The 13 Collective: Bound by Fate and the Universe Read online

  Everyone fled quickly from the site. Thirteen twisted the aperture of his scope on the piece that was left behind. There were windows, or the shapes of windows, in the block of steel that was left behind. Being dark, that was all he could see.

  “Well that was interesting.” Thirteen said aloud to himself.

  “What happened?” Jamal asked.

  “The engine became a drill and went into the ground. But it left something behind. All the locals fled. I’ll admit even I’m scared shitless to move.”

  “Did you ever get into anything like this in New York?”

  “Not really. I mean there was some crazy stuff in my day, but drills sprouting arms was not my field.” Thirteen returned his scope to his belt. “This might be our only chance. if the locals got really spooked they might go to the police. They could be here anytime. I'm going in."

  "Alright. I'm still recording your play by play. Please make it fast."

  Thirteen climbs down the house then sprints across the baseball field, past empty decrepit tents, past home base and stopped at the hold left by the drill. Thirteen takes out his tablet and points it’s camera at it, and presses a red button for it to start recording his findings.

  “The hole it left is large, if I had to guess, about fourteen feet in diameter.” He pulled out a small flashlight to see down the hole, which was endless.

  “The ground has a sheen to it, like its cold, maybe ice forced around it in the drill’s wake. I’m not risking getting closer though.”

  Then Thirteen turned his attention to the house. "There are burn marks common elements to previous entries of this kind. But there are also signs of explosion damage, and there’s a chunk of the dugout missing. I find no other signs that this thing crashed. The structure appears to be made of steel, or some kind of metal."

  He approached the windows of the box, they are charred and it’s dark inside, there’s nothing he can see. He goes to a set of doors. He tries to push them open but they don’t budge.

  "There are ports for tubes, vent maybe. And there’s charred wiring. These doors seem thick, maybe blast doors. But there's no power to open them. it's like it was torn out of something. It reminds me of a submarine cabin. Given it was attached to an engine, of some kind, I'm marking this as a UFO."

  "A UFO? I thought you said it didn't crash." Jamal said.

  "Figuratively speaking. We have no idea what it is."

  "Okay, Thirteen, if you’re finished get back here and let’s go. Hopefully when we come back it'll still be here."

  ****

  "Thank you for showing up so quickly!" says an older woman in her robe.

  "No problem. So you said this knocked off the corner of your apartment? Did you see what it was?" Dee asked as he stood near the edge of the open living room. HE could look into the city of four story apartment buildings from here with a glamour us view, outside of the chewed up hole that made that view possible. It was erratic and there were burn marks.

  "It was a gold... thing! I thought it was space debris from that NAAA satellite that was supposed to be falling back to earth. But good God it had a fiery golden trail behind it. You can see the burns!" She sais pointing to the edges of the chewed up walls.

  Then Dee’s phone ran on his belt. He picked it up, spoke a moment, then returned it to his pocket."Thank you ma'am. My partner has triangulated where the foreign debris may have landed. Emergency services will take care of you from here. Thank you for your time."

  The older woman smiled with a nod, still staring at the damage to her apartment as he left hastily. He spotted and turned away from the same detective he saw before, and made his way down the fire exit, hoping that he was not recognized.

  ****

  Twenty minutes later, Dee found himself trespassing into an abandoned post office. He and L-13, a new recruit, made their way through the dark past the counter into the sorting area. Long gone was most of the equipment, instead there was a stage with some roughed up sound equipment.

  “This is a venue.” The rookie said. “A lot of those death metal bands use these place to both practice and hold their shows. But could be others as well. Squatters or punk or something.”

  “Are you a music expert, L-13?”

  “I know some….”

  “Shut up. Eyes open. Look at this.” Dee said his flashlight pointing to the entry area where something came through. They followed it to the corner of the room, where a burned out speak was sitting.

  “It landed there.” Dee said and pulled out his radiation detector.

  “People were here recently.” The rookie said.

  “How can you tell?”

  “Well the door wasn’t locked for one. See the cups? And the spills? They had drink here. It’s fresh. And I think I see some blood too.”

  “Stage prop, if your death metal theories are correct.”

  Dee activated the detector and it shot up to it’s at 40 kilobots. He kicked away the remains of the speaker, but nothing was out of the ordinary

  “Signal is weaker here. Nothing looks out of place. Must have been moved.” Dee said.

  “If there was a concert here, broken up by the debris, someone might have come snooping for whatever it was that fell. Maybe they wanted a souvenir.” The rookie said.

  “Perhaps.”

  “So what do we do now?”

  “We can use this to follow the signal. There’s a narrow girth for the signal so we can at least get an idea where it ended up when the signal is the strongest. However, over time it will lose potency. We have to move quickly before it deteriorates.”

  Dee led his companion toward the door when the detective from the first site met him there with four uniforms.

  “Ah. Hello. Detective Anderson was it?”

  “Yes sir. Care to explain what you are doing here?”

  “Investigating. Like what you do. But as you know, this is still government time.”

  “Enough sir. I saw you at the apartment, and given there’s private property having been destroyed, we need to account for everyone. So, let’s see those credentials.”

