Being and something else

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Karakuriya
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Operation Barbarossa

Post by Karakuriya »

(These events actually occurred in August 2007.)

Wentworth's was a Godsend. No more hunting down fences. No more stashing salvaged chips and dented cannisters of compressed gas under her bed. She cashed out the last of her auctions, smiling to herself, and strolled toward Royal Overlook. For once, there was little reason to rush. It was Saturday, no class, no detention. And besides, she was feeling a little nervous.

But she drove it down. She pushed away the million doubts. No reason to be that way. No need to over-analyze. Just, you know, be a normal girl. But, normal people don't think about being normal. She could see this would need some practice.

Even walking, she made it to Icon five minutes early. The store wasn't unlike a pristine laboratory: racks of couture and bespoke spandex, nylon, and Kevlar strategically lit from below, showcased on the walls like formaldehyde tanks of specimens; stylish agents in crisp silk suits and severe hair lording over an island of marble counter top like cocky surgeons prepped for the OR. Their eyes scraped across her briefly, their gaze deconstructing her outfit at the seams, analyzing whose hands may have stitched it, guessing why she would hi-lo such craftsmanship with a Harley Davidson jacket with the logos stripped. She shrugged them off. It wasn't hard; she was here to see Serge.

The man in question stood at the back counter, nose turned up at the latest issue of Vogue, undoubtedly scoffing at recent criticism of or a lack of gratitude for is work, or how a particular model failed to properly wear a borrowed piece. Sure, the man made costumes for a living; but, given the materials of the hero-wear trade, he was a miracle worker.

She blew past the fashion clones with genuine confidence to Serge's counter. "Good afternoon."

"Ah, Miss Quisling," he crooned with a pseudo-intellectual, award-acceptance-speech-worthy smile. "Right on time. What may I do for you?"

Aeon rubbed her lips over her teeth and sank into one hip. "I don't really know..."

Serge continued to smile, but his Botoxed crow's feet began to twitch. "If you don't know why you wish to waste my time, Miss Quisling, why did you make the appoint-ment?"

"Well, I need a new patrol suit since, well, I should have something more me so..."

The designer tsked. "Miss Quisling, I simply refuse to do you favors if I must be confined within the little box that you consider to be 'you.'" He air-quoted abruptly. "But I don't want to fight, darling." He leaned on the counter and gave her almost genuine puppy dog eyes. "Why must we always fight?"

She couldn't help but crack a grin and withdrew a billfold bursting with cashier's checks and city stamped notes of services rendered, good for redemption at hero-friendly businesses.

"So, I was hoping you could--re-envision me..."

Serge brightened immediately. "You seem to have gathered a fair bit of influence in this city, Miss Quisling," he beamed at the notes, slobbering on them with his eyes. "Not just a simple hero, but an icon, shall we say, of bravery and beauty." He rounded the desk and, placing a hand in the small of her back, began to lead her toward the back studio secluded from the show floor and its prêt-à-porter capes. "Come, my dear, and we shall see what I can do for you."

"When we fall in love / We're just falling / In love with ourselves / We're spiraling" -- Keane, "Spiraling"
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Rebirthday

Post by Karakuriya »

(These events actually occurred on August 26th, 2007.)

She could be furious at Nick for telling Sam when her birthday was. While she hadn't told him not to, she wasn't in the mood for a party. She didn't want to have to apply a painted-on smile and make appearances. She didn't want to seem ungrateful to the people who cared about her. But frankly, she wasn't in the mood. Not thinking too hard about things was both easier and harder. It was certainly easier to get through the day and be social and complete her assignments with grace, but it did nothing to calm her general unease about her self, her friends, her place in the world, everything. It was like a scab she couldn't let alone to heal.

Aeon laid the paper bag on her bed and withdrew her gifts. Guitar Hero II and a controller from Garrison. She would have to borrow a console to play it. She wondered if it was anything like real guitar, but certainly the coordination wouldn't hurt. The game went on her shelf with the few DVDs she'd accumulated, and the controller fit on its end in the closet among her dresses.

