Another clip from Harry’s Reality — Book One – Symbiosis by Jack Shaw
“Look, I’m here because someone I respect very much seems to think you can help us,” she said impatiently. “I can’t tell you everything. Some things you’ll just have to learn for yourself. The true dangers out here are not what you think. In fact, they’re worse. Scarier, meaner…you pick.”
Harry looked even more nervous so she continued, “And those are just the things you can see for yourself. Hell, my people don’t even tell me everything.”
She was right. He could see it for himself by thought-blinking. Admittedly he hadn’t been forthcoming with that knowledge. What could these “Touchables” possibly want with his thought-blinking? It’s not like he could give it away. Besides, he had his own demons to wrestle. So far, he’d only found thought-blinking lately to result in lots of pain he rather not go through again.
Desiree heard a faint click.
“Down!” she screamed. The sky exploded with a blinding light and a deafening roar. She grabbed Harry and pulled him down, covering his body with hers as tiny particles shredded the clothes covering her back with stinging, searing, pain. Because they wear locked together, the shock wave that followed caused them to roll and slide for about 20 yards. Now, in addition to the minor lacerations, both are bruised and scraped.
Harry ended up lying on top of her, face-to face, with a childlike helplessness at this moment as he found himself in a most intimate of sexual positions.
“Are you all right, Harry?” she asked evenly while still on the bottom.
“Fine. You?”
“A few bruises and scratches.”
“Makes me feel truly alive. Real pain.”
“Good for you,” she rolled her eyes and grunted. “You can get up now, Harry,” she said as she nudged him in the side with a knuckle. “It’s over.”
Embarrassed by his sudden physical arousal, he nervously slid off her but stayed somewhat glued to the ground face down for a minute.
“What was that?” he asked, breathlessly.
“I’m not sure.”
“Are you all right?”
She knew her back probably looked like raw meat beneath her tattered clothing but she didn’t want Harry to know. That could only serve to increase his fears at a time when she needed him to be confident and brave.
“Feels like I’ve been run over by a street cleaner,” she said.
“What?”
“Funny little cyberts—kinda cute actually—clean the streets of debris. Seems not all cyberts are agile enough to dodge a little trash.”
Harry eyed her curiously.
“They’re harmless, Harry. Primitive communication capability. Local only. No danger if you stay out of its way.”
“Are you hurt?”
“A few bruises, scrapes, cuts. You?” She faced him to hide her back.
“Same. Sore.”
As they stood to brush themselves off, Desiree looked in the direction of the blast to survey the damage. Buildings looked intact. Harry seemed intact as well. Her back stung and burned from the blast, but she’d get something for it at the meeting place.
“Shock grenade, I think,” she said. “I’ve heard they stop cyberts for quite a radius. Means Shadows…”
Without warning, a Shadow separated from the darkness and moved into the light. He held two heads—small but deadly cybert heads—in one hand aloft, his cloth-covered fingers in a single eye socket in each head. With the other hand he tossed his hood back exposing his face and grinned. He was a handsome dark-skinned Bio, with dark gentle eyes and a wide grin that seems to say he was no threat. He held up the cybert heads as if proclaiming victory, or some kind of peace offering, then, without a word, he placed them in a bag made out of the same coarse fabric as the rest of his garb. He reached inside his cloak to retrieve something. He tossed a small object to them. It clattered to the ground. A small cybert shaped roughly like that of an insect—a bee.
The gesture, simple as it was, exclaimed, “Watch your back. Makr knows.”
Then he was gone.
“That…Sha…Sha…Shadow?”
Harry couldn’t help the stammer. He saw the Shadow change into a man and then become the Shadow again.
Shaw's Reality 