FUTURE IMPERFECT: CHECKMATE by Benjamin D. HutchinsDo not go gentle into that good night, Old age should burn and rave at close of day; Rage, rage against the dying of the light. Though wise men at their end know dark is right, Because their words had forked no lightning they Do not go gentle into that good night. Good men, the last wave by, crying how bright Their frail deeds might have danced in a green bay, Rage, rage against the dying of the light. Wild men who caught and sang the sun in flight, And learn, too late, they grieved it on its way, Do not go gentle into that good night. Grave men, near death, who see with blinding sight Blind eyes could blaze like meteors and be gay, Rage, rage against the dying of the light. And you, my father, there on the sad height, Curse, bless, me now with your fierce tears, I pray. Do not go gentle into that good night. Rage, rage against the dying of the light. --Dylan Thomas . /* New Order "Round & Round" _Technique_ */ Eyrie Productions, Unlimited presents FUTURE IMPERFECT: CHECKMATE Benjamin D. Hutchins (c) 1994 Eyrie Production, Unlimited with special thanks to Larry Mann Johji Manabe and the whole #Eyrie crew NEW AVALON INTERSTELLAR SPACEPORT NEW AVALON, ZETA CYGNI DYSON SPHERE 14 MARCH 2394 "GENOM #909-GA, you are cleared to land on pad 44, approach vector niner four. Do you copy?" "Copy, Avalon Control. 909-GA out." GENOM #909-GA, an old-fashioned BTL-A4 Myrmidon hyperdrive- capable starfighter, touched smoothly down on pad 44, coming to a halt perfectly between the lines, and the ground crew came out to tie it down and service it. As they did so, the mirrored cockpit canopy slid back slowly, and the pilot removed her helmet, shook out her long, thick red hair, and climbed up and out, kicking down the folding ladder. "My God," the crew chief said, looking over the Myrmidon. Its steel-grey thermocoat was scarred and pitted in several spots. One micrometeorite impact had removed most of the port-side GENOM logo, a design which dated to the days shortly before the Old WDF's collapse. The numbers and what remained of the logo were faded, and the coaming under the cockpit canopy bore no name. "I haven't seen one of these things in decades," the chief continued, reaching out as if he didn't believe it could exist and touching the side of the craft. "Looks like you flew it through Hell to get here, miss." "You might say that," said the woman with a smile. "Take good care of it, will you? I've had it... for a long time now." "Sure thing, miss. Want us to recoat it for you?" "No, don't bother... just a good field servicing will do." The woman got a large, long bag out of the storage compartment underneath the side of the cockpit, then walked toward the terminal, pulling off her flight gloves as she did so and flexing out her cramped fingers. It had been a long flight... She raised some eyebrows when she entered the terminal complex; between her extreme attractiveness and the fact that she looked very tired and very tousled, she accounted for most of the people there. The rest were probably looking at her Old GENOM flightsuit, a century out of date and rumpled as hell, the cockpit connection hardpoints corroded. It looked as if she had stolen it from a particularly sloppy museum. She stopped and leaned elbows-forward on the desk which blocked her way into the main part of the building; presently a young man in a neat black suit came over and asked if he could help her. "I hope so," she replied, sounding tired and slightly distressed. "I need an entrance permit." "Citizenship?" "Um... United Galactica." He looked at her strangely. "Is there a problem?" "Miss, the United Galactica has not existed for over fifty years." She looked back at him, perplexed. "Er... I'm from Niogi, wherever that is now. Uh, and if you don't mind telling me, what's the date today?" "It's the fourteenth." "Of?" "March." "In?" "In?" "What year?" "2394." She looked momentarily stunned. "Miss? Are you all right?" "Uh... y-yes, I'm fine. I just... I think I must have a malfunction in my ship's hyperdrive. I mean, how could I forget about the UG!" She laughed nervously and continued, "I've been out beyond the Antares Maelstrom for a while -- longer than I anticipated, I guess there's something wrong with my ship's chron too. I'm a civ hunter." [Where did THAT come from?] "I see." The young man shrugged inwardly. He'd dealt with travelers who were a lot more confused, and most of them deserved breaks. Besides, whoever this confused girl was, she was cute. "Name?" "Um... " A vision, suddenly, a memory. An old man, wizened and wheelchair-bound, bitter-looking, and yet kindly. Mian,> she heard him say. Snapping back to reality, she said, "Mian." "Surname if any?" one. Imperious. Cruel. it. "Mian Mann. Say, do you know Larry Mann, our local GENOM liaison? He comes through here all the time, flying back in from business trips out of the sphere." [That name!] "Um... he's my uncle." "Your uncle. I never knew the Doc had sibs... All right... and you say you're Niogan?" "Yes. Berlin." "Ah. Do you work for GENOM?" "I-- " She glanced down at herself. "I guess so." "You really should see a physician," the young man suggested as he tapped away at the computer. "We have two or three on staff here, I'm sure one of them would be happy to take a look at you." "No, that's all right," she said, too quickly. "I'm sure it'll pass. Like I said, it's probably hyperdrive shock." "Oh, is that your Y-wing? No wonder you can't remember anything. My uncle used to have one of those. He'd go for a trip in it and not remember who he _was_ the first day back. You'll feel a lot better in the morning. Purpose in visiting New Avalon?" he continued, not missing a beat as he slipped out of his anecdote and back into his official patter. "Erm... business, I think... " "How long will you be staying?" "I'm not certain. I might be staying permanently." "I'll give you a three-month permit, then. Before that runs up, if you plan to stay longer, you should contact the immigration office at the Government Building downtown, okay?" "O...okay." Was this it? No weapons scans? No crosschecks? Nothing? "Here you are. You're all set. If you want, I can refer you to a nice place downtown. Fairly cheap, too. Oh, but I imagine you'll be staying at GENOM itself, never mind... have a nice day." "Thank you." Mian took the papers the man was extending to her, walked through the gate, and left the building, not certain entirely what she was doing. [Cute kid,] the young man thought to himself. [Gotta be pretty uncomfortable in that flightsuit though. Looks like she hasn't been out of it in a year, and I think that was a tail in back there. If it isn't I don't want to know.] He shook his head, sighing. [Civ hunters. Why do they do it?] In the end, Mian found herself navigating to and checking into a Holiday Inn almost on autopilot. Instincts were returning to her, if no clear memories... she went up to the room she had rented, almost tore off her flightsuit, and took a long, hot shower, taking special care with her thick, heavy hair and matching thickly furred tail, which was cramped from so long stuffed in the back of that flightsuit. It was, after all, intended to be a fairly short trip... 2394?! Wasn't it supposed to be a short trip? Where the hell had she been going? Who -was- she? And why the hell had she almost instinctively told the man at the entry desk that she was a lost-civilization hunter? She didn't know much about herself -- her memories felt like jumbled plastic blocks inside her head -- but she knew she damn well wasn't any civ hunter. Turning off the water, Mian stepped out into the steam-filled bathroom and rubbed herself down with one of the soft towels. Wiping off the mirror, she stared for a while, contemplating the contemplative green-eyed face that stared back. It didn't appear the girl in the mirror knew what the hell she was about either, so she brushed her teeth and then, feeling much better, wrapped another towel around herself, went out into the room, and began to unpack her bag. On a desk in an office not far from the Holiday Inn, a telephon rang, and was snatched up on the second ring by a tall, dark man in a lab coat. "Mann," he said. The screen next to the handset blinked, and showed the young man from the spaceport. "Dr. Mann, this is Clark down at entry. I thought you might want to know that your niece arrived today. She's a little hypershocked, had trouble remembering things, but she should be okay in the morning. She's probably somewhere in the building by now -- they didn't already let you know, did they?" R-Type's brow furrowed. _What_ niece? "What did this person look like?" "Well, here's her picture," said Clark, reaching down. "She's pretty, if you don't mind my saying so," he said as Mian's face, scruffy and tired-looking, filled the screen. Dr. Lawrence Mann's heart jumped into his throat. [My God! That's MIAN!] "Uhm... thank you, Clark. I'll check up on her right away." "No problem, Dr. M," Clark replied, his face reappearing. "Hey, any idea how long she's staying for? I'd like to meet her." "No idea, Clark," Larry replied, forcing his voice to stay even, light and conversational. "No idea at all." "Oh. Well, if you get a chance, I'd sure appreciate a proper intro." "I'll work on it, Clark. Listen, I've gotta go -- I have a meeting in five minutes. Thanks for calling, okay?" "Sure thing, Dr. M. Be seeing you." Clark hung up, and the phone's screen went blank. [Eris,] Larry thought to himself, his heart pounding in his chest. [Mian's alive. She's here. I don't know how, but she survived and she figured out to come here. [What is she going to do?] He pushed his thumb down on the phone's cradle button and then dialed another number. Mian reached into the bag and started pulling items out at random. Street clothes, jeans, t-shirts, fairly timeless... underwear... some sort of costume... a file folder. Curious, she took it out and flipped it open, and a flat color holo looked up at her. A man, human, pale and blue-eyed, with octagonal glasses and long brown hair tied back. He was smiling a strange, enigmatic smile, and as she looked at him, Mian felt a surge of recognition in her mind, and something else deeper down. [I love this man,] she realized suddenly. [I don't know who he is, but I love him.] She put the folder aside and dug deeper in the bag. Had she come here looking for that man? Perhaps something in here could tell her who he was... The next item her hand encountered was cold and hard. She closed her hand around it and, with a bit of maneuvering, got it out of the bag; it was a sword, long and ornately gripped, in a metal-shod scabbard. Drawing it out, she felt its familiar weight in her hand and knew she knew how to use it. Looking at its wicked edge and the intricate runes carved on it, she felt another flash of memory, and looked back at the picture. Then she put the sword away and slung it over her shoulder, went to her window and looked out over the city. [I have to kill him.] "Damn and blast!" Larry snarled, slamming down his phone. Gryphon wasn't in his office, he wasn't at home, he wasn't at his camp on Vortigen Lake, he wasn't working on his ship, he didn't have a communicator or his cellphone with him. "How the hell can anybody go incommunicado in this damn sphere?" [I love this,] Admiral Benjamin D. Hutchins thought to himself as he roamed around the Avalon Centre Galleria, his favorite mall. [Nobody knows where I am, and nobody can find me. If there's an emergency, Vision will take care of it. For once, I'm not on friggin' call. Life is good.] He paused in center court, taking in the huge, ornate crystal fountain which was carved in, of all things, the shape of a VF-1S Valkyrie fighter, the water pouring out of its thrusters. It was perhaps the silliest public monument he had ever seen, sillier even than the giant pissing fountain statue of Kahless IV on Kronos, the Republican Klingon capital. Around it, the galleria itself rose to the tenth story's vaulted