Parallel 2: Interlaced (Parts 151-160)

By JulesM

Note for the reader: this is Interlaced, sequel to Parallels and featuring the continuing adventures of my OC Parallel. An ongoing serial, it's being released here in 10-part blocks for your convenience.

We resume the story as our heroine descends into Hammond's oubliette - and has agreed to help Connor Fox wake up early from a coma.

 

Part one hundred and fifty one

In the Squires hideout, I’m waiting in the lounge area for the last of the family to arrive. Claire is out of the room getting Connor into bed again. Max is waiting with me, we’ve been chatting idly about stuff, mostly school. It seems Anna, the one we’re waiting for, is a junior in Whitman, but she hasn’t been in school this term because of her father’s accident.

There’s a ping, Max looks at a monitor and smiles. “Here she is.”

Shortly after, a young woman comes in. Blonde messy hair, looks about seventeen. “Hi, Max, what’s so urgent… ah, and who’s this?”

“Anna, meet Jules, codename Parallel.”

---

“You’re…”, she covers her mouth, “Um, hi, I’m Anna, codename Requiem.”

“Nice to meet you”, I say.

Max says, “Jules is here because she’s working with the Knights and Squires, but she’s also offered to help dad. And yes, she knows. Amongst other things, she’s a kind of healer.”

“I’ve, well, heard some things from school”, Anna says. “You’re that Miss Parallel?”

“I am”, I grin. “Whatever you’ve heard, it’s probably true.”

Anna says, “You changed the rules and now everyone’s having sex?” Eyebrow raise from Max.

“The Head did that”, I say. “But I may have been involved. Has whoever’s been telling you stuff, told you about influence?”

“Yeah, and I heard the thing on the news too.”

“I think the Head figured she’d either have to start expelling heaps of otherwise perfectly normal students just because they’d caught a swipe of influence from being near me, or else change the rules. She’s a pragmatist, she changed the rules. So am I, so we get along.”

Anna chuckles. “Rather you than me, she’s terrifying. Is it true, the thing I heard about bringing people back to life?” That one gets a surprised look from Max.

“It’s true. And I regrew the head for someone who had it bitten off by a monster. That was me using life sorcery, like I plan to use to help Connor.”

Max says, “This I have to hear about.”

“Perhaps afterward”, I suggest. “Then I can tell everyone.”

Max thinks, and nods. “Well, we’re all here, let’s go through.”

Connor is back to comatose, although now free of all tubes, and Claire has put her into an oversized tee shirt and knickers. Going to need custom clothing to fit around those tails, I think. Claire sees the three of us come in and smiles. “Okay. You can go ahead, Jules.”

I say, “Siona, if you can hear this, I’m going to be using life sorcery now. You need to pull back your control.”

Anna looks confused. “Siona?”

While Max is explaining, I touch Connor and dive in on life sense. I can see the spirit has pulled back, and I get a feeling of grumpy resignation and watchfulness, but she doesn’t say anything.

Out loud, I say, “I want to copy in regen trait, this body already has a little, but I think I can push it up to my level, which is regen six. That will let the healing complete, and I can monitor it.”

“You’ve done that before?”, Claire asks.

“Yeah, twice”, I say. No need to mention that one was about half an hour ago.

“And the risks?”

“None that I know of. I’m not transplanting it, I’m altering her own abilities. It will be her regen, not mine.”

The others look at each other. Max says, “Regen six would be really useful, like, she will never have to worry about getting shot again.” Anna nods, looking a bit guilty.

Claire sighs. “Okay, do it.”

I copy it in, and immediately I can see the regeneration picking up on the remaining damage and repairing it. “She’ll be done healing in three, two, one… and she’s waking.” I step back.

Connor’s eyes open. She blinks, takes a few breaths. “Uh. Hi Claire.” Her voice sounds a little hoarse. She looks around. “Hi everyone. I take it I’m in hospital? I feel like I’ve been kicked down several flights of stairs. And I could eat a horse. Also, why is my voice weird?”

“You’ve been in a coma for a month, dad”, Claire says. “You had multiple fractures over almost your entire body, multiple gunshot wounds to your chest, and massive internal bleeding. All healed now due to the intervention of a spirit, and an infusion of regenerator blood. Followed by help from Jules here. Unfortunately, something in the infusion seems to linked up with something in your ancestry, and you, well, changed.”

Anna says, “Sorry dad. I didn’t know, and there was no time.”

Connor sits up, and looks at herself. “Into a girl, with tails. Why are you sorry?”

“It was my blood. I’m a mutant, and one of my abilities is regeneration. But I was the only one with your blood type.”

“Hold up, you’re a mutant?”

Claire says, “We all are, dad. And this is the Seattle Squires medical treatment room, not a hospital. Max and I are members.”

Max adds, “We’re affiliated with the Seattle Knights. It’s sort of an internship super hero group.”

Connor nods. “Okay, a lot to take in. And who’s Jules? Something inside me is telling me you’re a terrifying inhuman monster and I ought to be running away, but my kids seem okay with you, and I’m in no shape to run anywhere.”

I say, “Jules, codename Parallel. I am inhuman, but I hope not too terrifying. I’m definitely friendly.”

“Connor Fox, although I suppose if I’ll be going around looking like this, I’ll need a new name. And the rest of you, do you have codenames too? And what do you do?”

Max says, “Gladius, I make a sword and shield, and I’m fast and strong.”

Claire says, “Minerva, I’m telepathic and telekinetic, and I can accelerate healing, if nowhere near as much as Jules can.”

Anna says, “Requiem, I’m a medium, I see and speak to ghosts and spirits.”

Max says, “Will is always telling her she should tell people she’s a necromancer.”

“Will? Him too?”, Connor sounds a bit overwhelmed.

“Will-o-Wisp. He’s an illusionist, as in full scale images and sounds out of thin air.”

“Figures he’d go for something obvious and showy. That explains the stage magician job though. So, what’s with this?” She gestures at her body. “I thought regenerator blood makes you into a clone of the original, but I don’t look like Anna.”

My turn. “When I scanned you, earlier, I found that the regenerator gene had been altered by the spirit you’ve picked up, made into yours rather than someone else’s. She linked it up with some stuff in your ancestry, which seems to explain the fox traits. Then she helped heal your body, and this is the way it came out. We had a little conversation earlier today, she doesn’t trust me. We agreed I’d speed up your healing so she, and you, could keep an eye on me while I’m around your kids. I boosted your regen level up to about the same as mine, and that finished the job. Do you have any stories about foxes in your ancestry?”

“Fox-wives”, she says, considering. “It’s just an old Finnish tale my mother told me, but I guess, perhaps more real than I’d been believing. You boosted my regeneration level, hmm, what is it now?”

“Level six, or as my friends call it, ‘what bullet hole?’.”

“Could’ve used that earlier, about a month ago.” She sighs, turns to Max. “So, that crook at the docks. Who was he?”

Max says, “Ferrous. Petty crook, well what passes as petty for a mutant. He’s got some basic physical enhancements, then he’s actually got cybernetic limbs to repair old injuries. We were able to recover some of the video from your phone and ID him. They haven’t caught him yet.”

“Figures. Okay, does this place have a kitchen? I’d kill for some hot apple cider. And a burger. Several burgers. Possibly the entire cow.”

“I’ll grab the car and see what I can rustle up”, says Max.

Miss Valocco insisted we eat the lunch she cooked, and all of us had to do the table politeness thing, and I am absolutely sure she knew it was frustrating (while we were wanting to hare off and meet up with Sara), because if I did that to somebody, it would be to frustrate them. Dommy people, got to love them.

It was a very nice lunch.

And to be fair, it has given me a chance to have a few deeper thoughts about the whole business. Perhaps that’s why she did it, too, she strikes me as a woman who layers her plots even about ordinary things.

As we’re cleaning up dishes (I can help, now, because I’m family), I say, “After she hatched, when she became Sara, you were minding her boundaries, weren’t you? Or more like, the one big boundary. The one that she was choosing not to cross.”

She taps me on the head. “I knew that thing wasn’t attached to your shoulders for no reason. Good. Yes, I was, and so was Donna, in her way. She flowed into a new relationship, letting things reform themselves as they would. I stepped back and, if you had asked me yesterday, I’d have said I was waiting for Miss Waite to make the first move.”

“And here comes me, playing boke to your tsukkomi, blundering through all the webwork of carefully laid plans - and her own dissociation, and just tells her. Well, lets her watch me tell you, same difference. Now, where there was stasis, things have begun to move.”

A tip of the head. “You think some higher power meant it to happen that way?”

“I’ve been noticing a few times, I’m just the thrown rock, but the precision of the aim implies a thrower. Although I suppose, pareidolia is still a thing.”

“So cautious”, she grins. “This promises to be interesting. Alright, miss thrown rock, let’s go meet your Sara.”

Over at Whateley, Sara has been contemplative since she got over her laughing jag, but suddenly she says to the four of us, “If you know me well, you’ll know I’ve lived two lives. I was a man and an adult, and then I died, and became me. I was Michael Waite, the famous horror writer.”

“You were an adult? Um, and I’m a fan”, Vamp says. “Damn.”

“Was an adult, I’m not now”, Sara says. “It’s probably more accurate to say I had three lives. Before I was Michael Waite the writer, I was Michael Waite, the pattern theorist and mathematical wunderkind.”

“But he’s in really old textbooks!”, objects Tansy.

“Adult, remember? And while I was lecturing in higher physics, I was leading a double life dealing with class X monsters. Trouble is, that life eventually ran me into something my mind couldn’t handle. I’d… prefer not to go into details. So my old friends had to wipe my brain clean and park me somewhere calm and uneventful, and unexpectedly I found I could write. Memory can be blocked, but the channels remain. I had a lot of horror to work with. But ever since I hatched and became me, I’ve kinda been tiptoeing around that. I got my memory back, but I told myself I was putting it behind me, making a new life. Which is all very well, except a few conclusions I should have been drawing, I didn’t. Until Jules just brought it home to me in technicolour.”

She takes a breath, looks at us, then says, “Sixteen years ago, just before my big crash, I got somebody pregnant. And today I just watched my sixteen year old boy, who I had no idea existed, manifest and turn into a beautiful girl. She’ll probably be coming here. Might even end up in Poe.”

Vamp says what we’re all thinking, “Well, damn, congratulations, I guess? You’re a dad.”

 

Part one hundred and fifty two

With the Fox family reunited, and plans to go any further with opening the Big Portal called off for the day, I decide to vanish that body. So when Max is back I say goodbye to everyone, let Connor have my bag of Dick’s (It’s a Seattle institution, but I’ll have to try it next time), and vanish.

Which leaves me watching through the window as Miss Valocco’s car pulls up at the cult base. “She’s here”, I say to a pacing Sara.

“I’m trying to think what to say”, she says.

“Just be yourself, I think.”

“I’m not who I was.”

“And you are who you are now.”

She sighs, and hugs me, “You’re right. I can do this.”

And then the group of us are making our way up the stairs, and there’s a moment of awkward pause when we reach the top.

“Tina?” Sara says.

“Mikey”, Miss Valocco replies. “You look different, somehow, is it the hair?” Of course she’s smirking.

“You don’t”, Sara grins. “Come here and give me a hug, you daft old bat.”

Fina and I exchange a mutual, ‘this is not how they normally behave’ look.

While they’re hugging and making kissy-face, I ask Fina, “Can I get you a coffee or something? I know you must be tired after the regeneration. I speak from experience.”

“A hot chocolate and somewhere to sit, please.” And so I send one of me into the kitchen to scrounge up a hot chocolate, while the other me steers Fina over to the very nice leather sofa, and we plomp down together.

“This day is surreal”, she complains. “I turn into a girl, mom was married to a goth chick in inch thick makeup who used to be a guy…”

“You also got superpowers, which is an upside. Also, Sara’s not wearing a lick of makeup, that’s her natural skin colour.”

“Right now they just feel like more chaos.” She narrows her eyes and looks at me, “Her natural skin colour… You and her?”

