Horizon's End, Part Four: Etherium

“Hello, Miss.”

     Hannah gasped, but her shock quickly turned anger. “You! You dare invade my home? WHAT ARE YOU?”

     “Really? Is this your home? Is it anyone's?” He didn't laugh, even though Hannah expected him to. He actually sounded serious.

     Tab turned to Hannah. “You know Jack?”

      Hannah started to reply, but was cut off by loud crashes and a man shouting “Stop where you are! Colony Security! Hands where we we can see them!”

      Eight men had emerged seemingly from the woodwork in a half-circle, automatic rifles pointed at the cloaked man (Hannah wondered if “man” was really the right word) by the fountain, each wearing a black uniform with “U.S.C.S.” on the shoulder, matte black armor, helmets with tinted visors, and bouquet of hand grenades on their belts. She had only seen them on two occasions, both of which ended in colossal gunfights. She grabbed the kids by their collars and dove behind a pagoda. “Stay down!”

      She heard two or three muffled sentences, then a moment of silence, and then the security officers opened fire in a deafening thunderstorm, emptying their magazines into the unarmed cloaked man, who twitched as each bullet hit him, and then fell, smoking, to the decorative brick pathway. The men in armor walked carefully over to his body and kicked him. His cloak the billowed in the artificial breeze, and it sailed and spiraled for a bit, like the ocean's distant typhoons, revealing nothing underneath, not even stains from the flying blood that Hannah was sure she had seen. Tab whispered in her ear.

     “Do you know why he was here?”

       Hannah frowned, not angry but concerned, looking from children to the security men to the cloak flying about like a memo caught in a squall, or a bird in an intangible dream. She closed her eyes and thought for a bit, but Tom interrupted her, pointing at the cloak that sailed past the lights like a cloud. Hannah watched as an idea dawned on her.

     “I....think I know.”