skylight ceiling, railinged catwalks of the upper levels rising in concentric-looking rings. Patrons moved here and there, and the glass elevator at the south apex was currently coming down. The four cardinal corridors sprouted off the galleria and angled away, lined with shops and, like everything else in the Avalon Centre, sparkling white. Walking into the Toys 'R' Us on the first level, he wandered into the proper aisle and checked out their Transformers selection, noting with amusement that the hook marked "Super Optimus Prime" had only one remaining. He took the remaining toy off the hook, turned it over, and read the copy on the tech specs panel once again. He turned it back over and looked through the plastic window at the toy inside, checking over its quality; it appeared, of course, impeccable. After all, he owned and operated the Wedge Toy Company, and if his company didn't do Prime justice, Prime would know exactly who to complain to. He felt a tug at his elbow, and looked down and back; a small girl was looking up at him hopefully. "Mister," she said, "is that the last Op'mus Prime?" "Yes," he replied. "Do you want him?" "Can I?" said the girl, her eyes brightening. "'Course," he said, handing it to her. "Be good to him. He's a friend of mine." "I will," the girl said solemnly, then brightened again, chirped, "Thanks, mister," and darted away. Gryphon smiled and returned to perusing the shelf. Best damn toys in the galaxy, right here... Gryphon wandered aimlessly for another five or six minutes, checking out the other Wedge Toys in the store (and noting with amusement that Kei and Yuri were _still_ the best-selling Wedge Defense Force-3WA action figures) before returning to center court and, looking at the fountain, pondering the food court. He turned, leaning back against the railing, and watched the people come in and go out the main doors. As he watched, a pretty young woman with thick, windswept-looking red hair came in, wearing a long and floppy brown trench coat below which he could see just the lower parts of ornate red boots. She looked almost familiar, and in spite of himself, he found himself wanting very much to meet her. She happened to look his way as he watched her, and for a moment their eyes made contact, green to blue. [!] thought Mian, not having enough memories to know if there was any particular god's name or title she was supposed to insert in the traditional place. [HIM!] [She seems to recognize me,] Gryphon observed to himself, watching as her eyes widened slightly. [I wonder who she is?] He made up his mind that he would introduce himself, and pushed himself away from the railing, taking a step. Mian scanned him with her eyes as he took the first step, taking in height, build parameters. Black, rubber-soled boots, baggy blue jeans, floppy flannel shirt made visible by his hands in his pants pockets pinning back the lapels of his open, black duster. A little shorter than average; stocky build, but no wasted space. His face was lightly bearded, and what hair she could see around the edges of his hat, a WDF Tac School baseball-style cap, was medium brown. The octagonal wireframes were still there, and those blue eyes behind them were as unmistakable as the proportions of the face. He was walking with a brisk, purposeful, yet relaxed stride. It was most definitely -him-. Whoever he was. Mian resolved not to attack him. The sword might be for something else -- it might just be a memory jumbled into connection with another by mistake. How could she love this man and have to kill him, after all? She would at least find out who he was. Yes, that was a perfect plan. As he approached the red-haired girl, he noticed her expression turn from recognition to mild perplexity to a small and nervous smile. She seemed to know him, and yet not know him -- it was much the same way he felt, himself. How strange. Mian tried out a smile, felt how false it looked, and abandoned it in favor of simply looking pleased. He was within ten steps now; soon they would be in conversational range. She tried to greet him, but nothing would come out, and suddenly, with a small burst of static, a small legend began to blink in the upper right corner of her vision. >>TORIS: ATTACK MODE<< Gryphon pulled up short as he saw the girl's eyes go blank, completely dead. He'd seen that look before -- utterly flat and expressionless -- but not on people who weren't either chemically flatlined, lost in the Net, or being overridden by some kind of cybernetic controller. (The thought drew a small shudder of revulsion as he remembered the Gamilons' experiment with brain-dead cybernetic commando soldiers. Noticing their characteristic blankness and mindless obedience, as well as their appearance, someone in the WDF had nicknamed the Gamilon cybersoldiers 'the Borg'.) A moment later, Mian tore off her coat, revealing a lithe body clothed in almost depressingly stereotypical bikini-style battle armor, and a monster sword which she drew out and brandished, its intricate runes catching the light. /* "Weird Al" Yankovic "Dare to be Stupid" _Dare to be Stupid_ */ Gryphon had barely enough time to throw his own coattails aside and get his katana out before she was on him, having performed a startling standing long jump to close the gap between them. He was only half-braced when her first attack crashed into him like a freight train. TSCHLANG! He hit the black-and-white tile floor and skidded on the smooth surface on his back, fetching up against a brass railing post around the center court pond. His weapon was intact, but his left forearm had a shooting pain in it, and his entire skeleton felt like it was vibrating. [Christ!] he said to himself, scrambling to his feet. [What the hell is this girl -made- of? She hits like a truck!] He set himself for the next attack and parried it smoothly rather than just blocking it; the impact was less jarring, but another pain shot up his arm. The first hit had apparently damaged something inside it. He feinted, ducked aside, rolling along the railing, and got his wakizashi out with his other hand, making a mental note to thank Tricia Currier profusely for designing the clever scabbards into the sides of his coat. Mian struck again, bringing the massive crescent blade she wielded around in a hissing arc; Gryphon ducked under it and backed away a step. Her next cut quite neatly separated the railing and lopped the top foot off a railing post at a rakish angle; the metal sang as it split. Her next attack nicked him, the tip of her blade scything across his chest and parting shirt and skin like crepe paper, producing a superficial but bloody and painful wound. [Face it, Gryphon,] said the admiral to himself, [you are outclassed. Cut your losses and get the hell out; you're underequipped and unprepared for this.] Timing himself carefully, Gryphon parried another two blindingly fast attacks, then threw himself sideways, hitting the tile and rolling away from a cut that opened a six-inch gash in the floor and a second which barely caught the outside of his left thigh, then coming up in position to break for the stairwell leading to the parking garage. Briefly, he considered trying to reason, but abandoned that idea when he looked into the eyes of the girl attacking him and saw nothing looking back. [Whatever she is,] he said to himself, [she isn't the same woman I saw coming into this place.] This bit of rumination cost him another shooting pain as he was forced to cross-parry with his left, then feint with his right and fall back a step. Mian was a whirlwind, slamming into his defenses again and again as he fought his way backward, toward the stairwell; then, as he felt his back against the panic bar, he tried an old trick Kei had shown him. Mustering as much strength as he could in his good arm, he parried the next attack _hard_, driving Mian's sword arm up and away from a useful position. Then he jumped, lashing out with a Doc to strike her high in the armored chest and drive her several steps away, at the same time stowing his blades inside his coat again. The reaction drove him back against the panic bar, and the door opened. Bracing himself for more pain, Gryphon let himself tumble through, his back slamming hard into the steps, keeping his neck arched so his head wouldn't slam into one of the concrete stairs. It came off perfectly, and he tumbled, as an ancestor of his used to say, ass over bandbox (whatever the 'bandbox' is) down to the landing, coming up on his feet. Not bothering to look up, he shook his head to clear it and scrambled down to the garage exit, running full-tilt into the garage and searching with his eyes for his vehicle as he ran. There it was: sleek, black and grey, with the ever-incongruous GENOM Experimental and WDF Aerospace Division logos paired on its wings and nose; the sleek, razor-edged, compact and deadly-looking prototype of the R-9S Stalker grav vehicle. Part gravbike, part aircar, part starfighter, the R-9 series was the brainchild of Lawrence Mann, and his first major contribution to the GENOM/WDF joint development operations that Caine's new regime was seeing into place. Mann liked to think of the R-9 as his atonement give to the WDF for all the trouble he seemed to believe himself solely responsible for during the bad old days; Gryphon preferred to think of it as a fun new toy. He reached into his pocket and thumbed the remote for the Stalker prototype's security systems, hoping he hadn't broken it falling down the stairs (as it felt he had at least one rib). He hadn't; with a soft whine, its turbines began to spin up, and the canopy silently raised itself. Behind him, he heard a door slam; sparing a glance over his shoulder, he saw Mian charging after him, sword held high, running faster than he was. He kept running, and a second later a stabbing pain took him in the right shoulder. Turning as he ran (a neat trick if you can master it -- it took him weeks of practice), he reached behind his back and came up with the Mk 2B phaser which was in another of the cunning hidden pockets built into his coat. As he did, two more nail-like throwing spikes missed him, one just barely missing taking off the top of his left ear. Thumbing the phaser to heavy stun as he raised it, he shot the oncoming Mian dead-on in the center of the chest, just above the green gemstone set into the middle of her breastplate's decolletage. The orange energy bolt knocked her over backward, the sword clattering from her hand. As Gryphon ran the last ten steps to the Stalker and jumped in without preamble, he heard a scrape of metal on concrete; looking up, he saw Mian getting to her feet and collecting her sword. Swearing, he thumbed all the Stalker's grav drives online and the canopy switch to DN at the same time, taking the grips in his hands. She was coming toward him still, as he eased into forward thrust, raised the Stalker up off the concrete, and slid out of the parking space, pivoting on the gravs to face her -- but now she was walking, her eyes still dead and cold. He switched the onboard weapons systems online as he watched her advance, knowing she could see the phaser ports on the nose and wingroots begin to glow. She kept coming. "Come on," he muttered. "Don't make me fry you." The telephone in the instrument cluster took that moment to ring; Gryphon ignored it, his eyes narrowing as he watched Mian's approach. She kept walking, and, growling his discontent, Gryphon thumbed the triggers, bracketing her with a three-bolt high-stun spread. Three high-stuns should have been roughly equivalent to heavy disrupt, but having seen her shrug off a single heavy stun from a hand phaser in a second, Gryphon held out a hope that this wouldn't be lethal -- although why he should feel compassion for someone who was trying her best to stir-fry him was quite behind him. Orange lightning sizzled over her skin as the three bolts bracketed her perfectly, and Mian slumped to the floor. Gryphon punched the throttles, opening up the forward thrusters