Tag: Breanna

  • Stone to Flesh – Excerpt No. 8

    Disclaimer: This excerpt is currently in development. There may be typos, errors, omissions, inconsistencies and so forth.


  • Stone to Flesh – Excerpt No. 7

    Disclaimer: This excerpt is currently in development. There may be typos, errors, omissions, inconsistencies and so forth.


  • Stone to Flesh – Excerpt No. 4

    Disclaimer: This excerpt is currently in development. There may be typos, errors, omissions, inconsistencies and so forth.


  • Stone to Flesh – Excerpt No. 6

    Disclaimer: This excerpt is currently in development. There may be typos, errors, omissions, inconsistencies and so forth.


  • Stone to Flesh – Excerpt No. 5

    Disclaimer: This excerpt is currently in development. There may be typos, errors, omissions, inconsistencies and so forth.


  • Stone to Flesh – Excerpt No. 3

    Disclaimer: This excerpt is currently in development. There may be typos, errors, omissions, inconsistencies and so forth.


  • Disconnected – Excerpt No. 3

    Disclaimer: This excerpt is currently in development. There may be typos, errors, omissions, inconsistencies and so forth.


  • Shell Shocked – Part II

    “Wake up,” Mason said.

    Breanna snapped up from the console, and left a puddle of drool on the surface. Her eyelids felt as though they weighed a ton, and with some effort she managed to pry them open. What a shame, the world turned out to be nothing more than a haze.

    The Van Helsing Resurgence by Evelyn Chartres

    As her eyes focused on Mason, she realised that her mind had been exploring a memory. Now she hated him even more for taking her out of it.

    “What?” Breanna asked annoyed.

    “Any updates?” Mason queried.

    “What? Oh!” Breanna said while she wiped the drool off her display.

    Her fingers glided over the display with more difficulty than usual, and she grimaced every time the wrong functions were triggered. Breanna’s mind was lingering on that memory and would not compensate for her smaller, thicker, and less agile digits.

    Eventually, she had the information they sought and said, “Nothing yet.”

    Mason asked, “How much time do you need?”

    “The system is running at full capacity,” Breanna said. “Since the shockwave really messed things up, we will need a lot of resources to unravel what happened.”

    Mason looked around the room. In the back corner, Brett was replacing the floor tiles one at a time. Every move he made was slow and laborious; his mind was clearly not in it. All of their minds were wandering.

    “Okay. Go home,” Mason said.

    Breanna blinked several times and was severely tempted to pinch herself. Nonetheless, she thought it best to confirm, “What?”

    “You’re running on fumes,” Mason said. “We all are. So let’s leave these systems on auto. We can check on them tomorrow.”

    Breanna did not need to be told twice. She grabbed her coat and phone before heading towards the door. Then it occurred to her that it was probably sensible to smile and thank him.

    “Thanks,” Breanna said with a meek smile. “Have a good night,” she added, managing to sound sincere.

    Mason spotted Brett trying to make a break for the door, “You’ll need to close up this floor before you leave.”

    Brett looked as though he was about to toss out one of his witty remarks, but reason must have gotten the better of him. Without a word, he turned around and headed directly for the stack of tiles.

    Breanna smiled, and for a split second did not hate Mason that much. Although, this would wear off when that ass reverted to his regular charming self.

    Disclaimer: This chapter is currently in development. There are likely typos, errors, omissions, inconsistencies and so forth. Please do not treat this as a polished and completed work!


  • Shell Shocked – Part I

    Breanna looked out through the window as nearby stars streaked by. Those farther away moved at varying speeds, while others appeared to be fixed points in space. The harsh lighting of the overhead fixtures created a superimposed reflection on the surface of the window. She reached out to her mirror image with long and slender fingers. This was a rare occurrence, since their grey flesh absorbed most of the light. It was a defense mechanism for their kind, one that guaranteed unwavering uniformity.

    The Van Helsing Resurgence by Evelyn Chartres

    Her gaze shifted to that mouthless face, dull grey skin, oversized cranium, and reflective eyes. This image was mirrored in her eyes, the light bouncing back and forth to create an infinite number of copies. The only aspect not duplicated was her information overlay, courtesy of her cybernetic implants.

