10 Minute Tales

Apr 17

The ride home was the smoothest Queenson had undertaken in a long time. He disembarked to a city still in chaos; the two factions, those with augs and those without, were blaming each other openly. The security force was barely able to keep the peace, and what little peace they could get was quickly quashed by another pent-up frustration.

"Jeez..." Alyssa muttered, looking around. "I thought Sentinel had been taken care of, what's going on here?"

"Don't you worry about that. Go get some rest."

"But-"

"That's an order."

"I... yes, sir." Alyssa nodded briefly, walking off. A transport came nearby and opened the door for her; she entered. Queenson preferred to walk, taking his first confident strides in the newly reformed 32-A. Another security officer spotted him and ran over.

"Queenson? Thank goodness you're here, sir, it's bedlam down here."

"Yeah, well, it's about to get worse."

"I don't see how it could possibly-"

"Sentinel's dead. He masterminded this whole damn thing."

"... Sentinel? As in, the...?" he tapped the communicator on his wrist. Queenson just nodded. "Oh, this can't end well..."

"Not if you keep mopin' about it, it won't. Focus on getting everyone calm, we'll need to do a huge press release."

"But things are still working down here, sir! Cars are working, security fences are working, everything's... how is Sentinel doing all that if he's dead?"

"He's not. Aurora is."

"... what the hell did you do up there, sir?" the security officer stopped, disbelief stunning him. Queenson turned to look at him, and grinned.

"I did my job. Nothin' more." and with that, he turned again, marching towards the security office. A hero's work, he thought to himself, is never done.

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Whew! There we have it, readers, the final part of this murder mystery! Jeesh, I didn't know what I was getting into, I'll say that much for free, but here we are! I don't have the precise word-count to hand, annoyingly, but I'm willing to guess it's a lot... quick calculation reveals that, assuming 500 words per entry exactly (actual number will vary), it comes to 38,000 words. A quick Google search puts that in the high end of a Novella, which seems pretty darn nifty to me. Definitely need to work on how quickly I can churn these out, but I've been deliberately keeping the amount small. Now I'm used to this, I guess I should work on making longer entrants. So once again, thanks to everyone for sticking with me on this crazy project! More's to come, though, I'll dedicate the rest of April, maybe some of May, into the same short snippet style of January. If you have any suggestions for what I should work on next, let me know! I'm always looking for more things to write! Until then... Phoenix out!