The corpse in the metal suit toppled forward. The ninja leaped back, too shocked to try to blast her for a couple of seconds. Christine landed on her feet in a classic fighting pose. One of her knives was gone, still stuck in the face of the power armor dude. She used her empty hand to make a Bruce Lee ‘come hither’ gesture.
“One on one now, d-bag!”
The crowd went wild.
* * *
By the time it was over, her left hand was a frozen claw that she was probably going to lose, and she had several broken ribs. But the ninja was sprawled on the ground, blood spurting weakly around the knife she’d sunk in his heart.
It hurt to breathe, and the agony in her hand was bad enough to make her Top Ten list, but she was alive. The crowd was cheering her, but she didn’t feel particularly cheerful.
“It appears we have a winner,” a familiar voice, her own voice, echoed through the coliseum, making everyone shut up.
Christine looked up. The Goddess and her faceless consort were floating above her. Dark Christine looked small, almost doll-like, but her glowing aura, green speckled with purple-black spots, made her look ethereal and obviously superhuman. She was wearing a teensy golden bikini and thigh-high boots; she’d let her hair grow long enough to fall below her waist, and it fluttered behind her like a cape. Every stylistic choice was the polar opposite of what Christine would have done, from the five-inch high heels to the golden thong.
And the mass murder and torture, let’s not forget that.
“You’re one special girl, Nellie Gomez,” Dark Christine said. “If that’s your real name.”
No.
There was nowhere to run.
“I spy with my little eye… something that begins with C.”
God, please.
“Little Pissy Chrissy. I never thought you’d come back to me.”
Their eyes met, like a baby bird looking at a snake that had crept into her nest.
“I’ve known since your first day at the arena, Chrissy. Snipe’s moves gave you away. I figured I’d string things along for a bit, since you were too weak to be a threat. And you’ve been tres entertaining. But now it’s time for the grand finale.”
“Lovely little Christine,” Mister Night’s voice came through Mark’s featureless head.
“People, you’re in for a very special treat!” Dark Christine called out. “The Royal Couple is about to have threesome with the lucky winner! We’re going to ménage her to death, and you get to watch!”
She turned back to her, and Christine saw fangs growing out of the Goddess’ mouth as the evil grin grew wider. “I see you managed to get rid of the Taint. That’s okay. We can fuck it right back into you. A little sex, a little torture, some in vivo cannibalism, and you’ll be part of the family once again.”
They swooped down on her.
Christine fled to the only place left to escape.
* * *
She arrived in Mister Night’s Hell, where her perception of reality was removed from what was happening to Nellie Gomez’s mortal body. She had only a remote sense of what they were doing to her.
That was bad enough.
“They are…” Mark said, sensing what was happening, unable to put it into words. His rage was almost as painful as what they were doing to her. Dark Christine was laughing, trying to find out just how loudly she could make the helpless girl scream. By moving her consciousness from Dreamland, Christine could distance herself from it all. Even a fraction of the pain they were inflicting on her was agonizing enough. And nothing would matter once they killed or tainted her.
“Yes they are going full torture porn on me,” she said, her words slurry. Apparently you could get drunk in pain and horror. “They’re taking their time. Maybe they’ll make it last a few hours, or even a full day. Not sure how long, and I’m not going back there to peek. It’s…” She shuddered. “It’s bad, Mark. If I can’t think of a way out, I’m going to die or turn into an Outsider wraith.”
“I can’t watch you die.”
“Hopefully you won’t have to.”
Christine considered her options.
Plans A wasn’t going to work. C was a nonstarter. Time for a modified Plan B.
“She can access the Source as well as I can, and if we give her enough time she could manage to gain control over it…. my arrangement with the Outsiders is something the Source doesn’t like one bit.”
Dark Christine had said that, the first time they’d met. The problem was, the evil bitch would know it if she tried to access the Source. Would she know it right away, though? Maybe she’d be too distracted by all the fun she was having, at least at first.
Only one way to find out. Use all my Words: Dim to try and sneak past her, Power, duh, and everything else I can think of.
She told her plan to Mark.
“Sounds good. And I think I can help.”
“How?”
“I can take over Mister Night’s body, like the other me did in your world, and attack her. That’s got to grab her attention. Should buy you some time.”
She’d told him how things had worked out on Earth Alpha, of course. Now she wasn’t so sure it’d been a good idea.
“You only managed to do that for a little bit, Mark. Mister Night regained control very quickly.”
“Once I land a few good shots on her, do you think she’s going to stop? Even if he regains control, Mister Night is toast. I figure he’ll go down fighting.”
“Maybe. It’s a long shot.”
“Long shots are all we’ve got.”
“Point.”
Something horrible was happening out in the real world. A surge of pure trauma got through to her even here in this twisted version of Dreamland. They were running out of time.
“Wish me luck.”
“I love you, Christine.”
