The Marauders

"6-6-6, the number of the beast! Hell and fire were born to be released!"
The ancient rock and roll poured out from the toshibamitzu speakers with it's normal cringe and crackle of its fraying wires. Donovan tuned them down, and sat back putting his feet up on the console. All systems read normal, no life detected, no foreign objects, no planets. Nothing but empty space. He switched off the system link and walked to the galley, it was empty. The rest of the crew still fast asleep. There isn't time in space, he thought, not like on the surface of an earth, so it wasn't early, nor was it late. To be precise, the sun was in the noon position in accordance with the ship, but it was sleep time.
He pulled himself down the hatch into the galley, which was also devoid of any life. He opened a pack of freeze dried beef and chewed off a large chunk in his teeth. It was all you could get out here on the edge of the bubble, in the deep empty of the void. But this was where they cast their nets, this is where the big fish were. Or so someone kept saying. Just one old junker and they'd all be rich as noblemen and they could buy their own ships, their own fleets even. Just one battleship, one weapons transport, at this point he'd take anything, even a passenger transport, the railway of the universe, could load their pockets enough to sail back home and buy some real food for once. But so far it had been two months and they'd seen nothing but empty space. He had been staring at the monitors for what seemed like ages, but they never changed, never flickered, just the same message, no life detected, present course maintained. He started back to the flight deck. Moose would freak if he left his post.
The monitors were still cold blue, so Donovan slumped down in the pilots seat and left it on cruise. Moose kept saying they'd be there soon, but where he didn't know. The edge of the bubble? The edge of the world? The next earth? Wherever it was, it was still far, far away. 16 years ago, 8 of them had left Almera; Alerz and Carus, they died ten years ago when the ship came down with a deep space virus. And Saulh got left behind when the captain learned about his bounty, instead of cashing him in, Moose just let him go. Donovan still never understood that. In the years after they drifted through space, from world to world and station to station, trading what they could, and pirating when they couldn't. And four years, or five? Or six? Or more, since they had last seen another operating ship. They had scalped provisions from deep space freighters and old research vessels that had died deep in the void, and pirated any other small ships they came across, but now? Now it had been two years or more since they had even seen a ship. The food and fuel would soon be running low. They'd have to float back home, if they could even get there. He didn't want to think about that. Years and years. He shuddered.
They had passed other worlds, worlds vast and giant, but without any life. Swirling balls of deadly gas, uninhabitable to anything but dust, one surrounded with a great ring of billions and billions of rocks, but had to pass on. They were empty, lonely sentinels of the darkness. Moose had pushed on. He said he knew it was there, he knew we were close. But he didn't say to what, or where. They pushed on anyway, through the deep, through a field of asteroids, where they almost were crushed about a thousand times, but they had survived, somehow they had survived. And on they floated, into the deep, towards the burning red star on the horizon.
Then they found the great red rock. From a year out they could see it, the orange speck at first, then a big red spot laying in wait before them. That's when, briefly, Donovan's hope had returned, behind the red rock was a blue dot in the distance. He wanted to head straight for it, but Moose said no. They needed to stop, check out the big red rock, he said. The monitors had remained the same, no life detected.
They had found a few minor space craft, small and robotically piloted, but nothing worth raiding for supplies. It was hopeful though, it meant something was out here in the depth of space. Two months of searching the red rock led us nowhere, and Caron got lost in a dust storm and never came back, so we pulled out. Just four of us now, and Moose. The only thing we did manage to find out there was low grade fuel, usable, but not good enough to get us very far. The blue dot though, that was where the others were, he could feel it. The whole reason they had begun this journey, the reason they had given their lives away. To find the other earths, and he had no doubt this was one. Just a year or two more, he thought, and we'll be there.
It had been three years since they left the great red rock, and though that tiny blue dot got bigger and bigger, it still seemed so small out in the blackness. But he was sure now, that blue, blue was ocean, water, the source of all life. They were nearly at journeys end, one of these days those monitors would pick up something, anything. They must be close to their range, he thought, soon we can make contact. But what would they once they arrived? And he thought, what if they aren't a developed enough species to receive the call? What if we're stuck here. But he had resigned himself to that long before, they were stuck out here and they were never going home. Time would not allow it.
The deck was quiet and comforting to him, the way it curved around him like the walls of some interstellar womb, keeping them safe from the dark that loomed in all directions. He sank in the pilots seat, and felt the warmth of the condensed air from the heater, and closed his eyes. At first, he merely drifted, he heard the monitors blink and beep and hum, but he paid them little mind. It was a chorus he had grown all too accustom in his many years of service at the helm; an orchestra that was mathematically predictable. First, every six seconds, the monitor gave a soft but shrill beep that let you know it was still on and detecting life. Every nine seconds, the console would chirp, mainly because it was old and wired improperly, then after seven more seconds, it would blip, Donovan didn't know why. All the while the rest of the machines and instruments would chrip, beep, blip, hum, drone, and whine all in their different times, a chaotic ensemble of in-cohesive sounds, but still something that now, to Donovan at least, was so eerily comforting. It never changed, it was constant, and he longed for it now. Before he could protest, he was fast asleep, and floating through the deep of space.
He woke up and there was a new instrument leaking through the glorious noise. A beepbeepbeepbeepbeep he hadn't heard in years, and the red letters flashing on his monitor screen, "vessel detected." he rubbed the raw from his eyes, it must be a dream he thought. But there it was, plain as day, "vessel detected." He sprang to life, hailing out for anything.
"this is the Marauder, calling all ships, do you copy?" but no one responded. He brought up the radar, there it was, a great green speck in the corner. He set course and kept hailing.
"what's going on?" Donovan jumped, "whoa it's only me," it was Arrack the ship mechanic.
"you scared me that's all," Donovan said.
"well this alarms going off in all the cabins," Lena was with him. The ships, well, lady, "what's up D?"
"we found something," he grinned, "it's a ship."
"a big ship?" said Arrack.
"a huge ship," Donovan replied. He pointed to the radar, "look."
"what is it?" Moose was there. Captain Moose that is.
"it's a ship sir," Donovan began, but Arrack cut him off.
"a big ship captain," he said.
"you call em yet," Moose went on.
"of course," Donovan said, "but so far, no response." Moose shook his head.
"there's no one on that ship," he was looking up at the window, where the hulk of some old battleship lay limping through the void. It was cut stem to stern, it's pieces scattered around it in a great sloping arc. "Its the Hammer of Heaven, they're all dead."
"it's not the Hammer," Donovan said, "that's a myth."
"what do we do then?" Lena asked.
"we raid her, take what we can, and move on," Moose walked briskly toward the galley saying, "Donovan, wake up Ces, and go see what you can find."
"whose gonna fly the ship?" said Arrack, but Moose was gone. "wow, he's pissed"
"yea but about what?" said Donovan, and he walked out of the deck to get his gear on.
"you think hes right? That its the Hammer?" Arrack was asking Lena. Donovan spun on him.
"it's not the fucking Hammer alright, that ship doesn't exist, it's just a ghost story they tell you in the group homes."
"you don't know that for sure," Lena said, "there's documented evidence of a ship called "hammer of heaven..." Donovan cut her off.
"five hundred years ago Lena," Donovan barked, "now if I hear any more about the ghost ship..."
"you'll do what?" Lena said, folded her arms across her breasts in a defiant pose. How he wanted to lay his head upon those breasts again, to kiss her soft lips, taste her wet love in his mouth, but she wasn't his anymore. That was a long, long time ago, when they were lovers, when she was all his. He stared into her grey green eyes and tried to keep his feelings hidden behind a partition exterior of commanding might, but she wasn't fazed. She knows me all too well, he thought.
"I'll beat you both," he finally said, "I'm your commanding officer, and you'll do as I say." he felt like a heel pulling rank like that.
"I'd like to see you try," Lena said, getting right up in his face. He wanted to kiss her, but she'd probably shoot him again.
"get to your station petty officer," he said, "this discussion is over." she laughed in his face, and walked away. His eye followed her every move.

New Jericho: Third District.

9-10: New Jericho: Third District: 9&45: General Inspector Dexter Moyhn, Pains and Justice Division, First Class.