A bottle of perfume from Ty. It was well known that they didn't exactly get along, but no one could disagree that the gesture was extremely thoughtful. Anything was better than plastic, but this really did smell nice, of fruit and incense. Flirty and just a tad serious, fitting of Ty's taste. That went with her soaps and things.

Last was a picture frame from Alice. She barely knew the girl, sugary to the point of frightening. There was probably something darker lurking there, but it was no concern of hers.

What to put in it? She didn't have a camera of her own. She wasn't shy necessarily, but didn't like to impose on others. Aeon rummaged through the bottom drawer of her desk which stored various mementos. A portfolio of badges and awards, her report cards, some laminated pressed flowers, notes passed in class. And the bottom she found an extra print of a photo taken at the beginning of the winter semester when she arrived. All the new kids on one of their first patrols in the Hollows: Gravwarp, Blitzen, Veritas Nox, Cryogene, Vesper Fiend and her.

They'd all passed her now, except perhaps for Joni. Off fighting bigger and badder things. While she was stalled out in stupid mistakes and lethargy. Still the photo made her smile.

She set the picture into the frame, replaced the back, and propped it up on her desk. Tomorrow: thank-you notes to all, and especially to Sam. Chocolate ice cream was like a Band-Aid for the soul.

"When we fall in love / We're just falling / In love with ourselves / We're spiraling" -- Keane, "Spiraling"
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Old alchemy of the brain

Post by Karakuriya »

PARITY CHECK FAILED. BAD SECTOR DETECTED.
AUTOMATIC DIGITAL RECONSTRUCTION INITIATED.
.....
FILE READ ERROR. RECONSTRUCTION PAUSED.
ABORT, RETRY, FAIL?
> FAIL.
ANALOG FAILSAFE SEQUENCE INITIATED.
ENGRAM TRACE BEGINNING IN 5.....4.....3.....



0x4735DA7F


The various pieces of her black armor painted with her now-recognizable purple crosses were strewn over her bed. Crey parts, striped Daedalus red. She frowned. She just couldn't wear it now, just the thought making her skin creep.

Aeon tutted to herself and went to the narrow closet. There must be something else she could wear on a chilly day in the RWZ. She dug through the unsorted mess piled beneath her folded uniforms and hanging party dresses.

Old, torn costumes and scuffed armor. Broken boots. A brass cog. A bandanna with the Skulls' emblem. A little metal cylinder with the symbol of Kali etched around it. A book on the history of Faultline. A medal spray-painted gold, deep toothmarks marring its surface. A few crumpled letters. A data disc. Her fingers slipped over something familiar and cool--she thought she'd lost it...

Aeon tugged the length of cloth free. A self-healing sateen scarf dyed a black that faded to red at its pointed ends. Wide and sleek, how it whipped in the wind, it felt as much a part of her as an arm. They'd found it wrapped around her when she had collapsed on the hospital steps nearly a year ago now. From then on it had been a security blanket, though the last mission she had worn it had been the one in which she lost her arm and lung and, she thought, the scarf and the life she had been clinging to.

She let the cloth run through her fingers, nails lacquered cherry read with car paint. Daedalus Red.



0x446B7BC1

When all was silent and still, she pulled herself from the floor, disoriented, systems still coming online. Eyes shut tight, shut down, faking death, she hadn't been aware of what had transpired here. While she dreamt, the world had been painted red. So had she. Sticky and cold and, Lord, what had they done? Her vision tunneled, her breath short.

Violet peeled her scarf from the mystery puddle--she didn't want to know, couldn't process it even if she saw what lay beyond the creeping black spiders and the edge of her vision--and she began scrubbing at her hands with the tail of the scarf. Panic spread. It spread.

"Vi. Vi! Shh-shh-shhhh..." Primavera tugged the soggy cloth from her grasp and cupped Violet's cheeks in her hands. White hands, clean hands. Her dress was a blinding savior of unblemished white eyelet cotton. "It wasn't you, sweetie. Hush now."



0x4733885E

"Shush, not another thought about it. Out of that now."