and zipping over her. Twisting the grips in his hands (and ignoring the singing pain in his shoulder that twisting the muscles around the spike caused, and the duller outcry from his left forearm), Gryphon laid hard on the countergravs, making the Stalker literally drag itself around the sharp left leading to the exit. At 120 kph, there was no skid at all; the Stalker held the turn like glue. Excellent workmanship. Gryphon rammed the Stalker through the rectangle of blue sky at the end of the aircar exit chute; as he flew away from the Avalon Centre Galleria, he glanced in a rearview scanner and was somehow unsurprised to see a red-haired, red-tailed figure standing in the chute's mouth, something glittering in her hand, staring up at him. Reaching down with his left hand, Gryphon flipped a plastic cover off a square switch and pressed it in; it lit up red, revealing the black lettering on it which read "CLOAK". The Stalker shimmered, then disappeared, as the SalTech force shield generator modulated the shield signal from projection-protective to Predator-style invisibility. He hadn't been able to tweak it yet to protect while it rendered invisible -- that was still on his To Do list. Instantly, the phone stopped ringing. Behind him, Mian blinked and came back to herself as the >>TORIS: ATTACK MODE<< flickered and died away from her vision. It felt like awakening from a dream -- a very bad one. [Dammit!] she berated herself. [What the hell was THAT?] Shaking herself out of reverie, she realized that what she had just done was certain to attract the attention of local law-enforcement very soon now. Putting away her sword, she jumped down from the up-angled aircar chute without difficulty -- a fall of at least five meters to the side street below -- and faded into an alley. Meanwhile, Gryphon turned the invisible Stalker westward, flying it away from the center of the city. He engaged another switch, marked CLK COM, and watched with satisfaction on the monitor as the sensor-comm suite extended a long, thin whip aerial out beyond the cloak's outer edge. Immediately, the phone began ringing again, and Gryphon, setting the Stalker's primitive autopilot, picked it up. A tense-looking Larry Mann appeared on the monitor in the middle of the instrument cluster. "Gryphon!" he said, sounding both relieved and annoyed. "Where the hell have you been? I've been trying to call you for three hours!" "Well," said Gryphon conversationally, "I -was- having a quiet afternoon to myself, wandering around the Galleria and window shopping, but I've spent the last ten minutes getting chopped to little bits by a ravishing young thing in a classic steel bikini ensemble." [Damn it! She's started already,] Larry thought to himself. "Did this young thing happen to have bright red hair, and matching tail?" "That she did," Gryphon replied, his eyes narrowing. "What do -you- know about this, R-Type?" "More than I want to. I'll explain everything I know, but I'd rather do it in person -- where are you heading?" "The lake, I think. If this wacko found me once she can find me again, and I don't want her tracking me to Kei and the kids." Larry could understand that. Kei was more than capable of taking care of herself, but Kaitlin was only five, Leonard a mere two and little Priss wasn't even a year old yet. The last thing Gryphon needed to worry about was collateral damage involving his children, even though Mian probably wouldn't consider them mission directives and would ignore them. Probably. "All right, I'll meet you there and bring all the data I can dig up. You're not going to like this." "I haven't been enjoying it so far either," Gryphon replied. "By the way, I hope you don't mind... the Stalker's not damaged, but I'm afraid I -have- gotten the seat a bit bloody." "You're hurt bad?" "No. Cut across my chest, nick on one thigh, a throwing spike in my back I have yet to pull out, and what feels like a broken left radius. I've had a lot worse and pulled through." "Want me to bring a medkit?" "No need, although if you can find Deunan and Bri, bring them along, by all means." "I'll see if I can find them. See you at the lake, then, in about half an hour." "Right-o." Gryphon hung up, then, brow creasing, called his house. Within a ring and a half, Kei had answered. "Ben!" she said. "Larry's been calling looking for you since noon. He seems very -- what the hell happened to you?!" "A pretty girl I've never seen before, but who looked annoyingly familiar, attacked me with a sword in the center court of the Galleria and damn near reset my cron daemon," Gryphon replied. "R-Type seems to know what's going on -- he's going to fill me in out at the lake in about a half an hour." "The lake? Why the lake?" "Well, the woman seems to be trying to kill me. I didn't think it would be very polite of me to lead her to you and the kids." Kei looked contemplative. Her first instinct was to run immediately to his side and back him up, but she could see he had a point. Operating became a whole new ballgame with helpless people depending on you, and the best course of action here would be for them to remain separate. Assuming he was the target, him staying away would keep them safe; if he wasn't the only target, Kei remaining at home with the kids would keep them safe. She bit back her instincts and sighed. "I know," Gryphon said with a soft grin. "They're a pain in the ass in a combat situation, ain't they?" He cracked a bigger, more irreverent grin, and then became serious and said, "Can you get some backup over there without Yuri finding out? The last thing she needs is to find out about this, insist on helping, and then get caught in the middle of something." Yuri was six months pregnant with her first child, and she and Zoner were both on the edge of panic constantly trying to figure out what the hell they were doing with this upcoming parenthood thing. "No sweat. Hot Rod's in town, and I think Olaf might be too, and there's always Hammer and Eiko. I get the feeling we'll be a hell of a lot safer than you will." "R-Type's rounding up Deunan and Bri," Gryphon responded. "Between them and my bag o' tricks, I'm pretty sure I've got everything I need -- although I'd feel better if you were backing me up. There's something weird about this one... she almost feels like a loose end I've forgotten to tie up. I'm -certain- I've never seen her before, and yet... " He shook his head. "I dunno. This whole thing's gotten me spooked. I guess I'm out of practice; I haven't been chased around by a redheaded lady with a severe attitude problem in a while," he said with his familiar cockeyed grin. Kei snickered, reddening slightly. "Watch yourself," she said seriously. "I love you." "I love you, too," Gryphon replied, "and don't worry, I'll be careful. We'll figure this out in no time. Bye." "Bye." Kei hung up, and Gryphon followed suit, then took the Stalker back in manual control and killed the cloak. He turned northwest, heading out toward Vortigen Lake, the massive lake out in the terraformed forest zone which surrounded New Avalon. He had a camp on the remotest corner of it which would make a perfect staging base, and within moments he was touching down in front of it and shutting the Stalker down. He got out of the low-slung cockpit, noticing that the forearm was already knitting and the shoulder already stiffening, and then, phaser ready and feeling quite wary, let himself into the camp. A careful and tense check proved that it was empty. He had the feeling their meeting in the mall was just a chance encounter anyway. Pouring himself a Pepsi, he spread a towel on his favorite chair in the den, lit a fire, and sat down to wait for R-Type, Deunan, and Briareos. "Aki," R-Type said, shoving papers into his briefcase, "link to Battia and get me everything -- I mean -everything- on the old Tyrell Nexus Seven-A project and Gotterdammerung, Phase One, Killer Doll." "Mian?" Jilehr replied, looking curious. "She's dead, R-Type, what do you want her files for?" "She's not dead, Jilehr. Do as I asked, please." "Sure, sure, no problem. Just curious." Aki: "What do you mean, Mian isn't dead? Largo transmitted her failsafe code. I watched him do it." "Apparently it failed to function," R-Type said distractedly, searching through his files for anything else. Of course, he had no hardcopy files that dated back that far -- everything hardcopy in this office had been printed there or elsewhere in GENOM New Avalon, in the five years since he'd moved there -- but he had to look anyway, just on principle. "Oh, and get hold of Major Hecatonchires and Captain Knute, will you? Tell them to come over here ASAP, instructions from Gryphon." "You do that, Aki, I'll talk to Battia. She likes me better anyway." "The hell you say!" "You're getting more and more like me every day, you know that?" "Burn in hell, Jilehr." "You know I'd take you with me, my love... " R-Type half-ignored his ACI's two sides pretending to bicker; he knew they were doing it to try and distract him from something he obviously found most distressing, and he appreciated the sentiment, but this was too big for him to be cheered out of. This was a serious problem. By the time Jilehr reported that the data retrieval was complete, Briareos and Deunan had arrived. R-Type still had to get used to the sight of them, the hulking Hecatonchires-3 combat operations cyborg and the pretty blonde woman (who had recently rid herself of that incongruous-looking eyepatch, and now had a complete set of blue eyes) in the WDF Marine uniforms, black berets of the Elite unit on their heads. Briareos was the best-adjusted combat borg R-Type had ever seen or heard of -- one of the best-adjusted people he had ever met, period. Larry didn't think he'd ever seen Bri lose his temper or raise his voice except to make it carry further. Deunan, on the other hand, was loud, brash and dangerous; only her quietly manifested devotion to Bri kept her from being a loose cannon. Together, the two of them had a bizarre dynamic that most people had to run to keep up with. "Aki said Gryphon wanted us to meet you," Briareos said in his deep, rumbling voice, unexpectedly human coming from behind his decidedly mechanical face with its five optics and slot of a mouth. It was a strange face, inhuman certainly, but Larry had to admit, it had a certain charm, and Briareos himself a considerable amount of hard-to-trace charisma. "You're coming with me to his place out at the lake, just as soon as I finish dumping this data to disk," Larry replied. "Someone's trying to kill him." "What a shock," Deunan said, deadpan. "Deunan!" responded Briareos, reproachful. "Well, are -you- shocked?" "Mmm... not particularly, now that you mention it." "The defense rests." "Data transfer is complete," Aki's spectacled visage reported, then shifted to same-featured Jilehr's sorceress garb to continue, "and Battia says hi, and you never visit any more, you bastard." R-Type managed a tired grin. "I'll try to soon." He pulled the optical out of the drive and stuck it in an inside pocket of his suitcoat, stripping off his lab coat and shrugging into his overcoat. Then he grabbed his briefcase, put on his hat, and, the picture of a corporate man, led the way to the garage. A few minutes later, Gryphon heard the familiar sound of R-Type's flying Oldsmobile arriving outside. He went to the door, still wary, and let the three of them in; while Deunan dressed his wounds, he related what had happened to him, and then asked R-Type to kindly explain what the hell was going on. "What the hell is going on... okay, well... " R-Type took off his overcoat and hat and started to pace, contemplative, around the den. "The first thing we need is a little background. This whole thing started back in the early 2000s, back when I was working for a small-time company called AST Research. Tyrell Corporation was trying to buy AST out so they could get hold of me for their Nexus Project, and they were very close to doing so. They were working on a new series called Nexus-7, and