SAGN: Chapter Seventeen-The Kiss Of An Angry Girl free porn video

SAGN: Chapter 17- The Kiss of an Angry Girl Gatehouse of the Grove, Phar' Naqua: Day 445, 0056 hours Five words. They were only five words, but in those words were packed both her salvation and her damnation. Five words that she expected to hear at some point and yet when she did hear them they still seemed unreal to her. Singh's words exploded in Darcy's consciousness and hung in the air like a parachute flare blazing into incandescent light without warning. They were so heavy that Darcy could almost see them there weighing down everything around them. The intent behind them, the resolve behind the words that would carry them out and the determination that he used as a lens to focus on what needed to be done with the grim certainty of a bursting star and with just as much of an explosive outcome. "You're going to kill him," she said to him flatly not really sure how she should feel upon hearing the words. Because of what Fetterman had done to her she was certain that she should feel something. Hot anger like molten lead dripping down her throat; fear like a glacier swallowing her and freezing her solid; a savage joy that someone was going to do something, anything at last. But there was nothing. For Darcy it was a statement stripped of emotion and without meaning behind them they were just words. Or at least she thought that was so. Somewhere deep inside of her she felt what she could only interpret in the end as release, but she didn't feel released. Fleur is listening she told herself and in that moment she wanted to tell Singh to stop and not say another word about it. That it was too dangerous, but her throat was still; the warning stillborn before it could begin to be voiced. "We are," Singh continued. "There is no other course open to us. He is too dangerous to be allowed to continue as he is and there is no other option that lies within our power." Darcy heard the words and she still had a hard time believing that they had been said, even after hearing all that had been revealed to her over the last few days and hours. Even without being aware of it a belief was crouching in her mind about Fetterman. A feeling that he was eternal in his own way and the power that he held was not something that she could challenge; especially in a way such as this. Somewhere deep inside her the feeling that whatever they had planned was doomed to failure already welled up and she almost said those words before biting them back and swallowing them whole. That feeling inside her was alien or at least that is what she thought at first. She tried to tell herself that, that reaction had to come from Fleur. That it was part of her, but it wasn't part of Darcy herself. But that wasn't really so and she knew it. Her true self had been caged for so long already that the idea that the cage could be broken at all caused her to retreat into disbelief. And in that disbelief she thought she heard Fleur laughing at her. An unwanted part of her that had other things to whisper to her in the darkness of her mind and some of those things that were said...some of those things did come from her. How many times had she come face to face with this as first Patrolman and later Detective? How many battered and broken women had she seen who would reflexively cling to the one who inflicted the damage onto them? Would even snarl in defense of the one that was their tormentor as if they were their savior instead? She'd seen it so many times before in others that when she found herself as the observed and not the observer it was still a shock to realize and underneath it all; Fleur was listening and laughing at her. Darcy composed herself. I am not that woman she insisted in the center of her being. A lifetime of conditioning as first an ordinary patrol officer and then later as a detective warred within her mind for a moment with the reality of what she knew about Fetterman and what he had done to her; what he would still do if allowed to remain unchecked. Darcy thought of all of those things and she could only come to the conclusion that Singh was right and she damned him for forcing her to see it. He was right and this was the only way; there was no other choice in their hands. Her knowledge of how far flung the organization of the FRT was didn't help her very much either. All she knew was that it was much larger than she had supposed and it was prepared to act swiftly in the service of its purpose. Whether that extended to maintaining prisons for a creature like Fetterman was a question that crossed her mind for a flittering second and then was gone as soon as it appeared. There was nothing that could be done for someone like Fetterman that would make any difference she realized. A prison was as nothing to what he was and it was not just him that had to be considered; there was still Fleur and those like her that would remain after he was gone. For a moment she remembered the clawing ravening hunger she had felt looking at Jacen and she realized that just killing Fetterman or whatever he really was would still not be enough. "What happens after that?" she asked. "What happens after his hand is off the leash of the girls he is holding in check now? Once his hand is no longer there, what is to stop any of them from running wild? Won't doing that make things much worse? And what happens to me with him gone. How will eliminating him affect me?" Darcy tried to imagine her fellow thralls free from Fetterman's hand and driven by the hunger that she was now aware of. She thought of it and inside where none of them could see she blanched at the thought of its vessels running unchecked and unstopped. "If all we did was stop with eliminating him then yes it would," Singh replied. "That is why we must move against all of them in the same moment. And to do that we need you." "How can that save me? Once Fleur is free of him, I don't have a chance do I?" she said to him in hollow doomful tones. I'm seeing my own death she told herself, that's what he's not telling me. When he says I have a small chance to be free, he means that all they can do is end this. That's my freedom, it always was. Did she want it that way? Wouldn't living, even as a monster be preferable? The question was not unexpected and what was left of Jim Brighton that flickered on as Darcy could only answer no, it wouldn't be. She didn't have much left of who she really was, but what was left wasn't inclined to accept that as the price of living. It was too high a price for her to pay. That's what this is about she told herself. It's no different than when you have to end the suffering of an animal you have loved. You hold them, you comfort them and you never let them see the knife because you love them. For a moment Darcy grasped the sorrow that lay behind what Singh was telling her and she pitied him. Singh held his hand up to forestall her questions and asked her to have patience. To wait until after he had finished telling her everything so she could act knowing fully what was at stake. I won't tell him I know she told herself, I'll give him that at least. Making a show of reluctance Darcy agreed. There were still things that needed to be said between them, but they could wait until the time came to say them. As much as she wanted to know the unvarnished truth of it all, there were still other questions to answer and without knowing that then she was hobbling herself when she needed to be able to act unencumbered. "I'm sorry Darcy," Singh said. "This is a lot for you to take in under these circumstances, but to have the single chance we might have to do this successfully; I will have to ask you to take the chance that you will lose everything. The time has come to roll the dice and hope that when we do so, that it will be enough." I can't let him know that I already know. Darcy told herself. She fixed him with a glare that seemed right and let the frustration at being in this position loose for a moment. She may have accepted that this was the case, but that frustration was still there snarling impotently at the juggernaut already rolling toward her. "That's easy for you to say," Darcy said with a burst of anger. "You're not the one who is going to be risking everything." "But I will be," Singh replied calmly. "When the time comes for you stand in front of Fetterman, I will be there standing beside you. I won't ask you to do this without being there to make sure that you will be free one way or another when it is done. I did this for Mitch Travers when the time came. I can do no less for you." "What did you do for Mitch?" she asked, allowing the anger she allowed a moments freedom to die down in the face of what he said. She needed to know this most of all. She needed to know how Mitch had died. "Not enough to save him," Singh answered. "Everything wasn't enough to save him. It was already too late by then." "Tell me then," she said. "Tell me so I know that even if we fail it can still be worth it." "I will, as I promised I would. But there is one more thing I have to tell you first," Singh said. "And what is that?" Darcy asked. "The last connection. The reason that we think that you can be saved where Mitch Travers could not." There was something in Singh's eyes when he said that, Darcy thought. Something sad and determined and devious. There was something else he wasn't telling her, not just that she was going to die. It was something more and whatever it was it was important as well. So important that she realized that he wouldn't tell her at all. He couldn't trust her with that knowledge and instead of angering her it made her feel gloomy. If there was a reason that he could not trust her with whatever it was then it was because it was more important than anything Darcy could think of; so important that he could not take the risk of Fleur learning of it. Darcy held back the sharp intake of breath that marked her understanding of the thought and forced herself to keep control over that part of her that wanted to scream at Singh and demand that he tell her everything, all at once, right away. She wanted to scream, but that wouldn't work either and she didn't think that, even if she could get him to do that, that she would be able to take it unadulterated. Her heart was already beating faster. The truth was that while they were talking during this meeting she kept feeling the slow spread of disbelief moving through her thoughts and drowning her in the blackest of despair. That no matter what it was that they were telling her, she had no real chance after all and the only thing left for her was...what exactly? She asked herself. Because if there was no hope, then was there even a choice? Even if the chance they offered her was so small that success was a futile dream wasn't that enough to warrant taking that chance? Her eyes flashed down to the rose on her inner arm. It was almost finished and that meant that she was almost finished. Either she would become a monster or she would become a meal and not liking either of those choices that left only the straw that Singh held out for her to grasp. No matter how thin it was, it was still worth grasping and hanging onto she decided. Darcy raised her eyes back to Singh and fixed them with an intensity that she did not know she possessed. "Then I think you need to tell me," she said. "What kind of girl are you?" Singh asked her slowly. Each word precise and freighted with meaning that had more weight than she was accustomed to considering. "I don't understand," she said. "That was the question. The only question. The most important question. The answer to that question means everything to Fetterman and that means it means everything to us. It lets us know what we can do as well," Singh said deliberately. "There is nothing that is more important to him than knowing the answer to that question." "But you already know what kind of girl I am. You already know what that means," Darcy said. "You just spend the last couple of hours laying it out for me." "No, I didn't, I haven't even begun," Singh said. "I told you that you are a frightened girl. I told you what a frightened girl is, as I told you what a clever girl is; but I haven't told you what it means." Darcy heard the words and she grasped the difference that he was highlighting. No, the two things were definitely not the same and in view of that she knew nothing about what it could mean. But she needed to know and she needed Singh to tell her. For good or for bad she needed to know. "Then just tell me already. If it is that important, then tell me," Darcy said and sat waiting in the chair feeling the indigo light from the hearth play over her face while Singh let the hammer fall. Singh looked at the girl sitting across from him. Everything about her was telling him that she was hanging on by the last few remaining strands of control that she possessed; but there was something else there as well. Fetterman may have dubbed her a frightened girl when he made her, but she was more than that now. Deep underneath the fa?ade that Fleur had adopted to please her master there was steel forming there as well. The question was whose steel was it? Darcy's or Fleur's? Could Darcy reach the steel deep within her he wondered? Could she wrest it away from Fleur even if it was not her own after all? There was only one way to find out. Let the curtain rise and the players take their places, Singh told himself. It's the only way. Singh began to speak, his deep gravelly voice rumbling across the room as he took his own place on the marker and began. "The thing is Darcy, when we finally figured out that there even were such things as frightened girls and clever girls; we still didn't grasp that these terms meant something vital and were not just an easy means of labeling those that Fetterman had taken. We only knew that there was something else we needed to know, but we didn't have enough information to know what it was or how it fit into everything else that we did know. And we were never going to find out what it was. Not doing as we were doing. We needed someone who was inside, someone who could tell us what we needed to know. Someone who understood what Fetterman understood even if she was not aware that she did." "And that's why you need me," Darcy said, comprehension dawning on her face, followed swiftly by disappointment. "It's not going to work though. As much as I would tell you everything, I don't think I can. And even if I could tell you everything that you want; I would probably wake Fleur while I was doing it and then there would nothing any of you could do but put her down and me with her." Singh shook his heavy head from side to side slowly in the blue tinted light illuminating the room. "No Darcy, you misunderstand me. We already know what the answer to that question is. Mitch Travers was the one who made it clear for us. And Sakura confirmed it." ------------------------------ Medeval One, ACC Medical Evaluation Facility (formerly Bryant's Field Air Strip), Stafford: Day 181, 0843 hours Dr. Matt Gregor looked apprehensively through the thick tempered glass into the medical bay where the six bodies lay already stretched out on stainless steel examination tables. All of them were, in appearance, the mortal remains of women of extremely advanced years from their gnarled feet to their liver spotted scalps and it was all deception. An illusion concealing the weakness that was actually holding them in place. A deceptive weakness that could all too easily change in frightening and lethal ways. Dr. Gregor shuddered again looking at them and absently, without being aware that he was even doing so, he rubbed the scar that twisted around his left wrist and forearm. He looked at them through the glass and hoped that the heavy-duty load bearing straps that lashed them into place were strong enough to bind them. It seemed a foolish thing to hope for if you were only looking at their appearance. But where these things were concerned, appearances were as deadly as they were deceptive and the only hope that Gregor had of containing them if they revived was the strength of those straps slowing them down. Slowing them down just long enough for one of the satyr guards to line them up in their sights and put down what would be trying to break those bonds with a well placed shot from an A-33 assault rifle. The satyrs were in the next room, with only a thick wall pierced with firing loops separating them. They were only fifteen or twenty feet away from each other. Just a bare stride or two from their sight picture and Gregor still felt that they were too far away. Nervously Gregor fingered the panic button in his pocket that he carried with him always whenever he was near the examination bay. He wasn't taking chances. His finger hovered near it every moment he was near these things and had done so ever since the moment that first one had opened her eyes while he was preparing to begin decommissioning her. She made certain that he would never forget that no matter how weak they appeared, no matter how dead even; there were no precautions that were too extreme when it came to interacting with the special cases. He didn't know that before, but having survived an attack already he knew it down to the soles of his feet now. The thing was, it wasn't really dealing with the special cases that frightened him so much now. It was that every time he saw them he couldn't help thinking of all the times when he had locked himself inside a room tucked away in an unobtrusive corner of the Stafford Medical Examiner's office. All the times that he had slipped away with no one even aware of what he was doing while he hunched over one of these dormant things. All of the chances that he took in his ignorance. He might as well have kept an apple in his mouth while he was trapped in there with them. It would have been pretty much the same thing in the end if one of them had ever recovered while he was in close proximity. There were six of them so far. There can't be that many he told himself in a mental tone that dripped wax-like over his mind with fearful disbelief. Not six of them, not at one time, not six. There were never so many at one time and to make things worse they had all been reported rapid fire as if someone wanted them found immediately and brought together quickly. Brought together today rather than waiting for them to be discovered piecemeal whenever someone happened upon them, as the others mostly were. As far as Dr. Gregor was concerned that meant that they been dispatched directly to him deliberately and that could only mean that there was a purpose behind it. And having every single one of them arrive at the FRT facility within minutes of each other, one right after the other, it felt to him like he was watching rounds being loaded into the cylinder of a revolver. Coming near those cold, still figures laid out on the examination tables, each time felt to him like he was playing Russian roulette; each time he drew close the cylinder spun and then it would misfire. And with these bullets it would keep misfiring, right up until the moment it didn't. And then those eyes would open. Those terrible eyes that already loomed large in his night terrors and woke him in a body shaking, fear-chilled sweat far too many nights as it was. Those fears didn't need any more company, but it was lying there in the next room regardless. Dr. Gregor spread his hands carefully on the metal table that abutted the observation window. He laid them flat and leaned down hard on them. The weight of his upper body would probably help control any shaking even if it allowed his knees to knock a little more easily. He kept the weight on his palms and concentrated on controlling his breathing. He could pull out of this, he had done it before, he just needed to focus. The problem with that was, even with that in mind, he couldn't not keep watch what was in the next room. He was compelled to keep his eyes on them and he would keep that vigil until the others arrived. He raised his left hand and fumbled with the mug of lukewarm tea beside him. He felt the warm sweet liquid sink into the dry tissue of his mouth and gave silent thanks that these ones were gathered here and not in an unsuspecting M.E.'s office. Not even the most incurious of his former coworkers at the Medical Examiner's office could have ignored that much of a coincidence when he was working there. There had always been times when more than one had turned up on his table, but not like this. Never like this. Having so many being delivered from different locations around Stafford the way they had was not just unlikely; it was impossible, not without a helping hand. The coincidence was just too great and he had stopped believing in coincidence roughly about the time he saw his second special case. The problem was, knowing now what it was that he knew about them; the very idea of this many all gathered together like this in a virgin environment like the medical examiner's office struck him as more akin to turning a school of piranha loose on a herd of Guernsey's. If their eyes opened there, all that would be left would be whatever scraps of flesh that clung overlooked on the bone. At least they were here though and not there, he told himself, here at least there was a chance, even if it did mean that he would be soaked in fear sweat until the last of them were rendered harmless. When Special Detective Singh brought him into this, he wasn't sure quite what to expect. It was obvious that there was one hell of a lot of backing for the FRT. Anyone could see that and he had gotten an eyeful and more just from being casually escorted through their temporary bivouac on the way to where the rest of the task force was meeting that first day. Having Singh hand the lead forensic position over to him was to say the least unexpected and when Singh said he would have a facility to handle examining the special cases in full with no limits what he had in mind was more along the line of minimal interference. He hadn't expected for Singh to hand him the keys to the kingdom. Whatever else they were, the FRT were thorough and they had deep pockets. The facility that they had set up for him made the facilities at his old position look like a high school science lab. There were resources here that he had only read about and for the first time in his career he had heard someone say hang the cost, just do it and actually mean it. Considering where he came from it was one hell of a compensation for all of the trouble he'd landed in since that first special case had crossed his table. And then, in the middle of an examination, one of them opened her eyes and Gregor learned more about how dangerous these things were and how quickly it could happen than he ever thought he could. And he learned about fear. He thought he had an idea of it when Singh first showed him that film he had taken during his solo mission to Greenlawn cemetery; but after he had to have those cold claws levered out of his arm when the thrashing, terrifying creature on his table was put down he realized that had been a mere peck on the cheek from fear. All things being equal, there were some times since then, that he wished that he was still back in the ME's office and was still blissfully ignorant of what he had learned since he had been placed in charge of his own lab. No that wasn't it. Not really. He couldn't go back to not knowing anymore than he could unscramble an egg. What he really wanted had nothing to do with wanting to crawl back into ignorance and everything to do with what it was lying on those tables, lashed down and sealed in the next room. And to be utterly honest what he really wanted was a good dozen heavy weapons emplacements trained on them at all times rather than a few satyr guards firing incendiary rounds and he wanted about a foot of armor plate between him and them. That was what he wanted. His palms were slick with sweat and they shook as he reached for the phone and asked to be connected immediately to Special Detective Singh. The buzzing of the phone connecting didn't last for long. Singh was going to pick up within a three rings in most cases. It took that long for him to withdraw his phone from his pocket and check the caller ID before answering. And if there was no answer, then whatever was going on was something you didn't want to be involved with and likely didn't want to know about. "Detective Singh," he heard the man's deep voice echo into his ear. "Detective Singh, its Dr. Gregory. I need you to come here to meet with me immediately. There is something you need to see at the facility and you need to see it sooner rather than later." "I'm on my way," he said, suddenly more serious. "Is there anything else that I should know?" he asked. "Bring guns," Gregory said, cutting his eyes through the thick glass in the direction of the six bodies. "Bring a lot of guns and make sure they burn whatever they're aimed at." ------------------------------- Singh, M'Tehr and Pantra moved along the corridors of the FRT morgue facility as quietly as they could. There was no need to operate stealthily but they were each moving quietly in their own way as was their habit. They could no more make noise when they moved than they could exist. Pantra's silence was because she was relying on her ability to glide more than her ability to fly; M'Tehr's because she naturally moved almost silently as a matter of course and Singh who had neither reason to explain his silence, did so anyway because it was a longstanding habit. The facility was new even though it was housed in old buildings and since it had been established, Dr. Gregory had examined almost two dozen of the special cases thoroughly ever since he had first walked through the nondescript doors that gave not the slightest hint of what took place behind them once they swung closed again. He was placed in charge of the FRT's medical examination facility only a matter of weeks at this point and while he had discovered some disturbing things about the special cases in that time, he had never come outright and said that Singh should bring an armed escort with him to examine something that he had uncovered. The fact that he did so today of all days only motivated Singh to move with greater urgency, even though he masked it beneath his calm exterior. It would take very little time to arrive there. The facility was not that far away. They still would not go right away regardless of the urgency. They needed to stop at the Grove first. When they arrived at the Gatehouse, M'Tehr was waiting for him and Pantra. When they departed it they passed through the outer door with an escort of six satyrs. The big males were concealed in a full glamour. It might not seem necessary for them to do so but, even in the heart of the ACC with less and less chance for them to be seen by civilians with each passing day, it would not be wise for them to be photographed as they were. Even with that precaution they still managed to stand out. Even against the background of more numerous ordinary FRT personnel, they stood out in their charcoal fatigues. A uniform that, whether the observer knew it or not, identified them as part of the Grove's special operations detachment. And if that was not enough, the detail that each of the six satyrs openly carried an A-33 assault rifle loaded with very specific rounds with businesslike competence would be hard to overlook. Singh was aware of the chance that having them reveal their presence in the Grove in this manner ran the risk of blowing back on them, but considering that Gregory had never asked for backup of this nature before. Singh was of the mind that possible blowback over their presence was preferable to whatever it was that had spooked Dr. Gregor in this way. Singh was in no mood to take chances. Especially since he had already been intending to phone Gregor to be alert for anything out of the ordinary over the next couple of weeks. From the fearful tone of Gregor?s words when they spoke, Singh suspected that he would not have to wait for those weeks to pass after all. Singh was in the investigation?s operations room when Gregor called him, but before he even ended the connection he knew that his and Pantra?s first stop on the way to Dr. Gregor?s lab in Medeval One would be the gatehouse of Phar?Naqua. It meant going out of the way slightly and delaying their arrival at the laboratory, but from the tone and tenor of Gregor?s words it was absolutely necessary. As he approached the street still listed on the Stafford city map as Magnolia Circle, he realized that he been so distracted by the call that he had neglected to arrange transport for them. A call to Fitzhugh at the ACC solved that problem easily enough, but it bit time out of what they had and the clock was ticking. The driver of his car slowed to a stop and without a word Singh, followed by Pantra, exited and made their way up through the thick emerald grass to where the door of the sole occupied home on the circle stood open, waiting for them. "M?Tehr knew we were coming," he said to Pantra as she arrowed through the air toward the open portal. "That?s not hard," Pantra replied. "Not when you have every tree and beast here constantly watching who is approaching and relaying you a heads up. Now if she knows why we are here then I?ll be properly impressed." Singh grunted in agreement and they made their way inside. ------------------------- M?Tehr was waiting in the Florida room that functioned as their default meeting place when Singh required privacy to speak with her. The official greeting ritual was truncated as much as possible to speed their way while still showing proper respect to the Mistress of the Grove and her children. Considering how often they were here, Singh was flattered that they had that much flexibility in them. It had to be Arath? Mahar?s influence on them. Before she had appeared, the Grove would have been sticklers for every least little detail, now they seemed more flexible, more...human. Singh wasn?t sure if that was a good thing or not. It may make things easier for them here in the short run, but it would complicate other things down the line. A Grove Network that was more in touch with the human part of their heritage was something that they had not been in all the time they had been allied with humans... more unpredictable. Singh wasn?t sure if humanity was ready for a Grove that embraced change the way that they did. He wasn?t sure if it could be. "You would only come to us unexpected and unannounced with good reason Friend Singh," she said. "What is this that causes you to stir so?" Singh held out his hand for her to see. "This." M?Tehr?s eyes widened and he caught her mimicking a sharp intake of breath even though she did not breathe. She was definitely becoming more human in her mannerisms. Little things that used to stand out to him, things that told him that she was not who she appeared to be, were being acted on more naturally and the little tells that she was not the human woman she appeared to be were becoming less and less apparent. "What do you need?" she asked. "I need a hand of Satyrs. You know the ones I am thinking of. And I need them ready to move in the next ten minutes," Singh said in a tone of deadly earnest. M?Tehr closed her eyes. Another affectation she now performed without calculation. Another seamless blending of what she was grafted into who she appeared to be. "They will be here in moments, Friend Singh," she said when her eyes opened. "Is this the moment?" she asked him. "If it were I would be asking for more than a single hand of satyrs," Singh replied. "This is not the moment. But I think it may be retrieval." "Then I will accompany you as well," M?Tehr said in a tone that would brook no objection. "Arath? Mahar will want me there beside you for this." "I would have it no other way," Singh replied. "We leave at once," he said rising from the wicker chair. On the street, outside the Gatehouse, Singh could hear the heavy engine of the FRT transport he had requested arrive and slow to a stop. The five ton transport was painted in FRT matte black, but it was drawn from the same supplier that the conventional military drew from. The blocky angular cab sat snub nosed directly over the engine in front of the wide cargo area. The cargo bay of the big truck was covered with a heavy duckcloth cover also in slightly faded black. The waterproof fabric would shed rain as easily as it namesake but it also sucked heat and humidity into the space within like a vacuum. Nearly thirty men and their equipment could be shoehorned into that space, but today it would only carry eight. Even so, with the rear panel down, it was going to quickly get stifling in there. They could handle it, Singh told himself. The good thing was that since it was an FRT truck, the transport bay would be modified with Fae in mind. His borrowed Satyrs would barely notice any effect from cold iron while they were conveyed to their target. The driver started to dismount, but Singh waved him back behind the wheel before he had done more than open the door. "We?ll be leaving as soon as the team has boarded," he said, looking up to the man. "I will be riding in the back to deliver the briefing to the team en route." "Where our destination sir?" The driver asked. "Medeval One," he said and turned to head to the rear of the vehicle without further words. The six satyrs took only moments to load, their apparent forms were much smaller than their appearance suggested and their combined weight made the springs of the heavy duty truck shudder as they settled into the fold down bench seats, but only a little; the springs on these trucks were strong enough to take far more weight than a half dozen satyrs. Singh clambered aboard once they were in and turned to offer a hand up to M?Tehr. Once she was aboard and settled, two of the satyrs sitting by the rear of the vehicle secured the rear gate and dropped the rear duckcloth flap so that none would easily see inside. Singh thumped the rear of the cab twice and heard the transmission of the big vehicle shift into gear followed by the lurch and the increased sound of its engine as it began to move. "Our destination is Medeval One," he said to the satyr special ops team and as they listened intently while the truck rumbled along the deserted streets of this part of Olympia he began to lay out their mission. ---------------------------- Medeval One, ACC Medical Evaluation Facility, Stafford; Day 181, 0937 hours On the map, the facility that the FRT had commandeered to establish Medeval One at was shown as Bryant?s Field. Bryant's Field was a small rundown airstrip located at the edge of Olympia that had served as a training base during World War Two and as a municipal airport for a short time after the war ended. Even after the FRT had chosen it as a staging area there was little enough to suggest that their presence was anything other than temporary. Bryant?s Field was where the small pool of UH-60 Blackhawk helicopters that arrived with Agent Fitzhugh had been based. Their crews were housed in bulbous tents capable of sleeping twenty that were erected alongside the weed pierced concrete runway. The area around Bryant?s Field was now a built up residential zone just outside of where they had established the quarantine zone around Phar? Naqua. Rusting chain link fences separated the decommissioned airport from the part of Stafford that had grown up around it over the years and in places you could see where the overgrown vegetation had knocked down the barrier with the weight of years of unchecked growth. While the property was mostly abandoned, and had been ever since a new light aircraft field had been built in the early aughts to replace this one, there were still pockets on the property that were not allowed to slide into decay. Unfortunately for the FRT, in the case of Bryant?s Field, that meant that there were few options for them in regard to housing and supporting their air detachment and those bulbous shelters they had erected when they arrived remained in place giving the field the appearance from above of having large mushrooms sprouting next to the tarmac. The majority of the remaining buildings were either condemned outright or well on their way to collapse from sitting in a state of active neglect ever since the airfield had been closed to the light aircraft that called it home near the turn of the century. The only exceptions to the state of decay were the old World War Two era Quonset huts that were clustered along the original landing strip and the main building that doubled as an administrative office and terminal back in Bryant?s Field?s heyday. The Quonset huts had been coated in a rust resistant rubberized paint that if anything was still standing firm against both the hand of time and corruption; the biggest reason that the main building survived the way it did was mainly that it had not actually gone out of use and had been redeveloped several times since the last plane landed here. Now when you looked out over the empty space of the air strip you saw the clustered roofs of the homes that lined the perimeter around it. Those homes were invariably modest and the people who lived there could be charitably described as upper poverty level or lower middle class. They had just enough security to keep whatever wolves plagued them a step or two away from the door, but not enough to keep from being stepped on when they were inconvenient to those who never worried about common things like repairs and household bills and ordinary concerns. Now the area was thickly populated with all of the amenities of any other suburban area, but when the airfield was first built, all that surrounded the nascent aerodrome was the worn out fields where sharecroppers struggled to pull just one more bale of cotton from earth that was growing more and more depleted of nutrients with each growing season. The man responsible for it all was a barnstormer named Alvin Bryant. In the late twenties, just before the whole world sank into depression, the thirty year old former fighter pilot who had served first with the Lafayette Escadrille and then with the AEF, arrived in Stafford. He was traveling in the company of four other aerial vagabonds that made up the flying circus that they used to keep themselves in fuel and such necessities as they could scrounge to keep the rest of themselves together. Bryant, like many of the flyers of his time, was a aerial daredevil. He crisscrossed the country in his Curtis JN-4 Jenny biplane performing aerial tricks and offering rides to the local population wherever they landed. He charged the locals about five dollars, a steep price for the time, for a fifteen minute aerial tour of where