“What are you talking about?”
“See, when you died and got put back together, you ended up with something extra. All that exposure to the Outsider stuff finally caught up with you. Did you think you could play in shit and not get some on you?”
“No.”
It couldn’t be. He’d taken precautions, done everything to prevent that from happening.
“To quote the Kool-Aid guy: Oh, yeah! You drank the Kool-Aid, Dee. You got infected, and that shit doesn’t wash off. You’re capital-T Tainted. Your hatred of everyone opened the door for the stuff, and death left you vulnerable enough.”
“No.”
He didn’t feel any difference. Maybe she was lying to him.
“The changes would normally take a while. It would start with little things: short temper, sadism, a tendency to choose the most assholish way of doing things. For a stubborn d-bag like yourself, the process could take years. I don’t have that kind of time, though, so I’m going to have to jumpstart things.”
His eyes were beginning to clear up. The figure looming over his prone form came into focus. The woman did look just like Christine Dark. Same red hair, pale skin. He didn’t think the Christine Dark he’d abducted had ever had that insane glint in her eyes, however.
“I picked up a few gifts from the Outsiders during my adventurous life,” she said. “I can nurture their little seedlings and make them grow, as long they’ve got fertile soil to grow on. And you are chock full of fertilizer, Dee. We’re going to raise a bumper crop of toxic energy from your shriveled little soul.”
“No.”
“There are many ways to do that. A blood transfer would do it, now that you’re already infected. But I think we can do better than that.”
Her grin widened. She started undressing.
“I hear you’re a real lady killer, Dee, and I could do with a bit of shagging, as the Brits would say. So let’s get it on.”
“No.” He’d rather stick it into a meat grinder.
“You say no but you mean yes, right? Haven’t you ever used that line on anybody?”
He didn’t answer.
“It’s been a while for me, and I’ve gotten used to a lively sex life, Dee. And while I’m fucking with John as part of my plan, I won’t get to fuck him right away, not until I get all my ducks in a row. Meanwhile, you get the honor of being my sex slave as well as my henchman. And we get some more dark in you.”
“No.”
She pounced on him. He tried to fight her off, but she was a Neo, stronger than a normal man. And able to manipulate his emotions, to make him want her. Soon enough, fighting her became unthinkable. He was too weak to resist her.
Too weak. That was his last thought as himself.
* * *
They shared a cigarette afterwards.
His whole body ached. She had ridden him mercilessly, long past the point all pleasure was leeched from the act, using her powers to coax his body into rising to the occasion, again and again. It became torture. Feeling the shadowy, corrosive stuff of the Outsiders as it began to spread through him made it even worse.
At some point, something awoke inside of him, and the torture became unimportant.
“So this is what it’s like,” he said, exhaling and watching the puff of smoke with a mixture of curiosity and loathing. His hatred – for the girl, for the imbeciles who always ignored his advice, for the masses who knew nothing and didn’t care – had become sharper, better defined. He was beginning to feel what Mister Night had felt. It would take a while to get there: he was still human, with the wants and desires of the species. But he was on his way.
“It sucks in some ways, but there’s plenty of bennies,” the woman said. “Nothing feels better than hurting people. It’s better than sex. ‘Crush your enemies. See them driven before you. Hear the lamentations of their women,’” she quoted. “Best feeling in the world.”
Images danced inside his head: John Clarke, Doc Slaughter, Chastity Baal, being crushed like so many insects. “Yes,” he said. He started getting aroused, pain and exhaustion forgotten.
“See? I knew you wanted it, slut,” she said.
“Yes,” he growled.
“Later, we can grab some hobo, or better yet, a hooker, and we can really go to town. Torture porn makes for great foreplay.”
He got on top this time.
“Yes.”
“That’s my boy.”
The Freedom Legion
Freedom Island, Caribbean Sea, July 16, 2014
Olivia O’Brian looked up from her drink and saw Ali Fiori walking into the bar. She lifted her glass toward her fellow Legionnaire, inviting her to sit at the booth. Ali hesitated for a second, then shrugged and walked over.
