The voice was a silken caress across his flesh as he slept, whispering “You have done well my disciple. Have I not given you everything I have promised? Have you not destroyed your rivals? Have not your enemies died beneath your feet, screaming?” The doctor twitched restlessly, his eyes darting beneath closed eyelids. The long, delicate fingers of a surgeon bunched handfuls of sheet by his sides as he dreamed on. “Yet even now you have failed me, failed your benefactress, your true Mistress!”

A quiet whine escaped from bloodless lips as the sweat-soaked body on the bed jerked as if struck by invisible whips.

“This magic you call science is but a wan reflection of the power I offer you. You have but tasted of the glorious power I can give to you! Your heart and soul belong to the Mistress. You are filled with the darkness you dance with and that darkness is my home. The shadows between your desires are my hunting ground.” The voice inside the mad doctor’s brain grew sibilant with menace, the razor-edged words slicing across his mind.

“Do not disappoint me.”

Chapter the 3rd: Predators and Prey

Spyker wasn’t familiar with this area yet. She had only recently had a reason to travel to Kings Row, away from her normal haunts in Atlas Park or sometimes Galaxy City. She had followed rumors and whispers and hidden innuendos regarding the deadly Eidolons of Dr. Vahzilok to Kings Row, confirming her information with her own brand of first-hand intelligence gathering. Those punks should be out of the hospital soon enough. Spyker was determined to find the Skull leader named Bonebreaker. He was the brains behind the operation that stole and smuggled equipment to the mysterious doctor and his organization. She had narrowed down the possibilities until finally she had arrived in the grimy section of Kings Row called the Gish. This was her fourth night in the area. Her initial forays had been primarily scouting missions, the first move in her campaign. Terrain familiarity was a prerequisite for any successful mission. She had found a bolthole in the area: a place to hide her equipment and a safe place to rest. Then Spyker had started her real work. Tonight the huntress in her heart was looking for Skulls. Prey.

Spyker cautiously sent tendrils of thought questing ahead of her through the chill night air. The moon was a huge silver eye glowing in the sky, dominating the air and casting deep shadows between the worn-down and burned buildings around her. Throughout the Gish the homeless used discarded oil barrels to burn refuse in, trying to stay warm outside shelter. The acrid scent of smoke from the numerous fires wafted on gentle currents, alternately tickling the nose and suddenly stinging the eyes.

“Give it up, lady! I ain’t got all night.”

Spyker wasn’t sure if she had heard the words or only sensed them. There were so many things about her abilities that weren’t clear to her yet. They seemed to be evolving, changing as she used them more and more. Perhaps they were just like any other skill and the more she used them the better and stronger she would grow with them. Time would tell. With scarcely more noise than the papers that blew between the empty lots, Spyker slipped through the shadows toward her prey.

“Lady, what, are you nuts? Gimme that purse!”

“C’mere little chiclet, the party’s just starting!” The two men had bracketed a young woman and one held her while the other tugged at her purse. She was still fighting them but was obviously losing the struggle. The two Skulls were mostly playing with her now, jerking her back and forth between them. Her black hair whipped about her face as she screamed for help. The Skulls just laughed harder. They knew that after dark the cops only came into the Gish in flying squads of at least three cars and all the gangs watched the roads leading into the Gish carefully in order to give plenty of warning.

“Stop it! Stop it! Leave me al… OH!” the young woman screamed as the purse strap finally broke and the thug behind her wrapped his arms around her petite body as she fell against him.

“Boys, boys. You think the two of you are enough to handle one little lady? And to think I’d heard the Skulls were tough.”
Snarling, the two hoods spun to face the voice that emerged from between the buildings. The leader pulled out a semiautomatic pistol and fired a shot into the shadows. The other Skull dragged the still struggling woman backwards, away from the silky voice, using her body like a shield and pulling out a knife with one hand.
Spyker stepped out of the shadows, completely ignoring the wild round that whined down the alley. Focusing herself, she gathered the power inside her mind into a tight ball and wrapped it in the ever-present anger of her soul. The punk’s gun clattered to the pavement as a glowing ball of force slammed into his face. Spyker let the darkness slip from between her hands, watched it boil up her arms and then shoved both hands directly at the Skull. He screamed as the claws of blackest night tore through his chest. Spyker felt the rush as part of his life-force flowed back to her, strengthening her. Spinning down low, Spyker thrust out one leg, catching the crook just above the ankles and jerking his feet out from under him. As he bounced off the gritty asphalt she drove a flat punch directly into the hollow of his jaw. The Skull flopped once bonelessly and then lay unmoving. He would be out for some time Spyker knew from experience. Even though her powers didn’t cause actual physical damage, the psychic trauma was something these punks would never forget.

“Back off, bitch! You move and I’ll kill her. I’ll do it!” the last punk screeched at her. Panic waffled through his voice as he jerked his victim backward.

“No problem, half-wit. I’ll just wait here while you run away. See look, nothing in my hands.”

Spyker slowly brought her hands upward as she straightened to her full height. The punk’s eyes widened as he took in the tiger-striped face paint, the black thigh-boots and her leather wrapped arms. He tried to stutter something but the black fire of her power had already seeped through the ground beneath his feet. Feebly, the Skull tried to cut the throat of his hostage, but missed completely as the young woman twisted away and ran pell-mell down the street. Spyker held him in the talons of her dark powers as she slowly stalked toward him.

The skull mask on his face flew off into the night as the hood’s head snapped back under the strength of Spyker’s mental bolt. Snapping a hard left hook into his jaw, Spyker drew the sinister black flames back into herself. She grabbed the staggering Skull and jerked him around, spinning gracefully to throw him against the wall behind her. She heard an audible crack as the back of his head impacted the rough bricks and he crumpled to the ground.

“Dammit! I needed him conscious!” Spyker berated herself. She took a chirper from the top of her boot and placed it between the unconscious thugs. She was running out of time. Soon she would have to return to the main city and deal with her business there. Reclusive or not, Elektra Duras still had to make decisions on her investments so that Spyker could continue her alternate life. Another three nights was the most she could afford to stay. This time anyway. But next time she promised herself she would not leave until she had found her quarry.

There’s never a thug around when you need one, Spyker mused to herself as she melted back into the shadows and quietly climbed up a nearby fire escape. Stepping around bits of refuse and other things she tried not to think too much about, Spyker emerged on the rooftop. For a moment she simply stood there, basking in the silver light of the unobstructed moon. Then her eyes turned back to the alleys and streets, their darkness alleviated only here and there by the waning glow of decrepit streetlights and oil-drum fires. She simply had to find this Bonebreaker, but where?
Her quick eyes spotted motion in the wasteland of the park several blocks over. Spyker spun into action without a wasted motion or thought, leaping from rooftop to abandoned rooftop, clambering over exposed HVAC piping and electrical conduits with sinuous grace. When she reached the last building in the line she launched herself off the parapet toward the park entrance, diving through the darkness. Her outstretched hands grabbed the steel bar at the top of the open gateway to the park and arrested her fall. She spun in a complete circle around the bar to kill her momentum before she released her grip and landed, quietly as a cat, to scoot instantly over into the deep shadows cast by the brick walls around the park. She ran lightly around a huge boulder blocking her view. Some landscape architect had probably spent hours finding just the right spot for it, she thought to herself cynically. As she cleared the dark grey shoulder of the massive stone Spyker stopped dead in her tracks. Oh my dear God, she thought to herself. Not that, surely not that! But it most surely was.

Standing directly in front of her were three absolute monstrosities; patchwork quilt giants and the patchwork was of human flesh! Mismatched eyes stared dully at her from faces that had been stitched together over ill-fitted bone, some of which still gleamed whitely in the moonlight. Subliminally, Spyker noted the constant buzzing of flies around these monsters as her horrified gaze took in the hump-backed appearance and incredible size of the three zombies shambling aimlessly through the ill-lit park. Human skin of at least a half-dozen different shades had been sewn together and it was painfully obvious that an equal number of different size bones lurked beneath the repellent exteriors. Had it not been so sickening to see, the zombie’s jerky motions would have been comical, but Spyker realized the incredible cost in human anguish that each of those terrible monstrosities represented. Nothing she had ever seen compared to this wanton disregard of people’s lives and bodies.