What a scene, Moyhn thought, the heads hacked clean off. They had found the body dumped down a garbage shaft in the third district. Plugged up the drains, the shit started to over flow, some of the workers went to clean out the clog and found the mangled corpse. After an inspection, the second division idiots had pulled the body out, before Moyhn got to the scene. He harshly reprimanded the two third class officers, then set about his work inspecting the corpse. The man had been very fond of the color black, Moyhn noted, draped head to toe in it including his shoes, and though the head had been severed, a black pointed cap lay on the floor near the shaft entrance, black as well.
"he obviously an officer," Moyhn said suddenly, "or a mafioso, Simyon, check out the other departments. Did anyone have officers operating in the vicinity of the third district, Building 451?" a moment later, Simyon answered.
"four hundred and nine officers live in the building itself, mainly from division seven, but only twenty were operating in the area during the approximated time."
"ok," Moyhn thought, "any covert operations, security clearance first class."
"code accepted, yes sir," Simyon droned, "one. Ways and means officer Rudolf Gentz, third class." Moyhn shook his head. He was so obvious, Moyhn thought, any moron could tell you were a cop Gentz.
"that's what I thought," He turned to his second in command, Petr, "let's get a positive ID on officer Gentz, clean up this mess, oh and notify the Ways and Means that they have a funeral to arrange." and perhaps a widows pension, Moyhn thought. "And get me a receiver as well," he needed to call this one in. The ways and means division were operating out of their jurisdiction, but for some reason this mission, secret as it was to his eyes, was cleared by the executive of ways and means. It smelled rotten, like Gentz's corpse, which two officers where wheeling by him on a gurney. That's when he saw it, in Gentz's front pocket.
"stop a moment," he said to the other officers, and slid a thin silver disc from the pocket. "evidence," Moyhn said to the younger officer, "now run along." As they wheeled the body out, Moyhn could hear one of the officers saying, "he's the inspector general, he can do what he wants..."
Moyhn studied the strange disc for some time, but it gave him no secrets. It was lost technology, perhaps, a relic from the years before the war and the devastation and the island of New Jericho. And why did Gentz, some low ranking cop, have it in the first place? He tried calling Ways and Means commissioner Davidson, but his cyborg secretary said he was dining with Wars and Peace vice commander Recht, and Laws and Orders Chaplain Murgoid. Three fat old men sitting on their fat assess, Moyhn thought. How did anything ever get done in this city, except dinner parties. They sit behind their porcelain plates and polished glassware eating steak and potatoes while the rest of the nation takes supplement pills. Made of course by the divisions themselves. It really was a clever scam when you thought about it, and seldom do the elite of any culture eat like the commons they lord above. A clever scam indeed.
Moyhn pocketed the disc and handed the pre report to the commanding officer, a slouching desk cop from laws and orders named Ballack, before making his call in to the elder commissioner of pains and justice. Commissioner Greyn would be hard at work per usual, pouring over notes and files and paperwork in his solar at the Pain and Justice building. The old fart would probably die there at his desk, found only by his assistant bringing in the morning instant coffee. Greyn's secretary appeared on his vision.
"ah, Inspector General, the commissioner was awaiting your report, I'll put you through at once."
Greyn appeared a second later, nearly obscured by the mound of work upon the desk before him, Moyhn could only make out the top of his head, the pale neon lights shining off his smooth bald head.
"Moyhn," he said in a gruff voice, "what's the status?"
"ways and means officer Gentz," Moyhn said, "name ring a bell?"
"not really."
"well he's dead for one," Moyhn continued, "the body in the shaft was his, and according to his division, he was on some secret mission."
"what secret mission?"
"that I don't know," Moyhn hated this eternal game of run around Greyn played. Everytime he presented a report, Greyn would act like he had five heads growing out of his neck, "its highly classified, I thought you could-" he was interrupted.
"yea, yea, I'll get you the clearance," Greyn waived his hand as if to say we have more important things to discuss. "first you gotta get over to the floating city, we got another one." Greyn transmitted the coordinates and signed off with a last "don't fuck this up." Moyhn gritted his teeth. He have to remember to destroy Greyn once he became Commissioner. Make sure he ends up in a cell in the punishment sector, where all traitors to the ministry go to pay back their sins. Deep below the beautiful city to rot away forever more. Moyhn smiled. He felt much better now.

9-10: New Jericho: 9&50: Detective Alan Merwyn

When Alan finally got back to his apartment it was near ten. The cops downstairs had questioned him from the moment he turned the corner in the car port. Two of them, one big and beefy the other big and lanky, wearing the silver badges of laws and orders division; the grunts. They were the division in charge of keeping the peace in the residential zone, glorified traffic cops handing out speeding vouchers and doing detail work. Most of the guys in laws and orders had failed the other exams and this was the last place left for them, other than manual labor. The beefy one held out a sweaty hand to stop Alan as he went for the lift.
"Scuse me Detective," said the lanky one. They know who I am, Alan thought, "we need you to come with us. The Inspector General wants to see you." Moyhn? Alan thought, what the hell does he want with me?
The two cops had led him into the lobby of his building, which had been turned into a sort of operations center. L&O officers were rushing back and forth shouting to each other, setting up equipment and relaying messages. At the center, looking down over a massive vision monitor was Vice Inspector Ethan Black in his gaudy uniform. Black had served during the revolution two years back and had won several medals for his distinguished service, which dangled now from above his breast pocket in all his egotism. At least it's not Moyhn, Alan thought, he's a deamon.
Black questioned Alan for three hours, from the lift video surveillance footage Alan and Gentz, who after some deliberation on Alans part, he found to be quite dead, were seen together. "a heated exchange" as Inspector Black called it. Alan was furious, he just wanted to crawl into bed and never again awake.
Of course, there was also footage from the car port, which clearly showed Alan leaving for work for his solid alibi. When he pointed this out, the questioning ended almost immediately, and Black stormed out of the interrogation room in a huff. He just wants someone to blame, Alan thought, and maybe they'll give you another shiny fucking medal for that too.
The television blared at him as he opened the door to flat 451, blasted things broken again, he thought dimming the set and slinking down into the cushions of his sofa. A newscaster with a perfectly plastered coif of salmon brown hair was reading the evening news in a voice like butter.
"15 dead in an accident at the north point research center..."the newscaster said, "an apparent terrorist suicide attack, more on this tonight at 11:11 and again at one and noon tomorrow. Now to sports, we have Jerry here to talk about this weeks battle, Mangar Bloodbreath takes his twenty one win hotstreak up against Matty the Mauler, who just last week severed the head of The Mainfeild Maniac in the second tilt. It's sure to be a gruesome death for one of these competitors eh Jerry?"
"yeah and though Mangar's really been training up for this one, I think the mauler may have his number in this one..." Jerry said. Alan got up and poured a glass of beer for himself.
"Mangar's gonna win anyway," he thought, "everyone knows the death battles are fixed." But still entertaining to a degree, it would be fun to bet on how long it would take Mangar to break out his special move and simply rip his opponent in half. I've got to put some money on that one he thought.
He dreamt about Gentz that night, but the young and hotheaded corpse kept morphing into inspector black, his fat red face surfacing to mock and bleat. Then he would morph back into Gentz, his throat slit his eyes yellow and rolled back into his head, his laughing smile, tongue hanging black and limp from the side of his toothy grin. That disturbed Alan enough he woke in a hot fevered sweat and shouted something like "Gentz!" before shaking the sleep from his eyes and staring around the empty room. The next morning was a headache like a fist in the forehead, and Alan fought to keep the thought of Gentz's black lifeless tongue from his mind well into the day.
He got dressed and swallowed a breakfast tablet and caffeine capsule as he wisked out the door, the sun hanging orange and low in the sky like a bloody eye. The vile hot wind blew into his face and he breathed hard into his mask. The street was barren as always, aside from the occasional scarp of packaging paper or plastic bag floating disembodied in the stale morning air. Today the sky was a pale shade of green, grown sickly brown over the rust ocean and the many naval freighters that kept their silent vigil over the bloody water; run aground hundreds of years ago they had become like thousands of tiny islands hewn from metal and dust and rust. The closest, a mega cruise liner called The Queen Marie, had settlements on it; but the air there was thick with toxin and mainly the inhabitants were workers from the rust ocean renewal project research team. Alan could just make out the knife of hull wreching up from the north coast waters, the tiny dots of civilization buzzing like ants in the distance. He took the train into central port, not wanting to waste money on fuel, and swallowed a drammamil on the platform while he waited. Another day of no leads, he thought. And probably more cases, Yosen had mentioned some guy in the floating city whose weight exceeded the legal limit the night before. Hadn't people learned? It had been twenty years since the New Jericho Peace Accord.
Alan took another pill, he didnt remember which, in the lift up to his office. Luckily the lift remained empty this time. He found himself thinking about Gentz. What the hell happened to you? Alan thought, and right after we talked...not my department, he had to remind himself when he opened his office door and saw Yosen sitting in his chair.
"ah, it's you " Alan said putting up his coat and mask, "and what the hell do you want Chief? Come to give me the men I need?"
"don't get smart," Yosen said, "you'll only get a cyborg, so we'll have no more talk of that." Yosen had a broad mustache which he stroked as he reprimanded. Alan wanted to pull it off his fat face. "bigger problem, we got a national crisis on our hands"
"a crisis?" Alan stiffened.
"a crisis that falls under our jurisdiction Alan," Yosen had a big grin, "we can finally win the recognition we deserve, don't you see! This could be the case of the century!"
Alan tallied that this was the fourth time Yosen had used such words; so far no case of the century. Yosen didn't give him time to speak.
"get over to the floating city, Moyhn'll brief you on the way, he's waiting in the car port." Alans heart dropped. Moyhn? Why him? It could have been anyone but him, even inspector black. Moyhn. Moyhn was different. Alan made his way without much more protest. When he got to the lifts, they were all out for maintenance, so he took the stairs. When's the last time I did this, he laughed to himself, but he was sweating the hard. The air conditioning unit in the stairwell wasn't working. He took off his jacket and rolled up his sleeves.
On the carport floor he stooped to catch his breath. He was drenched in sweat, his face and neck beet red, and he fought for air. What a bloody mess, he thought as he walked into the carport still sweating hard, but the air here was on full and he smiled as the blast took him. He wanted nothing more than to stay there forever basking in the jet of freezing air, but then he saw the black sedan, and Moyhn, and reality set back in.
"hullo there Inspector General," Alan said, "detective Alan Merwyn, health and wellness," and extended his hand

New Jericho

The Floating City

9-10: New Jericho: Third District: 6&30: Detective Alan Merwyn, Health and Wellness Division, Second Class