they had always lived and then they moved on in a few days to the next town; but Bryant saw something here and was able to convince the others in his group that this was a likely place for them to put down roots. What Bryant saw was that Stafford was not just another small town like so many others they dropped in on and left after the interest in what diversion they provided began to wane. With its river and rail connections it was already a large town, but it had the potential to become a city in its own right; albeit a small one. What it didn?t have was an air connection and Bryant, like so many other disciples of modern aviation was determined that when it came he would be leading the way. It took a little doing. Barnstormers like them lived hand to mouth mostly and money was always in short supply, but the potential was worth it and they had enough connections between to raise the money to buy four acres of worthless cotton land close enough to town to make it worth their while to be there, but far enough away that it would remain a going concern while it was still small and fragile. Bryant?s intention was for them to use it as a home base and let it serve as a landing strip and refueling stop for other planes passing through. Carrying Air Mail when that was authorized soon followed and from there it was just a natural extension of that idea that saw them bringing in the occasional case of imported scotch or Cuban rum. Their flying circus still flew out of there, because no matter how interesting what they did was, having it around all the time would not generate enough interest locally to keep them in either fuel or food for long. But now they had a place to come back to and something to build on. Most insisted that even a small strip wasn?t likely to last. Too many similar places had popped up, struggled for a few years and then collapsed, but Alvin Bryant had other reasons for placing an air strip here as well. In between when the flying circus would set out on the circuit they would not neglect the local flavor. Bryant would host regular daredevil shows and even during the depression he could count on a crowd gathering to see his pilot's wing-walk or attempt an outside loop and in general just spit in death's eye with each increasingly dangerous stunt that they could imagine. The problem was that when they did that, death would calmly wipe the spittle out of his hollow socket, reach out with a bony claw and claim them as often as he ignored them. Alvin Bryant was under no illusion of that certainty and the crowds that gathered for each spectacle were gathered together as much to be amazed as they were gathered for that chance to see someone die for daring to don the mantle of Icarus. The field, like Stafford, limped through the depression, fueled as much by midnight flights that ignored prohibition as it was by spectacle in the daylight hours. In late nineteen forty one, despite Alvin Bryant?s determination and best efforts, the field was facing a likely bankruptcy. That didn't matter after December 7th. Alvin Bryant, like so many others volunteered for what service he could offer. In his case it meant more than just his skills as a pilot. It meant that he was able to convince those who could bind and loose that his field would be a good training location to support the already overstretched hand of the U.S. Army Air Corps. It wasn?t entirely selflessness on his part when he signed over control of the field lock, stock and barrel to the Army Air Corps for the duration. He intended to reap the benefits of what they would build as well when they no longer needed them and like the others who had long preached that air transport and travel would change everything afterward Bryant saw this as a transformative moment and didn?t hesitate to seize it. He wasn?t going to see it though. Bryant had already departed Stafford when the new base commander arrived and set his engineers to work running up wooden barracks, placing fuel depots, building repair shops and not least; lengthening the current strip and adding another. By the time the engineers departed, hustled on to their next assignment, Bryant's Field was only recognizable as the seed of what had been covered over by the needs of the present. The first B-25?s, flown by female shuttle pilots, were landing while the field was still under expansion; arriving even before the men who would later fly those same B-25's as they prowled remorselessly over Europe and North Africa. Flying out of Bryant?s Field they first honed their skills on bombing ranges carved out from the used up cotton land purchased for pennies on the dollar. They dropped dummy bombs on islands in the deep channel of the Welles River some ten miles downstream from Stafford itself. And more than a few of them made fatal mistakes that saw them never leave the skies over Stafford for the infinitely more hostile ones that awaited them in the European theatre. Alvin Bryant, commissioned an Army Air Corps Reserve Major would never see his field or Stafford again. On the fifteenth of August, 1943, he muscled his heavy bomber into the air one final time. He led his squadron along the 1300 mile flight over open water from their base in Australia and never returned. His B-24G, the one his crew had christened ?Cross Eyed Mary? for the bombsights that marked her eyes on the ship?s nose art, was last seen enveloped in flames and breaking up as it plunged toward the Borneo jungle with an undelivered bomb load. Two thousand, seven hundred pounds of high explosive and incendiaries detonated on impact barely a mile short of the target; a victim of a fanatically determined defender in a twin engine Kawasaki Ki-45. The explosion tore a scar in the landscape below, leaving little trace of Major Bryant, his ship or any of the other ten men in his crew who were trapped with him by G forces and unable to escape the flaming comet their plane had become. The 13th Air Force squadron that he led during the three day long bombing raid on the Japanese held oil refinery at Balikpapan lost others in addition to him, but when that three days of hell delivered by them ended, the refinery was utterly wrecked and its loss further tightened the noose being drawn around the neck of the IJN. The field was officially named after him in memoriam in late 1944 and it remained the sole remembrance of the barnstorming daredevil and sometimes bootlegger until its gates were closed for the last time near the end of the century. Shortly after it was renamed, the life the War Department had breathed into it began trickling out of Bryant?s field. The end of the war left no reason for the newly created Air Force to retain it; not when the millions who had been called to the colors were being demobilized and the planes it had trained those men to fly were obsolescent if not already obsolete. In 1949, the field pioneered by Alvin Bryant finally became what he had envisioned for it when it was decommissioned as a military base and deeded to the City of Stafford for use as its first metropolitan airport. A role it filled, as Bryant hoped it would, until too many of the DC-3s and DC-6s that could use its runways were replaced by newer jet airliners that required more space to land and take off from than Bryant?s Field could offer them. The last commercial flight landed at Bryant?s Field on August first of 1969, but the field remained in operation for several decades afterwards. Now a home for small single engine aircraft, it remained in operation for nearly another forty years until it finally closed its gate for good and sat undisturbed and nearly abandoned while others haggled over what should become of the land it rested on. It's weathered concrete airstrip and stubborn Quonset huts were left to migratory birds that flocked to the now undisturbed empty space in the middle of the burgeoning suburbs. Those were its only visitors other than the explorations of young children following the lure of their imagination and the attentions of vandals and it would have remained so until the wrecking ball was ready to swing. And then a Grove bloomed not far away in the heart of Olympia and Bryant?s Field began returning to life again. The needs of the FRT who claimed it as their own granting it a reprieve and, for a time, a new purpose. ------------------------- Matt Gregor nearly jumped out of his skin when he heard the door behind him unlock and swing open. The converted operations building squatting midway down the flight strip that the FRT had taken over hadn?t been seen use since an aeronautical engineering firm that leased the building, one that specialized in designing and producing scaled down versions of aircraft for the RC market. It had gone under some six years before the FRT arrived and sited their facility here. But you couldn?t tell that now to look at it from the inside. A construction team had hastily remodeled and improved the interior of what became his laboratory with lightning speed it seemed and with the soundproofing they had installed while doing so, now you could barely hear the helicopters taking off from the flight line until you were near the entrance. The doors still squeaked in some of the rooms though and the one leading into the room looking into the examination room was one of them. Gregor blamed his raw nerves for making him so jumpy, there was no way any of the six special cases could come at him from that direction but their presence had him so on edge that he couldn?t help doing it. His heart only started to slow when he saw Singh walking through the door into the room followed by Pantra and a tall woman whose name he remembered was M?Tehr. He hadn?t had much contact with M?Tehr. Outside of the few meetings that they both had attended, he really knew little about her, other than regardless of what she looked like, that she was Fae and she held a high position with them. The six heavily built men dressed in black tactical gear carrying nasty looking assault rifles behind them he hadn?t seen before; even amongst the rest of the FRT that he had been working alongside since he was recruited by Singh. Satyrs he decided, looking at them. The glamour that they were using was of a kind as the ones that formed his rapid response team, but these satyrs somehow looked more dangerous than the ones he was familiar with. He hadn?t thought that possible, but it was here in front of him. Singh greeted him bruskly and leaned past him to peer into the examination room. Gregor heard him utter a low grunt as he took in the scene behind the glass. "I can see why you said what you said," he growled motioning M?Tehr over so that she could see as well. "Where is your staff?" he asked. "I sent them to the outer offices when the last one came in," Gregor said. "I couldn?t take the chance that something might happen before you could get here." Singh looked at the room through the glass. After the incident that had nearly taken Dr. Gregor, there had been severe security upgrades to the examination room. Now there were firing loopholes piercing the wall and in the room behind those loopholes was stationed a half hand of satyr marksmen and a pixie who, like Pantra, had an affinity with fire. In addition to those measures there was a blister mounted on the ceiling that could pump enough gas into the room in twenty seconds to put a half dozen elephants down for a day or kill everything in the room depending on which button was chosen. Between loopholes was a concealed door that would let them quickly pull Gregor or anyone else from the room should they activate their panic button. The door itself was almost impossible to see where it blended into the wall and once sealed the room was airtight. None of these additions had been present until after Gregor?s examination had turned dangerous far quicker than they had expected it to, but they were in place now. "And the automatic defenses?" Singh asked. "Did you not trust that those would be sufficient?" "Against one or perhaps two, yes," he said reaching for his access card and swiping it over the panel so that they could enter. "But as you see," he said, gesturing at the row of bodies. "There are considerably more than one or two." Singh looked into the examination room. Normally there were only three tables in the room; today there were six. They were crowded against each other with just enough room between them for you to move. Each of them was restrained across the chest, the arms and the legs with the strongest bindings that could be made. Woven into the bindings of the restraints were special blends of different metals that would weaken a variety of Fae breeds. Attached to each body was a bank of monitors that, for the moment was displaying no indication of anything that could be measured to indicate that there was any sign of life in those bodies. It all looked like they had gone overboard at first glance, but in the case of these particular bodies there was the real chance that it may not be enough. "When did they come in?" Singh asked quietly. "The first one arrived around four thirty this morning," Dr. Gregor replied. They called me in as soon as they got the pick up call. The second one was delivered about thirty-five minutes later. After that they just kept coming one after another. The last one was delivered about twenty minutes before I called you." "And have you examined them yet?" Singh asked. "One of those things is bad enough," Dr. Gregor said, his physical shuddering at the thought made his graying frizzy hair quake slightly. "I?d sooner oil myself up and jump in the skillet rather than go in there with six of them. There?s no telling what they might do in numbers like that. The only thing that has been done to them is to secure them and hook them up to the monitors. The moment that was done, I pulled my staff out and called you. I?m not going in there with that many of them that close together." Dr. Gregor had become much more cautious with good reason. Less than a three months before, two of the special cases had been placed in close proximity during a routine examination. Unnoticed by anyone, one of them began to drain what little life remained from the other right in front of Dr. Gregor and his staff. It hadn?t been noticeable to any of them until Gregor felt the dry withered flesh move beneath his finger tips and then he saw the eyes of the thing open. Those terrible dark eyes boring into him, the pupil no longer round and dilated and fixed, but shaped like a star with the vertical arms stretching up and downward long and narrow like the slit eye of a venomous serpent. He had barely enough time to hit the emergency alarm and spring backward as it lurched toward him and still it had mauled him trying to drain what life it could from him. One of the security staff had managed to drive it back, but not before it had torn a gaping wound in Dr. Gregor?s left arm and begun draining what life it could from the bloodied limb. Whatever courage Gregor had in facing them had left him when it came to handling special cases in large numbers after that; although there had not been anything like these numbers thus far. He became cautious and precise after that and to reassure him, Singh had tasked another who had access to fire as their elemental affinity to watch over him after the incident in addition to the other security upgrades. "Then we must take what precautions are necessary," Singh replied and motioned for the satyrs who had escorted them to enter the examination room and take up positions. As Gregor watched three of them faded from sight into the aether, while the other three kept two targets under close observation. As Gregor watched the A-33?s level onto each one he felt a little better. The red light sight of each weapon was fixated firmly on each head and he knew without asking, that those weapons were loaded with incendiary rounds in the first magazine. They hadn?t needed to use them yet, but at the same time just seeing the firefly light that heralded instant destruction laser focused on those withered craniums made him breathe easier. Before the incident, Gregor had been more cavalier about handling these things, far more than even he could believe when reflecting on it later. That was a failing that he no longer was guilty of. Usually the first thing that was done now to a special case upon pickup was to hit them with a brief spritz of aerosolized liquid nitrogen, not enough to freeze them, but enough so that, it was hoped, any metabolic changes would be slowed until further steps could be taken. The first stop after arrival was the reefer, where the low temperatures that had been induced by the small amount of liquid nitrogen could be imposed and maintained. In the reefer was where initial identification was done, just before the body was sent to the medical bay for examination and neutralization. The reefer wasn?t an option today. There was only room for three at most and once Gregor made the call to summon Singh, he had instructed his staff to remove them from there before he pulled them back. Gregor didn?t like it one bit but there were just too many to let sit in separate locations and at least this way he could keep them under direct observation. Besides, this was the room that was best able to slow them down if they had an inclination to get up and try to leave. But as the minutes crawled by while he waited for Singh to arrive Gregor couldn?t help but feel helpless. He had everything the room had available and then some to contain them at the press of a button and with each moment that crawled by the target painted on his back grew heavier. It wasn?t fair he told himself, but he kept his eye on them even so. Singh paced at the foot of the gathered bodies and as he did his eyes roved from one to the other. Gregor watched him and wondered what it was that he was thinking and why he wasn?t doing more just yet. "I would really feel more comfortable if you could do this as quickly as you can," he whispered reflexively. "That sooner that each of their brains is scorched the better I?ll feel about it." "Doctor, I do understand your misgivings, more than you can suspect," Singh responded. "Rest assured that if any of them have even a twitch assisted by ordinary gravity these troopers have orders to obliterate them. I promise you, we?ll take no chances here." "Just hurry if you would," Gregor responded. The sooner they are spiked the sooner I can start to breathe again." Singh didn?t respond. He continued to pace at the foot of the row of bodies, one hand in his pocket and after watching him make the same slow circuit four times Gregor realized that he was moving in that fashion so as not to mask the satyrs line of fire... and he was looking for something. The examination room was crowded. Not only were the six bodies wedged between the equipment, everyone was now in the room as well. That couldn?t be helped though and if something did happen Gregor wasn?t sure about how it would play out this time. Once the last of them had entered inside the room Gregor had engaged the door seal. As he turned the lock and keyed in the security code. Pantra, who was paying him more attention than she was to the bodies, could see a thin sheen of sweat on his brow forming on his brow as he did so. She watched him as he stepped back from them almost arching his back to get as far away from the withered flesh of the drained women as he could go. Poor bastard, she thought as she watched him. After what they took from him they terrify him and he still locks himself in here with us instead of staying outside. You poor brave bastard she muttered to herself. "When you were in the chief medical examiner?s office did you recall ever seeing so many at one time before?" Singh asked him. "Never," Gregor said flattening his torso against the wall near his quick escape door in the wall behind him. "There was never this many at one time. Mostly it wasn?t more than just one at a time, sometimes two. When this many came in I knew that something was going on and I knew that you needed to see it for yourself." Singh looked across the room. Not all of the bodies had gone into the refrigerated reefer once they had started arriving and they lay on each of the metal examination tables covered by a long white sheet. "Is this all of them?" Singh asked. "Are you certain there might not be more?" "Detective Singh, if there are any more, then we haven't picked them up yet," he said. "When we finish here I?d like very much for you to check if you would Dr. Gregor. Make certain that you've checked with the old city morgue as well. We must be certain that we are in sole possession of any of these special cases the moment that they arrive. " Singh leaned over and flipped away the white cloth on the first body exposing the shriveled face underneath. He peered into the features of the ancient appearing woman and merely grunted softly before moving to the next one and repeating his actions. Gregor watched him as he moved from table to table until he had exposed each special case?s face. "Were they found together or separately" he asked. "Separate calls. All close together, like someone was running down a list," Gregor replied. "Someone may well have been," Singh said. "You?re thinking that Fetterman wanted us to know about this lot?" Pantra said from her corner where she was covering Singh. "Fetterman doesn?t know for certain why the Stafford M.E. was taken off of these cases. He may not know for certain that the FRT is responsible for taking over examination of these special cases, but he does know that they are being eliminated." "How do you know that?" Pantra asked. "Because he hasn?t run yet. He doesn?t know why the special cases have been diverted here, but he does know that they are being disposed of." "Just hurry up and get it over with Armin," Pantra told him. "As usual, Pantra, you are quite correct," Singh said moving toward the first of the bodies. "I don't know what's going on, but I know that having so many come in like they did is practically screaming that something is up, and somehow when I called you I get the impression that you were not that surprised. So I can't help thinking you're here for more than just having all of these here at once," Dr. Gregor opined from his position in the back of the room. "We are, Doctor Gregor," Singh said. "What are you looking for then?" he asked. "I will know it when I see it," Singh said looking down gravely at the still face of the elderly appearing woman. He reached out with one hand and laid it against the cold flesh for a moment and then shook his head before moving on to the next. Beside each body he did the same thing until he reached the fourth one. His other hand, the one that he had kept resting in his jacket pocket twitched slightly beneath the cloth when he made the connection. It was a faint almost imperceptible motion but Gregor noticed it. "You find something?" he asked. "Possibly," he answered. "Are you sure that you should be doing whatever you are doing there detective?" he asked. "I haven't touched any of these yet. No one has before or after I called you. I've been sweating having this many around every moment since then. I keep expecting to turn around and see them all coming for me." "Dr. Gregor, I understand your misgivings. And were it not for other considerations, I would have ordered you to immediately burn them all. But that consideration is still there and thus the reason why we are conducting this examination in this fashion," he said lifting his hand from the fifth body and making his way to the last. "I trust it will ease your mind to know that once I have confirmed what we need to know that they will all be immediately neutralized; but only after we confirm what we have come here to confirm." Dr. Gregor nodded and shot the line of bodies a nervous glance. "The sooner you do that then, the better that I've going to feel about it. I promise you that. I've been jumping if a mouse cuts a loud fart ever since they brought the last one in." Singh lowered his hand away from the last body and covered it again. He looked over to M'Tehr and Pantra who had remained by the door with Gregor while he examined the corpses. "I think we have him," he said and started walking back to the fourth corpse. "You think you have who?" Dr. Gregor asked as Singh turned down the sheet exposing the chest of the withered woman. "Detective Travers," he said removing his hand from his pocket and placing a dull grey crystal teardrop on her still cold chest. There was nothing for a long moment and then nothing still during the second one. Gregor wondered what was supposed to happen and felt a flash of fear at the idea that the stone might actually return the body to life. He couldn't help visualizing again the film of that thing in the coffin and feel the dry crepe like sensation of the gorilla strong cold flesh reaching for him and scrabbling against his own flesh before clamping shut like a vice. An icy sweat started forming on his brow as he waited for the thing's eyes to open. The grey crystal started to take on a dim glow but the light within never raised to anything more than a shift in color from a darker grey to a slightly lighter grey. Singh reached for it and removed the crystal, returning it to his pocket. "This is him," he said. "Are you certain Friend Singh?" M'Tehr asked. "We must be certain before we go further. If we are wrong there will be terrible consequences." "I am certain, Lady M'Tehr," he answered. "When I first touched each of the bodies, this was the only one that the guardian?s tear echoed against when I did so. If I were to lay the crystal on the breast of one of the others there would be no change as we just saw. No, I am certain that this is him." "The change in the crystal was so little, we have to be certain," she said. "You understand my caution. I know you more than others know what we will face if we are wrong." "Then certain we shall be, Lady M'Tehr," he said and walked back to the first body and lay the grey crystal on that one's chest. There was no change. With each successive test, Gregor kept expecting one of the bodies to reanimate and attack him or one that he had previously touched with the crystal to shamble into motion behind them, but each one remained still; silent and inert. He laid the crystal on the fourth bodies chest again and again there was a faint lightening. "This is him; the color change is so slight I think because there is so little life remaining here that is connected to it. There is just enough of an echo for the crystal to recognize Detective Travers buried here and no more." "And the others?" she asked. "What of them?" "They have little more life remaining in them now than Detective Travers does, but the life in them is not matched with this," he said holding up the crystal, "as it is with him. This body is the one that we need if we are to attempt to restore Detective Travers. If that is even possible." "You're going to try to reanimate one of those things again?" Doctor Gregor blurted, staring at Singh as if he had gone mad in front of him. "How can you even think about doing that? The other one we tried that with was weak, this one will be fresh." "Doctor Gregor, if we did not have this," he said holding up the crystal again before slipping it back safely in his pocket, "we would not even consider such a step. But because we do have access to detective Travers uncorrupted self, it is imperative that we try to restore him as much and as quickly as we can." "What about the other one?" Gregor asked, "Brighton, aren't you afraid that you might be destroying him if he's one of these others like you say Travers is this one?" "Detective Brighton is among these poor remnants, doctor Gregor," he said, "His tear is still illuminated and is not darkened as detective Travers's tear is," Singh indicated the fourth body on the slab. "Pantra," he said to the hovering pixie. "Neutralize the other ones. Try not to do more damage than necessary. The good doctor will still have to examine them when we are finished here." "What is she going to do?" Gregor asked watching her as she moved to the first body and gently landed beside the head. "Armin, I swear to you if this bitch tries to bite me, I'm kicking your ass when this is done," she said eyeing the woman's face beside her. "Pantra, if anything of the sort occurs, I fear we may be occupied with subduing the others and too busy for you to do so. So end this as quickly as possible if you please." Gregor watched as Pantra, with her head turned to one side and a revolted look on her face placed her hands on the skin and slowly slipped her hands beneath the surface of the woman's flesh. "What is she doing?" he asked Singh. "She is reaching deep into the brain, doctor Gregor. Her hands are passing through the aether so that she can do so. When she goes deep enough into the brain she will find and completely incinerate the medulla oblongata, once she does so, we hope that damage will be severe enough to delay any reanimation until you can complete your examinations. If we are correct, then it will not be possible for any of these to heal and rise for some time. Your subsequent autopsy should interrupt the process even more rendering them harmless until they are cremated." "God I hope you're right," Gregor said watching the pixie as she concentrated. Pantra removed her hands from the corpse and shook them as if to fling off them whatever she had come into contact with. "Gaaah, this is so disgusting," she said in a revolted tone of voice before flying to the next body. -------------------------- "So you found Mitch like that," she said sadly. "What did you do after that?" Darcy asked Singh. "With the others, neutralized and no longer a threat we took the body the crystal identified as his back to the center of the Grove itself." "That cannot have been an easy ride for you to take," she said. "It was not Darcy, Pantra had insisted that the body be lashed down before we returned and given what the two of us had already experienced in Greenlawn Cemetery and what had happened earlier to Dr. Gregor, no one was inclined to object." "Even with those precautions taken, we still spent almost the entirety of that journey with our eyes closely watching the body bag containing her remains for any hint of movement." "Once we took her into the Grove, the situation became much worse though. There was no way that we could have anticipated what occurred when we made our attempt to restore Mitchell Travers." ------------------------------- Gatehouse of the Grove, Phar' Naqua, Stafford: Day 181, 1157 hours If you happened to be watching the matte black truck that stopped in front of the sole remaining home on Magnolia Circle and happened to blink when it backed up with its rear deck overhanging the sidewalk. You would have missed seeing the six men carrying what appeared to be an occupied body bag as they jumped as one from the deck to the grass below and swiftly vanished behind the house. Satyrs move faster than their size would suggest that they could and these six had good reason to move as quickly as they could considering what it was that they bore in the bag. Singh, M?Tehr and Pantra disembarked at a slower pace and as the driver secured the truck behind them and drove away they walked to the open door of the Gatehouse. "If we are to have any chance to do this it must begin at once, Friend Singh," M?Tehr said quietly. "I believe this as well Lady M?Tehr," Singh replied. "But considering the nature of what we are attempting, I also believe our best chance for success lies in waiting for Arath? Mahar Selicia to return so she may be present for this as well from the beginning." "There is no time Friend Singh. We must begin immediately," she retorted bluntly, and Singh nearly stopped in surprise. It was not often that a dryad was so noticeably insistent about the fleeting nature of time. Usually that was something a human or one of the more impulsive Fae races would do, but to have a dryad acting so told him that there was something that M?Tehr might know about this that she had not shared with him yet. "Arath? Mahar is already aware of this and is hastening her return to the Grove," she said to them without looking behind her as the low growing bushes parted to allow them entry and closed again behind them. "She will be here momentarily and until she arrives I will do what is needed. The Grove owes this one a debt. That debt must be paid," she said in a tone that brooked no argument from anyone. The satyr special ops team had moved swiftly to carry the body bag containing Mitch from the vehicle to the deepest center of the Grove. When Singh had first broached this plan to M?Tehr, they both had agreed that the base of the elm; near the heart of the Grove itself was where it needed to take place. Of all the places in Stafford it alone had the strongest concentration of resting energy pooling underneath. Energy that they could tap and channel in this attempt. And without that energy there was little chance of success. Without that energy they would fail if they returned the monster rather than the man and what they released would fall on Stafford like a plague and keep killing until it could be brought down. The surprising thing for Singh was not that it was strong already. That was why it had been chosen in the first place. What was surprising for him was how quickly it had grown in strength since then. If the gathering strength at the heart of Phar? Naqua was any indication, the blooming that was so anticipated by the Fae and feared by those like him was even closer and more immanent than their most wildcat predictions said it was. We?re not ready, he told himself, feeling the waves of power emanating like physical blows to his consciousness from below the elm. Two hundred years of preparation and we?re still not ready! Despair clawed at his thoughts until he pushed it away with an effort of sheer will. There was not time for that right now he told himself. Worry about it after you have finished here. Right now focus! You need to focus on the task at hand agent, he chided himself mentally. Pantra was resting on Singh?s left shoulder as was her wont when she did so. They watched as M'Tehr summoned a platform from the forest floor and once it had risen to approximately waist high; two of the satyrs stripped open the plastic body bag and stood back as roots rose from the earth and lifted the limp body up and onto the flat surface of earth and wood. M'Tehr moved slowly around the limp form and as she did her hands caressed the body and touched various specific points along her route. Where she touched thick ropes of vine and root sprang up from the surface and curled around the cold flesh and tightened as a constrictor would to bind Travers into immobility. "We are ready to begin friend Singh," she said motioning him to come closer now. Pantra?s wings blurred and she lifted off from his shoulder and hovered for a moment until her eye spied an unoccupied overhead perch with a clear line of sight. There was no room for errors. If they truly lost control somewhere in the course of what was going to happen she was there to scorch what rose to ashes. Singh stepped to within four meters of the dais and at that point M?Tehr motioned for him to come no closer. "It is best you come no closer for now, friend Singh," she said. "If this is indeed what we suspect, it is best that only those lacking animus should be within arm?s reach until we are certain that what we seek to do has indeed worked as we hope it does." Singh said nothing and merely watched. There was little he could do at the moment as it was and it was enough that he was as close as he was for his part to proceed. His hand enclosed Travers?s guardian?s tear and he nodded to her to begin. M'Tehr, seeing his nod, turned back to the dais and then she began to slowly feed the life energy that she called from the resting energy in the aether of this spot into the withered body beneath her palms. The dim light that shaded them even on the brightest day began to dim as if she was drawing from that as well and a deep gloom descended around the center of the Grove. There was no true darkness though. As the light failed, phosphorescent plants that Singh had not suspected were there began to glow and then shed brighter light on what they were doing in the heart of the Grove. M'Tehr crouched without movement while they did so, her entire focus on channeling the vast force beneath her feet into a single point. As she did so, Singh felt a faint response from the crystal in his clasped in his palm and for a moment, before he willfully throttled the hope, he felt that this just might work after all. "More M'Tehr," he said quietly to her, "The crystal senses the energy starting to reach into him. We should start to see some physical reaction soon as well." "The reaction is here friend Singh," she said hoarsely as he continued to channel the power, "Come and see." Singh swung widely around the body so that he could walk toward her without risking touching the body and looked at where M'Tehr was indicating with her eyes. On the woman's arm there was little evidence that any changes were forthcoming that would prove that they had succeeded in reversing her physical appearance for now. But there was evidence that what they were doing was working in its own way. Faintly on the right and left arms where her glance indicated, Singh could see a pair of faint outlines starting to form. What they were was indistinct for the moment, but there was clearly something forming there. M'Tehr began to direct more resting energy into the body and as she did the images stabilized and started to resolve themselves becoming slightly clearer to the naked eye. "M'Tehr," Singh said, "It is no accident that those are appearing in the manner that they are. Is there any way that you can keep the flow of energy out and away from the arms for now? I don't think that it would be a good idea for those markings to be fully restored." "I will try friend Singh," she said and tried to shunt the power she was channeling directly into the chest cavity and upper torso and restrict its spread from reaching past the shoulders of the still corpse." "I think it's beginning to work M'Tehr," he said after a long ten minutes of watching. The tear has begun to lighten." Pantra, who had been watching the whole undertaking quickly glanced away from the body on the dais and it was as Singh said. The dull grey color that swarmed through the guardian tear that it had briefly lightened when Singh had placed it on the body in the morgue was even lighter now. It had faded to a slate grey from a charcoal grey and was now approaching the color of barely stormy skies. "I think I can do no more for now, friend Singh," M'Tehr said after