Spyker back-pedaled, trying to reach the safety of the shadows. Street punks, even drugged up and insane street punks, were one thing but this was something from the realm of bad science-fiction horror films. She moved too late however, as the previously unseen fourth man, if the other three could still be called men, pointed a stiff arm in her direction, yelling something. Suddenly they were all headed directly toward her! Spyker spun away from the lurching monsters. Instinctively she leapt up to the top of the boulder, hopefully out of their reach. She gathered herself and launched a sizzling mental bolt full into the face of the nearest monstrosity. The dark fire coursed through her arms and full into the chest of another of the zombies. Her body shook slightly as the corrupted life of the zombie was pulled back through the black lines. The power that flowed through her seemed tainted although it did make her stronger. Slashing down with her right leg, Spyker cracked her boot across the forearm of the third monster. For an instant it looked stupidly at the ends of bone protruding through decaying flesh, then it turned it’s flat eyes back to her and simply reached for her with the other arm.

Spyker brought her hands to her temples, desperately trying to gather her mental energies for another strike. The blazing energies erupted from her forehead and slammed full against the head of her first victim. It crumpled in slow motion, falling backward like a tree falls to crash into the packed earth below her. Spyker switched opponents in a fraction of a second, but that was still far too long. Her body shuddered with the impact of a crossbow bolt that slammed into her just above her left breast. Throwing out her right hand, Spyker called up the ebony energies beneath the marksman and his next shot went wild. She had time to see the words “Reaper” stenciled across the mockery of a surgical apron the man wore before she tumbled off the boulder. She thudded painfully to the ground. Her reinforced costume had stopped the full penetration of the crossbow bolt but she could feel the point gouging into her muscles, slowing her down. The two zombies remaining closed in around her. Spyker collected her inner strength and released it in a terrifying shout as she drove the first two knuckles of her right hand into the outside of the slimy knee closest to her. The zombie’s leg twisted inward as it fell to the ground. Spyker was up in a flash but couldn’t escape the powerful backhand of the other monster. Stunned, she staggered backward.

“Ahhhhh!” Spyker screamed as another crossbow bolt embedded itself in her side. She fell to one knee as the pain ripped through her. Then suddenly she was enveloped in revolting green goop that the zombies vomited forth. The smell alone was repellent enough, but the caustic slime burned across her exposed skin and into her wounds. Fighting only for survival now, Spyker used the last of her will to once more send twin bolts of ebony fire toward the closest patchwork giant. She felt her wounds heal somewhat as the monster took the full brunt of the strike, yet the energy returned seemed fouled and it burned through her blood. Or perhaps that was poison on the crossbow bolt, Spyker thought muzzily. She knew with frightening certainty that whatever energy she had stolen would not be enough. The next backhanded slap sent her flying backward to crumple at the feet of the crossbow-wielding Reaper. She looked up into maniacal blue eyes above a bloodstained surgical mask. He dropped the crossbow and pulled out a rusting butcher’s cleaver. Cackling like the madman he surely was, he reached for Spyker with one rubber-gloved hand.

She ran, heart pounding in her chest, each panting lungful of air a tearing rasp down her raw throat, even in the humid summer air. She ran through the trees behind the parking lot, the full moon giving her just enough light to miss some of the larger branches that threatened her as she rushed between the darker masses of tree trunks. Her dress was torn in a hundred places from the smaller branches that whipped her as she fled and her bare feet left spots of blood behind her. Her high-heeled shoes had been lost in the first frantic moments of flight across the inky blacktop of the common parking lot between the nearly deserted dormitories as they quickly flanked her, cutting her off from the safety of the dorms, forcing her into the woods.

She cried out, a small, frightened yelp, as she heard her pursuers close behind her. She made a desperate turn away from the sound of something crashing through the underbrush on her right. For just a second her long auburn hair whipped across her face, the sweat-soaked strands clinging to her dry lips as they blinded her for a bare moment. She misjudged the distance to a huge tree as she turned and twisted her ankle on the thick roots that stretched outward from it.

She hit the ground in an awkward sprawl, barely getting her arms beneath her in time to save her face from slamming into the moist earth. Desperately gulping down air she managed to get to one knee before they were upon her. She couldn’t even find breath to scream as their claws ripped bloody gashes across her upper arm and shoulder and she fell heavily. She writhed in pain, but was able to twist to the side far enough that the next set of claws gouged into dirt rather than soft flesh. She used her good arm to scrabble to her feet once more only to be driven forward by a heavy body slamming into her from behind. She hit the tree with stunning force, the rough bark tearing the skin on her face and chest. The impact forced the air from her laboring lungs and she slid bonelessly down the tree trunk. She rolled over just as the rest of the pack reached her, rushing through the pools of moonlight that filtered through the branches above. She managed a whimper as their hungry eyes met hers, the blood dripping down her cheeks and arms, and then they were upon her.

Chapter the 1st: On The Prowl

“Please don’t screw up the crime scene any more than you already have while you’re ogling my butt” the redhead said without looking as she straightened up, already peeling off the skin-tight, thin plastic gloves she wore. The two campus security officers jerked guiltily behind her. “For the love of God, what were you two doing when they were teaching site integrity? Never mind, I can imagine” she finished angrily. “I realize we’re in the middle of fucking nowhere, but you could at least watch CSI or something and catch a clue! Look at this mess” she said, pointing an accusing finger at the muddy loam churned up around the bloody body of the dead woman. “There are at least four different shoe sizes that tromped anything useful into mush between the time of death and the time you finally called it in. There’s damn little I can do with this now.” She stalked away, raising the plastic yellow tape to lean underneath it.

“Look here, you” started the heavier of the two, a slow red flush rising up from the top of his uniform blouse, taking a step toward her from where she had exiled them when she arrived. He stopped suddenly as she stepped swiftly up to him, angry fire sparking in her hazel eyes.

“Look here what, you Don Knotts knockoff? I find splatter porn pics of this on the Internet and a whole platoon of the backwoods redneck asshole buddies you let in here won’t be enough to dig you out of the hole I bury you in! Understand?” She stiff-armed the only slightly taller spluttering man out of her way and strode back to her car.

“Little harsh on the locals, don’t you think?” said the black-haired detective leaning against the side of the campus cruiser she had pulled in beside. “Not like they’re used to this kind of thing, Erin.” He struck a match and held it in a cupped hand against the end of the cigarette between his lips.

“Hell no! I’ll show you harsh one day. That was just a friendly warning. Those two will have half the campus terrified of werewolves or some other damfool bullshit story before we can even get back to the lab.”

“So you don’t think they’re going to go along with the feral dog story then?”

“Oh Christ no. We’re in the middle of hunting country. They may not know DNA from dynamite, but they know damn well those gashes and bite marks didn’t come from anything the size of a dog. And even ferals, unless they’re rabid, don’t routinely attack humans. No, they’ll start with wolves and then it’ll be werewolves. This whole generation was weaned on Jason and Freddy and unkillable monsters.”

She jerked the car door open, but stood there looking back at the two campus “cops” arguing with each other. The lanky detective pushed himself off the campus cruiser and closed the trunk on the non-nondescript black sedan. He walked around to the open door on the passenger side and slid into the seat. She dropped in beside him and slammed the door shut, twisting the key in the ignition and bringing the engine to life with a roar.

“No, Terry,” she said almost to herself, still watching through the windshield, “they wouldn’t have called us in at all except for the special bulletin that went over the wire to immediately report anything similar to the other two attacks.”

A curl of smoke threaded its way from the corner of her partner’s mouth as he leaned back and closed his eyes. “Yeah, you’re right. Three attacks, each of them during a full moon, each victim chased down and partially dismembered.”

“Ripped apart you mean. Every one of them young and female and a student in the local university. No boyfriends or jilted lovers or something convenient. Oh yeah, they’ll file an official report that says what we told ‘em to say, but the wifi generation will have the werewolf story spread across the whole campus before the news twits splash it across hell and half of Georgia.”

“There’s a difference?” her asked laconically.

“Damn yankee.” She dropped the gear into reverse, the tires squealing on the asphalt of the parking lot as the car shot backward. “Werewolves my pretty pink ass” she said tiredly as she turned the car and sped out onto the access road.

“Nothing there for me” grinned her partner without opening his eyes.

“And don’t you forget it either” came the expected rejoinder, but more quietly than usual.

“Too bony for my tastes anyway” he said, cracking open one eye to glance at her. For a second it was if she hadn’t heard him at all, then she whipped her head around to glare at him. “Don’t let this get too close, Erin” he said before she could say anything.

Her lips tightened into a straight line but she made no reply as she whipped the car through the tight curve of the entrance ramp onto the state highway.

