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[FanFic] - "Katya" by J.Kiln
🕑 Added 2020-10-20 06:00:41 +0000 UTCA fan wrote a short story about Katya on the Lemmasoft forums. You can read the original here. <3
"Katya" (a short fan-fiction, inspired by "Infinite Stars Episode 01")
by J. Kiln
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Screams... that was when it became undeniable that something was wrong.
Katya heard people screaming while she was hanging out with her friends at the park. She had a feeling something was off but couldn't tell what.
Just minutes ago everything was strangely quiet. There weren't any transports moving about, or crowds here and there, not even the sound of footsteps in the streets.
Like a wave of silence had suddenly swept over them without Katya or her friends realizing it.
And then all of a sudden there were people screaming and running for their lives.
Something had come to the colony... and it was hunting people...
Katya lead the way as she and her friends fled down a narrow alley, trying to get away from whatever was shooting at them. But that was a mistake.
Katya was the first out of the alley, but when she turned back to look, her friends stumbled and fell one by one in the shadows, their screams echoing in Katya's ears.
Katya caught only a glimpse of the shooter at the far end of the alley, before she ran.
She ran, abandoning the lifeless bodies of her friends, as the Sentinel moved swiftly over them, humming as it went.
Katya saw its weapons flash and blaze behind her friends' silhouettes, and she told herself that if she had stayed just a moment longer, she would've been killed too.
She cried as she apologized to her friends... Tears fell down her face as she whispered, "I'm sorry", while she ran away.
"Katya!!" she heard a familiar voice shout her name. She stopped in the middle of the street, wondering if it was her friends beckoning her to turn back, before Katya saw her mother sprinting towards her, coming to hug her tightly.
Katya tried to tell her mother what just happened, but her words quickly gave way to sobs.
Katya's mother didn't wait to hear what her daughter was trying to say, she was already pulling her by the hand and leading them both back to their home.
She told her daughter to go to the kitchen and start grabbing whatever packaged food and bottled water they had, while she looked for a flashlight, an emergency comm-radio, a compact map computer, and other tools they might need to survive in the wilderness, far away from whatever was happening in the colony.
As she went to fetch her daughter, the front door was shot down as a Sentinel burst through it!
Katya ducked and hid under the tablecloth of the kitchen table, and glimpsed her mother's last moments before the Sentinel chased her down.
Katya gasped, as shock and fear immediately paralyzed her.
The Sentinel didn't leave after it was done. It searched for Katya, going from room to room, humming like a bee as it went.
On the floor beside her mother, Katya noticed the survival equipment she was gathering into a backpack, and Katya saw what looked like a portable arc saw beside it.
A thought flashed through Katya's mind, and she decided to act on it. She crawled out from underneath the tablecloth, and slowly went to pick up the arc saw.
She saw her mother's horrified expression, staring up at the ceiling... and Katya looked away.
She powered up the saw, causing its cutting end to crackle to life, and inadvertently drawing the Sentinel's attention!
Katya shut off the saw and darted back under the tablecloth with it, just before the Sentinel would have spotted her.
Katya held on to the saw tightly, as she heard the machine nevertheless approach the table, humming louder as it came closer.
Something whined as it charged up, and Katya knew in an instant the Sentinel wasn't fooled: it was preparing to open fire.
"MEOOOW!" A furious screeching cat suddenly called out, causing the Sentinel to spin around and fire at it instead! Katya sensed her opportunity and scrambled out from under the table!
Before she realized what she was doing, she inflicted a deep, glowing gash into the Sentinel's back!
Katya then leapt onto it as it whirled around, firing at where she was. With an anguished cry, Katya forced the arc saw down its head! Shorting and melting circuitry as the saw sliced through!
The Sentinel malfunctioned as it lost power, and Katya fell with it to the floor as it collapsed.
Then... it was over.
Katya climbed off the dead machine, and crawled to her mother's body.
She still couldn't look at her mother... couldn't meet her terrified eyes...
The cat let out another meow, drawing Katya's attention...
Katya looked at it: a dirty little black cat, a stray that no one wanted, so it came and went as it pleased.
Katya gently picked him up, dusted the debris off of him, and held him close to her.
And the little black cat licked away Katya's tears in return.
