REYNARD SLAMS ON the brakes. The tires on his rusty Chevy squelch. Aundrea throws her arms against the dash to prevent smacking the windshield. Julie flings open the door and jumps out, her powder-blue prom dress snagging on the loose chrome trim. She ignores the rip.
“Where are you going?” Reynard flips the gears into park.
“I don’t know. This is insane!” She bunches up her formal dress so she can jog down the road without tripping.
“We have to get her.” Aundrea slides out of the passenger side, keeping her dress from getting caught.
“You go. I’ll see what this cop wants.” Reynard eases toward the flashing cherries atop the car blocking the two-lane blacktop.
Reynard approaches, his hands in a surrendering motion. The driver’s door presses against the uniformed leg sticking out. Reynard spots the slumped officer. The engine still runs.
Aundrea drags Julie with her as they run behind Reynard.
“She didn’t get far in heels.” Aundrea spots what Reynard sees. She hides her face. “Oh my God.”
The officer’s Glock dangles in his hand. His face half gone from a self-inflicted wound.
Julie screams.
“Why did he do that?” Aundrea cries.
Reynard pokes the officer.
He refuses to move.
Reynard unhooks the gun from the trigger finger and slides it into the waistband of his tux pants. “We heard the President’s last address. The United States has surrendered to the alien invaders.” Reynard imitates the president, “Remain in your homes and wait for further instruction.” He drops the police cruiser’s transmission into reverse. He jumps back as the car rolls into the ditch. “Not everyone can handle the reality of life beyond this planet.”
“I know I can’t handle it!” Aundrea screams at him.
“I don’t know what you want me to do!” Reynard yells back at her.
Julie slumps into a heap of fluffy dress and tears. Snot bubbles gurgles from her nose.
Shock overcomes Aundrea. Reynard has never raised his voice at her before. It makes her ask: “Are we going to die?”
Julie, now a mess of ruined makeup, snot and tears, says, “I want to make love before I die.”
Aundrea’s taken aback by Julie. She squeezes Reynard’s hand, her eyes signaling that she wants to be in his arms once more.
Reynard gathers the last of his confidence. “If they wanted us dead they would have leveled most of the surface before we even knew they were here. They leveled New York to show their power as a warning not to resist. They are here for us.”
He scoops Julie off the pavement. “It’s freezing out here. Let’s get back in the truck. I’ll take you home.”
Home.
Home.
Home.
Reynard had limited meditation training with the Calthos—control of fear and body functions. Spiritual enlightenment but not much thought control. Not in the manner the sisterhood trained JC. The Sandmen pick at his brain, drawing his memories of home, his friends and his concern for Aundrea Johnson. She was released by the Iphigenians and lived her life on Earth, so he knows not of her fate.
The Sandman on Ki-Ton’s home world made him repeatedly relive Leahla’s death.
Reynard slowly rotates his gun hand from palm to back. His fingers pop as he flexes, but they seem unfamiliar to him. He notes the mole in the center of his palm. The odd lifeline. The texture of a scar from stringing barbed wire. None of that makes it his hand.
“Something’s not cohesive, Commander.”
The enthusiastic cadet sent to join his crew remains at parade rest awaiting her orders.
Not how it happened.
She was inquisitive—wanted to know about Nysaean.
Amye didn’t like her.
Amye doesn’t like most people—Anthropophobia or close to it.
Reynard’s hand quivers. He digs his nails into the palm to prevent the shaking. “What are your orders?”
“I am to report to you for my orders, Sir.”
“Don’t Sir me. I work for a living.” His dad always said.
Reynard scratches the side of his head. “You’re not here.”
“I am assigned to the Silver Dragon as part of Admiral Maxtin’s field experience program,” Leahla explains.
“You were assigned. You’re dead.”
“I assure you, Commander, I am alive.”
“I watched you die, and I hold a great deal of guilt. It was my fault. The Sandmen are playing upon my guilt and fear.” Reynard fights with his own memory.
“I don’t understand. Sandmen are a myth, Sir.”
“I watched you die.”
“I don’t understand.”
“I beat them. They don’t want me dead. I’m here for a purpose. I drove back my fear. I killed the monster under the stairs. One less fear for them to utilize. To enter my mind. How do I give up wanting to know…home? How do you give up wanting to go home?”
“I don’t know, Sir. Mine was destroyed by the Mokarran.”
••••••
FEAR AND GUILT allow entry. Fear leads to anger, anger leads to hate, hate leads to suffering—my suffering. Give into my fear, defeat my fear. Control my fear. I’ve never been on the path of a Jedi. If Sandmen simply eat the brains, I’ve no defense, but they play with thoughts and memories. People control dreams—control thoughts. I have to release my fear and guilt. Without Yoda or a telepath to instruct me in removing such thoughts, I need to suppress—
“Commander, if you’d trained more you’d have been piloting the Mecat.” Senior Cadet Mark Carrison steps from darkness exposing his blackened flesh covered in branches of pink rivers. He points the melted stump of his left arm accusingly at Reynard. “I’m dead because of you.”
“I led a mission before I was prepared to pilot a Mecat in combat. I have to accept responsibility for my actions.” Reynard quivers. His eyes dart around his stationary face. His brain processes…the quiver originated outside of him.
“I accept responsibility for—”
Shudders rattle his frame.
“It’s more than simply accepting responsibility. My actions weren’t alone in Mark’s death. I didn’t order him. He chose.”
••••••
REYNARD JERKS. HALDON Sy and Eymaxin, on each side of him, grab his shoulders to steady him. Haldon Sy lowers his sword.
They were going to kill me before the Sandman consumed my mind.
“You drove it out without magic?” she questions.
“They keep drawing on my desire to return to my home world.” My feelings for Aundrea. The night of the Winter Formal before the President’s surrender to the Iphigenian invaders, I wanted to ask her to be mine. I wanted to make sure George knew she was mine. So selfish. “They play on unresolved emotions.”
“I doubt even the Thaumaturge understands what the Sandmen do inside their sufferers’ brains. None have ever survived such marauding.” Haldon Sy assists Reynard to his feet.
“I accepted the death…I realized my guilt was…” Reynard draws the revolver. Cocking the hammer, he targets his brain. “I won’t allow them to use my fears against me.”
The Sandman swimming throughout Reynard’s synapses snags a single brain cell from the hippocampus before fading from his mind.
“I felt it leave.”
Haldon Sy cuts Eymaxin a glance of uncertainty. Eymaxin averts her eyes to the ground to hide what she knows.
“It knew you meant to end yourself before it could control you. They want you living.” A tuft of cold air passes around Eymaxin, raising gooseflesh up her spine as wafts of evil emanate from Reynard.
