Hey all!
Congratulations to all the winners of the Imprint and Accie award!
Maybe now we'll get more Tsar Chasm and Writer's Block Woman....
Thanks always to Jamas Enright for the prereads, and to Tom Russel
for the bit he sent me about last issue.
Brittany also reports that Binky is _very_ flattered by the award of
Favorite Supporing Character, and blushed nearly two shades a darker
gold when he found out. Though she added that if he wasn't around to
support things, there wouldn't be much of a cosmos left. Thanks everyone.
Which, speaking of Binky, brings us to this issue...
Enjoy!
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DERELICT Press Presents
The twenty-sixth issue of
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/ /\/\ \ [) ~\__ (^^ || ,' ~\__
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" Joy "
Crows: Part 1 of 7
A psuedo-Acraphobe title
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Brittany stands with power blazing around her, eyes closed and
face uplifted. As if in prayer.
)()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()
Paytan flung her head back and screamed, clawing at the air as if
she could draw blood, or drive something away from her. Brittany was
there a second later, grabbing Paytan's hands and holding them steady.
"Wake up Paytan, it's another nightmare, it's okay. You're safe.
You fell asleep on the desk."
Paytan's eyes snapped open and she began to shake. The glow from
her gaze sent neon green light flickering across her features,
emphasizing the dark circles and bags under her eyes until it looked like
she'd been abused. Which was pretty close to the truth, actually. She
looked up at Brittany, and glared.
"You let me fall asleep," she began, low voiced and angry.
Brittany frowned, and jumped off the desk.
"You need all the sleep you can get."
"Yeah, I need _sleep_! What I'm getting now isn't _sleep_,
Brittany, it's hell in sweet little packages! It's everything I never had
to remember! It's everything Dirmarw kept back until the idiot had to go
die!"
"You get a little bit of rest each time before the nightmares set
in, and that's important. You don't sleep, Savannah doesn't sleep, am I
the only one here worried about the dangers of over-exhaustion? I mean, a
little exhaustion, that's okay, but - "
"Get away from me. Where's my coffee?" Paytan got unsteadily to
her feet, moved away from the desk in her room and toward the door. On
the way she snagged a mug from one of the many clustering on top of her
nightstand, took a look at the congealing pool of black-brown liquid on
the bottom, and slugged it back. She was still shaking.
"Look, Paytan, you _need_ this. For the last three weeks you
haven't slept more than an hour at a time! You're going to snap."
Brittany followed her through the doorway, then froze when Paytan dropped
the mug and spun. Paytan's hands slammed onto the wall on either side of
Brittany's head. She leaned in, grinning viciously.
"Who says I haven't snapped already?"
Brittany watched her for a moment, then reached up and tapped
her on the nose with a stuffed fish. "You still put sugar in your coffee.
I've never seen a crazy person do that."
"Have you ever seen a crazy person drink coffee?"
Brittany grinned. "No. But I expect they wouldn't take it with
sugar, would they?" The crazed tinge faded from Paytan's eyes, and she
let her arms fall to her sides. She turned away and stooped to pick up
the fallen mug.
"Sorry Brit. I just don't know - "
"It's okay," said Brit, softly. "It's not your fault." They
walked down the hallway and turned right when it split in two, heading
for the elevator. Paytan watched the mug, turning it this way and that.
"Did you ever think that maybe it would have been better if you
guys had never found the Demonlord's castle? If you just left me there?"
she asked. Brit shook her head emphatically.
"No, because we'd still be down there looking for you. And by now
we would probably have run out of ammo. And good old-fashioned cheer.
It's really hard to find old-fashioned cheer in Hell. All they have is
that new viscous kind all the vigilantes are using." Brittany darted down
the hallway a few steps and hit the down button on the elevator with a
flourish. "Milady, the kitchen awaits."