“Yes my friend, we will go soon enough,” she said to her familiar companion, but still she sat quietly as dusk crept across the land and the first tentative stars pierced the vault of the sky. Sighing, she finally urged her mount onto the slight path leading down the mountain. She shouldn’t have taken the time to come up here, she knew, but she had desperately needed a break from the constant grind of the research laboratory. She loved the work, had only dared imagine she would be given an opportunity like this when she graduated from P&ITT, but the safety precautions and unceasing vigilance required while she was working was exhausting. More than one lab assistant had been relieved when the lab cameras or the silent observers standing patient guard detected any hint of irregularity or lack of concentration. She tugged the wide-brimmed hat she wore lower in front as her mount picked up speed headed down the mountain. Grinning, Sarah gave the horse his head and a trot turned into a gallop as they raced the darkness back to the corral.
 
 
 
“Hola Sweet Sarah Mary!” called out the night lab tech as Sarah stepped through the last set of airlocks, slipping her badge into its special holder sewn into an inside pocket of her lab coat. He glanced up from the bank of video monitors and computer displays, but only for a second. “I wasn’t expecting to see you back until tomorrow” he continued as Sarah waved to him.

“Como estas Ernie? I was writing up some reports when I had an idea” she said as she walked around the operations console.

“Did you hurt yourself?” came the laughing reply.

“Be gentle Ernie, you wouldn’t like me when I’m mean” she said, frowning in mock threat. She smiled at the guards as she always did and was rewarded with a reserved nod. She had been working at this carefully hidden installation for almost a year before any of the guards would so much as nod. She also knew they were more than just guards. She had enough experience with the military to recognize soldiers and mercenaries when she saw them. There was something about men and women who had passed through the crucible of the battlefield that set them apart. Moving slowly, she removed two packs of cigarettes from a coat pocket and placed them on a table closest to the guards. Smoking was, of course, forbidden within the lab and even if it was not the guards were too professional to compromise their hands by smoking. However, she played poker with some of the guards at the barracks occasionally and packs of cigarettes were the preferred currency. She had grown up around military personnel; her mother had been a career soldier and commanding officer at a number of bases before her retirement. Sarah appreciated their commitment and professionalism as well as their company and stories. Turning back toward the operations console, she stood quietly behind Ernie as his long-fingered hands flickered back and forth over the touch-sensitive screens that controlled the technological marvel. As was her habit, she slowly surveyed the multiple displays showing environmental conditions, the status of the portal integrity fields, the last 4 hours of grid distortions and many other indicators and recorders.

“And what has the mighty intellect to share with us lowly mortals?” Ernie joked with her without taking his eyes from the monitors.

“From my lofty perch I have had a vision, oh puny and slow-witted one” Sarah replied ostentatiously “and if you were capable of appreciating it then I would share it!”

“You wound me deeply” Ernie replied, looking distinctly unwounded. “Please, enlighten me, for your vast knowledge is a beacon in my darkness.”

“Nice one Ernesto!” Sarah said, slapping him lightly on the shoulder. “Since you begged so nicely, I’ll let you in on my brainstorm.”

“That and the fact that you need my help” he replied with a laugh.

“Well, yes, there is that” she said as she slipped into the chair next to his. There was an uncomfortable moment as the chair read her identity and preferences from the microscopic chip embedded in her upper right arm and shifted its configuration to match its new occupant. Even after all this time, Sarah still wasn’t quite used to a chair that moved around her as she sat down, but since any of the lab personnel might be stuck in one of those chairs for hours at a time, she certainly appreciated it. “Anyway, here’s the thought process” she began. “We’ve never been able to determine what precisely makes this gunk, that’s my official technical term by the way but don’t worry, I’ll slow down if you need me to, that makes this gunk change the way it does.”

“True enough. The ‘gunk’, as you so eloquently expressed it, just doesn’t follow any conventional theories on the structure of matter or energy. We’ve hit it with every kind of test we can think of, even those that fell out of your brain, without much success. The fluctuations we observe don’t follow any predictable, or hell, even repeatable pattern. Lord knows we’ve tried everything the smartest people in this hemisphere could come up with.”

“No need to rub it in Ernie me boy, but that’s exactly where I think we’ve gone wrong.” Ernie glanced swiftly at her face, raising an eyebrow in inquiry before returning to his monitors. “We have the finest scientific minds here and technology that the rest of the world won’t even dream of for another decade” Sarah continued, “but I think that’s precisely why we aren’t getting anywhere.”

“Okay, I realize that I’m not in your league, but where the hell does that leave us?”

“Bear with me Ernie. I do need your help. I want you to set up a containment field in lab 6 and open the smallest portal you can manage. With what we’ve gotten so far, you can squeeze a small amount in there, can’t you?”

Ernie pulled his hands off the console controls and slowly cracked his knuckles. “Yes I can, but you’re going to have to give me more than that before I will. What do you have in mind, sweet Sarah Mary?”

“I want to read it poetry.”

The expression on Ernie’s face rendered any comment superfluous.
 
 
 
She shuffled slowly down the long corridor, her bare feet scuffing gently over the worn carpet. She looked neither right nor left but only down, as if to make sure the ground would not dissolve beneath her. The once-white lab coat draped over her was tattered and torn, ripped along one side and spotted with dark blotches. She paid no heed to the screams that echoed down the corridor. They were like background noise to her now; something that she never noticed, but that she was always aware of. Her face was hidden in the dark shadow cast by the wide-brimmed hat she wore pulled low in front. Dark hair streaked with red cascaded down to her shoulders, gleaming in the overhead lights. Soft murmurings escaped unnoticed from between her lips as she finally reached the thick doors of the first of three airlocks blocking the way into the laboratory beyond. The door beeped softly as she placed her hand over the recognition lock and the electronics hidden inside the thick door matched her palmprint to the data encoded in the chip embedded in her arm. Large bolts slid back almost silently and the airlock opened easily as she pushed forward. Twice more she went through the same process, adding a retinal and DNA scan at the final airlock.
As she stepped into the lab, thick, viscous black tentacles of something that moved of its own volition surrounded her. It caressed her face, touching her lips, her eyes and her sunken cheeks. Stray wisps of something more than smoke swirled about her tall body, urging her farther into the room. Pushing her gently when she strayed, the ebon tendrils slid around the skin-tight white bio-filtration suit she wore, always pulling her deeper and deeper into the room. Eventually she stood in the center of the room, surrounded by softly glowing display screens stacked almost floor to ceiling. Bare cables draped across equipment, broken monitor screens and shattered equipment containers were scattered across the floor. Tears streamed down her face as she reached trembling arms out and clutched at the floating ebony ball hovering there. A wide smile appeared on her lips as she pulled the sphere of blackness to her chest, her tears dripping downward and disappearing into the pulsing darkness. She stepped forward again and was enveloped in the black mass. Wild laughter burst from her raw throat. Her foot caught a book lying on the floor and sent it skidding over the polished surface to crash against a wall panel. Whirling toward the sound, her eyes blazed with maniacal intensity at the dim figure the book had bounced off. As the dark tendrils shifted, shadowy figures resolved themselves into heavily armed and armored men moving through the dark miasma toward her.
“Yesss” she whispered as they surrounded her, “we’ve waited so long. Come my pets, come to me! Come to your sweet, sweet madness!”
One by one, the men kneeled around her slender figure, each one stretching his arms upward toward her. From one she took a pair of black gloves laced with blood-red circuitry patterns and pulled them on. From another, a tactical belt complete with spare clips of ammunition and festooned with buttoned containers that he belted about her slim waist. A long scarf with alternating black and red bands went about her neck from the hands of a third and trailed down her back almost to the ground.
“Oooo, did you bring those just for me?” she cooed as she saw the black leather, thigh-high boots draped across the arms of one of the men. She grabbed the boots up, the circuitry embedded in them leaping to gleaming red life as she touched them. “Down!” she commanded imperiously and the soldier dropped to all fours. She sat down heavily on his spine and stretched out her long legs, lasciviously drawing the boots on. Jumping up she grabbed an assault rifle from another man; absent-absentmindedly wiping off the blood caked on the foregrip.
“Well, I think we’re done here” she said. “You!” she said, kicking over one of the kneeling men. “Make sure you and the others get my equipment loaded. And be careful!” She grabbed his flak jacket and with surprising strength jerked him to his feet. “You I can replace” she hissed mere inches from his face “but that equipment is priceless.” Throwing him aside contemptuously, she turned and cocked her head as if listening. “Yes, yes, I know, I know! But we have to get to a safe place where I can work. You aren’t cheap you know” she grinned happily. “We’re going to need money, lots of money.”
Snapping a new clip into her assault rifle, she spun and strode quickly over to a computer console. Her fingers flickered rapidly over the controls and an insistent bell began ringing. “30 minutes and this place is vaporized” she cackled.
“Get up you idiots!” she screamed at the blank-faced men still kneeling in a circle. “The things I have to do for you” she said. “You two” she said, pointing, “Go get the transport ready. The rest of you get the portal.” She watched as her minions left to carry out their tasks, then she stooped slightly and picked up a small stack of books. “Mustn’t forget these,” she cackled to herself. “After all, where would I be without them?” she said as she turned on her heel and strode toward the airlock. Her laughter trailed behind her, echoing through the halls far longer than should have been possible.