Sara plomps herself down beside Fina and takes the answer for me, “Like bunnies.”

Happily my blushes are saved (slightly) by other me returning with a hot chocolate for everyone, just in case. Although not helped by Miss Valocco squeezing in beside me, snickering.

“Er, hi, dad?” Fina says in a slightly overwhelmed voice. And takes her hot chocolate and hides behind it, burning her lips trying a sip. “Ow!” followed a moment later by “huh? That was definitely a burn but it stopped hurting already.”

“Regen six”, I say. “Blow on it first before sipping.”

“Hi, kid”, Sara says. “Sorry, I didn’t know, all these years. And sorry for teasing you just now. Who and what I am will probably take some getting used to. I’m not who I was. Back when your mama knew me, I thought I was human. Bit of deep one on my mother’s side, but you know, mostly.”

Miss Valocco picks it up, “And now she is the Kellith, a lust demon princess, a great old one, and a girl. But still a great kisser.”

“Also my beloved”, I say, staking my claim, “But you were here first and I’m good at sharing.”

“Don’t worry dear, so am I”, Miss Valocco gives a slightly predatory smile. “As I’m sure Donna will tell you.”

“Donna and I are going to have words”, Sara smirks. Then, “Has she set you two up with links?”

“Yes, on our way over”, Miss Valocco says. “I take it Donna is on links too?”

“All of us are. What I call my Pack back at school, Donna, and now my family here too.”

“Your Pack, hmm?”

“Mostly other beloveds, but in various different ways. Paige was the first. Jules, here. Erin, Hippolyta, Jet, Jamie, Gypsy. Gypsy’s the odd one out, we aren’t close, but she grabbed a mark before she knew what she was doing, and I’m still trying to figure how to take it off.”

“They all have your mark?” Miss Valocco sounds maybe a bit jealous.

“Only Paige and Gypsy and Jules, from the Pack. And of course, Donna.”

A surprised turn to look at me from both the Valocco ladies. “She offered me forever, I said yes”, I say. “Meant it too. All of us here are long lifers. Donna too, now, I fixed that.”

“Wait, long lifers?” Fina sounds confused.

“Exemplar and regen six, means you won’t die of age, of disease, or even of most injuries, and you won’t ever look older than about twenty-something. None of us in our family will. Also, you’re on links, and that means even if you do get dead, I can pull you back if you wanna. I’ve already done that a couple of times.”

“Don’t let immortality go to your head, dear”, Miss Valocco says.

Fina looks over at her mom, and I can see her calculating based on this new info, and she goes a little whiter. “Um, mom, how old are you, really?”

“I once heard that the Baba Yaga gave a good answer to that, and it goes, ‘as old as my tongue and a little older than my teeth’.” Miss Valocco’s grin shows several of said teeth. “I have my secrets, love, and that’s one of them.”

“Sorry, that’s rude isn’t it? I don’t know why I didn’t catch myself.”

“Influence”, I say. “Gets in all the taboos. Just roll with it, everyone else will be there with you soon enough.”

There’s a pause, and then Miss Valocco says, “Donna, hmm?”

“Cleared all her ageing damage, set her up to clear it automatically, and gave her regen. She was the first.”

“Then thank you. It was a quiet pain in my heart, that I would see her grow old.”

“World’s changing”, I say. “Pointless tragedies like ageing are on my to fix list. And although my beloved people may be first in line, I plan to get around to everyone.”

“You see why I fell in love?”, Sara asks. Which gets a grin and “I see it” from Miss Valocco. And a blush from me.

Down in the dark, I’ve managed to gather seven others so far. All around my age or younger, all mutants. The realm in this place is blocking me from just mapping it all out with g-sense, but the bits I’ve seen are one single tunnel, lined with secreted goop, twisting in on itself like a space-filling curve, or perhaps a labyrinth. It’s tempting to just rush forward and save everyone as soon as I can, but some of the others are looking puffed. Not everyone’s an Ex-4. And I need to strategise.

“Okay, lets stop for a moment”, I say.

That get various responses of the sort of “thank goodness”.

“Anyhow, sorry, I’ve been rushing, I’m worried to save people, but it’s time for a break. I should get to know you all and what you all are capable of. Also what you can tell me about the thing. I just saw a video clip, you’ve all met it. Also you can ask me questions.”

Alisha, a younger girl, says, “Okay, then I’ll start. What the hell are you? Because you just healed seven people, and when I say healed, I felt that blob of fucking goo eating my insides, I know there wasn’t much left in there, and you just regrew it all in seconds. And you did that for seven of us, and you aren’t so much as puffed.”

“I’ll start with the obvious. Mutant, exemplar four, regen six, warper. Beyond that though, I’m a life power and what’s called a great old one, broadly the same category as what I think our bugaboo is, except I’m friendly and it’s not. I’m a life sorcerer, and that’s what I used to heal you. I’m a lot less human than I look, but I used to be human and my values are still human.”

“Ya, and you talk like you’re fifty years old”, Joe, who looks about twelve.

“You get a galaxy brain and see what it does for your vocabulary”, I tease back.

Mike, the guy I saved first, says, “If you’re like that thing, why are you saving us?”

“I’m not. We’re the same category of being, I think, but our forms in this world are very variable. And so are our ethical perspectives. I’m solidly pro-human. I think that thing just wants humans as toys. I’ll happily kill it and save the lot of you if I can. I need to know what it’s capable of, though. Just from the clip it seemed strong, fast, possibly sentient.”

“Definitely sentient”, Mike says. “It talked to me. Asked if I’d accept its gift, or would I prefer to die. You saw what the gift was.” He shudders. “Weird thing, I heard it, but the words weren’t English.”

“Same here”, Alisha says. “Not English, not Spanish, but I understood it. It’s damn fast and hits you hard, and nothing I tried did anything to it. I can throw ice. Did nothing.”

“Fire, same”, Mike says.

There’s a general murmur of agreement at that. “Cut it and it just comes together like water”, “Hit it and your hand gets stuck.”

I say, “I think it’s probably not really as physical as it looks. That’s one way great old ones can have bodies, kind of pushing them into the world from outside, like a sock puppet. So messing with it physically won’t touch it.”

“So what do we do?” Jamie, a girl who looks fifteen or so. “It seems like you ain’t worried, but I got caught once before, I don’t wanna be at that thing’s mercy again.”

I’ve been thinking about this. “Group up. Three groups. Team grizzly, people who feel they can help me fight when we meet the thing. Team mama bear, if you don’t want to confront it but feel you can work defence. Team bear cub, you either can’t fight, or can’t face fighting, and you need the mama bears to defend you. No shame in that, being a mutant doesn’t make you a fighter. Basically when we meet it, bear cubs hang back, mama bears cover them, grizzlies and me go on the attack. Anyone gets hurt, sing out and I’ll heal you.”

“How? Won’t you be busy?” Joe again

I make a second body. “Not as human as I look. I can be in more than one place. Am in several, right now, in fact.” And vanish it again.

“If you can be in more than one place, why are you down here?”, Alisha asks.

“You’re here”, I say. “It’s that simple really. I walk away, I come back to bones. So I’m here to fight for all of us.”

“That’s appreciated, believe me”, Mike says. “But how are you gonna fight it if hitting it is no good?”

“We’ll use physical attacks as a distraction, get in, get out quickly”, I say, making a lightsaber and lighting it up. “While it thinks it has us tricked, I’ll try to hit it with life sorcery. And if that isn’t any use, I have other tricks up my sleeve.”

My little light show gets whistles and gasps. Mike says, “Nice toy. But where did you get it from?”

“Same place I got the other body from. Made it. I wanted you all to know I can do that, so you don’t get spooked by it.” I shut the saber down, toss it into the air and vanish it. “More where that came from.”

“Can we have some?” Joe.

A moment’s thought on that. “No. Sorry. I could make them, but you wouldn’t be able to use them. They’re ridiculously sharp, they cut sheet steel like it was butter. You need to be completely aware of your entire three hundred and sixty degree sphere and where everything’s moving, to avoid chopping pieces off the person beside you on accident. Instead, let me tell you about a thing called links…”

 

Part one hundred and fifty three

The room Mr Reilly and I are ushered into is painted a pretty Wedgwood blue, with full size marble statues in alcoves in the walls. It’s big, the carpet is fancy, and the small dark wood table they have set up looks a bit dwarfed. As do the two men already in the room, one of whom, General Pace, I’ve already met, although he’s in a dress uniform now. The other I’ve only seen on TV - President George W. Bush, or this world’s version of him. I remember thinking of him as a bad president, but perhaps influence has changed things?

I bow. “Mr President. Pleasure to meet you, sir.”

He was initially going for a handshake, but matches my bow. “Miss Parallel. You don’t shake hands, then?”

“Since some of my abilities work best on contact, I feel it’s polite not to touch”, I say.

That gets a nod from him. “Understood. And this is General Peter Pace, who I believe you’ve met.”

“Pleasure to make your acquaintance again in less rushed circumstances”, I bow again.

He matches my bow too. “Apologies if I was curt with you earlier, ma’am.”

“It’s fine, you were obviously all busy reacting to a circumstance you didn’t plan for or know what to do with. My apologies for that, again.”

The President asks, “I’m told you were fighting some monster, underground in New Hampshire?”

I nod. “I think it was an animalistic kind of great old one. I hadn’t used that weapon before, I didn’t know the side effects. I currently am in progress of dealing with another one right now, but if I need the same weapon, I know how to mitigate it now. I’ll vanish all the other bodies temporarily, therefore, no spill-over.”

“You are?” The President sounds a bit shocked.

“Emil Hammond’s pet, in his little oubliette for mutants in north Georgia. Mr Reilly has the precise coordinates. Don’t worry, it shouldn’t interrupt us here.”

“Miss Parallel, do you need the assistance of the US Government in this?” The President sounds eager to help.

“Thank you, sir. At the moment, your people need to steer clear, because one worst case possibility is that I might have to toss the thing a half kilo of anti-hydrogen, and raft the hostages out on links. We’re in the middle of nowhere, right now, I don’t think I’d take out any innocents. But I don’t want anyone coming inside the hypothetical blast radius. Afterward, if the locals will let you, you’d be welcome to help with the clean-up.”

“Anti-hydrogen?”, general Pace asks, looking concerned.

“I can make it, about as easily as I can make anything else. I’ve avoided making antimatter for obvious reasons, other than really small amounts as a power source.”

“What are your quantity limits?”

“Unknown. The largest objects I’ve made are bodies, more than fifty kilos.”

The general does a bit of mental math. “So you could destroy human civilisation?”

“Several different ways. Could but won’t, I like it here and I want to help humanity, and life in general. Harming the world is exactly what I don’t want.”

The general nods, evidently satisfied for now.

Mr Bush sighs. “At present, Georgia is one of the states refusing to take my calls. So we might have difficulty helping in any case.”

“For the moment, I believe I can manage on my own”, I say. “When I’ve got rid of the bugaboo, I should be able to get the hostages out with a teleport.”

“And Mr Hammond?”

“To misquote a certain movie, leave him to me.”

That makes Mr Reilly cover an amused laugh with his hand. The President turns to him, and smiles. “I’ve been remiss. Mr Reilly, good to see you again. How is the new job?”

“Busy, but good, thank you sir.”

“And of course you’ve met general Pace. Shall we take our seats? We can discuss this business further over the meal.”

Down in the tunnels, we’ve come around a bend to a larger open area, although lines of direct sight are blocked by pillars and sheets of the resinous stuff. My group is up by one, but we still haven’t found the girl in the video clip.

“Center of the labyrinth, I think”, I say. “Mamas and cubs, stay here around the bend. Guard both sides, just in case it can teleport or something. And keep an eye on the ceiling, you’ve seen the movies.” That gets me various nods. “And grizzlies with me. Keep your eyes moving and your powers ready. And look up as well as sideways.”