Paytan looked at her for a moment, then sighed. With a bing the
doors slid open, and Paytan walked into the elevator. She turned back,
and leaned forward a bit, a forlorn look on her face. "I don't know how
long I can survive this," she said, then the doors were closing with a
swish, blocking her from view.
Brit stood in the empty hallway and tapped a plush fish against
the metal doorframe, watching the indicator lights change over as the
elevator went down.
"I know."
-=ð=- -=ð=-
Sidekicks R Us sits at one of Net.ropolis's bigger intersections,
a heavy (and heavily rebuilt) building that dominates most of its block.
It remains a major employer of sidekicks and sidekick wannabes, even after
the, ah, small disruption a year or so back, and the company prides itself
on its respectability and appeal.
But pedestrian traffic still crosses to the other side of the
street.
Net.ropolis being what it was, the citizens were a bit dulled to
weirdness. So random explosions or flickering lights were ignored, and
something had to be truly original, or directly threatening, to get
noticed. Which is why no one bothered to look to closely at the three
men in plain business suits who entered the building.
A completely normal brown van pulled up to the sidewalk in front
of the building and sat idling. None of the pedestrians paid it any mind.
Not until the two back doors swung open, and three mechs piled out of it
and into the daylight.
Then everyone was paying attention. And running.
-=ð=- -=ð=-
Paytan was sprawled across the couch in the LNHHQ rec.lounge,
watching a vapid sitcom. Brittany was sprawled across the floor behind
the couch, watching the ceiling. And humming.
"How can people get money for doing things like this? When there
are perfectly good jobs open at meat-packing plants?" asked Paytan. The
floor around her was littered with coffee mugs.
"I can see Lucy in the roof spackle. But she's gotten rid of the
diamonds and put on rain galoshes instead."
There was a long pause.
Luckily Allen chose that moment to enter the room, preventing
disaster, or at least some physical discomfort on Brittany's part. "You
weren't in your room." Paytan lifted her head and glared at him.
"Would it be better if I just locked myself in there and paced?
Simpler for all of you?"
Allen gave her a look. "It would make you easier to find. You
okay?"
"Yes."
"No," said Brit from behind the couch, "She's not. She's stopped
taking sugar in her coffee."
"Ah. UN just put out the order. There's some villain activity
around the old Sidekicks R Us building, and somebody has to go take care
of it."
Brittany sat up. "But we're being wounded and fall-over-into-our
coffee exhausted - ow!" The pillow bounced off her head and hit the
floor.
"I like the sound of that. Let's go," said Paytan, sitting up on
the couch. Allen gave her a wide smile, and held out his hand.
"My lady."
"At least let me go get Kismet and 'Vannah!" Brittany bounced to
her feet, looking a little bothered by the situation she found herself
in.
"Brit, Savannah still can't see past atoms. Is it really a good
idea to bring her?" Paytan levered herself off the couch, then stumbled
and caught Allen's hand.
"From the look of things, I think we'll need all the help we can
get."
Paytan glared. "Look, I'm tired, I'm pissed, and I've been
wanting to kill something for weeks. And now I'm gonna get to go hit
stuff. You coming?"
-=ð=- -=ð=-
"Are you sure you don't want it with the hyper-laz extension?
It's really light, and who knows when you'll need one, right?"
Savannah shook her head and smiled, one hand resting gently on
the edge of the work table to keep her oriented. "No thanks. I already
have to learn enough about this one as is it is."
"Alright, whatever. Just remember I told you so." She heard
Master Blaster heft the rifle in his hands, then set it on the table. It
was probably far lighter than any of the guns he preferred. "Let me get
you some ammo."
"Thanks for all your help!" called Savannah, and Master Blaster
grunted back at her from one of the storerooms off the side off the
armory.
She ran her fingers lightly over the surface of the gun, and felt
a chill run down her spine. She still wasn't sure if she should be doing
this. The metal of the barrel was cold, and very smooth. She hadn't even
seen it yet, probably wouldn't be able to for weeks until she could
unfocus enough. Right now all she was good for was a really in-depth
analyzation of the gun's basic elements. Hopefully Master Blaster had
followed her specifications.