  ****

  It took an entire day to find out that the authorities definitely had Dee and L-13. Because of his Classified background, he couldn't be identified, so when probing the precincts around the city it was hard to track him down. A day was wasted trying to find him, and the other operatives were busy getting the other pieces back home.

  With Dee out of action, Thirteen volunteered to track Dee’s lead from the post office. Using a tracker he finally got a spike in activity at a low income apartment complex several blocks away. It was dirty and in disrepair, his getting in should be relatively easy.

  The trail let him to apartment 4H. The door was locked, but it was weak. Thirteen slipped out a small pocketbook of tools and picked the doors locks and snuck inside.

  The apartment was dark, with only a lamp or two. There was a couch but there were no real cushions on it, pillows made to seem like cousins. A radio, but no TV or expensive gaming systems. There were a few holes in the wall too. Almost as bit as the sliding glass door that led out onto a concrete balcony that had a basil plant.

  The next room, past the mini kitchen and a yellowish bathroom, was the bedroom. It had a mattress on the floor with many pillows and blankets. There were smashed picture frames with ruined pictures tucked away. Someone must have had a few broken hearts recently to have left them in the bed they slept in.

  Thirteen returned to his meter, which the signal was still a bit weak, but when he turned back to the door, it spiked. He moved fast and he wasn’t out of the bedroom when the front door opened. A bald man in his thirties entered, and saw Thirteen.

  Baldie’s anger fired up immediately and he attacked Thirteen. But Thirteen kicked him back into the door.

  But then the bald man reached into his pocket and pulled out a small piece of fruit, at least it looked like fruit, maybe an apple. But it was glowing, and the power trailed up his arm.

&nbs
p; This wasn’t good, Thirteen thought, and immediately ran for the sliding door. As he threw open the door and his foot hit the black iron banister of the balcony he turned and a ball of energy races past his back. As Thirteen fell towards the street, He twisted his body to avoid the shattered glass and door frame that came after the energy ball, almost the entire wall of the living room was gone as Thirteen fell four stories as a dump truck of dirt drove by and caught him, driving him away.

  Thirteen looked up, seeing the fire that emerged out of the hold in the building as he was driven away in the dump truck.

  ****

  “You’re free to go, sir.” Detective Anderson said, unlocking the cell he and the rookie sat in.

  “But appreciated Detective. Look me up if there are any other strange sightings around town.” Dee said, handing him a blue business card, then being escorted by Jamal, a dark man with a buzz cut, red jacket, black pants and boots.

  After they were outside of the precinct, they got into the brown sedan on the curb.

  “So where are we?”

  “Thirteen found the guy who took the debris from the post office. The guys tried to kill him with it.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “The dude blew up his apartment with it. Tee says it was a magic golden fireball.”

  “Have we gotten any of our people there yet?”

  “I went in with Bill, and we found the remains of some fliers for a secret concert linked to the post office. We can assume this guys was there, possible with the band that was playing.”

  “Okay. So where is this guy now?”

  “Disappeared afterwards. The signal is about gone, but we were able to trace it to the Jagger’s Club.”

  “Jagger’s club?”

  “They host bands there sometimes. But it’s a very upper class place.” L-13 said.

  “Has anyone checked it out yet?”

  “There’s been a development. I’ll take us by and you can look for yourself.

  Jamal drove Dee and L-13 by Jagger’s club, being the day now it was dead and closed off to the public, but there were armed guard outside of the building.

  “This place is normally chill, even for VIPS. All of them are packing some serious hear under their jackets.”

  “A shift.”

  “Sir?”

  “Thirteen tells me he can sense when there are shifts, after these objects come into our world, something changes. Maybe this was one of them, if the rookie remembers this being relaxed.”

  “Could just be a precaution for something going on there.”

  “My gut tells me otherwise.” Dee said. “Where’s Thirteen now?”

  “Back at the homestead.”

  “Let’s get everyone together. The police are aware of my presence now, and their interrogation is getting other agencies involved. We might need some clout before we take this on. And if this guy has somehow acquired a weapon of some sort, we need all the help we can get.”

  ###

  About the Author:

  Jeffrey Zweig II started writing long before he could drive. After high school He studied screen/creative writing at Indiana University and Indiana State University. After that he lost himself to learn to live, to write, and expand himself and After that he lost himself to learn to live, write, and expand himself and his craft to become a novelist.

  He placed in Semi-Finals for the 13th Annual Fade In screenplay competition and made Official Selection for Cinema City Film Festival for his screenwriting.

  Other Stories by Jeff Zweig:

  Tug of War

  My Name is Jerry Richardson II

  Uprooting Demons

  The 13 Collective: Bound by Fate and the Universe

  Anthologies

  Project Nine: A Road of Fate

  Novels

  The End Begins: The Nine

  Upcoming Projects:

  The End Begins: The GateKeeper (novel)

  “Dreams “(novelette)

  Connect with Jeff:

  Twitter: https://twitter.com/jzweigii

  His Blog: Stories of the Sleepless Mind

  Facebook:Username: jzweigii

  Goodreads: Jeff Zweig II