they wanted my compsci knowhow. But GENOM contacted me first. Since I didn't particularly like Tyrell -- I thought their methods were sloppy and wasteful -- and GENOM was giving me a much better job offer, I gave them the information they needed to eat both Tyrell and AST in one go. I was working for GENOM again. We took the Nexus-7 design, and turned it into the 33/S series." "Always suspected there was a connection. You do seem to pop up in the strangest places, Larry." R-Type managed a small, nervous chuckle. "Heh... yea. Anyway, while I was working on the conversion I discovered a variant on the N7 that Tyrell had been working with: the Nexus-7A. They called it the 'Killer Doll'. It was a dedicated infiltration- assassination weapon, lacking the Six and 33/S's special techno-synchron ability, with a unique failsafe: 'suicide genes'. The 7A was designed to die on command if ordered to by a superior." R-Type slotted the optic disk from his office into the A/V setup along the back wall and found a general arrangement, skeletal subsystem, with the old Tyrell Robotics banner across the top. It was dated 7 April, 2017. "This was, of course, not a mass production thing by any means. Even Largo saw no real use for it at the time. Then Gotterdammerung came along... (tch, it's still coming back to haunt me... )" "Pard -- ngh! -- pardon?" Gryphon said, wincing a little as Deunan got the vise-grips around the throwing spike in his back and yanked it out. "There were actually three aspects to the operation," R-Type elaborated, "not two. I never mentioned the third because I thought it had failed utterly and so was not worth mentioning; and it was edited entirely out of most of the reports on the subject. The first was Project Doppelganger, which produced the Butcher, your basic 33/S Replicant; they didn't need me for that one. The second was called -- tch -- 'Experiment 101-E' (Eris, the irony... I don't know whether that was a tribute or a torment on Largo's part), which produced 101-E -- I'm not going to call her Shasti... that was not the 'real' Shasti as far as I'm concerned." Gryphon nodded. R-Type's disenchantment with the weapon that had nearly done in ReRob was well-known around GENOM New Avalon and the WDF liaison office, as was his ambition to someday recreate her, as he put it, "properly". "The third project was the Killer Doll, and I had a large hand in it, familiar as I was with the Nexus 7-A series and workings. What was she supposed to do? Gryph, you undoubtedly found yourself interested in her. It was part of her design: her mission was to seduce, and later kill you." Gryphon raised an eyebrow; so, looking up over his shoulder, did Deunan, in a mirror gesture which Larry found quite amusing. Then, noting Larry's snicker, they glanced at each other, then shrugged, at which point their parallel gestures ended, as Gryphon winced and Deunan rolled her eyes and went back to work. Briareos regarded R-Type dispassionately, but his sense booms were quirked a little, which Larry had learned to read as restrained amusment. Recovering his composure easily in the face of the large problem they were all confronted with, R-Type continued, "The operation was originally supposed to work like this:" Ticking the points off as he paced, R-Type pulled up an official-looking Old GENOM memo dated 14 August 2287, with a flow chart on it. "1) 101-E would be placed and gain entrance to the WDF. This was retained in the reworking of the plan -- by now you know what the outcome of that was. "2) Killer Doll (I'll call her Mian) would be similarly placed and cause a rift between you and Kei by seducing you." Deunan snorted. "Let it never be said that Max Largo was not a romantic." Gryphon detected an oddly bitter undertone in that statement, but he made a mental note to ask about it later and let it pass, instead saying, "So that's her name, then? 'Mian'?" "Yes," Larry replied. "They gave me a fairly free hand in her fine design work, as long as I stayed within the psych-response parameters Intel provided me on you, so I shaped her into a favorite character of mine from a long time previous, and then named her appropriately. Anyway: "3) 101-E would gather intelligence data and clearance," R-Type went on. "This came off as well. "4) After the war operation diversion, the Butcher would impersonate you and frame you; the plan was that you'd be arrested and readied for Due Process Under Law. Largo was playing on the WDF's code of fairness. Everything's in place so far, but here's where it starts to get different. "5) 101-E would kill her contact, the Angels, and rogue intel agent A-K0, whoever that was. Captain Mandeville messed this bit up himself when he took out 101-E before she could get to the Angels, and according to reports we have, 101-E herself jumped the gun a good deal, entering this part of the operation before the war diversion even took place. Anyway, 101-E was then supposed to permit the Butcher to board the _Son_. At that point Mian would destroy 101-E so as to appear WDF-loyal." "They were going to make a hero out of her," Briareos observed. "Clever." "Yeah, and it gets deeper," R-Type continued. "6) The Butcher would then stage an 'escape attempt' in the brig. Mian would intervene, destroy the Butcher and permanently dispose of his body in secret, then kill the real you because you were 'attempting to escape', thus cementing her WDF-loyal appearance." "Cute," Gryphon commented around Deunan as she taped a bandage in place over his chest wound. "Verrrry cute." "And finally," R-Type concluded, "7) It was projected that Zoner would be a complete wreck by that time. Mian would then approach him and kill him. Then she would report to Headquarters, at which time her termination keyword would be issued and she would self-destruct. That would have been the end of Phase One of that operation, leaving the SDF-17 vulnerable for Phase Two. All core WDF officers dead, all three GENOM operatives liquidated. No loose ends. "The first bit went off all right: 101-E was placed right on schedule. But a couple things Went Wrong with Killer Doll. Well, actually they didn't Go Wrong. I sabotaged her." "Oh?" R-Type nodded. "It was the biggest gamble I'd ever taken in my life and my career, one which would very likely have gotten me killed. But I was angry and disillusioned, biologically 100 years old at the time; I couldn't let the operation proceed because I *knew* it would work. So I sabotaged Mian. "She was dispatched on schedule, but she never arrived at her placement point. It meant that the operation, which had taken a year or so to organize, would have to be *completely re-planned* in less than a business week. I had hoped that the setback would wreck the operation, but Largo's damage control was faster than I anticipated, and we all know what happened next. Even with the malf-up that 101-E pulled partway in, it came off well enough to be called successful. "That was the only time in my life I *wanted* to be killed. Any traces Largo put on the project would have come right back to me. But somebody else died in my place, a minor tech by the name of Krylen. It's funny because he'd been stealing things from our department; somebody had framed *him* for what I had done. I'm still not sure how I got out of *that* one." "What happened to Mian, then?" asked Deunan. "Well... during her programming, she was supposed to be indoctrinated to such concepts as the value of deceit and treachery, hatred of the Wedge Defense Force, and so forth... but she never really got them. I messed around with the programming a little before her final incept, incorporating some of the Astbury params from the intelligence we made for the first ICZER prototype, Artemis. Mian came out with a conscience and no real tendency for deception... she was almost... naive. "Largo was furious, but he believed it was an accident, a vagary of cybernetic development, not a deliberate action. In those days he was still rational enough not to kill people for things he thought beyond control, which is why I think I kept my skin on that one. He was also obsessed with his schedule, and so rather than scrap Mian and order another 7A made, he instead had the 'problem' patched. Cybernetic Controls Division installed a combat subprocessor in her, a TORIS." "Beg pardon?" "TORIS. Tactical Override Response Integration System. Mian's duty-devotion parameters were not strong enough, in her initial programming, to overcome her basic unwillingness to do harm, so the TORIS unit was installed. Basically, anytime Mian is about to jeopardize the mission objective, whether consciously or unconsciously, the TORIS takes control away. She's still using her own combat skills and motor cortex -- a whole secondary battle brain wasn't feasible space-wise in those days -- but her conscious will isn't in control. She's just along for the ride. People who've run under them have said it feels like being in a dream you can't control your actions in. When the mission crisis has been averted, the system disengages until needed again." "That would explain why I saw what I did when she attacked me, then... just before she came at me, her eyes went... I don't know how to describe it. One second she was looking at me, and the next, she wasn't looking at anything. Her eyes were just... dead." Briareos made an annoyed rumbling sound. "The comborgs who GENOM managed to capture or recruit when they took Earth in 2388 had those things stuck in them. Made me try all the harder to stay the hell underground. Bad enough Olympus stuck me with a police all-call responder unit... the last thing I need is a zombie chip." "I'm not keen on them myself," Larry replied. "One thing Largo didn't know about Mian when he had the TORIS installed, though, was that her deviation from mission parameters ran a little deeper than he had been informed. No one knew about that but me." Gryphon raised an eyebrow. "During her post-incept training, they tried to reinforce the hatred of the WDF, particularly you, her target, with video clips of you in action and things of that nature. The one I remember best was the vid of your address to the 3WA Academy Class of 2191. They figured if she hated you already, then just seeing you being respected and admired would be enough to reinforce it... but she -didn't- hate you already, and over the course of the indoctrination, she wound up falling quite in love with you." Gryphon raised the other eyebrow; Deunan snorted; Briareos chuckled. "Anyway, like I said, she was dispatched on schedule, but her transport craft was lost. Largo issued the termination keyword and we all thought that was the end of Killer Doll. Looks as though we were mistaken, but where she's been and what she's been doing all this time is a mystery to me, as is how she figured out to come -here-. Did she make any attempt at all to seduce you when first you met?" "No," Gryphon replied. "She attacked me before I got close enough to talk to her -- we didn't speak at all." Larry shook his head. "She's been damaged, then... she's running *part* of her program. Eris, I'll bet her neural matrix is pretty screwed." "I probably didn't help that any," Gryphon remarked, "with those phaser hits. Is she ever phaser-resistant! A full high-stun spread from the Stalker's guns put her down for maybe ten seconds." R-Type nodded. "The 7A's nervous system is made of a special optoelectric fiber. They're highly resistant to disruption. I don't think you did any further damage, though, Gryph -- in fact, an energy surge or two might start putting her net back together. Although, if it goes all the way back, we could be in even worse shape. If I could make contact with her... shit, I wonder if she would recognize me at all...? She... she exhibited a strong devotion to me... back then." Larry went to the window and mused for a moment. "Well," said Deunan as she fixed the bandage around Gryphon's leg in place, "you've got technical data on her, right? Worst comes to worst, you can tell us how to take her