A composite rifle with a charge pack, with the barrel set to
discharge bullets while a secondary barrel attached along the left side
fired stun bolts in various degrees of strength. She figured she'd be
using the stun functions mainly, but there were times, like the Demonlord
episode in hell, where she figured bullets might come in handy. If her
accuracy there hadn't been a fluke, if her power really worked like she
thought it did, and gave her an aiming ability akin to that of, well, a
superhero's...
"Savannah?"
The voice came from the direction of the door, and she turned
toward it. She had heard it before, but not since they got back from
hell.
"Savannah, are you okay?"
Bryan. The boy who had returned Brittany's manual. And left a
bouquet of white roses in his wake. Savannah felt herself blush right up
to her hairline. "Bryan? What are you doing here?"
"They told me I could find you in your room, but you weren't
there."
Savannah smiled. "So you headed to the next best place, the
armory?"
She could almost hear him blush. "Well, you know you superhero
types. I figured it might be a good place to check. Then the cafeteria."
"Guns and food, that's sensible. Actually this is the first time
I've been in here."
She heard Master Blaster return from the storeroom, the
chink-clunk of boxes of bullets landing on the table near the gun. "And
hopefully it won't be the last. You want any more help with the gun or
anything?"
"No, it's okay. I can deal with it. Thanks for all your help."
"No prob." There was a moment of silence where she wasn't quite
sure what was going on, then she heard him turn and go. Bryan took a step
closer.
"What happened to you? I mean, your eyes, you - "
"An accident. It's okay, though. I mean, I'll get better. Just
not right now. Did we leave another manual?"
"Huh? Oh, no it's something different this time. I mean, I was
hoping I could ask a favor."
"A favor?" she asked, and cocked her head to one side. She heard
Bryan shift something heavy, as if he had a bag or a large box. "Bryan,
are you alright?"
"Yeah, yeah, it's just - I've been looking for a while now, and
none of the libraries or the newspapers have anything. You know how stuff
like that is, always out of date. But then I thought of the LNH
computers."
"And we're going to be more current than the Net.ropolis papers?
I don't think anyone even turns our databases on much anymore, let alone
updates them."
"But you've got connections, and processing power. Leads. And I
was hoping, you know, that you wouldn't mind..."
"Lending a hand?"
Bryan paused. "Yeah. And I figured, hey, we haven't talked
lately. And chances are we aren't going to run into each other on the
street."
"You do have a point. I wouldn't mind digging around the old
databases, anyway. So what exactly was it you needed help with?"
Savannah smiled.
"It's called the Reality."
-=ð=- -=ð=-
"You don't need to come, you know."
"You're going to have to try harder than that to get rid of me,"
said Allen, and brushed his fingers down the length of her arm. Paytan
sighed. They were at a red light approximately three blocks from the
scene of the disturbance. She could tell by observing the way the
pedestrians seemed even more hurried than normal, all of them heading in
one direction. Away.
She had decided it was best not to ask where Allen had gotten the
car. It seemed like the kind of thing that would start an argument, and
that was the last thing she wanted. The sun beat down on them, heating
the air until she could feel her skin beginning to stick to the leather
interior. The light turned green, and Allen's hand came to rest on her
leg.
Something dark and horned moved in the corner of her eye, and she
twisted to look at it as the car roared past. An unassuming No Parking
sign sat at the edge of the sidewalk. She rubbed at her eyes and let the
wind toss through her hair, tangling it around the tips of her horns.
Almost a month of nightmares. Horrors bad enough to make her
scream every time she closed her eyes, and nothing to do but wait it out
and hope Dirmarw's barricades would solidify somehow, hold up under their
own weight. Hope against hope that the universe would give her a break,
and that the slow crumbling of the last of her sanity's defenses would
stop on its own.
