by David Finn
A single huge black electronic snake was everywhere in the room, electricity generating off the bleak, dark body, stinging and encircling Alex.
‘We’re close!’ shouted Alex, with a voice of strict tension and barely restrained terror. A massive electronic tendril struck her white suit, and Demorn grimaced as she saw the serpent tear the white material, fang sinking into pale skin.
Demorn squeezed off a volley of shots, on remote again, cold and distant to the death scream of Alex. Her mind faded out, synching with the Cavern, the throne of swords, the pods on the wall.
Her hand clasped the locket of Mictecaciuatl, feeding into the true old power. Guilt that she needed this to survive. Demorn saw a purple-red spirit dancing, she felt the ache becoming an awful, old empty pain that went forever and covered the stars and had no answer till extinction came to every last planet and star in the void—
There was burning on her left hand. A metal fist formed, born from the pain.
She swung with all she had into the vibrating, slick mass of the creature, muting out Alex’s screams, letting the electric of the snake feed back into her, loving it somehow, all that negative energy and pain and hate.
Alex jumped around her, changing—her body bleeding, face broken, the visor back on, white bodysuit covered in blood. Demorn kept hitting and hitting the strange snake, the metal now forming over her right hand as the blows struck home, hitting the core of the snake until it was dead, flesh rotten and charred inside the complex design.
She stopped.
Alex touched her face. ‘I’m fine, I’m fine, Demorn, it’s dead.’
Demorn looked up, slowly focusing. Alex’s visor was up. She didn’t even have a scratch. Her smooth fingers caressed Demorn’s face.
‘That scar is so deep.’
Demorn’s clothes had changed during the fight. She wore just the black kimono. The death-mask had disappeared. She brushed Alex’s hand away.
‘Don’t worry about me. What was it?’
‘A time snake, They attack from our pasts. I’ve been killing it ever since. It bit me when I was fourteen. It’s just getting stronger.’
Demorn shot another round into the broken creature. ‘I don’t even know what to say. Does this make us even for wiping Rachel?’
Alex laughed, anger rippling through her. ‘I will still kill for you, if that’s what you want.’
Demorn was tired. She didn’t know what she wanted. The Glass Crown hung heavy upon her head. ‘The Purple Lions had mined her head. I didn’t have a choice.’
‘Oh, I’m sure it just broke your heart, to gain another empty vessel for your little war. Have you got a nice new name all worked out?’
Demorn looked back sharply, flat anger in her eyes and heart. Her fist curled into the ball of steel. She wanted to smash Alex in the face. With all her self control, she slowly simmered back. The metal faded from her hands. The pain in her chest faded, leaving her feeling weak and sick and slow.
Finally she breathed, ‘It’s your War, too.’
Alex laughed. ‘Oh please, it’s all yours, Princess. You see yourself as some wandering sword spirit, but I think you know exactly how this War will end. That’s what makes it so funny. I never once dreamed of saying yes to letting you wipe me.’
Alex jumped away.
The lights came back on. It was a huge factory. The snake looked like a fake movie prop, burning circuits. Demorn felt like a fake movie prop, too.
‘How long does this damn Run go on?’ She sighed.
Alex sounded happy in her earpiece. ‘Oh, it goes until we die. Us or them.’
Figures, Demorn thought dryly. She slid the death mask back over her face. The scar was bleeding, meshing into the blurred skeletal visage.
Demorn followed Alex’s jumping form, her casual, Texas voice drawling instructions, rising higher in the lattice work of iron bridges, the metal ladders cold on her hands. As they moved, Demorn saw the way the factory changed beneath them, robotic engines churning in constant motion. Absently, she wondered what they made.
Her magic eyes clicked and she moved fast, barely avoiding a jet of green gas ejecting from one of the major factory pipes.
Her nose plugs slammed in painfully.
Alex appeared, jumping backward, seizing her arm, jumping out, the teleport whirring, leaving Demorn’s stomach queasy with the translation.
They were near the roof. She could see an exit hatch, blinking blue to red.
Green gas covered the entire floor level. Demorn saw reflected red blurs in the corners of her vision.
