by

Yanick Champoux (38%)

Lee Watts (18%)

Josip Nað (17%)

Michel Lacombe (16%)

Dorian (4%)

goldkngt55 (3%)

Andrew Avila (2%)

Marten (1%)

Oliver (1%)

Part 28

Michel Lacombe (26/1/2002)

Skull stared at the young woman on the bed. His eyes were burning, but in business, image is everything, so he did not blink.

The young woman glanced from him to those pieces of viscount Wilfred Hawksmoor that had fallen on the bed. She was heartbreakingly beautiful. Noble of course, but not too inbred; well educated, but kept soft by complete isolation from any harsh experience. Hawksmoor had always insisted on the finest, most delicate of whores.

Taught this evening that men are made of the same meat she had only ever seen so scattered in butcher's shops, she sobbed softly. Skull watched her sob, unmoving and unblinking on a dry patch of carpet.

When Skull was eleven, his thirteen-year-old sister was accosted on the street by a tall man with dark robes and darker intentions. She ran home, shut herself in her room and failed to hug herself hard enough to keep the tears in.

Skull had drilled carefully placed, near-invisible holes in the wall between their rooms years before, and watched her bloom into the the kind of beauty that no jackal-hearted tall man could pass by. The nightly spectacle of his sister's naked body had moved Skull's heart in ways he knew not the use of, but the sight of her naked hurt that one evening made his heart quake. He picked her lock, walked into her room and hugged her close until she stopped crying. This, he knew, was the use of his hunger for her flesh.

Skull had found the tall man six months later, and then no one had ever found the tall man again.

When Skull walked over to the young woman, careful not to wet his soles, she mouthed attempts at words. When he wrapped his arms around her trembling sweetness, she moved to lessen savagery by accepting it. But there was no savagery.

'Shhh, it's alright, it's all over now. I'm leaving now.'

And she just knew he wasn't lying. Her relief shockwaved over Skull, bringing him as close to ecstasy as he ever came. But image is everything, and so his eyes remained diamond as he released her, walked out on the balcony and jumped off the sixty-third floor.

Skull's body was an encyclopedia of forbidden experimental technology. Throughout his freelance career, after his retirement from the elite forces, he had given free rein of his body to the best frustrated weapons engineers he could find. He thrust and threw the many blades he carried with augmented reflexes and bacterial-computer-assisted precision. Genetically modified glands under his skin secreted poisoned bone razors on mental command. As the ground flew up to him, he concentrated and his senses dulled.

He hit the pavement like a meteor, turned off the integrity field that would keep him together down to the atomic level through any violence, and ran silently through magnificent gardens as the young woman's scream spoiled a thousand tourists' Friday night on Vera Cruz.

On Byzantium Secundus, the young scraver sat in his secret place, a nook in the sewers others avoided because of how quickly and often it was flooded. He believed his name was Rodent because this was how his father called him most of the time.

Rodent had been trying to open the metal case all morning. There was no visible mechanism and his fingernails found no fault in which to wedge themselves. Beaten, he rested his forehead on his fists. This never aided reflexion per se, but at least he looked like he was thinking hard.

When the hand in which he held the case touched his head, there was a click. Not in his hand. Behind his eyes.

And his consciousness exploded with visions through light-years of space and days of time in every direction.

Rodent sat in the belly of the beast and examined the ancient scroll. When he looked up at the woman who had been reading over his shoulder, Rodent saw that she was actually a man, a man who couldn't read the scroll like Rodent did. Which was very strange, because it was obvious which one of them had been at fine Reeves schools.

As Rodent began trying to explain the end of everything to the visitor in his head, he didn't notice water rising in his secret place.

Migite walked in and stated the facts plainly.

'Your older nephew is dead. His younger brother is missing. A ship fought its way through the jumpgate they were assigned to yesterday.'

Skull said nothing. His sister was crying, too far away for him to reach out and hold her. The sight of something like emotion in Skull's eyes was the most terrible thing Migite had ever seen. He forced himself not to run out of the room and added: 'The ship is headed into this system.'

Skull's eyes became diamond again.