Kiana’s last day at the magically-charged fence that protects the world from hyper-destructive unicorns: A day of celebration, right?
Not when the extraction team runs late and an ominous storm brews—and her partner has been keeping a potentially fatal secret…
For everyone who’s ever been suspicious of the perfect-persona of the unicorn and who understands what true sacrifice means.
Perfect Destruction
The wind howls through the towering forest as Kiana stomps her combat boots against the grassy ground to warm her feet. “Reckon they’ll be much longer?” she says, adjusting her rifle in the crook of her arm.
Beside her, Heiman shrugs, carbon-fibre body armour blunting his movements. “Hope not. This wind’s a killer.”
Kiana casts a glance at the fence behind her: cast iron, eight feet high, practically indestructible. But clouds are gathering, pressure is building, and their shift ended ten minutes ago. “I’m going to climb the tree.”
“Why d’you wanna do that for?”
A sharp crack. They both whirl around. A branch from a nearby elm lies on the ground, broken by the fierce wind.
“Place is giving me the creeps,” Kiana says, neck prickling. It feels like ants are crawling over her waist and hips. She shifts, wriggles, but her body armour’s doing its job well and she can’t get the itches to quit.
Big, grey cumulo-nimbuses boil over the sun. The noise of the wind is fierce.
“Doesn’t matter,” she says. “Home tomorrow.”
“Oh?” says Heiman. “Tour’s over?” His voice is too light, too casual.
Kiana doesn’t look at him. “I thought you knew. This is my last shift.”
He shrugs, picking at his rifle’s grip where the parts don’t quite line up.
Rumbling sounds in the distance. Heli rotors, or just thunder? Kiana hops from one foot to the other. “Wish they’d bloody hurry up.”
“I dunno,” Heiman says, staring fixedly at the treetops. “I’m in no rush.”
Kiana eyes him sideways. He knew today was her last day. Everyone knew. The shifts are posted on the public roster board; it’s not like it was a secret.
The rumble dies away. Just thunder then. The storms roar like the devil here, but they’re transient, gone in under an hour.
“I’m climbing the tree.”
Heiman shrugs. “Suit yourself.”
Kiana straps her rifle on her back, adjusts her boots, and heads over to the lookout tree, a giant lone redwood that stands sentinel above the forest. She climbs the aluminium ladder to the platform that sways high above the fence and looks out.
To the north the trees—elms and oaks, ash and introduced silver birch—diminish and in the distance, bare hilltops poke through, grass long and yellow. To her left the sun should be slowly toiling towards the horizon, but the storm clouds bubble and bloom like ink in the otherwise-blue sky. No sign of helicopters in any direction and it’s now—she checks—nearly twenty minutes past shift change. They’ve never been this late before.
She’s going home tomorrow.