Havok Publishing

Thriller

One More Time Around

Has it been long enough? The little voice in her head asked for the umpteenth time. No, one more time. Jyone used the phrase as a habitual counter, marking another revolution around the black hole. One more time around, then I’ll be far enough in the future that they will have forgotten me.

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Down Twisted Cypress Way

For Zadie, the first ninety-nine steps under the oppressive canopy of nighttime Pennsylvania woods were hard enough. The air was still and stagnant, and only thin shafts of moonlight pierced the darkness. But at the hundredth step, Zadie hesitated and took a deep breath. She had reached the point where she would have

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Thirteen Minutes to Kill

One of us will die today, and it’s sure as hell not gonna be me.
I’m a billion miles from home, crouched under a pile of ice boulders. Methane rain pours from Titan’s dark orange clouds.
The LCD screen on my forearm pulses red.
THERMAL COIL DAMAGED
REGULATED TEMPERATURE REMAINING: 00:13:24

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The Prairie Smuggler

The lisuxx were on the move, rising like a lake of miniature stars over the dark prairie. I crouched at the edge of the forest, watching with a familiar sense of awe tightening my chest. They were a blinding, bright yellow. The color of poison. Forbidden to the tribe. Millions of

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A Fluke at Work

Another boring Saturday.
I yawned, the report blurring before me. The faint buzz of life trickled up from the streets far below.
I continued scrolling. Just a few more before I could clock out and head home. Home, where my videogames patiently waited.
But nothing else did.
With a start, I realized

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Flea for Your Life

Darshia stretched her longest set of legs and hopped a couple times to limber up. Zephyriah was a difficult little brother at the best of times, but… he was missing. She had to go find him before darkness fell. Before anyone else died.
The last time he disappeared, Zephyriah and his friends

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The Gnat

The first thing you notice is light—cool and soft white, pervasive and blank.
You are so comfortable and drowsy it doesn’t occur to you to wonder where you are or how you got there. The temperature is pleasant. There is no sound other than your pulse, no smell besides a faint,

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Radio Silent

The first thing Mia noticed was the blood—dark specks drizzled across fresh snow like errant paint strokes. Her boots crunched in pursuit until the spatter disappeared into a sheet of white beyond the remote compound.
Blinding wind cut at her eyes as she peered into the Yukon permafrost and shouldered her

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Taming the Volcano

Auahi is angry.
He burns molten hot, his flanks shaking, gray clouds billowing. I adjust the scarf over my mouth and continue hiking up the volcano.
After one hundred years of peace, Auahi is finally awake. Now, his fury will destroy my village—and those who are unable to escape it in time.

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Mirror of the Sky

I gazed at the distant horizon, where the sky met the sea. The indigo twilight slowly faded into the dark ocean.
Something in that vast emptiness called out to me. It was more than just a vague desire to see the world. It was more of a beckoning. Like a beacon from a distant

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The Egg

The way I see it, you find a giant egg in the forest, you have two options. You break it open or you don’t.
The lodge we’d passed through was easy to see from the edge of the crater. Stand atop a fallen tree and there it was—civilization. Like children in sight

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Man & Beast

“I’m warning ye Elial, if it happens again, I’ll destroy yer vermin pets meself!”
“My wyrms didn’t touch your sheep, Malchi.” Elial fought down his irritation. This was the second dead ewe found mangled in Malchi’s fields, with neighbors suffering similar losses. No one knew the culprit, but many placed the crime squarely

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