Who was she kidding? Paytan looked down at her hands, unbandaged
a couple of days ago but still criss-crossed with scars across the palms.
Shattered metal scars, scars from the death of the only thing that had
kept her alive. The place where Dirmarw crouched in her mind was empty,
and would be so forever. She should have been overjoyed. She had dreamed
of snapping the sword in two across her knee more times than she could
count, and smiled for every moment of it.
But now she was alone. Alone and afraid, with nothing in the
universe left to protect her.
She spotted the mechs as soon as they cleared the corner. Nothing
like the manga-mech she, Brit, and Savannah had fought ages ago. It
seemed like ages. These machines were smaller and clunkier, more like
mechanized body armor than real mechs. They were thick with armor and
square corners, but deadly in their own way. Blunt metal claws tipped the
arm of each mech, and a few cannon-like protrusions bristled at their
shoulders. She felt a calm sort of eagerness intrude in her thoughts.
Life had always given her the short end of the stick, the kick to
the teeth. Part of her was exhausted, almost broken by the nightmares and
the stress of the past month or so. Another part was just angry.
And here, right in front of her, were three pretty targets.
Paytan gave Allen a vicious grin as he brought the car to a halt,
and leaped out before he could do anything. Brittany roared up from
behind them, drawing even to Allen's car on her hovercycle.
The first blast of neon green took a mech in the side, and fused
the plates of its left leg together. Brittany gunned the engine and
roared in front of the biggest mech, Binky sloshing water on the
handlebars as she spun to a stop, facing it.
"Hi!" she said, and fired the cableguns.
The blast took out the ground beneath the biggest mech, and the
bottom half of its feet. Even as Paytan was circling her power round
again and the mech began to totter, a golden streak fell from the sky and
slammed into its side. The mech fell forward as Kismet backwinged into
the air.
Paytan formed a circle with her thumb and forefinger, hands
shaking hard enough to turn the task into something that required real
concentration. The neon green power tossed inside her, free of imperious
demands and rude orders. She felt wrong without a sword in her hand.
By now Allen was out of the car, and the first mech she'd hit was
beginning to force its way around to face them, fused leg or no. The
third mech had turned, and was now lumbering toward them at an amazing
speed for something that looked so clumsy. Paytan's vision blurred for a
second, but she gritted her teeth and forced her eyes to focus.
Behind the mech, in the doorway of the Sidekicks R Us building,
three men in suits crouched huddled against the facade. They waited until
Paytan's full attention was on the mech, then ran for it. Paytan's spell
streamed from her fingers in a tangle of neon green cords, wrapping
themselves around the legs of the mech.
The mech stumbled, nearly fell, but thrust out a leg at the last
instant, cords stretching as it tore across the pavement. The spell
wasn't working. Paytan clenched her teeth until she could hear her jaw
creak, and tried to make the cords harder. All it did was slow the mech
down.
Kismet came out of the sky again, slamming her feet into the head
armor of the other standing mech. It swung up one clawed hand and batted
her to the ground with the clang of metal against metal. One of Allen's
shots whanged off the mech's shoulder, doing little more than denting it.
Things were getting a little out of control.
Brittany pulled up beside her on the hoverbike, and hit the
firing button. Nothing happened. Paytan glared at her.
"What's wrong with the damn guns?"
Brittany continued to hit the button while scanning the status
board. "Oh. The low battery light's on."
"The cableguns need a battery!?"
"Evidently."
The mech chose that moment to slam its claw into the cement in
front of them, mildly off balance from Paytan's badly done spell. Bits of
cement flew everywhere, and somehow the force of it knocked Brit's bike
back about ten feet.
"Paytan! Get the hell away from that thing!" Allen dove over the
hood of the car and grabbed her, arms around her waist as he physically
lifted her and hauled her out of the way. She saw over his shoulder as a
woman ran out of the Sidekicks R Us building, waving her hands. Kismet,
who was just pulling herself to her feet, yelled something at her.
