The hum in their teeth became a physical pain, a file scraping against enamel.

  Buddy didn't yell. His voice was a low, controlled growl that cut through the static frequency of the room.

  "Katherine. Jonathan. Center. Cover them."

  He racked the slide of his pistol with a metallic clack that sounded obscenely loud in that silence.

  "Everyone else: defensive perimeter. No heroics. You only shoot if they cross the threshold."

  ?The Dissonants moved as a single organism. No panic, just a military fluidity acquired through years on the run. Jonathan, a massive man with a scar splitting his eyebrow, grabbed Alex by the shoulder and shoved him roughly toward the central rug. Katherine did the same with Tony and Cristy, enclosing them in a triangle of human bodies.

  Tony smelled Katherine's jacket: rancid gunpowder and lavender. A contrast that made his head spin.

  The frequency increased.

  But the Dissonants remained motionless. They were stone statues in the middle of a storm. Their faces were contorted in grimaces of pain, but no one yielded an inch. They had learned to live with that white noise.

  ?SLAM.

  ?It wasn't a knock. It was an impact.

  Something heavy, massive, crashed against the front door. The oak wood bowed inward, groaning under an unsustainable pressure, sending flakes of paint flying.

  Cristy stifled a scream, bringing her hands to her mouth.

  Then, chaos.

  It wasn't wind.

  It was blows. BOOM. BOOM. CRACK.

  They came from every side. Heavy objects struck the exterior walls of the house, a blind bombardment that made the paintings tremble on the walls and the blacked-out windows vibrate. The house was no longer a refuge; it was a wooden box being kicked by a giant.

  ?Buddy looked up. He stared at the ceiling, at the creaking beams.

  "They're above us," he hissed. It wasn't a question. "They came in from the roof. They're walking on our heads."

  ?A younger Dissonant, crouched near the window with a sawed-off shotgun, turned to Buddy. His knuckles were white from gripping the weapon so tightly.

  "Filaments?" he asked, his voice cracking. "Is it them?"

  ?Buddy kept his eyes fixed on the ceiling wood, tracking the sound of shuffling, heavy, inhuman footsteps.

  "No," he replied dryly.

  "They're hungry," the young man insisted, swallowing hard. "They want to get in."

  "If they were Filaments they would have smashed through the windows by now," Buddy growled, without looking at him. "Voracity makes them stupid. They attack straight on. These..."

  He paused as another blow rattled the main door, nearly ripping it off its hinges.

  "These are waiting. They're studying us."

  ?"Then what the fuck are they?"

  Buddy didn't answer right away. He listened to the rhythm of the blows. One, two... pause. One, two... pause.

  "Whatever they are," he murmured, gripping his gun, "they've surrounded the house."

  ?KRA-BOOM.

  ?The noise exploded exactly above their heads, in the center of the living room ceiling.

  Dust and plaster rained down on Tony's hair.

  Cristy jolted violently, a spasm running down her entire spine.

  But she didn't land.

  She remained rigid, her back arched in an unnatural position, her arms stiff at her sides as if she had been tied up by invisible strings.

  Her eyes flew open, but her pupils were gone, swallowed by the white of the sclera. Or by the gray of the frequency.

  ?"Cristy!" Tony yelled, grabbing her arm.

  She was cold. Freezing. As if her blood had instantly stopped circulating.

  "Cristy, wake up!" Alex shouted at her, shaking her from the other side.

  She didn't react. She swayed on her heels, her gaze lost in the void, her mouth half-open in a breath that wasn't there. She was there, but she wasn't there.

  Katherine cursed under her breath and placed two fingers on her neck.

  "Her heart rate is going crazy," the woman hissed, worry cracking her mask of toughness. "She's overloading."

  ?Ten endless seconds passed.

  Outside, the pounding stopped.

  Inside, only the ragged breathing of twenty people.

  Cristy was a statue of flesh in the middle of the living room.

  ?Then, the air rushed in.

  Cristy inhaled with a gurgling, horrific gasp, like someone breaking the surface from drowning at the last possible second.

  Her body went limp. Tony and Alex caught her before her knees hit the floor.

  Her pupils returned, black and dilated like wells, staring at an invisible point in front of her.

  "I saw them," she panted, her voice hoarse, full of saliva. She was shaking so hard her teeth chattered. "They're all out there. In the trees."

  ?Buddy stepped closer, ignoring the threat at the door. He crouched down to her level, hard, urgent.

  "Who, Cristy? Who did you see?"

  ?She looked up at him. In her eyes was the pure terror of someone who had looked at hell and seen that it was organized.

  A case of literary theft: this tale is not rightfully on Amazon; if you see it, report the violation.

  "Valeryk," she whispered.

  Then she clutched Tony's hoodie, squeezing until her fingers hurt.

  "And he's not alone. There are other Resonants with him. Dozens."