out." "I'd rather we saved that for a last resort," R-Type said. "I was rather fond of Mian, and if there's a chance we can save her from herself, I think we owe it to her as a sentient being to try." "Fair enough," Deunan replied, standing up. "I know my job, though. If she comes for Gryph and we can't stop her, I'll -find- a way to take her out." "In the meantime," said R-Type, "I think I ought to try making contact with her." He connected the A/V setup to GENOM New Avalon and got Aki online, then instructed her to search and find out if anyone matching Mian's description was staying openly in any of the city's hotels. "R-Type, there are 690 hotels in New Avalon, with a grand total of 70,049 rooms. In addition, some of them are not data- connected full time; the smaller independents have UUCP feeds or even SIDENet connections. Getting a full report will take some time, even for me." "Do it and call me back, then. I've got to find her." "And then there are the unregistered dives and flophouses," Jilehr continued where Aki had left off, "and let's not forget the unofficial shelters for the homeless, and everyone's favorite, the cardboard box inn. All options for the killer on the go." "It's a -start-, Jilehr. Just do it." "Oooookay... " R-Type's ACI hung up on him, going off to begin the trace. "I wish I'd never taught her to terminate carrier," R-Type muttered, rummaging through the hardcopy data he had, searching. While he did, the vidphone rang; Gryphon picked up the remote and answered. It was Kei. "Hey, lover... everything under control?" Kei rolled her eyes. "We have overprotective friends, Ben. Hot Rod's out in the driveway trying to be inconspicuous, Marty's up on the -roof- being shadowy and mysterious, Eiko's got a virtual fortress of furniture by the front door and a lifetime supply of magazines, Uncle Olaf and Blaster are in the basement wiring up a perimeter security system, and Zoner's watching the kids. Yuri found out, but Zoner and I managed to convince her to stay the hell at home. She's getting into that weak phase." "ZONER is watching the kids?" "He said he wanted to practice." "He doesn't have the faintest clue what he's gonna do with one of his own, does he?" "Well, besides love her, no, but we figure between you and Marty he can be salvaged." "You and Yuri are convinced the first one's going to be a girl, still?" "We women know these things... " Gryphon laughed, then said, "Better make sure he's not exposing them prematurely to Pink Floyd," which made Kei laugh. "The kids must be enjoying all the company." "Well, Kate's a little intimidated, but everyone who's here is a close friend... I think it's just the numbers that scare her. She's up being dark and mysterious with Marty at the moment." "On the -roof-?" "Marty isn't going to let her fall, Ben. You know how careful he is -- he never turns his back. I don't think he -blinks-." "True." The statement, especially coming from Kei, showed the considerable trust she had in Martin Rose, and between him and the others present at the house, Gryphon was certain she and the children were safe. "Love to everybody, and tell Rod, Blaster and Olaf not to go running off until I get this wrapped up and I can come see 'em." "Will do. Love you. You guys watch him close, huh?" "Count on it," Deunan said, putting a hand firmly on his good shoulder and causing him to shrug sheepishly at Kei, then wince, causing Deunan to whap him lightly in the side of the head, causing Kei to break. "Love you, too, Kei. I'll let you know what we come up with tomorrow afternoon. Bye." Gryphon cut the connection, then got slowly to his feet, stretched out the leg, and went with hardly a limp to the kitchen. "Now, let's see what I've got for provisions in this place. Hell of a note to have to go out for Chinese." THE NEXT MORNING, ABOUT 09h00 Under the thick covers of the bed in Room 238, Mian tossed uneasily in her sleep. She hadn't arrived back at the room until after four that morning, after making fairly certain she hadn't been identified in the mall. No one had taken any notice of her until she'd gone into action, and then she'd been a blur. According to the news no one had given any description other than "a young woman with red hair and a sword". Nobody had even noticed the tail, her most distinctive feature. She'd come back briefly for more normal-looking street clothes, and had then walked aimlessly around New Avalon all night, thinking, trying to remember. Somewhere along the way she'd stopped in a department store's TV section and made sure she hadn't been pegged. Eventually she'd made her way back to the Holiday Inn. She'd observed it for police presence for over an hour (how she knew to do that was another mystery to her), and finally, satisfied that there was none, she had come in through the window, showered, and gone to bed. She'd been sleeping uneasily and fitfully ever since. Right now she was dreaming of a strange but familiar place, and three men. The place was mostly white, flat and clean. There were automatic doors, strange pieces of scientific equipment, medical tables... a bunkroom, a room with a TV in it where she watched films a lot... offices. The men were varied and disparate. One was old -- no, ancient. He gave the impression of having been a big and robust man in his youth, and perhaps even into old age, but now he was decrepit, wizened, bound to an old-fashioned wheelchair most of the time and capable of walking only with a slow, shuffling gait. The loss of dignity seemed to grate on him, understandably. He rankled under his orders and his condition; they made him bitter and angry. He never turned that against her, though; he was always kind to her... One was much younger, tall and thin and whiplike, with a deep, low, and dangerous voice and cruel, hard eyes. There was something inhuman about the precision of his motions, and behind the cold cruelty of his eyes she had seen something else, a gleam of something she couldn't know was madness. He was clearly in control, and everyone feared him, including her wizened patron, who was quite obviously deeply angered by the fact that he feared. She heard the old man call him by name in her dream; his name was Largo. The third she had seen already. He was the brown-haired man with the laughing blue eyes, the eyes that could turn to flinty sharpness under pressure. She'd seen film of him in and out of combat, and at times they seemed completely different people. She saw him flying a starfighter; she saw him in some kind of power armor, doing battle with Buma; she saw him, in an impeccable dress uniform, delivering a speech. She loved him, why she was never certain. In the battle films they called him Gryphon. Gryphon! She knew, if not his name, at least his nickname, now... with the fluid madness of a dream, the scene changed, and she was walking into the Avalon Centre Galleria again, seeing him in civilian clothes, a beard on his face, lounging against the railing by the fountain. He saw her, smiled, pushed himself away from the railing and striding toward her, his heavy oilskin coat hanging strangely at his sides. She wanted to run to him, catch him in her arms and beg him to tell her who she was and why she loved him. As she took the first step, though, her limbs felt like lead, her boots felt as if they were mired in glue. She struggled to walk further, but the voice of Largo boomed in her skull, "TORIS: ATTACK MODE! KILL HIM, 609-ZETA! -KILL- HIM!" And suddenly she was leaping for him, her sword in her hands turned by the special effects magic of dreams into a huge flaming crescent, and he pulled a sword out of his coat, and she slashed through it and him. He shattered like a cheap dinner plate and vanished, melting away into the air, and the mall exploded soundlessly away, and all of creation was gone. There was an infinity of white silence, and then a single booming word, spoken in Largo's voice: "CHECKMATE." She woke with a cry, sitting upright and flinging away the covers, the chill of cold sweat in air-conditioned air instantly bringing goose-bumps to her naked skin. For a moment, she sat, chest heaving, wild eyes scanning the room, feeling her heart pounding inside her ribs; then she slumped, burying her face in her hands, and sobbed. She remembered. VORTIGEN LAKE At the camp, things were starting to come to life. Briareos had watched vigilantly through the night -- he could go for several days without sleep before the biochemical imbalance in his brain would outdistance his biofilter's ability to compensate and he became "tired". Deunan had awakened at seven, R-Type at seven-thirty, and Gryphon at a little before eight, and now, after a round of showers and a check of Gryphon's wounds (which were healed), Gryphon was in the kitchen making breakfast. R-Type called his office, noticing no messages from Aki; the same answered. "Dr. Mann's office, Aki -- oh, hello, R-Type," Jilehr finished. "I was just about to wake your sorry butt up. Took us all night, but --" She shifted to Aki in mid-sentence, a new trick R-Type found disconcerting. "-- I found Mian for you." "That's great, Aki. Where?" "Room 238 at the New Avalon Holiday Inn. She's registered as 'Mian Mann', and gave her home address as Berlin, Niogi." "What's she paying with?" "Cash. Salcreds, apparently. They haven't changed significantly in over 200 years, after all." Jilehr: "I haven't tried to call her -- I figured you'd want to do that yourself. Want the number?" "No; the street address. I'm going to do this in person." Aki blinked. "Are you sure that's wise?" Jilehr added, "If she doesn't recognize you, she could make executive stew out of you before you could blink." "I know. It's a chance I have to take, Jilehr -- I owe the courtesy to Mian, if nothing else." "You've got a warped idea of courtesy, RT," said Jilehr, and Aki followed it with the slightly more compliant, "I'm feeding the place's address to your location printer now." "Thanks. Hold down the fort -- I'll be in touch." Larry closed out the connection and took the printout from the slot on the side of the multiterm; then he went and got his coat and hat. "You're not going alone," Gryphon announced, "and you're not going before I eat breakfast. Deunan, if he tries to leave, clobber him." "You got it." "Gryph, this is serious," R-Type said, a little irritated at his flippancy in the face of this crisis. "You can't come with me -- you're the target, for pity's sake." "Larry, with her memories so scrambled, -anyone- she recognizes might be a target. You need backup, and I'm not going to let this scare me into hiding." He came out of the kitchen with the last plate of waffles (everyone else having been served before him) and sat down in his favorite chair to eat them. "Besides, I'm prepared this time. I'll be much safer." "Oh? How so?" "Just a minute, let me eat." He proceeded to do so, then put the plate in the sink and rinsed off the remaining corn syrup before it could get sticky. (Larry didn't think he'd ever seen anybody eat waffles with clear corn syrup before, and the concept quite frankly made him a little queasy.) Then, smiling a small and private smile, Gryphon went into the large bedroom off to the side, gesturing to the others to follow, and opened up the small wooden chest at the foot of the bed. The first thing he drew out was a double shoulder-holster rig containing a pair of large, heavy automatic pistols; that he shrugged into. A few other items were pocketed without Larry having time to really recognize them; then he drew out a small earset radio and what looked like a Bajoran disruptor with a small whip aerial. "What's that thing?" "Little toy Android calls a weirding module. I keep promising 'Droid I'll test the thing, and then I keep forgetting." "What about that sword of hers?" Gryphon put on his black coat, then held back one side so that Larry could see the waiting grip of one of his swords. "I'm all set." "Gryph, Mian's sword is star-forged adamantine. I know those are good swords, but they're only steel." "A