Alan woke to a buzzing siren, like every morning, a herald of the days coming misfortune. The metallic bleat of the buzzer signaled the arrival of six and thirty, time to get up and go to work, as the mantras say. He rose from the tiny moth eaten cot, sliding out from the comfort of his tattered wool blanket. His feet met the floor, cold linoleum, and recoiled without touch, sending a lightning bolt of tension through his body. He grabbed a cigarette and his lighter from the side table and stood, stretching the tremors of the previous night from his back and lighting up, gazed out his thirty fifth story window toward the spiraling columns of the third district housing project below.
The city was a masterpiece of human ego indulgence; when man had exerted it's capabilities to curtail an exploding growth in population, and found the world mired in grief and sin, he simply built over the remains of his failure and raised a nation. In other words, they just kept building and building, mostly residential complexes like this one, until the land was completely covered. But the population continued to grow, and they had to start building over the sea. Alan gazed toward the old harbor, where a massive platform had been raised at the cities edge, at least ten miles wide and added to each day. On the face, you couldn't really tell it was a platform at all, since a sprawling slum had appeared there almost over night. Down there they called it the floating city. Up here they call it the Shit Hole. Or the Fuck Hole, it depends on who you're asking.
West of the floating city Alan could just make out the ruined sector, twenty square miles of city left electrically unsound after a botched government experiment on cyborgs using nuclear powered core weapons, and beyond that the rust ocean (an ocean of rusty water that, apparently goes on eternal) and Tower Island jutting out of the reddish brown water like a pleading hand to the heavens. The waves lapped around it's base engorging a thick black foam, the same color of the dark clouds in the ashen sky, and it left behind a stench that one would not believe, but the buildings filtered all that nasty smell out. But I've still got to go out there, he thought.
He dressed, hazmat breeches and protective face mask, and made a cup of instant coffee, which he forgot anyway, and rushed out the door, swallowing down two little green Aspadoza pills and one big orange Subuxone pill as he got in the elevator and pushed the button for the car port. When the doors wisked open, Alan breathed a sigh of relief to see the lift was empty, his medication hadn't taken effect yet and he had one nagging bitch of a hangover, so needless to say, his ability for social interaction was low. And his horrorscope said today was "a day of ill omens" which definitely couldnt be a very good sign. Alan was a crab, and it was the year of the fisherman, so bad luck was in abundance.
The lift doors opened on the very next floor down, and when they did it caused Alan to jump. A tall thin man in a black suit, with matching black pointed toe shoes, socks, gloves, sunglasses (which shouldn't really be worn indoors, bad omen, Alan thought) and a black peaked cap to top it all off. He was obviously a cop. Alan could smell another cop no matter how good his intrigue, but this guy was being blatant. If he's not, Alan thought, then I'm the grand high sultan. The obvious cop noticed Alan watching him and quivered nervously.
"lovely morning," Alan said in a loud voice. His meds were kicking in and he felt a surge of confidence enough to make small talk. The obvious cop just nodded and turned his eyes to the countdown above the door. Why do people do that, Alan thought, it's very rude. He coughed.
"you're a cop" he said, and the obvious cop turned on a dime, "it's ok," he produced a badge, "I'm with public safety, detective Alan Merwyn, food and wellness division, second class." The cop just stared back at him, his lip flinching. What is with this guy? He's getting all bent out of shape, Alan thought.
"Gentz," he spurted, "ways and means division, fourth class," there was defeat in that. He was admitting his lesser rank, was that his problem? No, Alan thought, there's something else. "how did you-"
"know you were a cop?" Alan laughed, " the black. The black always gives it away, as you can see, my jumpsuit is brown. They never expect a cop to wear brown because the commons wear brown. The cops and the government guys always wear black," he tried to tap a finger against Gentz's head, but he pulled away.
"hey!" he shouted.
"the sunglasses," Alan said calmly.
"the what?" Gentz shouted.
"the sunglasses, nobody wears sunglasses in doors except cops and mafioso. So, which one are you?" Gentz gave him a menacing look, then pulled the glasses off. Alan grimaced, Gentz had what the common folk would call an evil eye. Science types call it Posion Tears. I'd call it a fucking nightmare of dried puss and blood, Alan thought.
"that's why you fucking prick!" Gentz was saying, "what do you think of this huh?" Alan laughed.
"watch it Gentz, or I'll give you two eyes like that," and the conversation was finished. They stood in silent tension until the bell rang for the car port and Alan departed. For a moment he turned to say something to Gentz, but the young cop was red faced and sweating like he was holding his breath, and Alan thought better of it. He got in his car as the elevator doors closed again and Gentz was gone. A fucking prick, Alan thought as he swallowed down a breakfast supplement pill, he called me a fucking prick and I didn't blind him, I must be getting soft.

He drove from his buildings car port to the metroway and joined the daily march of slowly ascending traffic. It reminded him of a highly oiled machine, or a line of cattle in a slaughterhouse, blindly pushing forward to the inevitable doom that lay before them. Seven brightly shining plain metal buildings jutting from the rabble, the divisions of the state; wars and peace, laws and orders, pains and justice, ways and means, past and future, air and climate, and finally his own health and wellness (or food and wellness depending on who you ask). Each gleaming tower held a million workers each, and these streams of fuel efficient hybrid electric vehicles poured into them from the metro like plankton engulfed by the gaping mouth of a whale.
The tension with Gentz still bit at him, so he swallowed a paxifril and two more Subuxone before his car reached the load port inside the health and wellness building. The vision screen on his dashboard was showing a news clip from the wars and peace division's war on poverty, shiny armor clad patrol men in minitanks watching over the floating city, a smiling officer handing out bread pills to dirty children, the clean (to an extent) streets of the plaza.
"...and forty more years," the news reader was saying, but Alan turned the volume to mute, the noise was upsetting his head. The screen flashed some scenes, that Alan could tell were staged, of the recent capture of a rebel leader in the ruins. Then a commercial for military insurance, but Alan wasn't paying much attention. He knew that it was a vice to not pay attention, especially to a patriotic broadcast, but the encounter with Gentz had him in a torrid state of mind. There was something that nagged at him about the young cop, something strange about the way he acted. Ways and means was a division of silencers and assassins, spies and turncoats. Information specialists. Alan supposed it was possible that Gentz lived there, there were too many people living there to know them all, but for some reason he doubted it. Problem was, he could say why exactly, maybe cause Gentz called him a "fucking prick." Technically insubordination to a ranking officer, Alan thought, I'll file the paperwork tomorrow.
The car lift jolted to a halt and Alan got out onto the fifty fifth floor of the hall of Heath and wellness. While the lower floors, used for specimen processing, violation screening, and of course prisoner and paperwork storage, were busy with the footsteps of thousands, these higher floors were almost always empty of sound. He stepped out into the empty lobby, his own footsteps echoing out in all directions, and fleeing into the darkened nooks and crannies like roaches to the light. The effect was very similar to walking around inside a giant steel drum, he pondered, or at least what he expected walking around inside a steel drum was like, and as he crossed from the lift to a great metal door on the far side of the lobby, the echos danced around him singing their mimicking tune. No one comes up here but him, Alan thought, the chief.
Commander and Chief Yosen was a stout man in his mid forties with a boldly painted black mustasche, beady blue green eyes, and tiny wisps of greying, thinning hair. He was tall in stature, with great bear like shoulders, but his waist was tiny, and his small legs, ravaged by gout in both feet, where comically undersized when in comparison to his hulking frame. Yosen wore a brown jumpsuit with a front pocket containing his fifteen pens for signing vetos and his pocket sized Mission Statement; the mantra of the seven divisions, a handy travel size handbook of rules and regulations. Alan had his own copy stuffed into his back pants pocket, it was unwise to be seen without it, nay, a crime.
"oh god not you again," Yosen was on his telereciever when Alan entered, "sit. I'll be with you in a moment, and don't touch anything." Yosen turned back to the receiver and continued his conversation while Alan fiddled with a brass figurine on Yosen's desk. After ten minutes had passed, he hung up, and turned back to Alan with an increasing grimace. Chief Yosen was what they called a forty fiver; he was hard pressed to leave this lofty vigil and descend (hence the name) to below forty five stories. The pressure of the altitude caused intense pain. Yosen had to stay up here where the air was thin, and it showed on his withering gaze.
"what is it now Merwyn," he said, exasperated, "I'm up to my neck in shit today, are you hear to bury me in it?" that's what Alan liked about the chief; his loveable, playful wit.
"no sir," Alan wanted to get straight to the point, "it's just the Anders case, it's driving up a fucking wall. I can't even sleep at-" Yosen cut him off.
"like I told you before," he sighed, "there's nothing I can do to help you, we're stretched thin as it is and I can't give you an application for new recruits until they've passed the entrance exam. I've got the minister up my ass, he wants this whole thing to just disappear and expects my head to roll if it doesn't, and the chief of ways and means wants us to help investigate some food poisoning in their mess hall. Then there's the council of nine, don't get me started on those fucking zombies." Alan had no intention of that, the council of nine were like gods. Untouchable and undeniable.
"but chief I got to get this case closed up and I can't do it with what I got now-" he was cut off again.
"I can give you a cyborg." Alan almost spit in his face.
"never." His face dropped, and he cringed, "I'm not working with one of those."
"suit yourself, but they're damn helpful Alan," Yosen coughed up some black phlegm, "excuse me, they're damn helpful. And that's the best I can do for you." Or the least you can do, Alan thought, fucking smelly old bastard, I know you're holding back. That's just how it is, you got to cover your own ass.
"I'm flattered you think so highly of me," Alan mocked, "but a cyborg won't do. I need men."
"you won't get them," Yosen tone had turned stone, and sour, Alan opened his mouth to protest but the chief beat him to the punch. "you simply, WILL NOT get them. That is all." Alan wanted to scream, but he knew there was nothing more he could say. The old fucking bastard had made up his mind. Alan left the office in a huff and made tracks for the elevator. That's two things that made me angry today, he thought as he swallowed a paxidel and another paxifril, and it's all someone elses fault! What a morning already. And it was only Monday

ransom bennett

Working on this as well...
RANSOM BENNETT!
this is the story of a badly written action super hero who begins to question his existence and role on this earth. enjoy or die.

                Ransom Bennett was a hard man to kill.

Even when he was a kid, no one could kill him, and people tried. People from all around the world came to Ransom Bennett’s Dad’s house and tried to kill him. But he was too strong for them, even as a little baby. Once a man, a big scary biker from a bike gang, came to Ransom Bennett’s Dad’s house and said “I’m gonna kill that baby,” but Ransom Bennett’s Dad just said “no you wont,” and Ransom Bennett beat the biker up. He was three years old then, but now he was a big tough guy who wasn’t to be messed around with. Ransom Bennett was like a cobra and a tiger mixed together and given the radioactive powers of the Hulk but he is able to control it. Was. Is. Is like that what I said before. Ransom Bennett is actually better than that.

One day Ransom Bennett was going out to his awesome badass motorcycle to go pick up some chicks when he heard a strange noise behind him. Ransom Bennett knew it was a ninja assassin. They were always waiting for him by his sweet bike. Ransom Bennett turned around so fast and pulled out his sword that he had cleverly hidden in his motorcycle incase of ninja assassins. But when Ransom Bennett looked down at his sword, there was no blood on it.

“what the heck?” said Ransom Bennett.

Usually there would have been a ninja there, sword in hand, raised high above his head, ready to strike. It should have been that way; always. But there was nothing, just a cool morning breeze and the silence of his vast estate.