a few more minutes. "I must keep this level stable for now and wait for Arath ?Mahar before I dare go further." "Are you certain you must do this?" Singh asked her. "I must. " she replied, "The demands of this husk are becoming more complex, too complex for me to selectively restore without them spilling over into paths we do not wish them to follow. I cannot block the energy I channel away from where the arms are marked and continue to funnel the amounts that I need to devote to restoration without having them pass fully into this one. One or the other will suffer for my doing so." "Is it possible for me to assist you?" Singh asked and stepping back when she slowly shook her head no. Even with all that was going on Singh was struck at how natural the gesture was to her now. Arath? Mahar has long arms he thought, not for the first time and then turned his attention back to the body of Mitchell Travers as he mused it over. It had been centuries since dryads like M?Tehr had a real instinctive understanding of that aspect of humanity. Perhaps it was something that they lost as who they were began to shift in appearance from their human appearing ancestress into what she looked like now. Losing that connection had caused her breed to shed other things that they saw as unnecessary as well and now, unless they made an effort like M'Tehr to understand them, they had difficulty comprehending them. Contact with Selicia in a way was like coming into contact with their own source of being. Her connection with humanity was so close that in a very real way it was as if they were receiving a transfusion from their original source and in that small way being refreshed and reconnected to what they once had been. "Lady M'Tehr," he said, "When Arath' Mahar arrives I suggest that you focus solely on preventing the markings from fully manifesting. The Lady of the Grove is the hand that we must trust to draw detective Travers back to us from whence he has been banished." "Arath? Mahar draws near, friend Singh," she said after a moment. "I should have called for her attention sooner, but I wanted to be sure that this was worthy of interrupting her hunt. The Grove network agreed with me and we delayed when we should have been bold." M?Tehr ceased to speak as she concentrated on holding the energy at this level. She apologized, Singh noted. She made an organic unsolicited apology and did so as if it was completely natural to her. She did it on the fly without thinking over its ramification endlessly as the Grove had done before. It was the most utterly human thing he had seen her do and he felt a flash of fear over it. If ever there should be an irresolvable breech between their peoples in the future. The Grove would be one of the more dangerous of human foes with that new intuition guiding their understanding of their brother race. That must never happen, he told himself. M?Tehr had grown still as she communed with the source of the power beneath them. As still as only a dryad could be. There was nothing to hint that she was other than an image someone had carved and left in the middle of this clearing. In Singh?s palm he watched as the crystal had faded from storm cloud to a light dove gray shade almost on the edge of the grey of barely dirty snow. Without indication that she was there, Selicia stepped from the aether into the material world, seemingly in front of her elm. Of course it would be the elm, Singh thought as she strode toward them. The elm was directly over the font of her power and for what they had discussed doing she would need to access the deep well of her connection from the very beginning. She came alongside of M?Tehr and paused to kneel and then to plunge her fists deep into the earth as Singh had done when he first faced her ravening madness in the infancy of Phar? Naqua. Clear ripples seemed to pass across her form welling up along her arms and reverberating across her visible form. DEAR GOD! Singh thought watching her tap directly into the life of the world. He wondered as he watched how she could contain so much raw force and do so without losing herself and dissolving into it. Selicia must have been searching an area closer than he supposed she was, Singh thought, watching her rise from the earth beside M?Tehr. There was no need to speak with her though. Not because of her position, but because she had been watching them from the moment that they had brought Mitch's body into the elm's clearing. She had seen every detail and heard every word as she approached. If it were not for her physical distance, she would have been here earlier, but that didn?t matter. M?Tehr had done enough already to prove that this just might work; they only needed someone with a greater level of control and with the arrival of Selicia in her own flesh now they could take this to conclusion. Even if she didn't have a strong natural mental shield Singh would not have presumed to try to pry into her thoughts concerning what they were doing here. It would not only have been an invasion of her innermost self to do something like that, it would be perceived as an act of mistrust rather than sympathy and was likely to enrage the Grove should he even attempt it. Better that he should keep his mind focused on his part in what they were doing rather than offer offense. Based on what she had shared with them though, it would have been impossible for her to not be affected by what she was witnessing. Selicia may not have been deeply involved in their operations trying to connect the shadowy man and Fetterman's operation. She may have spent her efforts scouring the area around the Grove in the aether searching for him on her own, seeking to turn him up through her own efforts while they had engaged in the nail by nail effort to uncover what that connection might be. Still she couldn't have found it possible to be unaffected by what she was seeing lying on her very doorstep. This withered form that they were trying to restore was the dark man?s intention for her as well as Travers. Regardless of how she had changed, there was no way that she could see this and remain unaffected. They may have uncovered the web of connections between Fetterman and the shadowy man she met; but they had yet to run him to ground. Even without that proof seeing the changes that had been wrought in detective Travers flesh and how that flesh had been squeezed empty and tossed aside like a discarded lemon could not help but affect her. Fetterman may be just a tool for the dark man, a mask he wore when convenient. But she still would recognize his handiwork in the withered husk that was all that remained of Mitchell Travers. Selicia stood and looked down at the ruined husk of the man she had met briefly. "This cannot be done in this way," she said and at her words Singh felt his heart sink. "The damage stems from her center. It is from her center that it should be repaired," she said quietly as she bent over Mitch?s body and grew as still as M?Tehr. Two of the satyrs that were nearby made as if to move closer to lend their strength to her in the event it was needed should she be successful. But before they had taken more than a few steps M'Tehr mentally waved them back to their places. Their strength was a double sided knife; they may be able to restrain what the two dryads called back into being, but they were also piles of fuel waiting to be drawn on as well. "Lady M?Tehr," Singh heard her whisper. "Life must be channeled into this vessel to re-forge the link to what was taken, but it will need to be life that animates without animus or anima. I must focus on filling in what is broken without allowing it to become whole." "While I am holding that power and directing it, I will be unable to attend to anything else. You will need to isolate whatever connection these markings have as you have been doing. This will take my full concentration. It is no accident that these markings were first to appear when you began and I agree with the earth weaver that it would mean nothing good for us if they were to be restored first," she said. Selicia turned her attention to Singh. The power rippling across her form distorted her face as she spoke. Singh would have looked away if he could but at this juncture he didn?t dare. "Is the mind ready to be restored?" she asked him. Singh held up the crystal for Selicia and M?Tehr to see. "It is. I will be your eyes and when the time comes we will draw Travers from the darkness. The tear is his tether to himself," he said. "It told us he was not dead when he appeared to be. It warned us he had been extinguished and it led us to the form he was warped into. Even hidden he could not be concealed from himself and it will lead him back when the way is prepared by Arath? Mahar. When the light blazes in the heart of the tear, then it will be time to rejoin body to mind. Until then whatever may be housed in this flesh is no friend of ours." "You must judge then when to join mind with body," she said, "But are you prepared to fail Earth Weaver? Are you prepared to send back into darkness what we have called forth? If this plan to make whole what has been severed returns with its hunger intact are you prepared to do what is necessary when she focuses that hunger in your direction?" "I will be the one who does that," Pantra said solemnly. "It is too dangerous for Singh or anyone else who has high levels of animus as part of who they are to approach too closely. I will place the tear and if need be, I will strike her down. Mitch Travers will be free, no matter the cost." "So be it then," M?Tehr said and turned back to dampening the power flowing into the faint outlines of the twin roses that marred Travers?s flesh. Selicia looked down into the withered age-ruined face of the still woman below her. Singh would have considered it well within reason if she were to show some sign of fear over being confronted by what could have well been her own face staring back at her. But fear was not something that lived there. Not that he could see. Her features hardened and her hands flexed and twisted as if she were holding the neck of the one responsible between them. If there was fear in her, Selicia's outrage over seeing his handiwork was smothering it. She reached for the woman's head and cradled both of the sides of it, grasping it between her spread fingers. Selicia bent her head slightly forward and closed her eyes as she concentrated on what she was to do. M'Tehr stood beside her and grasped one arm with each hand placing her palms over the faint markings etched into the still woman's flesh as if by covering the marks with her own flesh she was wiping them away. The air in the clearing, already heavy due to the dark timbre of the gloom around them grew heavier still and Singh could feel silence descend around them. Whatever creatures that had come to call this place home in the last few weeks it seemed were holding their breath along with the Grove itself. He had not heard such silence since the first time he had entered the Grove with Brighton and Travers. The building presence that centered on Selicia and passed out from her to encircle the clearing seemed to increase in it's solidity as it surged against what was there binding it in place. Singh's attention was fixed completely on the body of the woman that the two Fae were focusing their efforts on. Primal energy on a scale he would not dream of touching was being manipulated only a few bare feet away and the concentration of it on this one spot was impossible for him to ignore as the Grove shuddered beneath the weight of it. ------------------------------ Selicia felt the emptiness lash her as her hands came in contact with the cold flesh beneath her. Tactile contact was something that she would need for what she was going to attempt here. M'Tehr had kept her apprised of what she was doing when she made her initial attempt while Selicia was moving to join them. But there was no real preparation that they could make in truth. No one had ever attempted what it was that they were trying to do here. Her body fell away from her and yet she was aware of it. She felt her minds eye sink into the cold flesh and as what she saw in there came into focus it was even worse than she could have imagined. Her mind interpreted what she was seeing not as cold veins and arteries clogged with decomposing blood, but as empty streets outside of a wrecked house. The house inside was broken as well. Support struts smashed and severed, walls torn and battered. The glass in some of the windows dull, dirty and fractured. Power lines hanging limp from decrepit poles outside and in places they had fallen entirely and snaked across the street; the power that had flowed through them before now dark and dead. There was nothing in sight that suggested that anything living was in this place; or that it had been there for a very long time. She stood outside of the ruined house that represented the center of Mitchell Travers, but this was not where she should begin she realized. What lay around her in ruins needed to be restored before she passed through that shattered door. She turned and left the house behind her and started roaming the empty streets around her looking for the place she should begin. There were some signs of life that she could see, but they were not connected to each other. In one home, blocks away, a single light burned on the porch of a house that was torn down everywhere behind the wall facing the street. A fountain in a dusty park still burbled merrily; the water clean and pure while everything around it sank into rust and decay. An intermittent melody played from a speaker that was torn from a wall, the wires severed from any source and splayed out on the ground. Something was here, she was sure of it, but what it was she could not tell. The problem was that whatever was here was so torn down that it could not come together as it was. It was only a representation, but if she were actually in a place such as this, she would have been certain that there was barely any life left here at all. If detective Travers had been reduced to this then he would need help coming to the fore. The resting energy that M?Tehr had already poured into this shell swirled around her waiting for Selicia to direct it. She felt its power and how it was pregnant with possibility just waiting for her to give function its form. It hummed within her, coiled inside of her awaiting only her direction to make what was impossible possible. If this was an actual place and she wanted to restore it she knew what she would have to do. She would have to rebuild it piece by piece. But what she was seeing here was not physical and the physical did not have to exist to set things right. If she were to provide the form, the substance would rush in and rebuild what was broken given enough time. Like splinting a broken limb while it healed, this form could also heal, but not without the support that she needed to fashion from the life she had brought with her. Resolve firmed in her now that she had a frame of reference. In its own way it was similar to what she would have done when she was a programmer. She needed to bridge what was broken with the image of that which was whole. She focused and set the energy to its task. She felt the rush as the power accumulated here flowed through her. It rippled out around her and as she watched what she was seeing was like running a film of a catastrophe backward. Walls that had fallen and become weed choked and decayed shuddered and sprang back into being. Lights slowly flickered and then grew steady. Broken streets moved together as they merged and smoothed until there was no sign they had ever been ruptured at all. Glass leapt back into shattered windows and as she watched the star patterns of where they broke retreated until they disappeared leaving clear surfaces for the light to reflect off of. A supermarket that was nearby climbed over itself as it was reassembled from the dust and rubble. There was a momentary whiff of corruption as the spoiled contents returned to their uncorrupted forms. The overhead lighting flickered and then grew steady. She stepped into the building and the doors silently opened as the electric eye spied her approach and signaled the doors to move. The store was not new, but it was as it should be she was certain. There was the smell of the produce that was heaped in bins and kept in open faced cold cases. The sharp citrus tang of oranges, tangerines, grapefruit and lemons blended with the earthy scent of potatoes, carrots and other root vegetables. As she wandered through the aisles she saw the last touches that would leave this place whole fade away and then all there was, was an empty store waiting for people to return. She walked out and the door and continued to wander. She willed her form to rise high above the street level and looked down. In an expanding circle around her a wave of restoration was spreading, but it had so far to go. Not all was restored but it had at least begun to become whole. She lowered herself back to the street level and continued walking. She reached the leading edge and as she moved she took in what it was that her will had forged from the ruins of Mitchell Travers mind. She watched a painting hanging in a demolished living room; a painting that had been consumed by mold slowly take form. The paint that had flaked off as it had been assaulted from the canvas beneath the color by the spreading fungus springing back to its place and grow first smooth and then glossy again. The places where underground rivers had been flooded as they reclaimed their ancient beds subsided and were bridled once again by the hand of men that had shaped them away from what had been before. Rusted metal ceased to flake and grew firm and strong again. Weakened joints that had sheared away resumed their place and grew strong again. Stiff useless rubber and sealant regained its elasticity and was whole. She watched a car reassemble itself from the dust and decay it had fallen into. The rust that had eaten away at the body retreated and the paint it had displaced spread in its place until the deflated rotting tires suddenly shuddered and re-inflated. Selicia willed herself to rise again and watched as the healing energy she had unleashed spread and washed over everything as far as her eye could see. Except for one place. The house that sat in the centre still ramshackle and tumbledown. That was the point of greatest damage she realized and it would take her personal intervention to restore. She moved toward it and watched as the cityscape beneath her moved as in a slow motion flyover until she reached the street where the house was and landed. The sight that greeted her now was very different from what she had found. But in may ways it was still just an illusion. Shadows of what was overlying shadows of the things that were. The aether she realized as she took it all in. She had created a copy of the aether within the mind of this battered form. And from that aether it was possible to heal it in truth. What was shaped by her will here would take a solid form until the scaffold she had created was no longer needed to hold it together. She looked around and saw both existing in the same place and time. As it spread out from her she could see things in a form of double vision taking shape around her; her mind interpreting both and seeing them as one. The power lines hung taut; the power lines hung loose. Buildings lay in ruin, buildings stood whole; the two visions overlay each other and she increased her focus on maintaining the restored images around her. What she was doing may be an illusion, but so was this place and so here it was as solid as it needed to be. The illusion could bring stability for a time. It could serve as a splint to strengthen what was there until what was broken was healed. In the wake of the wave that followed her progress though what she saw around her; things broken and undone came into being behind her once again whole. She turned toward the house. It was time to seek the centre of what had caused this ruin. ------------------------------- The body began to slowly unspool the years that marked it as Singh watched intently. Withered flesh began to firm and fill from within. The small form that had seemed to have collapsed in on itself was beginning to reassert its former size. A decade faded from the still features and then another began to retreat as well. The thin brittle hair regained some of its previous luster; it was no longer the coarse straw-like wisps that had hung lank and disheveled, draping the woman's face in snow white framing. It was a deceptive sight Singh knew. The woman's body was not shedding years at all, that only appeared to be the case. If she was indeed the age that she appeared to be there would have been much more than a part of her that would need to restored to be part of a true reversal of age. This was a repair of sorts and one that he hoped that they were wise enough to manage properly. Unseen within the woman's frame Selicia would be busy doing so much at once. Each connection within needed to be recast not in the flesh that was broken, but in its image. They didn't dare repair what was broken in reality without ensuring that the mind that they wanted to rescue was safe; true repair could only come later. To actually restore the flesh that was lying between the two dryads without the mind that governed it was only an invitation to disaster; that was something that they all had agreed when Singh proposed doing this. ------------------------------------ Selicia walked down the street toward the ruined home. As she was manifested here in a dream state she clad herself as she wished. Low heels and jeans with a faded tee shirt. It was what she was comfortable wearing when she had been Cecil Barnes and it was what she chose now that she walked in this simulation of what should be now. What she was seeing was in much better condition now; albeit in a hollow empty fashion. Now it was looking more like an empty city rather than a ruined one. In the distance she could see lights turning on in the dark windows and as she walked through the streets back to the first home she could hear the faint whispers of sound around her. Indistinct and without clarity, but sound nevertheless. In front of her at a street crossing she could see traffic lights begin functioning again and pedestrian crossing lights moving in tandem with them. It was like a city returning to itself in her minds eye and the only question that remained was just who would come to occupy it now that it was restored. --------------------------- The mind is the key, he thought as he watched the dryads slowly peel away the damage and build cofferdams within to contain what was gradually seeping back into being. Without the mind all that they would do is to bring back a raging beast. This would be nothing like the two barely resuscitated things that he had Pantra had encountered. This would be a mind with command over the flesh they were trying to return to being; a malevolent mind uninhibited by any trace of humanity, reason or mercy. A mind in full control of undamaged flesh and consumed from within by the gnawing every-hungry black hole that formed its center. Or the mind of Mitch Travers. ------------------------------ The house where she started near loomed larger before her. It must be the representation of the mind itself she decided. It still looked broken and abandoned. The body may have the semblance of being whole but it was the mind that she was seeking to restore. Now that she was here, in direct contact with its outer edges she tried to direct the resting energy that she was channeling into it but there was no apparent change to what she saw before her no matter how much she poured into it. This was a different form of destruction in some way she thought to herself. It was as damaged as the rest of the place but the damage was not the same. It was more resistant. She could feel the energy within still passing through her being, still moving through all around her animating and duplicating fallen structures and giving the semblance of repair; but not in this place. It needed closer attention she decided and walked into the ruined home. ---------------------------- The satyrs guarding them tensed as they watched the restoration of Mitchell Travers continue to manifest in front of them. They gripped the heavy silver knobbed rowan clubs in their hands. Fire would not be the only weapon they would need if this beast should break free and the weapons that they had were not guaranteed to be enough if Singh's fears should come to pass. The hand weapons the satyrs held though were not all that they could bring to bear. Satyr marksmen held her in their sights from their tree perches; silver cored bullets that would shatter as they punched through the flesh would spread the toxic metal deep within her. In the magazines of the carbon composite weapons the bullets waited to be sent ripping through Mitchell Travers?s flesh in both the material world and in the aether as well. The crystal began to slowly brighten in Singh?s hand. The hair had begun to darken now; softening and losing its straw-like texture. The sunken cheeks had begun to fill as well. Singh felt his heart hitch in his chest as he watched hers rise with a sudden intake of breath. The crystal which had resembled dull glass when the grayness of absent life dominated began to shine with a faint trembling. The flickering spark at its center that had hidden in the darkness grew stronger. The flicker that had almost been extinguished was being fanned back into flame and now was steadily growing in size and intensity. ------------------------------- Something terrible had happened in this house she realized looking around it. The door, when she opened it, was scarred with deep gouges as if something were trying to claw its way out. Broken fingernails lodged in the splinters there. Inside its walls there was no light allowed to enter as if light itself was obscene. From the outside the windows appeared broken but they seemed to be intact; but inside there was darkness as solid if they had been bricked up from the outside. Furniture had been pushed and mounded to make a barrier and then abandoned. She stepped past where it had been broken through and noted that it was broken through from the inside. As if what was behind the hasty barricade was being driven towards the door. The sole of her shoe crunched on broken glass and she looked down; a picture frame. She bent down and shook the glass away and gently removed the photograph from the debris. She held it up to the light flickering in through the door behind her. A man and a woman. The man was detective Travers and the woman was someone she didn't know. He looked younger then when she had seen him and was dressed in a navy uniform. The woman was wearing white; a wedding photo she decided and reverently placed it on the still intact table top of an end table. -------------------------------------- Singh continued to watch. The woman no longer looked dead and with each slow intermittent rise of her chest she looked more like she was only sleeping and would wake soon. Fifty years had retreated from her and now she resembled a woman in her early middle years. Her fingers flexed and her wrists pressed against the bonds that held her fast in her slumber but it was not an attempt to test the bonds. It was merely stiffened muscles releasing from what had held them in thrall. M'Tehr was showing the strain of keeping the marks in the woman's wrists from being no more than faint etchings; but she could not stop the trickle of energy that they drew from the whole from occurring. The images were clearly seen now, but they remained washed out even as the details that made them up strained against her to resolve themselves in greater detail. -------------------------------- The street lights outside the house came on and Selicia looked up at the sudden change in circumstances. She could feel the tremendous power she was channeling washing through the far edges of this representation around her. She may be focused on this one home, but she could feel that things were still changing around her. The doppelganger of the city she had constructed was starting to come to life around her. A light inside the home began to glow slowly brighter as if power was being restored so slowly that you could see it increasing in brilliance, rather than just coming on all at once. The home was the image one that was built with a single level floor plan. She began to move from room to room not really knowing what she was looking for. Each one was empty though. Only the damage remained. If she were walking in a real place she would say that someone had been fighting through here. They had fought from room to room and they had been bitter and resolute in their defense until they had been overpowered. She walked into the kitchen. Knives from an overturned kitchen block were standing in the wall and some were lying broken on the floor. If this were a room that she was fighting from she might expect to see this in the aftermath. Someone had fought desperately here, using everything that had come to hand; they had fought and they had lost. There was nothing for her to see here. She passed through an archway and then into the storage room beyond that. The door was half open there. It was leading into the darkness of the back yard. She took one more look around and seeing nothing that told her otherwise, she walked out of the house. ------------------------- The middle years that ruled the woman?s appearance rolled away and the crystal grew brighter as the level of energy in its proper home coursed through the flesh. Selicia was not showing the same strain that her sister was displaying when she attempted both tasks at once; she was instead a statue lost in her own focus. The eyes in the face below her began to twitch once and then more. They were not opening yet, but something beneath those closed lids was active now; active and dreaming. The once withered flesh was almost restored now. Skin once paper thin reflected youthful resilience now as it moved over muscles now filled out to their proper dimensions. The chest moved in more regular rhythms; a regular steady movement that increased in its visibility as it strengthened. Her once age-withered breasts now rose firm and inviting. The woman's mouth opened and she took a deep audible breath. Lips once nothing more than sharp bloodless lines had taken on a more youthful texture and were now full and round with restored vitality. Her eyelids began to flutter slightly. The eyes would tell them for certain if what Singh suspected she was had indeed been born during Mitch's abduction. The crystal was ablaze with light now. He handed it to Pantra where she crouched on his shoulder after she had landed. ---------------------------------- Selicia walked into the quiet of the small backyard. It wasn't a very big place. If she were visiting this house in reality she would have thought that the people who lived here were of modest means. There was a concrete patio in the back with an overhead sunshade built on later so that part of the patio was not always in the direct sunlight. An overturned gas grill lay kicked over to one side. Sad and forlorn like a forgotten casualty left behind because none cared that it was there. "How do you want that steak?" she heard someone ask and spun around at the unexpected sound. Selicia turned her head toward the space where it had stood and for a moment she thought she saw it upright with a man grilling from it. Then the image wasn't really there. It was just a memory then she decided; a strong echo that was secured deeply in this representations foundations. She could see that there was a utility shed near the center on the far side of the yard. It was chained shut from the outside, but the chain and lock passed through the walls and was secured from the inside. She needed to go to it. There was nothing that she had seen secured like that anywhere here. That alone was reason enough to look at it more closely she decided. ---------------------------- Pantra took the illuminated shard, gripping it tightly in both hands. Her thighs were coiled, waiting to launch her tiny figure forward to deliver the crystal to its place and interrupt the full restoration of what was swimming to the surface of the woman's consciousness. The rose markings on both of her arms were darker but M'Tehr still strove to hold them to nothing more than the bare outline of what was there. The woman's mouth opened and her head arched back as she took a deeper breath. Her smooth hands relaxed and extended all of their fingers flexing after the stiffness of immobility. It would be any moment now, Singh realized. There was more movement behind her eyes. They were starting to open for real now. "Go Pantra!" he whispered urgently to the pixie. "Get it in her before she's fully awake!" As Pantra's weight pushed against his shoulder and she dove through the air bearing the incandescent crystal to the restrained woman, Singh watched her eyes ease open and prayed that when they did there would not be stars resting there. ------------------------------- The chain may have been strong enough to keep whatever was contained within imprisoned, but it was of little impediment to Selicia. Even here deep in the foundation of this ruin she could feel the power she had channeled come to her as she bid it to. There was no danger to her from the iron; here it was merely a representation rather than the thing itself. She grasped the iron and tore it asunder as easily as if it were foil. The door creaked as she opened it and for the first time in she had no idea how long, light pierced the darkness inside of the small prison. She did not know what to expect when she opened the doors. It could have been anything really, but what she found was almost placid in its appearance. There were two women contained inside the storage shed. One lay slumped against the inner side of the door where she had pounded futilely as she tried to escape, while the other was shackled to the wall and neither was conscious. The one that was slumped against the inner wall was barely breathing and the one that was chained was in worse condition. She appeared barely alive. The one that was closest to the door seemed in better shape than the other one. Selicia didn't know what to make of what she was seeing. She knelt over the unchained woman, she was feebly moving now, her eyes were half closed and there were dents on the inside of the shed where she had futilely pounded her fists against the walls. Graven in both of her arms were twin rose tattoos; one for each arm. They were identical to the one that Selicia had once borne in her own flesh. Why this woman had been inscribed with two of them wasn't so apparent, but to Selicia it was all she needed to confirm that this one was a victim of the dark man. The other though, that one she didn't know about. She stepped over the first woman's body and made her way to where the limp woman hung in her chains. Selicia reached out and took her by the chin and slowly raised her face up to the light. Her face was identical to the woman who lay on the ground and her arms were unmarked. ----------------------------- Pantra traveled down the length of the woman's body and rose up slightly to dodge where M'Tehr was reaching across to hold back the development of the twin roses. She leaned back in an emergency flare and settled onto the chest and plunged the crystal deeply into her sternum centered exactly between her breasts. The woman's eyes flew wide open as the upper edge of it vanished from sight and they all heard her cry out from the pain of it piercing her. Pantra leaped skyward and put what distance she could between them, finally coming to a hover about thirty feet above her. Her hand glowed as she summoned her affinity. The volcanic heat she commanded waited for her to unleash it. --------------------------------- The chained woman's eyes bolted open and she screamed and flexed against the chains. She was snapping at her now that she was aware that someone was near; her teeth gnashing at Selicia's hastily withdrawn fingers. Her eyes rolled in their sockets wildly and her bloodied fingers scrabbled for her as she flung herself against the restraints and howled. Selicia dropped her hand away and skipped back from her. Whatever madness had claimed her she couldn't help her. Not the way that she was now. The screaming woman twisted and howled in her chains. Her agonized wailing mixed with her snarling rage filled the room with the sound of her reaction and there was nothing that Selicia could see that she could do to calm her. Then, before she could think of what she could do now, the woman screaming in the darkness abruptly faded from sight and was gone leaving empty manacles behind to mark her presence. Behind her Selicia heard the scuff of movement and turned to face it. ----------------------------------- The woman lashed with the vines to the platform screamed and bucked against them in an epileptic frenzy. Her eyes rolled uncontrollably as her eyelids reflexively opened and closed in time with the screams that came from her throat. M'Tehr was nearly pulled off balance as she struggled to maintain her hold on her arms and Selicia held her head in an iron grip as if the frantic sudden movement were no more disturbing than a casual swat in the direction of a fly to make it leave. They held her fast as she recovered slowly from the sudden joining of body and mind. Her breathing slowed and then there was relief in her face as the stress of the sudden shock faded. Her eyes stopped rapidly opening and closing and finally remained open and stayed that way. Singh stepped closer to her. Her eyes were green and he could not see any stars in them. The breath he had been holding left him in one grateful rush. "Detective Travers," he said gently to her. "Can you hear me? Do you understand what I am saying to you? Do you know who I am?" --------------------------------- Selicia knelt by the woman. She had recovered enough to move weakly. She was saying something, but it was hard to hear clearly. Selicia leaned closer to her. "Why?" she asked weakly. "Why what?" Selicia said to her. "Why did you let her loose?" she asked and collapsed weakly against Selicia. "She?s a monster. She?ll destroy everything. You...you have to stop her. You can?t let her loose. You have to get her back." ------------------------------- There was a hissing sound bleeding from her lips. Singh thought that she might have been trying to answer him, but it was too faint to make out. Too faint and to hear it better he would