Serge flicked a dismissive finger at what Aeon had, until now, thought was a cute outfit. She frowned and retreated behind the screen to change into a white silk robe, not appreciating being stripped and clothed and stripped again like a fashion doll. Not when she had waited this long and called in so many favors, not to mention the dollar cost, "complementary consultations" aside.

One of Serge's many suited fashion clones entered the private fitting room with what appeared to be a paint can and used a pair of shears to lever it open to reveal what appeared to be thick blue paint. Another clone entered, producing foam brushes.

Serge nodded approvingly. "I will flee, now, while my ladies tend to you. Claudette, you will fetch me when you are through, m'yes?"

Claudette nodded and handed her brushes to the other girl. "May I take your robe, Miss Quisling?"

It was actually more like latex. The women daubed her from neck to waist in the stuff until it was thick and tacky. Then Serge returned with a tray of synthetic wafers of various shapes and sizes. Using a numbered map, the trio pressed the plates into the goo to create a mess that looked more like shoddy masonry than some of the latest in cyborg-friendly armor. Serge snapped some of the plates together with prefabricated bits of elastic and then stood back to admire his work. His discerning model arched her eyebrows at him incredulously.

"Tch, darling, this is the magic part." He peeled the backing from a badge and affixed it to one of the plates. Aeon sensed a current passing through the blue adhesive and the plates and tendons, and they began to shift. The plates aligned and molded themselves to her shape, and the undercoat tightened and toughened, hugging the plates in place.

Serge gave her a once-over, tapping here, poking there, until he was satisfied, nodding to himself. "Marvelous!" he suddenly declared, clapping his hands. "Ladies, see to it that she can get out of the thing," he handed Aeon an appointment card, "and I will see you in a week for a final fitting, yes?"

"O-okay?"

Once Serge had gone, Claudette busied herself with the shears.



0x473F8547

Jacob--no, Hellfire, was completely impossible to read given that he was made of plasma, but at least he was predictable.

"So this whole bikini bottoms and thigh highs looks good on you."

And even if he was forward, at least he was honest.

"Thanks. I guess that's the idea."

Hellfire smiled, as best she could tell, and then jetted into the air. "Let's rock!"



0x472F951B

She had wished with all her heart that it wouldn't come to this. Aeon lead the team of grim-faced PPD officers into the laboratory, their final target of the raid. She marched, conflicted and furious, in her Crey armor, Crey eyes, and Crey arms, to bring down the organization and blasphemies of science that had remade her.

The scientists didn't know what hit them. The agents didn't stand a chance. The tanks were dispatched. But the fight wasn't important. It was enough that they dared to be here, that they were calling out the Countess. It was an unspoken accusation.

Then she spied him. His face had changed with surgery and fear, but his hands were the same. Hands like hers, that had made hers in their image. Dr. Vosk was huddled under a painted steel desk in his office, a small fire creeping in around him, though he didn't seem to mind it given the alternative of incarceration in the Zig. His guard was gone, and none of her men were in eyesight...

Aeon ducked into the office, stooped, and yanked the quaking man out from his hiding place. Shock drained the last of the color from his face as he recognized her in the sputtering florescent light. She simply shook her head.

"Shh."

In a few fluid motions she stripped him of his lab coat and identification, casting them into the fiery corner of the room, pulled out a green flagged zip tie from a pouch, and bound his wrists as the doctor just stared at her, paralyzed with disbelief.

"Found a hostage!" she yelled into the hall, and gave the doctor a push. He glanced back with a mixed expression of gratitude and worry as an officer came to lead him from the scene. She nodded.

Aeon returned to the office being slowly consumed by fire. What did Dr. Vosk have to do with the Revenant Hero Project? Well, he didn't, necessarily, but those leads brought them to this lab and here he was. Her team had this situation well under control without her, certainly there was a little time...

She began rifling through the paper files, knowing full well she wouldn't find the information she sought on the system. She let her fingers walk themselves over the manila tabs, trying to let the nerve-splicer's artistry speak through her, and finally she came to the back of a drawer and hovered there. After beating the flames away, she skimmed the intact files, attempting to absorb the information through the anxiety and the shock at what she found there.