Lorenzo’s was a cozy bar reserved for veteran Legionnaires only, a place where those who had been there and done that could let their hair down and drink away their sorrows. Of late, Olivia had been frequenting the place quite often, and found herself drinking more in the past few months than she had in the previous five decades. Lucky for her, Neos didn’t get hangovers. She could drink herself into a stupor and wake up fresh as a daisy in the morning.
None of that made her feel any less sad or lonely, of course.
Ali Fiori looked like she was in a similar mood. She sat down, a wan smile on her face. “Fancy meeting you here, Councilor.”
Olivia grinned back. “I could say the same, Councilor. Drinking alone, this late at night?”
“Well, John doesn’t feel right if he isn’t in bed by eleven, unless he has to pull an all-nighter for some lofty purpose. I, on the other hand, can’t live like that. So I wait till he goes to bed and sneak out. Well, not really, he knows I’m leaving. He just doesn’t care,” she concluded bitterly.
“I’m sorry, Ali.”
“Hey, I knew I was the rebound. I just wish he didn’t make it so obvious sometimes.”
“That doesn’t sound like John,” Olivia said. And that immediately worried her.
Ali noticed. “No, nothing like that. I’m just whining. He’s still his nice old self. I’m just nitpicking.”
“Ah.”
“Enough about my silly troubles. How are you holding up?”
“You mean after Dawn Zhang’s death?”
Ali nodded. “That couldn’t have been easy.”
Olivia shrugged. She and Ali weren’t bosom buddies. But she needed to talk to somebody, so she decided to take a leap of faith.
“I felt nothing but contempt for the woman before she was declared dead during the Genocide War, and little more than pity afterwards. But to see her like that… She was insane, and her feelings for Larry played a part in unhinging her mind. She truly cared of him. I can’t forgive her for carrying on with a married man, but I can at least understand she couldn’t control how she felt. I wish we’d been able to talk.”
“Can’t control how you feel. Only what you do.”
“Yes.”
They drank in silence for a bit.
“John’s still in love with Christine,” Ali blurted out. “Guess I can’t stop talking about myself.”
“That’s all right. I really had nothing else to say about Dawn.”
“I told John I didn’t care.”
“Of course you did. And of course you care.”
“He’s still angry at her, but lately he can’t keep his eyes off her, whenever she’s around.”
“I don’t think you have to worry about them getting back together. Christine was very clear about that chapter being over. Both of them spoke to me about it, and their versions of their breakup agreed on that point, if not much else.”
“People change their minds.”
“True. And God knows I’m not the one to ask when it comes to infidelity,” Olivia said; Ali wasn’t the only one feeling bitter.
“That was a shitty situation all around. I’m not going to speak ill of the dead, but Larry…”
Olivia held up a hand. “I know. No need to get into it.”
“Yes. Moving on.”
They changed subjects. There were a number of charitable projects they both had been promoting, and they could discuss them without touching on any personal matters.
Olivia hoped Ali was right and John was back to normal, even if his new normal included pining for Christine.
The world needed John to be his old normal self.
Christine Dark
Earth FUBAR, Day One
She wanted to run, but where could she go? Plus the guys in the hoodies had guns, and she couldn’t outrun a bullet.
There were five of them, all in their twenties, all walking with the swagger of professional bullies. Next to them, the Lowell kid looked like a piglet surrounded by wolves. Their leader was tall and skinny, with a pale complexion, dark hair, and a wide mouth twisted in a seemingly perpetual leer.
“That’s Charlie the Emo,” Robb whispered behind her. “Bad news. You shouldn’t have made trouble, Nellie.”
Great. I should have let that creep molest me. Eff that.
Charlie the Emo walked up to the front porch.
“Mrs. Grace,” he said, politely enough.
The older woman gave him a short head bow in return. “Can we help you?”