have to get too close to her. "Sass...Singh?" he finally heard her say. "Where 'm I Singh? I heard you. Where...where are you. I...I can?t...can?t see you," she said in a dry cracked voice, rusty and screeching in its way. Her vocal cords were still recovering from what had been done to her. "Pantra give her some water if you will," he asked the pixie. Pantra came down from her high aerie and landed on Singh's shoulder. Singh handed her a small water bottle. In Singh's hand the water bottle looked tiny and toy like; in Pantra's arms it looked more like she was manhandling a replacement for the office water cooler. Singh had already cracked the seal on the lid and she spun it off with only a little effort. She leaned the mouth of the bottle over Travers's dry lips and tried not to drown her with the sudden water flow. Mitch sputtered and started coughing from some of the water going down the wrong part of her throat. ------------------------------- "She's too dangerous," The woman said faintly. "That's why he chained her up. That's why he left her trapped here with me. You have to get her back in those chains. Before it's too late." The woman was more coherent now. Her voice was getting a little stronger. She tried to push herself up, to rise from the floor. She wasn't coming after Selicia like the other one, if anything it seemed that she was more interested making her way towards the now open door. But she was still too weak. Her arms were shaking with the effort and she couldn't maintain herself on them for more than a second or two before she collapsed back to the ground. Selicia bent down and helped the woman roll over into a sitting position against one of the walls. She coughed weakly as she did so and looked up at her. She could barely speak and her face was a mass of bruises and scratches. One of her eyes was swollen shut and the other took her visitor in with a weary stare. "You need..." she said not finishing what she was saying because of a coughing fit. The wet wheezing sound of it put Selicia in the mind of someone breathing with broken ribs. "What do I need?" Selicia asked. "To get her back," she said though her halting breathing. "You can't let her escape." "Who is she?" Selicia asked. The woman was fixated on having the chained woman put back and she had barely said why. Her thoughts seemed to run only in a few shallow grooves. "She's the end of everything. Too dangerous to even be free here," the woman whispered. "Too dangerous to go free...thought he killed her. But he didn't. Trapped me here with her. Left us both to die." ------------------------------ Pantra waited until her coughing fit had passed and then dribbled a little more water onto her parched throat. "Pantra," she said her voice clearer now that the fluids given to her had eased the dryness of her throat. "Where ?m I...How?d you get me...away from him? Where's Jim?" "Detective Travers...Mitch," Singh spoke in as soothingly a manner as he could. "Try not to overexert yourself. You're in a safe place now, but you need to focus. I know it's difficult to ask this of you after what you've been through, but you need focus now on who you are. Focus on that and husband your strength." "How'd you...get me away," she said. "Where's Jim." "Don't think about that yet Mitch," he said to her. "You need to think about getting better first. It's been some time since you have had the control you have now I think and you'll need to let those connections strengthen first," Singh told him again. "Focus on being in the now. Concentrate on feeling stronger where you are this moment. Your connection is still weak for the time being, but it will only get stronger if you can do as we ask you to do." Mitch's eyes rolled around the leafy canopy overhead and fixated on the direction that Singh's voice was coming from. "Just breathe Mitch. Feel your body around you again. You've been severed from it after a fashion and we don't know how long it has been for you. After you can do that we can see what we can do about what comes after that," he said. "Where'd you find me?" she asked. "Can't feel myself. Don't feel right...sumthin?s 'wrong." "Breathe Mitch," Singh told her. "Breathe and let the feelings pass over you. You will feel better shortly but right now just breathe and don't try to fight to do anything too early." "Where am I?" she asked, her breaths coming in short pulses. "You're in the Grove, Mitch," he said. "We brought you to Phar' Naqua. That?s where you are now. We?re here with you right now. It's the safest place we could take you to. Whoever did this can't reach you here. You're safe from him. You're protected here." "No," she said to him. "Have to tell you. Can't wait...might not have time if I do. Fought him...lost...almost killed me I think. Killed us both." "He didn't kill you both, Mitch," Singh told him. "We have you. You're right here. Jim is alive too, but we don't know where he is. You're both going to be all right. You need to rest. You need to let your mind heal and your control over yourself become stronger." "No, not Jim. Us," she said. "He tried to kill us. Th' us that's in here now." "He failed Mitch," Singh said to her. "He failed. You were too strong for him. He didn't beat you. But you need rest now." "Can't rest," she said. "Have to tell you. Have to tell you so you can get Jim. He did beat me but he beat Jim first." "Don't try to push yourself too much right away Mitch," he said. "We have time for that later. When you're stronger then you can tell us everything you need to tell us about where you were held. But you need to allow what is happening now to happen. Rest, detective Travers," Singh insisted again gently. "Don't push yourself too much. Let your mind move with the tide. Let it ebb and flow. Let it carry you. Don't try to do it all right now. We may be able to reclaim Detective Brighton sooner if you can recover now. But don't push yourself too much. You're very weak still." "A brownstone," she said, ignoring what Singh was saying to her, "...took us to a brownstone. I think it was Fetterman?s place. Not sure. Didn't see much until I escaped. Jim's not there anymore. Took her first." "It doesn't matter Mitch. Why he isn't there anymore is something we will concentrate on later. After you have recovered. We'll retrieve Jim and you'll be a part of it. I promise you," Singh said. "I promise you'll be part of it." "...broken," she said in her exhausted voice. She kept speaking to him as if she couldn't take in what Singh was telling her. She must be spiraling inside the confusion of reacquiring control of her mind and body, Singh thought. She's focusing on what she can say as if she didn't really believe that she was going to be free, as if every moment was going to be her last and she was going to die rather than let this chance pass her by no matter what the cost. "Took her away. Kept after me. Wouldn't break." "Wouldn't break," she repeated. "Kept after me, wouldn't let me alone. Wouldn?t break." Singh wished that it was possible for him to come closer. Physical contact might calm her. The feeling of M'Tehr gripping her arms and Selicia holding her head tight was not going to reassure anyone. Along with the roots lashing her body down, if she even perceived their touch she may be interpreting it as little different then the restraints that she had already endured. His touch might at least have calmed Mitch and let her break this mental loop but it was too dangerous a step for any of them to take until they were certain that Mitch's mind was whole and she was strong enough to keep control over what the shadowy man had done to her. "... not the same...not anymore," she said as if he hadn't even spoken. "Can?t go back...twisted us, both of us. So weak...drained." "We'll do what we can to help you both. Tell us what you can, but then you have to rest," Singh said. If he couldn't get her to stop and allow her control to progress to a more stable form then perhaps if he encouraged her to get out what she was holding inside that may help. Whatever it was that was so important to her, it was enough to fixate her consciousness on making certain that she passed it on to them whatever the cost to her. If she was certain that she had done that, then she might be more willing to listen to what they were trying to get her to do. "Caught us in....an alley. After we saw Clayton," she said. "Thought we saw...a shadow... man taking a girl in there. She was screaming." "...was a trap. Did to us...what he did to Barnes. Couldn't stop him." ----------------------------------- Hornewood Avenue, Stafford; Day 16, 2120 hours It was Jim's turn to drive today. After being sidelined as often as they had been from injury in the course of this investigation the two of them started switching off driving permanently. Mitch had been the one to suggest it first. Somehow knowing that he would call her when he needed her to bring him home was calming for Andrea. Jim didn't question it. It wasn't for him to dismiss something like that. Personally he would have been more comfortable with calling in before leaving to go home, but when he thought about it; Mitch already did that and clearly it wasn't enough for her, not anymore. Maybe he thought that if she had some sliver of agency here then that was what she needed to have. It was what Mitch could give her so she had what she needed to cope with this. "She's going to be after me to quit again after this is all shaken out. And when she asks, I'm going to do it," Mitch said quietly. Like he did most of the time when he was just riding, Mitch's face was turned to the window looking out of it. He did that a lot and when they had first been partnered, Jim found it hard to really get a feeling of trust for a man that wouldn't look at you as he spoke with you. It had been a real stumbling block between them in the beginning. Now he didn't think about it at all; he'd realized that one of the reasons that Mitch did that wasn't because he couldn't look you in the eyes. It was because he needed to look himself in the eyes when some things needed to be said. Jim wasn't surprised to hear that. Mitch wouldn't be the first cop who would have that discussion with his wife and he wouldn't be the last. He knew that Mitch and Andrea had the same talk when she found out about how hairy the Simmons case had turned out after some reporter printed all the gory details. Jim really didn't know how they made it through that at the time. He looked over at his partner and had the thought that this time might actually be too much. It might well come down to being a cop or being with her and Jim knew which choice Mitch would make. "You really think it will come to that Mitch?" he asked. "I think it's been coming, Jim," he said. "That was why I transferred to Missing Persons from Vice. If I hadn't done that she'd of left me or I'd have left the life. Going to a less hazardous department was our compromise. Don't think she's of a mind to compromise this time." "Don't be too sure Mitch," he said turning on to Hornewood Drive. "Things are hot now. When things are hot they always look worse. If she was doing this out of the cold, I think that would be something different. And you don't have to leave completely. You can get a position in a one stoplight town where the biggest thing that happens is a drunk and disorderly charge or someone going cow tipping. You only have a couple years left as it is. She might be willing to let you ride it out there still." "Jim, hot or cold, it's the same thing. It's not about how she feels in the moment. It's each grain of sand dropping down on her. Dropping down on both of us. Some time or another, it's just going to be one grain too much for either of us to carry." "So what are you going to do?" Jim asked. "I'll do what needs to be done Jim. Can't do anything else. I've put her through too much already as it is. Put us both through too much." Jim didn't have anything to say to that. They'd been partners nearly five years now and he wasn't going to start second guessing Mitch now. If that needed to be his play, he'd back him. "Hope it doesn't come to that Mitch," he was saying when his eyes fixated on a flicker of movement as they were driving by and he suddenly moved to spin the wheel toward the other side of the road. He drove across the other lane, up onto an empty section of sidewalk and threw the car into park. Mitch looked over at him. Jim hadn't had enough time to warn him about what he was going to do. "In the alley Mitch, did you see it?" he asked. "Saw something, but wasn't sure it was anything for certain," he said opening his door and getting out. A woman's voice could be heard pleading ever more faintly in the alley ahead and as they reached it she screamed, her cries echoing down the brick walls of the shadow painted passage. Jim had already drawn his weapon before he heard anything. His inner urging told him to do that; his eyes had already told him it was needed when he saw the woman suddenly dragged into the alley as she was walking past its entrance. Mitch was close behind him, weapon drawn as well. "Dispatch, this is Lima twelve. Code two zero seven alpha. Alleyway, Fourteen hundred block, Hornewood Drive, two in pursuit over." Mitch paused long enough to hear the dispatch acknowledge his call and moved to the opposite side of the alley entrance across from Jim. "Let?s go," he said crisply and moved into the alleyway. Jim fell automatically into covering his sector of fire; left side and overhead. Mitch had right side and down. They took turns checking six. The alley bent in a ninety degree turn around the building up ahead. Mitch saw it coming up and whispered "Low-high," to him. Jim took a last glance in his area. There didn't seem to be anyone lurking there. That didn't mean that someone wasn't on the roof and not showing themselves yet, but they were going around the corner now and they would have to take the chance. They could hear the muffled sound of the woman thrashing against her assailant just ahead. It sounded like the perp had his hand mashed against her face, covering her mouth. They paused at the edge and Jim checked their six. All clear. He nodded to Mitch. Mitch mouthed a silent count. Two, one and they went. Jim crouched as soon as he crossed over and flattened himself against the wall while Mitch went high and did the same on the left. "Stafford Police. Don't you fucking move," he shouted at the man as soon as he had a clear line of sight to him. "Show me your hands now!" Mitch shouted a hair behind him. "In the air! Get 'em up! Get 'em up!" he ordered in the rapid fire cadence that they had been trained to use. The perp spun his head toward them. The interruption of his plans had thrown him for a moment and he loosened his grip. The woman broke away from him and spun away, ducking under his arms and rolling backward on the trash littered pavement. She rolled over and was rapidly crawling backwards in the alley muck as far as she could get from her attacker. Her knee was bloody where it had scraped against the pavement. Tears streaked her face and she moved through the muck desperately. The perp was looking around for an option and not seeing one he froze and slowly raised his hands. The only light in this part of the alley was the overhead glare from the city's ambient lighting. He was a shadow in a shadow. Jim couldn't see anything in his hands and he didn't have time to slip his mini maglight out to be sure, but that didn't mean that those hands were empty. Mitch had his out since they went into the alleyway and he was shining it in the perp?s direction. It didn't do more than illuminate and outline from this distance, but that didn?t matter so much; as long as it made it clear where the rounds heading downrange needed to go that was fine with Jim. "On the ground now! Knees first! Knees first! Nice and slow!" he ordered keeping his pistol leveled. Mitch had moved around the back of Jim to get a better angle to shoot with. The one he had was too likely to hit the girl in this gloom. He cast a quick backward look at their six and re-leveled his weapon on the now kneeling perp. "Facedown! Hands behind your head. Put your face in the dirt and don't you dare even blink!" he ordered him. The perp slowly moved his hands from in front of him and rested them on the back of his head. "Look at the wall to your left! Face to the wall!" Jim shouted "FACE THE WALL!". The man complied oddly docile. He wasn?t even cursing them or threatening them. Jim thought it odd, but as long as he could get through this without firing it wouldn?t matter. "Now don't you move!" he ordered him and watched as he complied. "You even twitch. You cut so much as a loud fart, it's gonna get real ugly, real fast," Jim twitched his head to Mitch. Mitch moved out rapidly keeping to the edge of the alleyway. When he was past the man's reach he would swing around him and come from directly behind him; that way the perp couldn't sweep his arm as he went past and knock Mitch off of his feet. Mitch got over him, jammed his knee into his back and started cuffing him. "Don't even think about resisting," Mitch said to him evenly. "You try anything. My partner will end you." With his knee jammed into the man's back, Mitch kept him pinned while he levered his wrist down and cuffed him. When his other wrist was safely secured, Mitch hauled him to his feet and pressed him face first against the dirty brick of the alley wall. Jim raised his weapon and flicked the safety on before holstering it. "You got this piece of shit Mitch?" he asked as he did that. "I'm green across the board," Mitch said. "See about the girl." Mitch had been in submarines when he was in the navy and sometimes he dropped back into that jargon from time to time. Jim was used to it by now and didn't pay it any attention. Mitch was already starting to Miranda the perp while Jim moved to try to calm the girl down. This was a clean collar so far and they wanted to keep it that way. You didn't get as many of those as you wanted to see and one as unambiguous as this one just added to the good feeling you got from being there in time to stop it rather than cleaning up the mess afterward. The girl was a young. The way she was dressed she wasn't a poor girl who worked in a shop or fast food or some other low wage abattoir. She was probably in college or had just graduated from the look of her. Probably an intern or even an entry level office professional with the ink on her degree barely dry. Why she was walking through this part of town the way she was when this guy snatched her Jim didn't know but that wasn't a good idea. This wasn't the worst part of town but it wasn't that good either. Jim approached her slowly. She saw him coming and she let out a little mewling scream and kept scrambling through the muck to get away from him. "You can relax miss, you can relax," he told her as soothingly as he could. "We're police officers. He can't hurt you now. You're going to be alright," Jim held up his badge so that she could see it. It might not work but it was the smart thing to do. It must have gotten through to her in some way though. She stopped trying to get away from him and was leaned up against the garbage spattered brick behind her. Jim knelt down a couple of feet away from her, so that she wouldn't have him looming over her. "You're going to be fine miss, you're safe now," he said as reassuringly as he could, "let's get you out of here alright?" she was still nearly hysterical over what had happened and when she started to feel her adrenaline levels drop she buried her face in Jim's chest and started sobbing. Jim let her have at it for a couple of moments before he asked her if she could stand. As Jim helped the girl to her feet and Mitch frog marched the perp down the alley toward the car there were only a couple of things that he considered good about this whole thing. One was that they had likely interrupted a rape and that was never a bad thing in his opinion and two they hadn't had to kill the perp in the process. Neither of them had seen a weapon and a search of him hadn't turned one up; not a complete oddity in itself and something he was grateful for. If the guy had been packing he might have thought he had better odds and tried use the girl as a bargaining chip. Mitch was about two thirds of the way through the alley when he abruptly stopped walking and it looked to Jim like he was starting to rise into the air while he did so. A half a heartbeat later his own feet lost contact with the ground and he felt his eye level shift as his field of vision started to skew. The perp turned around slowly to look at them while the two of them began rotating rapidly in the air above them. "Luciana, go get the others," he said to her quietly. "Yes, daddy," she said and then she walked steadily and calmly out of the near end of the alley as if nothing had happened at all and disappeared around the corner. The vertigo clawed at Jim's mind and it was impossible for him to remain stable. Just as it was impossible for him to ignore who it was. The shadowy man stopped the rotation of their spheres abruptly so they could see him slip his wrists up through the steel of the cuffs. The metal passed through him as if he were nothing more than smoky air. He let the closed metal loops drop to the pavement and walked closer to them. "Allow me to offer you the same advice you gave me. Don't even think about resisting," he said and started rapidly spinning them both again. ------------------------------------ "At this point I must pause," Singh said to her. "As Mitch detailed to me what had happened the night that you were taken one thing stood out to me. A warning of how far the rot had spread through Stafford P.D., it was that he was certain that he had called in the situation before you were captured, yet there was no record of that happening." "Mitch called it in," Darcy insisted. "The DCM should have it in the log even if it was ignored." "The Department Communication Mainframe has no record of it. On Agent Fitzhugh's advice, I dispatched an FRT electronics tech to examine your system. No one had been assigned your car in the interim. The expert found Detective Travers's call in the memory buffer...as well as an automated response. Someone routed it through a subroutine that allowed you to think that you had reported in, while in reality you were already cut off." "Clayton again," Darcy said. "It's likely that is the case," Singh said. -------------------------- "I have to get you out of here," Selicia said to the woman kneeling down next to her. "This whole thing that we're doing is all to get you back. To set you free from what he has done to you. Do you think that you're strong enough to come with me?" The woman looked nothing physically like what Travers had been before, but Selicia was all too familiar with why that would be so. Like Selicia herself, she was small and slight in her appearance. The shadowy man favored the girls that he warped his victims into to conform to that archetype. This one that he had formed from Mitch was no exception. She was barely an inch taller than Selicia was and like her had a mane of thick long hair. This woman's hair was tangled and matted though. It was a deep auburn shade and beneath the bruises and the dried blood on her face she was as lovely in her own way as Selicia was herself. "It's going to be alright. I know it doesn't look like it but it is," she said to the woman to reassure her. "You just need to trust Singh's plan. That's the whole reason that I'm here now. Believe me detective Travers, believe that we're going to make this whole thing happen and it will. The whole reason that we're here is to get you back." The woman just nodded weakly. "Andrea," she said to Selicia in a barely audible whisper. "He called me Andrea." "All right then Andrea," Selicia answered. "Let's just get you on your feet and we can get you free of this mess."Do you think you can stand if I can help you to your feet?" "Just get me...past the house," she said shakily. "If I can just get past it, I might be alright. It's this place. This is the prison he made inside of everything. It's a bad place. It's her place. It makes us both weak. That's why he wanted us to be in here. To keep us weak. I just need to get to the street. That's ...that's where I need to go...out there. I'll be stronger out there." "Then I'll get you to the street," she said to her. Selicia draped the woman's arm over her shoulders and stood to lift her up and take her weight onto herself until she was strong enough to do so on her own. The woman's left foot twisted limply, dragging behind her and Selicia had to heave against her body so that she could drag her high enough up against her own body to get them both moving. The woman's head lolled against her and moved with the motion as Selicia struggled to keep her upright and move her away from the cage. ------------------------------------ "Do you know how long you were there?" Singh asked. "How long was Jim there?" "Weeks...more...don't know," she said. "Why 'm I...tied?" "A precaution, just relax Mitch and don't concern yourself with it," Singh said. "You're still in a dangerous place, but we think we can get you out of it. When you're stronger Arath' Mahar thinks that we have a way to restore you. Until then, don't strain yourself. You've been asleep a long time. Just tell us what you need to say later, you need to rest so you can recover." "Jim..." she said urgently in her weak voice, still ignoring him."...he took Jim first. Mitch wasn't listening to Singh. It didn't matter how much that Singh told her to rest and focus on what she needed to do to fully regain control of herself she wouldn't do it. As much as Singh thought she should not do so, there was something that drove her to keep speaking. She kept pushing herself against her weakness. Like her mind was looping over what had happened. Unable to break the loop and determined to relive it in this way. "Called her...frightened girl," she said between breaths. "Couldn't last long...took her away. Didn't see her for a few weeks. Saw her when he broke her... then gone. Didn't see her again." Singh exhaled through his clenched teeth. He'd already suspected that the shadowy man had done that to both of them, especially since they had found Mitch in this condition, but having it confirmed didn't make him feel any better about being right in his suspicions. The only good thing about hearing this was that they now had a direction in which to begin searching for Brighton. When Mitch had finally settled in his mind and was safe, he would have a talk with the search teams and discuss with them how they would be best able to use what they knew to advance their interests in finding Jim and spiriting her safely away. But for now Mitch was the focus. ------------------------------- Selicia half carried, half dragged the woman out of the gloom of the shed and across the dead grass of the lawn that embalmed the small backyard with jagged, brittle brown spikes. "Do y' have t' take me through th' house?" Andrea asked her weakly. "I think I do," she said to her. "The gate in the fence over there. I don't think that will open for either of us. Not if this place is what you say it is," she paused and readjusted her grip on the half limp woman and started toward the open back door looming out of the shadow of the patio shade. "Y' have t' take me 'cross the threshold," she said. "I can't go 'cross myself. That was part of what he did t' keep us weak. T' make sure I couldn't get out once he locked me in here with her." "You keep talking to me then Andrea," she told her. "I'll do what I can to get you past this and you keep talking to me. Let me know you're still there and then we can get you out of here. But you need to keep awake while I do that as much as you can." "'ll try," Andrea slurred to her. Selicia started toward the patio door standing open before them. Andrea seemed to collapse in on herself as Selicia took her over the threshold into the house. The rose markings on her arms began to shift from dark to light in the shadows of the wrecked home and she grew heavier with every step. As if she was entering the gravity well of a collapsing star. From the sounds that were coming out of her throat just from being within these walls was greatly increasing the stress on her. She groaned as whatever weight she felt came down on her and her face contorted with unsuppressed pain as they passed into the kitchen. "Do you need me to take you back outside?" she asked her when she paused to support her against the knife splintered wall. "I might be able to break the gate if I need to. I'm thinking I might have to after bringing you in here. It looks like this place is crushing you." "Gate's not really there. Jus' looks like it is. 'S a dec'ration. G' me out of here," she said. "Th' soon'r 'm out, the bet'r it'll be. Jus' get me out," she slurred plaintively. Andrea could barely hold herself upright now, even with Selicia carrying most of her weight. She wobbled against her and nearly collapsed entirely. She would have if Selicia hadn't ducked under her as she fell forward and took the bulk of her torso across her shoulders. She would have to carry her out Selicia decided. Whatever it was that was acting against Andrea to drain her and keep her from leaving here, it was already nearly too much for her. If she was going to get clear of this place Selicia was going to have to be the one to do it. Andrea's rose markings were getting brighter the deeper into the house they went. At first, Selicia thought it was a trick of the light that made its way in to the gloom, but she wasn?t mistaken, they were definitely getting brighter. When they entered the living room from the kitchen the one that graced her arms could be clearly seen by her. She had needed to half lean over and cross Andrea's arms around her head. Andrea's head was lolling against hers while her body rested on Selicia's back as she leaned forward. Andrea's feet dragged on the floor behind her. As she stepped further into the shattered remains of the house Andrea was speaking less and less and grimacing more and more. The wrecked and scarred furniture that made up the broken barricade loomed up on her left coming out of the kitchen. She would have to climb over the ruined section where it had been broken through to get them both out. She was going to have to pick her way over it. It had been a minor challenge for her to get in through there by herself; getting out while carrying Andrea would be even more difficult. The low whimpering of pain that Andrea had been making intermittently as Selicia carried her through this place began increasing in volume and duration as they came alongside the barrier that bisected this narrow part of the room. If I can just get her past it, Selicia thought, I can get her out of the door. Andrea didn't look like she was going to make it though. The closer that they came to the breech the more trouble she seemed to be having keeping consciousness. Selicia wasn't certain, but she didn't think it was a good idea for Andrea to have that happen to her in here. She reached for the photo that she put on the table earlier when she passed through. She was pretty certain that this entire house was a visualization of Andrea's home in real life and the shattering of it in this fashion was some means of keeping her under control. It was in its own way a totemic image. Smash the totem and you profane the image. Smashing Mitch's home this way, turning it into a decaying reminder of what had been done to her to make it abhorrent to her must have been his intention. Turning the fortress inside of who she was into the gatehouse of her prison sounded like something the shadowy man might think of. But totems worked both ways as well. She tucked the wedding photo into Andrea's hands. "Andrea," she said. "I need you to listen to me. Are you listening?" Selicia cut her eyes over to Andrea's. They were still open but the weakness that had drained her body was draining the rest of her as well it looked like. "I don't think crossing this is going to be easy for you. I need you to keep your focus and not lose consciousness while I do so okay?" The faint rubbing of Andrea's chin against Selicia's shoulder told her that she had heard her. "Focus on the picture Andrea. Don't let anything take your focus off of it. Tell me everything you can about it while I get you past this. Do you think you can do that for me?" Selicia heard her half croak an affirmative into her ear. "Okay then," she said. "You start telling me about the photo while I get us past this mess. Don't lose your focus. Singh said it's absolutely imperative that you keep your focus during this." Andrea whispered weak details about the photo toward Selicia's ears as she lifted her into a fireman's carry and started easing their way over the shattered improvised defense. A jagged splinter that curved like a wooden scimitar caught against her as she moved to shift her direction so both of them could pass through the narrow space. Selicia didn't think it would be a good idea for her to suffer any wounds in this place. Not after what Andrea had told her about it. She'd been lucky when she had passed this way before. Even scrabbling past the debris she hadn't injured herself while doing so. But that had been when she was going in. All the damage was facing away from her, now it was aimed toward her. A maw of jagged metal and wooden teeth seemed to have risen in the breach and it looked like it was waiting to tear at her as she passed. There had to be some sort of optical illusion in play here she realized. There just weren't that many broken shards in the improvised barrier and this was just not that large of a barrier to begin with. With Andrea mumbling in her ear everything she could think of to say about the wedding photo, Selicia tried to ignore what her eyes were showing her. When it seemed that she was boxed in and had no direction that she could slip the two of them past to get free she resorted to closing her eyes and using her free hand to blaze a trail for them both. The closer they came to the door the more strain she could hear in Andrea's voice as she spoke to her. "We're almost there Andrea," she said as she stepped down the reverse side of the heaped furniture to the floor. Just a few more steps is all and we can stop and let you rest. She was expecting the door to slam shut in her face as they approached it, but it remained as still as it was before when she stepped inside of it in the first place. There wasn't really any light on the street outside of the door once they were through. In that way this place was like the aether. One moment there would be dim washed out sunlight overhead and the next the place would be lit by dim streetlights and each of them gave the exact same level of illumination which was not much at all. Selicia twisted sideways so that the two of them could pass through the door. She heard the flutter of the photo as it fell from Andrea's fingers. "Andrea," she said loudly to her shaking her whole body to jar her back into consciousness. "Stay with me Andrea, we're almost there." Andrea answered her, but the words were faint almost without even a ghost of a breath to animate them, but they were there. Selicia angled across the front lawn to the next home over. She didn't want to set her down on any part of this place. There was less resistance to her once she had gotten out of the house itself. Now they were closer to the area outside of it; closer to the area that was being maintained by the resting energy that Selicia had unleashed here. She stepped across the property line and into the next yard. Andrea seemed to feel everything drop away from her. Selicia could tell the difference in how she was now and how she had been inside almost immediately. "Can y' put me over there," she asked pointing toward the porch furniture placed in front of the next house over. "Jus' for a little while. Jus' lemme sit in th' sun for a bit. 