“something isn’t right,” said Ransom Bennett. The ninjas should have been there by now, and he should have been knee deep in their blood and bowels, but he wasn’t. Ransom Bennett was confused. What the heck is going on, Ransom Bennett thought. Ransom Bennett got on his motorcycle and decided to ride into the town and get some beer and a scratch ticket, which he would win lots of money on, just like always. He rode down the road at high speed, racing around corners and hugging turns with intense precision. Then he heard a “DING” and noticed he was running out of gas. WHAT? He thought, this never happens to me. Ransom Bennett was beginning to feel nervous, another first. He pulled his badass motorcycle off to the side of the road and saw a gas station up ahead, so he pulled back onto the road and drove toward it. Ransom Bennett was not having a very good day.

The gas station was quaint and small, but Ransom Bennett knew there would be a big buxom lass there waiting for him to have hot sex with. However, when he got to the gas station, there wasn’t a big buxom lass, but rather a fat old man with a big scar on his face.

“where’s your girl?” Ransom Bennett asked.

“what in the hell are you talking about boy?” the man said.

“your girl, nevermind…I need gasing up” Ransom Bennett said.

“you got money boy?”

“excuse me?” Ransom Bennett was not accustomed to money.

“cash money boy,” the man said, “I aint giving you no gas till I see some cash.” Ransom Bennett shot him a look, then reached into his pockets…which were empty. No wallet, no money, no nothing. Ransom Bennett had never needed to get gas before.

“I…”

“You better just move on then…”

“But, I need to…I’m running on empty,” Ransom Bennett pleaded.

“Don’t make me get my gun boy.”

“Can I leave…”

“No you cant leave the bike here…walk it” The man went back inside.

Ransom Bennett shot the gas station attendant another harsh look as he rolled the motorcycle out of the gas station and began walking down the road. Ransom Bennett was really nervous now, he hadn’t ever had to get gas, and when he did there was always a big buxom lass there wanting his sex. Not some overgrown monster of a man covered in sweat and piss and gas. The sun beat down on Ransom Bennett’s head.

After about a mile Ransom Bennett turned his badass bike over on the side of the road and left it; it was much too heavy and Ransom Bennett was feeling tired. As he walked he could feel himself fading, running through his heads a billion and one thoughts and feelings he never remembered having before; fear, anger, frustration. Why is this happening to me, Ransom Bennett thought, what changed in the world. One minute he was the most awesome badass mother fucker on the face of the planet, and the next he was walking down the side of the road, sweaty, beaten, and sullen. Ransom Bennett cursed, what am I supposed to do?

Ransom Bennett thought about his life as he walked. The many adventures, the many villains bested, the many women conquered, the prizes of his life as THE hero. Ransom Bennett didn’t want to give that up. He remembered them all, for the first time in his life, he was remembering things that happened long ago; and feeling the pain of his actions. Radio Man was one such case. In the helio actic base miles beneath the earths surface, Ransom Bennett had ended his reign of microwave terror. With a rocket launcher. To the face. It was a bloody mess. Radio Man had tried, and failed, to steal all of the earths radio frequencies, (which made no sense I’ll concur, but he did it anyway) and covert them to a single frequency which would blah, blah, blah. Ransom Bennett hadn’t waited for Radio Man to finish his explanation; Ransom Bennett had already expertly untied the knots that bound him. Ransom Bennett had lunged at Radio Man, gripped him by the throat, and stuffed the nearest thing to his hand into Radio Man’s mouth, which was Radio Man’s RPG (Rocket Propelled Grenade, Radio Man Role Playing Game available this Christmas) and promptly exploded the back of his head from the rest of his body. He had never really thought much about icing a villain before; it always seemed so natural, so easy, like it was meant to be and he shouldn’t question it. For the first time in his life, Ransom Bennett wondered, Was that the right thing for me to do?

Radio Man was his first big break into the super hero world. Ransom Bennett went from local do-gooder saving cats from trees and servicing buxom lasses to member of mutli-national, multi-galaxial, inter-dimensional group of super beings that protected the earth from the threat of evil. The Earth Defense Force Mach One, the greatest assembling of heroes ever known in this universe. Ransom Bennett had been approached personally by Uberman and Dark Vengeance and presented with his own Earth Defense Force Mach One Identification Card and ½ off at Denny’s gift certificate. Ransom Bennett was now a protector of the earth itself. Along with Uberman and his super human strength and flying abilities, and Dark Vengeance with his Super Suit and detective skills, there was The Beam, an alien sent to protect/police the earth by a group of all knowing, sentient plants on a distant planet (protect/police the earth with an intergalactic flashlight,) Tim Time, a time sliding Englishman with no whit and a penchant for burning people alive with his other superhuman ability to burn things, Uberlass, Uberman’s less powerful cousin (female,) Honey Badger, a Canadian civilian who camped on a Nuclear test site and was granted the powers of a honey badger nearby (love of burrowing, healing factor), Black Man, a super powered black man named Jamal Wilson with the power to turn his body into electricity, and finally, The Neptunian bounty hunter Kaal Duu Marr, who had all the powers everybody else had and that was his power. Together they protected/policed the earth in perfect harmony, without women to interfere with their perfectly laid plans. They often joked about it, but Ransom Bennett had known it was deathly serious. A women in control of the Earth Defense Force Mach One? The world would be in flames by noon. But now Ransom Bennett wondered if that was right as well, or had he been so afraid of women he pushed them away; turned them into sex objects and feared them because of his mother? He shook the thought from his head; a memory. He was only a child.

It disappeared as fast as it had risen.

The road was still unfolding before him, straight like and arrow up into the hills ahead, like a stream of light shooting through the cosmos into the hands of god opening into the new world. Ransom Bennett raised his hand to block the warm rays of sunlight, and brushed the dirt from his face. He couldn’t remember where he was; where he was going. The road was off to somewhere, that was for sure, but Ransom Bennett didn’t know where that was. He knelt on the shoulder of the road to catch his breath, cupping his face in his hands and biting his lip. Pain. He was feeling pain. He doubled over.

Ransom Bennett had been with the Earth Defense Force Mach One for ten years when the Cataclysm happened, but even now it seemed like such a short time. They had solved crimes, thwarted plots to destroy the earth, captured murders, fought in major wars, and even helped broker peace in Israel, all just in ten short years. The world had become a better place; people were free, the evil was jailed, and the earth was safe from peril once more, thanks to our brave heroes. Thus began a however brief Shangri-La period on earth, under one world government appointed by the members of the Earth Defense Force Mach One, all people on earth strived for peace and prosperity and a new world order. The evil of the world was laid to waste, violent criminals and rapists were slaughtered like pigs, villains and philanthropists and distributers of pornography and drugs and alcohol and sin were rounded up and re-educated into civil society, liberals and revolutionaries and libertarians were made to surrender and join society or be annihilated, and the world was at peace once more. Arboreal sins were made illegal by pain of death by the Earth Defense Force Mach One and thus humanity ascended to an intelligence unseen in any of its eras before. Subsequently, some measures had to be taken to ensure the pure hereditary traits of the human race, and many children born with defects or disabilities were put to the fire, but it was needed if the world was to move on. Ransom Bennett had agreed then, that they must take precaution against the same vices and ills that led the human race to the brink they had come to, and Uberman and the rest of the Earth Defense Force Mach One had carried out these orders, and the world followed suit. Eventually it began to change the way humans gave birth, and scientists learned of ways the genes that caused down syndrome and autism could be detected and the fetus neutralized before it was too old. These advances in medical learning led to the discovery of cures for cancer and other diseases that had ravaged humanity for centuries. Ransom Bennett had been a part of that, the curing of humanity, the rebuilding of a new society free from depression and guilt. But it had all come crashing down in the Cataclysm, when the dark one came. Ransom Bennett had changed when he showed up.

The dark one was what Dark Vengeance had called a “mirror person;” a figment of our imagination given life by some dark magic not understood yet by mankind. These Mirror People were all around us, the manifestation of our ego run wild; waiting in the shadows to grow and divide and become real in their own bodies with their own minds and thoughts and feelings. Dark Vengeance had said, “they are you, but they are not you at all. They are the black and dark mud that boils deep down in your gullet; the fear you neglect to reason with. And they spawn when someone is about to die, but not always the person that sees them. They are ill omen.” The dark one had slipped out of Ransom Bennett’s own ego and crawled across the bedroom floor in what Ransom Bennett had thought was a dream; a shadow, thick and viscous like margarine, limping along leaving a trail of foul looking grey slime. By the morning it had grown into a middle aged man, and stood against the wall in his bedroom with a look of sheer malevolence on its face. Ransom Bennett paid it no mind at first, it was after all only a figment of his imagination, and Dark Vengeance had given him a few tips on how to get rid of these “Mirror People,” so there it stayed, on the wall, growing and looking more and more like him everyday.

When one day the Mirror Person was gone, Ransom Bennett didn’t think all that much about it. He went on with his usual day, fighting a robot alligator in the subway, stopping a gang of clowns from robbing a national bank truck, investigating and breaking open the case on an international child smuggling ring, meeting with president Arthur Krantz and former Texas Gov. Lyla Rose Hardin and the joint chiefs of staff, beating up a teenage bully at his nephews middle school, reading to sick kids at the hospital, then bedding nine Swedish models in a hotel room for the afternoon. But when he returned to the Earth Defense Force Mach One Mach Two, a giant earth orbiting satellite where the group conducted its meetings, everyone was dead. Uberman, Dark Vengeance, The Beam, Tim Time, Uberlass, Honey Badger, Black Man, and Kaal Duu Marr were all lying on the floor of the satellite covered in their own, and everybody else’s blood. Ransom Bennett remembered what he had though at that very moment, what kind of sick joke is this? It was like someone was intentionally placing these horrible obstacles in his path, and every time he was left alone, the soul survivor of some brutal massacre. Just like his parents; he could see their faces draining of life before him.

