Chapter One
Zella Mills - London, 2044
A sharp, uncomfortable crackling came through Zella’s headset. She cringed. “Zella, if you can hear me, lift one leg up and hop on the other.” Joe Halili said.
Zella rolled her eyes. “You’re loud.”
“Sorry.”
It took her a while to think of a response. She wasn’t good with pleasantries. She preferred when Joe joked around. At least then she could ignore him. She didn’t know what to do with an apology. “Khloe confirmed that he’s coming, right?” she asked, choosing to divert the conversation to the mission.
“Affirmative,” Joe replied. “I know we’ve gone over it a hundred times, but I’m going to repeat it so our lovely assistants on this line hear it. The plan is, you wait for Zip to get on his balcony and smoke a ciggy. Just as we’ve watched him do a million times. We’ve put our jammer on the back door, so when he goes back inside, it won’t fully shut. You’ll swing down from the balcony above, and once he’s out of sight, you infiltrate and do your sneaky stuff. The goal is the laptop. Snatch it and get out of there quietly.”
“That’s what we discussed,” Zella replied. But it wasn’t quite the plan she had in mind.
“You shouldn’t be going in alone,” Joe said.
Zella raised her hand to her ear. “I told you. I can handle myself. Goodbye, Halili.” She tapped the power button on the headset. Distractions were no longer welcome.
She leaned over the balcony and glanced down at the footbridge connecting building A and B. Zip’s balcony was directly below her. Earning the trust of the tenant above Zip had taken some planning. The tenant was an elder man named Mr. Garnet. He never trusted the immortals or the Starlight program and despised living above one of them. They’d needed Mr. Garnet’s help because getting in the building presented challenges. This luxury apartment building prided itself on having top-notch security. They were in Embassy Gardens, London, after all. The grind it took to get here was worth it. Khloe had given them the intel that Zip was holding onto some valuable footage that would expose the immortals. And the cherry on top was that Zella could get even with one immortal who murdered her father.
Zella lost herself in the memory of what happened five years ago when she was sixteen years old. Dr. Calloway raised Zella as his foster child. Not only was he her unofficial foster father, but he was also the inventor of the star serum. The serum that made the immortals what they are.
It all started in 2022 when a meteor crashed into Montana. Scientists discovered a mysterious substance that was later named Starfalite. Dr. Calloway studied Starfalite extensively. One day, he made a breakthrough in his research. He believed that the substance could enhance human genetics. Making humans immune to disease and old age. A subsidiary of the government funded Dr. Calloway’s idea, and the Starlight program was born.
Dr. Calloway’s team selected ten subjects. And because Dr. Calloway’s team believed infant genes would better adapt to the star serum, they chose orphaned babies and infants as the subjects. They gave eight children the serum, and in a moment of pure disaster, two babies died. Dr. Calloway sent an order to shut down the project before the final two subjects could receive the serum. That left six successful cases of the Starlight program. Today, those six individuals are the immortals.
The world revered the mighty immortals. A few of them reached celebrity status. The rest of them flew under the radar. In the years they’d been immortal, they even gained a few special abilities that separated them from normal humans. Zip, for instance, could teleport up to ten feet in any direction. They kept their abilities secret to prevent global leaders from feeling threatened. Their unique abilities made them seem like deities. But Zella knew the truth about them. They were corrupt, murderous, power-hungry dogs.
With the Starlight program shut down, Dr. Calloway spent years researching the effects that his project would have on the world. The government banned him from carrying out any kind of test work on the six immortals, but he still made a shocking discovery. He learned that the star serum would have a terrible impact on their psychological profile. He believed that despite their immunity to disease; they possessed a mutation that changed their cognition. This was problematic. He worried that their immortal qualities would make them a tyrannical threat to society. That’s why Dr. Calloway researched a cure for the immortals. A way to reverse the effects of their immortal mutation. A cure for his own creations. But Dr. Calloway would never get far into his research.
Zella’s eyes closed. Memories of her foster father’s murder played in her mind like a montage. Her father running. Zip teleporting behind him, striking him with the butt of a semi. The laughter of the one they call Quinn echoing in her head.
A door slammed somewhere below. Zella twitched. She gripped the handle of the VP11 pistol in her leg holster. A soft vibration came from the inside of her pocket. Zella tapped her headset. “Halili, is that him?”
“Correct. We got a ping on his biometric security system,” Joe said. “He’s home.”
Zip was below. The moment had arrived.
*** 1.5 ***
Zip scanned his card and gazed at the biometric card reader. “Access Granted,” his virtual assistant said. The green light blinked, and the lock disengaged. He pushed the door open and smelled the plum blossom incense that he’d taken a liking to. The amber gradient sundown sky beamed through his large glass balcony doors. He never closed his curtains.
The light sensors activated as he stepped through the living room. He slid the glass door open and stepped onto the balcony to light a cigarette.