I flipped down the latch and palmed the slide as it slipped from from the guides beneath the barrel. The springs were next and then the barrel itself. I laid the parts carefully out on the oilcloth. The familiar movements were calming, but my hands knew them so well that my mind was free to wander. The meeting with the Tween had gone down like Sarah had said it would and now she and the arms merchant were headed into the sprawling megalopolis that had sprung from the bones of old Atlanta after the firestorm of ‘33. There was powder residue inside the barrel. The twisting hexagonal sides stayed much cleaner than the old lands and grooves system and the caseless rounds burned cleanly, but full auto was a bitch on machinery no matter how high the tech and lead was still lead. The silvering was still good and the barrel shined in the dim light against the darkness of my skin. My fingers found the cleaning materials where they always were and began brushing out the barrel. People in the cities never took much effort in preventive maintenance. Their lives depended on tech that could die during the next solar flare, but if they didn’t think about it then they didn’t have to worry about it. After all, there was always some ‘nician just a vid away and who’d want to get their hands dirty like that anyway? It was different out in the open spaces. Parts were precious and some nearly impossible to come by until you hit the next concrete and steel aberration covering hundreds of square miles, choking out anything that dared push its impudent head up to the sun. The drifters knew the value of good tools and solid tech. Survival wasn’t glamorous but it beat hell out of bleeding out down in the neon cesspools where the city threw its failures because your carry piece decided to throw a shitfit. A gun that can’t shoot straight doesn’t even make a decent paperweight.

I’d grown up so far down the food chain of the city that the mutated roaches thought we were a step in the wrong direction. I sighted down the slide, checking to see that the almost imperceptible marks around the sights still lined up perfectly. My Gramps used to talk about the old ghettos and the terrible things that happened to black people back when anybody cared what color your skin was. Sounded like a bad movie plot to me when I was a kid. Who cared what color you were, everyone bled red if you fucked up in the wrong part of town and it still came out black in the shadows. Machines were predictable; they treated you right if you treated them right. They didn’t have a crying fit at midnight for no apparent reason and jump out the window. The loud snap of the slide as it slammed forward pulled my head back to where it should have been all along. Heckler and Koch built to last. I picked up the shotgun next. The action on the pump had been a little rough the last time I’d had occasion to use more than one shell. I loaded my own explosive rounds and one 10 gauge shell with that much boom was usually all that was necessary. I’d replaced the wood pistol grip with a kevlar composite the last time we’d been through Atlanta and I still missed the organic feel. I’d had some extensive work done on my arm, but below the wrist it was still meat. I could handle the shotgun easily with the ramp-ups in the arm, even hot-loading. I had to be careful with leverages and counter-balance, but I could handle a lot of weight with that arm.

Gramps had been the reason I’d struggled my way through mechanics and engineering lessons from stolen textbooks. He’d nearly beaten the words into my thick skull. Anything that wasn’t perfect wasn’t done he’d tell me as I checked and re-checked my calcs before giving them to him to judge. I’d made the mistake once of hurrying through the problems he’d given me. Once. What was her name? Taerla, yeh that was her. She’d almost been worth the skin Gramps had pulled off my hide for goofing my calcs. I wasn’t exactly small, even in those days, which was precisely why Taerla had liked me in the first place, but Gramps had shown me just exactly how little I knew about keeping my head attached to my shoulders. I missed that old man, missed him fiercely. I hadn’t bothered to count the years after I’d lost my first family. I trudged from job to job in a fog of chemicals that kept the screaming nightmares wrapped up and stuffed deep enough that I couldn’t remember them in the morning but the torn pillowcases and ripped sheets that mocked me each shuddering dawn never let me forget what it would be like when they finally burst completely free. I replaced the foregrip and put the brass screwdrivers carefully back into their oiled leather case. The action moved smooth as the wind through a graveyard as I worked it back and forth before a few times. I set it aside and switched to the revolver.

One day I was far out on the edge of some city, I didn’t even know which one it was, or care. Some idiot had managed to screw up a magnetic lock. How the hell you could screw up a maglock I couldn’t imagine, but I didn’t really care either. They weren’t the hardest things in the world for a good ferret to bypass, but you really had to try to screw one up so badly that it wouldn’t work at all. I stroked the glowglobe behind me to life as the last of the sunlight leaked out of the sky. Men had been inventing better ways to kill each other since there had been men, but the revolver was in many ways the pinnacle of weaponsmithing and design in my opinion. Minimal moving parts, solid metal to metal contact, helluva lot more reliable than even the best caseless pistol. The right load could take down a man anywhere from six inches to sixty yards away even if he was chromed so shiny he glowed in the dark. You just had to know where to place your shot, that was all. The cylinder dropped into my palm and the copper wire brush slipped into the barrel.

I’d gotten seriously lost that day and was wandering around looking for landmarks to guide me to the moron who’d promised me hard curry. I usually got what they promised once they saw what years of hard work had put on my near seven-foot skeleton and the gleam of my chromed arm. Wasn’t anything particularly dangerous on the arm, but they didn’t know that. As long as I got enough to keep the fog closed in, I didn’t really care, but I didn’t tell them that. Problem was, looking for landmarks is not a good play when you’re surrounded by sharks and sharks there were aplenty trailing along in my wake. I hadn’t tumbled to them yet and probably wouldn’t have until they started playing jump-rope with my intestines. I stopped by this old white-haired drifter who was swinging one leg over a really nice Harley hog. The motorcycle caught my eye and the clean lines drew me in like nothing human could have. They were a matched set those two, worn down hard and sleek with all the non-essentials left roasting in some desert dune never to be found again. I don’t know what I was going to say to him, I just knew I had to see the finely tuned machinery lurking there. If I’d taken the time to think about him I still wouldn’t have been worried about the drifter. He wasn’t sporting any obvious cyberware and didn’t move like any of the chromed-out street punks I knew. He saw me coming and swung his other leg over and off the Harley to end up facing me. A wide-brimmed hat concealed his features but his hands were calloused and sun-burnt as he swept back his long coat. That monster Harley should have made him look like a kid next to it, but it didn’t. Maybe that was what finally got something percolating through my thick head. It was way too late, years too late, by then. His left hand flashed up and back-handed me across the face hard enough to turn me halfway around and drop me to my knees.

I smiled in the soft mercury vapor glow as I put the revolver back together and holstered all three weapons, hanging them by the bedrolls for easy access. I’d never been hit so hard in my life. I wouldn’t have believed it possible that some lanky old guy with long white hair and hands like sandpaper could drop me at all, much less like I was some half-grown punk teenager. Three explosions ripped through the space where my chest had been a second before and I looked up to see a shining silver hogleg, as Gramps used to call those big revolvers, belch flame out the end of the barrel. Warm wet droplets showered the back of my head. Instinctively I ducked even farther down and twisted to look back the direction I’d come in time to see the blood pouring and spurting through a hole the size of my fist in the throat of some mohawked, chrome-boy thrillseeker wearing Screamin’ Demons leather barely an arm’s reach away. His blood splattered me as he and his three running buddies thrashed out the last of their lives out on the pavement. I was certain they’d never seen him clear the pistol from the holster. Hell, I certainly hadn’t! Probably watching my fool ass hit the ground as he put his rounds dead center into their throats. He damn near decapitated them with a single shot each.