Zanji-Sankate master's swords," Gryphon replied with an enigmatic smile, "are an extension of his will. They are as strong as their wielder." R-Type absorbed the data and matched it against his internal stores of unusual information. He'd known Gryphon was a Samurai master -- that kind of thing got around -- but he hadn't realized that he had studied one of the more mystic forms. He knew a little about the Zanji-Sankate Samurai form -- enough to know that it rejected the ancient Jedi view (as most newer forms do) of the unified energy field produced by the vital energies of all living beings as perfectly dual in nature. The Zanji, as well as the Neo-Shaolin of which Caine was a full master, held that the field simply -was-, and any directions of good and evil were determined strictly by the individual. "Never knew you for a mystic, Gryph," he finally observed. "Ah, I'm not," Gryphon replied. "Just a meta-mechanic." Briareos made a snorting sound. "Meta-mechanics are mystics who don't want to sound like crackpots." "Why, Briareos, my dear man, I do believe you're starting to catch on," Gryphon said with a grin, and led the way out of the room. Mian buckled her breastplate and then, sitting on the bed, pulled on her boots, silently berating the computer inside her skull for making her abandon the raincoat, for making her try to kill Gryphon, for being there, for working. She didn't know what she was going to do now, but she had to get moving. Bad identification or not, it was only a matter of time before the police caught up with her. Why the hell hadn't Gryphon turned her in? she wondered. He had certainly gotten a good enough look at her. Did he know her? That was impossible! She could remember now... seeing him in all those films, then deciding she couldn't go through with the plot to destroy him. She remember the endless, empty loneliness she had felt in the cockpit of the old fighter, far out in space, as she dropped out of hyperspace at random between stars, disabled the transponder, sat and waited to die. Looking out at all those cold, uncaring stars, wondering which one of them he was near, and knowing that if she would never know him, at least she would never kill him. Then her comm system had come online, and before she could reach out and shut it down, the Voice had rattled off an authorization code and her failsafe termination code. She hadn't been lying to Clark in the spaceport -- there -was- something wrong with the drive on the Y-wing. Its effects after only a few hours in hyperspace hadn't affected her conscious thought processes or memories yet, but apparently it had scrambled her underlying programming a little, and that had saved her life. The failsafe code had shut her down, but it hadn't wiped her neural matrix and killed her. Instead, she drifted in a coma for over a century, in deep space. She wasn't certain what had awakened her, nor how she had come to the decision to set the Myrmidon in motion for Utopia Planitia. All she knew for certain was that the unscheduled journey had taken over three weeks in hyperspace, thanks to her nav computer's extremely outdated charts, and by the time she emerged, she was so messed up she didn't know who she was. Now, after the energy surges Gryphon's phaser fire had provided and a night's sleep, she was almost complete again. She remembered inception; she remembered Largo; she remembered her mission; and she remembered the demonic little device that had been installed in her head to make certain she would accomplish it. She also felt the faint sense of dread in the back of her mind that told her the failsafe was active again, active and unscrambled by an ill-tuned hyperdrive. There was a knock at the door, jarring her out of her reverie. She looked up at it, a simple white rectangle with a chain and deadbolt, and the map indicating the fire exits bolted to the back, and wondered if she should answer it. It was probably the police. She could elude them, or kill them, fairly easily, but did she want to? Capture would end her mission... And so, if she tried to be captured, the TORIS would kick in. Her shoulders slumped with the lost hope, and, deciding she'd nothing to lose, she answered the door. The man who was standing there was tall, and dark, and dressed impeccably, and his face was starkly familiar. [It can't be -- that's impossible!] she said to herself, seeing the similarity in his face instantly. Then he spoke, and his voice confirmed her suspicion more than her words. "Mian, it's me," he said. "It's R-Type. Do you remember me?" "R-Type... " Mian whispered. [Impossible!] "But that's... that's impossible. R-Type was an old man, more than a century ago. You can't possibly be the same man." "I can and I am," R-Type replied, walking into the room, his hands held away from his sides, palms out and open. "Remember what I told you, Mian... nothing is impossible --" "-- only financially unfeasible," Mian finished before she realized she was speaking. R-Type grinned, a gesture she had seen very infrequently on the old, wizened, bitter face she was familiar with. "Now do you believe?" R-Type asked. "Yes... I guess I do. Why... why are you here?" R-Type closed the door behind him, then took a chance, reaching out and taking Mian's shoulders in his hands, looking into her copper-green eyes. "Mian," he said, "609-Zeta... authorization R-Type four nine nine red. TORIS disengage and shut down; permanent battle supplement offline. Attack mode wipe." She blinked. "H-how did you do that?" R-Type grinned. "I installed back doors so deep -I- forgot about them. No way Largo knew about that one." Mian smiled. "Does this mean I won't have to kill Gryphon now?" "You've remembered his name, then." "Partly. I don't remember his real name... I don't think he knows me. And after what I did yesterday... " She looked at the floor and continued in a small voice, "He probably hates me." "Gryphon's only hated one person in his life," R-Type said gently, putting a finger under Mian's chin and levering her face up so that she was looking at him, "and that was Largo. Largo's dead now, Mian. We don't have to worry about him or his demons any more. Gryphon is fine, and he very much wants to meet you." Mian brightened, smiling broadly. "He does?" "He does indeed. We're going to take you back to my lab, where I can take that computer out of your head, and then you're going to have a normal life. You'll be free, Mian." "Free... " Mian tried to understand what that would be like, and failed, and then she felt a cold sensation in the pit of her mind, crawling up from the blackest recesses like some kind of slimy monster. "No... " R-Type saw her stiffen, heard her whispered injunction. "What is it, Mian? What's wrong?" "No... " Mian managed again as she saw the familiar and hated orange letters form in her field of vision: TORIS: ALL CODES 'R-TYPE' INVALID TARGET DESIGNATE 'R-TYPE' UNAUTHORIZED -- SECURITY MODE REVOKED >>TORIS: ATTACK MODE<< "NO!" Mian cried, and the sword was out and swinging before R-Type even registered that it was present. He heard a loud THUD, and everything exploded into white nothing. "R-Type?" The voice swam into his brain like a fish, circled for a while, and then snapped into stony bas-relief as consciousness returned. "R-Type, can you hear me?" It was Gryphon, leaning over him and shaking his shoulder gently. He was sprawled on the bed in the middle of the room, and the left side of his skull felt like it was on fire. "Nnnnn," R-Type replied. "Don't yell at me." "What happened?" Deunan demanded. "I gave her the TORIS shutdown code, and it seemed to work... she remembered me... I told her she'd be free, and she said 'no' and hit me. Why would she do that?" He shook his head, regretted it for the pain it caused, but it served its purpose and cleared the cotton out of his thoughts. He fumbled in a pocket and slotted a rapid-recovery chip, then took a deep breath and said, "I'm a fool, is what happened." "Beg pardon?" Gryphon said. "Largo knew, or at least suspected, the son of a bitch. I planted codes in Mian's programming so deep I never expected him to even have a clue they existed, and he found them and flagged them for the TORIS. When I used one of them, it set the damned zombie box off, after a slight delay. Largo KNEW!" "If you set off the TORIS," Briareos observed, "then why aren't you dead?" "Good question," R-Type replied, reaching up and touching his fingertips to the sticky mess on the side of his head. "She must have hit me with the flat of the blade, or left it sheathed. That means... " His eyes widened. "Eris! That means she's resisting the TORIS! Oh, shit. Gods only know what that's doing to her, resisting an override computer. She knocked me down and... " He turned and confirmed his suspicion. "Out the window, yep. Dammit, she could be anywhere. I was so CLOSE!" "Calm yourself, R-Type," Gryphon said, buttoning his coat. "Deunan, Bri, get R-Type to a hospital. I'm going back to the lake to have another look at those files, and then I'm going Stalking." "You can't go after her alone -- she almost killed you once," Deunan protested. Gryphon produced a wide-brimmed black slouch hat from somewhere, put it on his head, and then drew a crimson scarf across his face, and as he did so, he underwent an unsettling transformation, ceasing to be Gryphon and becoming The Shadow. R-Type had never seen him do this before, and even as it unnerved him, he found it fascinating. "I have to, Deunan," The Shadow said quietly, his voice full of intensity. "It's because of me she's -in- this situation. I have to get her out, one way or the other. Please, Deunan. Do as I ask." She stared him down for a moment, then lowered her eyes and nodded. The Shadow gave her a hug, was clapped on the shoulder by Briareos, and then left the room. "He's crazy," R-Type said, and tried to go after him, but between his own dizziness and his opposition, he didn't get far. "That's why he's the boss," Briareos said with his version of a grin. /* Jerry Goldsmith "The Sanctum" _The Shadow_ */ Two hours later, The Shadow piloted the Stalker prototype around another corner, following the trace on the monitor. As he'd hoped, the classified data on the Killer Doll project R-Type had left at his camp on the lake had contained a few highly useful items, and Vision had gotten a few more after wink-and-nodding past Battia and then crashing Halstead Station's super-security daemon which surrounded Largo's old personal files. Right now, the dog-brained drone with which the Stalker was equipped had locked onto Mian and was following her, cloaked, through the backstreets of New Avalon, near the River Thames dock district. What she was looking for was unclear, and it was possible she wasn't looking for anything; she was just running. The Shadow was cloaked and following the drone, hoping to map a course that could get him in front of Mian. Momentarily, he found one, and, ducking around a warehouse, pulled into the street in front of her and disengaged the cloak. Mian pulled up short as the Stalker seemed to materalize, in all its black and grey glory, in the street in front of her. [No, not you, not here... why can't you just write me off?] she thought as the canopy silently opened and The Shadow stood up. "609-Zeta. Authorization Largo omega black. TORIS shutdown; attack mode wipe," he boomed. He knew Largo's own code! Mian felt a surge of hope which was instantly dashed by the appearance of: TORIS: UNAUTHORIZED 'R-TYPE' CODE SET SECURITY LOCKOUT NO OVERRIDES ACCEPTED -- PERSONAL OVERRIDE ONLY >>TORIS: ATTACK MODE<< "I'm sorry," she said, fighting the TORIS to allow her to speak as it was driving her body forward, blade out. "Total security lockout." The Shadow threw the Stalker to an altitude of twenty meters, leaving the canopy open, and activated the drone's combat mode. Immediately, it decloaked, and, guided by a small joystick and the main monitor, fired on Mian, a medium neurokill setting Gryphon hoped would be enough to stun her. She took two