Fear the Survivors Read Online Free

on the sleeping major.
    Gripping the unconscious man’s head with both his hands, he focused in on the center of the hemorrhage he had detected inside the man’s skull, and set his machinery to work. His scalpel was invisible. A mere flicker of bluish green in the dusty air as it lanced the major’s skull. Watching in awe, Captain Jennifer Falster saw the major’s hair singe and burn away before she saw the black spot appear on the top of his forehead. A small circle of the skin flayed away along with the thin layer of flesh beneath it and in a moment she was staring at a tiny patch of her colleague’s bleached white skull.
    The hole that the laser then burrowed in the unconscious major’s skull was barely two millimeters across, but as soon as the laser broke through, the sudden release of pressure caused a spurt of blood to squirt from the gap. It sprayed across Shahim’s chest and lap, a line of red relieving the oppression of the major’s mind.
    With the skull penetrated, Lord Mantil lifted his index finger and pressed it to the tiny hole. Once more, the minute fibers wormed out, this time into the major’s head, fanning out as soon as they passed through the hole in his skull into the gap between the brain and the cranial bone that cradled it. As they spread out, they found the broken capillaries and veins that were causing the hemorrhage and they began to heat up. The heat from them singed the tiny blood vessels, making them contract and seal and then the wires began to rotate in Major Jack Toranssen’s head, cauterizing the other broken blood vessels as they went.
    After a moment, he withdrew his finger and focused his left eye once more, sealing and anaesthetizing the small wound even as his hands prepared a bandage from the med kit. Jennifer watched in fascination as the Agent worked, his hands moving with speed and precision, her mind working to keep up with him. In a moment it was over and he turned to her once more, his hand rising to touch her other ear this time. She let him touch her, giving in to the strangeness of it all and his voice sounded in her deaf ears once more.
    “It is done. I do not know how long he will sleep, but we must move, and we must move now. Captain, can I ask you to trust me one more time?”
    She paused a moment, more surprised that she was even being asked than actually debating her answer. She had just seen a man perform brain surgery with his eyes, and now that man was talking to her with wires in his fingers. What was she going to do? Run away? Ask the Iranians for help? Wait here for a cavalry that she knew would never arrive?
    She mouthed yes to him, and followed it with a hesitant shrug, like a child trusting her mother before she pulls off a band-aid.
    “Thank you,” his voice rang in her ear. He quickly performed the same simple but incredibly precise surgery on her right ear as he had her left, and then he removed his hand from her cheek and stood. She stood as well, a little unsteady, but her strength returning with every minute. He turned and motioned for her to climb on his back. Sparing a thought for how they were going to move the major, she shook her head, mumbling that he should carry the major, she would be fine.
    But his face became insistent, the face of a father not wanting a child to argue, not this time. Just do it, his expression said, and she reacted with a trust born of a lack of options. Wrapping her good arm around his neck, she climbed meekly onto his back, wrapping her legs around his waist as she did so. He anticipated her movements and bent to meet her, lifting her easily, and then bending at the knee to scoop up the major. She felt amazement blossom afresh inside her as he stood with ease, bearing their combined weight like they were but rag dolls.
    He turned his face to her and he mouthed, ‘Hold on’ and then he winked, a conspiratorial smile spreading across his face.
    And with that, he leaned into the wind and leapt forward, bounding