Below is the latest scene from the novel I'm currently writing, a continuation of the story previewed at the end of Guns Of Penance, which you can buy here.
As it is first draft stuff, expect grammar wangleness and plot whathattery that may be changed or removed entirely from The Crystalline Prisoner.
"Teeth ripped me from the dream. I awoke in the memory screaming as the man’s jaws bit into my shoulder. I kicked at him, and as he fell backwards he jabbed at me with the butt of his vapor cannon, the synthwood stock of his gun splintering as it smacked my head. Then there was a reactor pipe in my hands, as if it materialized from nothingness, and unblinking, I sprayed the man with it, watching the white light dissolve him before he could even scream.
"I was in a war zone. Other men and women like him were shooting at me, and the sky boiled with blood and fire, gouts of scarlet smoke splashing over the people shooting holes in each other. For a moment I just stood there, before a voice in my head urged me to advance, to keep firing the reactor pipe, to silence the rebels who threatened the safety of the planet’s terraforming project.
I choked on the smell of burning flesh, coughing as the smoke stung my eyes, but then I was overcome with a nearly instinctual urge to stand, target a man using a crude projectile rifle, and turn half of his body to ash, even as his compatriots shot me in the chest.
Bullets, bits of metal, gas propelled, sank into my skin, my flesh. They burned there a moment, and as I stood, my body flexed in some alien way, and repulsed them. Child’s play, this war. It didn’t matter. The voice in my head buzzed on, directing me to shoot the men and women as they stood futilely against me, or turned to flee, or tried to sacrifice themselves to blow me up.
The voice in my head was like the pressure of some terrible migraine, and I moved almost involuntarily. . ."