Smoking causes mouth and throat cancer, his pack of cigarettes read. A mandatory warning that cigarette companies were to include in the United Kingdom.
Zip chuckled. Yeah, right. Maybe for the mere mortals, he thought. I’ll smoke until I’m blue in the face and live for an eternity. He sparked the cigarette and took a long, hard pull.
Two feet swung down from the air and slammed into Zip’s chest. He hit the ground hard, coughing up smoke. Someone walked into his apartment.
He forced himself up and shook off the pain. He set eyes on his attacker. A black padded mask covered her nose and mouth. She had brown, wavy hair tied into a bun. She wore tight, black tactical gear. A padded shirt and slick combat pants with holsters and knife holders. Her brown eyes showed animosity. “Do I know you?” Zip asked.
“We’ve met.”
Zip smirked. Whatever this was, it was personal. But she wasn’t cold-hearted enough to get the job done. He should have been dead already. “I hope you’re aware of the mistake you’re making,” he said. Zip straightened up and tilted his neck from left to right.
***
Zella raised her arm, but before she could aim, Zip teleported behind her. His arm was around her neck so tightly that he blocked her airway. She had played out this scenario in her mind a hundred-thousand times. What would she do when Zip appeared behind her? Just like he had done with her father. How would she respond? She slammed her mini tactical knife into the side of Zip’s leg and twisted it. His cry rang in her ear. She grabbed him by the arm and attempted to throw him to the ground. Halfway through his descent, he sandbagged himself, causing both of them to tumble on the ground.
They rolled on the hardwood floor, both trying to gain the physical advantage. As far as Zella knew, he could only teleport while standing on two feet. Perhaps it was better to fight him down here.
His weight was on her, keeping her down. His hands found her neck. He applied pressure. Zella fired her pistol and heard her shots hit the glass door. Zip took the pistol from her grasp and tossed it, keeping one hand firmly around her neck.
Zella poked the open wound in his leg with her index and middle fingers. Zip screamed. She pushed him away and hopped back onto her feet, standing in front of the open glass doors. She watched him stumble back onto his feet. He would use his ability again. She had to be ready.
Fresh air hit Zella’s face. She had lost her mask in the scuffle. The gun was by her feet. Too far away from her hands. Zip eyed her curiously as if trying to associate her face with a memory. “I don’t know who you are, but you’ve made a grave mistake messing with me. And now you’re going to help me set an example of what happens when you mess with an immortal.”
Zella took two soft steps backward. “It must be a privilege not having to remember the faces of your victims and their families,” she said. Sirens were blaring in the distance.
“Zella,” Joe called in her ear, “what’s going on? Why are you engaging the immortal? This wasn’t the plan.”
A chime went off in her ear to let her know someone else had entered the call. “Zella,” came Khloe’s voice. “There’s a SCO19 firearms unit heading your way. Abort mission, now. Forget Zip and forget the laptop. Just go.” Zella kept her eyes on Zip and ignored the voices in her ear.
Zip disappeared from in front of her. She jumped backward instinctively. The moment Zip reappeared in front of her, she grabbed him, pulled him with all her strength, tossing him against the guard railing on the balcony. Numerous times, her fist slammed into the back of his head to stun him. She made a beeline for the pistol and raised it to the back of Zip’s head. A shot burst from her gun, and she watched Zip’s body slump.
The air became still and silent. In the distance, a police helicopter approached, its rotors beating against the amber sky. Before she could look for the data, she had to be sure that Zip was gone. She took him by the feet and flipped his body up over the guardrail, tossing him over the balcony. There was a loud thud as his body crashed against the roof of the footbridge connecting the building to its sibling. She glanced over the balcony and saw Zip spread eagle on top of the bridge. Zella popped another round into the gun and fired down at Zip for good measure.
Time was running thin now. “Zella, are you there?” came Joe’s voice. “We’re coming to pick you up by hover car. Wait for us by the balcony.”
“Hurry,” she said. But she didn’t wait on the balcony for them. She retrieved her mask and put it back on. Then she searched around for the laptop. It was sitting on the desk of his corner office unit. She opened the drawers one by one, pocketing every data storage device she could find. Anything they could learn about the immortals would help.
She folded the laptop and walked back over to the balcony. Beaming lights emerged. For a split second, she thought the police had her number, until the hover car turned sideways, revealing Joe Halili’s handiwork with the decal. It read ‘Sol’.
“What were you thinking?” Joe snapped as the three of them made their getaway from the luxury apartment complex. She glanced back at the buildings one last time. Tonight, she had made history. She’d become the first person to murder an immortal.
- Mere Immortal is written by Gary Swift. If you see this on another website under another name, then someone has plagiarized it. Visit mereimmortal.com for more information. Subscribe to the Substack paid tier to read further ahead in the story.
- This version of Mere Immortal is formatted in US English.