No, it wasn't that Dr. Vosk had once worked for Daedalus. Project Daedalus had once worked for Crey--a partially owned subsidiary, even, jettisoned after the raid they had suffered. Aside from continuing to tithe to Crey for personnel, equipment, and protection, the two companies went their separate ways, Crey to focus on the Revenant Hero Project, and Project Daedalus to seek refuge in the Rogue Isles and continue toward their questionable goals. But that was only the North American branch--"manufacturing" as it were, as now chiefly executed by a Mme. Silvia. "Mama."

But what was their common goal, she wondered. Hand-tailored, in-house Supers were the end product, but by what means, and to what ends? A "new world order" just sounded so...cliché.

Her radio chirped, pulling her from her reverie in time to remove her boot from the fire as it crept across the nylon carpet, slowly turning it into a sheet of black plastic.

"AQ, we're gonna need your help down here. We've got Protectors."

"When we fall in love / We're just falling / In love with ourselves / We're spiraling" -- Keane, "Spiraling"
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Like city lights, receding...

Post by Karakuriya »

0x473FA711

She fancied Michael was trying to protect her. Although she didn't need it. Hellfire was just being a jerk. Everyone was staring now, Joni near tears. The DJ spun on, unnoticed.

He did have a point, though. Maybe Hellfire deserved a date of his own. But Jacob had already promised Joni, and now Aeon was in the middle of the whole mess. And here was Michael, fire extinguisher in hand, frowning strangely...

At least his two-shoes looked fantastic. At least she had the chance to tell him because he spent the rest of the night all but avoiding her entirely. And that was fine. There was no room for friends at date night.

Why was everyone so convinced she was sweet on him? How could it be so hard to grasp that she really wasn't capable of the emotions necessary for such a wasteful endeavor as unrequited love? Friendship was a miracle. She'd take it and be grateful.

SEEKING.....

Fake. Fake. Fake. Fake. Fake. Fake. Fake...

SEEKING.....

No, what she had really wanted to say was, "You know, Rocco, I never quite understood how you get away with being an underwear model when all you really are is a skinless, necrotized torso."



0x46ACDAC2

Death bled up through the girl's flesh and spread across her breastbone, a stain, a badge, a secret heart. The skin flaked and crumpled, caving inward like a miniature star, an inner void puckering the veneer of purity. The girl was imploding.

Gazing into that empty, hungry, unholy abyss, she was gripped with terror and a giddy abandon. She felt she might fall in, her soul like a penny cast into an old, forgotten well, and that would be just fine; it was destiny.



0x46ACFA79

Her knuckles rang hollowly against the steel door. Like her expression, her knotted stomach. She clutched the heavy, awkward bundle to her chest.

After a few moments the door cracked open and her heart dropped.

Sydney looked her over--looked them over, his plum brows pressing together, some tension at the corners of his mouth. He moved silently to the side to allow her entry to the warehouse's office front.

Aeon laid the girl's shrouded body on the folding table beneath the scattered, over-bright fluorescent lamps as Sydney fetched a steel chair. She gladly collapsed into it as he eased back into his own, facing her where he had, only a moment ago, been waiting patiently. A paperback copy of The Other Boleyn Girl lay at his feet.

Aeon sagged against the cold metal, her face falling to the ceiling. They sat in silent for several minutes, regret, cyclic contemplation, and internal pleas for numbness deadening their want for words. Her failure lay unspoken, a quiet monolith resting on the table.

At last Sydney spoke, his dry throat cracking. "It's not your fault, Vi."

She tipped her head upright to look at him, to read his face. He sat pitched forward with his elbows on his knees, his head bent to gaze through his steepled fingers at the floor between his boots.

"Don't bullshit me to make me feel better." Her voice failed, too, its deadened affect mismatched with her word choice. All that she was was quiet. "I--I pulled her apart. I walked with her."

He looked up then, surprise softening his face slightly, but the worry stayed etched between his eyebrows. His mouth opened slightly, but no sound came.