Alex sighed suddenly. A steel star embedded in the shoulder of her ripped white bodysuit, blood fresh and red. Through the orange visor, Alex’s face became mummified, some horrible living death, as she jumped away, out of the factory.
Blood Clan Hunters!
Stars were flung at Demorn, one nicking her skin, sharp, quick pain. Others careened into the rising green gas.
Demorn caught her ankle holster and fired at the red blurs, feeling unquiet whispers flickering against her mental defences. She saw two red shadows fall. Her eyes stung and grew blurry.
Two stars struck her gun-hand, stunning her, paralysing some nerve ending as they painfully wedged in her skin. The pearl handled Athena gun tumbled from her grasp, falling into the gas cloud.
Twin red shadows erupted from the clouds, hunter-ninjas clad in pure red hooded cloaks, one wielding short swords, the other a sickle chain. Demorn plunged from the railing at the last moment, feet dancing on a thin cross-pipe, her one good hand drawing her katana.
There was no negotiation, no quarter asked or given. Her katana parried the fast, savage dual-sword attack, as she scissor-kicked with brutal speed, death-visions in her mind, everything on the line. She felt the chain wrap around her waist from her blind side, twisting her with a rending pain, even as her fast kicks dislodged the dual swords.
As she plunged from the supports her blade sliced upward, slashing the girl with ridiculous ease. In slow motion, Demorn saw the neck open up, black skin messy with blood and damage.
The chain jerked savagely, her spinning fall broken, as the identical red-hooded Clan member, jerked her back from the edge.
Demorn heard rich, familiar laughter rattling in her mind.
The girl drove her free hand into Demorn’s shoulder, snapping a collar bone. Her eyes tracked a flashing blade, a dagger slicing into her side as she twisted, an inch from her heart. The katana sliced upward, cutting through fabric and gut, her one good hand pushing it through the ninja’s torso.
The locket surged to life around Demorn’s neck, agony flooding through her. Metal grew over her dead left hand. Drawn in close, choking with the intense pain, she snapped the girl’s neck with a casual brutality, silencing the scream. The katana drove through the girl’s back.
Demorn hung there, suspended for a moment, entangled in the sickle chain. She knew with a sick certainty what it all meant, what they were, these Blood Clan Sisters from distant Firethorn.
With all her magic strength her hand snapped through the chain. Letting the locket’s agony course through her, Demorn drew the small dagger from her side, feeling the strange, twisted healing that took place under the locket of the pain goddess.
Oh, but it hurt. Her eyes were wet with tears that wouldn’t fall.
Demorn pushed the hoodie cowl back and clambered onto a metal support. It was Toxis, black hair shorn, a single face tattoo, neck snapped, broken.
No, no, no. She caressed the tattoo across her face — it was just painted on. And the face was younger, a rough copy up close, almost blurred. Robotics were mixed into the torn flesh, exposed in the blood. It was some cybernetic nightmare mad scientists had styled. It was Mexico all over again. It was the goddamn Capitan. Or something worse than him, playing her like a puppet, from all the way across the distance.
What a goddamn mess. Demorn let the body fall away, back into the swirling mists, and moved fast to the beckoning roof exit.
; The Run was a cruel thing. She had forgotten how cruel.
5
* * *
The night air was cold, tunnels howling through the soulless canyons of steel. The roof was a long grey stretch of nowhere, connected in a pentagon of similar factories, before it rose up into the complex geometry of the upper city.
The rumble of the trains flying cross-town was a faint echo. It had been a long time since she’d been on this side of town. A long time. Demorn had once been told that people in the city never looked up to the towers, but she always did. Maybe it was because she wasn’t born in these canyons of steel and glass.
She looked up now. The shimmering, shifting promises of the giant laser commercials reflected against the brutally elegant towers that sought to touch the sky. It was all so tacky and so beautiful, so eternal and so temporary . . . an illusion in every way.
She saw the white bodysuited body of Alex sprawled on the roof, unmoving. Demorn ran to Alex, turning her over. It was just a skull inside. Alex’s inert gloved hands still gripped onto the two elegant laz-pistols.
