Guilt ripped into her like a rusty, serrated knife. It took up residence in her soul, settling in and getting comfortable so it could saw away ragged pieces of flesh and leave her to bleed.
She settled back in the chair and draped one leg casually over the other, her hands coming to rest together on her knee. “Arrest me. Torture me. Parade me about in the public square. You will have your prize catch. And you will lose everything.
Do you love me?” His voice rang flat in his own ears, deadened and weighted with the recognition there was only one chance, and a fool’s chance at that
Deep in the recesses of her mind, she knew they were probably watching. They watched everything, after all. Let them watch. Let them see what it meant to be human. To live. Let them see what it meant to love, and be loved in return.
She gazed at the bay of wrecked shuttles in dismay. The last of her adrenaline seeped away at the sight of the widespread destruction. It occurred to her then, for perhaps the first time in this long nightmare, that she was going to die.
Above the curving arc of the planet, a mammoth explosion plumed crimson and charcoal then erupted in a starburst of crystaline white which for a microsecond shone brighter than a sun. For the briefest moment he allowed himself to entertain the notion...
If her daughter’s ship had been disintegrated in space there would never be evidence of it, never an answer to what had happened to her. If she stopped to ponder the implications she might break. And Admiral Miriam Solovy did not break.
He wanted to grind every Federation world into dust beneath his boot as his army blazed a trail of blood and corpses all the way to Seneca. He wanted to storm their inner sanctum and fire a laser into the skull of their Field Marshal while their Chai...
His punch knocked her back a meter into the wall. His fist had moved of his own volition, carrying a rage and frustration all its own. To his dismay, she didn’t fall. People so small as her always fell. No tears pooled in her eyes; instead they fla...
They flew high above savanna grassland. The sky was the deep cornflower blue of a sunny late afternoon on Earth…exactly the color of a sunny late afternoon on Earth. Only there was no sun. Whatever was lighting this planet, it wasn’t a star.
Her weight settled on her back foot as she crossed her arms over her chest and stared at him, now legitimately baffled. “How delusional are you, aliens in your head notwithstanding?
Individuals reacted in any number of ways to extreme stress and, relatedly, to impending death. A non-negligible percentage of people reacted in a manner which could be summed up by, ‘Screw it, I’m going out in style!
So that’s why I say ‘never have anything you can’t walk away from.’ Especially a woman. For them, because this is a dangerous life we lead and you never know if or when it will blow back on those close to you." "And for you, because trust me ...
Tiny details imperceptible to us decide everything!
How I wished during those sleepless hours that I belonged to a different nation, or better still, to none at all.
It was real sweet, except that he'd drugged me and ridden me to within an inch of my life, and I was still so high I was paralyzed and mute. But other than that, I guess it was pretty romantic.
Tudo parecia organizado da melhor forma possível, como se de fato o mundo constasse somente de palavras, como se assim o próprio horror fosse trazido para dimensões seguras, como se para cada aspecto de uma coisa houvesse um reverso, para cada mal...
He did not have time to wallow, to give a moment’s thought to what may have happened to her or whether she was alive. Turn into the punch, grab hold of the gun, leap into the arena. Attack. He had to move. Now.
É um vazio todo peculiar que surge quando, numa cidade estranha, a pessoa disca números de telefone em vão. Quando ninguém atende, é uma decepção de alcance transcendente, como se esses números aleatórios fossem uma questão de vida ou morte...