"It set her off, dissociating like that, probably. If her soul was loose..." she trailed off, unsure how she arrived at that conclusion or what it meant. Sydney's still-stunned face suggested she might be right, but that she should have no reason to arrive at that conclusion on her own.

He shook his head and sat back. "It's not your fault, though, I don't think. It's the Matthews. They're...I don't know, it's like they're cursed--doomed."

No matter how high the tower, Aurora pricked her finger just the same. Aeon gnawed at the inside of her lip.

"Well, how are the other two?"

"Shiloh and Mercy?" He sighed. "So far they're good--too good to be true, actually...most of the time..."

Aeon frowned, her eyes wandering over the lump beneath the shroud, half expecting the girl to sit up, rub her eyes and yawn, all smiles, like a storybook princess.

"Please don't blame yourself, Vi. Mama won't."

What about Purity's mama? What about her kitten? Would she have become a great poet? How was this not something to be concerning herself with? A girl placed into her care had died.

"But..."

Sydney's eyes flickered and he blinked slowly, catlike, quieting the rising bubble of indignation. "Please..." he entreated.

She slumped further, even her exasperation fizzling at its source. "Oh 'please' yourself. Don't use that crap on me, Sydney."

He frowned, apologetic, looking away. A knocking echoed through the still air from the far end of the warehouse.



0x472933DC

The scarecrow rapped on the door and together they waited patiently, the autumn breeze whipping her red wig into her mouth. Aeon shifted her pumpkin pail to the other hand and brushed the lock away.

Michael shrugged. "Next?"

He wasn't very talkative, but neither was she. They roamed the streets enjoying the crisp weather, the festive atmosphere, and the casual company. It had been a long time since they'd done anything just for fun.

To just let go and enjoy herself, it required practice. It was like walking meditation just to try to forget about the war zone and Purity. Sydney's words echoed in her head, a hollow mantra. "It's not your fault...don't blame yourself...they're cursed--doomed..."



0x472D7529

"Not everyone a little lost needs rescuing, you know."

Her words rang over the wind and the surf, sounding angry to her.

Nova resettled his wings. "Yeah, honestly...and this is gonna sound stupid. I wanted to try and help make you stronger... Not that you're weak! Just, ya know, always room for improvement kinda thing."

"Well, I've kind of got a delicate balance going on."

"I probably understand more than ya know." He chuckled to himself.

She could chalk it up to ignorance. That wasn't how he meant it, but still, she felt miffed. She looked it, too. Nova's helpful face melted into confusion. He knew he'd said something wrong somehow.

Aeon tried to stay open minded. He'd invited her all the way out to this bit of rock discarded and forgotten in the bay to watch the sunset. It was thoughtful. And it was pretty.

"I'm fine in the scrapping department, thank you though." Too terse.

"I... I'm sorry... I mean, I am no scrapper, I am sure you know that better than I do. I was just trying to say there are ways you can train yourself and things you can incorporate into your training."

She shook her head. Training? She didn't get it. Her body was as good as it was going to get, abandoned as she was in the field. She and the island, they had something in common. She and Nova? Beyond their gross misunderstanding of human relationships, not much.

"I don't train. If I want to get better at arresting Nemesis, I go practice it."

Still Nova stabbed forward, trying to make his point. "Y...you can get stronger and faster though. My body is proof of it."

She tried to ignore his conceit and stay on topic, but, God, it was getting hard to do. He's struck a nerve, her lower eyelid beginning to sneak up in a wince or a twitch.

"Why doubt my creator's vision? My purpose isn't to be 'the best.'"

"I don't know." Desperate to help, concern crept back into his face. "Do you really think your purpose is defined by someone else?"

She pursed her lips and gave him a long, hard look. "Yes."

"Aeon..." He wanted to go on, she could tell, but held his tongue, lowering his eyes. Still, she waited, unmoving, for him to finish, her expression steeled.

"I... I... Its not my place for me to tell you what to believe."

She sighed inwardly. The boy at least deserved some sort of explanation. She wasn't trying to be difficult. Not today, at least.