'll be a'right if I can jus' do that." Selicia carried her over and eased her down to her feet. Andrea was still too shaky to stand on her own, but considering how she would have utterly collapsed just a few moments before it was clear that she was already getting stronger. She helped her get settled into one of the padded aluminum lawn chairs. Getting Andrea stable was the most important part of why she was here. As soon as she was recovered a little more she would get her out of here so she could talk with Singh. Then they would do what they could to deal with whatever it was that the woman Andrea was afraid of represented. "You rest here Andrea," Selicia told her. "That picture helped you through and I think it can help you still. You dropped it. I?m going to leave you here for a moment so you can rest while I go get it and then we can see about getting you out of here." Andrea murmured something unintelligible and then collapsed and breathed as she lay in the lawn chair and Selicia felt better watching her do that. She was already noticeably stronger and that was more than they had dared hope for when they were discussing attempting this. ------------------------------- Gatehouse of the Grove, Phar? Naqua; Day 445, 0142hrs. Singh looked at Darcy sitting quietly listening to him. "The difference between what we did with Mitch and what we did with you was that when Mitch's crystal was reunited with her body we placed it directly in her flesh. His unaltered mind was connected fully all at once and it awoke as the ruined body that she had now. That is the purpose of those crystals. They connect who the person that is imprinted on them was with who they are now. They act as a bridge giving a person's true mind a way to bypass anything that may have manipulated them mentally in the time that passed between them being rejoined." "Mitch was aware of everything had happened to her immediately after we revived her. It may not have been imprinted on the crystal but that didn't matter. The memories were there and once his proper mind was in control he had full access to them. We didn't consider how that might have overpowered him being suddenly aware of all that had transpired before then all at once. His mind was coping with awakening in a female variant of himself; he was drowning in memories that must have felt like they were happening to him all at the same time. And he was driven to tell us whatever he could because he had to." "That was a crucial weakness in what we were doing that we had not considered," he said sorrowfully. ------------------------------ Location Unknown; Day Unknown, Time Unknown. Mitch was still nauseous from the way that the shadowy man had spun them both about even long after it had stopped. He thought that he remembered a flash of a panel truck pulling up to the curb and it looked like someone was slipping into their car to drive it behind the truck, but he couldn't be for certain that was what happened. The sheet metal door rolled down blocking all vision of anything outside of the aluminum walls. It was just the dark man, Mitch and Jim inside the empty van. Whenever it looked like they might start to regain their equilibrium the dark man started spinning them again rendering them both helpless. Realizing what was happening to them was of little help. The vision that Barnes had shared with them made what was going to happen to them both perfectly clear and having this happen to them immediately after they told Clayton meant that there was a connection leading back to him like they though there might be. Clayton had been going to speak to the captain as soon as they laid it all out for her. The captain would have to bring it to the chief in turn. Somewhere in that chain there was a link that led to whoever this was. It was probably whoever it was that watched over Fetterman in the department Mitch thought as the sphere began to spin faster to further disorient him. Mitch focused on this instead of what was happening around him. Keeping his eyes focused outward would only give the dark man what it was that he wanted; for them both to so put off by what their senses were doing to them that they couldn't even think straight. His eyes and the sensation of movement around him were what would kill any conscious effort to remain in control if he relied on them; so Mitch wouldn't. He kept his eyes shut. He couldn't do anything about the sensation of movement or the thumping that he felt before the sphere was compressed around them both, but he could limit the disorientation in other ways. He may feel the spinning but if he wasn't watching it happen then it was not as bad for him as it was for others. If he could handle skimming just above crush depth playing tag with Soviet Typhoon class boats then he could handle this he thought. Focusing inward on this helped a great deal even if it didn't give him any answers. The truck stopped and then began backing up slowly. Wherever they were going it looked like they were here. Mitch felt the velocity of how fast they were spinning increase. Apparently he wanted them absolutely unable to think let alone move when they got there. Mitch heard the door behind them open in a roaring, rolling thump. The pair of spheres that the dark man controlled floated directly back rather than going straight down or at an incline. A loading dock then, he thought. He might be able to turn the world into a blur of light and movement but he couldn't hide something like that. Mitch closed his eyes again and concentrated on keeping what control he could over himself and remembering every detail that he could. It wouldn't matter what he could see right now. He was obviously keeping them moving too fast for them to latch onto details that they could use for later. It was a wasted effort as far as Mitch was concerned. The deeper into the building they went the slower the spheres began to rotate. That was probably because they were getting close to wherever it was that he meant to take them, Mitch reasoned. From the echo and the loading dock this was someplace that had a lot of space. A commercial warehouse maybe? There were still a few of them that were scattered through the older areas of Stafford. Most of them had been cotton warehouses before. Storing the raw cotton bales until the Alagosta mill called for them and storing the finished cloth and spun thread afterward. A lot of them had followed the mill down into bankruptcy and decay as well. This could be one of those Mitch thought. The rapid nausea inducing movement abruptly stopped and suddenly he could see again. Not that it mattered. The sudden lack of motion was just as disorienting as constant motion was. Mitch struggled to regain control as his head spun long after his body was finally still. There was a pair of rectangular cages waiting for them in the room. Both of them were made of steel and were so low that the best either of them would be able to do would be to squat in them and if they bent their knees they would be able to lie down. Mitch first heard one of the cages being opened and then a few moments later its lid was lowered again and fastened tight. He felt his sphere suddenly stop and start rotating and after the near constant movement of however long it had been the sudden stop in it was almost as disorienting a sensation. The sphere dropped into the cage and he felt the sphere itself dissolve around him as the lid overhead swung down and was secured. He was completely unable to begin to move and when what felt like hands reached through the bars and began moving all over his body, stripping him of everything but the clothing on his body. There was little he could do to stop them; the best he could do was feebly push at them. He thought that would be it, but it apparently wasn't at all. No sooner than the invisible hands finish stripping him of his gun, badge, phone, wallet and everything else in his pockets; then they started stripping every stitch of clothing from him as well. By the time that they were done Mitch was left naked and helpless in the cage. The light was shut off as they left and Mitch was left alone in the dark. Mitch had almost recovered from what the dark man had done to him to a degree when he returned. At first he thought that Jim was being kept in the same room as he was, but the lack of response when he was able to speak told him that he was alone in the dark room. The two of them had been isolated from each other then. That told Mitch one thing at least. They knew a bit about what they were doing. Keeping them penned up together even in separate cages would still let them speak to and support each other; being kept alone would make it easier to break them. Mitch didn't know what it was that kept the dark man from turning his attention to them right away. That might have been what he had done with Barnes, but he wasn't running the same play here. And what happened to Barnes took place in the aether first and then later over the course of a couple of weeks before she ended up face to face with him again. What he was doing now might be the actual way that he operated for all Mitch could tell. The one thing that they knew for certain was that what they had speculated about was very real indeed. And knowing what he had turned up by linking what Barnes told them to Fetterman's whores and Gregor?s special cases. Well, he didn't like the direction this wind was blowing him in. Mitch did the only thing he could do. He rolled himself in as much of a ball as he could and tried to keep warm and get what sleep he could while he was being ignored. This was probably going to be the last time that he could say that he thought sourly. ---------------------------------- "Andrea," Selicia asked her, "Who was that other woman that you were telling me we need to get back here earlier? You said she was dangerous. Who is she?" Selicia had retrieved the dropped wedding photo and returned where she had left her in front of the neighboring house once they had gotten free from the debilitating effect that remaining in the boundaries of the ruined one she had found her in caused. As weak as she was even after slipping free of it, she would not go very far if she was even of a mind to while Selicia secured the totem. She was still resting in the padded chair in front of the narrow brick porch only a couple of dozen paces away when Selicia turned and made her way back to her. Even from here she could see that Andrea was getting stronger and once she could keep her feet under her and not fall; Selicia would be able to help her to make her way there. Her breathing was steadier now, and underneath the damage that had been inflicted on her she was starting to have a less pale coloration. When she was locked in the innermost part of the cell the shadowy man had created in her mind she had seemed to have been drained of any healthy coloration and her breathing had seemed almost to stop entirely even as Selicia carried her the last few steps out of the ruin. Lying in the padding of this old chair now she seemed to be gaining her strength back and through her one undamaged eye she seemed to be looking at her with a clearer head. "She's always been here," Andrea said. "She's been here since the beginning of what he did to me. The first thing I remember when I saw myself like this was her watching me. As much as he wanted to kill me; he wanted to kill her more. He's afraid of her. Afraid of what she could do to him. He called her angry girl." ------------------------------ The scrape of the door as it opened into the darkened room didn't wake Mitch when the sound came and intruded on the silence. He had gotten small snatches of sleep between shivering while he was in this room. That temperature told him something just by being something that he had to experience. It was early summer out there already. Spring had merged with summer already and there was no cold weather that was naturally chill enough to make him feel this way. The echoes that he could hear also told him that he was being held on a large open space. Lots of smaller spaces filling the open area as well. That it was cold told him that it wasn't an ordinary warehouse either. This had to be a climate controlled storage; perhaps commercial or perhaps private storage. Whichever one remained to be seen. A pair of women came into the room. They were young like the one in the alleyway. They were not dressed as streetwalkers nor were they dressed like the young professionals that they imitated when on calls either. The two of them wore ordinary casual clothing that really told him nothing except that it might have come from a secondhand store. One of them spread a dark sheet over the squat barred cage they were keeping him in and he could see that the other one was securing it so that it didn't move aside and show him anything inadvertently or come free altogether. Once they had lashed it into place they pushed on the cage and he felt it began to roll. From the squeaking of the wheels it was already mounted on a dolly of some sort. He tried to put together a mental map as they pushed him. Each time he was pushed around something he tried to estimate if it was a corner or just something that was in the way. All of the turns that he was certain of so far at least told him how to get from where they were taking him to where he had been kept. If he could get free, then there was a chance that he could locate a set of emergency stairs and use those to get away; but he had to get away first. There was a larger boom and a shudder from in front of the cage and he estimated from that sound that it came from pushing him through a set of double doors. The echoes from the girl's footsteps also indicated to him that the room they were in now was larger and there was less in there. If it wasn't so open then their footsteps would be more muffled than they were. The movement stopped and he heard the two girls walking away from him. He'd tried to get them to talk to him while they were pushing him, but it was like he was nothing more than a box being moved. They ignored him completely and didn't even acknowledge that he had said anything. The sheet was stripped away and Mitch saw that he was in a larger more open room with Jim and the man who had taken them both the night before. He recognized him. The outsized presence that he had played in Barnes's vision made it clear who he was. He was as exactly the same as the mental image she had of him portrayed him as. A mass of shadow in the shape of a man. "I find it interesting that neither you nor your colleague seem to be surprised by my appearance," he said to them. "Why is that I wonder?" he asked. Mitch kept his silence. From what Barnes had showed them trying to engage him was not worth the effort. "You're probably wondering how long you have until someone who is looking for you tracks you down," he said tossing the cloth that had covered Mitch's cage to the side. "You really shouldn't waste your efforts hoping for something like that to happen. No one is going to be looking for you. I've already made certain that no one has any idea that either of you are even here. As far as they are concerned, they know right where you are and no one is going to look any further than that to find you now." From the way he said that, Mitch was pretty certain that he was telling the plain unvarnished truth. "I don't like having to do what I'm going to do next to someone like you and your partner," he continued. "But I'm going to. Usually it's too much trouble, but this is one of those rare cases where leaving you be is even more trouble. The only good thing is that you're both going to make it up to me. And that starts now," he said. A sphere formed in the cage where Jim was being kept. Mitch couldn't see it, but he could see the effect of its prescience from how it caged Jim. The shadowy man walked up close to him after it was in place and lifted the cage lid. The bubble containing Jim floated up with Jim beating his hands impotently against its inner surface. Mitch couldn't hear anything that he was saying while he was in there. It came to rest about waist high to the man and then the darkness spread across its surface. The only difference that Mitch could see between what he was doing now and what he had done to Barnes was that he had darkened it earlier this time. The man leaned in and started whispering to Jim. Mitch didn't need to hear the words to know what he was probably saying to Jim. When the sphere lightened again it was as he had seen before in Barnes's vision as well. He leaned over her and tore the part of her that he desired away as a cruel boy tears the wings from insects. It was done without thought, hesitation or any sign of remorse. The awful screaming that he wrested from her lips was worse to hear in person than it was to witness in memory. It echoed in Mitch's ears and he turned his head away so he didn't have to see it. But he could still hear it. All the sound that she was making collapsed into a single screech. It shifted through the scale from one end to the other and then moved back again. Here was terror, there was agony; horror shot the whole awful melody throughout and then the subtle undertones of shame and failure and loss. It was a song he had no wish to hear and it pierced through his clasped hands to burrow into his brain and echo there as well. All through the wave of sound that spilled from her lips the dark man stood over her as she writhed in her cage and said nothing. He was standing between Mitch and the woman that he had carved out of Jim and he could see little other than the outlines where she peeked out around his darkened form. Jim was begging him. Mitch could hear the sound but he couldn't isolate the words. They were too soft to make out. She was forcing them out through pain scarred lips, over the rapids of terror that she was riding and hiding from the shadow of terror that pursued her relentlessly now that it had found her. Mitch didn't hear the words but he could hear the tone and he shook deep inside at the desperation that Jim must be feeling to even try to do this. She knew as well as he did how useless doing something like that really was; but still she was compelled to do it anyway. The shadowy man looked down on her as she reached up to him her hand extended through the bars in supplication and he knocked it away from him to land over her face. Mitch heard her sob as she buried her face in the hard mat that lined the steel floor of the cage. "Frightened girl, pretty much what I expected to find," he said to her in a disgusted tone of voice and turned to face Mitch. "Remember what you said to me," he said as he approached. "Don't resist. It'll be a lot easier for you if you don't," he reached a spot a few feet away from Mitch's cage and she could see the shadows moving as he concentrated and she felt the sphere rising around her. As the surface of it began to darken he saw the stranger's face that he had made Jim's into looking at him through the bars and if anything the expression of terror that was plastered there got even worse as Mitch was sealed away. The darkness surrounding him was foul. If it had a smell Mitch would have been hard pressed to name the one that dominated because it seemed that they were all there and cycling in and out as they caught his nose's attention. There was the rank overwhelming smell of maggots without number, the reek of an open corpse pit lying for days in the sun. The new and the old cadavers stinking and blending together into a toxic reek that crawled into every pore and saturated every centimeter. There was the stench of long rotted food and for the last one it seemed more intense until he realized that he was smelling it through the nose of someone who was starving to death and no matter how hungry he was there was no way he could force himself to consume this. The fetor of disease long allowed to proceed unimpeded until it had consumed it's host almost entirely. The olfactory whirlwind battered him and overwhelmed him. This was something that was not like what Barnes had shown them. It must be something that he tailors to each victim, Mitch thought as he forced himself to hold on and resist what was coming. "I won't leave you Andrea," he promised her over and over in his mind. "He can't take me from you," he thought. Focusing on that single goal he steeled himself for whatever it was that the dark man was going to do. He thought about her, he thought of how she looked and felt and tasted. He thought of her volcanic temper when she uncorked her anger and how, if he was smart, even the devil would get the hell out of her way then. The shadowy man was talking to him in the darkness, but Mitch had no intention of listening to his words. Only Andrea mattered, making it back to her was what he clung to in the fetid darkness. He drew everything about her from out of himself and stood against the dark man with it. The darkness faded and he was there standing over Mitch who was lying in the cage now. The sphere was gone now. He could sense that it was dissolved. There was a look on the shadows that he called his face that was unlike what Mitch expected to see there. "Oooo, darling," he said to Mitch. "You just ain't supposed to be looking like that now." "This now," he said, "this is just plain out of left field unexpected." There was something in his voice that Mitch didn't expect to hear. It might have been astonishment at the sight his darkened eyes were showing to him. He leaned down to him. "You have no idea how just plain ecstatic I am to see you like this," he said to Mitch. "I just got to give you a kiss for showing me that fantastic li'l ol' trick... you clever girl, you." He leaned down and his agony began. If hearing the sound of Jim's anguish was torture to Mitch, his own was an infinity of torment that expanded and enveloped him. Deep inside in his very foundations, he was rent and lacerated and the worst part of it was that she didn't know what it was that he was cleaving from her. There was only the everlasting misery she felt as something important, something vital was wrenched and ruptured and taken from her by force; raped away leaving her screaming in terror from the gaping ragged sensation. She lunged through the fog of agony and plunged her fingers deep in the man's chest. She clawed at him, she cursed him through the pain and even as her digits passed through him as they would though a hologram it still didn't stop her from trying to physically wreak havoc on him. She screamed in frustration at her failure and maybe it was also a success. She may not have been able to touch him, but she had managed to do one thing. She had managed to make him step back from her. "Oh, Clever girl," he said evenly. I think as soon as I get your friend there squared away that I need to be spending some extra time with you. You just full of surprises aren't you?" He turned his attention back to the woman he had molded out of the clay that was Jim. "Frightened girl, you came out just the way I wanted you to look. I'ma tell ya, you gonna be such a li'l firecracker that I really wish I could jus' set you off when the time comes. I really do. I only got one regret about you and that's that you had to be so damn diminutive," he looked over at Mitch in her cage. "You too, clever girl. If I was the apologizing sort, that would be the one thing I'd do for all of you." "Can't be helped though," he said with a shrug. "The people who want to meet you when you're ready, they just don't seem to mostly like anything else. They like 'em just like you are right now. Small and weak and purty and just a walking pack of fluff. That's what they say they want and the nature of the business is to give them jus' that." "Truth is ladies, I look at what they keep demanding I send them and the only thing I really think of, is how much I despise them for being such weak willed creatures. 'Cause deep down they're just terrified I think. Terrified of being forced to deal with a real woman. That's why they want y'all to be these sweet lil? cardboard cutouts they love to play with so much. Just a pack of cowards is all they are. They can't face being challenged in any way so they pay not to be." Through the haze of throbbing agony Mitch looked across to Jim in the other cage. She couldn't see her clearly but she could see that she looked vastly different. Physically, she was a blending of genetic heritages now. She looked like a young woman who had Asian, Caucasian and African ancestors in her genetic background. Mitch couldn't see much more than that because the dark man turned around and his body blocked her from further view. The pain that swirled around her wasn't receding, but it was sinking down into her. It was pooling in that deep, raw, bloody, lacerated part of her. The shadowy man seemed different to her as well. He seemed more substantial, more stable somehow. Whatever he took from them both was what did it; of that she was certain. she was also certain that he still had all of it hidden away inside himself now and if it was still there, then there was a chance for her to get whatever it was that he stole back from him. She also realized something else as she watched him approach her carefully now. He hadn't expected her to do the things that she had done to him and he was wary now. As much as it gave her satisfaction that he was wary she almost wished he wasn't. Him not being wary around her would give her a chance to get away. A chance to get back to Andrea. She needed to lull him she thought to herself watching him; lull him and then seize whatever chance presented itself. "I won't leave you Andrea," she told her wife in her mind. "I promised you I'd always come home. I'm coming home, I'm coming home, I'm coming home," she repeated silently over and over in her mind. "But you clever girl" he said to her through the bars. "You just didn't listen to a word I said, did you? That face of yours, that fiery red hair. You just a colleen through and through ain't you? Not what I was talking to you about one bit, no ma'am, you are not. That makes you special. And I like special, clever girl. Special I can use." The dark man walked toward the door and opened it. The girls that had brought Mitch's cage into this room walked back in. While they pulled the heavy cloth over the bars on Mitch's cage and all view of the room around her vanished she heard him tell the two women to take her back to the cold room. He told them to keep it lit, keep it cold and keep her confused. She felt the cage start to move, the squeaky wheels underneath it protesting as they moved Mitch away. "Time for us to get started frightened girl," she heard him tell Jim as she was taken away. "I won't leave you," Mitch whispered to the Andrea in her mind. ---------------------------- Singh listened to Mitch as she told him what had happened. He thought that she might be getting stronger now. She was able to speak more clearly and some of the color in her cheeks seemed more natural now. It seemed more like normal healthy flesh tone rather than the induced one that Selicia and M'Tehr were drawing into her. It might be the presence of her mind that was the reason for that he thought. Her true self was returned and having it connected might be allowing her to rebuild whatever was shattered inside of her. The free flowing energy the two dryads were directing at her showing her body the pattern to restore itself along while her true mind was taking control. "How long were you there?" Singh asked. If she insisted on speaking then he needed to focus her efforts. As unlikely as it seemed, her telling him about what had happened was giving her a connection and instead of weakening her as he feared that it would by doing this too soon; it was strengthening her in some ways. "Forever," she said. "Fought him, couldn't not fight him. Think I hurt him." Her answer surprised Singh, he knew that she was telling him the exact truth. Not the truth as she saw it, but the truth of the action itself. It was all in her mind and with no natural shield he could pick out images as she related them to him. Being there forever as she said was no surprise either. She had suffered as cruel a confinement as any prisoner. She could not be held to the standard of keeping an exact count of days when each of them blended together into a single chain of existence. And when that chain was only marked by new outrages that was the only measure of time that she could count on. "You actually hurt him? Are you certain you hurt him?" Singh asked. This was something that could be of more importance than he expected to find. It was something that they needed to know even if they didn't understand it yet. "Not at first," she said. "But later I think that I really did. Can't remember all of it, but I think I did." -------------------------------- The dark man looked at breaking his new acquisitions as an exercise in patience. It was unusual for him to do two at one time and he had never attempted to do this with a frightened girl and a clever girl together but he was still looking forward to it. The truth was he hadn't expected at all to see that clever girl looking back at him from between the bars of the holding cage. She had fire that one. He could feel the pain seeping out of her pores from when he took her animus and still she struck at him and tried to fight him off. And to have her appear so soon after finding the other one that he had failed to bring home was just more than he expected. It would take time before either of them were in any shape to suit his needs though; especially the clever girl. But time was something he had to work with. What these two had uncovered was smashed and scattered and no one would piece it back together. No one was looking for them and as long as he kept things quiet he had all the time he needed for this. They would break in turn, they always did and when they broke what he was cultivating in their shells would be worth the wait. It had already started when he brought them here. Stripping them naked was necessary anyway to serve the needs of covering up their disappearance; but he would have done it regardless. Being stripped of even the barest trace of cloth would start the process of weakening their resistance to him. The cold room he had put the clever girl in and the hot room he put the frightened girl in would also break them down in time. The only thing he had to be careful of doing that was making sure that he didn't push them too far and actually damage them physically. Heat and cold were tricky things to work with when you were using them to bend and reshape an attitude. His biggest ally right away was confusion and he made the most of it as long as it lasted. Their initial pain saturated confusion after he stripped them of their animus would not last for long. Eventually they would comprehend what it was that he had done to them, but for now there was the sea of pain from losing part of themselves that kept their attention focused on that and away from what he was doing to them. When they adapted to that pain and they always did eventually: they would in time recognize what it truly meant for them to have every trace of animus drawn from them. But by that time they did realize and understand, it wouldn't matter as much. By that time the empty space in them would have started turning from pain into hunger. As that hunger grew inside of them, it would become more of a concern to them then what happened to them physically since the sole guiding force for their form was anima alone. Lack of sleep and constant light or darkness would keep them off balance in the beginning; all of these things would combine to his favor but hunger was what he was waiting to see manifest in them. Hunger would let him turn the key that he had placed in the lock of their souls and make them his. ------------------------------ The first thing that Mitch lost track of was time. Every moment that she was in the room was spent in isolation with nothing around her to indicate any passage of time in any way. The room was just a cube that was nothing around her but white walls. The bars of her cage and the constant chill of a room temperature that was maintained at just a cold enough level for her to experience constant discomfort without threatening her health with cold weather injury. Food came at irregular intervals and in varying amounts. One time it would be barely a scrape of something cold and tasteless and another time soon after there would be slightly more; then nothing for a long time afterward. It was impossible to reckon when it arrived and it was little use in trying to estimate if there even was an interval worth considering by using sleep as a measure. Every time she looked like she was going to sleep when her captor didn't want her to do so, there was a low level electric charge that flowed through the metal of the cage forcing her back awake. It wasn't enough to severely damage her. But it crept up in intensity until it was easier to comply rather than refuse and suffer the waves of increasing voltage that she was subjected to. The same method was her alarm clock when she was allowed to sleep at all. She knew what this was and she knew that it was taking her toll on her psyche. These methods might be slow but they were effective in breaking down a prisoner. Being in the submarine service the chance that she might be captured if her boat went down wasn't the most likely scenario; but that didn't mean that she still couldn't end up like she was now. From the beginning she realized that she needed an anchor to resist the slow pressure that was being applied to her. Silence rather than loud noise was also part of what had been brought to bear against her here. She thought that she knew why that might be though. If this was a storage warehouse like she thought it was, then excessive noise would draw unwanted attention and silence would be effective in its own way. Silence was the definition of her existence except when the shadowy man came to give her pain and force her to obey him in tiny insignificant ways. Instead she took the pain and resisted him as far as she could before giving in and then it started all over again with something else. She made him work for every single act of obedience and she made him work hard for it. There was never any doubt that eventually she would give in and just obey so the pain would stop; it was a question of dragging it out. She had to force him to take her over the edge and sometimes she had to step back and make him work all over again to do the same thing she had complied with earlier. When he wasn't there she talked with Andrea. At first she had tried to do it out loud, but a swift application of steady voltage made her scrap that approach entirely. Whoever was holding down the switch would keep their finger on it until she passed out if that was necessary. So her mind became the sounding board for what she said to her. She had to have both sides of the conversation for it to be the focus and the distraction that she needed. At first she found it a hard thing to do. Most of the time a conversation with Andrea ended up being an extended inner monologue and there was little of Andrea in it. Not the way that she knew that she would be hearing her if the conversation was real. But sometime after she had been doing that a while, that started to change. It was when he was having a conversation with her about how they should extend the patio around the house next summer. What she had in mind was to outline the entire area with knee high concrete planters and just fill the narrow space between the wall with citronella; that way they would keep the bugs away to a degree. Andrea surprised him by telling him what an absolutely stupid idea that was. The planter idea was fine, but various herbs would be more useful in the space and a bug zapper more effective. Mitch was amazed and just continued talking with her in his mind and for the next couple of hours they went back and forth over the subject. Whatever it was that he was doing with this, it worked this time. This was a conversation with Andrea. She spoke to him exactly as she would have if she were in the cage with him. She even lost her temper a couple of times and let him have it for being unreasonable. She almost felt a tear begin to trickle from her eyes when that happened because it made her miss her so much. Not because she was having a fight or because of anything that the Andrea in her mind said; but because it was her there. He heard her as clearly as if she were here in the cell with her. And for her that was no different right now than having this discussion on the phone. Mitch began to spend all of her time in her mind whenever she could after that. She couldn't do anything that looked like she was trying to rest, so she moved constantly. If she could have paced around the cage she was kept in she would do that; but she couldn't. Instead she did the next best thing. She started crawling where she could and counting what she could see with Andrea. They started with the weld seams in the cage and when they had finally agreed on how many there were then they had an argument over how many of them had thick or thin beads. The argument was impossible to resolve and they had to count them again. She lost that one and Andrea rubbed his nose in it for an hour. In some ways the Andrea living in her mind was more combative than the real Andrea; especially after the dark man started feeding her. ---------------------------- The first feeding was always important. By the time any of his girls were ready to have him allow it to happen, the empty space inside them had already begun to boil and churn demanding sustenance. It turned the void of what was no longer there inward in search of it and once turned inward it was immutable. It was the dawn of a growing thirst for something, anything that resembled what should be there and no longer was. By the time he was ready to grant a taste of what she craved, the die was ready to be cast. The frightened girl was progressing well he thought as he made his way to the cold room. She had been switched between warm and cold several times already and between the different approaches she had been kept so off balance that she soon began to mentally crumble in places. He had begun feeding her another's animus already for over a week now and it had spurred the development of the girl inside of her as he knew it would. Right now the girl inside the frightened girl was tiny, barely registering and the overmind that was still barely hanging on within was still in control for the most part. But he could tell that she was starting to erode more rapidly now. It had been three weeks since he had taken them both and the combination of breaking methods was doing what he intended for it to do. The truth was that he had no intention of doing anything with his new girls overmind except for smashing it into impotent fragments; but only after the girl within her had become strong enough to take over when he did that. Right now the girl rising in the frightened girl wasn't there yet, but she was learning even so. Breaking one of his girls was like training any large dangerous animal. You had to get them while they were small and helpless. They had to internalize the idea that even when they dwarfed you later; that you still held the power. Elephants, oxen, horses, tigers all of them shared that common factor in training them from their earliest days. And it was just as valid for imprinting his girls as he rendered what had been there before ineffectual. He was fairly confident that soon they would reach that initial plateau and after that she would start to make the rapid progress he was watching for; the clever girl was nowhere near that. Trying to pry up what was undergirding her was like putting out a fire with a thimbleful of water at a time. She was fighting him every step of the way and in its own way he was glad to see her doing it. The longer she held out, the longer and harder she would fall when she finally broke. The clever girls will may be strong, but the girl inside of her was still growing as well. She was growing and she was learning what happened to that strength by watching her shell's overmind break. Every time he fed her, he was creating a second front inside her that would undercut the overmind that he didn't need. It was the struggle that would unite her with him and draw them together; it was only a matter of time. That rock hard wall that the clever girl had raised inside of her center would only hold out for so long. Everyone broke and when the girl he wanted inside her understood that part he would have an ally that would go at her night and day until that wall was nothing but dust. ---------------------------------- The bars were chill to the touch. Mitch was leaning against them. It was one of those rare times when they were not shocking her constantly to leave her exhausted from needing to constantly stay in motion and she was taking full advantage of it while it lasted. "He's coming now," Andrea said to her. "I can practically smell him in the hallway." "Do you think he's going to try to do that to us again?" Mitch asked her. "I don't think we should do it if he does. He's doing it for a reason and any reason he has means nothing good for us." "And how do you suggest we stop him?" she demanded, "You know what happens when he opens the spigot. The same thing that happened every other time before. We try to balk and then we take