We make our way in as a group, carefully, perhaps not in the organised way soldiers might, but I’m still proud of them for keeping their courage and keeping together. Good thing we’re looking up, too, because it’s Alisha that spots the thing, clinging to the ceiling, glinting in the glow of my photophores. “There!” She flings a spear of ice at it, but it dodges sideways, flicker-quick for its size.

It speaks, and I recognise immediately, it’s speaking R’Lyehian, although with a weird bubbling accent. “I hear the dying screams of my children, cast out of their warm homes onto hard stone. Why are you in this place, intruder, have you come to take what’s mine?”

“You are to leave this world and this universe, and not come back”, I say, in the same language. “You are to return all the humans to me, unharmed. Do these things immediately, or be destroyed. There will not be another warning.”

“Why should I listen to the one who destroys my children?”

“And where are your other children, o mother of many?” R’Lyehian lends itself to constructions like that. “I’d expect to have seen some, here if not before. Where are the ones who hatched?”

The laugh that comes from the thing is horrifying, high pitched and bubbly. “When I lived in caverns formed by water, they would run and hide in the small places, and some would hide so well I couldn’t reach in and winkle them out. Maybe they are still cowering down there. But these tunnels were made for me by humans, and there are no hiding places in here.”

“You grew your own children inside living humans, and then you hunted and killed them.”

“Yes, does it surprise you?”

“It disgusts me. Humans are not your toys.”

“Are they not? And yet I have this toy here, that has been giving me much pleasure.” It has the girl, wound up in a tentacle, and she’s unconscious. “If you would wish her alive, perhaps we shall have a negotiation.”

Second time I’ve faced this choice. But I have nine living humans to save, this time around. “A hostage is already dead. No negotiation. Put her down and leave.”

“I shall not.”

It charges towards us along the ceiling, and I figure it’s going to try and drop onto us. “Everyone scatter!”, I say, making a warp so that our group is out from under where it’ll end up. “Blast it with everything you’ve got!”

I realise belatedly that I was talking to the humans in R’Lyehian too, but it’s clear they understood me, as they cut loose on the creature as it lands in the middle of us, hitting it with ice, fire, and plasma blasts. A tentacle lashes out, swatting one away, and I feel a life wink out. Another tentacle comes for me, but I cut it off with a saber, making the thing scream. “Human thing! You are not worthy to be one of us!”

“I wouldn’t want to be.” Life sorcery is not finding any purchase on the thing. It’s not warding me off, which I could just rip through. It’s not alive, in any physical sense. Not anti-life like the previous thing I fought, but just a puppet. What I suspected, really. I need to reach the core of the thing, where it connects to this world. Trouble is, that’s deep inside. There’s no easy way to get to it.

The hard way, then. A teleport takes me over the top of the thing and I’m stabbing down with my saber. As I half expected, I drop down inside the body of the thing like it was made of water, but only a little way before it hardens, and I’m stuck in there like a fly in amber. If I was a human, I’d be suffocating. For me, it’s mostly just claustrophobic and dark. A current in the gelatinous morass snatches the saber out of my hand, and I let it go out.

“Now I will digest you slowly, over a thousand years, a piece at a time”, the gloating voice in my ear clearly thinks it has won. Except I’m exactly where I wanted to be, and I reach a hand out, and touch the core, and dive.

The soul of a great old one is bigger, much bigger, than Darrow’s was, but this one is just as dirty. It built its core around the fear-dreams of humans, and it’s been adding on the terrified souls of its victims ever since. Nothing I can do for them at this point except what I’d already planned. Big me rises out of the deep, far more of her than last time, because this time it’s a fight, not a slaughter. Great tentacles cut at each other. I’m stapling together gashes in my substance as I grapple with it, but it’s smaller, and it’s losing. “Let me leave! I will go!” it cries out. But the time for that option has passed, and I tear it down and down again, right to the smallest pieces, and they scatter with a soundless scream.

And it’s over. I swim my way up through rapidly liquefying gunk, shake it out of my eyes, then teleport out. Three dead, one injured from my party, but I’m already healing them. The hostage got her head dashed out against something hard, she’s very dead. I head over to her. “Miss, if you’re still here, I’m offering you something called a link, it will let me save you, but you have to want it to connect.” A pause. Silence.

Somewhere down where I was just a moment ago, I feel a soul brush against mine, a moment of benediction, and a feeling that translates to a thought, “thank you, but no.”

And no link. So I can’t save her. Somehow that, out of everything, is what makes me start crying.

In Sara’s cult house, all four of us hear the thing’s dying scream. Sara says, “Thus dies an immortal.”

Fina looks horrified. “What was that!?”

“I killed a great old one”, I say. “Although it cut me up something nasty on the soul side.”

“Are you alright, love?” Sara’s concerned.

But then I can feel big me reaching up and touching the golden seed of chi I have stored inside my dan tien, and tapping some of it out, and the wounds are closing. “Thanks to Monkey and her peach, I will be”, I say.

And in Washington, I say, “Got the bugaboo. Didn’t need to use a nuke, thank goodness. I should be able to manage the clean-up myself.”

“Would that be what just made me feel like a ghost walked through me?”, the President asks. But I’m distracted from answering because a guy in a suit has just come over and is whispering to the President, who nods. Then says, “Sorry to ask everyone to pause your meal, but you’ll all want to see this, I think it involves you all.”

A TV on a trolley is hastily wheeled in, plugged into the wall and switched on. A man is speaking in front of a podium, I recognise him, it’s the Vice President. “…and so luckily, I was outside the radius of the alien influence that has claimed the President and the entirety of the government in Washington DC. For this reason I now announce that I have taken over as acting President, as the law requires. Because the constitution of the United States is temporarily unable to operate, I ask all loyal states to rally around me, in our new temporary polity, the Confederacy of Human States.”

“Dick, you liar”, says the President. “You were right here.”

 

Part one hundred and fifty four

“I think its name was Eihort” Circe says. “What you showed me wasn’t entirely as it has been described, but perhaps the witnesses erred, seeing it in the dark and without benefit of a night owl’s eyes. The habit of bargaining and implanting its children, that was as described. The voluntary bargain, of course, being the magical binding that allowed it to keep control of its victims even after their death.”

“Perhaps it just changed form”, I say. “Nothing about that body was mechanically necessary. It just rethought itself to become what it felt would be more terrifying.”

She nods. “And perhaps, it learned to glue people into the walls from human memories of that movie, Aliens? I have not seen it, but I have heard. There is a similarity in the life cycle that it would have recognised. Although of course also to natural things like parasitic wasps.” A pause, she looks thoughtful. “What do you plan to do about the hypothetical brood, hiding in the crevices of caves under England?”

“If they were just offshoots of the one soul, they’re already dead”, I say. “If they’re individuals, that will be on them. I figure soon enough, if something starts preying on the humans like that, I’ll notice.”

“Links, hmm?”

I nod.

“It will soon be an interesting new world. And so. I think you mentioned you had another reason to come down here and see me in person?”

“Various things have convinced me that one of my enemies is a mythos sorcerer, and based here in the school. I was wondering if the school’s wards could be tuned to detect their activity. But I know mythos magic is hard to track.”

“And you came in person, in case your own mythos magic might help the detection.” She smiles. “Well, let us see what can be done then, together.”

The TV cuts away from the press conference to talking heads, and the aide switches it off for us, and leaves. There is, for a moment, a pause.

“So, is it going to be war?” Mr Reilly is the one who puts words first to what we’ve all been thinking.

The President takes a deep breath, closes his eyes. I think he’s praying. Then he says, “No. No war. Not unless they start it, and not even then, if I can help it. I’ve… I’ve had to declare war, more than once, and when I did it I thought it was the right choice. I leaned on God, and I leaned on Dick, God help me.”

General Pace says to me, “Mr Reilly passed on your warning, yesterday, about people shielded from your influence by close association with your enemy. That description helped us trace several more moles. Unfortunately, all of them had already run. It was initially hard to tell them apart from those who just walked off their posts and went AWOL, because they couldn’t face their conscience. Up until now, we had been assuming that was what happened to the Vice President.”

The president says, “Could I stand up there, and lie to the American people, as I am now? I could not, I wouldn’t be able to get out a single word.” It’s as if he’s thinking out loud. He’s talking to himself as much as anyone else here. “Dick did it with a straight face. If… no, I won’t dignify him with a name. If that man has been leading me by the nose all these years… God have mercy on me. I’ve done terrible things.”

“Every moment is a point of choice, Mr President”, I say. “The enemy has been here a long time, you aren’t the first one to be pulled into his strategies. Don’t think yourself unique, he probably has as many infiltrators in Al Qaeda. Sell guns to both sides, because the point of the game is nothing more than war, ruin, hate, and dissolution, everywhere. Nobody wins, everyone loses, and he rises over the ruins. But think a moment. He just made a near-open move against us here. To the extent that the obvious counter move is accusing Mr Cheney of what we suspect, being the enemy’s pawn. He has never wanted to be drawn out into an open fight, he wants us to fight each other. Why make what looks like a panicked move?”

A pause. Then Mr Reilly gets it. “This place is a citadel. He can’t get in, he’s lost his operatives. And Mr President, if you were once easy to lead, I’d wager you aren’t now. You came through influence intact because you chose to face yourself. That’s going to be true of everyone still at their post. They won’t bend, and they’ve already shown they won’t break. For the first time in perhaps our lifetimes, Washington belongs to humanity.”

A few extra bodies and a cross-country teleport brings my new friends to Doyle. Probably lit up the wards like a Christmas tree again, but I don’t feel they ought to have to schlep it in through the snow, not after what they’ve been through. Let’s hope the school doesn’t mind treating them.

Which leaves one very pissed me, and a certain Mister Hammond. I could just teleport out, but I’m feeling demonstrative. What he hasn’t realised about a very heavy lid, is that mass is not your friend if someone happens to reverse the local gravity. The lid rips off its moorings with a deafening screech of tearing metal, and smashes upward through the ceiling, as I make my intentionally ominous way out on foot. There are minions, and they shoot at me. I stop the bullets, and leave them gasping and helpless. “Oh Mister Hammond, I have a few dead kids and a monster I would like to talk to you about. The monster in this case being you.” I’m speaking R’Lyehian and pushing the words, so he’s going to hear it like an echo in his head. I stretch my sorcery a little to scan the place. He is, unsurprisingly, making a run for it. I lift up through the newly ventilated roof. He’s in a jeep. A small flick of sorcery stops the internal combustion in the engine. He jumps out and runs down the road. I close in on him from above and behind. Bullets converge and are blocked. More minions topple, gasping.

What would be the appropriate punishment for a monster? I think I know the answer.

Nobody was born bad. And inside him, there is a song, long crushed and forgotten. His potential. I find it, it’s beautiful. I start to sing. Science allied to heart. True understanding of mutation, to help and heal. He could have been loved, he could have helped so many. Been a shining beacon of knowledge, remembered down the ages.

And then I let the song stop.

I know I’ve never heard a man scream like that before, and I hope I won’t again. He knows. He is his own judge.

I’m done here, and I vanish the body.

I think I must have paused my other mes for a second there, because I come back to attention in the cult house with a bit of a bump. Sara is looking at me with compassion. Fina with slight shock. “You just kinda of shone there for a moment, what happened?”

Good question. “I think I kind of wasn’t the same me. Or was a different kind of me, for a moment there. Something like an avenging angel. I passed judgment on Emil Hammond.”

“What did you do to him?” Miss Valocco sounds if anything, professionally interested.

“Showed him everything he could have been, his own song. Let him see the contrast for himself.”

“Not merciful, then”, she nods.

“That will be on him”, I say. And start shuddering a bit from the adrenaline crash. Sara pulls me into a hug.

Sara says, “I think we had better be making our way back to Daddy’s realm for now. But I’m going to stay dual located for a bit, and I hope we can arrange to meet up again, as our personal rather than professional selves, tomorrow?”

Miss Valocco nods. “Of course… Sara, love.”

And Sara says, “Love you too, Tina. Never change. But I need to get this one home.”

I’m led, unresisting, through a door that leads directly into Gothmog’s parlour.