"I wasn't gifted with cybernetics just so I could do whatever I wanted with them, Nova. I have an obligation to fulfill to something greater. And just because I'm not entirely sure what that is right now doesn't mean they're not going to come for me sooner or later, and I have to be prepared for that." Physically, mentally, entirely. She frowned at the ground, contemplative.

"Aeon.. I don't think any of us look at our gifts that way. I was sealed with something when I was born too, my brother and I. We carry it around inside us knowing we are part of something greater. But that has never stopped us from living our life, on the contrary it has pushed us to better ourselves, so when that day comes and we are called upon for whatever purpose, we will be bright shining examples who dedicated our lives to not only our purpose, but as well defining ourselves as individuals and leaving our own legacy."

That was all well and good for him. She was glad Nova could afford that sort of bravado, the confidence of a steamroller.

"Who are you to say I'm not doing exactly that? I'm not going to go and tell someone who knows much more than me how to do his job by modifying myself."

Hot waves of indignation rolled down her spine, surprising her. Her blades vibrated in their enclosures. Still, he persisted. Couldn't he see she was angry?

Was she angry? Yes. She was.

"I... I think you already have though, every memory you have taken in, every friend you have met has modified you in one way or another."

"Maybe that's the plan," she shot back. "It's not my decision to make. Just because you're from some enlightened society doesn't mean that you automatically know the best for us.

Nova blanched. "Aeon! That isn't what I was trying to say!"

"Then say it better." She felt her blood chill, her body scrambling to right the imbalance.

"I was just trying to help you, so you wouldn't have to sit there in pain and patch pieces of your skin back on!"

Less than an hour early she'd been burning off steam fighting...she couldn't even remember what, but they'd roughed her up a bit. It was nothing new. Still, it seemed to mortify Nova to see her whip out her field kit, adjust this, patch that. He wasn't even human, what did he care?

Nova lowered his face into his arms. The grass lapped at them and the surf crashed, but nothing could drown out the silence.

"This always happens..."

"Then fix it."

That chill again, running up this time. She could feel the tension dispersing, solidifying into a firm blankness across her features.

"I don't know how." He entreated to the grass. "I am just trying to help people. The same way I try to help myself."

"Maybe you should make sure people want help first."

Nova stood finally. He was the one who looked upset now. "I... I am really starting to see that."

Aeon sighed a little, apologetically. She hadn't meant to hurt his feelings. Even though he'd hurt hers first, it hadn't been deliberate.

"It just...it comes off like your way is the best way to do things, and that's not how it works around here."

He really was as lost as he seemed. He didn't get it at all.

"But why? Its not like I am gonna 'fix' you, because you don't need it! I was offering to show you what I have learned on my own to see if it could help you become stronger. Not to be the strongest and the best, but to make sure that when something happens, you--you... won't be too weak to protect your friends around you." He finished with clenched eyes and fists.

Something passed between them, then, a secret understanding. Her frustration melted as quickly as it came on only to be replaced by another. Bitter, jagged, like she'd swallowed razors.

"We all do what we do for a reason. Maybe it's my place to protect people... Or..." She hiccuped. "Maybe it's just not in the stars that day."

"When we fall in love / We're just falling / In love with ourselves / We're spiraling" -- Keane, "Spiraling"
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Art wasn't quite crime, crime not quite art

Post by Karakuriya »

0x473FB103

The celestial boy tugged her up from her seat in an act of mercy. They had spoken sparingly since their last tête-à-tête, but she would have done almost anything to get off the bleachers. She had even considered chatting up Biff until Maureen arrived.

Aeon enjoyed dancing in spite of herself, forgetting for a moment, lost in motion. Nova was a good guy. Just naïve.

SEEKING.....

I hate this song.

SEEKING.....

Please just ignore me. Ignore me forever; it'll be easier.

SEEKING.....

Nick looked sharp in a new suit with red velvet trim. She was glad he made it out, having been cooped up in his research since Tiffany left. Even still, as they made halting attempts to catch up as they danced, a heavy silence fell between them.



0x43E2BF36

The Argentinian man threw his hands into the air. "Stop. Stop again." He then pressed a ruby and emerald ringed hand to his brow. "Sydney, can you please try to lead? This is the tango, not cow-tipping."

