The Wound hung heavy in the sky, incandescent pink and intoxicating orange light accentuating its rough edges against the grey of the morning. It had appeared on a near identical morning 5 months ago, and it had taken less than 48 hours for all of the ceaseless news outlets to decide that it should be called The Wound. Keiron had often pondered whether the naming was accidentally loaded, or if it was yet another piece of finely tuned and knowingly twisted world play by the global news think tanks? Despite the endless flow of text, images, audio and video, news had a tendency to be awfully calculated. With over a billon minds all hooked up together online, it was easy for permutations to be formed, reactions anticipated and leverage applied in less time than it took for the average person to spit a half-thought out onto one of the many facets of the web.


Having given up the majority of outlets, Keiron was still fascinated how they still found their way into his life. Adverts were everywhere, which was no surprise, but the ambient hum of media outlets was surprisingly inescapable. When the rest of the population was so switched on, trying to avoid their displays was pointless. So he soaked in undiluted news about The Wound without really trying to. In line at the refectory this morning a security officer in front of him was idly sweeping through the early articles on his holographic display - a gaudy and obnoxious device that made the user look like the an advertisement for the newscorps whenever they used it. Keiron got sick of the need to hold his hands in a fixed frame position to operate it, but had found the way it automatically swept by reading micromotions in his eyes rather appealing, which is why before he disengaged, he had elected to keep the ocular stem implants, because it made all of his clerical work far easier. The holographic display also had the temerity to orientate itself towards any casual viewer at an instance without affecting what the primary user saw, which mean Kerion could very easily see the words GREATER STATES REFUSE TO ACKNOWLEDGE CLAIMS THAT OFFWORLD BRUTALITY ORIGINATE WITH PRIOR TERRAN MILITARY POLICY jaggedly shifting for his attention.


With a yawn he turned his attention back to the coffee machine that for the low price of only three uniCs was languidly excreting a pathetic simulacrum of the coffee he could have made back in his dorm for free. “This is the price of modern living.” he thought, hesitating slightly afterwards to consider if that was something he’d read before disengaging. It was difficult to simply pick apart what was online and what wasn’t these days, and that was the real problem for his job. After his promotion from routine security grunt to privileged enforcer, he had been to an advisory meeting with a softcomms analyst who had recommended the disengagement. The analyst, an athletic and grayscale individual who looked like every other analyst he could ever remember seeing online, had recommended the disengagement therapy. The reasoning was simple, the ambiguities of the upcoming role would not allow for the kind of prevaricating that being connected encouraged. There was no time, in a world where the wound hung so low and so heavy, to second guess things. If an opinion had to be expressed, it had to be expressed. If an action needed to be taken, it must be taken. There was no time to waste.


As Keiron stood running through this rhetoric, Peterson nudged him.


“Hey, some of us need coffee too.”


She looked at him with a degree of anticipation, the clear blue of her eyes free from the night sky glimmer of baked in links to the web. She was an enforcer too, a few days senior to him, and she had a right to shitty coffee. 


“Sorry, just an info hangover, i’ll get out of your way.”


Keiron shuffled towards a single seat table and sat down, nursing his coffee. From this solitary vantage point, all manner of details leapt forth. Primary coloured displays juddered and shifted for attention between the teal shapes of slumped security guards, and the more sculpted stance of the enforcers. Military grade hardware fractured the traces of holoscale into a myriad of colours that danced like constellations in front of Keiron’s eyes as he struggled to focus on the tepid blackness steaming in between his hands.


A few ripples alerted him to the fact that Peterson had taken up residence on the corner of his table. 


He glanced upwards, “Yes?”


“Role call is in, and we’re up. On deck at 9am. There’s a swell, and duty calls.”


Kerion nodded hesitantly. Psych hadn’t give the go ahead for an entry shift yet, he was supposed to be on exterior duty, but he knew they were short at the minute.


“OK. I guess I can do that but psych said…”


“Listen, I know what psych said. Info headache or not, we don’t really have the people. Get your self so hyped on coffee you can’t hold off the trigger for all I care, you’re up. End of.”