Circe’s looking at me. “Are you alright? No, I see that you are not. We shall continue this later then. Would you like me to call someone to come and meet you here?”

“Sara, please”, I say.

I’m in Doyle twice over, but I have to say to Mike, “Can you take over telling what happened? I need to focus my selves?” he agrees, and I vanish that body.

Me in first aid class has a frustrating choice. I don’t want to ditch the lesson, but I’m not feeling myself. Dr Tenent understands. “We overlap rotations, you’ll be able to retake the lesson next week, although it won’t be with me.” I thank her and vanish that body.

And with the President, the general, and Mr Reilly, I’m in a worse pickle. “I’m sorry. I just had to do an emotionally hard thing and it’s hitting me something nasty. I need to vanish this body, but I promise I’ll be right back, later today or tomorrow.” They understand and agree. Vanished.

And then there are three of me, two in my room in Gothmog’s house, one making her stumbling way over to Sara’s room in Whateley, and all of us with a Sara, and I can let the tears flow.

Snuggling up to her, in three different bodies, in two different beds, feels like home and safety. And I can let go all the stuff I’ve been bundling down. “The tunnel was dark, there were children glued into the walls, suffering, dying, already dead. He must have watched them. Seen them be forced to swallow one of those things. Watched them wasting away.”

“He wasn’t a nice man”, Sara says, comforting me with a kiss.

“I think I killed him.” And I’m weeping again. “I don’t understand why I’m crashing like this. He wasn’t my first.”

“Last time was a flash of hurried motion in the middle of a crisis, love. This time you carried the full weight of it, understanding and judgment. I was there too, I saw.” She strokes my hair. “Also, you aren’t as healed from that fight as you think. It’ll take time for those patches to be solid. No more GOOs until mom Sara says you’re all better, hmm?”

“I’ll try”, I promise. “Love you forever and ever.”

“Love you too, silly sausage.”

“I was thinking I would need to blow myself up. And then when I was fighting it, I wasn’t sure I’d survive the fight.”

“It was a dangerously direct way to deal with one of us, although I understand why you chose it. And love, you’ve had to sit on your emotions, since you were kidnapped. Knowing you were safe in the abstract doesn’t make any of what you went through less scary. And then when you had to confront one of us, you even had to let go of that, because it was a real fight with your life at stake as well as all the others you were protecting. You kept on because you were determined, but determination only gets you to the end. Emotions come back afterward.”

I nod mutely.

And then I’m just snuggling and being petted and I can let myself be without words for a bit and just be something that feels, nuzzling up to Sara three different ways and every one of them is a delight. And from inside one of me, I can feel the love from Junior too, without judgment, unconditional.

 

Part one hundred and fifty five

I’m awake, so I get up and pad towards the sound of Sara-voice. I’ll leave other me asleep for now. Thoughts start spinning in my head. Why did I freak out so badly? Why feel the need to be so few selves? No, set those aside, I’m not ready to think about that yet.

Peeking Sara knows I’m awake, of course, and she says “Hey, love” as I step into Gothmog’s lounge. Donna smiles up at me from kneeling at Sara’s feet.

I plomp down beside Sara and lean against her. it feels like home. “Hey Sara mom”, I echo, “Hey Donna mama. Love you both forever.”

Donna looks a question at Sara who nods and gives her a smile. “End of scene. You can come up and join us.”

That gets Sara hugged legs from a still-kneeling Donna, and then she stands, and drops down on the other side of me and puts an arm around us both. “Hi sweetie. I hear you’ve been having adventures.”

“I went down a hole, I saved some kids, I scared a bad man”, I say. “Also I met the President. And Miss Valocco, who is twisty but nice.”

That makes Donna giggle. “That she is. How was the president?”

“Upset that his buddy works for Cthulhu.” Not particularly caring about attracting the attention of someone I’ve pretty unsubtly attracted the attention of already. “I think he regrets a few things. Probably a good sign. This time, he wants to avoid a war, rather than jump into it.”

“Which may be a job of work”, sighs Donna. “What a world we live in.”

“Fixin’ it”, I say. “Have patience while the great Jules solves everyone’s problems, and also creates snow flowers for your salad.”

That makes both of them giggle.

A moment of just snuggle. Then Donna says, “You know, it’s not all on you. Leave some adventures for the rest of us, hmm?”

“That monster was mine”, I say. “Sara could fight it, I could, maybe Gothmog? Not sure who else. It would have just regenerated if the humans nuked it.”

“I’ve never tried”, Sara admits. “You just dived right in and wrestled with it at the soul level, I don’t think I could have done it as easily. You’ve got the practise, there. Not that I don’t have my own ideas on how to fight. But that way, I think, is yours, your signature.”

“All the psychics in ARC heard it die”, Donna says. “I think you’ve put the other monsters on notice. They’ve got a bit arrogant, dealing with humans.”

“Our kind aren’t used to the idea of dying”, Sara agrees. “They won’t risk it lightly. The fact you did, that you wagered your own destruction to win… it’ll make them fear you. But sweetie, please don’t do that again.”

“I don’t know why I dared it, for one monster”, I agree. “Except perhaps it was one of those destined things, and putting the others on notice was the point. From my own perspective, I just did it.”

Sara hugs me. “For those few moments, love, I was terrified.”

“I wasn’t”, I say. “Even now, I’m not.”

“Fighting’s like that”, Sara agrees. “Might hit you a day, a week, or a month later. But when you’re in it, it’s just a frantic scramble.”

“If it does, we’ll be here for you”, says Donna and ruffles my hair. Which nuzzles against her fingers.

A moment passes in quiet shared love. Then, I say, “Speaking of, why are you over here? Catching up, now the cat’s out of the bag? Saying sorry for secrets?”

“Catching up for old times sake”, Donna smiles. “It’s nice to be reconnected to who we were. Maybe saying sorry for secrets a bit”, she smirks at Sara. “Also checking out this rather amazing off world conference I’m told you’ve got planned. Which I’m surprised you hadn’t mentioned.”

I wince. “Sorry. There’s a few things I’ve just outright forgot to update you on, no malice, I’ve just been so busy the thought hadn’t occurred. Speaking of…”

Other me peeks around the door, and steps in, in a translucent nightgown. With a very visible baby bump.

“…meet Junior. Eleven days old, and developing at a human equivalent rate of one week a day. Before you ask, I’m both genetic parents. She’s already a cutie. I’m trying to figure how to give her a link.”

Donna does some mental math. “Conceived after you hatched?”

“Hatched on a Monday, conceived her on the Wednesday morning. Deliberately, but then I couldn’t make myself destroy her.”

“Two GOO parents”, Donna chuckles. “You say she’s a cutie. She can interact with you already, then?”

“I got to meet a sort of time shifted version of her, the Friday after. She could talk then. Since then, just feelings, but very clear ones. She’s determined, curious, loving, secure, and knows she’s loved. She’s the one deciding to grow so fast, none of that is me. Want to meet her?”

She does, of course, so pregnant me sits on the other side of her, and we guide her to put her hand over the bump.

Far from being just the clump of cells she was earlier on, Junior now has a distinct body, arms and legs and a head. Not really a functioning person in any meaningful physical sense yet, but psychically she’s a force. We get a clear feeling of happiness and greeting, overlaid on her usual love and determination to grow. Yeah, hi there to you too, kiddo. And then curiosity about Donna. “That’s Donna grandma”, I say to her, although I’m never sure if she understands words yet. But I do feel a focused greeting from her to Donna, and a burst of love, that makes Donna herself tear up.

“Oh my gosh, she’s a charmer. Gah, now I want to hug her”, she settles for hugging the bump.

“Rate she’s going, she’ll be out and physically huggable soon”, I grin.

“Looking forward to it”, Donna says with a grin. “Oh, before I forget, there was some other stuff I wanted to catch you up on.” She sits back up. “First off, love, you full influenced pretty much everyone in Dunwich, including me. A few of them had problems, but most of them seem fine. Since you got DC too, it kind of slipped beneath notice. You probably expected that?”

I nod, “Would be surprised if I hadn’t.”

She nods. “And the other thing is those wizards who wanted to meet you. A couple of them reached ARC yesterday, but doc Otto tells me he’s been getting some very hinky feelings from them. They’re locked down psychically, and they won’t open up. And they insist on meeting you alone, they say having one of us in the room would interfere with the tests they want to run. We suspect they mean you harm. Do you still want to risk meeting them?”

I weigh that one up. If they are just jumpy, and actually innocent, then they might become useful allies. And I’m not without recourse, magically, although I also shouldn’t get arrogant. But the tense look in Sara’s face decides me. She must still be feeling worried from when I fought the monster. Back then I had good reason, hostages to help, present and future, that outweighed the risk. In this case, no. “Tell them I said that either they drop their psychic shields and let Doc Otto rummage through their plans, or the answer is a no.”

She nods. “I’ll pass it on.”

Sara squeezes me with a hug. “Thank you love. I don’t want to push my feelings onto you, but I think that was the right choice. If their council wants reports about you, it can ask Circe, or Mr Lodgeman.”

“Both of whom I trust much more than some random strangers”, I agree.

Over on the other side, I’m wakened by Tansy peeping in, carrying a plate with cling film over it. “Are you feeling better?”

I rub my eyes, sit up and take stock. “Yeah, kinda. I think I picked up a nasty swipe of trauma, but I’m not crashing any more. It just all up and hit me in a rush.” I look over at Sara sitting up beside me. “Snuggling helped a lot.”

“I brought you lunch”, she says. “Sorry, I had to guess what you’d like.”

Lasagna, fries, ice cream and fruit for a dessert, and oh, interesting, she’s brought me a fly pie. “Looks great, thank you. Those three doing good business then?”

She giggles. “I’ve hardly seen them so driven. I guess it’s fun being praised and given money. Better than being shouted at.”

“They got the big thing they wanted, they can afford to focus on something else.”

She nods and sits beside me. “Why did you crash? If you want to talk about it.”

Should I? It doesn’t feel too raw. Okay. “Ever heard of Emil Hammond?”

“Who hasn’t? Mutant hating bastard, in cahoots with the Goodkinds. There should have been riots when they let him walk from his trial.”

She already knew I’d been kidnapped, but now I can explain how he was behind it, and the compound, and the oubliette. “I think it was just his dumping ground for the mutants he’d used up.”

She winces in horror. And I explain the monster, and what it was doing to them, and then how we fought it.

Sara says, “She just jumped right in and tore its soul to bits. I’ve never been prouder, or more afraid. My little scrapper.”

“Oddly, that’s not the part that got me”, I say “That just felt like a fight. It was what I had to do next.” And I describe how I punished Hammond. “I was kinda dissociated, focused in only on him, the rest of them didn’t matter. What I hit him with, for those few moments I had absolutely no mercy at all. He had made his bed, and he could lie in it. When I came down out of that, when my emotions came back, it squished me flat. I still don’t really know what to feel about it. Did I do wrong?”

“You didn’t, love”, Sara says.

Tansy thinks. “I know I’m coming at this from the perspective of an arch-bitch who used to be free and casual with the vicious punishments myself. But honestly, that man deserved to get dead. Although love, I’m glad you didn’t, I don’t want you dragged into court by the Goodkinds, they have scary money.”

“They might still try”, I say. “Intentional infliction of distress, or something. Although I’d argue that the only one inflicting distress was himself, and maybe that would stick.”

“Let them try. I’ll, no, we’ll fight them all the way.” She raises a fist defiantly, and I have to pull her into a hug for being sweet.

Taking a mental deep breath, I nudge Mr Reilly over links. “Sorry for having to vanish like that, are you somewhere I can safely appear?”

“Will be in a moment”, he says. “How are you feeling?”

“Better for a cry and a long hug from my loves. I’ll be re-creating the body I vanished, so I’ll be hungry.”

“Obviously the business with the President is called off for now, but I’ll call and leave him a message that you’re feeling better. For now, would you like to go to that smart restaurant I’ve been threatening you with?”

“Love to”, I say.

One more bit of work needing done before I can relax. I nudge the Head over links, “Sorry for dropping a bunch of kids on the school unannounced, ma’am.”