She said it back, of course, even if it wasn’t quite true. But none of that mattered now. She gathered all she knew, all she was, and reached out to the Source of this world.
The alien construct was in terrible shape, as bad as the Source that had empowered the Genocide had been. Maybe worse. Could an entity that wasn’t quite sentient feel rage? Well, the Source was certainly angry, or at the very least it harbored a very focused desire to destroy the entity that had betrayed it.
An entity that was very much like Christine. Making contact with the Source came very close to being the last thing she ever did.
Not her! I’m not her!
Her desperate plea rang out as the Source tried to snuff her out of existence. She countered the oncoming attack with information, transmitting all her memories, her thoughts and theories, every last musing, guess and fantasy her overworked brain had generated during her twenty-three years on these Earths. Sentient or not, the Source was quick on the uptake. It was soon satisfied she wasn’t the evil her, and it approved of her plan.
Hooking into the Source in her currently weakened state was hard, but she used the Word of Power for all it was worth, ignored the way the raw energies she was exposed to burned her soul and consumed the tormented body of one Nellie Gomez, ending its agony and causing it to burst into flames hot enough to hurt Dark Christine and alert her something was going on.
What the fuck did you do, Chrissy?
The jig was up.
And Face-Off made his move.
All those years of torment and pent-up rage paid off. Mark overcame Mister Night with surprising ease and, just after Dark Christine shouted out in surprise, Mark used his reclaimed right hand to land a full-force uppercut to her face. He wasn’t kidding around. Face-Off went after his tormentor with everything he had.
Christine ignored the rest of that fight. Her borrowed physical body was dead; the only thing keeping her alive was her connection to the Source. If she could just use it to catapult herself back to her reality and her real body…
NO.
The impossibly real, dense, heavy negative came from the Source itself, and stopped her in mid-thoug
ht as if she’d run into a brick wall.
The Source wanted something before it would let her go.
What? Just say it!
Its desire coalesced inside her mind. It wanted her to channel all its energy into a beacon that would send a message across the galaxy. A warning of sorts: Here Be Monsters. Outsider Taint, to be precise. When the creators of the Source – the Cosmic Nerds – received the message, there would be a reaction.
The Source was in effect calling for a nuke strike on itself. And on Earth. It couldn’t do it on its own. It needed an independent mind to make the call.
Everyone will die! I can’t do that!
The Source didn’t respond. It didn’t need to.
Back on the prime material plane, Dark Christine had pounded Mark into the ground. Even worse than that, Mister Night had regained control and convinced his mistress the whole thing had been one big misunderstanding. And now Mister Night was hunting for her through his Hell construct.
She did. She felt him die through their connection, unlike the last time. It was like dying herself. His life flashed before her eyes, and she felt every bit of it, his joys and sorrows, the critical moments, the quiet ones. She saw herself through his eyes, felt his love for her, and felt his final agonies as she snuffed out everything he had been and anything he could have been. It was the worst moment of her life, and the shrill cries of Mister Night as he followed Mark into oblivion provided no comfort or satisfaction.
Sending out the Source’s message and sealing the fate of the last few million survivors on Earth FUBAR was nothing by comparison.
She felt herself falling through the universe yet again. Memories flew by, gone and forgotten like when you wake up from a dream, knowing it was important and intense but unable to recall its details. She woke up in Dreamland without any idea how she’d gotten there, and saw Mark confronting Dark Christine.
“Get away from him, YOU BITCH!”
She blasted her evil self, surprised at how much hatred and revulsion she felt as she did it.
Blissful ignorance.
Face-Off
Dreamland, July 21, 2014
“The End,” Christine said. We were floating in the misty realm where she’d saved me from her evil twin. “I killed you and everyone on Kansas and Australia and the entire effing planet. And Dark Christine still managed to escape while all those innocents died. Stupid Cosmic Nerds couldn’t even get that right And you’re not even surprised about it.”
“I was pretty sure it was something like that,” I said.
It’d still hurt like hell to watch it happen, but I was glad I had.
“And you still love me.” She sounded shocked.
“And I still love you.”
“What does that make you?”
“Another killer, I guess. A fellow murderer.”
“A retail murderer by comparison. You’ve killed, what, a few dozen people? A hundred? I pushed a figurative button that literally killed millions.”
“Dead is dead. It doesn’t matter how much company you have when you go. Die in bed alone or in a city as it burns down, it’s all the same. I guess people figure the total number makes a difference. I don’t.”
“I wish I could think like that.”
“I wish you could forgive yourself, Christine.”
“I don’t think I can.”
“You had no choice. Those people were as good as dead.”
“They weren’t all going to die that day, or however long it took the Cosmic Nerds to destroy the planet. Most of them would have lived for years, decades, and I took it all away from them. I doubt they thanked me for wiping them out. How can I live with myself?”
“You can learn how. The guilt will never go away completely, and you will never forget what you did, but you can’t change any of that. All you can do is live the rest of your life, and try to balance the bad with the good. You saved seven billion lives when you beat the Genocide, Christine. Don’t forget that.”