It was the dark one, Ransom Bennett would soon find out; he was trying to take Ransom Bennett’s life away piece by piece. He wanted to break Ransom Bennett down and take his place, to destroy him and literally become him. They battled on that ship for days, an equal match for each other, before Ransom Bennett had finally won, like he knew he would. The dark one was beaten unrecognizable, and in fact Ransom Bennett had wondered how long he had continued fighting him after he was already dead. That was when he felt pain, for the first time since his parents died, real deep pain that racked him to his core. Depression; he felt like a great and heavy weight had been lain on his chest to carry now for all time. Whenever he closed his eyes, he saw their faces; the faces of the men he had killed in his days. Frightened faces, twisted and bloodied, draining to pale in his hands, and every time they turned into the faces of his friends and his loved ones, his parents. Did I kill them?

so heres what I'm doing now.


Its hard out here for a pimp.


anyway...
this year a friend of mine (name: N Legaspi y Dukes) and I began working on a secret project which N titled "ART SLASH CRIME INTERNATIONAL." I suppose it is sort of a curio service for underground artists and bands who wish to distribute their art and music through a totally free provider, perhaps one day turning into a label. As of now we have about 14 or 15 artists and musicans who have agreed to work on the project by submitting their works to us for procurement and media distribution. I want to stress that this is a totally free, non profit type of organization. We are not here to steal or judge the music and art we showcase. We are here to deliver said art to the greater world. The idea is to produce a mixtape to be distributed in different sectors (eg. CDs, itunes Podcasts, Soundcloud, bandcamp, etc.) featuring full songs from each artist played in a radio or podcast like atmosphere (with information on bands contact, booking, artist info and all that good shit) interviews, comedy (live comedy recorded at venues with crowd noise) poetry, video, art, graphic art, graphitti, novels, short storys...you can get what I am talking about. Everything we can get our grubby little hands on, we want a piece of it.

This idea, at least for me, springs out of the idea that, as a local artist, I feel there are a great number of really talented people who I know personally (including myself) who are trying to make their way in the art world, but feel like it is an insurmountable task. N and I want to push these talents to do the kind of work we all love to do, to make our art and feel like we are making it for some reason other than ourselves. We want to get this stuff out there. Its past time.

If you want to get involved...

you know the number...use it!

next next part

Yaakov

Jack watched as his men scooped Saura up off the floor, and shook his head. She's always got to make me mad, he thought, last time she told me I had a little dick. Fucking bitch, he lit a cigarette, and let out a puff. What the fuck does she know about dick? That made him laugh. She's quite a woman, he thought. 

"Can we rape this one sir?" Croakus was a grade A fuck up and 100% psychopath, but even lunatics can come in handy in some situations. Sane people think with their fucking heads, psychos think with their other instincts. Sometimes, that's just what you need, those other instincts. Croakus had nearly run out of uses, but Jack had grown attached to him. 

"No," he said, fingering his revolver, "in fact if you so much as think of touching her at all, imma give you six new assholes, so you shit fucking spaghetti," Croakus gave him a look, and then shuffled away. This girl was his, and he aimed to show his men that was the case. Croakus would have to go soon; he'd take care of it before sundown, when the camp was gathered for dinner. It was all a show; to prove to his men he was still in charge. 

He would use a blade, a big one; phallic and unmistakable. Right through the neck, deep and quick and clean. He'd hold it there for a moment, let the sweat and blood and viscera wash over him, and then release it all in one bloody mosaic too beautiful for words to ever describe. The other men, they'd see that and they'd remember who was in charge. They'd see that and they'd stop their wretched campfire ramblings over their cups of rice wine and stale bread. They'd see that and fall back in line. They'd see that and know that the 86th street west clan was still the most powerful gang in the city. But most importantly they'd see that he was still without a doubt the strongest of them all. 

They had come a long way since the days when it was just him and Francis and the Chinese bitch. Xie. Fucking bitch, he lit up a cigarette and puffed, fucking two time... He thought about her a lot these days; they could really use her gun. She may have been a chink and a slut and a liar, but that gun? Damn could she shoot. But she was dead, took one in the belly in Texarkana during some idiotic spice wars (hint: "spice" is another word for synthetic heroin) between one overweight Mexican cartel boss and another, who she happened to work for. He hadn't been a part of that either, even though Francis and Jean, and shit just about everyone in the world seemed to think he did. He lived for her. He loved her. She was a fucking bitch and she deserved to get the shit kicked out of her for sure, but he never wanted to see her killed. Others couldn't seem to understand that, but he didn't really give a shit. They were only soldiers, not capable of such higher thought. 

Saura was loaded into one of his personal trucks and he rode in the back with her all the way to 86th west. She was older than when they had been together, roughhewn now from war and dust and age, but still beautiful. He sat opposite from her on a bench, smoking cigarettes and staring out the window of the truck at the dark night whizzing by in a haze of blurry bits and pieces. He wasn't going to do it, he wasn't going to ask her, he wasn't going to make her go through that again, but. He felt this strange murmur in his stomach, this electric, combustible feeling like energy and excitement were flowing through him and bouncing off the insides of his body, aching to escape. Shit. He knew this was bad. He was falling for her again. And she didn't want anything to do with him. He banged on the divider to the front seat of the truck. 

"We almost there man," he called out to Francis, "I gotta fucking piss."

"Yea we here," Francis yelled back at him, "cool it mother fucker." Francis liked to talk tough, act like he was big shot from some fucking seventies movie, but he was a sensitive fag underneath it all, and the bravado worn like tattered cloth. 

"I gotta fucking piss man, what are you a eunuch?" Jack laughed. 

"Idiot," Francis called back, "eunuch's don't have fucking balls, they still have to piss you moron," he heaved the wheel and the truck spun left violently. He threw out his arms and tried to catch Saura as she was lifted from the bench and into the air. It was like when they first met, well just before it, speeding through the streets with those horrible ducking hunters on their tail. With Toshi. Shit, he almost forgot about Toshi. Time had apparently stopped for this moment, and as Saura hovered in the air as if it was some invisible sheet of water, he very clearly began to hallucinate. The doors to the back of the van opened and Toshi stepped in, but he could see him clearly at first, he just knew it was Toshi. He climbed onto the bench and sat, his cybernetic husk showing from out of his burned and destroyed Exo-skin, a jumble of wires and metal and circuits. This was how he looked the last time they had seen each other, after the battle with the hunters, when Toshi was pulled from the crash wreckage and Jack and his comrades were alerted to Toshi's very heavy cybernetics. He had been a plant, a mole, sent by some squid secret police agency or other rival to spy on them. Toshi wasn't aware of this himself, he had to be told, but then, right after that, he also had to die so it wasn't much of a consolation. Jack shot him in the forehead, trying to make it quick, but it took four more bolts to put him down. Suddenly he was back, there on that dingy street corner in the pouring rain and covered in white goopy android blood. 

"Asshole!" Toshi was drenched, sprawling on the concrete like some shattered heap on bones and sinew and electronics. Half his face had been burned off in the crash and his left eye exposed gleamed a light green and blue like the color of ice and ocean. The other half still looked like a regular human male. 

"Shut the fuck up and die," Francis pulled his pistol and fired. Toshi's screams filled the night. Xie joined in as well, howling with laughter as they painted the night sky with Toshi android blood. Jack turned away; he stumbled forward, and fell to his knees, vomiting on himself. Then he saw the blood, seeping from above his eyes, and then the world and everything in it turned red, red, deeper and deeper and deeper, until there was no more light and he was blind. He felt rough hands grasping him, and then releasing as he vomited once more. They dragged him to a sitting position and began shouting, but all he could hear was a high pitched tone, a riiiiiinnnngg, so loud, so utterly deafening, he thought for a moment it might drive him mad. Then he fell through the earth and was no more. Nothing. Nothingness. Emptiness. Fearlessness. Then he knew everything and was everything. The earth and the skies and the underworld trembled before his sight and did his bidding a. For a moment he was god. Then he woke up, in a hospital bed, machines beeping and humming and monitoring. And he was a man. But he was alive. That was ten years ago. 

"Asshole!" Toshi hollered. 

"Hey man," Toshi pushed him and he could feel it. 

"Fuck you!" Toshi reared back punched him in the chin and he toppled over in pain. 

"What the fuck man," he spit out a tooth, "you fucking dick! Look at all this blood!"

"You shot me! YOU KILLED ME!" Toshi stood over him. He rolled over and spit out some more blood, but reached for his trusty bolt pistol which could put a hole in a man from thirty paces and was designed specially to be used in close combat and also...wasn't there in its holster. 

"It wasn't my fault man," he scanned the room and prepared for the next punch, which literally cracked his jaw, sending two more teeth out with another jet of blood. His vision blurred and he slumped over on his side, but his hand found the handle of his pistol and, in his blindness, he turned and fired randomly in the direction of his foe. Then there was silence. They say silence is golden, but honestly, it's damn frightening when you are completely blind. 

He rolled over and began to crawl from the wreckage of the accident and he realized he was back where he started. Toshi lay in the front seat, his face cracked open, blood everywhere. 

"What the fuck is going on here?"

He raced to the car, again, and pulled Toshi from the wreckage. Why, he thought, why do I feel so compelled to do this? When I know where it will end. 

"Hey man wake up, we're here."

He pointed the gun at Toshi and asked him:

"Who sent you after me?"

And Toshi sat there in the rain and wept like a beaten child. 

"Wake up man."

He pointed the gun and Toshi, who wept like a little bitch, and he fired. 

"You sold us out," he was holding the gun at Toshi's head, "you were working for the squids, just tell us."

"I don't know what you are talking about," he was just a kid. 

He was firing his bolt pistol at Toshi and he wasn't sure it was right. 

"Wake the fuck up," he was shaken. He was looking around. His brain began to work. He was in the truck. He had fallen asleep. Francis was standing in front of him, Saura was gone. 

"Wake up nigga," Francis was saying, "I ain't your fucking nanny." 

"Where's Saura?" He managed, grabbing out and clutching Francis sleeve. 

"She's inside man," he tugged away, "damn you okay man?"

"Yea," he sat forward rubbed his eyes, "where is she Francis." It was an order. 

"She's inside man," he repeated, "fuck man, you sure you're alright?"

He stood up and walked out of the back of the truck. Croakus. He was looking for Croakus. He scanned the crowd of marauders before him and didn't see that odd shaped bald head. He was nowhere in sight. Jack pulled out his bolt pistol and checked the cartridge. He prayed. Please lord, don't let that scummy piece of horseshit get his little pecker anywhere near her. He headed for the cells where they kept prisoners. 

