Crime Rave by Sezin Koehler

blackout on the events, and then to secure a location for the survivors. “I don’t give a rat’s ass what you have to do. You clear a floor and get security detail set up ASAP. The survivors are to be surveilled at all times, you understand me?” A pause while Anderson wipes sweat from his brow, hating the feeling of it trickle down his back and from under his arms. Why didn’t he bring a spare shirt? “We cannot risk even the slightest breach of security here. Move it! You call me when it’s done.” The intermittent sharp pain in his chest becomes a constant. He opens and closes his fist, regulating his breathing, praying.
    Inside the operating theatre, Guy Severin cannot steal his gaze away from the group who grew from amputated body parts. The Survivors shiver from the overachieving air conditioning, screaming to be released from the Velcro that hold them to the morgue gurneys.
    The Countess Barona salivates, her eyes glued to the young giant with only one eye. I must have her! Which politician will be the most effective in turning over this prize? She has dirt on all of them. But who will get it done? Barona’s body breaks out in gooseflesh as she conceives of a plan. Not just a plan of how to remand the girl into her custody, but what she will do to her afterward. Mayor Ellis catches a glimpse of Barona’s wicked smile and knows he’s in trouble. I can kiss re-election goodbye, deciding he will have nothing to do with whatever the psycho bitch is scheming.
    Detective Günn focuses on her breathing, hoping she won’t have a panic attack and embarrass herself in front of her colleagues. Günn excuses herself from their company and heads into the restroom, where she splashes warm water on her face. She fixes the strands of her pixie hairdo, left in disarray by whatever it was that happened in that room. She still feels the electricity coursing around her, making the fillings in her teeth vibrate. This can’t be happening, she thinks, the paper towel coarse against her face as she wipes away water and shock. She looks at herself in the mirror, her cream skin patchy and pale. Her eye has stopped twitching, even it has been shocked into submission. A voice insists: This is happening.
    Günn puts her hand over her belly. She imagines the baby stirring inside her—even though it’s no bigger than a chestnut—and it feels like the only normal left in her life. Even though it won’t be around much longer. Her appointment is next week.

8:10 AM The Roswell Institute
    B etween a fault line and bedrock, in an underground dreidel-shaped compound engineered to withstand seismic forces one mile beneath Los Angeles, Julie Keaton, deputy technician of the Roswell Institute, looks up from Stephen King’s newest when the monitor in front of her lights up like a Christmas tree on crack. Thoughts of being the next King of horror put aside, Keaton runs her hands over the keyboard, isolating the various pingbacks that are sending the radar into a tizzy. Keaton’s screen decrypts an alert: three of The Institute’s missing specimens have turned up in the LAPD database, apparent victims of the Crane Mansion Massacre that’s making headlines all over the United States and the world.
    “Fuck me. Ripper’s gonna have a coronary.” Keaton’s hands fly over her keyboard as she responds to each alert, dreading having to be the one to report back on The Institute’s three most meddlesome creatures.
    Keaton’s workspace is in the basement of an already subterranean facility. She likes it that way. Less contact with the freaks and geeks The Institute houses in its five wings. Aliens, cyborgs, viruses, genetically engineered humans, even gods. A whole lot of mess, in her opinion. And damn shames in lots of cases. Sentient beings don’t belong in cages. Not that she’d ever voice these opinions. Far as she’s concerned, a job’s a job.
    Steeling herself, she makes her way out of her office. An industrial metal alloy that’s