“From the stories I’ve been hearing out of Doyle, you had good reason”, she says. “I take it you’re feeling better?”

“For now. I’ll be glad of therapy tomorrow.”

“I’ll see that it’s extended”, she says. “Now, what is this I’ve been hearing from Circe about a mythos mage loose on my campus?”

 

Part one hundred and fifty six

“So you could have given those kids lightsabers?”, Toni whispers to me.

We’re supposed to be watching Hydroflux demo the new showers. Jade called me on links and asked if I was coming over, and I decided yes. While we were waiting in our dressing gowns for everyone to straggle in, Toni and I got chatting about the monster fight. Hydroflux is an ordinary looking girl, but evidently a whizz with the plumbing. And she’s just starting to explain it, so I say, “Later, okay? It’s complicated. Come ask me after.”

She grins and nods. Both of us are curious about the complicated assemblage of pipes and hoses. Turns out they aren’t just top-down showers like the traditional kind, but in from the sides ones too - and up from underneath, as an option. “That’s to help you relax after a hard day”, Hydroflux says with a smirk that hardly hides the euphemism. “So who wants to try them out first?”

A pause, as everyone realises what they’ll be showing off, then surprisingly enough it’s Nikki who speaks up. “I’ll go first. I’m an empath. No point in me waiting, I’d get the full blast anyway.”

Doesn’t take long after that for the cubicles to be filled, and a queue to form.

When Mr Reilly signals he’s ready, I use the link to find him, remake the body I had to vanish, and I’m standing in a car park, underground. “I’m back”, I say unnecessarily, but his “Welcome back” is warm.

“Anything happen since I left?” It’s only been an hour and a bit, but things were moving fast.

“The President has gone into a meeting with his people to decide what to do. You should probably brace yourself for being asked to get involved. I don’t imagine they can counter the narrative that you turned all of DC into your zombie slaves, without somehow actually trotting you out to answer questions.”

“I can do that if I have to”, I say. “I was already planning to do it at the conference.”

He nods, but his reply is interrupted by my stomach growling, and he looks amused. “Alright, follow me. I’ve been able to set up a last minute booking, we may not get the best table, but the food should still be excellent.”

Nikki looks damp in her robe, relaxed to the point where she’s holding onto one of the basins to stay upright, and very happy. “Thank you, Hydroflux. That was wonderful.”

“Thank Phase, he paid for them”, The devisor grins.

Looks like she was about to say something else, but then Nikki holds up a finger in the ‘shush’ gesture, and pads over to the door, pulling it open suddenly to reveal two boys and a stethoscope. “Hello, boys.”

“Um, we can explain”, I think that one is called Flux.

“Sure you can. Would you like me to make you shit your pants, so you can go run off to your own bathrooms and explain in there?” She sounds like she’s seriously considering it.

“Sorry, sorry!”, the other guy who I believe is Risk, says.

Nikki turns and looks to the girls in the room, “What should I do with them?”

The two boys look simultaneously terrified and turned on, with a room full of half dressed girls regarding them like something the cat dragged in.

“It ain’t the listening that bothers me”, Sharisha says. “It’s the squatting down there in front of the door. What if I walked out, and right into you, and fell ass over tits and cracked my teeth out?”

Nikki nods. “How about this. You can listen in. Like any of us gives a damn about that. But if you get underfoot, if you block up the corridor, or the doorway like that, you’re gonna lose your ability to hear anything until the next day. Do it twice, I’ll ask permission to make it last a little longer.” That gets nods from the girls, so she turns to the boys, “Understood?”

Two terrified nods.

“Good, then your punishment starts now. It’ll wear off by the morning. Scram.” And she makes a gesture. And then pushes the two out. “Any of them try it while I’m not here, tell me.” That gets grins all round.

Hydroflux waves for attention. “So! As I was gonna ask people before we were interrupted. Is everyone satisfied?”

A chorus of whoops and high fiving. I wait for it to quiet down a bit, and then say, “I do have one issue.”

The room goes quiet. She looks curious. “Oh?”

“Me and Vamp, on this floor, it works for half our equipment, but not the other half. And for Ayla, not at all. Which seems a bit much, when he paid for it. This being Poe, we aren’t the first and we won’t be the last. Is there any way you can expand its repertoire?”

She looks thoughtful. “I’ve thought about it before, but I don’t know much about how that… equipment works.”

“I can help with that.”

She considers. “Even if I could finalise a design right now, it’ll take me a week to get the parts.”

“You’re on links, right?”, I ask. She nods, so I say, “Show me what you’d make.”

So she shows me, and I make suggestions like, “you need to handle various diameters and lengths, particularly in Poe”, and “don’t forget it starts short and soft, and grows”, and “afterward, when it shrinks, you need the mechanism to ease up some” and “don’t forget to flush it out, or it’ll get gross”. With her adjusting the design a little each time. It ends up complicated, but looks workable. Then I pull Jade into our group. “Can you show Jade how you’d fit it to the existing units?” And Jade watches with curiosity as the very clear internal visualisation shows what would have to change.

“Think you can work with that?” I ask, and Jade nods.

“Okay, but this is complicated enough it’s gonna take a month to source all the fiddly pieces”, Hydroflux says.

And so I hand her an assembled unit. “Tell me if I got the materials right.”

A brief moment of boggle, and then she looks closely at it. A few moments later, she nods. “I have no idea how you did that, but if you make one for each unit, we can finish this in five minutes.”

“And then you get to be guinea pig”, Sharisha smirks.

Mr Reilly was right, we didn’t get the good table, we’re kind of stuck in a corner near a rather aggressive palm tree, but I’d say it’s worth it. I chose the fish, and it’s excellent. Haddock done with capers and a white wine and butter sauce. Ayla couldn’t ask for better.

“I don’t need to ask if you’re enjoying that”, Mr Reilly says with a grin.

I wait until I’m done chewing then say “Thank you very much. It’s lovely. Apologies if I’m a bit over-enthusiastic.” I’ve never quite thrown off the tendency to scrape my plate clean.

He laughs, “No, no. I’m glad you’re having fun. That’s the point. Well, that and I thought it would be a good opportunity to just kind of have a get to know each other a bit better chat”, he says. “With one thing and another, we haven’t had a chance.”

I think about that. “Yeah, we’ve either been on other people’s territory, or rushing around, or exhausted. Or in the office, which is not really the same as relaxed and social.”

“It isn’t, no”, he agrees. “So, perhaps I can get things started with a question. I’ve read your file, of course. But everything I know about your life begins on January first. So what I wonder is, do you wonder about what came before? We’ve looked for a reference to anyone like you in the missing people records, globally. So far, nothing.”

“You won’t find me, I’m not from here, and I didn’t look like this.” Not sure why I’m telling him, but it feels right to. “The cover story is I have amnesia, the truth is I’m keeping secrets and I have my own good reasons to do it. But I’m from another universe, and from another Earth, one with a lot of similarities to this one. Same country names, mostly. Same President. There’s a reason I arrived speaking English.”

He nods thoughtfully. A pause while I eat some more tasty fish. Then he says, “Do you miss that life?”

I shake my head. “Most days I barely consider it. I have perfect memory for all of it, now, but very little happened. All my loves are here.”

“Family?”

“A few. We weren’t terribly close. I imagine from the perspective of that side, I probably just died. They will have mourned, and moved on. I wasn’t really enjoying that life. This one is a splash of colour and joy by comparison, even with all the terror and pain.”

He nods. “I won’t press you, it sounds like you don’t enjoy thinking about it. Instead, for a change of subject, why don’t you tell me about your loves over on this side?”

I grin. “That, I can do. So, the first one I met was Sara…”

Ayla looks around the room of damp girls wrapped in dressing gowns. “Not that I’m complaining, but why am I here? I wasn’t planning to attend this demonstration.”

“A little change in plans”, Hydroflux says. “Parallel intervened on your behalf. And hers, and evidently Vamp’s, although she’s not here. So I changed the design a little, with her help. No extra charge.”

Ayla peeks into a cubicle. A certain sleeve-like device dangles unsubtly. “Ah”, he says.

“Go get your gown”, Toni smirks. “Don’t think you can get away without trying it out, like we all did.”

“With you all here?”

“Like you weren’t listening to all of us from your room? Fair’s fair. You’ve been growing a pole, looking at us every morning, and then doing nothing with it. Now, there’s something for you to do with it, but you’re gonna have to get over that shyness of yours. So yeah, you get your gown, you give it a try, and you give us a show for a change. Not that we can see anything through the cubicle door, but well, we decided not to put sound dampers up.”

“Cuts both ways”, says Sharisha with a certain schadenfreude. “You’ll get to hear us, we’ll get to hear you, that’s the deal. Share and share alike. Take it or leave it.”

An obviously conflicted pause, then he nods. “I’ll be back.” And a few seconds later, he is, with his fancy silk gown. “Um, how do I…”

Hydroflux says, “Turn it on like normal. Set the selector on the left to the bottom position, that selects your kind of undercarriage. Move the central mode lever up, relaxation mode. And dive in.”

He nods mutely, steps inside, a few moments later we hear the water start, and then “Um, okay, here goes.” And then a few moments later, a surprised gasp. And heavier breathing. Heh, I know exactly how that feels, roomful of listening girls and all. But Hydroflux is really good at what she does, and the sensation builds fast enough to drive away self consciousness. He’s gasping, and then outright moaning. And the orgasm hits you like a freight train. Ayla’s cry is enough to make a tent in my gown. I know he’s a boy, but he doesn’t sound like one.

And then the thing’s sneaky. It lets up, turns to gentle warm caresses, encourages you not to pull out. Until you start to grow again, and it’s too late to want to stop.

Ayla ends up going three rounds before he gets up the determination to pull away. And when he finally comes out, gown loosely draped and unworried about flashing the room, he looks practically melted with afterglow.

I think we can call that a success.

 

Part one hundred and fifty seven

Mr Reilly had to step out to take a call, meanwhile I’m enjoying a very tasty chocolate brownie dessert with orange sorbet, and just looking out at the room, and thinking. There’s so many political balls in the air at the moment, it’s hard to know where each one will land. I’m certain the business with Hammond will have consequences, but I can’t begin to calculate out what they’ll be. And can the incipient civil war be headed off?

It occurs to me that I’ve been viewing this country from a child’s perspective, but now I’ve become a player in the game, and I need to educate myself fast. Right now I’d bet that Ayla has ten times the understanding I do of the nation’s moving parts. At least, as they were, before I overturned the apple cart.

Looking at people with life sense, there’s a contemplative aura to them. I guess I’m not the only one asking myself what it all means.

Mr Reilly comes back in, and he looks worried. “Finish up quick, we have to go, right now.”

Okay, two big spoonfuls finishes off the food, sadly without time to clean the plate. On links, I ask, “what’s up?”

“They’ve found video of you, and it’s on the news. Some fight.”

Ah, that thing. “I know the one. Implication, I can no longer walk around incognito. Time to arrange a press conference, perhaps?”

“Once we get you to safety, maybe.”

“You realise I’m not exactly terribly endangered?”

He stops and thinks about that a moment - credit to him. And then says, “Physically, no, I see your point. But I’d like to avoid exposing you to any more horror, after what you already went through today. Being swarmed, grabbed and shoved by a crowd would be that. Even if they couldn’t do you permanent harm.”

Point to him. “Okay, I can see that. Shall I port us back?” It’s only a short walk around the block back to DARPA, but, walking together risks us being spotted. Worse, it risks linking us and making him a target.

“Yes, let’s walk as if we’re going out, and then teleport from the lobby.”

Soon enough, we’re back in DARPA. Except I think I detected a curiosity spike from one of the waiters on our way out. I guess we’ll see if he’s feeling professional.

An aide shows us into a room with a TV, and presses play on a recording of the news. My full fight was pretty long, over an hour, with short breaks while the ANTS bots put themselves back together. So the news program just shows a few of the more spectacular clips, then cuts to a talking head interviewing some martial arts guy.

