Elizabeth." I feel my smile on my face as I understand what she is doing. Though it's a strange one, she has a name-sound just like I do, and she's telling me what it is. I try to make the same sounds. "Ehh..beh." I frown. Why is her name-sound so di...
Noah gave an exaggerated eye roll. “Just out of curiosity, is this the stupidest thing you’ve ever done?” “It wouldn’t be fair to rank them.” Caleb gunned the engine.
He made sure his tone remained casual. He was trying to keep his son unaware of the encroaching alien invasion for as long as he could, be it another day or another hour. Once innocence was lost it was never regained. So he took his son fishing and s...
Alone for a few precious seconds, he drew in a deep breath. He stood on a ruined street in a ruined city. Destruction stretched for kilometers in every direction, all caused by a single man for whom vengeance had devolved into madness.
Caleb!” The sharp, forceful tone demanded he halt. He found he had complied, but did not turn around. His voice sounded low and hoarse, likely because he couldn’t breathe. “Alex, I can’t.
He was terrified he was making the wrong choice. He relied on his instincts in his work but now he didn’t dare trust them. The wound of betrayal still burned raw in his chest and another cut might be the killing blow. But it was the end of the worl...
God, she was beautiful. Hair a tangled mess, clothes torn, lips pale and swollen, skin streaked in dirt. And she was so damn beautiful and flawed and perfect.
He steadied himself by resting one palm on her thigh and the other on the armrest, and rose to his knees. “I’ll be damned.” “Possibly. But not today, I think.
We—humanity—didn’t come this far by being afraid. Explorers and visionaries have willingly headed off to certain death for thousands of years and by doing so brought us to where we are today. No one has ever told us ‘no’ and succeeded in ma...
She didn’t want to be the savior of humanity. She never had. She didn’t want to be the vanguard—of destruction or salvation. What she had really wanted was to be a girl whose father lived to show her the stars. Instead she had been left to wand...
If humanity is annihilated because we were too busy squabbling with one another to manage a proper stand, we probably deserve the annihilation.
His whisper continued to stream a silent cacophony of warnings, kill and damage reports and pleas for assistance. He allowed himself two seconds to watch it and came away with the sense they were losing. Not lost and not soon, but losing.
You’re covered in blood again.” “I really am.” “Why are you always covered in blood when I wake up after being unconscious?” “Usually for the same reason you were unconscious, I think.
She burst into her hotel room pulling her blouse over her head with one hand while she yanked her shoes off with the other. No way was she going to face an alien invasion in heels and silk.
As soon as he had departed she directed her attention to the others. “I need a shielded containment box, radiation gloves and a micro welding torch. And a crescent wrench.
Time slowed as metal shards enveloped her like shattered glass. None pierced her of course, but it seemed as though she might be able to reach out and pluck one from the sky. She settled for stretching out an imagined hand, palm upturned, and letting...
Good luck with the aliens, and if we survive this feel free to look me up on your next vacation.” “Good luck with the aliens? You are such a prick.
You’re insane.” “It’ll work.” “Which does not alter the fact that you are insane.
She thought he might have said her name, but it was background radiation accompanying the hum in her ears and the symphony in her head— —a song of quantum mechanics and trajectory calculations and astroscience physics and where to go, where to go...
The Artificial’s speech pattern was an idiosyncratic mix of awkward and colloquial. It was unexpectedly endearing. “I just have good instincts. Mostly I love being in space.” But you are not ‘in’ space. You are in your starship and your sta...
Blood drummed in her ears and adrenaline coursed through her veins, driving her to move. To act. Her hands trembled against his chest. Time vanished out from beneath her feet, one accelerating second at a time.
