Tiny Horror

"Kaelen."

The voice was faint, but it was real. It wasn't a taste or a smell. It was sound. It was the only clean thing left in the world.

Kaelen forced his eyes open. He crawled toward Sarah. His hands were numb. His fine motor skills were gone. He managed to grab a scalpel from a nearby tray. He sawed through the zip ties, the blade nicking his own fingers, but he didn't feel the pain.

Sarah slumped forward into his arms. She was shaking. The crystalline device was still humming at the base of her neck, its needles vibrating with a frantic, dying energy.

"Don't pull it out," she whispered. Her breath smelled like copper. "The feedback will kill us both. There's a kill switch. On the console. Blue light."

Kaelen dragged himself to the computer. His fingers felt like heavy sausages. He found the blue light and slammed his palm against it with the last of his strength.

The humming stopped. The silver needles retracted with a wet, slurping sound. The device fell away from the neck of Sarah. It clattered to the floor. It looked like a piece of dead coal.

Kaelen turned to look at Cassian Vane.

The killer was still alive, but he was gone. He lay on the floor in a pool of his own fluids. His limbs were twitching in a rhythmic, purposeless pattern. His mind had been burned out by the overload. He'd spend the rest of his life in a catatonic state, his brain a scrambled circuit board of screaming voices he could never turn off. He was the host for the city now, just as he had wanted.

"You saved me," Sarah breathed. Her hand reached out to touch the cheek of Kaelen. "But Kaelen. Your eyes."

Kaelen looked at his reflection in the darkened computer screen. The capillaries in his eyes had all ruptured. His irises were surrounded by a ring of solid crimson. He looked like a demon.

The tale continues...