Croakus was there, and so was Slag and Muncher, two perverts who apparently had decided to die along with Crokus today. She was tied up, he breasts were out and her legs open, but the worst had not happened yet. He was clothed. That was a good sign. Jack turned the corner and fired straight into Muncher's forehead, killing him outright. The other two spun around, but they were too slow to respond and too stupid to remember to bring their weapons to this little party of theirs. Jack blew off Slag's ear, and then took him down with a second shot to the lower neck, piercing his trachea. Then he turned the gun on Croakus and with the last four shots unloaded into him. Croakus fell into the dust like a rock and suddenly the night air grew very quiet, save for the calls of dire wolves out in the distance. All this happened in mere seconds, and all three were dead before the first had hit the ground. He untied her, and covered her with a cloth. 

"What the fuck Yaakov," she looked up at him, "this is your idea of a good time?"

"I'm sorry," he said, "I fucked up," he picked her up and helped he walk to his bunker. He gave her clothes to wear and showed her how to work the shower. 

"So what," she looked at him with sad cold eyes, "now it's your turn?"

"I thought you knew me better than that," he said and handed her a key, "I'll be sitting outside, you can lock the door and decide when you want to let me back in. Your effects are on the bench there." He ducked out of the bunker. 

"Fuck," she laughed, "what do you intend to do with me?"

"Show you we are on the same side," Jack said. 

"That's fucking hilarious Yaakov," she turned, "I'm locking the door now."

The shower definitely helped, but Saura couldn't shake the thought of those disgusting hands touching her all over. She hadn't even really been raped; Jack had arrived at just the right time though. She saw the end of her attacker’s tiny, shriveled penis welling up like a goiter before Jack put four bolts in him. She shuttered. That bastard, she was really falling for him again? But what about Gaius? Men were all alike, grubby, overgrown children who liked to say they really truly would do any goddamn thing for you one minute, then sneaking off to fight wars all by themselves, leaving you alone to pick up the pieces. But Jack made her feel...she needed to get out of the shower and put her clothes on. And go shoot something. 

Gaius on the other hand? He was the hero type, while Jack would dump you at the least of hesitation to remain honest to his ideals, Gaius would keep you in the dark so not to frighten. Of course this meant he would go out all by himself and get gut shot and say "I love you" as he's about to presumably die or be captured. The whole thing was a goddamn mess, and what really pissed her off was the fact it meant so damn much to her when there was a real war to fight with real consequences and real...but she was a human after all. She slammed a fist against the wall of the bunker; the whole damn world seemed to remind her of both of these assholes. Why couldn't she just escape? Why did either of them mean anything to her? She dressed and reloaded her pistols. Nothing really makes sense anymore, she thought, so I guess I'll have to follow the path that's been laid before me. Gaius would say it was a new lease on life, and it would have pissed her off. Nostalgia is dangerous, she thought, it only weighs you down, and she shook the memory off. There was a lot of bullshit to take care of, starting with Jack and his band of merry misfits. She looked in his cloudy mirror, and sighed. This is going to be another long ass day. 

Jack was where he said he'd be, sitting vigil in front of the door with his shotgun over his knees like some idiotic bouncer. He really goes to historic lengths to show me how much he cares, she thought, I wonder what he's planning. After all it’s Jack, so I know it must involve bedding me in some manner. He turned and smiled. 

"Feeling better?"

"That's really overkill you know," she said, pointing at the shotgun, "and yeah I feel fucking fantastic. Thanks."

"No problem," he smiled and she wanted to punch him. 

"Thanks for the other thing too, you know, stopping them," her face was getting red. 

"I know," he stood up and nodded, "it was my fault, I-" he started to quiver. 

"No it's cool," she walked down the steps and looked around his urban encampment. 

"No it's not," he was getting too close. 

"Dude," she turned and pulled out her bolt pistol, "I already shot you once, back off."

"I'm sorry, it just," he was weak around her; it reminded her why she left in the first place, "it drives me crazy, I should have been there for you."

"Listen Yaakov," she spoke sternly, "you're falling apart right now, and you might wanna save it."

"I love you Miranda," he said. Shit, she thought, he remembers all that? 

"That's not my name," she said. 

"That's rich," he said, "don’t you...? Of course you remember, because that is your real name. Miranda." How could he remember that? They hadn't even met then. 

"How do you know that name?" She stammered. 

"I've done research," his smile was colder now, powerful and menacing, "Miranda Vincentii Alegara." She stumbled backward, how did he find her? When did she fuck up? When did it slip?

"I am a wizard, Miranda," he laughed, "you look surprised, and what you thought it was a challenge for me? You left far too many clues. I found your contact from overseas. Charles was his name, agent for the Chine-Europeans? He told me all about you, and your mutual friend from the Black Mountain test labs, Dr. Kagome. I visited them both personally in fact. Kagome? She was ripe for the plucking, eh? I emptied her of blood Miranda. I let her empty out upon the floor. Drip by drip. It took literally hours, and the whole while with her screaming bloody murder mind you. But she told me, in the end, she told me everything." Saura had begun to back away from him, there was this look in his eyes now that engulfed her in deep, soul wrenching fear. 

"What the fuck is wrong with you?" He smiled, and it was sick and wrought with envy and hatred. He had lost his soul along the way back to her. 

"Charles was a miss," he snarled, "I only got Kagome's name from him, and he lasted much too short for my liking. Plus you know...I'm not into males."

"You are fucked in the head Yaakov," she put a hand on her weapon, "they had nothing to do with it," they were my friends. 

"They had EVERYTHING to do with it," he was standing tall now, chest puffed and cocksure like some foolish looking bird, bobbing his head, "they KNEW you. I just wanted to know you." His men were starting to gather to watch the spectacle, hairy, filthy with dirt and blood and...Other things, they were a truly horrid sight to behold. She gazed at them and saw only their hallow, sunken features and their bleak, defeated nature, and she knew that the clan was dying. Their leader had become weak and so they had followed. He would not last much longer, before they began to abandon him. After all their will was their wallet, and there was always spice to smuggle and whores to fuck and other armies to die for. 

"You're making a mistake," she said, but he was enraged. He couldn't turn back now. The end had come. 

"Fuck you WHORE!" He lunged at her shotgun first, but she was lying in wait from the first moment his eyes had turned that strange color and easily outmaneuvered him, sending him to the ground. He took a hard land, and crumpled over in a heap. She sidestepped and pulled out her pistols. 

"Fucking eh Yaakov," she found herself back against a stone wall, the eyes of Jack and his men all around her, all upon her, "I thought we were supposed to be on the same side?"

"If I can't even have you then what am I?" he was crawling on his hands and knees and making quite a show. She actually pitied him, this man who had once been so very strong. 

"You are out of your fucking mind man," Saura said, trying to gleam a method of escape, "you sound like a child." His eyes burned inside her own. 

"You left me," he pleaded. 

"You didn't want me anymore," she laughed, it had been like ten years since then. She was kind of surprised he felt this way, or that he had even remembered. 

"I needed you then," he looked like an awful mess, "but I need you more now." Nice, she thought, this is just what I fucking need.

"Yea well," she wanted to just say it, that he was an asshole and a pompous load of shit and a liar, but she couldn't. And that was rare for her. 

"Please," he sniffled. She was growing more disgusted by the second. 

"Okay," she pulled away and pointed the pistols at him, "that's enough of this shit man. You know, when I first saw you again yesterday, I wondered to myself if you had changed at all. You're a disgrace to men, "Jack." We have a fucking war to fight with a bunch of murderous and super intelligent squid creatures if you hadn't forgotten, and it's a bit more important than cocks and cunts, eh?" He move closer, rising to his feet. 

"You gonna shoot me or what?" He said through clenched teeth. 

"I'd really rather not if you don't mind," she laughed, then put a bolt in his knee with such precision that he was forced back down to the ground. "You made me do it, to show all these cunts out here," she waved her pistol at the growing audience of clan’s people, "I'll fuck you up."

"You...are fucking..." Jack grabbed at his bloody leg with shaky hands. He bit his lip. He screamed and swore and cried in pain. She knelt down beside him. 

"You wanna be a sneaky fucking bastard," she whispered, "two can play at that. You're dead man walking I see you again, right?"

"Fucking bitch, fucking cunt, slut, whore, cocksucking..." He spit at her ferociously. She put the barrel of her bolt pistol in his mouth. 

"Right?" She asked again. His eyes were nearly bursting with rage, sweat and blood dropped from his face and for the first time she saw how ugly he was, and always had been, under that handsome exterior. 

"I'll...kill..." He tried to say, but he couldn't quite get it out. She understood. 

"Add you to the goddamn list," she said and with a swift motion pulled the pistol out of his mouth, taking a tooth with it. Then without a seconds waste, she smashed Jack on the top of his head with the butt of the weapon. He fell like a rock to the ground. She looked up at the clan, they were in awe of her, starring wide eyes and open mouthed at the shocking defeat of their leader. It was as if he had forgotten they were even there, as if she and Jack's scene had played out for no audience but they two. And now the curtain had been pulled back and the house lights lit and the veneer completely gone. We were mere actors once again, she thought, no more protected by our makeup and costumes and happy endings. We were now awake in the world. 