hits, staggered, turned, and hurled her sword, neatly chopping the drone in half. The monitor went to static. Cursing silently, The Shadow closed the canopy and threw the Stalker into forward motion, flying over Mian, then pivoting at ground level at the other end of the street. Activating the external speakers and pickups, he said, "Mian, please! I don't want to destroy you. I barely even know you, and I want to correct that." "Of course," Mian replied, teeth gritted, battling the TORIS with every word. "My... purpose. Designed... to intrigue... you." She recovered her sword and turned to face the Stalker. "It's more than that!" The Shadow insisted. "You deserve a chance to be more than a weapon, damn it! Fight it! Help me help you!" "Trying!" Mian replied, and began to charge. "No use!" Making an inarticulate sound of annoyance, The Shadow drove the Stalker forward, then stabbed the emergency egress button. Being partially a ground vehicle, the Stalker didn't have an ejection seat, but its canopy did have explosive bolts to throw it clear, and they fired now, throwing the clear klaster canopy free. The Shadow felt the wind hit him as he rose, stabbing the Petrarca-Holtzman LaserSafe bodyshield generator clipped to his coat's belt active. The familiar "brick" of the energy shield coalesced around him, tuned in this shielder to be red instead of the usual amber, making outside sounds hollow and blocking out the wind; he leaped as the Stalker passed Mian, crashing into her and knocking her down, then rolling down the street a bit. The Stalker sped on down the street, crashed into a building, and exploded. /* Metallica "Ride the Lightning" _Ride the Lightning_ */ The Shadow came to his feet and drew his katana as Mian charged him; the ancient sword parried her golden blade just as he had known it would. The TORIS made her fight as if its dispassionate logical circuits had somehow been angered by his refusal to die and her own attempts at resisting it; for every strike he parried, two others glanced off the shield's blocky surface and drove him back, back, into an alley. Then, as she wound back and let him have it with a particularly passionate strike, the shield collapsed, the generator box blowing out in a picturesque shower of sparks. The Shadow noticed himself falling into a phenomenon that was familiar. He'd found that, since his Zanji training, the more desperate his situation became, the calmer he became, and the more fluid and effortless his motions, as he harmonized more and more with the unified field. Now that he no longer had the shield, he didn't -need- it; his own arm moved the katana faster than he could consciously think. As he stepped up his defense, the TORIS stepped up its attack; soon, the alley was ablaze with light as their weapons sparked and flashed with every collision. "Mian!" The Shadow cried over the repeated clashings of their impacts together. "Don't -do- this! Don't make me hurt you!" "Can't stop!" Mian replied. "TORIS... too... powerful now! Longer runtime... gives... more power... can't... NO!!" As The Shadow watched, horrified, Mian jerked as if a small explosion had just gone off in her head. The green gem in the center of her breastplate began to glow brightly; Larry had informed him the night before that the gem was largely an indicator of power consumption by the TORIS. For it to be glowing brightly enough to make him squint, it would have to be in total control. Perhaps not total: from the corner of one dead green eye, a tear rolled, and The Shadow, his senses hyper-extended by the strange mindstate that crisis put him in these days, did not miss it just before her body threw itself into attack with renewed fervor. Teeth gritted beneath his scarf, The Shadow defended himself valiantly, but he was fighting nothing but a weapon now. A living weapon, with no mind to resist the will of the war computer that controlled it. Whatever kind of warrior he was, he could not match it for long, and even his own Detian body was beginning to tire. Eventually, he would make a mistake. The mistake was not long in coming. He overextended on a parry, and the TORIS paid him for it by gashing his left forearm to the bone. Only a lightning-reflexed flinching of his wrist saved The Shadow from losing his hand at he wrist. The katana clattered to the ground. He barely even noticed the pain, stumbling back and letting the next strike go into the brick wall behind him as he ducked around Mian and back the way they came. He was too busy drawing the weirding module with his off hand and thumbing it online wrong-sided. Mian's body turned to face him, sword held low, gemstone glowing blindingly, and then the TORIS did something that convinced The Shadow it -had- somehow developed a mind of its own. It made her stony, dead face smile a stony, dead, evil smile as it stepped forward for the kill. The Shadow raised his weirding module and put all the impotent rage and despair he was feeling into the keyword: "KyiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiSCHA!!" The entire opposite end of the alley exploded in flames, pitching The Shadow out into the street, rolling head over heels on the pavement. His hat tumbled away; his scarf fell away from his face, and as it did he reverted to his less-dark self. The weirding module flew in some other direction, and he lay for a moment, one-handed and stunned, before gathering himself together and drawing himself to his knees to look into the fire raging in the alleyway. Tears ran down his face as he mourned the girl he had never even known. Then she walked out of the flames, singed, most of her right arm missing, the sword in her left hand and that same dead smile on her face. "Mian, no," he moaned, his voice hollow and agonized, throat raw from the weirding scream. "Don't make me... " "Mian is already gone," the body replied in a mockery of Mian's sweet voice. "She failed to fulfil her protocol, and the failsafe device I installed in the TORIS unit instated me in her place. I thought it might come to this." Gryphon's eyes widened, and a name came whispered to his lips. "Surprised?" Largo replied. "You never could beat me, Gryphon." /* Nine Inch Nails "Suck" _Broken_ */ Gryphon got to his feet, cleared his throat, spat some blood, and recovered his hat, saying, "You're wrong, Largo. I killed you. No electronic ghost is going to get the better of me." Behind Mian's body, he could see his katana, looking undamaged, lying on the pavement just outside the alley conflagration. It had been fabled that the ancient Jedi could use the Force, the unified energy field that Zanji masters manipulate to better their combat abilities, to move physical objects -- a form of manifestive telekinesis. Takanaka claimed that it was more than a fable, and that it was an attainable goal; but sadly, he himself had never attained it, and could not pass the secret on to his pupil. Now, watching Mian's dead-eyed body bear down on him, the sword in its hand with his death writ large upon its side, Gryphon felt strangely calm as he drew his scarf up and slipped back into The Shadow. In fact, he felt calmer than he ever had in his life. The rage was gone, the despair was gone, as if he really had thrown all of it through the weirding module and into the brickwork at the end of the alley. Time was slowing down for him, slowing down and stretching outward. His concentration was sharpened to a razor's edge, sounds and sights clear and in perfect focus. He could see each individual tongue of flame in the fire twist and merge and separate as he looked past Mian-possessed. Ignoring the pain of the twisted, parted muscles, he held out his hand and flexed his will, his concentration zooming like a lens on the katana. It seemed the simplest thing in the world to draw the weapon's grip into his hand and raise the blade in time to block Mian's next attack with it. His focus widened out again as the fight was rejoined where it had left off, Mian-Largo fighting manically, The Shadow defending himself with dispassionate cool, his face even, almost expressionless. "I don't think this is a good idea, R-Type," Jilehr announced from the main monitor of the base-model R-9 Seeker which R-Type was flying at a bit faster than maximum recommended speed toward the dock area. He'd already used his connections to order the police away from the area, saying he would take care of it himself, and now he was flying in to do just that. With a Seeker, a shield generator, a mild concussion and a GENOM Security basic training course. He must be mad. "For once I'm in agreement," Aki seconded. "Why don't you let the police take care of this?" "Because!" R-Type snapped. "They'd just kill her. I can save her!" "R-Type, she's locked down with a TORIS that has a screw loose," Jilehr replied irritably. "I'd really -love- to know what -you- can do about that, Captain Deskjob." "Shut up, Jilehr," R-Type growled, winging the Seeker over and diving into Portsmouth Avenue, in the middle of which the fight was occurring. He locked the targeting systems on random objects -- a newspaper machine, a fire alarm box -- and fired off two of the missiles slung under the wings, rocking the street with the two explosions as he howled overhead. "Now that I've got her attention... " he muttered, killing all forward motion, rotating the Seeker 180 degrees on its Y axis, and setting it down in the street. Opening the canopy, he climbed out, ignoring Jilehr's continued protests, and started walking toward the fight. The Shadow looked up, startled, his concentration momentarily disrupted by the explosions. Mian-Largo smirked and swung, bashing him in the jaw with the sword's heavy pommel. "Ungh!" he remarked as he crashed to the pavement on his back. "Stay there," Mian-Largo growled to him. "I won't be a minute." She turned and started walking toward R-Type. "Mian," R-Type announced, "I know you can hear me, so listen carefully. You're stronger than the machine, Mian. You can --" "She -can't- hear you, Dr. Mann," Mian-Largo said, the smirk growing. "It appears my suspicions about you were correct after all. I should have had you terminated centuries ago. Today, it looks like I'll get the opportunity to correct that." R-Type blinked. "Largo... ?" "You're the second one to guess it," Mian-Largo replied. "It seems my little contingency measure has given me a bit of life after death, although how the Wedge Rats managed to defeat me and build... -this- after Gotterdammerung eludes me. Not that it matters -- now that I've returned, it's only a matter of time before I re-achieve my old primacy. You've taken my corporation from my dead hand, then, and allowed it to produce," she gestured contemptuously at the GENOM-WDF symbol on the Seeker behind R-Type, "these toys?" "Not me," R-Type replied. "Caine." "Kwai-Chang Caine? Miserable old machine. I knew I should have recycled him when he started getting all mystic on me. All those ancient Jedi writings he read, and that damned Neo-Shaolin thing he started. They'll be the -- if you'll pardon the expression -- death of me someday." [Sooner than you think, Largo,] The Shadow said to himself as he got slowly to a half-sitting position, trying to get his focus back and stop his head from spinning. [Keep him talking, Larry... ] "I don't know for certain how you did this, Largo," R-Type grated through his teeth, "and I don't care. Some kind of matrix encoded in what we all thought was just a TORIS chip, no doubt. I know damn well you haven't superseded Mian, and I want to talk to her. NOW!" he roared, bringing all of his command skill and presence to the surface and hoping it would work, in light of Largo's current condition. It did, briefly; Mian-Largo stepped back a half-step, blinking, and the TORIS regulator gem glowed less brightly for a moment. Mian's eyes cleared somewhat, and she said in her own voice, "R... R-Type?" "Listen to me, Mian, I don't have much time," R-Type said, fighting to keep his voice calmer than he felt. "I know it hurts, love, but if you keep fighting