Next thing I knew the big pistol had disappeared back wherever it came from and he had two fists balled up into the neck of my working coverall. He leaned down and yanked my face up close to his and all I could see was a hawk-nosed face with terrible scars all around his right eye. His left eye seemed dark as midnight with a faint gold ring surrounding the pupil. For a long moment I was trapped in his unblinking stare. I didn’t know what it was then, but I’d seen him with his wolves since and then now I knew exactly what it was; absolute certainty that if one of us was going to die, it wasn’t going to be him. I jerked my eyes away only to be captured again as his right eye swirled with grey storm clouds, literally. Somewhere inside me I knew that it had to be cybermods, but right then it was as if I looked straight into the heart of a raging thundercloud. I was stunned by the force of the spirit behind those eyes, paralyzed in the gaze of the predator.

“Is this how you respect your teacher?” he growled at me. He shook me by the throat, the stainless steel zippers gouging into my skin. “Your sensei would be ashamed of you, whelp. He lives on behind your eyes and you nearly throw away his life’s work to these curs?”

His anger was like a razor cutting through the layers of despair I’d layered my heart with. I tried to twist away from that terrible, knowing gaze and he shook me like a rag doll. His teeth ground together in frustration as the blood dripped down my face.

“Such a waste you are! And you waste your teaching you disrespectful sack of shit! He wasted his life on you?” Contempt laced each and every word with acid that burned straight into my soul. I howled like a madman and swung at him as hard as I could, wanting nothing more than to die so long as I took that voice with me. He dropped me and leaned away and my fist missed his chin by centimeters. His hands slapped at my wrist and elbow and I spun halfway around as I hit nothing but air. A knee slammed into my back just above my kidneys and pain lanced through my entire body. An arm seemingly made from cold-rolled steel wrapped around throat from behind and a terrible pressure forced my head downward over his forearm. My heart pounded like a triphammer in my head as he cut off blood and oxygen.

“Look at it boy! Look at what waits for you. Is it enough for you” his voice hissed in my ear. The lifeless eyes of the punk on the asphalt stared up at me blankly, like marbles, in a face surrounded by a pool of blood. My world started growing black edges that quickly funneled my vision down until the only thing I saw was that unmoving face.

“I’m sorry Gramps” I said to myself as the darkness obliterated everything.

I woke up with my back against the Harley that had started the entire affair. My white-haired savior squatted down in front of me. A choker of beads and silver and other things wrapped around his throat caught my eye as he looked intently into my face. His eyes were just normal eyes now, but deep and dark and full.

“So, you remember yourself now, do you? You have been given such a gift as to lift your spirit high above clouds. Choose to use it or you squander it. Choose! Are you a student to make your teacher proud?”

Tears that hadn’t touched my face in too many years mingled with the dried blood on my skin.

“Then you have another choice to make. I will teach, you will learn; that I promise you. Or stay here and make your own way.”

I stretched out my hand shakily and his long fingers wrapped around my wrist as he stood and hauled me to my feet. He was at least a foot shorter than I, but it seemed that I looked up at him. He brushed off his hat and put it back in place, his face disappearing into shadow. “I am called Walter White Wolf” he said as he threw his leg over the fairing of his bike once more. “You are welcome to ride behind me, Black Cloud. Until we find better transportation.” I popped open the leather saddlebags hanging from the rear seat and placed my tools inside. It really was a huge motorcycle and, while it wasn’t exactly a comfortable fit, the bike took the extra load gracefully, settling solidly down on its heavy-duty shocks as I took my seat. I haven’t answered to any other name than Black Cloud since. My brother carries heavy weight, but we share it now between us; White Wolf and Black Cloud.

It was a long time before I asked him how he knew the things he knew when we first met, but by then I really already knew the answer. He made it his business to know.

<em>Copyright © 2007. All rights reserved.</em>

Chapter the 2^nd: Where there’s smoke…

“I’m tellin’ ya, nothin’! I don’t know nothin’!”

“Then tell me who does” Spyker hissed at the Skull gangbanger. For good measure she bounced his head off the wall once more. The Skull’s feet scrabbled fruitlessly as she held him a couple of inches off the ground. “I can do this all night, you gutterpunk. And I’ll enjoy it right up until your brains splatter out and I have to go find some of your friends by myself.” Her balled fists twisted into the lapels of the cheap leather jacket the punk wore, Spyker shook the skeleton-masked man once more.

“A’right, a’right a’ready!” screeched the punk. “There’s a guy that knows a g… OW!”

“If I wanted fairy tales I’d go to the movies! Last chance.”

“Okay! Jeezus! Ask for Bonebreaker over in the Gish. He moves around a lot. I’m tellin’ ya!” the punk yelled as Spyker shook him once more, “He doesn’t let anyone know where he hangs. Over in the Gish, the Gish I swear!”

Spyker let the power within her begin to seep through the leather wrappings around her forearms. The ebony energy looked like a cross between black flames and dark grey, sooty, smoke. The Skull’s eyes widened as he felt the hungry fingers begin to creep toward his face.

“Wha the! Hey, no! I told ya!” he screamed as the dark cloud covered his head.

Spyker dropped the unconscious punk to the ground. The police band beacon, a “chirper” in the lingo, she set by his feet. The PCPD should arrive long before the Skull and his buddies regained consciousness. Spyker faded back into the shadows, the black tiger-strip camouflage on her dark orange catsuit blending her outline into the night’s cool darkness. She headed slowly toward the park she knew was nearby, staying to the shadows while she thought her way through what she’d learned.

Rumors had been circulating about a new type of villain terrorizing the streets of Paragon City. Not that there was a shortage of evil-minded freaks wandering about after the Rikti invasion. There was also no shortage of new heroes as well thanks to the incredible energies released during the Rikti War. Many had formed teams and even groups, but Spyker had avoided them. Her single-minded mission hadn’t seemed to leave much room for working with other heroes. Yet, she knew other heroes might have information sources she did not. She had been a loner for so long, she wasn’t sure how to approach these other superheroes. For now, she had another goal in mind. Homeless people had been disappearing. It wasn’t as if the city kept accurate records on the homeless, but several of Spyker’s sources had reported friends and acquaintances going missing. Worse than that, she had seen copies of several police and forensic reports where bodies had been found, or rather pieces of bodies had been found. Few of the victims had been identified since DNA-style identification was mostly useless; the homeless rarely had occasion to have DNA typing done. In every case the police had been unable to positively identify the victim. More disturbing than that was the information that hadn’t made the papers: in many cases the body parts found together didn’t belong to just one individual.

The full moon cast a silvery light across the brown, desiccated grass of the park as Spyker crept through the wrought iron gateway. The special contact lenses she wore brought everything into sharp detail as well as disguised her eyes behind a glacial grey façade. She had little fear of anyone recognizing her. The sharply lined, tiger-style makeup she wore made her face look completely different than Elektra Duras’ face. At any rate, since her rich alter ego had a reputation for reclusiveness, there weren’t that many pictures of her circulating in the public eye. After the explosion that had changed her world forever there had been the typical media circus with photographs and news reports on every station and every newspaper in the area of course, but the woman that walked away from the medical institution after recovering from a months-long coma and more months of therapy afterwards bore little resemblance to the one brought in by the EMS unit. She had kept in touch with a few friends on the police force and some of her family’s contacts in other circles, but they only saw the carefully prepared socialite, Elektra Duras.

As Elektra she wore personally tailored clothes that softened the muscular lines of her body. The strange effects of the lab fire had given her above-average strength, which she had worked hard to maximize. She was no match for the super-strength of some other adventurers, but she was significantly stronger than a typical person, particularly starting from her athletic background and earlier police conditioning. Special shoes, black hair dye and careful attention ensured that no one made any connection between her two identities.

Spyker prowled the edges of the park, slipping out the other side to slide beneath the bridge arching overhead. Her specially made boots added even more inches to her 6’6” frame, but she could walk through broken glass and never make a sound. The Skulls had hidden gathering spots throughout the city, but the area known as the Gish seemed to be a magnet for all the different kinds of weirdness scattered through other parts of the city. She knew that eventually she would turn up this “Bonebreaker” and he would tell her what she wanted to know. Everything she wanted to know.