Her eyes scanned beneath the surface, but it was no illusion. Her calm heart felt a flicker of cold. She wondered what it would be like to leave the world spinning and become a warrior spirit in Hades.
A voice whispered from the grave. ‘You look like shit, Demorn.’
Demorn smiled, sneering, keeping things slow and compact. Her collarbone was healed but the rib was tender. ‘You should have seen me five minutes ago.’
She heard the familiar intake of breath and looked over fast.
Capitan Roberts stood there, his vast form flickering inside a cheap hologram. His one good eye looked cruel. She hadn’t seen him standing upright in years.
He looked enormous and too old in his ancient military uniform, the bright red buttons and bulging waistcoat two sizes too small for him.
‘You must be scared, Capitan. To come and play this game. I might kill you, wipe out the whole debt.’
He shook with creepy laughter. He flicked something through his fingers. It glowed like a miniature sun. Demorn knew what it was. Her heart ran cold.
‘Don’t worry on my behalf, Princess. I’ve got a slice of this show. I’m a producer, I make money no matter what happens. But the real fans know how much we hate each other. They want you bleeding out in prime-time. They want you begging.’
She drew her katana slowly, circling him. ‘I hate these modern shows where people cheer for the villain.’
There was a horrible rending scream in the night, somewhere nearby. Capitan grinned. ‘That’s him, my Grod Monster. We won this, twenty years ago. When it was new and raw.’
Demorn shrugged. ‘Ancient history. Who cares.’
The Capitan laughed, flickering into nothing. ‘Not me. But he can still kill, my Grod, it’s all that’s left for him. He’s just a bomb with a blown timer. I couldn’t care less what damage he does. I just let him go.’
The screaming rang out again, urgent, then silent. Demorn couldn’t tell if she could really hear the rending of flesh or if that was her imagination. The Capitan was laughing.
She looked down at Alex. Something was very wrong. It wasn’t a skull anymore, just an awfully pale woman. There was flesh across her face but the wounds inflicted upon the bodysuit were deep. Demorn suddenly knew that her magic eyes weren’t working properly. She could see the black stripe through Alex’s hair; she could see her topless and beautiful in Firethorn.
‘She’s alive,’ Demorn said, taking the elegant pistols from Alex’s hands, putting a teleportation tag on her bodysuit, rigging it for sick bay.
The body shimmered and was gone.
Capitan was still laughing. ‘Barely. You could have avoided all this, Demorn. If you were a little better at the card table.’
‘Oh, shut up before I throw up, you played a few lucky hands.’ Demorn sneered at the flickering hologram. ‘My brother made every payment while I was stuck in The Grave.’
Capitan grinned. ‘And it was fun bleeding him. But where is he now? Regressing back to dancing with butterflies and believing in fake gods. With your marker about to fall due.’
She smiled. ‘Lucky I’m back in town then. ’Cause you know I only believe in my sword and cash.’
Capitan chortled. He started saying something about whores. Demorn fired the pistol at the flickering hologram, happy when he flinched like the coward he was. She fired again at max blast, disrupting the weak holo, ignoring the churning fear that she was going to lose everything and everyone she loved.
The hologram shorted out, his audio crackling with empty boasts.
‘What an ass,’ Alex drawled over the com link.
Demorn exclaimed, ‘You’re better already!’
Alex sighed down the link. ‘Kind of. The teleport is fritzing out. I got phased straight into the Cavern Pool, a couple of hours back.’
‘Lucky the boss likes you.’ Demorn smiled. ‘What’s the damage?’
‘Hasn’t left me with a mark, but I’m out of the game for a play or two. Those insane Blood bitches were using poison. Did you get cut?’
Demorn grunted, flexing her left hand, still metal. She knew her eyes weren’t focusing properly. ‘I got a nick or two, but I’m OK.’
‘So much for being our fucking Sisters,’ Alex said with heavy sarcasm. Her voice turned soft. ‘So he’s telling the truth. He’s into you for serious cash?’
Demorn looked where the screams had come from, the maze of factories, strung out in flat anonymous boxes across this whole Quarter. She could hear Alex splashing in the Pool. How carefree it all seemed.