Miss talking head: “What we saw there, it looked like something out of a Hollywood movie. One young girl, taking on four adult men, and winning.”

Martial arts guy: “If you watch the whole thing through, they aren’t men, they’re some sort of sophisticated robots. After she knocks them down, when the bout’s over, they just get up and pull themselves back together. And the difficulty ramps up over the course of the recording. So in some of the clips, like the last one you showed, she’s not just fighting the equivalent of four adult men, she’s fighting highly skilled and in some cases, powered opponents. And winning.”

“She’s that good?”

“What’s interesting is, no, she isn’t, not in terms of technique. In fact she’s visibly getting better at technique as she goes, and I believe learning on the fly from what’s used against her. But she’s precise, smooth, and fast, and she thinks well ahead of the opponents. She makes no mistakes of timing or angle. And while some of the opponents posture and taunt, which seems to be part of their program, she’s never anything but practical. When she sees an opening, down they go. Until then, calm and focused. If anything she fights more like an AI than a person. Solve for X, where X is winning the fight.”

“So, what style is she using?”

“As far as I can tell, an eclectic mash-up of half a dozen completely different styles. Including a number of moves she borrowed from her attackers, and they used everything from Aikido to Krav Maga.”

“So, can you tell me, why did the teacher stop the fight? Because to my untrained eye, that seemed to come out of nowhere.”

“Well, the frustrating part is that the recording cuts off as soon as she stops, and you don’t get to see them discuss it. So I’m going to have to hazard a guess. What I said earlier, calm and focused, that lasted right up until the last couple of seconds. If that had been a series of real martial arts fights, her opponents would be in hospital, but not in any serious danger. Then something annoys her, her face turns angry. And she goes for a move that would have left her opponent in intensive care, if he was very, very lucky. The teacher stopped the fight before it connected.”

“Something in the fight annoyed her?”

“No, that’s the odd thing. There wasn’t anything in the fight to set her off. If you could get her on the show, I’d love to ask her. From a respectful distance.”

“We’ll have to see what we can do about that. And now, back to…”

Screen goes blank, recording over. Yikes. Not the way I’d like to be introduced to the public. “You ever make a mistake and it doesn’t just bite you in the ass, it keeps on biting?”, I say.

“So what did set you off?”, Mr Reilly asks.

“An injustice, seen by another body. Theodore Covington, asshole backstabbing lawyer, trying to get my friend and beloved, Tansy, treated as mentally ill because she was the first person to be fully influenced. For a split instant I let it spill over, and I lashed out, used a move I knew would kill. Even if it was a robot, it looked like a man, I was fighting it like a man. What they cut off at the end of that clip, is me having an immediate freak-out as soon as Dyffud pointed out what I’d done. Sobering doesn’t cover the half of it.”

“You realise, if we have a press conference, they’ll ask you that?”

“Less if than when, I think. And yes. I’ll tell them what I told you, minus details of what was going on over on the other side. I made a childishly wrong decision in a fit of anger. I’ve learned from it, but no, that isn’t going to erase it.”

He looks at me thoughtfully. “Nobody died. Nobody would have died, even if you had been fighting living opponents, because the teacher called the match. And you were and still are a student, being taught. Mistakes happen.”

“When you’re a walking weapon of mass destruction, mistakes had better not happen”, I counter.

“And did you cause any mass destruction? No, you cut loose for one moment against a non-living opponent with one of the most innocuous weapons you have. Caution with great power is a good thing, but I think, even when angry, you retained your sense of proportion. You should give yourself credit for that.”

I examine my memories. “Conceded.”

“So cut yourself some slack, hmm?” He smiles, and ruffles my hair. “I notice you didn’t tell me what age you were before you came here, but it’s clear that in this world, you’re still learning.”

I nod, thoughtful. “In some ways, this is my first time - from a certain point of view. And you’re right. A lot of stuff I need in this world is new, and I’m learning it from scratch.”

“From a certain point of view?” He sounds amused. “When Obi-Wan said that, he was pretty much lying.”

“Obi-Wan had good reasons not to tell a starry eyed brat that his dad was a Sith and second in command of the evil Empire. Even if he hadn’t been helping hide said brat for two decades.” I smirk. “As for me, what it means is, first time around sucked. Betrayed by my body, stuffed into the wrong box, feeling like I was waiting to breathe, I missed everything people normally call a childhood. This do-over is something I’m embracing because it genuinely is the first time I’m able to just do teenage things. Even if I am concurrently busy saving the world.”

He laughs. “Okay, I can see that.”

Speaking of teenage things, I’ve made my way back over to Laird, in Whateley. Still a busy and happy crowd. No Vamp in evidence, so I nudge her on links, “Hey, where are you?”

“Um, there’s a breakout show. I’m in there. Room 105.”

Now that was uncharacteristic for Vamp. “What’s up? You sound hesitant.”

“Would you believe I’m a little shocked? Come see for yourself.”

Okay, that has me curious. “On my way.”

As I make my way out of the main room, I can see various other breakout rooms. An art room. A 13-and-under show, with a big hand painted banner hung up.

Room 105 on the other hand isn’t labelled with any banner. What it is, is guarded. Two burly looking seniors, blocking the door. I look at them, they look at me.

The female one of them says, “School rules, if you don’t wish to see sexual activity or nudity, it’s your responsibility not to go through that door.”

“I wish to see it”, I say.

The two of them step out of the way. And I go in.

Given the rigmarole, I half expected an orgy. But instead, what I see is another catwalk, and a fashion show - Vamp, in her hat, visible in the audience, and I make my way over to her. Noticing as I go that the people on the catwalk are much less dressed than the ones in the main room. One of the students is showing off a smart look with slicked back hair, pinstripe trousers, shiny black leather flats - and bare breasts under a pinstripe waistcoat, worn open. Very nice. Vamp grins at me. “Isn’t it amazing? A fashion show, in school, with nudity allowed. Only here.”

“Everywhere, after a little while”, I grin back. “But we get the preview. Sorry I had to bail, earlier.”

“Nah, it’s understood, believe me I’ve had moments when it all hit me. I recognise the look, I’ve seen it in the mirror.”

I put my arm around her. “Reminds me to ask, how are you doing? I mean, even if we weren’t ground zero for weirdness, coming here after being stuck with Darrow must be whiplash enough.”

“Oddly, the couple days I spent in pokey softened the blow.” She leans up against me, snuggling as she talks. “When the cops heard he was dead, they raided us, of course. Sandra - that is, Lady Darke - and I were just chilling around the house. Old corpse breath didn’t want us with him. We wouldn’t have been reliable. Wilbur was in lock-up, but he took Lycanthros, never learned his name, and Eddie. Sandra and I were just chilling, and the next I knew, I was waking up in a cell with the mother of all headaches… Hey, you went white. Whiter. What’s up?”

“I just realised”, I say. “If you’d been there with him, I would have killed you. I can judge Darrow, but I have no idea if the other two were nice people. They were just there, and a danger, so I cut them down.”

She shakes her head. “You can reassure yourself on that, they were assholes. But I’m glad I got the chance to know you some nicer way than at the business end of that lightsaber. It would have been a short and painful relationship. And I’m glad Sandra didn’t make the trip either. She’s.. kind of a friend. The cops wouldn’t tell me what happened to her.”

I nod feeling shaken, and hug her. “I’ll see if I can find out.”

 

Part one hundred and fifty eight

I’m sat on a convenient bench in the hallway, outside the crowds and noise of room 105. Vamp came with me and is sitting cutely in my lap. She’s surprisingly light. her hat is propped against the bench.

“Didn’t realise it’d hit ya that hard. Although it’s sweet you’re all bothered about me like that.”

“I’ve got too much of an imagination. I can see myself killing you. And then you know how imagination is a bitch? Like the imagined you looks at me before your eyes fade and it’s like, I could have loved you, but you killed me.” I wince. “It makes me wonder if I’ve been doing it all wrong.”

“You’re wondering if you shoulda let Lycanthros and Nightgaunt live?” She shakes her head. “They’d have killed you, absolute certainty. Both of them are… were, vicious murdering bastards. Pros. Eddie’s favourite trick was jumping through shadows and then appearing with his gun barrel right in your eye. A lot of exemplars aren’t bulletproof there, he used to brag about that. And maybe getting shot wouldn’t have left you actually dead, but they’d have taken Donna for a hostage. Nah, cutting them down quickly was the sanest thing you’ve done.”

I sigh. “Yeah, and that’s them. But how can I tell someone like you, who’s basically nice, from someone like them, on the battlefield?”

She laughs. “Basically nice, she says. Best compliment I’ve had all day.” Then a bit more seriously, “I dunno, look for the reluctant ones? Believe me, if you’d taken out Darrow, and then cut down the other two, I’d be surrendering as hard as I could manage. I was pretty much a hostage myself.” A frown, she looks down. “You know what the worst of it is? The law knew. That bitch at the Boston DA’s office knew I was innocent of the murder they’d framed me for. But rather than get me out of there, she twisted my arm and made me help her to nail Darrow. And then after, she lets me sit in the pokey for two days, which like I was telling you before, was not comfortable or sanitary, before she bundles me off here and washes her hands of me.”

“That sucks a whole lot”, I pull her into a hug. “That’s an awful way to treat anyone.”

“Eh, it’s her job. I’m just some kid.” I give her a tight hug showing her I disagree. She squirms and says, “Ease up, woman of steel. Hey, I just realised. You could show me on links what you did to old Darrow?”

“Sure, if you don’t mind the ick factor? His soul wasn’t pretty.”

“Well dip me in batter and fry me like a codfish, not pretty you say?” Which has both of us giggling.

“Okay, okay, fair enough. I’ll start with what we were doing before, and then give you the whole thing.”

I let her see me and Donna having fun inside her house, me playing a game, and then the shock of Donna’s warning and the pain of her wound. She sees the knife, and the threat. And the monologuing, that man had a serious case of liking his own voice. She sees me follow the link to Donna, and she sees the knife stuck in her soul. And the line leading off it.

“Oh man, he done fucked up.”

“More than a little, in several different ways”, I agree.

She sees his soul, while I’m pretending to negotiate. “Oh man, that’s him? I could vomit.”

“It’s him, and a few of his victims, including his own other-selves. And a bunch of summoned occult crap.”

And then she sees big me rising. “The holy fuck is that?”

“That would be me. Well, the GOO side of me. All of me was very annoyed at him.”

“You’re fucking enormous, you know that? Um, no offence. Also holy fuck, what are you doing to him, that looks vicious. You’re cutting him to pieces.”

“Tearing his soul all the way apart, into the smallest pieces it was made of.”

She shudders. “One thing to hear about, another to watch it happen.”

“I wouldn’t show just anybody. But you deserve to see.”

And then she gets to see the aftermath. Darrow’s cut-puppet-strings fall. Lycanthros’s confusion, bisection and beheading. Nightgaunt’s beheading. “And then it was over, I just waited for the school to get there.”

“Wham, bam, just like that.” She snuggles up. “That was horrifying a bit, but satisfying a lot. It’s going to be easier to really believe they’re gone, now that I saw it.”

“And you see what I mean. If you’d have been there, you’d have gone as fast as Nightgaunt.”

“In the circumstances, I’d have understood it”, she leans her head against me. “Don’t ever turn into one of those catch-and-release heroes. I’ve seen people try it against those two, and of course they pretended to surrender same as you did. And then turned it right around, bang goes Dudley dumbass Do-right.”

“It’s like I told the lawyer afterward”, I say, “Surrendered isn’t stopped. Dead is stopped. If you try to get the bad guys to surrender, you’ve gotta remember you’re still in the fight until they’re safely locked up. I’m guessing those two weren’t the sort to stay locked up, either?”

“They’d break out, or someone who wanted goons would break them out. They were pros, pros are always in demand. And they were both the sort to come back later with a grudge. Nah, you made a good call. Dead is stopped. I like that.”

“Try not to need it, killing people is a weight on your conscience. Even jerks.”