“And that cancels out killing six or seven million?”
“I don’t know. I think the living would say so. The billions you may save tomorrow definitely will.”
“And I killed you. I know it’s effing selfish that it feels worse than all the other murders, but it does.”
“I think I can speak for him, at least,” I told her. “He was grateful. You saved him from Hell, and gave him a good death. We all have to go, even us Neos. He died well. I hope I die that well when it’s my turn. You don’t have to regret that death, at least.”
“Everything is so simple for you, isn’t it?”
“Nope. Nothing simple about any of this. I just did the math and this is what I came up with. And I still love you. And I’ll do whatever it takes to get you to love yourself again.”
There were no words for a while after that.
New York City, New York, July 24, 2014
Condor let me get to the end of the story without saying a word.
“And you’ve been sitting on this for three days?” he said.
“First chance I had to come visit. I had reams of paperwork to catch up with, not to mention trying to keep Christine busy when she wasn’t jetting to the Arctic and back to do psychic surgery on the Infected Twosome. She’s going to be spending the next two days over there, so I figured this would be a good time to drop by.”
“Good thing it’s been quiet over here. The serial killer has stopped for now – no joy finding him, though – and the Big Apple’s been pretty peaceful otherwise. You need a break, Face. A falling-down-drunk kind of break.”
I nodded. “Sounds like a plan. How about your better half? Is she around?”
“No,” Condor said with a slight frown.
“Did you...?”
“Propose? Not yet, but I dropped some hints in that direction. Figured catching her by complete surprise wasn’t a good idea. She seemed receptive to it, in a general, hypothetical sort of way.”
“Glad to hear it,” I said, meaning it.
“But she’s been going off on her own since then, for days at a time. She’s not working at her old S&M haunts anymore, by the way. I checked.”
“Don’t tell me you can’t track her down.”
“I can. I did.”
“And?”
“She’s been spending time at Hiram Hades’ place. His secret hideout in Canada.”
“Oh.”
Hiram Hades’ clone, to be precise. Who was fighting a massive legal battle to have his record expunged on the grounds he wasn’t the same Hiram Hades who had killed about three million people over the last seventy years, in assorted attempts to take over the world.
“They know each other, and she won’t tell me from where or when,” Condor said. “And now they’re hanging out.”
“You don’t think..?”
He shook his head. “If she wants to trade evil scientists, all she has to do is say the word. It’s something else. Unfinished business, I think. I just wish she’d let me in.”
“It’s never easy,” I said lamely. I was still working to deal with a girlfriend who’d shared all of her secrets with me. It took some getting used to.
“I gotta hand it to you, Face; my drama can’t hold a candle to your drama. Let’s go get drunk.”
“Where to?”
“Where else? Club X-Tremo.”
“Never been there. Mainly ‘cause they want two hundred bucks for a shot of the house whisky. And the cover charge could serve as a down payment for a luxury car.”
“No longer an issue for you, Mr. Moneybags.”
“Fuck you, Mr. Billions. I make peanuts on endorsements. You’re buying.”
“Cover charge, and the first couple rounds. After that,
you’re on your own.”
“Fair enough.”
* * *
Club X-Tremo was one of those oddities you can only find in a town like New York or L.A.: a Neo-only establishment. You couldn’t even bring a vanilla date in there. Attempts to sue on civil rights grounds had been soundly defeated on public safety grounds. The place was created by Neos, for Neos: patrons went there to let their hair down, and when Neos let their hair down it just wasn’t safe for normal humans to be around. It’d be like having dinner inside a cage full of lions. Even if the lions didn’t mean any harm, it wasn’t a good idea.
Located where Studio 54 used to be, on West 54th Street, the place was hideously expensive because it was designed to hold a few dozen Neos (Max. Occupancy: 81) of varying power levels. An intricate network of force fields protected all load-bearing walls, the floor and the ceiling; they were rated to hold a Type Three Neo, for a few seconds, anyway. All the furniture and glassware were designed to collapse into harmless powder if broken. And eight-tenths of the personnel, including the bouncers, were Neos themselves, including a couple fairly high-caliber Type Twos.
All of which cost a lot of money, of course, which was why our bar tab soon began to resemble a small town’s annual budget, not counting the equally impressive cover charge. Given that the average income for Neos was in the high seven-figure range, the place was never empty, although from what I’d heard, the club would barely break even if it wasn’t for a few events conducted off the books, including some very high-stakes poker games.
Profitable or not, it was the place to be if you were one of the lucky winners of the parahuman lottery. The music was great, with top Neo artists vying for the privilege of performing for their peers. And it was a good spot to be seen and to network. Deals worth millions of bucks were often made under the light of the mirror ball on the ceiling.
All of that was second-hand knowledge, until now. Vigilantes like me had better things to do with our money.
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