"I'm going to leave now," she announced to the crowd, and taking her final bow, "and if any of you has anything they want to say to me, you better fucking do it now," she picked up the shotgun, "any takers?" There weren't any who weren't coward, not a single one in the clan seemed to so much as flinch. She took that as a sign of good luck, and began to walk down the road back toward the city center. This whole bullshit game Jack had been playing had thrown her completely off track, now she'd have to go all the way back to the hotel, and she wasn't even sure there'd be anything left in the way of clues when she got there. The squids would be gone by now at least, and business would probably be up and running, meaning who knew what kind of fucked up shit was going on there. That lead was dead and dried up, she decided, and dialing up the home office on her receiver, she found that it had been jammed up and smashed at some point during her nighttime journey and no longer functioned properly. She tossed the receiver on the ground and stomped off to find a gang box, little receivers that she and the others had planted all over the city in case of emergency. She checked her map, a folded square of waterproofed paper that held a detailed drawing of the downtown as it was in the old days. Ares had found it in a shelled out tank by the red river, said it was an old military artifact used in the last Great War. Now it was hewn with age and over marked with locations and notations and figures, but it still showed where she had stashed each of the receivers, in bold red ink blots. The closest one was about six miles away, following the promenade towards the circus, which was a very, very dangerous place, but more so at night. It was still early, she might get by without vein noticed, but the so called "people" who lived in or frequented that area of town were known to hunt early in the morning. The other option was up the river, literally, following the coast of the red river North West about ten miles or so to the old business district. Safer, for sure, but quite out of the way, and that area, that last she had heard, was overrun with abominations too horrifying to even be named. Those were the worst things the squid magic had created, the mutations in humans and animals that turned them from normal creatures into great hulking monstrosities of dripping flesh and black bones and green blood. It was known only as "the Pox" and it affected about 75% of creatures, give or take. That group would suffer these horrible consequences when confronted with even the sight of one of the squids. The squids also have a liquid that expedites that process, though they have stopped using it having discovered that the resolution mutants are uncontrollable and unstoppable without great military casualty, and that after a time, it begins to affect the squids as well. Though they were strong and vicious and powerful, they had very short life spans, and in a few years most of them drop dead. The strong ones, the really strong ones, however can live for eons, or so it is said. The others, like Saura, were not affected at all by the squids or their quickening substances. The lucky ones, they live on, able to produce children with the gene that makes them immune. Fuck, that's the last thing I want to think about right now, she thought, children. God, do I really have to go through that shit? Pushing a kid out of me? She laughed at the thought of her thick with child. That ain't gonna happen. 

It was after that the squids got another really good idea, and coded a version of the disease that kills cells at a 100% faster rate, meaning the mutation only lasts a few hours before the carrier dies. That's why the world was so empty now, the disease was efficient and it killed billions upon billions upon billions. Humans, animals, even birds and insects. Piles and piles of carcasses littering the land, and only the lucky ones left to take care of the dead. Saura grew up in this world, and watched the rest of her friends and family succumbs as she lived on in perfect health. Her adoptive mother and father, her brothers Olf and Dexter, and her baby sister Grela, she stayed with them and waited and watched as each one slowly died, before the mutation could even take hold. It was soon after that she was found by a group of wandering travelers, including her new mother and father, the gentle and sweet Maria, the coarse and gruff Fatius. They called her Miranda from then on, even giving her their own surname, and she traveled with them and grew and learned how to read and ride and drive and shoot and even, later on when she was 15, and with a nubile but experienced boy named Claude, she learned how to be a woman and how to make love. Those were the good days, when you could live on the outskirts and you'd never even see one damn greenish tentacle lingering behind some doorway. The squids had expanded their operation since then, but it wasn't them who put her second family to the sword, all except old Fatius. That was men, hairy men from the north lands with massive sabers hewn from great shards of metal and wearing the bones and eyes and skins and other body parts of their flayed and murdered victims. They descended on the travelers as they crossed the open land of a dry lake on their way to Culver to trade and supply, a whole bloody regiment, whopping and hollering and waving their clubs and daggers and long rifles above their heads. Against the back drop of a noonday sun, they were strangely poetic and beautiful for that one brief moment, until her whole world had crumbled down and descended into total chaos. 

First there was panic among the group, people began to flee, to scream, some to pull their weapons and trade fire with the long rifles on the hill. She was still a child then, 19 or 20, and barely knew a thing about combat, but what she did know was to keep herself low to the ground and out of sight. Fatius had taught her the basics starting almost as soon as she had arrived, and she was able to hold her own in a fight against a boy of her age, but these were full grown men, toughened beyond the realm of madness and depravity. She crawled toward a dark corner, picking up a rifle someone had dropped as she crawled. It was covered in blood, and she finally noticed, so was she. The oppressive ringing in her ears suddenly ceased, and she saw the carnage unfolding before her. 

She saw the swarm descend and she saw hairy men, three of them broad shouldered and grinning with gap toothed inanity, dragging a man from behind some cover and repeatedly bashing and bludgeoning him with their massive, chain covered fists. She saw two more pulling a woman right in half, her insides falling out onto the ground, blood and viscera and intestines, her eyes sunk and white with death, finally after all their pulling her spine snaps and they each tale their piece to sodomize and rape and destroy. She saw children, little ones, skulls punched in for sport, a group of marauders gathered around laughing and taking turns smashing a little girl named Sara with their clubs until she was no more than a mess of red and white. She saw people, people she knew and loved, stumbling through the smoke and blood, cut down by long rifle shots, through their legs, then their knees, then their torsos, then up, up, up, up until their heads, in pure sporting fashion. She saw their shots reigning down, she saw them rape and brutalize everything they could find, she saw them split open skulls and drink the blood and brains. She saw them take turns. She saw everything. And in that moment, she was alive. For the first time, she was really looking out at the world with eyes open. She saw them, and she watched them, and she cursed them with her revenge, but she was too terrified to move. She couldn't help them. And they all died. Except Fatius. He had taught her well. 

When the dust had cleared and the hairy men moved on to their next massacre, she crawled from the wrecked caravan. The scene was indescribable, like something from the depths of purest hell, a landscape of gore, total and insurmountable. She could tell they took a lot of the bodies with them, for later. The hairy men weren't men any longer, they were only beasts. She swirled and felt herself begin to collapse when a pair of hands rushed out to catch her fall. It had been Fatius; he was there in the end, covered in blood like her, and tired and hungry and wondering why he wasn't dead like the others, just as she was. He had embraced her like she was really his daughter that day, and she never forgot it. He burned the mark of his family, a crude "A" looking shape, into her upper left arm, and instructed her to do the same. 

"Now we will always remember why we fight, Miranda," he told her as she pressed the molten metal prod onto his fleshy skin, "for them. For Anders, and Mykayla, and Gort, and David, and Sara, and...Maria."

Fatius had taken her far away from that place, that scene of massacre that still haunted her dreams and her thoughts, and brought her to the relative safety of the big bad city. Culver was run by the sympathizers, humans who gave themselves over to be slaves in the employ of the squids to keep their meager lives, but it was safer than the outskirts, as the tribes moved closer and closer to the city, with their food sources on the rim running out, they hungered for raw flesh. So Culver was safe, if there was one thing the hairy men were loath to fight, it was the squids. Most of the hairy men were 75 precenters, that's why they lived so far from the squids in the first place, and they had a natural fear of the squids, and their allies, ways of weaving magic’s. Fatius had taught her the only spell she knew, Light, which like the name suggested was only that, a light, to use if she ever came in contact with the hairy men. It was a trick. The hairy men hated intelligence, and feared it so that mere words could deflect them. Sometimes. 

"Has it ever worked?" she asked him, "your spell?"

"It's a last resort, Pumpkin," Fatius smiled and patted her on the back, "when your back is up on the wall."

"And they're about to rip my guts out."

"That would be the best way for them to kill you darling," he laughed, warm and robust, "I don’t need to remind you..."

"No, you don't."

The idea that their prey was skilled in the magical arts could be enough to drive even a whole group of them away. That’s what he said; the magic was all in the mind. She barely remembered it now; the hairy men didn't really exist anymore, not like back then. The squids moved out and found them in their caves and wiped them out. The ones who survived went deep, deep into the wasteland, far enough away to never even see a squid. They were only a memory, a shadow of their former garish glory. 

Culver had been where she learned how to be invisible, how to hide in a crowd, how to pick pockets and rob food carts and climb up walls for a quick getaway. She learned how to run and jump, rooftop to rooftop, and how to fall and land when you were falling. She learned how to conceal her identity, how to kill with one move, how to disarm opponents and how to really fight. She learned how to hack computers and dive data systems and destroy from afar with deadly efficiency. The training was hard, and Fatius a harsh master, but she grew strong and learned. He taught her history and psychics and language. He taught her numbers and figures and science. He taught her to shoot, the right way, and reload, and find cover. He taught her everything he had ever learned. She had gone from a scared little girl under a caravan, hugging a rifle, unable to fight back, unable to act, to a bonafide killing machine. Fatius had taught her everything. 

For a few years they scraped by with whatever work Fatius could find. He did mercenary work for different companies, fought in two separate gangland spice wars, piloted a delivery truck for a local sympathizer, ran guns for different gangs in the city, blew up a building for some terrorist group, he even worked as a bartender for a little while. But it was the terrorism, the revolution as he referred to it, that really called out to him. You see Fatius really believed they could kill the squids one day, like before, when they had simply all contracted the strain of virus we know as "a cold," and died. He really believed we could win. 

It wasn't that she thought he was wrong, but she didn't see it as a matter of winning and losing, especially when the prize is nothing and the price is your life. She just wanted to live, and take as many goddamn squids down with her before she went. Winning wasn't a part of that. It was a foregone conclusion. But Fatius had belief, and belief is so very strong in our minds, the revolution meant everything to him. Saving the human race, but not just that, getting credit for saving the human race, it was all he talked about from then on. He had seen a sign from the otherworld, from "god" or "devil" or whatever you want to call it. It told him that he was right. 

