EXCERPT

Page 1 of The Darwin Elevator:

     Blood streamed down the inside of the tiny vial and pooled at the bottom.  A finger, the source of the fluid, knocked against the glass with a dull thud. 

     Skyler turned the vessel over again.  Fresh from its temperature-controlled sleeve, the vial felt cool against his skin.  A small refreshment in the otherwise balmy cockpit. 

     The scene replayed again in his mind.  The subhuman, half its scrawny body still smoldering, the scent of burned hair so strong that Skyler had retched.  Then Samantha, always acting never thinking, stood triumphant over the corpse.  In one swift motion her dark combat knife flashed from a sheath on her calf, flashed again as she brought it down on the poor creature’s hand.  Two fingers, and half of a thumb, skittered away.  ‘Before it all burns,’ she’d said. 

     ‘We only need one,’ Skyler had replied when his nerves allowed. 

     Hair would have been simpler, cleaner, but the hair had all singed away.  A messy piece of work, though the end result was all that mattered, or so he kept reminding himself. 

     "Visual on the Elevator,” Angus said from the pilot's chair. 

     Skyler grunted acknowledgement, and flipped the vial over again.  The muscular digit was caked with dirt, and ended in a yellow, cracked fingernail chewed to uneven length.  It almost defied belief that it had been shorn from a once-human hand.  Almost.