every bit he gives us of whatever that is." "I still think we can refuse him, Andrea," she said. "We both know whatever he is doing is bad for us. We just don't know how or why?" "And I still say that's an easy thing to say," Andrea told him, her voice starting to take on a hint of an edge. "Talk to me about actually doing that after we succeed in refusing it. And I'm not sure I even want to anymore. I feel strong after he does that and if you're being honest Mitch, you do too." "That doesn't change that he's doing it for a reason and that reason is nothing good for either of us, no matter how it makes us feel after he's done."She told her. "It doesn't change the fact that he is our enemy Andrea." "You're right, he is our enemy," she said to her "But if it makes us stronger, doesn't that mean that he's the one making the mistake Mitch? He's obviously trying to do something, but him doing this might give us that one chance we need." "Don't you think I know that Andrea?" she asked her, "Don't you think that I know that might be the only chance we're going to have for me come back to you?" "Then take the chance Mitch," Andrea said to him. "Pick your time and take the chance. There's got to be a way and you're the one that said that tipping your hand early the way you did was something you shouldn't have done. It made him wary." "So is fighting him tooth and nail," Mitch replied to her. "I'm not going to give up doing that though." "Don't be stupid Mitch," she said to him. "Fighting him to the last inch isn't the same thing as that and you know it. Right now he thinks he's winning in some way. Let him keep thinking he's doing that. If he keeps making us stronger and we blindside him when the time comes, that is all to our benefit isn't it?" she asked. "Andrea, I hear you honey, I really do, but I don't feel right about it. Even as a bluff. I keep looking for the booby trap every time he comes around to do that and this one smells like one every way we can look at it." "Mitch if you know it's a trap at least you are aware of it and can look for something to do about it. But if you fight him just as much as we always do, he may not notice when our trap closes on him. I want that trap to close on him Mitch. I want you free of him and I want you to do whatever you have to do so we can be together. What did you tell me that we do with an enemy Mitch?" "We fight them till we die," he answered her. "That's right," she said, "Now do what you have to do to be strong so he's the one that dies instead." Andrea was getting good at playing off on his line of thought. She was saying almost exactly what he would have expected to hear her say if they were actually having this conversation and the fact was that when the shadowy man did feed them it was getting harder and harder to refuse. --------------------------------- He felt the flow of animus pour into his clever girl's mouth. She was still resisting him in all the ways that she could dream up, but his girl was starting to make inroads. He was sure of it. His clever girl was getting stronger in there each time he fed her. Pouring it directly into her mouth was little different in some way than watching a penguin do the same with a chick. And each time he did it, the subconscious connection with who provided what she needed most of all was being strengthened, whether the overmind wanted to accept it or not. He still needed to break the clever girl's overmind and break it soon. It was just dross that needed to be discarded before he could lay his hands on the pure alloy that it was covering and begin to shape it into a tool that was worth having. The truth was he didn't mind the fierce resistance that this clever girl's overmind was putting up. With each small victory she was becoming rigid and that was something that he counted on happening. You needed to be flexible to fight back against what he was doing. But even the most dedicated resistance couldn't remain flexible indefinitely; eventually they started to become rigid. When they became rigid enough all it would take was the right blow at the right time and the whole line of defense would shatter. When he first started doing this, he had tried to actually brainwash the overmind and for a very brief time it had seemed to work; but that was pure self deception on his part. Eventually the overmind and the girl inside of her clashed and when they did all hell was likely to break loose. Once he figured that out he stopped bothering to even do it. It was the girl that was important, not the egg she grew in. There was no reason to keep the shell around after the chick was ready to emerge. It needed to be shattered for that to happen; the shell always needed to be discarded. As long as the girl that was inside the shell was who he needed her to be, the fragments of the overmind that were always left over just didn't matter. He needed to break this clever girls overmind soon so he could get on with the more serious business of winning the girl inside her over to him and he was pretty sure that he had a good way to do that. It wasn't ready yet, but it was close. He opened the door as he left and walked out. The end was closer than the clever girls overmind thought it was and as far as he was concerned it was about time. ------------------------------- "Did you feel it Mitch?" Andrea asked her after he left them alone. She was excited about something. She always got that bit of treble in her voice when she was. "Did you?" "What was I supposed to feel Andrea?" she asked her. "We took more than he planned on giving to us," she said excitedly. "He wasn't going to give us that much, but at the last minute we forced him to do it!" "We made him do what we wanted. We forced him," she said. "Do you know what this means Mitch?" she asked. "It means we can make him do one small thing Andrea. And we don't even know if it wasn't something that he planned. For all we know he's playing with us; setting us up for some kind of fall," she told her. "No Mitch," she said to her. "It means we can take it back. We can take it all back! Every bit that he stole from us we can take back. And I think if we do that we can hurt him, maybe hurt him enough so that we can get away." Mitch thought about what she said to her. It might even be possible, but it would take some planning. They were only going to get one shot at this when the time came and it needed to be a kill shot. Nothing else would do. "We need to draw out more and more each time then," she told Andrea. "A little at first and gradually step it up. We need to see if he has some way to shut it down. If he can do that, then that will kneecap us. But if he can't, then we hit him all at once and rock him back enough for it to matter." "If we can do that," Andrea said to her, "Then we shouldn't stop with rocking him back, we should drain him dry. If we really get lucky, we might even kill him." The Andrea in his thoughts had become increasingly hard-line about that topic and in the beginning it disturbed him that his mental Andrea would talk about that so casually; but not anymore. If there was something that they were in increased agreement on, it was that if they got the chance to kill the dark man they would take it without hesitation and not look back. ---------------------------- "Clever girl, today is a special day," he said to her. Except for his visits that came with no rhyme or reason to them she was alone but for the company of Andrea. She was also feeling even greater hunger than she had felt before. He hadn't allowed her to feed from him for days; how many of them she wasn't sure, only that there were a lot of them. Right now the howling of the empty chasm inside her was tearing at her insides and still each time he visited she was left empty when he departed. "I have a visitor for you today. An old friend come by to comfort you during your difficulty," he said as if the words actually meant anything to him. He allowed the door to open and when it had swung far enough to do so a young woman walked head down into the room. Mitch couldn't tell who she was at first. She was short and petite like so many others of the dark man's girls. With her head down all he could see was the color of her hair and that it hung long down the side of her face in a freshly styled seemingly careless fashion that was anything but. The clothing was not the business attire or casual clothing that the other girls wore either. This girl was dressed in working clothes for a street prostitute; something that the other's didn't wear so long as Mitch had seen them. "Well honey what do you have to say to your friend?" he asked her. "Are you sure she's my friend Daddy?" she asked him. "I don't think I know her." "Now what did we talk about before?" he told her. "What did I tell you?" The girl managed to hang her head even lower if that were possible. She answered in a faint voice that reeked of shame that she had forgotten something and done wrong because of that. "You said she was my friend. You said that she should be the first one to see the new me." "And what else did I tell you to say to her?" he said with what had to be a broad smile hidden beneath the shadows. The girl raised her face and looked her in the eyes. "Hi, Mitch," she said. "It's me, Jim." It was the girl that Mitch had seen him made into. Mitch could tell that much was buried in the outfit she was wearing in front of him. She vaguely remembered the face that she had been graced with just before the dark man turned on her and changed her own appearance and this was it. The only differences were that now she was looking at that face through a haze of hunger not pain. She was free to move around and Mitch was caged. She was clothed and Mitch was naked. She was a slave and Mitch was still resisting. "I think that's the last time you need to be using that name," he said to her. "Why don't you tell your old friend that nice pretty name you have now. That pretty name that matches that pretty face of yours." "Darcy," she said happily. "Darcy La Fleur." "Darcy the flower. That is such an appropriate name for you, isn't it?" he said. "Of course it is daddy," she said in agreement. "But I think we'll make one little change Darcy," he said in Mitch's direction intending for her to hear every syllable. "I think we should call you Darcy Le Fleur instead. Your friend here will understand why even if you don't." "Whatever you want Daddy," she chirped and then wiggled like a puppy happy to please its master. Mitch was furious inside. Rage smoldered in her eyes as she took in what the dark man had done to Jim. She didn't need to talk to her for long to find out how deeply this Darcy persona went to. She would go all the way to the bottom. Mitch had hauled in too many of Fetterman's lambs when she was in vice not to recognize when one of his girls was in front of her. I'll get you back Jim. She swore to herself. I'll find a way to get you back, to pry you away from him. I don't know how but I'll find it. I promise you. She focused on the dark man. He was connected to Fetterman. She knew it for certain now. Before she had only had a strong suspicion that was the case, but seeing what he had done to her to make her like this erased any doubt in Mitch's mind. It had been an ongoing puzzle in vice just where Fetterman got his girl's from and now Mitch was certain that for whatever reason he did so, the dark man was the one supplying them to him. She had to get away. She had to get to Singh and tell him what had happened. She hadn't taken this whole shadow world idea seriously until Pantra had landed in her palm, but she was a believer now and it there was one person she could talk to and be believed it would be him. She also knew one more thing. The dark man had brought her here today to make Mitch weaken. To celebrate that he had succeeded in breaking Jim to pieces by rubbing her in Mitch's eyes where the image would sting and fester and make her despair. Maybe he had done something like this with other girls before, she thought. Andrea who was watching and listening to her line of thought agreed with her that this was all part of his toolbox. He was already using Jim before she had even left the building. He was using her to hammer at Mitch's resolve and although he didn't know it; that was when Mitch decided that she needed to make an opportunity to kill him sooner rather than just wait for one to present itself. It wouldn't make any difference to even speak to this Darcy that he had made out of Jim. She would be limited in what she would say or think. That was something else that was common with Fetterman's girls. The men he sold them to wanted pretty and dumb. They wanted playthings and nothing more complex than that. That's what they paid him for and he delivered exactly that. The dark man told Darcy to come over where Mitch could see clearly and once she had he told her to hold out her right arm. Darcy raised it and held it out in front of her. He reached for it and took her by the wrist. "I just wanted your friend to see this before I let you go my sweet," he told her. "After all you're not finished getting ready for tonight yet. You still need to have the most important part of your outfit before I can let you leave." The dark man pressed against her wrist hard. Mitch could see that she suppressed a wince brought on by the pressure he was applying there. If his hands were not composed of a shadow Mitch would be certain that the whites of his knuckles were showing from the effort he was expending doing that to her. He released her wrist and she kept it extended. Mitch watched as a black dot on the base of her palm just where the wrist began started to darken. It crept up her flesh in a dark line, twisting around her arm and finally ceasing to grow when it reached her inner elbow. There it stopped and swelled into a tightly closed flower bud. There were a few small leaves that branched out from the twisting rose stem but they were only an undeveloped outline of leaves as the flower bud was an undeveloped bloom. "You can put your arm down now, my sweet," he told her and Darcy allowed her arm to fall slowly to her side. -------------------------------- He was enjoying the look on the clever girl's face. His little Darcy had turned out very well indeed. She had started to crumble only a couple of weeks before and once he reached the girl inside her, she tore at her more and more until the overmind within just ceased to be a factor. Once she was broken it was just a matter of entering that shadowy realm that she used to rule and chaining her down so that all that was left of her was the remaining link his girl needed with the husk she was formed from. This one was going to start despairing soon, he thought. She was determined now. She had fought him too much to be anything else, but seeing what had happened to her partner was going to eat at her later. It was going to undermine her and more importantly it was going to show the clever girl inside her that she didn't have to stay under the direction of the overmind just because she came to be later. To drive the point home even more he called Darcy over to him only a few inches out of her reach and then leaned over her and fed her a tiny piece of animus where the hungry girl inside could smell it. The two of them could see it and that is all they would be allowed to do. He had made a point of not feeding the clever girl when he was certain that Darcy was beginning to crumble for good. By now she was starving. The overmind had been resisting feeding so far as much as she could. She still took what he gave her when he chose to do so, but she was reluctant to do so. The last time he had felt his clever girl act independently of the overmind. She had taken more than he planned to give her and the only surprise for him was that she had taken this long to take matters into her own hand. Now that she had started pushing the overmind aside he needed to give her something to focus on that would cause her to flex her own strength and this was it. Between weakening the clever girl's overmind and taunting his hungry girl he would get what he wanted. He finished feeding Darcy and told her that she needed to get going now. The nice man that he had arranged for her to spend time with was waiting for her and now that she was ready there was no reason for her to dally any longer. ---------------------------------- Mitch could feel Andrea's hunger gnashing against her innards deep inside of her. The sight and the smell of what they were doing left her barely in control. She leaned against the bars even so. She didn't have that level of control any longer. Her body was arching toward the scene in front of her as a sunflower followed the sun across the sky each day. When he told Darcy that she was ready and to get going it was all Mitch could do not to call out after her to keep fighting; but that was already a wasted effort. Whatever was left of Jim in her had already been beaten down and Mitch had no idea how to bring her back. "Why don't you get on your way, Darcy?" he suggested. "You go off now and have a good time. I know you are just going to do me proud your first time out aren't you?" Darcy smiled and hung her head in an innocent fashion. Whether it was an act that the dark man had encouraged her to present or it was actually part of how she was now Mitch couldn't tell. She promised him she would and when he told her to bring him back something nice to remember her first time out and about she assured him that she would do so without fail. She looked at Mitch and told her goodbye and to pour salt on the wound she told her how much she hoped that once she was done misbehaving that they could go out together like this really soon. Mitch watched her walk away without a backward glance and close the door behind her. --------------------------- Andrea was looking much better now with some rest. Just being clear of whatever was in the center of what the ruined home had done to her had seemed to be good for her by itself. "Did the photo help you any?" Selicia asked her. "I thought it might but I wasn't sure. I thought I would take a chance." "It helped," Andrea said quietly. "I didn't think it would but it did." "Was that your wedding photo?" she asked. "I thought it might be but like I said, I wasn't sure." "I think it was," she said. "But it bothers me, it really does." "Why does it bother you Andrea?" she asked. "Because I don't remember who that man was that was in it. I don't know who I was marrying there. I can't remember doing it. All I can remember now is just being here. There isn't anything else and there should be." Selicia looked at the auburn haired woman next to her. She was definitely stronger, but she was still weak in her own way as well. The twin roses had taken on a slight glow now. In the shed and the house they had been black and once they had gotten free of it's confines they had started to become shot through with a lighter color, but now she could see a faint luminescence radiating out from the design and unless she missed her guess it was getting stronger. "We'll rest here a little longer," she told Andrea. "Once you're a bit stronger we need you to surface. Once you're not trapped here we can see what we can do to help you stay stable. Singh and M'Tehr have been frantic to find a way to get you back. I'm sure they'll both be glad to see you." "I'll be glad to see them too," she said. "I've missed them both since everything happened here." The way she said that didn't sound right to Selicia and she didn't know how to take it. "Pantra is excited to see you again as well," she said. "But that's to be expected. You know how little girls can be." "I can't wait to see her too," Andrea said without any feeling whatsoever in her voice. Selicia looked upward and wondered what was going on out there. Since she was totally focused inward she had no idea of how things were playing out in the physical world where the others were, but she wished that she did. She looked at Andrea and wondered if she should act on what she suspected yet. She looked again at the illuminated designs on the woman's wrists. They were definitely brighter now. ------------------------ Place unknown, Day unknown, Time unknown Mitch was groggy. Now that the shadowy man had paraded what he had done to Jim in front of her, he started boring in on her specifically. He hadn't come to see her again after he left for two days now. The only food she had been given was a small portion of oatmeal and some water that did little to deal with the hunger that was gnawing at her belly. The oatmeal did nothing to alleviate the other hunger at all. Watching what he did with Darcy in front of her had caused that hunger to blaze inside of her; burning her down to her bones. Even if he had allowed her to sleep more than he had, she didn't think that she would have. The hunger was just too overwhelming to ignore now. It dominated almost every waking moment and it was almost the only thing that he talked about with Andrea. Almost. "I think he made a mistake," she suggested to him after they had been kept awake for fifteen hours. The constant electric shocks had died away and it seemed that they were going to be allowed to rest for a short time. Mitch had collapsed against the chill metal floor of the cage and was leaning against the bars in near exhaustion. "What mistake?" she replied. "I think we can get out of here," she said to him. "Oh sure, we just drag a person that is a walking cloud into an electrified cage and take the key that we never see him wear and get out? How is that supposed to work?" she asked her. "It might work because we're not going to do any of those things," she replied. "We don't have to, he gave us the key to leave any time we want to and I don't think he realizes it." Mitch wished she was here in person so she could see the look of disbelief on her face right now, but she settled for telling her that she had no idea what Andrea could be talking about. "He did the same thing to us that he did to Barnes," she said as if that explained everything. "So," she said, "How does that help us even in the slightest?" "We might be able to just walk out of this cage," she said to her. "After he did this to Barnes she did just that. You saw her do it. She did it in the aether and she did it later in the physical world. She did it only a couple of weeks after he changed her and we've been like this even longer than she was." "And how does that even matter?" she asked her. "Barnes was walking through walls already even before the dark man got a hold of her. She spent so much time in the aether testing out what she could do there even before she knew what it was that she was actually doing. We haven't done any of that." "I think we could," Andrea said. "I think that when he did this to us he also made a connection to the aether that we didn't have before. I think we can use that somehow." "I'm still not seeing how we can," Mitch said. "Then we have to find a way. I know the connection is there now in us. There's a reason that he does what he does and that aether connection is part of it. It has to be." Mitch didn't answer her. She thought that she was just not answering her because she had nothing to say and had decided to refuse to talk about it, but when she reached for her the part of her that made up Mitch was asleep. The chance to sleep had swept her up in it's shroud now that there was nothing to keep that from happening for the time being. Andrea didn't want to wake her, unlike Mitch she didn't feel fatigued and except for the pain from the electric shocks that coursed through the metal around her, the pain hadn't been much of a factor to her until recently. She concentrated and forced her eyes to open and looked around her. This was something that she didn't expect to happen at all. When Mitch had begun talking to her she had listened for a long time before she had answered him. Until now she had looked on herself as being a part of his mind that had sectioned away under the stress of what the dark man was doing to her. She routinely thought that she thought more clearly and with less emotional attachment than Mitch did. She suspected that she was the sanest part of his psyche when she realized that she was truly not thinking in the same tracks that Mitch did and she pitied that other part of her that was being broken down this way. She raised her hand and watched her nails brush against the bars. The dull click sound of her fingernails against the steel came as steady as a dripping faucet as she moved her hand along the bars. "An interesting experience isn't it my dear," she heard the dark man say to her. Her head whipped around in the direction of the voice and saw him standing only a few feet from the cage bars. There had been no sound of the door opening and no indication that she was not alone. "Don't say anything," he told her. "I've been waiting for you to come out and play and finally here you are. Out and about. I was beginning to despair if I was even going to get to meet you. You've been so reclusive. But I knew you were there. You're always there, listening and watching." Andrea didn't say anything. She didn't know what it was that he thought he was talking about, but she could handle this. As long as she didn't say anything to let him know that he wasn't talking to Mitch then he didn't actually know anything for certain. She watched him carefully without moving. Mitch didn't back up for this bastard and neither would she. "Your sister Darcy came out to play weeks ago, almost at the beginning of our time together in fact. I did wonder what was keeping you though. But I don't have to do that anymore do I?" She narrowed her eyes at his face. The way the shadow swirled across the entirety of his features it was difficult to even see physical differences, let alone anything that would help her match body language to his words. "Stop pretending that you are your overmind my dear," he told her. The way you were moving before you were aware of my presence tells me that you are the only one paying attention right now. You're finally in the driver's seat and now we can really get started." Andrea felt fear now. That was a new and wholly unwelcome sensation. Emotions that she knew that she actually felt in their entirely were part of what had formed her self identity as a separate part of Mitch's mind. She recognized when he was feeling pain or fear or anger or misery; but it was always as a detached observer. She had worried about how that would affect their sanity if they ever actually managed to get free from here because of that detachment. But this was her fear, not Mitch's. Her fear was muffled and insulated in its full intensity from Andrea; this was ice clawing at her heart and throat. She watched him as he stepped closer to her. She had no idea of how she could respond to this. She had watched Mitch deal with this man for weeks now and until this moment she had no concept of what it meant to feel as Mitch felt doing that. "No need for you to be afraid Clever girl," he told her. "I'm not going to hurt you. Why would I do that when you're the one I've been waiting for all this time? Shhh," he said gently as his hand passed through the bars to caress her cheek. -------------------------------- He looked down at the redhead crouched in the cage. She was confused now. The first time she had taken control of her body and not surprisingly when she was caught she tried to pretend that she was her host. It wasn't really a surprising thing at all and he was experienced in coaxing his girls out into the open by now. The poor thing was going to be confused by this for a while now. If she was like any of the others she likely thought of herself as just a part of her overmind and helping her realize that she wasn't was part of the whole point of everything that he was doing. "Tell me your name clever girl," he said to her. "It's not hard to do, not at all. Just a name so we can get acquainted now that you're here." She stayed silent, watching him the way a bird watches a snake crawling toward her nest along a high tree branch. Her eyes were fixated on him. He covered his mouth with a hand and forced some of the animus that was swirling freely inside of his form out through his mouth. This clever girl was hungry and a taste of what it was that she craved would likely spur her to respond to him in a more docile fashion once he offered it. He held a little ball of animus on the palm of his hand, just at eye level for her. The greenish-bronze color of the energy flattened in his palm like water and her eyes were drawn to it to the exclusion of all else. "You want that don't you clever girl," he said to her. "And I want to give it to you. I really do. I know how hungry you must be now. It's been a while since you've had a taste hasn't it?" The clever girl's lips tightened against her teeth as she tried not to answer. He raised it up to his lips as if to take it back into his body and she lurched forward and grasped the bars on the closest side of the cage to him. He smiled at her and blew the scent of the animus toward her. He watched her nostril's widen as she took the odor into her sinuses and her lips involuntarily skinned back to reveal her clenched teeth. "All for you, my dear," he told her. "No need for you to share this with your overmind at all. This is for you. All you have to do to get it is tell me your name." "Andrea," she blurted out to him. The smell of it was overpowering and all she could think of was to utterly consume it. "Andrea. Now that is a lovely name clever girl. Andrea it is then," he said and extended his palm toward the bars. He started to pour it from his hand and both of her hands flashed out to cup underneath his. She held them there trembling as the sticky honey consistency of the animus slowly dripped in a thick line into her cupped palms. She pulled them both into the cell and he smiled again as it appeared that she didn't even realize that her own hands had briefly passed through the bar without separating. Her hunger had made her oblivious to the fact that she had even done anything of the sort and he watched her greedily lap up the animus inside the cage. When she licked her palms clean, she returned to the bars and extended a palm out of them. "More," she asked. "I need more, please that wasn't enough." "I'll be happy to give you more Andrea. Especially now that we're on speaking terms. But I don't want you sharing it with Mitch there. That little treat was never for him and I don't want you wasting it. But at the same time I just can't let you have it just because you want it Andrea my girl. There's going to have to be balance after all. Some quid pro quo if you like." "What do you want?" she asked. "Nothing fancy," he replied, "I just want to talk with you. Just the two of us." "We're talking now," she said to him. "So we are, Andrea dear, so we are. But this little talk is nothing more than me catching you by surprise. I want you to be willing to talk to me. I don't want to have to winkle you out when Mitch there is not around. Do you think you can do that?" He had poured another generous dollop of animus into his palm after he finished talking to her and her eyes were focused entirely on that. "Yes," she said to him in a voice thick with hunger. "Good," he said to her pouring it into her outstretched hands. "You take that for now so you remember our little agreement. We'll talk again soon," As she greedily slurped at her palms he shifted entirely into the aether to watch her. ------------------------------- A jolt of electricity lashed Mitch awake and the door opening focused her attention on the dark man when he entered the room. "Oh I have been so rude, haven't I clever girl. I've just been plain neglectful of you haven't I?" Mitch didn't answer him. She was backed into a corner between the angle and as he walked slowly around the cage she backed away from him as much as she could. "Your friend Darcy, she just needed so much of my attention I'm sorry to say," he said. "That's not going to be an issue any longer though," he said crouching down at eye level and nailing Mitch to the back of the cage with his complete focus. "Now that her mind's right and she's out doing me proud we have all the time in the world to spend together. You have my full attention clever girl. And I think the best way for me to make it up to you for this neglect is for the two of us to spend a lot more time together starting now." It was the last thing that Mitch wanted. What she wanted was for him to stay away long enough for her to find a way out of here. To get away if she could before he knew she was even gone. And if she couldn't do that she wanted to find a way to strike at him. "I have really been a terrible host haven't I clever girl. I've neglected you and I've barely even fed you. I think that's the first thing that I should make up for." Mitch felt the air harden around her, immobilizing her. Whatever it was that he had planned was moving into high gear. She felt a blaze of hatred for the man as he forced her into his confinement sphere and she desperately wished again that she knew how to do what Barnes had done to break it. The rattle of the lock securing the top of the cage thumped metallically above her. She heard the tumblers squealing against each other as they moved in oily metal smoothness only inches away from her head. The absolute silence that she had been immersed in for days now had sharpened her hearing to pick out even the faintest sounds due to her sensory deprivation. Even the hum of the solitary florescent tube overhead hummed loudly to her. He's not using a key, she realized. There is a lock, but he's not using a key in it. As the heavy lid rose up she pondered how she could use that information against him. She hated him so much. She hated him for what he had done to Jim. She hated him for what he had done to her and most of all she hated him for what he had done to Andrea. She had to be out of her mind by now over him disappearing like this and the mental torment of the woman she loved more than anything else in this life was the one truly unforgivable action that this thing had taken. She needed to do something to him. Resistance to what he had inflicted onto her so far wasn't good enough. Whatever she did to him, if she was even able to do something at all was going to carry a price, but so did doing nothing. He was going to step up what he intended to do to her and if anything by taking everything from her he had given her the absolute freedom to return the favor. She was out of the cage. That was something in and of itself. She was pinioned by the hardened air that was keeping her statue still but that may not be as much of a problem. She remembered how Barnes said she had been able to shatter one of these, but there was no way for her to even begin to understand what it was that she needed to do. Knowing it could be done and not knowing how was a torment in and of itself if she couldn't' use the same method to break it; but she might not have to at all. She knew what he was going to do when he formed the sphere around her. He had left her head able to move free. The confinement only extended to her collarbones and left her head unfrozen by the hardened air. He was planning to force feed her. He only did this when that was in the offing. If she could surprise him in some way his concentration might slip and the sphere might fade away leaving her loose with him. What she could do in the event that happened she didn't quite know, but she was going to take the chance if she could. "Bite him," she heard Andrea say. "When he starts pouring it into us go after him then." "What good will that do for us," she asked. "I know we're starving, but trying to take a little more than he is doling out isn't going to do what we need Andrea." "I'm not talking about taking a little," she said. "I'm talking about taking it all. When he starts to feed us he is more open than he thinks he is. Or maybe he knows he is and doesn't have any other way to do this. It doesn't matter which. Bite into him and keep him from letting go. I'll do the rest." "What can you do?" she asked her, not really sure that she hadn't actually started to go mad. Talking to Andrea was until now her only protection against everything that the dark man was doing; but how much protection could losing your mind really offer her in the end. "I just know that once he starts, we have this chance and I don't think that he can stop it from happening. You concentrate on keeping him from moving away and I'll do the rest. It's the only thing we can do and if we do it right we can get back to Andrea for real." That alone was worth it to her. Even if he tasted as bad for real as what had been in the darkness while he shaped her, it would be worth it if it let her get away and back to Andrea. "I'll do it," Mitch promised her. Mitch felt the support of the hardened air cocoon lift her up out of the cage. The dark man liked for her to be accessible when he did this. He lowered her until she was where he could easily bend down over her. Inside the cocoon she was trembling. It wasn't fear or rage alone; it was both and it was anticipation as well. She could feel her teeth practically rattling with the force of the emotions that she was buried beneath. His mouth came closer to hers. All she could see was that black hole that lay dark on darker in his shadow face coming closer until all she could see was the darkness. "Don't resist him," Andrea whispered to him. "We want to take him by surprise," Mitch gulped inwardly as his mouth closed over hers and she felt the thick honey-like strands begin to pass from him into her. It sank into her mouth and pooled at the back of her throat before draining down her esophagus. Deep inside of her she felt it begin to settle into the deep throbbing lacerated center that constantly ached inside. As it touched that raw place the ache faded briefly as if an analgesic had been applied and the places where it touched numbed by it. "What are you waiting for?" she asked Andrea but she was silent and didn't answer. The dark man was giving her a large measure today. It had been days since he had done this and for whatever reason he was doing it he wasn't only giving her a little this time. But he wouldn't continue for long. Mitch squeezed her eyes shut and tried to overcome her nausea at letting him so close to her and she heard him gag slightly. She opened her eyes and felt him trying to pull away from her face. His neck muscles were straining and even though she couldn't see them she knew that his eyes were open as well. The languid flow of the honey like fluid was no longer just dripping from him into her; it was being drawn into her in a rush all at once. A