  ?"In whose head?" Alex panted, shaking Cristy by the shoulders, eyes wide. "Who were you looking at?"

  ?Cristy shook her head, a jerky movement, as if her neck hurt.

  "No one," she whispered, her voice still thick with terror. "This time... this time I wasn't inside someone. I was outside. It was me, projected among the trees. Like a radio signal."

  ?"Get down!" Buddy barked. "Everyone on the floor! Away from the windows!"

  They threw themselves onto the worn rug as the shadow of something passed quickly in front of the closed shutters.

  ?Alex crawled toward Tony, grabbing his arm.

  "The quartz," he hissed, with the desperation of a drowning man. "Tony, use it. Do what you did at Tower Gamma. Drain them. Turn it all off."

  ?"No!" Tony yanked his arm back as if he had been burned. He felt the crystal in his pocket. It was hot. It pulsed against his thigh like a second, diseased heart. "I can't control it, Alex. At the mine I almost killed you guys. If I activate it here, in this state... I'll empty all of us. We'll become hollow shells."

  "Better empty than dead!"

  "I said no!"

  Tony was lying. Or rather, a part of him was lying.

  Because the call was there. An atrocious hunger rising from the quartz, begging to be fed. Tony had to clench his fists until his nails dug into his palms to keep from obeying.

  ?SKRRRCH.

  The crackling sound of a megaphone tore through the air, distorted and metallic, drowning out the night wind.

  ?"COLLINS. WE KNOW THEY'RE IN THERE."

  The voice came from everywhere.

  "YOU ARE SURROUNDED. HAND OVER THE KIDS AND YOUR DEATH WILL BE QUICK. OTHERWISE WE WILL BURY YOU INSIDE THAT WOODEN COFFIN. YOU HAVE TEN SECONDS."

  ?Buddy remained motionless, crouched near the couch. He exchanged a look with a massive Dissonant.

  In the other man's eyes, there was no hope. Only cold calculation.

  "We have no way out, Buddy," the man murmured, gripping his useless shotgun. "There are too many. Not against them."

  ?Katherine, crouched near Cristy, looked up at the closed shutters. Her face was pale, tense.

  "Valeryk himself..." she murmured, more to herself than to the others. "Why? Why mobilize an entire army for three kids? What do they fear so much that they'd risk an open war?"

  ?Buddy didn't answer. He stood up.

  Slowly.

  He ran a hand over his tired face.

  "Katherine. Jonathan," he said, his voice low, devoid of tremors. "Get ready. On my signal, take the kids and head for the back."

  "What signal?" Jonathan asked, tense.

  Buddy didn't answer. He started walking toward the front door.

  ?"Buddy!" Tony yelled, understanding everything in a second. "No! Don't do it!"

  He tried to stand up, to run after him, but a hand of steel pinned him to the ground. Jonathan held him nailed to the floor.

  "Stay down, kid," the Dissonant growled, but his voice was shaking.

  "Stop!" the other rebels shouted. "Buddy!"

  ?He didn't turn around. He reached the entryway.

  He put his hand on the mangled handle.

  He opened the door.

  The darkness of the night invaded the living room, broken only by the beams of tactical flashlights that all locked onto him.

  Buddy stepped out onto the porch and raised his hands.

  From the floor, Tony watched through the crack.

  The yard was full. Not ordinary soldiers. Men in reinforced suits glowing with status LEDs, wearing frequency visors and carrying heavy weapons. They formed a perfect semicircle around the house. There were dozens. The elite of the Resonant guards. An army for three teenagers.

  ?Buddy turned toward the inside of the house for a fraction of a second.

  He said nothing.

  His eyes met Tony's. It wasn't a look of fear. It was an apology. A silent goodbye.

  Run, those eyes said.

  ?Then, the world broke.

  It wasn't an order. It wasn't a gunshot.

  It was a black, liquid movement that sliced through the air at the periphery of their vision.

  An indistinct silhouette, fast as lightning, shot across the dark yard.

  It slammed into the right flank of the enemy formation.

  A Resonant guard was mowed down. He didn't fall. He was dragged away into the dark.

  "AAAAAAH!"

  The scream was inhuman, cut short by the wet sound of snapping bones.

  Before the others could react, another shadow dropped from the porch roof. And another from the woods.

  The perfect circle of guards shattered into chaos.

  Gunfire. Screams. The sound of meat being torn.

  ?Buddy backed away, pale as a sheet. He rushed back inside and slammed the door, locking it with hands that shook violently.

  He turned to them. He had only one word on his lips.

  "Filaments!"

  ?All hell broke loose outside. Bursts from frequency rifles lit up the windows like day with stroboscopic flashes. Orders being yelled turned into the gurgle of blood.

  "Now's the time!" Buddy yelled, vaulting over the couch. "Go! Now!"

  ?CRASH!

  ?The living room window exploded inward.