you can beat the machine. I'm behind you, Mian, I'm for you, and so is Gryphon. We'll help you -- but you have to beat the TORIS. You can do it if you try harder. Try, Mian! Beat it! Control your own actions, your own destiny -- free yourself!" "I -- I -- AIIIIEEEEEEE!!" Mian replied, dropping to her knees, her remaining hand dropping the sword and clutching at the side of her head as the gem flared almost blindingly. Then it returned to a steady glow, and she got to her feet, recovering the weapon, Largo's flinty glare behind her eyes again. "Nice try, R-Type," Mian-Largo growled. "You've a gift for rhetoric, but your cause is a lost one. Mian is dead; only Largo remains." "If you don't mind my saying," The Shadow said from behind her, "she doesn't look good on you." He reached out, clapped his right hand on her shoulder, and spun her around forcefully; startled, she stumbled backward, the sword far from a useful position, and she couldn't even -see- her opponent as The Shadow raised his sword, spun it into a stabbing position in both hands, and then rammed the point into the TORIS gem. Mian-Largo screamed as the gleaming steel blade merged with the green glow of the gem, and inch by inch, as he became visible in the lightstorm, The Shadow shoved the whole length of the blade through the crystal and the body beyond. Teeth gritted, eyes burning, The Shadow pushed inexorably, his arms quivering with the effort, and the juncture of the gem and the blade burned white like a forge. With a tiny click, barely audible over the sizzle-roar of the energy discharge, the katana's guard met the surface of the gem itself. The backlash was deafening and blinding, and blew R-Type off his feet and almost back to the Seeker. Crying out, he averted his eyes as his optics cut in the glare compensators, enabling him to look back almost immediately. The Shadow was crumpled against the front of a building across the street, looking sooty and rumpled, almost comically Wile E. Coyotified. His katana, somehow unharmed, lay six inches or so from his outstretched left hand. He looked unconscious. Mian was face-down on the other side of the street, near the curb, smoke curling from underneath her, a neat slot of a wound in the center of her back. In the middle of the street, in the center of a circle of soot, were the twisted remains of Mian's breastplate, surrounded by a few shards of shattered green crystal. R-Type hovered for a moment, indecisive of which he should check on first. Mian stirred, groaned, and pushed herself to hand and knees, then got to her feet. Her chest was rather nastily burned, and the look in her eyes was still unmistakably Largo, as she collected her sword and started stalking toward Gryphon's crumpled form. Swearing under his breath ([What does it take to -kill- that unholy chip?] he asked himself), R-Type activated his shield and moved to block her, another appeal forming on his lips. "Save it, Mann," Mian-Largo snarled, backhanding him viciously out of the way. The shield saved him from being cut in half, but the sheer impact sent him tumbling away and stunned him momentarily, and Mian-Largo had an unobstructed path to The Shadow. As she reached him, he stirred, looking up. "This is the end, Gryphon," Mian-Largo intoned, "and a long time coming, too. I understand I owe you this." She raised the sword high, and as she did, The Shadow smiled, his face shifting back to that of Gryphon (a subtle difference, but very noticeable). Seeing the smile, R-Type, who had gotten to his knees and taken out his phaser, paused and lowered the weapon, which he had, in sad desperation, set to 'disintegrate'. "You can't kill me, Mian," Gryphon replied, raising his left hand so that his fingertips touched his chin and, more importantly, the gleaming fire opal on his ring finger was in her field of view. Mian-Largo paused, a look of confusion forming on her face. "Oh? And why not?" "Because," Gryphon said, narrowing his focus on her eyes and looking right through them, past the false face of Largo and into her soul, "you love me, and without the gem to power him, Largo doesn't have the strength to make you do it." "When will you learn that -- gah!" Mian-Largo jerked as if punched, staggering back, the sword once again clanging to the street. "What the hell -- this is impossible! Damn you, I replaced you, I -erased- you! You're -dead-, I -- " "No more, Largo," Gryphon continued, calm and even, his gaze never leaving her eyes. "You're history. Again." "RIDICULOUS!" Mian-Largo bellowed. "I am LARGO! Master of GENOM, destroyer of the Wedge DEFENSE FORCE! I cannot be defeated by something as puerile as... as... as LOVE!" Gryphon smiled calmly. "In the end, Largo, there are only two things in the universe that matter at all. Love... and Death." "You fool, I'll cut out your -- GAAAA!" Mian-Largo dropped to her knees, again clutching at her left temple with her hand. Gryphon spoke a single word: "Mian." At the sound of his voice, Mian's eyes snapped open, wide and desperate, and met his cool blue gaze. "Free yourself." Mian slumped forward, her eyes closing, and Gryphon threw himself forward, from his back onto his knees, and caught her, feeling at her neck for a pulse and feeling elated when he found one. For a long moment, he knelt on the pavement and held her limp form against him, feeling the life burning within it that he had helped bring back from the edge. "She's alive," he told R-Type as the latter rushed over to them, phaser in hand, "but I have no idea how long that will last." "Let's get moving, then." "There it is," said R-Type an hour later, holding up a small metallic object in a pair of forceps. "One TORIS unit." A couple of small LEDs still blinked on the surface of the device, but most of them were dark and the surface of the object itself was charred. "Geezus, look at this thing. It's almost completely slagged. How'd you -do- that?" "I didn't; Mian did. I only showed her the way... the force of her will did the rest." "Amazing." R-Type regarded the device for a moment. "Hmm... you know, Largo, there was something I always wanted to say to you." There was a long moment of silence. Then, with a sudden violence that startled Gryphon coming from the source it did, R-Type hurled the chip to the floor and shouted, with all the venom of a man who feels freed of a personal demon, "FUCK YOU!" Then, stomping the heel of his nicely polished wingtip down and crushing the chip into the tile floor of the med lab, he continued in a lower voice, "I always hated you, Largo." "Well said." "Thank you. Sorry... dunno what came over me." Again R-Type paused; then he went back to work. "You took a hell of a chance, stabbing her through the chest like that." "No, I didn't." At R-Type's quizzical look, Gryphon explained, "Well, think about it. I know the way you design things, Larry. Would you have put her in the field without a backup system for something as vital as that? No way in hell." R-Type smiled. "I never thought I'd be glad I was predictable... " GRYPHON AND KEI'S HOUSE APPROXIMATELY 23h47 THAT EVENING Kei sat, worried and nervous, on the couch in the living room, looking at the picture window by which a tall, weatherbeaten Nordic god of a man, Olaf Petersson, stood unmoving, exactly where he had been for the past nine hours. Martin Rose lurked in a corner in his Darkwing uniform, brooding and silent; his wife Eiko was next to him, being near but not annoyingly solicitous. In the driveway,the sleek red and yellow race car kept its own silent vigil. MegaZone himself stood as unmoving as Petersson behind the couch, one of his large hands on Kei's shoulder, a little storm cloud of assurance. Deunan and Briareos stood by the door, hand in hand, silent and worried. Nobody had said a word in the last four hours, since Martin and Zoner had put the children to bed. They all knew what had happened in the city today. All they knew now was that R-Type was at GENOM, struggling to save someone's life. More refusal than anything else prevented them from believing it was Gryphon. Suddenly, a car pulled into the driveway behind Hot Rod, its lights going out as it shut down. The people inside the house, unable to see out the window thanks to the darkness of the New Avalon night and the glare of lights inside, heard three car doors open and slam, and then Olaf, close enough to the window to peer outside, smiled every so slightly. The front door's lock rattled as a key was put in it, and then the knob turned and the door opened and R-Type walked in, dishevelled and unshaven, his three-piece back in place and rumpled, and the bandage around his head askew. Kei got to her feet. The rest of the room sat in tense expectation. And then R-Type smiled a tired smile and Gryphon walked in behind him. Gryphon was drawn and haggard, his eyes sunken, hollow, and rimmed in red. His face was covered in soot, and his clothing tattered and similarly sooty. The melted remains of the shield generator still adorned his coat. Slung on his back was a painfully familiar, long and straight sword in a metal-shod scabbard. His left arm ended in a white bundle of bandages. He looked very tired, but oddly exhilarated. Leaning against his shoulder, her steps weak and uncertain, was Mian, a bandage similar to R-Type's around her own head. Her right arm appeared to be back, although it was covered in bandages and hanging in a sling. She was dressed in a pair of her own jeans, new sneakers, and one of Gryphon's myriad flannel shirts, ridiculously oversized and gapping at the top to show an expanse of tape and gauze beneath. She looked around the room with trepidation evident in her shining green eyes, and didn't speak. "Hi, all," Gryphon said with a tired grin. He left Mian with R-Type and went to Kei, hugging her tight and giving her a kiss. Then he turned, indicated Mian, and said, "Kei, this is Mian... she'll be staying with us for a while, if you don't mind. She's only recently found herself." Kei looked at Mian, whose worried eyes wouldn't meet her gaze for a moment; then she stepped forward, put a hand on her shoulder, and said with a smile to her surprised expression, "I don't think I mind that at all." /* Boston "I Think I Like It" _Third Stage_ */ Eyrie Productions, Unlimited Something changing for me inside presented Took a long time FUTURE IMPERFECT: Now there's nothing for me to hide CHECKMATE I say what's on my mind Changes making me see the light primary text constructor I finally see wrong from right Benjamin D. Hutchins Now I can see every sign with text assistance from Oooh! I think I like it Lawrence R. Mann I think I like what I'm feeling Even though it's such a surprise lyric sidebar style developed by But you know Chris Meadows Ooh! I think I really like it I think I like what I feel and "Mian" stolen with thanks from Changes really open your eyes the manga series "Caravan Kidd" by Oh, look at the world we make Johji Manabe What have we begun? (available in English translation People living for what they take from Dark Horse Comics) All for number one Changes making me see the light CAST in order of appearance: I finally see wrong from right Mian Toris as Mian Now that it's all said and done David Chase as Technician Oooh! I think I like it Joe Clark as Clark I think I like what I'm feeling Larry Mann as R-Type Even though it's such a surprise Benjamin D. Hutchins as Gryphon But you know Jenny Thomas as The Little Girl Ooh! I think I really like it Kei Morgan as Kei I think I like what I feel and Mann Systems AJ-2 as Aki/Jilehr Changes really open your eyes Briareos Hecatonchires as Bri Oh, doesn't love say enough Deunan Knute 2.0 as Deunan When you realize Optimus Prime as Olaf Petersson People try to come off so tough Martin Rose as Marty All to fantasize Eiko Rose as Eiko Changes taking me through the night Hot Rod as Hot Rod I finally see the light MegaZone as Zoner I've opened my eyes Those changes can open your eyes... This story is dedicated, however incongruous it may seem, to the memory of John Candy. |