“Seems there was a spot of trouble between your boy, the Gomez girl over there, and a couple others.”
“Those Lowell boys came after my Robbie, is what happened,” Mrs. Grace said in a plaintive tone. “They done beat him up, they did. Just look at him!”
“Is that what happened, Robbie?” Charlie asked him, in a sympathetic tone. “They done beat you up? Beat you up real bad?”
A bit too sympathetic. Faking it. He was enjoying this, Christine realized with a sick feeling.
Robb shrugged. “Ain’t too bad.”
“Really? It looks bad. How hard did they hit you, Robbie?”
Robb started to shrug, and that was when Charlie punched him. Right in his broken nose.
“Like this?” Charlie asked sympathetically as Robb howled and grabbed his twice-broken nose. “Is that how they hit you?”
Robb’s mother whimpered but didn’t say anything. She was afraid anything she said would only make things worse. That was what living in constant fear was like. That was what living in a world where the bullies ruled was like.
“The Lowell kid came crying to me,” Charlie the Emo went on, strolling casually around Robb, who was bent over in pain, cradling his injured face in his hands. Christine wanted to go check on him, but didn’t think it was a good idea to interrupt Charlie. “That means I’m going to have to write a report, be all official like. I’ve got all kinds of extra work now, thanks to you.”
He casually kicked Robb’s feet from under him. Seemingly satisfied with the sight of Robb curled up on the ground, whimpering in pain like an injured animal, Charlie turned toward Christine.
“The Lowell boy didn’t want to tell me who messed his buddies up,” he said. “I knew it couldn’t be Robbie. He ain’t tough enough. So I made him tell me.”
Charlie walked up to Christine until his nose was a few inches away from hers. “They told me you done mess them up. A girl.”
She couldn’t help herself. “The Goddess is a girl.”
The Emo recoiled as if she’d bitch-slapped him.
“Be careful what you say,” he told her. His leer was gone. He looked a little scared at the very mention of the Goddess.
Christine crossed her arms and glared at him. “Whatever. Those guys came after us. We defended ourselves.”
A part of her felt bad about the ‘we’ bit. She figured the Watchers would find it more believable if it took the two of them to inflict all that damage. From the look Robb gave her from the ground, he clearly felt like she’d just thrown him under the proverbial bus.
“You two are coming with us,” Charlie said, composing himself. “We’ll get to the bottom of this.”
No choice.
* * *
The building used to be a church. They’d taken out all the crosses, and someone had spray-painted the words ‘CHRISTINE SAVES’ on both sides of the roof.
Holy Cult of Personality, Batman, she thought to herself. She’d never been that self-centered. Even on Earth Alpha, she was mostly embarrassed by all the attention she got. How did I become such a b-word?
Not you. She. She got infected by the Outsiders, her brain reminded her. That didn’t happen to you.
Lucky me.
Inside the church were another half-dozen Watchers, the other Lowell brother and Little Jimmy. All the bullies looked much the worse for wear; the Watchers had decided to add injury to injury, apparently. Welcome to D-bag Land.
Sitting on a chair on the dais of the church was a middle-aged guy who didn’t look as comfortable in the Watcher hoodie as the younger dudes. If he’d been dressed normally, he would have passed for your typical small town wise and gentle old-timer, with grayish hair, neatly-trimmed beard, and thick glasses. The eyes behind the glasses were cold and flinty, though, matching the emotions beneath. From the way everyone was looking at him, he was the man in charge. Even Charlie the Emo looked a bit greener around the edges when he saw him.
“Sheriff Bergen,” Charlie said, bowing deep at the waist like they did in Karate school. “I didn’t want to bother you with this, sir.”
“Been a slow day, and I heard there was someone with potential around these parts,” the Sheriff-Watcher said. “I’ve been charged with finding some fresh blood for the Games. Goddess needs new recruits.”
Oh, no, no.
“These two?” Charlie said, indicating Robb and her. “They’re nothing. White trash. They got lucky and beat up three other losers.”