Violet blanched.

"But she's heavy..."

"I'm certain the girl has no trouble moving herself provided you should lead rather than make like a push-pull-or-drag sale. Suggest, boy, don't drive."

Her pursed lower lip began to quiver.

"Now. Again!"

Sydney smiles apologetically, pulling her close again as the instructor touched the needle to the record.



0x4515D5C5

She sat quiet and still in the private box, appreciating the strong notes of the tenor as they washed over the concert hall. Primavera began to fidget next to her. Molly was already long gone, planting tools in the past for when she would have already returned to finish the job. Violet smoothed her dress again, the layers of wine taffeta sliding over one another with the softest rustle. Why couldn't she just stay here in the box, a simple tableau vivant, as much a part of the Art Nouveau hall as the chairs? Her companion's navy blue nails drummed against the gilt mahogany.

"That's my cue." Primavera rose at the end of the phrase as the chorus chimed in, off to play her own part.

The opera was an ambitious production. They demanded the show go on even though the Myrtha Sapphire had been stolen from its display case in the rotunda not an hour before curtain. Luckily, the Baroness Lockwood who was in attendance tonight with the Lord Lockwood, was wearing the actual Myrtha Sapphire, and the one stolen had only been a display replica for the evening.

Violet gazed across the expanse of the hall at the beautiful aristocrats, the gem laying across the Lady's sternum glinting in the old converted kerosene lamps lining their box. It was her job to make sure the necklace Molly stole earlier that evening had been the real one.

The diva, a signet ring, the only remains of her supposedly dead lover, clutched to her bosom, advanced toward center stage in the big aria of the first act. Patience.

As she reached her mark, arm extending to the heavens in a plea for mercy from the gods of love and youth, the floor of the elaborate set below her calved, the note ending in a perfect soprano shriek.

The audience and cast gasped as one as the orchestra dissolved, and the Baron vaulted to his feet, hands with white knuckles gripping the relief roses that edged the box. Primavera had previously gathered that the Baron and the soprano were secretly involved, and like clockwork, he dashed off to her aid, leaving his new wife, formerly known simply as the actress and new-agey philanthropist Julia Whitley, unattended.

Violet was immediately in the shadows, cloaked with careful refraction, bending the photons as though she wasn't even there, and making her way as quickly and quietly as possible to the aristocrats' box. Everything hinged on a tiny shred of intelligence. Whether or not the Baroness' mega-corporate enemies took advantage of this very moment was all that determined whether or not the sapphire they had already secured was genuine.

For the last half hour, Violet had labored over the implications of if this vital step were to fall through. If the assassins failed now, would she dare to kill the Baroness herself? Molly wasn't here now, and even if she was, she wouldn't know--she could only travel backwards. And yet, even with the distortion of basic causality time travel imposed, the future was still determined by the even-edited past.

"No, you don't understand, Vi. I have to go back," she had explained once. "Or we wouldn't be having this conversation."

She couldn't fathom how Molly was able to plan anything this elaborate, but that intrinsic understanding was part of her gift and the reason she was leader of the trio.

Anxiety mounting, the scene flashed across Violet's imagination: warmth gushing over her hands, sticky and guilt red. She prayed it wouldn't come to that. She wished someone would just tell her what to do.

The whole theater rustled like an agitated hive of taffeta and organza wasps, but the heavy velvet curtains hung still and silent. Very carefully, she phased through.

And the carpet squished. Baroness Lockwood's hair, tangled in her diamond tiara, spilled over the rug near Violet's feet. The woman's throat had been slit. But beneath the dark fissure and the slick the chunky amulet remained where the gallery curators had trusted it to be, too hot for a simple assassin to touch and get away with.

The scent of death hot and metallic in her nose, the girl stooped to unfasten the necklace. She was red-handed now, panicking a little. Violet crinkled her nose as she hastily wiped her sticky hands and the necklace on the tail of her scarf. No, the "simple" assassins would get away, but they would catch the simple thieves--the scavengers--if she didn't calm down and regain control of her abilities; the hardest part was yet to come. She triggered a tranquilizer and concentrated on her next disguise. Gold lamé, pearls, blonde--no, brunette--just anything but purple...