The underground grapevine was rife with rumors on the grisly slayings, but one particular story had drawn Spyker’s practiced eye. The Skulls were reportedly brokering equipment deals for a mysterious figure known as Doctor Vahzilok. The other main outlaw gang in the city, the Hellions, had been engaged in a turf war with the Skulls over supplying this Dr. V, so there was plenty of money flying around. As long as the Skulls and Hellions were taking each other out no one was likely to shed any tears, but lately the battles had taken a darker turn. Even the Skull and Hellion bodies were disappearing now and witnesses had described a new, vicious, combatant the Skulls referred to as Eidolons. These creatures were covered head-to-toe in black leather and chrome-buckled belts. Far more powerful than either the Skulls or Hellions, these monsters had also been seen to throw bolts of dark flames and create smoky, insubstantial, tentacles that nevertheless held fast anyone caught in them. Spyker looked down at her own hands and thought of the inky smoke that she also could manipulate in various ways. She would never forget the voracious black flames that had destroyed her father’s laboratory and ruined her own life. There had to be a connection between the two. She would find it, however they tried to hide.

“Bonebreaker eh” Spyker whispered to herself, casting her senses out into the night. “We’ll just have to see about that.”

Original Characters copyright © 2007 all rights reserved.
City of Heroes Copyright © NCSoft and Copyright © Cryptic Studios

Chapter the 1st: The Time Before

“DAD!” Elektra Duras screamed as she leapt up from her sweat-soaked sheets.

She was halfway to the door before her conscious mind reasserted itself and reality spun away the fibers of her nightmare. She fell to her knees, the terrible images still so real inside her head: the awful smell of the laboratory as the black flames roared hungrily through shattered glass beakers and test tubes. The heat was terrible; she could feel it beating against her, but somehow inside her skin rather than outside. Even now she could still feel the twisting agony echoing within her, just as she had first felt it racing through her father’s office door only to be engulfed in darkness.

Shaking her head to clear it, Elektra stumbled on trembling legs into the bathroom. Luckily, it wasn’t far to go in her studio apartment high above the streets of Paragon City. She snapped on the light and started cold water running in the sink. Cupping both hands in the clean, cold flow she splashed her face with water and ran long fingers through her short-cropped hair.

“Dammit. Just dammit all. I’ll never get back to sleep now. I may as well do something productive.” Her stride lithe and purposeful, Elektra prowled back out to her bedroom and grabbed her working clothes. Dragging the boots and her orange and black coverall over to the edge of her bed, she threw the rumpled sheets aside and started dressing. The white shock of her thick hair took only a second to shake dry as she finished zipping up her uniform. Angrily she wiped tears from her eyes as she sat down at her dressing table and began pulling out her makeup. Her mother had always called it her “war paint”. How appropriate that was now. Her nightmares of the disaster at her father’s police laboratory always brought other family memories to the fore. Her mother, proud as only a proud Greek can be, had taught her many things while Elektra had been growing up. She had learned the legends of her home country, the ways of the world and the ways of this strange country. Elektra had idolized her mother and her father long before she was old enough to understand their brilliance and the driving force of the ideals they both held most dear. They had fled Greece barely ahead of the secret police that so many refused to believe even existed because of their ideals. The belief that all people should be free, that scientific discoveries were meant to be spread out among all the people of the world and not just the select, the rich or the powerful.

Elektra finished the final touches on her makeup before placing everything carefully back in its place. Reaching a long arm over to her bedside table, she flipped on the powerful police-band radio she had kept from her days on the police force. The constant chatter faded into background noise in her mind as she slipped on her black leather boots. Mother would not have approved of these boots, she thought to herself. It had taken her quite some time to get used to them actually. She had always been more comfortable in either tomboy clothes, or volleyball uniform, or gymnast’s leotard. Her mother hadn’t really approved of those either, although she had been fiercely proud of her daughter’s accomplishments. She missed her mother desperately sometimes even after all the years since the automobile accident and a drunken driver had stolen her mother away. That had been a turning point for her life. Elektra had always intended to use her college athletic scholarship as a springboard to the professional volleyball circuit. Her height and long-limbed build had earned her respect across college campuses as well as the nickname “The Tiger Spiker”. It had also made her lonely as many of the men she had met were intimidated by her size and ability. Of the few that remained, most of them had only seen her as another kind of trophy. But when her mother was ripped from her life, Elektra had soured on what seemed an inconsequential life of the sport idol. Against her father’s wishes, she had enrolled in the Paragon City Police Academy. Her father had fatalistically accepted Elektra’s new course, having experience with the implacable resolve of his wife, and so Alexandras Duras offered his considerable scientific expertise to the Paragon City PD as well.

Things had actually worked out quite well for the pair after that. Elektra remembered award after award her father had won as he almost single-handedly brought the scientific equipment used in the police force not only up to the state-of-the-art, but also beyond it in some areas. Elektra’s face hardened into chisel-sharp lines as her recent nightmare played again on the screen inside her mind. Her father had been working in the lab attached to their home on the outskirts of the city on that terrible day. A new type of communications breakthrough he had theorized promised to revolutionize not just the police force, but military units and any other occupation where communication was essential: direct mental contact. Once thought the realm of fantasy and comic books, telepathy promised to bring a desperately needed coordination and instant connection to team members involved in life and death struggles on a daily basis.

Elektra put in the colored contacts and inspected herself in the magnifying mirror before standing up. She snatched up her accessories satchel and stalked over to the full-length version along one wall of her bedroom. For months her father struggled to make a practical apparatus from his esoteric formulae. Months that Elektra had learned first hand of the daily sacrifices and pain of her own teammates on the police force. And then finally the terrible afternoon when the explosion echoed through their house. Elektra clenched her fists tightly. The nightmares never really stopped but she had learned to stop talking about them. She had fought the firemen and rescue workers as they dragged her from the remains of her father’s destroyed laboratory. In her frantic madness she had injured more than one of them as she struggled to go back to find her father. The black flames that seemed to eat the light rather than cast it; the tearing heat that shattered skin and bone without leaving burns; the pulsing psychedelic light that beat against brain in pounding waves; none of it had mattered to her. Only finding her father was important. But she had failed at that as well. She hadn’t been able to save either of her parents.

Finally, the EMS techs had been forced to sedate her and she had slipped into a nightmare-infested coma which lasted for more than 3 months. Her nightmares had been even worse then and much more frequent. She had tried to tell the doctors everything before she realized they had no hope of understanding. She learned to keep her thoughts to herself, putting up a shell of dry humor as a wall around her inner demons. When she had been released, Elektra knew that the police force would never be able to give her what she needed to fill the hole left by her parents’ deaths. She had thrown herself into hard physical training, pushing herself far past the limits of her former physical conditioning. She had discovered new skills and frightful powers within herself and had honed them along with her steel-hard resolve to find her father. His body had never been recovered from the lab. His equipment had been destroyed in the explosion but her father’s patents had more than covered her own medical expenses as well as a new place to live. She couldn’t stay in that house any longer and moved to a high-rise in the city. The joking and wisecracks became second nature to her and let her disguise her true self and her real feelings behind a façade few ever saw through. Her wealth had made her into a society-paper debutante and given her the perfect excuse to become an elusive, reclusive figure.

The open window sent cat’s-paws tickling through her white hair as she looked out on the city below. It was still several hours before dawn. Perfect hunting weather. She would find the people responsible for her father’s disappearance; she would find her father. If not tonight, then another night. She wasn’t going to stop until she had. The back alleys and byways of Paragon City had their own sources of information: a whisper-stream that eddied and rushed through the shadows and hidden corners. The whispers told many things to those with ears to hear. A new name had been dropped in the dark pools there, a new hunter prowling the fringes of daylight: Spyker. A name she meant to make sure reached the ears of her prey. Her black-leather wrapped hands gripped the edges of the window as she launched herself out into the void: a tiger-striped missile homing in with single-minded, relentless intensity.

“I’m coming for you. All of you” she whispered as she hurtled crisp night air. Ebony fire flickered down her arms and pulsed through her fingertips as Spyker reached out into the darkness, hunting.

Characters copyright © 2007 all rights reserved. City of Heroes Copyright © NCSoft and Copyright © Cryptic Studios

Copyright © 2007; all rights reserved

Man #1: “How exactly did we end up with an undead vampire working for us?”

Man #2: “Undead vampire is redundant. Nor is there any indication that he actually requires blood to sustain him. We think he just developed a taste for it.

Man #2, continued: “He’s not precisely undead either, not by his account. More like… refused.”

Man #1: “Talk sense or I’ll pull the funding and leave you here to rot with him.”

Man #2: “There’s no reason to believe that he would rot.”

[Man #1 glares hard at Man #2 who sighs, somewhat theatrically, before continuing.]

