun and games. The barely-alive franchise did its best to leech its employees of energy and joy. He definitely needed to find something better to do with his time.

  About halfway to his exit, a flash of light coming from the woods on the side of the highway caught his attention. Multiple flashes, he realized, slowing down a little.

  “That ain’t no aurora borealis,” he muttered as he spotted a car on the shoulder near where the lights were. Its hazards were blinking.

  Keep going or get involved? The inner debate lasted all of one second; Roland slowed down and stopped in front of the of the Red Suburban on the shoulder. He set his own hazards on before getting out. The lights flickering through the trees were changing colors – red, blue, green, flashing back and forth like noiseless lightning bolts. Roland concentrated on the car first. Nobody was inside, but the hood was still a little warm, so it hadn’t been there long. Weirder and weirder.

  A scream echoed through the woods and was just as suddenly cut off.

  “Shit.”

  Roland looked back at his car. He could just dial 911 and drive home, or dial 911 and wait by the side of the road to guide the cops toward the lights. Or he could leap over the guardrail and walk into the woods, flicking open his keychain baton and wishing he had a gun. Which was just what he did, cursing himself for being an idiot as he headed toward the sound, which also happened to be the source of the strange lightshow.

  He’d had the telescoping baton for years. Connecticut’s latest batch of gun laws made it near impossible to get a carry permit, so he’d settled for the blunt weapon. Combined with his Escrima training, the weapon made for a – barely – acceptable substitute for a firearm. He’d never used the extensible stick in the six years since he’d gotten it, other than to practice with it every once in a while. And now he was holding it at the ready for the second time in a week. Things were really getting crazy.

  After making his way down to the ditch separating the highway from the woods, Roland climbed carefully up the other side, trying to make out the lights. There were no more screams, or any noise other than the distant rumbling of a truck on the interstate. Traffic at almost three a.m. was nonexistent. Roland was acutely aware that it was just him and whatever had caused that scream out there. He had to think about it for a few seconds before he climbed all the way up instead of returning to his car.

  After he made it up the escarpment, he reached for his phone to call 911– and realized that he’d left it in the car. Dammit.

  The lights kept changing colors, although he still couldn’t make out what was making them. The closely-clumped trees made it hard to see. He could hear something now: wet, metallic noises, and a low chittering, some kind of Animal sound.

  After casting a last glance in the direction of his car – and his phone – Roland quietly unhooked his keys from the baton and stuck them in his pocket, where their jingling wouldn’t give him away. He started moving through the trees, trying to be quiet, head on a swivel while he looked for the source of the weirdness.

  Even with the lights, the forest was full of impenetrable shadows, so when a small figure darted toward Roland from behind a tree, he didn’t notice it until it was almost on top of him.

  It’s a kid, was his first thought. The figure couldn’t be much over three feet tall. But it also was holding something metallic that reflected the lights, and it was making the same inhuman, chittering sounds he’d heard earlier as it slashed at him.

  Roland backed away, turning his body so his left side faced the attacker. The short figure missed with the first swing of its weapon, which looked a bit like an axe with a round edge. Roland could have landed a good whack with his baton, but he hesitated. He didn’t want to hurt a kid.

  As he backed up, chased by the axe-wielding kid, they stepped out of the shadows and Roland felt a shot of coldness run down his body as he saw what was attacking him.

  The ‘child’ was covered in pale gray fur and its head wasn’t human. It had a long snout and oversized ears, like a rat’s, complete with a pair of rodent teeth bared in a snarl below a tiny pink nose. A long tail swished angrily behind it. It was either a little person wearing some amazing furry cosplay, or something inhuman.

  Its weapon was a crudely sharpened metal disk, maybe a can lid, embedded in what could be a sawed-off broom handle.

  “What the eff is this?” Roland said, still backing away from the slashing weirdo.

  The furry whatever moved in on its tiny legs – legs that were bent the wrong way for a human – trying to chop into Roland’s knee. Its smell hit him, an Animal musk with more than a hint of sewer in it, and that convinced him. That was no costume. The shock of that realization slowed him down just enough that the can-lid axeblade landed a glancing cut to his thigh.

  It hurt. It made him bleed.

  And it woke up the icy cold rage inside him.