“It was the girl,” Little Jimmy said. From the looks of it, someone gave him a fat lip to go with his bruised testes. “Bitch broke my balls.”
“Is that so?” Sheriff Bergen said. Jimmy nodded emphatically. “Come closer, little girl. I want to get a good look at you.”
She walked up to the dais. This isn’t going to end well.
The old man was undressing her with his eyes as she approached. She didn’t know what she would do if he went beyond that.
Probably do something that will get me killed.
“Pretty enough. Bet she cleans up real nice. Healthy. Let’s see what she can do. Charlie, pick one of your boys. If he can pin her down, he can do whatever he wants with her.”
And here we go again.
She was scared crapless, but also mad as hell. The combination was making her vaguely nauseated.
While the other Watchers cleared a fighting area by moving pews around, Charlie picked the lucky wannabe rapist. All five members of his posse wanted in on the action. That almost sparked a fight right then and there, but the Emo put an end to it by the simple expedient of cold-cocking the friskiest guy in the bunch, restoring order and cutting down on the number of applicants in one swell foop.
“Luke,” he said, pointing at a wiry guy with a crewcut and a whole three front teeth, which looked pretty lonely when he smiled in triumph. “You’re up.”
“We’s gonna have fun,” Luke said, lisping badly and sending a thin spray of saliva everywhere.
What the eff do I do? Beat him quickly and get sent to the freaking Goddess as my door prize? Lose and get raped? Make it look like I barely held my own, and probably get raped anyway?
Anger won out. Frakk it. I’m probably dead anyway, so I’m going out on a high note.
Luke came at her, stupid-like, just like Little Jimmy. For a place that was essentially a matriarchy, they sure didn’t seem to respect women. He bull-rushed her, going for a tackle and takedown. She dodged the clumsy charge with ease and tripped him with a strategically-placed foot. Luke ended up sprawled on his stomach, to the laughter of everyone else. As he scrambled to get up, she walked up behind him and kicked him right between his ass cheeks, getting at least a partial impact on the family jewels. Luke folded into a fetal position with a cry of pain, giving her ple
nty of targets for a follow-up kick. She picked the kidneys, just to stay consistent. Luke yelped, all thoughts of violence against women forgotten.
Maybe next time he won’t be so eager to join the local wrestle-and-rape team.
“Well, well, well,” Sheriff Bergen said, looking pleasantly surprised. “She is a little minx isn’t she? Where have you been hiding her?”
“She never done anything like that,” Charlie the Emo said. “She always knew her place, before this.” He turned to Luke, still shuddering on the floor. “You stupid cocksucker! You let a girl take you down like that?”
Luke was too busy feeling feelings to say anything back. Charlie looked about ready to walk up and finish kicking him to death.
“Your men don’t seem ready to face someone willing to fight back,” Sheriff Bergen told Charlie, stopping him on his tracks. “That’s disappointing.”
“He just didn’t think she’d fight back,” Charlie replied. “Stupid. Let me pick someone else.”
“No. But I do agree that wasn’t a proper test. On the one hand, she is willing to fight, and that’s good. On the other, I can’t tell if she has a killer instinct. She didn’t finish Luke off, for one. If she ain’t willing to kill, she’s no good for the Games. One of you, give her a knife.”
Seriously?
Charlie began to reach for a knife on his belt.
“Not yours, Charlie. You’re going to be needing that knife.”
Motherfrakker.
* * *
Round two. Christine versus Charlie the Emo. Fight.
Christine had gotten some fairly good hand to hand training during her time as a super-duper-hero. But nobody had bothered to train her with weapons and stuff. Well, Mark had tried. He’d offered to teach her how to use guns, knives and clubs, because “you never knew.” But she loathed guns, and didn’t think she’d ever need to use a knife, so she’d turned him down, and he hadn’t pressed the issue; he’d probably figured the odds she would need to use a weapon were low enough it wasn’t worth the hassle.
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