Strange Little Band – Dark, edgy sci-fi romance

“I don’t want to do this,” Ashlynn said again, leaning against the wall of the private room in the psych ward. She wanted to sleep for a week. By then Jake would have finished healing her bandaged, splinted leg. Right now the half-healed skin was tender and itchy. A crutch allowed her to keep her [...]

A dragon. Of course, Shane thought half-hysterically. Every instinct said to run, but he couldn’t. His heartless alien bastard of a father had control of his body. I hate this place. Stop whining, Almeida scolded. Carlyle won’t harm me. Harm you? It’s MY body– Shane cut himself off as his asshole father’s words caught up [...]

The executive level was a ghost town. Jake had visited on a handful of occasions, always accompanied by one of his parents. Each time the spacious, daylit lobby had hummed with quiet activity. Gibson and his Chairmen masters had tens of visitors each day. Despite that, he only recalled seeing a handful of guards. Seeing [...]

Teague limped forward quickly but cautiously, holding his 9 mm pistol ready. Their luck was holding; they’d won three skirmishes since leaving the psych ward, and the bullet that had clipped his leg was their only injury. It hurt like hell, but didn’t slow him down. Ashlynn’s mental voice whispered, Group of five 50 meters [...]

Flames climbed the piece of paper in Addison’s hand, consuming a short list of numbers: 24, 9, 76. She, Shane, Teague, and a handful of others knew the numbers’ meaning. They were the number of Triptych employees who’d gone AWOL today, AWOL employees recovered, and the current count of co-conspirators. Nine, Addison marveled. Less than [...]

They either stared at him or wouldn’t look at him at all. One or the other. It made Shane want to scream, but of course he couldn’t. That mulatto bitch wouldn’t let him. How had everything gone so wrong? Shane watched the girl and her dweeb of a brother from the back of the let’s-make-pretend-we’re-scientists [...]

If Dad’s office hadn’t been saturated with blood, Jake would have lay down beside his father and slept, too.  He’d poured nearly all of his energy into healing Dad’s neck and stabilizing his vitals.  His father had lost what would normally be a fatal amount of blood.  The last thing Jake had done before his [...]