The basement was dark, but she wasn't blind. The least light was enough, and air moving, and awareness of heat and moisture. Especially the latter, right now, but thirst was a good motivator. Work now, drink later.
The dusty metal of the air duct was slippery, and every movement made a reverberating scrape or clatter of sound. The bent, battered vent cover laid black bars across the view of the dim room beyond, and framed a hole just big enough to squeeze through.
She imagined forward. She imagined the taste of food and the undisturbed peace of home, and she envisioned it out there. Her own stomach ached with hunger. Forward.
"Apolysis" - by Emma Bull and Will Shetterly
Arthur Tan walked through the front door of his condo with his messenger bag and two big paper sacks, calling in his best Ricky Ricardo, "Lucy! I'm home!"
Naima was the first into the hall, helpfully clarifying, "Amma! Baba's home!" as she hurtled toward him with their Beagle at her heels. He managed to set his bags on the side table just before thirty-two pounds of everything nice knocked the breath out of him.
Catching her in his arms, he said, "Hey, Pirate. Did you and Bartleby have a great day?" Then, still holding her, he stooped to scratch Bartleby behind the ears.
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Meanwhile, the Season 1 and 2 episodes and DVD extras are available here. Think of it as a zero-shelf-space boxed set.
The WTF Network. Home of Schrödinger's Platypus.
News
February 14, 2010 -We've added a Getting Started page to orient new readers.
February 7, 2010 -Season 3 has begun!
In addition to the regular episode format, The Unicorn Evils is available on the Episodes page as a PDF, a Kindle file, and an epub file that's supported by most ebook readers. We expect to have official Shadow Unit ebooks of all the older material in the next two weeks.
March 29, 2009 - Season 2's extras now have their own page here.
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial 3.0 United States License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/3.0/), with the Peter Watts provision: Please don't change, remove, or add to the actual prose, at least not without asking first. We put all these words in a specific order for a reason.
The FBI's Behavioral Analysis Unit hunts humanity's nightmares. But there are nightmares humanity doesn't dream are real.
The Behavioral Analysis Unit sends those cases down the hall.Welcome to Shadow Unit.