Keiron swallowed the foul tar and nodded again. It was only a matter of time before he got pulled up for duty, one way or another. He’d already been briefed on hangovers, but it didn’t stop shock of seeing halos of degrading info fuzz circle around people. He fancied he could see some scant information about Peterson still circling her cropped black hair, but it could just as easily artifacts from the tens of holo devices still vying for his attention.


Together they left the mess hall and headed down the T-Block corridor towards the briefing area. The lockdown area that the government had set up was still largely temporary. Everything was tents and prefab units linked by ramshackle corridors half full of supplies and sleeping recruits. No one was a stranger to the idea that the opening of The Wound had amounted to an act of warfare, but the genesis of the idea was so tangled in the opinions of so many media outlets that it was impossible to unpick the genuine origin. Still, the effect was very real. The camp in the midlands felt like a network of hastily constructed settlements at the edge of a speculative no-man’s land. The country was skewered right in its centre, and the grey soil was tinged with the red glow of the hanging scar.




As Peterson unzipped the plastic covering to the outside, Keiron could already feel the air thick with the metallic tinge of a swell. 


“Buckle up Keiron, they say this is going to be a fairly big one.”


The last time this had happened, Keiron had been facing in the opposite direction. The noises, and the lurid colours that had painted the scorched grass and slick tarmac in front of him and been almost impossible to ignore, but a voice had screamed “FORWARD, FORWARD OR YOU’RE DISMISSED” on loop into his earpiece, as a hundred different clauses, subclauses, and written laws flashed over his cornea and convinced him aply of the severity of such a betrayal. As an enforcer, he didn’t have to wear anything like that. He had been briefed of the reality of the situation, and he was expected to behave accordingly.


The compound stretched around him, perhaps half a mile in diameter, the blasted earth in the centre ringed by numerous skyward facing armaments. Above, military craft hovered and darted, depending on their bulk, and flashed probing lights skyward. The Wound was swollen and tumultuous, spitting white hot streaks of lightning across the morning sky. Idly Keiron wondered what it might have looked like in a few hours time, if in America The Wound complemented the afternoon or evening sky, whatever time it might be. It was rare for them to have to deal with a swell, humorous given the circumstances behind the cloven sky in the first place, but they maintained a presence in Britain anyway.


Peterson had stopped and was leaning back against one of the concrete dragon’s teeth that littered the interior of the compound. They were a fairly quaint fixture as nothing with the ability to traverse the ground had ever reached terra firma, touch wood, but Keiron supposed they were for looks as much as anything. As that thought crossed his mind, the swell exploded, and The Wound was breached.


The initial shock wave was always more forceful than anticipated, and he regretted idling as a syrupy tide of gravity belched out from the sky and soundlessly flung him into the mud. Peterson was flat against the dragon’s tooth but managed a choked laugh as the firework display began. The Wound wrenched and tore, spilling fibrous lights into the sky, coating the morning in pale fire. A few seconds later, sound caught up with light, and the cracking and splintering of space whipped and echoed around the complex. A security officer with a cigarette was stood by the compound entrance, supporting himself with one hand as the other fumbled with headphones. 


Within a seconds the thunderous crack signalled the first real breach of the Wound’s aperture. Keiron spared a glance to the officer and saw that, thankfully, he’d got his headphones on quickly enough, before turning his eyes skyward. From that mouth of fire and electricity came the prow of a ruined carrier, smeared with scorched white paint and three story letters spelling the word “DON’T FIRE”. All around the rim of the compound, electrical disablers whirred into life. Military officials gave the word, and a score of energy pulses shot into the air, connecting with the body of the craft that slid lazily out of The Wound. Moments after, the pulses connected with the shambolic body of the craft, and its graceful exit was cut short as the bulging rear ended swung rapidly out of the tear and began accelerating to earth. Keiron unholstered his rifle and braced himself next to Peterson as the bulk of the craft plummeted towards the centre of the compound, its hundreds of retro boosters struggling to slow its descent towards the soft pulpy earth below.[/spoiler#