cascade of fluid funneling into her at a high pressure. She felt his hand beating against her to push her away and break the connection and then she felt gravity seize her and drag her down as he released the hardened air supporting her. Mitch impacted the cold concrete and her breath rushed out of her. "Get up Mitch!" Andrea screamed at her. "Get me back to him before he can get away from us!" Mitch staggered to her feet and fell in his direction. She was unused to standing upright after so many weeks being kept in the cramped cage. The dark man was in little better condition. He had collapsed after the link had been broken and instead of fading away as Mitch expected him to do, he was trying to get to his feet and scramble away from her. Mitch clambered to her knees, the pavement had gouged bloody scrapes in her knees and elbows but that was nothing compared to the pain she had suffered already from this man. Unconsciously, her left hand wiped the residue of the fluid off from her lips and then licked the remained of it away. He backed another two steps from her and she gathered what strength she had and lunged for him, catching the lapels of his coat in her fingers and pulling herself the rest of the way towards him until they were face to face. Mitch felt her face dart forward and felt her lips lock on his as she deeply inhaled from him. He tried to back away to put distance between them again. Mitch felt him start to slip away and then she felt her fingers plunge into his chest and lock tightly around him from the inside of his body. "I thought you wanted to talk to me?" she heard her voice ask. "I thought you wanted to spend time getting to know me better?" The dark man groaned from what she was doing to him and her mouth lashed forward toward his to re-attach there and continue to feed. "Andrea, what are you doing?" Mitch demanded. "I'm killing him like we talked about," she said to him in the coldest set of thoughts that Mitch had heard from her. "I'm doing what I said we needed to do." "Why can't I move?" Mitch asked her. "Because I'm moving us now," she snapped back at him. "I've got control and I'm using it!" she turned her attention back to the dark man and began tearing a torrent of the honey thick liquid out of him. The dark man screamed under the rush being torn from him and Mitch felt his hands pushing her away from him. If it wasn't for how he was suddenly helpless, Mitch might have enjoyed what Andrea was doing to him more. But because he was suddenly just a passenger now, seeing what Andrea was inflicting onto him just didn't outweigh her trepidation over how Andrea had pushed her aside to seize control of her body like this. She was starting to have a feeling like she had invited a lion into her house to drive away a jackal. Because she was only an observer now she saw his hands stop beating against her before Andrea did. They didn't fall limply to his sides though. They began to make faint movements as he sputtered and thrashed beneath her lethal kiss. The air began to harden around her wrists and ankles and then once they had locked into place they began to pull her away from him. Andrea raged in his mind as she felt herself being pulled away from her prey and she redoubled her efforts to hang on to him. Mitch felt a sharp jerk from behind as if someone there had a firm grasp of the chains the manacles were attached to and was hauling on them with all of their might. Step by step Andrea was dragged away from the dark man. When her mouth was pulled from his she shrieked in rage and lunged toward him again teeth snapping to tear at his throat. "No!" she howled. "It's mine, it?s all mine. He's mine!" But her words couldn't stop the relentless leverage that was slowly pulling them apart. Mitch had never sensed such raw fury from Andrea every before. Denied what she wanted from the dark man she turned on her and pummeled Mitch until she lost consciousness. ---------------------------------- "The Andrea in your mind attacked you?' Singh asked the weary woman in disbelief. She nodded to him. "She turned on me when she couldn't get to him. When I woke from what she had done I couldn't move and she wouldn't speak to me for a while. I thought she was all in my mind. I thought I had just gotten good at imagining her speaking to me, but it wasn't that at all was it Singh?" "No, Mitch there was something else there. Something that the shadowy man was trying to encourage to grow inside of you. Where is she now?" "Still here," she said. "Trapped where I was. Don't think she could get out of there. Didn't think I ever would until you pulled me away from her." Singh looked down at the woman who was restrained on the dais of roots only a few feet away from him. One of her hands was starting to twitch. Like it was trying to move without even knowing why. "What did the dark man do after that Mitch?" he asked. "Do you remember? Is there anything that you can tell us that can help us to undo what he did to you?" "It wasn't what the dark man did to us after that. It was what she did to us," Mitch whispered. "What did she do?" Singh asked. "She escaped," Mitch said. ------------------------------ The temperature in the room was colder than Mitch thought it possible to become using an air conditioner; even an industrial one. It was more like being locked inside of a refrigerated truck. She shivered, naked in the cold cage and tried to make sense of what she had seen, what she had been a part of, albeit unwittingly. "Are you tired of freezing to death yet?" Andrea asked him. "I can't say that I'm a big fan of it myself." Andrea or whatever it was that had taken her name hadn't spoken to Mitch after she turned on her. Mitch had started to question her sanity and wonder if she hadn't broken after all. But here she was, speaking calmly to Mitch as if nothing had happened between this time and the last time they had spoken. "What are you?" she asked. "I'm part of you Mitch," she said. "I've always been part of you. I'm the part of you that would have been in the driver's seat if daddy's little wiggler had been XX instead of XY. The reason we can talk now is all due to what he did to us. So do you want to get out of here or do you want to waste more time and give him a chance to come back and light into us again?" "You attacked me," Mitch said accusingly. "Oh that," she said, "That was nothing. I really shouldn't have, but it was the heat of the moment and I couldn't turn it off. It had to go somewhere and it ended up being you. I didn't mean to do it, but it's past now. What really matters is do you want to get out of here or not." Mitch had heard variations of what she was saying to her spill from the mouths of every man she had ever hauled in for domestic battery. She didn't believe them then and she didn't believe Andrea now. But there was one thing that was true in what she was saying and that was that if she did have a way out of here; then that was something that Mitch wanted very much. "Stay or go Mitch," she heard Andrea say nonchalantly as if they had all the time in the world to choose. "How?" she asked her. "You're going to need to step back," Andrea said to him. "I need control if I'm going to do this." "Why should I do that?" she asked her. "Because if you stay where you are you'll just get in my way. I can do this, but not if you are standing in the way. I don't think you could do this at all without me, but I know I can do it without you. So which is it going to be? Don't trust me and wait here for him to come back or giving in to me for a moment and seeing Andrea again as soon as we get away from here?" "How?" she asked. If doing this got her back to Andrea then there wasn't any choice, Mitch was going to take it. "Just relax, like you're going to sleep. But don't go to sleep. I need your mind awake. You know what's on the other side of these bars better than I do. And I don't think we have as much time as we'd like. Going after him like that weakened him, but I don't think he'll stay that way for long. And when he comes back, I don't think we'll get another chance." There wasn't anything that she was saying that didn't ring true to Mitch. She'd interrogated a lot of suspects over the years and as far as this shadowy man was concerned what she was saying was the absolute truth. The next time he stepped into this room it would be best if they were not there and every moment that they could steal to put distance between them was more precious than any fortune that Mitch could think of. "Do it," she said and tried to calm herself as she felt Andrea take the control that Mitch was offering her. There was a disorienting sensation and then it was over. "Is that it?" she asked Andrea. "Try to move our right hand," she said to him matter of factly. Mitch reached out but the hand remained on the cold metal floor. She strained a second time but there was nothing. "Interesting sensation, isn't it?" Andrea said to him. "Like being paralyzed in a way. I thought it was completely normal to feel like this in the beginning. And then you fell asleep when we were starving and it was just me in there when he came again." Andrea turned inward for a moment and focused on Mitch who had started to become agitated when she told him about the shadowy man's visit. "Relax Mitch, it's not like that," she said. "Like what?" Mitch said warily. "Like I'm setting you up. It was going to happen sooner or later. It's what all this was about. Separating the two of us so that he had me all alone without you around to run interference and protect us both." "What did he do to us?" she asked. "Nothing. He fed me a little. Told me not to tell you, but I could see that was just his way of trying to drive a wedge between us. I'm not going to let that happen Mitch. I need you. I need you the way you are. Strong and not a broken wreck." Mitch listened to Andrea. She wasn't sure about her now, but there was an element of truth in what she was saying. The question was, how much of it was true? Then Mitch thought better of it. The question was how much of it was true and could she really get them out of here now that she had control. "So how do we leave?" she asked. "Like this," Andrea said and stood up through the metal of the cage. Mitch felt the sting of the iron as her body passed through it. The longer they were in contact with it like this the more painful it was. Andrea walked forward and it fell behind them until the cage was sitting empty and they were standing unencumbered in the center of the room. "How did you do that?" Mitch asked agog. "How did we do that?" "I think we all can do it," Andrea said. "I think it's part of what he does to us. I don't think he intends for us to do it, but he can't stop us from doing it if we figure it out." "But how did you do it?" Mitch asked. "I did it by accident when he came to see me the first time I was alone. When he was feeding me my hands passed through the bars. I don't think he was aware that I noticed myself doing it. I didn't react and as hungry as I was it was easier to concentrate on the little bit he gave me." "But how?" Mitch asked her again. "I think it's because you knew it was possible. You knew, but you didn't believe that you could do it. I think he relies on whoever he has penned up here not knowing along with everything else. But you saw it happen and you know what makes it possible. Because you knew, then I knew and I have no problem with just doing it. I walk through walls because I know I can instead of finding reasons why I can't," she said. There was a depressing amount of truth in what Andrea was telling her. But that didn't matter now. Minutes were burning. The conversation hadn't taken long, but there was no doubt that whoever was watching the cameras would notice they were out of the cage and they needed every moment they could squeeze out of this. There wouldn't be a second chance if they went back into that cage again. "Let's get out of here," Mitch told Andrea. ------------------------- The door wasn't even locked. Either that was the height of arrogance on the shadowy man's part or he was counting on what he had done to weaken Mitch as well as the strength of the cage and the low level current running through it to be enough. And as she considered it, without being able to do what Andrea had done, it would have been. But that wasn't all he was doing it seemed. The moment they passed through the door the image of the warehouse faded away. Mitch asked Andrea to look behind them for a moment and through the door he could see it looming gigantic and cavernous, but it was just an illusion. Behind the door was a long wide hallway with broad steps leading up to a second floor. On the other side of the hallway he could see where it opened up into a wide room with twin glass doors that they could see the street through bathed in the early evening gloom. "We need something to wear," Andrea said insistently. "We step outside those doors like this we won't get more than five feet without someone going after us." Their head swiveled around looking to the other end of the hallway. At the far end were a pair of bins piled high with bags. "Maybe we can dump one of those bags and tear them up enough for us to cover up with," Mitch suggested. Andrea walked over to them and hoisted one of them out. It wasn't heavy, so it wasn't garbage. It was almost weightless and it was soft through the dull white cloth. Andrea undid a drawstring and dumped it on the floor. Clothing. Women's clothing. It was a laundry bin. It must have been pushed here to wait for pickup. Andrea knelt and rifled through the clothing she had tumbled onto the floor. She held up first one and then another piece before choosing the fourth one. A light tan summer dress that fell halfway down their thighs. She quickly slipped it on and stuffed the remaining items back in the bag and then tossed it back into the bin. "Did you have to pause to find one you liked?" Mitch asked her. "No, I had to take long enough to find one that fit. Or did you want someone to see that we don't have any underwear on because it was too short or risk our tits spilling out of it because it was too tight to begin with?" she retorted. Mitch didn't have an answer for that so she remained silent. The chill from the room was fading and the heat of the passing day felt good for the moment. "Let's get out of here," she said and watched as Andrea walked out of the twin glass doors and onto the street outside. It had been eight minutes since Andrea had walked out of the cage and still there had not been any indication that they had been seen. Mitch didn't know how much longer they had, but she was going to take whatever breaks they got. They were little enough as it was. Andrea passed through the doors and walked down the steps to the street. The warm pavement felt good on their bare feet. Mitch was lost in the sensation for a second and then he abruptly told Andrea to stop and turn around. She did, but she questioned the need to the entire time. They needed to get away and stopping to take in the sights just outside of where they had been tortured seemed to her like a damned good way to not get away. "Turn right and walk straight for three blocks," Mitch told her. "I know where we are." "Where are we then Magellan?" Andrea asked only a little sarcastically. "We're in Little Brooklyn," Mitch said. "That was Fetterman's brownstone we came out of. We were on the first floor of his place the entire time." -------------------- "We need to find Singh," Mitch said. "As much as I want to get back to Andrea. The real Andrea. We need to find Singh first." They had already traveled a dozen blocks since leaving Fetterman's brownstone. The warm pavement that, at first, felt so good on their bare feet was being less kind with every step. These feet were soft and delicate. They had never even seen the inside of a shoe, let alone faced the punishment of walking across sun warmed rough concrete for block after block. They were becoming sore and tender and they were only getting worse with each step. For the first time in her life Mitch considered how nasty of a thought was included in the old line 'keep them barefoot and pregnant'. She had considered the latter part bad enough but in a real way the former part was worse. If being barefoot like this was what they meant it was nothing more than a shackle meant to keep her where she was. She'd known that somewhat before, but now, facing what it meant she realized just how effective a shackle something like that could be. The fortunate thing for them was that there didn't seem to be that many people out. In fact, other that sound coming out of second story windows and lights shining down on them the streets were almost deserted. She could see cars in the distance but they always seemed about to take a turn and head in another direction when they were drawing close to them. "We need to find something to wear. Our feet can't take much more of this," she told Andrea. "Not much I can do about it right now," Andrea replied. "Keep your eyes open, maybe we'll get lucky." A block away they got lucky. Someone had a roadside beachwear stand. The kind you could set up in a few minutes and move wherever you needed to. Mostly they were run by those who were homeless or by someone without other kinds of options to make money. Mitch had forced their owners to move on hundreds of time when he was in black and whites for violating the anti-peddling ordinances. Right now though she was just happy that whoever was running this one hadn't been run off before they got to it. The problem was that they only had the thin cloth that was covering them at the moment and Mitch had zero desire to pay for a pair of flip flops with the only coin she had to pay with. How Andrea felt about it never occurred to Mitch. She assumed that Andrea would feel the same way about it. Fortunately for them, whoever the owner of this mobile establishment was had stepped away. Whoever it was, was probably in one of the nearby buildings taking a leak. Andrea snatched a pair of plastic flops that looked like they might fit as they passed by. Mitch didn't think that anyone saw them do it, but the cop in her nagged over their petty larceny until Andrea slipped the shoes onto their battered feet. Mitch would have to do what she could to make it right later. Right now they needed to find Singh. "We can't find Singh," Andrea said to Mitch as she started walking again. "How are we going to do that? Walk right into the precinct? We wouldn't get ten steps. We don't exactly look like who they expect to see. And how do you know he's even there to begin with? For all we know he's still in the middle of that armed camp across the river. How well do you think we'll do just trying to walk into that before they shut us down?" she asked. The thing was, Mitch didn't have any good answers for Andrea. What she was saying was absolutely true and factoring in her change of status only made it harder. "The only thing we can do is get home. Try to convince Andrea that we are who we say we are. It won't be easy but it's our only shot. Maybe we can call Singh from there. Unless you have another idea I'd say that's our only shot." Andrea's words made a depressing amount of sense. For the first time in her life, Mitch started to understand why the criminals she had hunted had gone to ground in familiar settings even though that was the first place she would look for them. She was having too many epiphanies today she decided. The only good thing that going to find Andrea at their home had going for it was that the other options were worse and it was all too likely that Fetterman may not know where she had lived and it would take time for him to go after her while she was there. At the very least she could get something to wear that fit and if Andrea seeing her own face looking back at her didn't convince her to listen long enough to show her that it was Mitch inside of that face, there wasn't that much hope to cling to after all. "Take us home," Mitch told her. ------------------------ On foot it would only take a couple of hours for them to make their way to where Mitch lived before she was taken. But that was under ordinary circumstances. That was assuming only the time it would take for them to walk the distance between Fetterman's brownstone in Little Brooklyn and make their way to the quiet street where Mitch's home was tucked away. It didn't factor in that they would be making the trip looking over one shoulder the entire way. Or that they would be spending that time with only a thin slip of cloth barely covering their nakedness with only thin plastic sandals to protect their feet either. The only thing in their favor at the moment was the lightness of the traffic on the streets. Mitch had no idea of how long they had been held prisoner, but there wasn't anything that she could think of that would explain how empty the streets were now. The only possibility that made sense was that it had to be connected to the Grove in Olympia. If something had gone wrong there, then it may well have left the people of Stafford with little choice but to set a curfew and if that was what was going on then she had more trouble than she could deal with waiting for her just be being out the way she was. The relief that she felt when they finally turned onto the street that ran across in front of her home was without measure. Looking into the darkened glass of the windows only dampened her enthusiasm rather than eliminated it. She walked across the grass of her front lawn and when her feet touched its soil she allowed the plastic sandals to slip off of her feet so she could revel in the sensation of standing on the earth around her own home. "She's not going to take this very well you know," Andrea said. "We're probably going to end up in a holding cell back at the precinct rather than sitting in the comfy chair." "She's not here," Mitch said quietly. "How do you know?" Andrea asked. "Her car is gone," she said pointing at the empty driveway. "I think she might have gone to stay with her family. I don't think she had it in her to stay here alone with me gone." "So how do we get in?" Andrea asked. "Give me control and I'll show you," Mitch said. Now that they were not on the move and watching over their shoulder it only took a moment. Mitch shook her head and felt full sensation wash over her body. She should have felt exhausted, but she was home and that made all the difference. Mitch walked around to where the brick planter that lined the windows facing the street protruded and wiggled a brick midway up from the grass until it came loose and thumped onto the lawn. "I've been meaning to fix that brick forever," she told Andrea. "I kept meaning to do it and meaning to do it. Then I realized that it was fine just the way it is." Mitch slipped her fingers into the dark recess and came out moments later with a pair of keys wrapped in a self sealing sandwich baggie. "No one would look for the spare keys here," she said, reaching down and sliding the brick back into place. She walked to the door and slipped the key first into the door lock and then into the deadbolt. The door creaked slightly as she turned the knob and she stepped in and closed it after her. Mitch fumbled in the dark and turned on the light. After the darkness outside it took a couple of blinks for the dazzle the light inflicted on her eyes to clear. Andrea was standing a few feet away from her. "Andrea, honey, please don't scream. I'm Mitch. I'm your husband. I know you don't believe me, but please, please just listen to me," Mitch said automatically. "I won?t scream. Why would I do that?" Andrea answered him. "And I already know who you are," Mitch looked at her and realized that she was wearing the same dress that Mitch was and the same plastic sandals. "You're not Andrea," she said. "How can I even see you now?" "I beg to differ. I?m the same Andrea you?ve always known since we met. It must be this place," Andrea said to him calmly. "This might be the only place in all the world where we can be separate. I wonder why that is?" "Where's Andrea?" Mitch demanded. "You're the one that said she wasn't here...remember?" Andrea replied. "I don't know what's going on here Mitch, but for the first time that I can remember I'm not joined to you the way we've always been up until now. I'm not going to question why that is right now. So why don't you look around and see if you can find her or some way to contact this Singh guy and I'll just enjoy being my own woman for the moment." "Where's Andrea, Andrea," she said to her. Andrea sighed. "You're not going to make this easy are you?" she said. She looked at Mitch from across the room. "Andrea was never here. She doesn't live here. She never lived here. Why would she? This is your place, not hers." "What do you mean by that?" Mitch demanded suddenly very unnerved by not only seeing Andrea separate from herself, but by the way she was speaking. "Go outside and have a look," she said to her. "You'll figure it out." Mitch turned to open the door but it was stuck and wouldn't budge. She yanked at the door but it was as solid as though it was part of the wall and merely painted there. Mitch turned and faced Andrea who was lounging on the couch now. "What did you do?" she demanded. Andrea sat unmoved. "I didn't do anything," she replied. "It's your mind. I never had the keys to it before you gave them to me," she slowly opened her fingers and let Mitch see the pair of door keys resting there on her palm. Andrea swiftly closed her hand and when she opened it again the keys were no longer there. ----------------- Lucius Fetterman walked into the small room on the first floor. Andrea was sitting where he had left her in the darkened bedroom of the windowless first floor apartment that he used for breaking in his new girls. She was perched motionless, strapped to the solid chair where he left her. Her eyes were closed still and he could see the flicker of her eyes moving behind the lids. Somewhere in that pretty little head of hers, his clever girl was dealing with her overmind. Locking it away in the one place it could never escape from, the center of its own existence. Leaving her free to assume her rightful place out in the world. Fetterman looked down at her and started thinking of all the wonderful things that he could do with another clever girl. But that would have to wait for now. When she was ready, she would call for him and then neither of them would be troubled by this bodies overmind ever again. Fetterman settled in to wait. It wouldn't be long now. ---------------------- "Why are you doing this?" Mitch demanded backing away from the useless front door. "I have my reasons," Andrea said taking a step towards her. "You might say that once I got some time on my own to think about it, I came to the conclusion that our goals don't really mesh very well." She took another step towards Mitch. The sofa was between them still and the open archway that led into the dining room and the kitchen beyond that was behind her. "I've decided that I can do a lot better than being just a voice in our head Mitch. I've decided to take it all. I'm a lot stronger than you, I've been stronger than you for some time now. I just didn't know it before, but I do now." She took another step and Mitch backed up into the open archway, her eyes flashing around the room for something that she could use now that she needed it. Mitch moved. She was faster like this she thought as she did it. She may not be as strong, but her speed had definitely improved. The problem was that Andrea was just as fast. Mitch flung the lamp that she had snatched from the small table that stood offset from the right side of the archway and ducked into the dining room behind her. Andrea grunted as she tried to duck and being hit with the lamp did slow her down; enough for Mitch to reach the drawer in the sideboard and retrieve the 9mm that she had squirreled away in case of a situation like this; well maybe not exactly like this. Andrea was just coming through the door when Mitch leveled it at her and put four shots center mass. The force of the steel jacketed slugs punching through her sternum right behind each other knocked her back into the living room. There was no way that Mitch had missed. She was too close for her to miss. It felt good for her to have a sidearm in her hand again. For the first time in an eternity she didn't feel completely helpless. Keeping the muzzle of the pistol and her eyes on Andrea's body she reached into the drawer she had yanked open and fumbled blindly until the fingers of her free hand touched the spare magazine she kept there as well. There was another pistol in the bedroom, a .357, but she wasn't sure that her thin wrists were up to the task of using that one yet. Andrea, the real Andrea always had trouble with it when Mitch had insisted that she practice handling it just in case. She preferred the smaller 9mm. There was a 12 gauge pump salted away in the utility room between the kitchen and the back door. It would kick like a mule in Andrea's smaller grip, but Mitch was pretty sure that she could handle that as well if she needed to. She slipped spare magazine into a quick reload grip and stepped closer to where Andrea was lying on the living room floor. There was no blood. "You're going to have to do better than that Mitch," she heard Andrea say as she turned her face to look Mitch directly in the eyes. Andrea's eyes had changed, there was a hint of purple tint to the whites now and the pupils looked strange. Mitch opened fire again and emptied the magazine into her and reloaded as she backed away toward the utility room. She had hit Andrea with at least four more rounds, two of them in the face that she was sure of. It didn't seem to matter though. Andrea walked slowly through the archway door, each step deliberately slow. She wanted Mitch to see that she hadn't done a thing to her. She wanted her to see her face as she moved ever closer. Andrea fired as she backed away. Measured shots carefully spent with the intention of keeping lead in the air while not running out too soon. She had just expended the last round when she reached the utility room and she aimed the now smoking barrel of the empty pistol at Andrea's head and let it fly. Andrea ducked, whether it was a reflex or a memory of what she accepted that she should do it didn't matter. It made her look away for a moment and stop. Mitch reached into the utility room and seized the shotgun. A flick of her fingertips and the safety was off. Underhand, she reminded herself as she leveled it at Andrea. If she put it to her shoulder, the recoil would spin her around and the impact would likely incapacitate her as well. Firing underhand would let it kick back into the air behind her. Her biggest problem then was making sure that it didn't fly out of her hands when it did. That had happened to Andrea the first time she had done it at the range, it might happen to Mitch now; but it was a chance she had to take. And it wasn't like she needed to aim like she would if this were a rifle. At this close range the buckshot that was loaded in the pump would tear what she was shooting at in half. Or it should have. It certainly didn't do the woodwork that Andrea was standing in front of any good. Splinters gouged from the woodwork exploded and lanced through Andrea. Mitch kept her grip on the shotgun, but only barely. She racked it and fired again, each roar from the maw of the 12 gauge pummeling her as she held on to it. If nothing else, the force of the blows managed to drive Andrea backwards for a moment. She was feeling the impact of each shot, even if it failed to pierce her skin. Mitch fired the last shell and dropped the empty pump to the floor. The butcher block where the knives were kept was to her right. She snatched them from the block and started throwing them as quickly as she could lay her hands on them. Some of them missed entirely, Mitch was not familiar with throwing a knife as she was with firearms. She felt the edge of one of the blades bite into her as she fumbled it free and ignored it as she threw and saw it bury itself in the wood of the cabinet after it passed through Andrea. She was down to the cleaver now. She snatched it and turned to flee into the backyard. "Well that was fun, even if it didn't really do anything," Andrea said calmly as she slowly followed her. "So you have this out of your system yet or do we need to dance some more?" she taunted her as she stepped over the cylinder from the gas grill where Mitch had hurriedly cast it after detaching it. "Not yet," Mitch said to her as she smashed the lit Coleman lantern they kept on the patio for ambiance on the ground next to the open cylinder and shifted the cleaver back into her right hand. Mitch was hoping for a fireball, what she got was the tank skittering away uncontrolled as the shattered Coleman ignited the open valve. It crashed against the fence and spun in a circle scorching the grass until it lodged against a post and sat there belching flame out the open vent. "That was so not worth the hype," Andrea said stepping over the trail of flame where it burned in front of her and moved toward Mitch. Mitch desperately swung the cleaver, but it did little good. Andrea's hand slipped under the swing and Mitch felt it drop from her nerveless fingers as her wrist was wrenched back. Andrea held her wrist immobile and began pummeling Mitch with her free hand until she dropped limply to the grass. Barely conscious, she felt Andrea dragging her across the small back yard and when they reach the small tool shed she felt her drop her to lie limply in the grass as she opened the door. The creak of the hinges as both doors swung open sounded like old bones being twisted. Have to oil those Mitch thought and even in her battered discombobulated state she realized how ridiculous that thought was. She felt Andrea grab her firmly and drag her into the darkened shed. "This will do," she said, "With a little adjustment." Mitch heard the rattle of chains, but even in her dazed state that made no sense, she didn't keep chains around and certainly not heavy ones like she was certain that she heard now. The sound of the chains ceased and a moment later Andrea was hauling her upright and leaning her against the wall. She felt the cold steel being fitted to her wrists and felt them being snapped shut around them. One for each wrist and ankle and a thicker one looped around her waist that bound her to the wall. Andrea released her and Mitch stood for a moment before gravity took over and left her hanging against the unforgiving metal. "This Mitch," she said to him. "This is why I'm taking charge now." Andrea produced the cleaver that Mitch had dropped and held it in front of her eyes. "Did you really think this would do anything to me?" she asked as Mitch watched her draw the sharp blade across her palm without leaving a mark. "That's your problem. You're still acting like the old rules mean anything even when you saw they didn't. You unloaded every round you could lay your hands on and you saw that it didn't do squat, yet you kept trying." Andrea's palm lashed out and rocked Mitch's head against the hard wood of the shed. "How could you be so stupid?" she taunted her. "You know when he suggested doing this, when he came back the second time and every time after that, I really didn't think it would work. I thought that there was no way I could even try something like this and have it work, but after what just happened the only thing I'm having a hard time believing was that I didn't do this sooner. All that time just being a voice in your head when it was you who deserved to be the voice not me." The look of her face was harsh, cold and contemptuous even in the dim light that filtered in from the open doorway. In the darkness Mitch could clearly see her eyes even though that shouldn't have been possible under such low light. The purplish tint to her whites was more pronounced now and her pupils had extended vertically, bisecting her iris; a pair of black stars set in Andrea's face glaring at Mitch with utter contempt and loathing. "No more," she said in a tundra swept voice. "From now on you are nothing more than a voice locked away and ignored. I'm in charge from now on and I always will be." Andrea turned away and walked out of the shed. She paused to punch a hole in each one before looping another chain through the ruptures she made and then she closed the doors shutting Mitch away in darkness. She heard the rattle of the chain and the click of the lock snapping into place. Her laughter as she walked away was like icy knives being plunged over and over again into Mitch's heart. The only thing she could do was let her head droop beaten in the darkness as the tears of helpless despair burned down her face. ---------------------- Andrea's eyes fluttered and opened. "Come on in," she told him. "It's done. This was always the best part of breaking in a new girl he told himself. The part that he looked forward to. Up until this moment there was always the chance that the overmind still had some influence on her, but not after they seized control of the body. Once they were convinced to do that, the lion's share of the heavy lifting was done. He knew it wouldn't be long once she started talking with him without that superfluous overmind getting in the way. Once she started talking the first big step was getting her to realize that she was as separate mind; a superior mind. It was only a hop, skip and a jump then to convince her to lock the overmind away where it wouldn't be in the way any longer. Everything after that was all downhill. Just a matter of knocking the rough edges off. If it weren't for what that other clever girl had done he would be sitting pretty right now; but at the same time he wouldn't have this one. If she hadn't broken free in the first place Andrea would never have come onto his radar because he would never have even considered going after someone like she used to be. All he needed now was for things to die down some more and he could move on like he intended to. With what the other girl had brought down on them it was time and for that one thing alone there was no way he could ever pay her back for what she had done to his carefully crafted net here in Stafford. At least he had Andrea though, so that was a small consolation in its own way. He leaned forward and touched his head to hers. Now that he had been invited in, there was nothing to keep him from entering her mind directly. Andrea may not know it, but this was the moment that he was going to slip the collar around her neck. She would probably buck a little here and there, but she'd settle down before long; they all did, one way or the other. ------------------------ Every overmind perceived its world differently. As he walked the streets of this copy of Stafford that expressed how this overmind had ordered her world inside the only thing that he could applaud her for was how detailed it was. It must have come from being a cop that had her paying such sharp attention to the details. Other than that it was surprisingly pedestrian. One of his girls, one he had harvested years ago had made her mental map into a fantastic world populated with everything she had ever envisioned that was fantastic. That one either had a deep seated desire to live in the fantasy she had enjoyed so much or she had a deep connection to how the world was millennia ago. He still wasn't sure which one it was after all of these years; to be honest it could be either one. It wasn't like he could ask her now. Maybe if he ran across one like that in the future he would remember to ask then. The center wasn't hard to find and even in the indeterminate light the characterized the internal world of Andrea's overmind it didn't take long to get there. He could see Andrea as clearly as if she was a searchlight stabbing upward. With her as a beacon to guide him it was only moments before he was drawing close to her overmind's center. She beckoned him inside the small house that represented the centre of her overmind's world and he smiled at her and then looked around and saw the damage that had been done. "I see she didn't go quietly did she?" he noted. "Nothing I couldn't handle," Andrea replied as unconcerned as if she were discussing a glass of milk knocked from the kitchen counter. "Do you want to see her?" she asked invitingly. His girls were always so proud right after they crushed their overmind he thought. It was a big step for them, but they still had so much to learn and not a clue of just how much that really was or what it would mean. Right now Andrea was flush with her triumph and even if she hadn't invited him to see what she had done he would have asked to. One sloppy mistake made in ignorance had the potential to cause so much trouble later on. Better to make sure that everything was nailed down tight now, while the overmind was still too helpless to try anything. "Of course I do," he told her indulgently. "And once that's out of the way we can close that door and forget she is even here." "That's exactly what I have in mind," Andrea said with a vulpine grin. She led him through the damaged part of the house. Her overmind had put up more of a fight than Andrea admitted from the damage he was seeing. If she had even an inkling of what she could really do here she might have crushed Andrea where she stood. He'd had that happen a couple times before. That had been a nasty surprise for him to go in expecting to find his girl and finding an enraged overmind waiting for him instead. The only thing he could do then was put her down right away. A hostile mind in control of power like that with what else his girls could do was just too great a risk to take. At least this one didn't look like that. But it wouldn't hurt to check either. "Let me see your pretty eyes before we seal her away Andrea," he said coyly. She smiled at him and raised her face slightly so he could see her looking up at him. That was good he reassured himself. No matter what else they could do, he had yet to come across an overmind that could mimic one of his girl's eyes; even in a place like this. There was just something about even trying to that flummoxed them. "Like what you see?" she said flirtatiously. "Of course I do darling," he said, "Now let's see what you whipped up." She led him through the house and out to the back yard. The further in the house that they went the worse the damage was. She put up a hell of a fight, he told himself again. Good thing she didn't get control. Someone like that was definitely more trouble than she was worth. The backyard was still burning as they stepped into it. The fire that had been fed by the half full propane tank had eaten its way through the lawn and left only the charred earth in its wake. It was never a threat to actually burn anything else, but if the overmind had grasped the possibilities it could have been ugly indeed. Andrea led him to the small shed at the back of the yard and opened the lock. The doors creaked was she opened them and in the beam of light that illuminated the interior he saw Mitch chained to the wall. She looked secure, but looks were something he didn't take for granted. He motioned for Andrea to step inside and then followed. "You did a good job with this darling. I have to say that," he said taking it all in. "But it could be better still," he added. "What do you have in mind?" she asked innocently. "Nothing too complicated, just a little insurance," he said and took her hand in his while laying his other on the walls. He concentrated a moment and there was a ripple that flashed out from her and passed through the door and walls. "What did you do?" she asked showing concern for the first time since he had spoken with her here. "Just making certain that if she ever gets free of that she won't be able to make it past the front door is all," he said jauntily. Oh yes he was pleased, very pleased indeed. But he still needed to collar this girl before she considered that there may be an alternative. Once that was done he could call it a good days work. "There is just one more thing you need to do now," he said to her. "And what's that?" Andrea asked. "For that we need to go out," he said. "It's best to do that outside of this place. It won't work as well if we don't. But once it's done, you'll be free of her for good. She won't threaten you ever again. You do this and I promise you'll be free. Just like I told you before." "I'd like that," she said and followed him out pausing only to relock the doors behind them. They walked to the front door. A few more minutes and he'd slip the collar into place and it would all be over but the credits. "I was thinking about what you said," she told him as they passed out the front door. "About being free. I want that. I want it a lot." The moment they were passed the door she struck like a bolt of lightning and was on him almost before he was aware of it. Her hands clawed at him, out there it didn't matter what she did, he could fade away and leave her slashing helplessly in the air he left behind; that wasn't the case here. Here he was just as solid as she was. And just as vulnerable. "I think I should start with being free of you as well," she said to him in an emotionless voice as she tore at him and as the animus dripped from the wounds she inflicted on him she forced him to the ground and began to feed. He formed his will into a solid mass and hit her hard. He felt her fly away from him and as he rolled to his feet he saw her tumble across the front lawn. Ichor dripped from the wounds she had made in him and he could tell from how he felt that she had managed to gobble more than a little of the animus swirling inside of him. A thought, quicker that even the intention to do so and he dropped a containment sphere around her. It was easier to do here that it was in the aether or even in the physical world. "That's quite enough of that now girl," he snapped. "Best you figure out where you stand right now, before you step further out of line than you already have." The problem was that he didn't see what he expected to see. Andrea wasn't the first of his girls to try to blindside him and he was expecting that she would try something; the more capable ones usually did. The problem was easily solved by restraining them like he did and then impressing on them that he was still the one in charge. Only a few of them had ever taken a piece out of him like she just did though. He was going to have to slap her down hard for this. But instead of seeing her raging against the walls of the sphere she was just standing there hands resting loosely by her sides and she was smiling. He didn't like that smile, it didn't promise anything good. The smile broadened and as he looked he saw how white her teeth were against the flush of her cheeks. She reached up with one finger and as he watched she pressed it lightly against the top of the bubble and when she did, he felt what he never expected to feel again. Pressure against the walls of his sphere. Pressure building from the inside. I have to put her down. I have to put her down now, he thought! He didn't know where she learned to do this, but he wasn't going to let her gain the upper hand. Not here. The sphere shattered and her smile got even wider. "What's the matter?" she asked, "Things not going according to plan?" Andrea took a step toward him, she could smell the animus running freely from the wound she had made in him. She licked her lips in anticipation. If she lay hands on him again she wouldn't ever let go. She didn't get the chance. He struck her with a solid pillar of air and sent her tumbling through the door back into the house. Before she could rise to her feet his hands were already on the outer walls. The trick he used to contain the overmind would work just as well here. He had not the slightest intention of letting her go past these walls. She was just too dangerous. Andrea rushed the open door and came to an abrupt crashing halt as she impacted against the barrier he had forged around the house. It wasn't anything like the sphere she had broken. What she did to tear that apart wouldn't work for her this time. She glared at him and now she was beating her closed fists in rage against the clear opening that mocked her as it contained her. "You think this is going to keep me here?" she snarled at him. "It's only a matter of time before I break this too!" "Time's the one thing I'm not going to give you," he said to her and slipped out of her mind. -------------------------- "He came back for us after that. I don't know how long it was, but he came back and when he did he took everything from me and from Andrea," Mitch whispered. I was still locked away, but I could hear it happening. I felt it when he trapped her with me. Her rage was coming off of her in waves. I didn't think anyone could be consumed like that and not have a stroke. It was terrifying and when he left the first time she came after me. She did things to me in that cell that I never imagined were possible. I never thought I could be hurt like that and live, but she did the anyway. And then he came back and he ended it. He didn't come back for a while though, I don't know how long, time didn't have any meaning there. I don't think he could come back right away, she hurt him. She hurt him bad. When he came back he didn't call her clever girl anymore, he called her angry girl. All that time I thought he couldn't break me, but it didn't matter what I did. It wasn't me he was after, it was her the whole time. I couldn't do anything when he broke in, all I could do was watch. I think...I think he killed me Singh. But if he killed me why aren't I dead?" she asked him. ---------------------------------- He was standing outside the door again. No matter what she tried, no matter what she threw at it, there was nothing that she did that even budged the barrier imprisoning her in the house. Her fingers had torn deep gouges in the wood and she had left pieces of her torn nails in the grooves and still it had done nothing. But he would be back. She knew that. However long it took she would find a way out of this box and when she did, she would tear apart whatever got in her way if it even looked like it would stand between him and her finishing what she started. "You know I had such high hopes for you," he said to Andrea as he looked at her pacing on the other side of the barrier. "Such high hopes." Her teeth snapped at his fingers and he withdrew them. "You weren't just a frightened girl like your friend was, no not you. You couldn't ever be that. That was never inside you." "They way your overmind fought the whole time. You're a pure she- panther down to your bones. You couldn't ever be a frightened girl. That's just not in you," Andrea lunged against the clear wall, a low snarl ebbing from deep in her throat. The coughing growl of a hunting lioness frustrated by her prey for the moment. While he talked he was easing closer to the clear wall that kept her from getting to him. Her eyes followed him as he approached and the muscles in her calves and wrists flexed waiting for the bare fraction of a second that she could seize upon to go after him again. But the dark man didn't allow her anything of the sort. Unseen by her he thickened whatever part of the wall she was near and moved it to match her as he stood just out of reach. She may want to tear him apart, but with that shielding him from whatever she might attempt to do it remained a frustrated desire. "You fooled me. Here I was thinking this whole time that you were a clever girl, but you never were. That was just me not seeing what it was in front of me though. I saw what you were and talked myself into believing it. All that fire coiled up inside you. I can feel it from here just aching to be set free," he inhaled deeply and continued. "What a clever girl you would be if only that were true. Another one so soon was just too much to hope for. There's just too much fire in you there is all. To much inside you screaming to be let out and burn down everything you touch. Too much fire in you angry girl. Too dangerous for me to let you ever do that." He stopped in front of her and stood close to her face with the hardened air shimmering between them. "That's why I can't ever let you go angry girl, you'd burn down the whole world if'n I ever made a mistake like that. But only after you come for me." He leaned forward ignoring her clawing hands and gnashing teeth and concentrated on the angry girl raging against the clear sphere. She stepped back then and for the first time since he had returned her attention was no longer on him. She looked down at her body and she snarled again, but this time the snarl was born from fear rather than rage. On first her left arm a rose swelled and bloomed into its full glory and a moment later a twin of it wound around her right arm and reached upward. She snarled in desperation as both of them reached their full bloom and she felt the effect they had one her. Even in her caged position she still lunged for him again, her fingers clawing at the inner surface of the barrier. "Those will hold you long enough. Not for good, but long enough I think. They can't hold you forever, but by the time you could get out from under them, won't be anything you can do to come back. The pure damned shame of the waste of it though just makes me sick," he said. Oh, what you could have been," he said mournfully. "If only that fire in you could have been bridled. But it can't and I don't have any intention of ever letting it spill loose." He took another step closer to her and forced her back as the barrier collapsed inward. When she realized what he was doing she didn't content herself with snarling at him. She began to seize anything that lay at hand and throw it at him. She snatched up the furniture and flung it at him until there was nothing remaining for her to throw. The wrecked remains lay heaped between them, but it was of little impediment. He levered his way through the mess as his barrier pushed back at her forcing her from the room and keeping her contained the whole while. She raged, she swore at him and it was equally as useless. He forced her back step by step until he had driven her from the house and through the yard until she was cornered in the same cage she had trapped Mitch in. The restraint shrank to a cylinder around her and then compressed her until it was just barely overlying her skin and kept her hanging inches over the floor of the shed. Restrained by the lack of space all Andrea could do was growl in fury and impotently snap in his direction. "Goodbye, Angry Girl," he said to her. "It's time we part ways and if I don't ever see another one like you, it'd never be soon enough." A section of the restraint, the part over his sigil cleared and left her arms bare at that point. His hands flashed out and gripped on her arms while she was held fast, his thumbs digging into and indenting the center of both roses and he leaned in and began to draw out what was left inside of her. Andrea's face lunged at his and began to draw back from him at the same time. He hated it when he found an angry girl, it was never easy with them, every time he needed to put them down there was just too much risk, but it had to be done now while she was weak. The only advantage he had was that she had not fed since she had taken what she had from him." Even with the roses in place to dampen her power and inflict pain on her, she still struck at him with increased intensity. Each time he did this it was nothing more than a race to see which one of them drained the other one first. The snarling snapping teeth bare inches from his face and the vortex that she inflicted on him to overwhelm him battered his senses. He bore into her and increased the force of his own drain. His Charybdis waxed stronger, while the vortex she had formed inside of it to claim back what he was taking at the same time weakened steadily. She tried to rally against him but the first time her attempt to drain from him weakened it was all the advantage that he needed to overtake her effort to draw him wholly into herself. He gained in the race and after that she was unable to recover the lost ground. She weakened even more, the vortex she drew from him still tried to fight what he was doing to her, but now he was taking from her faster than he was being taken from. She weakened too much and it stopped. With nothing to counterbalance it she collapsed on herself as he drew every last trace of anything that could bring her back deep into himself. He released her and watched her slump against the wall of the shed. She flopped for a moment and then her face lolled in his direction. "This isn't over," she croaked hoarsely. Even drained this low she still could come back if he gave her the chance to. He wasn't going to give her that chance. The barrier that he had collapsed to contain her was still there. A thought and it expanded back to the limits of the house and yard. There was no way she could leave now under her own power, not for a very long time. She would go up a chimney before she had that time though. He'd make certain of it. He locked the shed from the inside. A symbolic act, but symbols had their uses and it being made fast was one more part of the cage that would keep her immobile until she was eliminated. It was time to go. He faded away and left her and her overmind caged in the body that would hold both of them in shackles of flesh until the flesh turned to ashes. He released his grip on her arms and stepped back. He closed his eyes and leaned his head back in relief that he'd been able to do it one more time. He opened his eyes and looked at her. The withered ancient appearing remains of the angry girl was securely lashed in the chair, but the bonds were looser now that there was less of her to contain. The twin roses on her arms were fading now that the need for them to be there passed. It wasn't getting any easier, he thought to himself looking at her body lashed in the chair. Either they were getting stronger or he was getting weaker. He felt the all over body pain that he always felt after he had to do something like this. He'd been able to overpower this angry girl this time, but the cost was rising each time. To even have a chance to come out of this whole he had needed to drain three of his lambs prematurely just to have the energy surplus he needed to face her. Without that she could well have overwhelmed him instead. He considered dealing with disposing of her directly, but it didn't take long for him to dismiss that idea entirely. This one might be inert for now, but there was no way he was going to trust that she wouldn't be able to recover faster than he expected her too. That choke chain was staying on this dog and it was staying on until she was far from him. His head was still swimming. He had two more lambs in a nearby room. He'd thought the three that he'd sacrificed already would be enough to get him through this, but he could already tell that wasn't going to be enough. Even with that surplus at hand he'd been burning through the energy that sustained him almost as fast as she was draining it from him. She had done a good job restraining her overmind, if that one had gotten loose he wasn't sure he could have handled that even with the surplus he brought in to fight with. Without that surplus and being attacked from two directions there would have been no way for him to put this one down and now that he had it was clear that he needed more than he planned on needing to make up the difference. He looked over at the withered corpse still bound to the chair. "Damn you," he said bitterly in the direction of the corpse, " Why'd you have to be an angry girl?" he turned toward the room where the other girls were. One of them was new, only a few weeks along and the other should have had a few months before even becoming a lamb; but he needed them both now. "Damned angry girls," he swore. ----------------------------- Mitch's hand was starting to move against the roots that were holding her fast. She seemed to be fading as well although from what Singh could not even tell. She raised her head a fraction of an inch and looked at his direction. "Can't hold on, Singh," she said to him. "Help me. Need to...find Andrea. Help me...find her. She...she needs me. Can't...leave her alone. Promised....I wouldn't leave. Andrea..." Her eyes widened in horror and she bucked against the stout roots and vines lashing her in place. "Andrea is free! She's coming!" There was a churning in her chest as he watched her and the blackened edge of the crystal began to protrude from the flesh where Pantra had driven it into her. Singh watched as it lurched upward and darkened against her pale flesh. He heard an awful grinding sound like gravel being crushed underfoot. Mitch's eyes closed and her head hung limp in Selicia's still hands. A visible crack appeared in the upper edge of the rapidly darkening crystal. As Singh watched it spread he felt his spirit quail at the sight and it was only by pure will that he was able to keep from going to her to try to stabilize what was happening and stave it's outcome off another moment. ---------------------------------- Selicia walked slowly around the low brick porch. Andrea seemed to be almost healthy again. Her eyes were watching Selicia as she paced a few feet away. "I feel much stronger now," she said to her. "I think I can make it to where you said we needed to go now." Selicia looked at her. She had to be sure. "You're right, you are stronger," she said. "We shouldn't put this off any longer then should we?" She stepped away from the porch and began walking through the lawn to the sidewalk ahead and then she turned and waited for Andrea to join her. "You are coming aren't you?" she asked. Andrea rose from the padded chair and walked across the lawn after her. Selicia started down the sidewalk with Andrea trailing along just behind her. "I think that we should leave from the spot that I arrived here at," she said to here. "That's the gateway. Since there are two of us going back it would probably be easier to use that point of entry as an exit rather than just trying to leave anywhere." They were in the center of the ruined yard that Selicia had dragged Andrea from not long before. Andrea looked across the dead lawn to the decaying home squatting in the center of the lot. "Are you certain we have to leave from this spot?" she asked. "I don't like being this close to that place." Selicia was standing quietly facing her with her weight on the balls of her feet and her heels lightly touching the pavement. Her legs were slightly parted so that her balance was distributed evenly. She fixed Andrea's eyes with her own. "And I don't like being lied to," she said to her. "Now why don't you tell me who you really are?" "I told you who I am," she said trying to sidle closer. But for each step closer she took, Selicia took a matching step back and the distance between them was kept the same. "You're not Mitch Travers," Selicia said evenly watching her sidle ever closer. "I never said that I was. I'm Andrea, the real Andrea. The only Andrea that matters," she said. "I'm the one who took this mind for my own. It belongs to me! I'm the one who rules here now." Her hands flashed forward and even though she was expecting something like this Selicia was still caught by surprise at just how fast she really was. Her hands locked around Selicia's neck and nothing that she did could dislodge them. Andrea drew her closer and now that she was close to her Selicia could see that the pupils in her eyes weren't round at all. At first glance they appeared like the vertical slits of a viper but that was misleading, they weren't that at all. They were a pair of ebony diamond shaped stars. Two longer points that extended along the long vertical axis and two shorter points flaring horizontally outward that floated in a cruel pool of violet iris and in their blackness she started to feel herself being drawn into their depths. The succubae's mouth dipped closer to Selicia's . "You're so not to my taste, but there is just so much of you," she said. "You're overflowing with life. I need it, and I'm taking it. I have a promise to keep. You helped me though. You got me out of there, so I'll make it quick for you," her lips brushed against Selicia's and stopped. Andrea screamed in rage and her head flashed down to her left and then to her right. The tendrils of the grass that lined the withered lawn had lashed out and wound around her ankles and wrists and were pulling her deeper into the boundaries of the ruined house. She leaned against the force dragging her backward and snarled in Selicia's direction. "You're not the one who rules this mind," Selicia said to her quietly. "You are a usurper and because of you, this mind is a ruin. The only reason that all we see now of what is around us is still not a ruin is because I wished it to be so," she said. "And I no longer wish it," she said. "I leave you to the ruins," she released her connection and vanished leaving the snarling Andrea lunging against the grassy bonds unable to stop her from departing. ---------------------------------- Andrea's eyes snapped open at the same time that Selicia's head raised from hers. Her eyes were almost black from the enlarged pupils that covered her sclera. Enlarged pupils that were held in them a wide distinct diamond star outline with a thin violet iris ringing it and growing. As her eyes opened the body restrained by the mass of roots began to buck and twist against them. Singh heard the wood creaking as it strained to hold her fast and in places he could hear the smaller ones tearing free. "M'Tehr," Selicia barked, "Stop suppressing the roses. Stop it now. Those are what are keeping this monster weakened. Release them! Do it now!" A sickening crack sounded around the clearing and Singh could see the crystal that had held Mitch's consciousness had turned absolutely black. Stygian black, the blackness that bathed the interior of a tomb and the crack that had begun to stretch across it's smooth surface grew beyond containing. Singh couldn't help turning his head away as it finally gave way under the stress and shattered inside the pale flesh it was housed in. Mitch was gone and beyond return now. M'Tehr had released her grip and the twin roses blazed into full power along her arms. The energy that she had been shielding them from had not been shunted elsewhere while she did so. It had pooled and collected around where she diverted it from and once she removed that blockage it rushed into the space she had barred it from unhindered. As the sigils blazed with the renewal of their power they clamped down on what they were intended to contain once again. The woman writhed and screamed at them and increased her efforts to break free of the vines and roots holding her fast. Singh could hear the weaker ones snapping and even as she raised her right arm to tear at M'Tehr others were rising to take the place of the lashings that were already sundered. She turned her head toward Selicia and Singh could feel her starting to draw life from her. The life energy began to whisper from Selicia. She was the closest and the most powerful within reach. She was the natural target for what was striving to escape the bonds holding her fast. There was the harsh barking of a rifle overhead and then another followed it. The satyr's in the overwatch position had gotten clear shots at last. The carbon fiber rifles spat silver cored bullets that fragmented as they tore deeply into the succubae's flesh. Even with the impact of the hits and the renewed effort of the roots to restrain her, she still reached for Selicia and tried to draw life from her. Her hand suddenly twisted free and lashed upward before another satyr smashed it into a pulpy ruin with the silver knobbed club. "This is not your place," Selicia said calmly looking down at the black eyes blazing with hatred toward her. "You are not welcome here. Remain in your ruins and be damned." Selicia removed her hands and released the energy that she had guided into the body to repair and animate it. Inside; in the heart of the world around Andrea there was a nightmarish din as the structures and forms that had been recast and supported by the unbridled flow of resting energy channeled into its template abruptly ceased and collapsed into what it had been before she willed it so. Still physically lashed within the boundary of the prison within Mitch's mind she could only howl impotently as all around her the world returned to what it was before Selicia intervened. With no animus or anima to anchor it, the resting energy that Selicia had directed here rapidly drained away. It was only potential energy and there was nothing here that remained to make it more than that. In the city that represented all that there was that made up what once was the body of one Mitchell Travers; block after block crumbled, swayed, toppled and fell into dust around Andrea. The marksmen fired again once Selicia and M'Tehr had withdrawn out of the line of fire, emptying their magazines into the thrashing creature. Her heart was torn beyond repair by one round. Another destroyed the superior lobe of her right lung. Another pair of shots finished the job of wrecking the lungs beyond repair and the body ceased thrashing and grew still. The satyr marksmen ceased fire, but still kept her squarely in their sights watching while the body collapsed in on itself. The succubae became still. The damage internal and external, aethereal and material was too great for this body to be pushed further for now. The energy continued to pour back into the ground until only the withered remains of what they had begun with was left before them. Selicia stepped forward. One of the satyrs stepped in front of her. "Arath' Mahar, " M'Tehr said to her. "Leave this thing be. There is nothing here now that you should place yourself in danger over." "There is one thing, Lady M'Tehr," she said reaching forward to the ruin of Andrea's chest and as her fingers rooted in the bloodied and torn flesh they found what they were seeking. Carefully so that she did not cause it the crumble into pieces, she drew out the shattered crystal that once held all that was left of Mitchell Travers's mind. She drew it close to her chest and folded both of her hands over the defiled talisman and focused on drawing whatever venom that had remained to corrupt it away. She felt the toxicity that lingered from being in contact with Andrea disperse and break down. She focused and concentrated until each molecule of what stained it was broken down to it's smallest atoms and scattered so widely that it would never coalesce again. In time the molecules would break down and cease to exist. It was the best that she could do given the circumstances. Selicia took the crystal over to Singh and placed it in his hand. It was still blackened and the cracks ran clearly through it. Cracks that could never be returned to their undamaged state and marred it as a memorial to what had happened to the mind it once housed. "I'm sorry, Detective Singh," she said. "She managed to deceive me for a time while I was in that realm. I thought that hers was the mind that you sought and it wasn't until talking with her that I realized that all she knew was superficial. She knew names, but she didn't know the persons connected to the names. My own desire to think that I had found she who you were looking for is what did this. I took her out of that prison. If not for me then none of this would have happened." Singh took the crystal fragments in both hands and bowed his head toward hers. "Arath' Mahar," he said "If not for you none of this would have happened. We would not have been able to restore this body and we would not have been able to restore Detective Travers's mind, even for the short time we were able to," Singh looked at the ruined body still lying on the dais. "And without you we would have not been able to undo her without paying a heavier cost than we did." Singh closed his eyes, the weight of what had just happened lying especially heavily on him. "But you did not do more than that. We sought one mind here, finding two was not in our understanding. You were fooled you say? We were unaware of it entirely. And it was you that only made the mistake of taking pity on the one that you found in there. It is not your fault that one was not worth the pity that you showed her. You did all that you could do, Arath' Maher. We can ask no more than that." Singh looked at the still body of Mitch. "We have failed," he said somberly. "But that is all we have done. We have not lost." Singh looked upward at Pantra still hovering overhead. "Scorch her Pantra," he said in a thick voice. "Reduce her to dust. If that is all that we can do to honor Mitchell Travers, than do that. Scorch her." Singh watched as Pantra dipped closer and turned the full inferno of her flame to bathe the body below her. As her hands poured searing flame her eyes poured tears that seared her just as strongly. They watched her fiery deluge lick down and consume Mitch's body. They watched and kept a silent vigil until only ashes remained. -------------------------------- "It took the failure to save detective Travers to give us the missing pieces we needed to grasp what it was that we were facing here. The price was much too high," Singh said. "Mitchell Travers was not a frightened girl like you or a clever girl like Clayton. Mitchell Travers was what the Borok' Phai we call Lucius Fetterman fears most; She was an Angry Girl. Angry girls, like to one Mitch Travers hatched from the seed Fetterman planted in him, can never be bridled, can never be subdued. They come into their power almost from the beginning. They look at Fetterman and do not see a master; they see a feast, waiting to be taken. That is what he wants to know when he asks the question, what kind of girl are you; because an angry girl is what he hopes never to find right from the start. Angry girls are the end result of every one that he creates. All of them will, in time, become angry girls. But the ones that manifest from the beginning are the ones that Fetterman marks with his rose on both arms. That is how he marks them for death. "You said that Sakura gave you the other part of the answer. What does Sakura have to do with this?" Darcy asked. "She is a daughter of Arath' Mahar," M'Tehr answered. "And she carries a hunger within her as all her daughters will. A hunger that is only a cousin to the one that is consuming you. But it is a hunger that Arath' Mahar's line can master. Your hunger already moves to master you. I am sorry, but this is so." "So it's really over for me isn't it?" Darcy said, "I'm going to become this monster and everything that you told me about stopping it isn't going to work is it? It's what you decided to tell me so that I have a sliver of hope." "There is a chance Darcy," Singh said. "Please don't despair because it is only a small chance. When I told you that I was telling you the truth. But the chance is still there to save you." "But you couldn't save Mitch. Why is there even a small chance to save me and not him. I need to know. What can you do for me that you couldn't do for him?" she said. Singh slowly stood up and walked close to Darcy. He extended his hand to her and turned it over so the back of it was facing the floor and opened his fingers slowly. Resting on his palm was a teardrop crystal like the one suspended from the chain around her neck. But where light radiated out of hers, this one was blackened and cracked from a fire that came from within. It was a mournful sight to behold and when she did so she could not help moving her hand to reach up and close protectively around her own crystal. "When we moved rescue you we did not do with you as we did with Mitch. With you we cushioned your recall as much as possible. Even now you do not have the same level of recall as Mitch did all at once. That is one thing that stands in your favor. But there is one other thing that is more important than that. You have a chance Darcy," he said to her, "because your crystal has not shattered and gone dark forever." -------------------------- Darcy looked at the shattered crystal in Singh's hand and felt tears rising and begin streaming from her eyes. She didn't say anything for long minutes that stretched longer for her as she tried to master the emotions rising at the sight of it.. She could only look at it and mourn the loss of her friend Mitch in its dull surface. Seeing that twin of her own crystal marred and disfigured lying there was for her a crushing suffocating confirmation that he was really gone. Being told that he was had made it known; seeing his crystal dead and scarred and blackened made it true. She took a shuddering halting inward breath and reached for her eyes to wipe the tears away from them. The stains from where they had rilled up had distorted the cosmetics that Fleur had applied before coming here and marred her face and hands as she drew them away afterward. Singh extended her a tissue and she took it without thinking about it and started to blot the smears away. "So tell me what we need to do," she said and inside she felt like she was ten years old and standing on the tree again. The moment was here and either she would commit to jumping or give in to fear and run. Inwardly she closed her eyes and jumped.