Man #2: “Very well. He never gave us a name. His story is that he was visited by Death but she, yes she, refused to take him and made him an offer he couldn’t refuse. He ’s been working on earning his place by her side ever since. How long? He didn’t say precisely, but he gives us information like this hidden wing within the underground temple we discovered recently. Rooms that none of our instruments detected, or can detect still for that matter.”

[The two men arrive at an airlock, more like a clean room airlock than one for use underwater or in vacuum. The door is translucent and with no apparent seams. Wavy outlines of four people on the other side can be seen through the material. The conversation is interrupted briefly as the outside door flicks opens abruptly, like a camera shutter. Man #1 jumps slightly at the surprise. Four men wait in the space between the airlock doors, wearing uniforms that include a deep purple beret worn in military style, high-tech, bull-pup design assault weapons, the requisite mirrored sunglasses, and leather vests with spare clips in tight fitting pockets. Three of them spread out slightly for overlapping fields of fire without endangering each other. The two men enter the airlock, the iris snapping shut with a metallic sound behind them, and are searched by the fourth mercenary/security guard. When he finishes without finding anything of interest, the inner door whips open just as abruptly, with no sign to show how it was opened, and the two pass over the threshold. into a rough-hewn tunnel of stone, shored up with worked metal beams at regular intervals. POV shifts around in front of the men, looking back at them, irregularly shifting to a close-up of a speaker's face. The door closes behind them and they resume walking and their conversation. As they walk, their footsteps echo back from the metal panels placed in a grid on the stone floor.]

Man #2: “There was no way he could have known what was there without having been there when it was built. The original owners of these temples killed the architects and builders and anyone associated with its construction in order to preserve their secrets.”

Man #1 scoffs: “Didn’t work out too well for the Egyptians either, did it.”

Man #2 looks impassively at Man #1: “That all depends. Despite all our technology and experience we lost twelve expert men getting this far and there is no reason to believe we would have discovered the hidden chambers. All our research suggests that the people who built this temple predate the Egyptians by quite some time. In fact, the Egyptians likely either learned or copied from whomever put this place together. They weren’t, however, able to duplicate the building material, nor achieve anywhere near the technological sophistication exhibited here.”

[The two men reach an obviously massive metal door. The door is circular, made of a dark metal with jagged veins of bright green. Beside the door are ancient-looking, but recognizable, handprint and retinal scanners. Man #2 steps up to the readers and presents his right hand and right eye, continuing to talk as the door slowly rolls to one side, sliding into the rock wall, but not quite completely disappearing.]

Man #2: “So far, everything he has told us has turned out to be true. He has wandered from continent to continent through the ages, always searching, never finding whatever it is he needs.”

Man #1, sarcastically: “You wanted to be a poet in school, didn’t you.”

Man #2: “You have a small mind.”

[Man #2 motions Man #1 through the portal, following behind him. The door slides slowly and soundlessly shut behind the two as Man #1 shakes his head exasperatedly. The two men continue down another tunnel, but the walls and roof are now supported by struts of the same dark metal as the door. The floor appears to be stone, but it does not echo their footsteps like the previous metallic flooring.]

Man #2: “He found us, which should give you a good indication of his talents, and offered himself up for our research, provided that we supply him with whatever technology we have that he wants. We took him up on it.”

Man #1, his agitation beginning to show more openly: “Are you mad? He’s only using us!”

Man #2: “Of course he is. Neither of us is under any delusions here. In addition to submitting to medical and physical tests, he gives us tidbits like the location of this hidden wing. We keep him loaded up with tech, provide the opportunity to use his skills for us, and occasionally provide backup support. He has apparently always worked something like this, joining groups like the Illuminati, the New World Order, and similar organizations that are in advance of the general level of technology present in the dominant culture of the region.”

Man #1, very agitated now: “Who the hell approved this? You damn scientists need to see the bigger picture! It’s a good thing the front office sent me down here!”

[Man #2 calmly pushes against a rectangle in the wall outlined in faint blue light. He again motions Man #1 forward through the doorway, which is only large enough for one at a time to enter. Man #1 charges angrily through, throwing his words back over his shoulder. Inside, the room is dim, only faintly lit in the pervasive blue glow emanating from where the walls meet the ceiling. There is no sign of what is producing the light however. The outline of a man in the same uniform as the airlock guards is standing in front of another door on the far side of the room. Man #1's footsteps ring back from the smooth metal floor as he stamps farther into the room. POV stays with Man #2 in the hallway, looking through the doorway.]

Man #1: “For God’s sake, how many of these little tin soldiers do you have?”

[Man #2, ignoring the comment, continues his words from where he stands in the hallway.]

Man #2: “It’s a very reasonable arrangement. He has already returned the investment of his equipment tenfold.”

[Man #1, whirls around toward Man #2 still standing in the hall. POV shifts irregularly to closeups of the two men as they talk.]

Man #1: “Really! And what else is he going to want from us in the future? You people have to learn to plan ahead. Always lost in your computers and charts. What controls do we have in place? What hold do we have over him?”

Man #2: “He has existed for centuries. There is little likelihood that we could hold him against his will. However, he is still getting used to the current level of technology and we offer him safety and provide for his needs. It works out quite well actually.”

Man #1 replies sarcastically: “Needs? If he’s that powerful, what does he need? Money? Women? The secret recipe for Coca Cola?”

Man #2: “Not precisely. We bring him people with small minds. Lots of them.”

[Man #2 manipulates a control out of sight and the door whips closed with a solid sound. Hurried footsteps from within can be heard as Man #2 turns away and begins walking back down the corridor in a relaxed manner. As Man #2 moves down the hall., POV slides around until it is behind him, but does not follow him down the hall, so that Man #2 gets smaller as he moves down the hall. Man #1's voice rises to a muffled screaming of words that fades slowly in the growing distance. Muffled banging noises come from the door as Man #1 beats his fists against it. POV stays focused on Man #2's back as he walks away.]

Man #1, muffled but clear: “But… but… No! No! I’m in charge here!”

Man #2, stopping briefly: “Not precisely.”

[Man #2, shakes his head as a scream rises in volume and is cut short]

Man #2, quietly: “Idiot.”

[Fade to black as Man #2 walks down the hall.]

This story began life as an exercise in dialog that eventually may develop further, but for now it is just a scene. Hopefully a vivid one for all its lack of detailed description. The ending probably isn’t much of a surprise, it was the juxtaposition of words that I enjoyed writing.

Copyright © 2007; all rights reserved.

In her castle of rose-tinted marble the timid fingers of dawn caressed her satin cheeks and gently stroked the crystal sphere between her long, slender fingers until a gentle echo of the rising sun’s warmth stirred the crystal’s sluggish interior. Auburn hair cascaded from her downward tilted head, but even that thick curtain failed to hide the sparkling green ice of her eyes. She raised her gaze briefly to stare through the open window set high into the tower’s walls. The shining sphere in her hands reflected her form; echoing the curve of her alabaster neck, the swell of breasts gently trapped in the white fur wrap she wore. She rose gracefully from the stone bench, one hand grasping the cool crystal in her warm hand while the other flattened the wrinkles in her silk dress against her smooth skin. Outside the window a shadow flickered past, gone nearly before it was seen, and a hawk screamed in fury easily heard above the low roar of the waves eternally crashing far below. Her head flashed up in response to that wild cry and for a moment she was filled with the pure untouched wildness of an arctic night. She arched her throat as if to answer that lonely cry and eldritch flames leaped up around her. Blue-white tongues of fire played about her lithe form, twining fiery ropes among her limbs and about her face. For an instant it seemed that she would transform, must transform, completely into a wild creature and leap through the casement into the sky. The morning air rippled about her as the flames arched and spun about her; sometimes obscuring, sometimes revealing the elfin body.

The power she drew from within warped the space around her until she could scarce be seen through the waves of distortion and then suddenly collapsed into the crystal in her palm. The crystal flared brightly, banishing all the shadows from the tower room. An instant later the light disappeared abruptly enough to take breath away, the daylight hesitantly streaming through the window seeming scarcely brighter now than the light from a guttering candle. Her gaze returned to the crystal as she resumed her seat. Within the sphere tiny figures danced under her intense scrutiny, running in unfathomable patterns; living, laughing, and dying between the sapphire glitter of her fingernails. Children played and laughed. Women loved and sang and wept. Men fought and died in ways horrible and honorable and indescribable. Her gaze never faltered. Her hand never flinched.