“I managed to avoid it so far, thank God. Just roughed a few people up. Although I couldn’t avoid seeing Darrow doing it. He insisted I watch.”

“Jerk”, I say.

“Dead jerk.”

“True. Doesn’t erase the ripples he put into the world, though.”

She nods. “What you said about the counselling thing, couple days back. I went to see if I could meet them today. Got to talk to Doc Bellows, who you mentioned. He seemed like a nice old guy. Even though everything was still real busy after yesterday, he gave me his full attention while we were talking. He’s set me up an appointment tomorrow.”

“Huh, both of us tomorrow. When’s yours?”

“First period.”

“Mine’s fourth, just after lunch.” I grin. “Good for you.”

“Hope I won’t regret this”, she snuggles against me.

Which is pretty much what I’m thinking on the other side, as they prep me for my first, rather impromptu press conference. We’ve found an extra large hall available for rent, and the White House is covering the hire. Right now, they’re helping fit a radio mike under my civilian clothes. Although I’ll only need that to begin with.

I have plans to make this a press conference like no other.

A few minutes later, the room starts to fill up with reporters. We’ve invited far more than the usual few, pretty much every legitimate news outfit in town and a few of the silly papers. They’re looking a little confused at the instructions we gave them, and at the arrangements - unlike the usual tight rows of seats, there’s a central cleared area near the podium, and the rest of the room is full of seats set up in facing pairs.

The guy who’s introducing me is called Tony Snow, he’s the White House press secretary, and he’s here, really, to make it clear this is an official briefing despite being in an unorthodox place. He does the “as you already know” spiel about the pink light, influence, and so forth. And then he cues me, and I walk in.

Instantly they’re all shouting questions at me. I ignore it, and walk up to the podium, and ask for quiet. Then when I get it, I say, “In normal press conferences, I’d stand up here, you’d shout questions at me, and I’d pick and answer a few of them. That’s not how this conference is going to work. Instead, each and every one of you is going to get a one-on one interview. You may be thinking that would take all night. But no, it won’t. Consider this a demonstration of my bona fides.” And I switch my mike off, and start creating copies up front, greeting each reporter by name and suggesting we pick a pair of chairs and get started.

Amazement turns to wonder, turns to clear thoughts of Pulitzer prizes. And then we all settle down, they get their cameras pointed or microphones recording, and the questions begin.

A lot of them begin with the obvious, what was the light, why did I do it. And I have to explain that I was using an untried power against a monster elsewhere, and I didn’t know there would be spill over from all my other bodies. If there’s a next time I can mitigate it. I do apologise for affecting so many people without any of their consent.

One of them, bless him, asks if I’m a space alien. I answer that no, in some ways I’m still human, at least physically and in how I think, but in other ways I’m from much further out. Space aliens are from other planets. The Great Old Ones aren’t even from this universe. Yes, the Lovecraftian ones. No, I don’t work for Cthulhu, I’m his opponent, we have opposite philosophies. Yes, they’re real, and dangerous.

I have a suspicion the tabloids are going to get more straight up reporting out of this than the broadsheets and TV channels. It takes a certain recklessness to ask the weird questions.

Someone asks me if I’m a Republican or a Democrat. I say neither. My goal is universal post-scarcity, but I don’t believe that can be imposed top-down from Washington, and I also don’t feel happy taking sides, when my focus is all of life. Have I aligned myself with the Bush administration? No, I’m just working with them. Do I think influence will change President Bush? It already has.

What do I make of self-designated President Cheney and the new Confederacy? I’ve agreed not to discuss some of my more speculative thoughts, but speaking for myself, I feel it’s the same kind of thing as the first Confederacy. This is a group of political leaders who feel their bigotry is under threat. And indeed it is. Bigotry is a form of self deception, influence won’t abide it. However, the immediate situation does worry me, and I definitely want to avoid it worsening.

Does this mean that nobody in the Washington government is capable of self-deceiving any more? Yes, it does, they were forced to confront themselves on Saturday, and those that couldn’t handle it had breakdowns. Does that imply that the same will happen to everyone else? Yes, but much more gradually, which I hope will let people adjust.

What do I make of Mr Cheney’s claims about me and my influence over Washington? I think he’s playing rhetorical games. He knows that to most people, the alien is seen as something to be feared. So rather than addressing what influence does, which is actually positive, he is taking aim at what I am, and allowing people to reach unfounded dire conclusions about what I’m doing. Hence this press conference.

Am I trying to set myself up as a rival to God? Short answer, no. I don’t see myself as a rival to anybody, and don’t wish anybody to abandon their religion, but I am a life power. For more on that, check out my ecumenical conference due to start on the first. Yes, it’s going to be real, and it really will be off-world. The press is very much invited.

And finally, it’s over. We’re reached the agreed end point, so I thank everyone, vanish all copies except the original, give a wave and walk out. Whee. I hope that helps.

 

Part one hundred and fifty nine

As I’m heading out of the hall, feeling a bit successful, I can’t help but notice Mr Snow leaning against the wall, looking a bit grey and radiating distress on life sense.

“You okay?”, I ask. “Looking a bit under the weather.”

“Sorry”, he makes an effort to pull himself together. “It’s the chemo. Takes it out of me.”

“Chemo, as in chemotherapy, for cancer?”

“Yeah.”

“Would you be willing to let me scan you? I may be able to help with that. It would involve no more contact than a handshake.”

He looks at Mr Reilly, as if asking for confirmation, and Mr Reilly says, “During the time I’ve known her, she’s done various miracles. I’d take her at her word and say yes.”

“Okay, sure. A handshake?” He holds out his hand, and I take it, and scan into him.

“You have cancer in your colon, multiple metastases, including a nasty one in your liver. It’s adapting to the chemo. I can clear it out, would you like me to?”

“Clear it out, as in what?” He sounds sceptical.

“Destroy the cancerous cells, all of them. Scan and scrub any pre-cancerous DNA changes. Regenerate normal tissue into the gaps. It would take a few seconds, might feel a little funny, but no pain.”

“That is way more than what the doctors were offering. I even looked into mutant healing, and they said it doesn’t work well for cancer. Too many fiddly little cells, and you can’t afford to miss even one.”

“I won’t miss one.”

“What’s the downside?”

“None, unless you don’t want something like me tinkering with your body. I will, briefly, be in full control of it.”

He thinks a moment, then, “I can live with that. Go ahead. But I warn you, I’ll get my oncologist to verify what you did.”

“You’re very welcome to. Okay, here goes.” I pick off the small metastases first, they don’t require anything more than an instruction to lyse. The body can easily heal voids the size of a few cells. Larger growing tumours require instructions to lyse, shredding the capsules they’ve grown, pinching off and closing the extra blood vessels they’ve induced, and then a flood of neutrophils and macrophages to clean up the rubble. In a few locations, I need to combine that with growing in the surrounding tissue layers, to avoid punctures in important organs. A second once-over, fix any pre-cancerous cells and tidy up some of the damaging systemic side effects of the chemo, and I’m finished.

“Done.”

“Just like that?”

“Not much to do, from my perspective. Cancer cells can evolve rapidly to ignore or evade chemical poisons, but I was controlling them with life sorcery. They die when directly instructed to. Your white blood cell count might be high for a bit while the broken up crud gets processed, but then you should be back to normal. Please definitely do verify the result with your doctors. I like being double checked if only for my own peace of mind, and it will reassure you I did what I said.”

“Huh.” he looks a bit gobsmacked, but I guess getting miraculously cured will do that.

“Preview of your brave new world?” Mr Reilly asks, amused.

I nod. “People shouldn’t be wandering around with uncured, curable problems. Including ones I can fix and medicine can’t yet. I need to spread links around first, though. Which can wait a few days.”

While we’re driving back, Dyffud, of all people, nudges me. I wasn’t even aware he had a link. “Hi Jules, do you have a minute to talk?”

“You’re speaking to a dedicated instance of me, so I have literally as much time as you need. What can I do for you today?”

An amused feeling. “Well, I wanted to talk about a couple of things. I’ve noticed that our fight in the arena has become a whole lot more public than I anticipated.”

“You said yourself the place gets recorded. It’s why I wore my super suit and we used my codename. I just didn’t expect my codename to get known this early. I was planning that for a week from now and under much more controlled conditions.”

A wry smile. “They say no plan survives contact with the enemy. But given how it has become a subject of public discussion, I apologise for setting you up like that.”

“Eh, you wanted me to learn an important lesson. Better to learn it there than in a fight with real humans and nobody to call a stop.”

“Even so, I feel a bit responsible for your trouble.”

“I’ve been thinking of going and giving an interview on that TV show where they had the martial arts guy talking about it. Maybe you can come along and explain the set-up, as your penance?” I’m teasing, but I’m also serious.

He laughs. “It’s quite a trip down to Washington.”

“It’s a teleport there and another back. Shouldn’t be a problem.”

“I’ll have to think about it.” He sounds dubious about the idea.

“If you come along, we can even do a demonstration spar for them. I wouldn’t want to risk that with some random baseline.”

He laughs again. “You never think small. Trying to be the next Jackie Chan?”

“It’s you that would wow them, or perhaps show me up for the beginner I am. No, I’m not, but I do feel it would be advisable to gently warn any assholes not to try and deck me in the street. Famous people get crazies.”

A sigh. “Yeah. I can see that. You realise they’ll probably pull a gun on you, though?”

“Guns, I have experience dealing with.”

A very clear wince. “Yes, and that brings me to the second thing I wanted to talk to you about. Sensei Tolman and I wanted to spring a surprise on you tomorrow first period, a little test. But I’m wondering, after what the Head told me about the awful business earlier today, whether you’d prefer to pass on that.”

Good question. “I’m feeling a little shell shocked. I’m controlling it, but I think that something too close to what happened might set it off. Trouble is, I’m not so sure my powers would stay inside the sim-suit if that happened.”

He nods. “How about you tell me what happened, and then I’ll ensure that our scenario is something completely different?”

“If you want. That may work. It’s not a happy story, though.”

“Don’t worry about me. I feel, sharing the burden might help you carry it?”

“Fair point. Okay, so, it started when a bunch of cosplay soldiers kidnapped me, yesterday afternoon.”

As I tell the story, he stays quiet, but I can feel his amusement at my antics, and then horror as I describe the facility. Is he sending the emotions, or am I just getting better at reading them over links?

When we get to my decision to go down the oubliette, he stops me. “Why did you decide to go down? You know you’re not personally responsible for rescuing everybody, right? As a child, your job is to prioritize yourself.”

“I knew I could come back later with an army of adults. But I didn’t doubt, if I did, all I’d find was an empty tunnel, empty buildings, and bones.”

“Some would say that was better than taking a personal risk.”

“That wasn’t what I chose, I suppose it’s as simple as that. I took the risk, and it paid off. I saved eight kids.”

“Sometimes they don’t pay off.”

“I’m aware of that. I know how close it was.” And I continue describing my journey down into the tunnel. How I found the kids, alive and not. How I fixed them up, in some cases from pretty close to death, and killed the baby bugaboos. How we divided ourselves up, and faced the monster in the ways we were able. How I was able to destroy its soul, but not save the hostage. She chose to stay dead, and I suppose she had her reasons, but it still bothers me.

And then, afterward, how I chased down Hammond, and forced him to face what he could have been, and was not. That bit, oddly, still hits me hardest. I suppose because it wasn’t a battle of equals, it was a judgement and if I’m honest, no small amount of vengeance. Yes, it literally could only hurt him exactly as much as he deserved… but still. I should avoid getting into that mode too often.

Dyffud sighs. “I see what the Head meant. A concentrated dose of horror. Do you think, if we avoid anything reminiscent of that, you’d be okay facing a martial test tomorrow?”

I nod. “Something without bad memories attached might actually help.”

“Alright, I’ll see what I can do.”

On the other side, Sara, Donna, and I are snuggling together in Gothmog’s lounge, enjoying each other’s comforting company and relaxing after having taken the tour around the place, having nibbles and interesting non-alcoholic drinks.