Allen dropped her onto her feet behind the car, and she flung a
hand against the trunk to steady herself.
"Paytan, something's wrong, you - " said Allen, but he faded out
of her hearing as she watched Kismet try to urge the woman back into the
building and get waved away.
"Help!" cried the secretary, "The computers, the files, they've - "
She clutched at her neck for a moment, a strange puzzled
expression crossing her face before she fell limply to the ground. Paytan
saw the pilot of the mech they'd knocked over lying half out of his
machine, dart gun braced against his shoulder. She smiled. This was
something she could take care of.
She closed her eyes and took a deep breath, pulling up the last
dregs of power she had and dragging it through her arms down into her
hands. She tried to make a spindle with it, a spear of force like Dirmarw
used to show her. But she couldn't seem to get it to form a point, and
then the whole thing was collapsing in her hands.
Paytan looked up in time to meet Allen's gaze, as the world
around her went blurry. An entire section of the mental barricades fell
away and crumbled to dust. A flood of nightmare memories screamed into
her conscious mind.
Paytan fell.
-=ð=- -=ð=-
The call came into Savannah's room over the LNH intercom. Bryan
started when the little box on the wall buzzed to life, then froze as the
secretary's words sunk in. Savannah went white.
"We have to get to the med.lab. Take my hand, make sure we don't
run into anything. I'll give you directions," she said, standing up so
fast she didn't even have time to move the rifle. It fell to the floor
with a clatter, but she was already across the room and standing in the
doorway. Bryan got to his feet.
"Savannah, I'm so sorry, I don't know what - " he began, slipping
his hand into hers. She shushed him.
"Head down the hallway, make a left when it ends. Run!"
The med.lab door were closed when they arrived, stumbling and out
of breath to the first floor. Bryan threw his hand out to force them
open, and pain jolted through his arm when they refused to budge and he
hit them at full speed and bounced off. He and Savannah ended up in a
heap on the floor.
She scooted away from him across the floor and got to her feet.
"What happened?"
"The doors are locked." Pain beat through his hand. He hoped he
hadn't broken anything.
"Where's the intercom?"
"Two feet to your left, about shoulder high."
Savannah threw out her hand, brushed the little box with her
fingers then jammed a button down and leaned in. "Hello? Anybody? The
med.lab doors are locked, what's going on?"
The intercom crackled for a moment. "Out-of-It Lass? Perdition's
powers are flaring erratically. She's not conscious. Organic Lass, Faq
Boy, and Weirdness Girl are out looking for Occultism Kid or somebody
else with enough power to tamp down her powers long enough to see if
there's anything we can do."
"Can't you open the doors?"
"Do you _want_ to be incinerated in a stray blast?"
Savannah took her finger off the button and hung her head for a
moment. Bryan could have sworn he heard her curse under her breath. Then
she was standing up again, eyebrows drawn down close together in
concentration.
"If the layout plans I saw for the building a couple of months
ago are still accurate, there should be a monitoring room around here
somewhere. Do you see a door?"
Bryan looked down the hallway. There was nothing for a while,
then at the very end a smallish metal door with a window in it. "There's
one." He took Savannah's hand again, gave it what he hoped was a
reassuring squeeze and led her toward the door.
Inside the room three TV screens flickered on the wall, and a
couple panels of colored lights blinked on and off here and there. "This
is it. Screens galore," he said, and turned to see Savannah still
concentrating, eyes closed.
"How does she look? Is she okay?"
Bryan stared at the monitors. A girl with dark hair and ram's
horns spiraling out of her temples lay on the bed, spasms running up and
down her in waves. She looked vaguely familiar. "She's... she's not doing
too well."
Savannah's hand came down on his shoulder, fingers digging in
deep enough to hurt. "Describe it."
"She's out, and she's having some kind of convulsions." He ground
to a halt, images of another hospital and a different girl on the same
white sheeted bed flickering through his mind. It was Jenna down there,
again and always slipping from between his fingers. Why did everyone have
to die?