‘He’s into me for a lot more than that.’
If she closed her eyes, she could see the golden sun, warm in his lecherous hands.
‘You could always ask us for help, Demorn.’
‘No, I really can’t, Alex. It’s my mistake. I get this win and we’re clear of Capitan. That’s why he’s creeping on my game.’
A savage howl down below, followed by a single short scream. Her vision was still blurry. She gripped the locket with her good right hand.
Alex sounded sleepy. ‘Just be careful, ’cause I’m not ready to save your ass just yet. You’re gonna have to use the tracker to finish the Run.’
Demorn glanced at her wrist display. The data stream pointed to the Diamond Core, except for one red static blur nearby. ‘I can handle it, Alex.’
Alex sounded very sleepy now, the fumes in the Cavern Pool would be drenching her. ‘ . . . careful of the Grod Monster. He went toe-to-toe with Guard Dog once. It got damn violent.’
‘Who won?’
‘Guard Dog, but only just.’
‘What a shame Dog didn’t snap his neck.’
Alex yawned. ‘I think he did, but y’know what death is like in this game, it’s all a bit bullshit . . .’
Sure she knew. Hardly anything stayed beneath. Friends, enemies, lovers. Things came back, draped in bad science and black magic. Coated in the grime of where they had been. Nobody was clean.
Demorn saw something flash in the sky, flickering above the maze of advertisements and flying traffic. She held the locket tightly, letting the power flood through her without barriers. The flashing became a huge star lighting up the towers. She leapt off the factory roof, flight powers kicking in, as a massive energy beam smashed into the factory roof behind her, exploding everything.
She tumbled briefly and got away from the explosion wave, dropping down cat-like into a back alley.
The purple energy beam shut down. Capitan had taken a shot. He was just the kind of rich asshole who would own killer satellites in the sky, she thought with a touch of bitterness.
The com-link was dead, blown out by the laser. She didn’t care at all. Demorn was flooded with power. It had been too long since it had all been so vibrant.
The Grod was nearby, enormous, a gigantic shadow against the burning building, howling into the night.
She heard footsteps running toward her, and shiel
ded herself against the alley wall, katana in her hand. A couple ran by. For a moment she saw two kill-bots with cannons in their wrists. But as they closed in, she saw it was just a man and woman, terrified and lost, civilians probably, either bait or prey in this insane game.
Unseen, she let them pass. Their fate was their own concern. The random nature of her magic eyes was troubling, though she would fight blind if she had to.
The monster was noisy even when he was quiet, and Demorn slipped from cover, lurking down the alley, noting a few rag-doll bodies strewn in the area, most partially eaten.
The Grod was slumped against a building wall, seemingly digesting a victim, crushed and half-eaten in his hands. She hadn’t seen the creature in years. Like Capitan it was almost retired. It was huge, the misshapen reptilian head covered with exposed cartilage horns, a gigantic stomach extending from the beast, covered with gross liver spots.
The factory building was noisily collapsing in on itself, and the sky was a multitude of motion and colour. She had blocked it all out, seeing just angles, as she slid out of the alley, taking cover in the rubble strewn through the square.
Her com-link cut back to life. A pleasant male voice chimed, “SKULL PRINCESS v THE GROD.”
It cut off. The air around her lit up with same fluorescent message in bright pink. A goddamn ad!
The Grod roared, waking from his semi-slumber. She ducked farther beneath the rubble. So much for the element of surprise. He flung the half-eaten body into a nearby boulder, shards hitting her mask.
The neck pacifier Grod wore was broken. So Capitan really has let his animal loose, she thought. He threw a huge rock, with even greater power, screaming with his primal roar. He was calling her out, challenging her.
She flung herself around the corner, laz pistol in left hand firing, shooting for his knees. One of them blew out. The Grod staggered, screaming and punching wildly. Other shots landed, but his thick skin was resistant.
The katana sliced into his side and she carved out a chunk of flesh.
His huge mouth slobbered, disgusting breath washing over Demorn. He swung his arms, which she dodged through chance and speed. She slashed upwards for his face, the katana striking one of his head-horns, barely chipping it.