Passionate fire lighted the emerald casements of her eyes as drama after drama waxed and waned, but the lady moved not a hairsbreadth. Patient as the sea that threw itself at the foot of the tower far below her, she searched the globe, waiting for something or someone to appear. The sun traveled on unnoticed and the shadows grew long as those ageless, unblinking, impossible eyes peered through the veils of time and space, searching endlessly for something long ago lost.

Copyright © 2007; all rights reserved.

“Ey Carla. Ya mind pointin’ dat blamed Gatling gun da other direction?”

The beautiful young woman standing beside the long black sedan pointing the barrel of a truly huge weapon at the dark figure behind the passenger window did not appear to hear the question. The sound of the slide ratcheting back was loud in the silence.
“C’mon Carla, it ain’t been dat long.”

Her shoulder-length black hair shifted gently in the cool spring breeze as she raised the impressive assault-rifle style weapon to the bare shoulder showing above her form-fitting red dress. Impenetrable black sunglasses covered her eyes and there was no expression on her face as she flipped the fire selection lever to ’slaughter’. The solid snap of the safety seemed to echo from the concrete driveway.

“Do I know you, slick? More importantly, do you know who my daddy is?”

The door of the sedan opened and a black slouch hat emerged from the shaded interior and rose slowly as the man exited the vehicle and stood up. And stood up. And kept going up. Carla’s carefully manicured eyebrows rose slightly as she took in the mountain of a man dwarfing her. Mirrored sunglasses wrapped around a square face beneath the brim of the black hat. A precisely trimmed mustache and goatee surrounded his mouth and matched the short-cropped red-black sideburns. Carla was tall for a woman, taller than her father and her father was almost six feet tall, but the top of her head would come in somewhat below this giant man’s chin. Grey shirtsleeves rolled back over the unbuttoned black suit jacket’s sleeves straining ominously over forearms that made Popeye look anemic and fingerless red leather gloves were strapped to hands seemingly larger than her head.

The roar of her high-caliber rifle on full automatic brought two machine-gun toting guards bursting through the high-arched doors of the mansion behind her. They immediately split to each side of the thick wooden doors and took shelter behind the marble columns supporting the ancient portico, black gun-barrels locked on the giant figure surrounded by a cascade of brass and compressed lead bullets. With a slight grimace the enormous man brushed at the front of his dress shirt and straightened his tie, knocking loose several more flattened lead pellets to fall to the ground.

“Carla! Put that away. Now.”

Carla carefully moved three steps backward before lowering her weapon to hip level. The barrel waved almost negligently back and forth in the general direction of the sedan.

“Carla. Now.”

“Yes Papa” she said in a small and almost disappointed tone. A quick motion of her wrist and the raven-haired beauty was suddenly empty-handed. She turned toward the slender figure of the older man standing in the high-arched doorway beneath the columned portico. “A girl can’t be too careful you know.”

A slight smile showed white teeth on the face of the man as he walked toward his daughter. “Carla, you’re surrounded by enough men to invade a small country. You just like showing off.”

An impish smile curved her ruby lips and transformed her face before she assumed an air of injured innocence. “Why Papa, you say the most outrageous things!” She turned her face back toward the man standing silently by the sedan. “Hat. Shades. Gloves.” she said musingly as she slipped one long arm around the narrow waist of her father. “Gio? Whynhell didncha say so?! You made me waste almost a full clip.” She looked at him appraisingly, “You’re a little bigger than I remember from the prom.”

A slow blush crept up from the giant’s unbuttoned collar across the man’s craggy face. The older man shook his head slightly as he held out his hand to be briefly engulfed by the other man. “Welcome Sergio Giordano. Thank you for coming.”

“It was an offer I couldn’t refuse, Don Tortelli” came a rumbling basso reply from deep in the cavernous chest. “Consigliere Castiglione mentioned that you needed a little, ah ’special’ assistance down here in Paragon. It was a fine time to take a little trip” he finished respectfully, tipping the front of his hat to the Don of the Tortelli Family and his daughter. “Don Lavigni sends his respects.”

“Come inside and we’ll talk” answered the older man as he guided his daughter back toward the mansion, the hulking giant bringing up the rear behind them. “I have this situation that requires an, ah, delicate touch” he said as the two machine-gun toting guards closed the doors behind them.

“Me? I’m jus’ da backup driver” rumbled the very large man through the open car window. The smartly dressed PPD sergeant’s mouth opened slightly to frame a suitably acid reply as the man passed a business card to him. “Tortelli Construction. We’re here ta make a delivery.” The policeman took the card automatically but had only glanced at it before the window in the rear door slid down soundlessly and a soft contralto said “Tommy! How’s the missus doin’ after her surgery? You know we were all concerned. Mario and I are just showing our new driver the byways of Kings Row. He’s new and we wouldn’t want him to get confused and upset, now would we?”

The flustered cop looked at Gio’s impassive face and stuttered out an apologetic reply before turning and striding quickly away.

“Gio, don’t frighten the nice men in uniform.”

“Yes ma’am.”

“Mario, you stay here. We won’t be long.”

Sergio stepped carefully out of the car that was scarcely large enough to hold him and opened the rear door. Carla unfolded her long legs and gracefully stepped out, pointedly ignoring the hand he extended to help her. Shrugging slightly he closed the door and fell into step behind her as they approached the somewhat run-down facade of the large brownstone huddled in the back alleys of the area in Kings Row known as the Gish.

Carla reached for the doorknob, but Sergio’s long arm reached it first. She whirled on him angrily, but stopped at the look on his face. “Beggin’ yer pardon Carla, but dis is what I’m here for.”

“I don’t need no damn babysitter!” she stormed as her assault rifle materialized out of nowhere into her hands.

“Carla, you may kill me cuz ya don’t like it, but dat’s nothin’ compared ta what da Boss will do ta me if’n I don’t do my job.”

She snarled at him, but lowered the barrel. “Fine, fine. I’ll deal with you later. We’re here to explain to these goombah Skull twits that free-lancers aren’t welcome here any more. Their stupid little scams are bringing in too much super-powered attention.”

“Yeh, I’ve dealt wit’ a few of dem types” rumbled Sergio. “Dey don’t seem ta unnerstand how it is.”

“That’s right. We’re gonna take down crime and take it over til all these super-noseys run out of things to do here and get out. Then we branch out to Steel C and Skyway.” Carla made a complex little motion and attached the underbarrel flamethrower that appeared in her hand to the assault rifle. An actinic blue flame leapt forth at the front of the barrel.

“Some day you gotta show me how you do dat.”

“Don’t hold your breath big guy. A girl’s got secrets. Now open the damn door or get outta my damn way!”

Something almost like a sigh slipped from Sergio’s lips as he casually ripped the doorknob and lock completely out of the steel door. “Dese posers need better locks” he said as he kicked the door off its hinges and walked over it into the dark hallway. The skull-masked man flattened under the door moaned as Sergio stomped down and crushed the ganger deeper into the wooden floor. A second street punk pulled a handgun just in time to have his face rearranged by the bone and sinew mallet of Sergio’s right fist. The last tough made a split-second choice to go for his phone rather than his gun, but phone and body went different directions as Sergio casually slapped him into the wall. The unconscious man slid bonelessly to the floor as Sergio crushed the celphone beneath his black leather shoe.

“Silence is golden.” Sergio grinned bleakly as a sound like a monstrous zipper announced Carla had found targets for her full auto assault. “Or not” he mumbled as he turned and charged down the hall.

Mario moved the car smoothly away from the curb as Sergio popped open his cellphone. Carla let out a happy sigh from the plush rear seat as they slipped into the traffic flow like a shark through water.

“Paulie? Better let me talk ta the Doc. Yeah, I know. Just do it Paulie. Doc, we’re gonna need a coupla cleaners. Geezit, I know already! Carla got a little carried away. And for God’s sake don’ say nothin’ about dis. You know how he feels about it. Thanks Doc. Paulie’s got da beep from my phone. Lemme know when yer done.”
There was a sudden scream from the rear of the car. Mario whipped the big sedan between two sports cars with scant inches to spare and bounced over the median to turn into a crossing street, accelerating smoothly into the straightaway.

“WHATHEHELL!!” Sergio yelled as he was flung against the door by Mario’s defensive maneuver.

“I broke a friggin’ nail!” Carla screamed at him. “Somebody’s gonna pay for that!”

Characters copyright © 2007 all rights reserved. City of Heroes Copyright © NCSoft and Copyright © Cryptic Studios