    Breanna dropped her head to get that image out of her thoughts and turned to her right. From this vantage point, she gazed down the length of the ship, a massive vessel that stretched out farther than her eyes perceived. The overlay included a map of the ship in the top corner of her vision, along with an indication of what she could see. She could see about a third of the ship with her enhancements and would soon see only a fraction of that.

    The ship appeared to be silent, although she knew that was nothing more than an illusion. The fusion generators were always operational, autonomous, and powerful enough to propel this vessel through the vast distances between stars. The sounds they generated had long ago been relegated to background noise.

    She again turned to the right and faced a series of glass panels that shielded the stasis chambers. There were rows upon rows of workers in a hibernation state. They would remain as such until they were needed for missions or upon arrival at the next star system. Normally, she was tapped into their thoughts, a feature of cybernetic implants. Alas, in preparation for her mission, the link had been severed. For the first time in her life, Breanna was alone with her thoughts. The sheer magnitude of that solitude weighed heavily on her.

    Soon, the visual overlays would be gone followed by the implants themselves. All of these steps were required before they genetically modified her cellular structure, all because her new configuration would reject the implants.

    “Breanna,” the ship’s public address system blared out.

    She turned around to face the control console. When travelling within a solar system, this place was a hive of activity, swarming with workers. This far out, the ship required nothing more than a few to maintain a vigil. Truthfully, the computer handled all day-to-day operations while travelling through deep space, so her presence was largely superfluous.

    She had been scheduled to return to stasis in a couple of cycles, but a new mission objective altered those plans. The ship was about to move beyond the range of a passing system, so they would no longer be able to send in quick insertion teams. They needed a long term presence to deal with the locals. To prepare for her mission, she was relieved of her duties to undergo a series of invasive treatments to alter her genetic structure.

    By the end of it, she would be indistinguishable from the native inhabitants of the third planet of that yellow star they bypassed. For now, it was not worth their collective attention, but after a bit of manipulation…

    “Breanna,” the public address system repeated.

    Breanna glided over to the nearest console and ran some diagnostics. The logs confirmed that the loud speakers had not been engaged since they left their home system.

    “Wake up,” came a voice from behind.

    She turned around, but saw nothing. This part of the ship was empty, or at least there was no one within earshot. To say she was confused would have been an understatement, but that quickly morphed into panic when a warm hand grabbed her shoulder…

    Disclaimer: This chapter is currently in development. There are likely typos, errors, omissions, inconsistencies and so forth. Please do not treat this as a polished and completed work!


  • Triple, Venti, Soy, No Foam Latte – Part I

    “How did we get main power up and running again?” Mason asked confused.

    The Van Helsing Resurgence by Evelyn Chartres

    Their original estimate had been in the order of weeks, but the fusion generators were roaring back to life now. When operating normally, they would be silent and undetectable to humans, functioning at frequency ranges that were beyond a human’s ability to detect. In contrast, the ramp up procedure made them impossible to conceal. While the machinery whirled back to life, the sound increased lock-step with the power levels, reminding him of gas turbines spooling up on an airliner.

    For a moment, the building vibrated in harmony with the generators. The startled group looked to one another because this scenario was never meant to happen. If this were to turn into a positive feedback loop, the building would come crashing down.

    Fortunately, the speed increased just enough to cancel out the harmonics. Soon, the main power would be restored and they could get some answers, or so they hoped.

    Brett, who was preoccupied with the generator start-up routine, answered once he was satisfied, “Breanna activated a repair drone.”

    “So I leave for a couple of hours and you find a repair drone that none of us knew about?” Mason asked.

    Brett shrugged before answering, “She found it while snooping around in the inventory database.”

    “Breanna!” Mason yelled, but by now, the generators were nearly silent, so it came across like he was furious.

    “What!” Breanna snapped back. A few seconds later, her head peeked out from the floor above and she asked, “You called, Oh Captain, My Captain?”

    “Stop that!” Mason exclaimed before adding, “Why were you searching through the inventory?”

    Breanna was enjoying getting under his skin. While this had been a rough night for the lot of them, she was still bored of these petty squabbles. She needed an escape, but for now, the where and the who was still up for grabs.

    Breanna let out a long woeful sigh before replying, “I thought it was time well spent compared to staring at a blank screen.”

    “So, you didn’t know we had one?” Mason asked.

    “No,” Breanna said in a bored tone. “Did you?”