Out of the blue, I notice a background thread signalling for my attention. “I think I just figured out how to do one-sided link-up. Something I was thinking about on the other side made a connection.”

“One sided?”, Donna asks, languidly.

“Like, if they aren’t able to think in words, or something, so you’d need to push a link to them, they can’t be told to pull it.”

“Huh. I can see how that’d be useful, but how? Don’t people have to reach out for a link?”

“Thing is, I kinda-sorta of cheated to achieve that. Souls…” I try to fit the concepts into English. “They aren’t like, in physical space, near or far. The distance between any two souls is zero. But the reachability follows different rules. Relational ones. It’s the same reason I can’t normally dive and see someone’s soul without a link or physical touch. There needs to be a connection. The link-up process uses the way they kind of pull together when they are reaching for each other, and the kind of contract that forms. The spell jumps across the connection and sets itself up on the other side.”

“You’ve thought of another way to make them pull together, then?” Sara sounds curious.

“I already knew it, that’s the irony. Donna, you won’t know about this because I’ve been keeping it confidential. But the first time I pulled somebody back from the dead, they’d already been that way for months. I needed a link to pull them in, but how to establish it? How to even let a dead person know they should want a link?”

“Damn”, Sara grins. “I see it too, now.”

“Why don’t you two galaxy brains spoil the surprise for me”, Donna teases. “How?”

“Well, at the time, and I’m gonna use they-pronouns here to avoid spilling any secrets, I thought the ghost was hanging around their ex in a kinda”, I wiggle my hand, “physical-ish, present nearby kinda way. And maybe thinking about them really hard, thinking about how much the ex loved them, would let a message pass. And it did pass. The ghost reached for the link and connected up. But I see now that I misunderstood the mechanism. They were reaching for each other’s souls, with love. They actually connected at the soul level, briefly. Kind of like the scruffy wild relative of links.”

“Huh, I see”, Donna looks thoughtful. “And if you rewrite the spell to use that kind of closeness, it’ll fix a lot of the ethical downsides. You’re not shoving a link at a stranger.”

“I’ll make it carry an explanation of what it does, in raw concepts without words, and part of that is the ability to reject the offer. A seed, rather than an instant set-up. So if it connects, it’s because they said yes.”

Sara smirks. “You’re gonna link up Junior, aren’t you?”

I grin. “Am I ever.”

 

Part one hundred and sixty

“Did you forget about the tea party?” It’s Chou, on links, interrupting me while I’m having fun kissing Vamp.

“Uh, no? I wasn’t aware there was going to be one.”

“You must have missed the bit where I said we’d do it again next week, last week. Sorry, my bad, I should have checked everyone knew. We’ve talked about it in Kimba, but we’re together every day in team tactics, and you’re not in that group yet.”

“Don’t worry too much. Is it already over, then?”

“Oh no, we’re just setting up.”

“Coming over, then. I’ll bring Vamp.”

Somehow I feel her wince, but she sounds bright enough when she says “I’ll see you both when you get here, then.”

Vamp is initially dubious, but I manage to persuade her to try it at least once, on the basis that being calm and contemplative is nice, and also, the tea is particularly good. Unstated: I think it’ll help her bond with the Kimbas. Shared experiences are a lot of the basis of friendship.

A short jump gets the two of us into the Poe lobby, and then we head for the dayroom, peeking in, the Kimbas are all assembled and looking relaxed. Chou herself looks sleepy, but she’s kinda going with that and making tea slowly. The scent is delicious.

“Oh wow, that’s tea?” Vamp evidently agrees.

“Tea given to me by the immortals, yes”, Chou smiles.

“Immortals?” Vamp sounds dubious. “Is that like, a super group or something? I haven’t heard of them.”

Chou chuckles. “Sorry. I’m just a bit too relaxed to not laugh, but don’t mind me. The others, well, except for Jules, all saw me arrive and heard my story long ago. It’s not your fault you’re newly arrived, and the subject hasn’t come up. No, these are the Chinese Taoist immortals, the actual real ones. It comes with the job. And the job comes with the sword you’ve seen me swinging around. The sword is called Destiny’s Wave, and the job it’s connected to is that of Handmaid of the Tao. It’s a sort of mystical title, and it comes with mystical allies. Who are, at least while they’ve been around me, absolutely physical and real. And capable of giving me tea.”

Vamp raises an eyebrow. “Into each generation a Slayer is born, kinda thing?”

Chou laughs. “Yeah, like that. But much rarer than each generation, more like once every few centuries. And always when there’s a huge problem on the horizon that the Tao wants to take a personal hand in. I’m kind of its delegate, but when it wants, it operates through me pretty directly.”

“So what’s the big bad you’re here to slay?”

“Not a clue. In the circumstances, I’m guessing Jules here has something to do with it? But not as my enemy, that much has been made clear.” She sighs, “This job so totally needs to come with a manual, but no. What’s odd, as well, is that Handmaids are usually dropped right into the mess and told to go hit things. Me, I’ve already had several months of lead time and the problem hasn’t shown itself. Which implies it must be a biggie, so I’m trying to make the time count.”

I say, “Downside, mysterious destiny, possible doom. Upside, some particularly nice tea.”

Which makes Chou grin. “Yeah. And nice company too, which is definitely part of the point of this.” She waves a hand to indicate the party, and then seeing the tea is ready, starts pouring and handing out cups. “Sip slowly at first if you haven’t tried it, to be sure you’re not allergic or anything. I’m sorry, they’ve showed me the list of what’s in it, but they’re all plants from China, no names in English and you wouldn’t have heard of them.”

Vamp takes hers a little dubiously, sniffs and sips. “Oh wow, that’s deelicious!” Interestingly, her demonstrative response gets smiles, not frowns.

“Second highlight of my day”, Ayla agrees. “While we’re stuck eating our meals in the diner of doom and despair, it’s the only genuinely delicious thing that didn’t come out of my own fridge.”

“Second, huh?” Vamp’s curious.

Chou says, “I’d lay odds that the first is those showers.” Then seeing Vamp’s look of confusion, “Weren’t you invited to the demo?”

“Well yeah, I was, but they’re just showers, what’s to see? So I stayed at the show. Much more my style.”

Nikki says, “I think you may change your mind when you see them. Did you know, Jules spoke up for you specifically, and for Ayla, and got the design altered?”

One very confused Vamp says, “Huh?”

It’s Ayla, surprisingly, who tells her. “I had those showers fitted, as a gift to the girls here. Hydroflux makes them, they’re designed to be used for sexual release as well as getting clean. And when she put them in this morning, they were designed only for girl anatomy.”

“Which you don’t even have, I think? Why buy what you can’t use?”

“A gift. But Jules turned it around, got her to do an on the spot re-design to support boy anatomy too. And then conjured up the pieces. So if you see me looking uncharacteristically relaxed, that would be why. I got gifted my own gift.”

Vamp laughs. “Okay, this I have to try. A shower with built in jack-off machine.”

I say, “Selector to middle position picks both at once mode”, with a smirk. “Only you and me can use that one right now.”

Chou says, “It’s weird how weird it doesn’t feel. Like, I know that the me I was when I came here would be mortified to be making loud orgasm noises and probably being heard by the whole floor. Or at least definitely by the whole girls’ side. But I found I didn’t care at all. Felt like enjoyable sharing, even. I guess it’s influence, but it sneaks up on you.”

“No sound dampers, huh?” Vamp sounds surprised.

Nikki shakes her head. “We voted against it. Most of us on the floor are lesbians, or bi. It’s nice to hear girls having their fun. And nice to share it with appreciative ears.” She smirks. “Ayla had to share too, though. Which is only fair given how much he gets off on watching us prance around the showers naked.”

Ayla has gone pretty red. “I’m shy, it’s how I was raised. But I had a lesson in overcoming that today. And you’re right, Nikki. In the end I didn’t mind the others listening in and enjoying it. And the orgasms, well, I guess I must have been mister cranky before, because the contrast is so obvious now. I just feel like I’ve had a whole day’s soak in a hot springs bath.”

“Little bit”, Toni teases. “I look forward to seeing your new chilled out self.”

Which makes Ayla laugh. “I do too, to be honest. I think it’ll improve attitudes across the whole floor of the dorm. At least the girl’s side. Maybe the boys will club together and hire her to fit theirs too? Now that she has a design that works for them.”

“You’re not going to finance it?”, Billie asks.

Ayla shakes his head. “Not unless I make a move over to the boys’ side. But I’ll give them a loan on reasonable terms, if they can show me collateral and a plan to repay it.”

Billie looks curious. “Planning on doing that, moving across?”

“Definitely, if the BIT-slicer works and turns me physically male”, Ayla says.

Jade says, “You know you could just tell the school you identify as a boy, and they’ll move you?”

Ayla nods. “I know it, but I find myself reluctant. It feels like giving up on doing it properly. So I’ll leave things as they are for the moment.”

Toni says, teasing, “I think what you don’t want to give up is the view in the showers.”

Which makes Ayla laugh. “It’s true, I’d miss you all. But honestly, I’d give it up in a heartbeat if I could have a fully male body again. Something about that runs deeper than living out the fantasies of every red blooded straight boy on campus. Strange, but there it is.”

Jade shakes her head. “I completely understand. I literally trained myself to hypnotise away the pain of surgery without anaesthetic, just to get a little closer to being a real girl. And the day Jules broke the curse and I got to be a real one all the way was the best of my life. I completely understand how much you’d give up for that.”

“When do you do the BIT-slicer thing?” I ask.

“I don’t know yet”, Ayla says. “Thuban is going to set it up for me. It depends when people are available. Probably this week, though.”

“Well, good luck”, I say. And everyone else echoes that.

There’s a pause of quiet, while we all enjoy the taste of tea. Then I say, “I have my own news, and I think you might all be interested. All of you have met Junior.”

Various nods around the room, and Vamp says, “I still can’t believe you’re just casually pregnant over there.”

“Believe it.” I grin. “Because now, you’ll be able to talk to her from anywhere.” And I group everyone up on links, and invite Junior in.

At first she’s hesitant, clinging to me, but then cautiously curious, and then recognising people she runs around the group sending wordless greetings and love.

“We love you too, sweetie”, I say, and she nuzzles up to me in response.

Everyone else is amazed for a moment, then instantly gushing over her and making a fuss. And she happily laps it up, snuggling up to them and dancing around the virtual space like a speck of moving happiness.

“How on earth did you do it?”, Ayla asks. “I thought you’d have to wait until she understood words.”

It’s Junior herself who replies. Wordless memories of something arriving, it’s a question, and an offer. She examines it, a pause to think, then accepts, and it blossoms into a link. And she and I flood happiness and love at each other.

“She understands us”, Nikki marvels.

Junior replies to that with an image of incomprehensible jabber, but somehow there’s an undertone of meaning.

“You’ve made a universal translator”, Billie says.

“About half of one, I think”, I say. “Junior’s special. She’s all-GOO already, and she’s doing most of the hard work. But I might be able to develop something.”

Junior sends me encouragement, and faith in me. And I send love and thanks in reply.

“If you can, then do it”, Ayla says. “Too much of the world is divided by language. It makes it too easy to think of people as the other.”

“I’ll see what I can do”, I agree.

As the tea party is winding up, Hank says, “One last thing, everyone, before you all go your separate ways. I’m proposing to invite Jules to join us in team tactics, but only if the senseis okay it.”

“Meaning if I pass my combat test tomorrow”, I say.

“Yes, but I thought it was supposed to be a surprise?”

“Dyffud called me on links, and explained that they want to run a test. He was worried it would trigger me, after this morning’s fight. We agreed to go ahead with it, and I showed him the fight so we could avoid anything too similar.”

Hank nods. “Okay so, everyone in favour of inviting Jules, providing I’m allowed to do it, say aye.”

There’s a chorus of “aye!” from around the room. Including from Vamp, who is being a sweetie because she isn’t on that team and can’t really invite me, but I think she just wants to give me support. So she gets a hug. And from Junior, a burst of supportive faith. She really is the sweetest little thing.