  A rain of glass shards and wood rained down on the Dissonants.

  Tony covered his head, feeling the debris scratch his arms.

  Something had come in.

  It didn't stop.

  It was a blur of convulsive movement.

  The thing grabbed the legs of Austin, the young Dissonant.

  Austin didn't even have time to scream.

  He was sucked out through the gash in the wall. His boots dragged across the floor leaving two trails in the dust, his fingernails scratching uselessly at the wood.

  Then he disappeared into the dark outside.

  Only then did the scream come, long and agonizing, fading rapidly toward the woods.

  ?"AUSTIN!" Buddy roared.

  Too late.

  The gash in the wall was wide open. The wind and the noise of the battle poured in.

  A young female Dissonant threw herself forward. She had no weapons.

  She planted her feet wide in front of the massive hole, hands raised and outstretched toward the void, eyes closed in a grimace of painful concentration.

  The air around her sizzled.

  The temperature plummeted twenty degrees in an instant.

  The steam from Tony's breath became a solid cloud.

  The moisture in the air condensed in the window gap. CRACK-CRACK. A thick layer of irregular, opaque ice sealed the gash in three seconds, shutting out the horror. The girl collapsed to her knees, panting.

  ?Another man stepped to her side. He raised his arms to the ceiling.

  Hands didn't emerge from his sleeves, but arcs of purple light. Filaments of plasma crackled in the air, wrapping the room in a living Faraday cage, a hum that drowned out every other sound.

  "This will hide our frequencies!" the man yelled, sweat pouring down his forehead from the effort. "But it won't hold long! Go!"

  ?Buddy ran over to them, grabbing Tony by the jacket.

  "Katherine! Jonathan! Out the back! Toward the cabin! We'll keep them busy here!"

  "I'm not leaving without you!" Tony yelled, trying to break free. "Buddy, they'll kill you!"

  "Move your ass, Tony!" Buddy screamed in his face, spitting anger and fear. "Don't let Austin's death be for nothing! Get out!"

  ?Jonathan didn't wait. He dragged Tony away bodily, while Katherine pushed Alex and Cristy toward the kitchen.

  They smashed through the back door and stumbled out into the freezing night air.

  The smell hit them like a punch: ozone, gunpowder, and burnt copper. The stench of an electrical slaughterhouse.

  The backyard was a chaotic battlefield.

  Bodies of Resonant guards lay strewn in the tall grass, suits torn, LEDs dark. Others were still fighting, firing blindly at shadows that moved too fast to be human. Flashes of frequencies—red, blue, white—lit up the dark, clashing with orange discharges.

  ?"Run!" Katherine ordered. "Don't look back!"

  ?They dashed toward the edge of the dense woods, lungs burning from the cold air. Branches whipped their faces, roots tried to trip them in the dark.

  They ran for fifty yards, hearts in their throats.

  They thought they had made it.

  ?THUMP.

  ?Something fell from above.

  Heavy.

  It landed right in front of them, kicking up a cloud of dead leaves and dirt.

  The three kids braked, skidding on the damp ground, nearly crashing into the thing.

  For the first time, they saw it. Up close.

  Under the pale moonlight, the horror was absolute.

  ?It wasn't a monster. It was a mistake of nature.

  The Filament straightened up with jerky, spastic movements, like a video dropping frames. Its joints bent at impossible angles, accompanied by the sounds of snapping cartilage.

  The body was a twisted mass of carbonized flesh, black and shiny as tar, fused together with a transparent substance, like glass or resin.

  Beneath that hybrid crust, something was moving.

  Veins.

  Not of blood. Veins of living copper. They pulsed with a sickly orange light, pumping energy through the dead tissue.

  It emitted a continuous sound. Zzzzzzz-hummmm. A hum that wasn't heard with the ears, but vibrated directly in the roots of their teeth.

  ?The creature's head snapped toward them.

  It had no face. The mouth was sealed by melted skin.

  Instead of eyes, set into the black sockets, were two bulbs of raw glass. They emitted a white, cold, clinical light.

  ?The kids backed away slowly, terrified, unable to tear their gaze away from that abomination trembling with pure static instability.

  The Filament took a step toward them.

  Then another.

  It stumbled, but it was fast.

  Jonathan raised his rifle, but his hands were shaking.

  ?In that instant, Tony felt something move.

  It wasn't the monster.

  It was his right hand.

  He felt it slide into the pocket of his jeans.

  He wasn't the one giving the command. His brain screamed STOP, but the nerves in his arm answered to another master. A cold, alien master that had taken control of his muscles as if they were the strings of a marionette.

  "No..." Tony whispered, looking at his own arm with horror. "Stop..."

  ?The hand didn't listen.

  His fingers closed around the stone.

  They drew it out slowly.

  The quartz gleamed in the dark of the woods, pulsing in perfect sync with the copper veins of the monster before them.

  Author’s Note ??