"I hate my powers!" yelled Savannah, so loud and sudden that he
jumped away from her. "If I wasn't so damn blind I would have been there,
I could have changed - "
Something moved on the monitors. "Wait, someone's - Brittany's in
the room."
Savannah fell silent, and Bryan watched as the monitors showed
the doors of the med.lab opening to admit Brit, her hair badly mussed and
a long char mark running down the shoulder of her trenchcoat. She was
carrying Binky under her arm, looking far more serious than any of the
times he had seen her in battle.
She walked slowly into the room, steps halting and tentative. As
if she wasn't sure she should be there at all. There was no sign of
Occultism Kid, or anyone else for that matter.
"What's happening?" asked Savannah.
"I don't know."
Brittany came to the foot of Paytan's bed and looked down, biting
her lip. She set Binky down at her feet and crouched beside him for a
moment, running a finger lightly over the glass of the bowl. Bryan
squinted, trying to figure out what the fish was doing. He couldn't tell.
Brittany stood and took a deep breath. Closed her eyes.
Even over the cameras it was easy to watch the tension go out of
her shoulders, the way her head slumped forward a little. In the
fishbowl, Binky began to swim in frantic circles, round and round.
Brittany held both her hands out toward Paytan, palms out.
The air burst into yellow, grey, and pink.
The force of it sent waves of distortion through the air,
Brittany's trenchcoat flapping as if in gale-force winds. A blaze of
electric blue tore into the air around her with a sound like rending
steel, loud enough to be heard over the tiny mic in the surveillance
cameras. It tore around her in waves, lashing itself around her arms and
legs, knocking beds aside.
The colors reached out toward Paytan, brushed gently across her
face, then the electric blue flared and the cameras were nothing but
static.
-=ð=- -=ð=-
Paytan hung in the blackness, and screamed.
Memory poured over her, times she had spent in hell that Dirmarw
had kept from her, enough pain to drive twenty Paytans insane, let alone
one. Enough pain to kill her.
And a little voice inside her said: This is the way it should
have been long ago. Without Dirmarw there wouldn't have been all this
fighting, all this faithless hope. You could have given up long ago, and
died, and left the world a little bit more peaceful.
Another section of the barricades shattered, and more dark
figures loomed in her vision. Too many, even, for her own doubts to be
heard. Paytan felt the last shreds of her mind began to tear in two.
Then silence.
The memories were gone. Everything was gone, except for the
faintest sensation of ground beneath her feet. Paytan looked up.
A ghostlike blur hung in the emptiness above her, looking down.
"Dirmarw?" For a second, for no reason Paytan could understand, she was
almost ecstatic.
"No," said a voice, "Someone else. Where are the barricades?"
The heaviness in her heart returned, and Paytan stood. "There
are no barricades. They disintegrated. You should probably get out of
here before the memories come back, or we'll both be in for it."
"Where were they?" asked the voice.
"How the hell should I know? He never told me how they worked, or
where he set them up. Like I even know the inside of my own brain? Get
out of here. Dirmarw's dead, let me die with him! It's not like either
of us had any chance at a real life anyway."
A faint light began to buzz around the ghost-figure. It hovered
in the emptiness above her, and looked down. No sign of leaving. Paytan
grimaced.
"Fine, whatever. I think they..." she turned vaguely to her left,
concentrating, "I think they were over there somewhere."
The figure floated down to her level and headed off to the left,
it slowed down after a second, then stopped and turned back. Held out a
hand. "Coming?"
Paytan huffed, and followed it. What seemed like a few moments
later their surroundings hadn't changed, but there was a sense around
them of something lacking. Of foundations with nothing above them, like a
wall was missing. By now the figure almost seemed to vibrate with power,
and Paytan was beginning to sense that this might not be a good thing.