That's how the baby Laiuna went from Miranda to Saura. It was also when she had joined up with the side of revolution, just like Fatius, and where she met Ares and Cal and Gineva and...Gaius. Fatius had brought her to this local gang leader, it felt line ages ago, and while they were talking about military strategy and past conquest, she had spied him, standing with some other boys his age not far off, handsome and strapping at the age of 24. They had become fast friends, Gaius cold and calculating, she quick and cunning, they formed quite a stunning duo. Gaius, she was beginning to lose hope in ever finding him, you're slipping away from me aren't you. She had gotten no answers when she went to the hotel, and even less from their contact with Jack. He'll be lost soon, she thought, and then what do we do. There was also the matter of the missing goods, Francis mentioned that they hadn't been recovered on their end so...could it all have been a robbery? She didn't think so, more likely it was just one of the many gunning for Gaius. He was never really one for accumulating friends and seemed to make enemies wherever he turned. He's probably dead, she thought suddenly, and though it had occurred to her before, now she was feeling guilt. Like it was in some way her fault. Like she was that little girl again, hiding, and she would never be able to save him. She saw them cleave a man in half and bathe in his blood. She saw them hold a woman down and gut her from her genitals to her neck with an axe bigger than she was, and watched as the dull edge tore its way slowly through her skin and bones and tissue and organs until her eyes burst with foamy juices that ran down her far like clowns tears. She saw them eating flesh, gnawing on human bones like vicious dogs, lying in the pools of sinew and viscera like it was some posh feast for a nobility, they gorged on eyes and ears and noses and buttocks and genitals and fingers and toes. She watched them make their prayers to The Lord of Doom, the god of destruction, the caller of death. She saw their twisted ceremony, impalings and gutting’s and massacres too unfit and disgusting for her to even describe. She watched it and did nothing. The hairy men built an altar to their savage games, and then dragged those few left living or near life away with them to continue the sick revelries in some other dark and deathly locale. Nostalgia. It creeps up on you. 

She checked her map again, the emergency receiver was only about a mile and a half away now, but she was coming into the radius of the gangs now. She bent low and checked Jacks shotgun still hanging on her back. She had eight shots plus her two bolt pistols, enough for a show at least. She moved forward, the bridge was close now. She saw movement in the distance and dove to the ground. She couldn't tell if she had been spotted, and crawling behind some low brush she pulled from her jacket pocket a pair of specs, but it was too dark to really see anything. All she could make out we're a few figures standing approximately one hundred feet ahead, and right in front of the bridge, so there was no way of sneaking around them. 

"Of fucking course," she muttered under her breath, putting the specs back in her pocket, "so, how am I going to figure this one out?" She scanned the area, there were some burned out cars stacked like ramparts to her far left, an obvious homestead of some degree, and a few scattered tanks and other downed vehicles, but not much else. She sighed. What a fucking week this is turning out to be, she thought. 

There were only a few options from here; one, she could backtrack to one of the other sites and try and find a different gang box, but that would take hours, and she was already short on time. The second option was to attack, just move in for the kill, guns blazing, and not worry about the consequences. Shoot first, ask questions never. But that was also risky, they could, and probably did, have superior firepower and numbers on her, and there was also a chance they were patrol men from Culver or even Jameson who would be friendly and perhaps even help her with some supplies or a spare receiver. That was unlikely, but that was choice three. Walk right on up there and act like you're supposed to be here. Get ready to blast away, but get a closer look first. They were all pretty fucking lame plans, but she figured at this point she didn't have many other choices. Time was running out, and if she ever hoped to see Gaius alive again...

Plan three it is, she thought, and crept up to get a better view of the men. They were dressed in the uniforms of security detail, but she had been trained to look past things like that into the very souls of her targets. They were odd looking for security men, but security men were not police, and tended to look a little odd, so there was a chance they were legit. They were still oblivious to her presence, or damn good actors, so she slid Jack's shotgun off her back and pointed it at the soldier’s legs. One of the soldiers moved, he was looking in her direction. He pointed. She was starting to sweat. The other two turned, and all three started walking towards her. She aimed the shotgun and waited. They were thirty feet away. She waited, the sweat poured down her face. They were closing in, twenty yards; the one on the left cocked his rifle. 

"Who goes there?" The other one said. They were ten feet away. She had to make a choice. She gripped the shotgun tight and closed her eyes. Fatius, she thought, what the hell do I do now? She could smell them, they were so close. She bit her lip. She heard them rustling around her, they were mere inches away from her. She aimed the rifle. The one on the right turned. 

"What was that?" He said. She fired. His head exploded bits of brain and blood and tissue flew in a blinding spray. She turned to the left and fired again, twice. The first shot took his legs, the second his torso, and he was flung back like some comical rag doll. The third was shouting, and shooting. She was on her feet; she had dropped the shotgun, and raced forward firing both her pistols. He caught three bolts before he went down. She scanned the area in a panic; reinforcements would not be far off, and as she made for the bridge, she picked up one of their rifles and a satchel with food and water and even some extra ammunition. She looked back as she came to the bridge, and the coast was clear; for now. But where had the third one gone, had she hit him? She looked at the ground, two dead bodies. That's not right, she thought. 

Then she saw it, why the soldiers had been standing there in the first place, and cursed. The bridge was out; she looked over the edge of the deep ravine and saw its shattered remnants fifty feet below. She turned and suddenly felt very strange. Confused. Like she was living in someone else's dream. She ran back over to one of the dead security men and pulled his ID tag out of his chest pocket. The faces matched, they weren't fakes. She began to grow nervous. They had been real soldiers, just kids, not rapists and marauders and hairy men, but green boys. And where was number three?

"Fuck," she said, as she gathered up the other two ration packs and ammo belts, "I killed them for nothing."

This was real bad, she didn't need to add "capital murder of a law enforcement officer" to her already impressive rap sheet, and it was just the kind of thing that would get all the hunters off their fat asses to take her down. Hunters were worse than hairy men, at least the hairy men would put you out of your misery, eventually. The hunters liked to twist the knife when it was in you, and let you lie there and decay. It was just a psychological difference of opinion on how to get the job done. 

She headed north immediately, by this time it made more sense to walk back to the safe house and call in from there than to backtrack. After a few minutes, she had put good distance between her and the bodies, but she still needed to cross this chasm. With the bridge out it was going to be a bitch getting supplies up to The Mouth where they made their camp, they'd have to either cross down south by Blackwood Gulch, which was squid territory and overrun with the slimy creatures, or head north, as she was now, toward the canyon, which was about twenty miles out of their way. What a headache and she could quite nearly see their camp, perched up on a ridge and only a simple hill to those with an untrained eye. It was so close there; she could almost reach out and grasp it. That's when she heard it, a crack, a footstep, she had been followed. She wheeled and let a shot fly. 

The man’s head burst when the bolt flew through it, popping like some gruesome child's balloon. The second man, a blur of brown and black and white and steel, lunging with a gnarled blade, slashing through the air with wide, wild swipes. She fired into him, the bolts ripping bloody holes through his belly, his sword coming down as if it was in slow motion, and she tried to side step but the blade was too quick and it glanced hard off her hand, and she felt her fingers loose grip on the handle, she felt her pistol fall from her hand, she felt her foot slip back and she felt herself fall. Hard. On her ass. The shock ran up through her spine and into her skull with locomotive speed. She was on her back now, and more shadows were emerging from their darkened hiding spots. She was hazy, blurry; she reached out for her pistols, but found nothing. The shadows were surrounding, closing in, teeth chattering, palms sweaty. She kicked out, threw her hands wide around her, and found the barrel of Jack's shotgun. And then they were upon her.

She felt the matted, hairy fist when it smashed against her temple, even saw it coming, but she was helpless to stop it. She could only brace for the impact and hope she would pass out. The pain was so excruciating, the force so powerful, for a moment she didn't feel anything. Suddenly there was the ear-piercing drone of silence and she was afloat in the air, the second fist had hit her, she was taken off the ground about an inch, and then driven down by a knee to her stomach. Blood poured from her mouth, her ribs were cracked and possibly broken, and even though she still clutched the shotgun in her hands, she knew the end had arrived. She rolled over and aimed, and with no real target fired. There was a burst of light as the body of her attacker was lifted from her sights by the blast, and a scream of terror. She tried to stand, holding the shotgun out before her as she limped toward the light. Fuck this shit, she said, and I thought I just got out of this. 

She fired again at a blurry speck of something that rushed toward her. The blur fell in a shower of red, with another blast of the shotgun. I can't go on much further, she thought; this is just the last stand. She fired at anything that moved. After a few shots, the shotgun gave an empty, echoing click. No bullets. She tossed it aside. I'm sorry Gaius, she thought, but I'm gonna die now. 

There was a blast in the distance. 

"I failed you," she was speaking aloud now, "I couldn't..."

There was another series of blasts. Bam. Bam. Bam. 

"I couldn't do it," she said, tears were streaming down her face, "Gaius, I'm so sorry...Fatius..."

Bam. Bam. 

"I'm weak, I'm a weak little child," she cried out, "are you fucking happy Fatius? I Failed!"

Bam. Bam. Bam. 

"I just hope they're not squids," she breathed, and fell to her hands and knees, "anything but that."

Bam. 

"Oh Gaius..." She rolled over on her side, "I don't love you..."

Bam. Bam. 

"Saura?" 

"I'm dead," she said. 

"Hey, I found her," that voice, she thought, so familiar, "get the stretcher!"

"I'm dead," she said. 

"What the fuck happened to her?" another familiar voice, "she okay?"

"She got beat up pretty bad by that big one," said the first voice. 

"Damn man, we got here just in time," said the other voice. 

"She got him though, the big one," the first voice said, "it was her shots we heard up there on the ridge. See, shotgun cartridges."

"Damn, she's still got it," said the other voice, she felt hands on her, shoulders and legs. They gently lifted her up in the air and placed her gently on a flat surface. 

"She's an idiot," the first voice said, "she should be dead."

"I am dead," she said. 

"She's trying to talk man," the other voice said, "hi Saura, it me!"

"She can't hear you, come on," she was lifted in the air again, and they carried her. It felt like she was on a boat, bouncing up and down and left and right, her weight shifting around her body to compensate, "she's in shock, give her some of your morphine."

"That's mine man," the other voice said. 

"Fuck you," they stopped, "give her some."

"Fuck me?" said the other voice, "fuck you, man, this shit is mine."

"She's gonna die," the first voice said.  There was a mighty unsettling silence. 

"Fine," the other voice said finally, "but you owe me. Or she owes me. One of you owes me." They were moving again. 

"That shit isn't for personal use," the first voice said, "just give her the damn morphine and shut up."

"Oh what you're in charge now?" She felt a pinch in her upper leg, the poke of a syringe. She fought the oncoming malaise, the all-encompassing sleep that charged in through her veins, but the world grew murky and warm and darker than ever before, but she felt strangely safe, like cradled in the arms of her mother. She was beginning to accept it. 

"Nighty night," she heard the other voice say as she drifted into unconsciousness, "little princess."