    The act of throwing the question back in Mason’s face was her way of avoiding conflict. While Brett could get away with his antics, she had no such leeway.

    Georgians in their true form functioned like insect colonies here on Earth. Enclaves of Georgians were primarily composed of female workers, a small group of drones, and the Queen. Mason, Brett, and Breanna had all been workers, so gender had not been a factor until they were selected for this expedition.

    Mason and Brett ended up with naughty bits on the outside and quickly developed traits that came with that toolset. Mason became the authoritarian ass who led by edict, while Brett played the part of the court jester.

    Breanna had been assigned a female body, which opened up a whole array of alternate attack vectors. While the men could draw conflict by threatening some unwritten patriarchal rule, she possessed the ability to bypass most safeguards all by using her assets against the opposite sex.

    Although effective, Breanna soon learned that she preferred the company of other women. There was a softness, a connection that existed during those liaisons that eluded her with men. Her age of discovery coincided with the Roaring Twenties, an era when empowered and hedonistic women were also open to exploration.

    While Mason questioned Brett on what was known of the repair drone, Breanna pulled out her mobile from the depths of her pocket. She flicked through the interface until a certain name made her heart skip a beat. Without a second thought, the fiery redhead sent out a ping into the night.

    “Am I going to get a reply?” Breanna hoped.

    Mason tapped Breanna’s shoulder and asked, “Is everything okay?”

    Breanna fumbled with the phone until she managed to press the lock button. The screen went black, and left behind the reflection of a hysterical woman.

    “Fuck!” Breanna exclaimed. “Don’t do that.”

    “Sorry,” Mason said in that sorry, not sorry tone.

    “Yeah. Yeah,” Breanna replied while ignoring the giggle-snort that Brett made. “I’m sorry. Did I miss something?”

    Mason gave her a curious look, as though he was trying to peer into the depths of her soul. Since they were no longer linked through cybernetic implants, the man gave up.

    “Can we confirm—,” Mason said.

    “The gain in mass?” Breanna answered while interacting with her station’s interface. She paused for a moment before adding, “The original estimates were correct.”

    “That’s impossible!” Mason blurted out.

    “Well, normally, yes,” Breanna said.

    She switched to her phone and scanned trending headlines. There were a few articles of note, so she pushed the content onto her workstation’s display to show the group.

    The first article started off with the image of a man in prison attire. The headlines read, ’Man who rode lighting, back from the grave?’ Immediately, to the side of the mugshot, they displayed the picture of a man they apprehended earlier tonight. Either they were twins or—

    “Says here that police arrested a man trying to break into his former home. Authorities are baffled. Dental records and fingerprints were matched to those of the convicted serial killer, Adam Graves. The same man who was executed last year for his string of sex crimes that culminated in a series of horrific murders,” Breanna summarized. “The thing is, this man has no scars from the police shootout.”

    The second article was more graphic. It contained a picture of a skyscraper superimposed over a dilapidated neighbourhood block. Some developments did integrate existing building faces into the design, but this was something else entirely. The front face of the larger structure was blocked by two boarded up buildings. In between, there were dumpsters, full of trash, which were fused in the front doors. Of course, the most disturbing element, were the people embedded into the structure. Men and women in suits were now literally part of walls erected a century ago.

    “What the—,” Mason and Brett said.

    “The article states that this neighbourhood was torn down shortly after the last municipal elections,” Breanna said. “Now it seems that both events happened simultaneously.”

    “So—,” Mason tried to ask.

    “Correct,” Breanna said. “These humans can’t create matter, or at least not on this scale. The disturbance we saw appears to have resurrected alternate timelines and integrated them with our own.”

    Mason turned to face Brett who, by now, was white as a sheet. It was one thing to make a mistake that knocked out their systems. Mishaps like that could be remedied without alerting the world to their presence. However, this was a fuck up of epic proportions. People were sure to remember an alternate version of events and start asking questions. News of this event was already spreading like wildfire which would only add fuel to the fire.

    “Oh shit.” Brett said in an attempt to deflect.

    Breanna smiled, knowing that this court jester was about to be put in his place. She only wished that she had a big bag of popcorn on hand to enjoy the show.

    Disclaimer: This chapter is currently in development. There are likely typos, errors, omissions, inconsistencies and so forth. Please do not treat this as a polished and completed work!


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