"Look, are you okay?" She reached out and to her surprise,
touched a shoulder. Whoever it was was blurred with power, but still
solid.
"Not for long. Lend me your power?"
"What power?"
She could almost hear the figure smile when it replied. "Whatever
you've got." Paytan frowned, and focused. Dragged in the scattered dregs
of power from the cracks, what little remained, and massed it together
until she had a glowing green ball the size of her fist.
How little power she had left. How helpless. Dirmarw would be
disappointed, if she hadn't been so weak that she got him killed. Paytan
stared into the tiny swirls of neon green, the stuff of magic that, in
the end, was worth more than any other part of her. Because in the end,
it was the magic that declared whether she'd be a pawn or a player.
Paytan heard a noise, and realized she hadn't been paying attention.
The ghost-figure had brought up a thin spiderweb of strands,
enough to outline something that looked like a stylized Great Wall of
China. The pattern stretched out of sight.
"If I may?" asked the figure, and held out its hand. Paytan
looked hard at it for a moment, then shrugged. Whatever, she was dead
anyway. She sent the ball of power skating into the figure's palm.
The pattern lit up with neon green, for miles and miles. Took to
her power like cat hair to linen on a hot day, and threaded out strands
here and there throughout the structure. Next to her the figure was
vibrating so hard it began to hum, and a cacophony of yellows, greys, and
pinks flared around it and blasted through the network of webbing and
power. It was being filled, the webwork and Paytan's own power acting as
a guide for the swiftly rising wall.
In a howling counterpoint, the memories from hell began to recede
behind it. But the figure had fallen to its knees and bent over,
clutching its stomach. It threw its head back and began to scream. The
wall continued to fill.
Paytan watched as the nightmares disappeared, as the wall was
nearly finished, as the figure arched back and a spear of wild electric
blue burst from its chest. The power continued to pour forth, and Paytan
watched as the spear thrashed through the figure's body. Something hit
her cheek, and her hand came away covered in blood.
She growled, and reached out to grab the spear. A flurry of
static jolted through her arms as her hands closed around the energy and
tried to control it. It juddered through her skeleton, shot through her
chest and hit her heart with a shock.
Something opened its eyes inside her skull, and looked at her.
Paytan screamed and let go. She flung herself backward and hit the ground
hard, rolling to a stop.
When she opened her eyes the wall was complete, the memories
locked up again, the figure gone. Blessed silence reigned.
Paytan took a deep breath, and finally let herself rest.
-=ð=- -=ð=-
Censor Girl woke. The cell was cold and bare around her, in the
depths of the LNHQ. By reflex she started to scan the bars and walls for
weaknesses, then stopped with a sigh. She sat up and put her back to the
wall, let her head fall back until the top of her skull clunked against
the plasteel barrier. She supposed she should be trying to fight her way
out, but what was the point?
She had been built so that her body would never tire or need
sleep. Killfile hadn't thought to do the same for her mind. When she
looked back over her life, it was sobering to realize that her favorite
part was the time she spent in a coma.
She sensed the transmission almost before it began.
It started in the depths of her mind, setting off hidden command
programs in waves, and she greeted it without surprise. She offered no
resistance as the signal tore through her already ravaged mental systems
and threw in its own programs and commands in droves. After all, had not
the universe chosen her to be the ultimate pawn? It certainly seemed that
way to her. Like an old friend a ghost voice echoed in her skull again.
<You will destroy the LNH> And beside it, a newcomer.
<Report to Lord Corvine>
________________________________________________________________________
Binky, Kismet, Mr.Fossavellus, the Junior Brotherhood of Net.Villains,
Out-of-It Lass, Perdition, Weirdness Girl, copyright Jennifer Whitson,
1995. Censor Girl is Public Domain. Faq Boy is Jamas Enright's. Everyone
else is someone's.
Next Issue:
Censor Girl's old programming has been reactivated. Who's
controlling the poor poppet now?
There's a new hero in town. Is it another friend or just more
trouble?
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