A young girl flew from the Baron's box, crying in horror, her gloves clutched to her face. She had to distract without being the distraction. She had to the gallery to receive Molly when she reentered the time stream from the scene of the heist. Violet struggled to maintain the illusion as she ran through a rough calculation: if Molly had left at the beginning of the aria and chained three times to reach back almost two hours into the past, she would only be able to hold the tear for...thirty, fifteen, seven minutes. Violet guesed she had only two left to come within twenty-five yards of Molly's past destination: the display case, and make the drop.

She looked down at the gloves crumpled in her carefully manicured hands. They at least appeared to be gloves, but only because she was concentrating with all her might to pretend that the blood wasn't there, that she couldn't feel the weight of the real Myrtha Sapphire sharp and warm in her hands.

In the gallery Violet ducked behind a decorative screen just in time to feel a slight warp between the ticking seconds of the massive clock and Molly appeared next to her, sweaty and short of breath. She barely nodded and made a grabbing motion with the hand that wasn't braced against her knee. Violet dropped the gloves into her palm and, as they left her fingers, they reappeared as the bloodied necklace. Molly panted and smiled.

"Good girl."

A little startled at the praise, the last of the illusion vanished in wisps of light.

"There's a washroom down the hall."

And with that Molly formed the elaborate seal and disappeared again to make the switch complete.



0x42D0642B

The university auditorium exploded with applause. Even the director beamed down at them from his podium, giving a discrete thumbs-up. The flutes giggled. Across the arc, the first cello boy grinned at her and she felt her cheeks grow hot.

The conductor turned and bowed to the proud parents and music majors. Then he asked them all to rise and bow themselves. A few parents whooped. The director smiled over at Violet, gesturing. One last bow, all by herself.



0x473FC4FF

The waves of applause, yells, and general commotion echoing through the gymnasium broke against her numb, pleasant façade, her unease mounting. She wanted to tear things up. She wanted to bruise egoes and dash illusions of grandeur. They were all petty, sophomoric, acceptance-driven and sex-crazed sacks of meat as far as she cared right now.

The stress of forcing herself out of bed every morning and on with her life was becoming unbearable, and she was falling back on the crutch of excessive patrolling in attempts to forget it. After all these months, Purity's death still hovered in the front of her mind, and even though she was tired and sore, she returned to the war zone nearly every day in vengeance--and on the lookout for Sydney. She couldn't bear doing nothing, more.

Aeon hastily said good-bye and slipped away.



0x46FC4985

The nigh air was cooling, a late-summer breeze beginning to pick up. The only sound, save for machine gun fire in the distance, was the quiet metal-on-metal of her blades extending and retracting slightly like nervous cat claws.

She took in her reflection in blue and gold, slipping in and out of the shadows cast by the streetlight as they circled one another.

The Paragon Protectors had always unnerved Aeon, but these were the worst: the Claws Pattern. They were always matched blow for blow, trick for trick. It boiled down to endurance, who could outlast the other, who would take the gamble for the upper hand.

The other woman waited until the light was behind her to strike, focusing her advance to knock Aeon from her feet. She sidestepped, wary of the front of disruptive of force the Protector carried on the leading edges of her blades.

Cut for cut they wore each other down, redoubled their efforts and were still equaled. Aeon began to worry, like in any extended combat, that her opponent was realizing she was not as quick as she seemed.

Suddenly the woman moved, and Aeon couldn't explain why or how, but she recognized the particular articulation, the tilt of her hip, the placement of her feet, the shoulders just so. She falterd for the briefest moment before the next strike came.

Automatically, she phased to let the danger pass, but in the last inch, the Protector retracted her claws, turning her fist to connect with Aeon's solar plexus.

Her molecules failed to permeate the structure of the woman's hand; instead, they rebounded, cascading into each other in a shockwave that shook Aeon back in phase, reeling from the blow, toppling backwards.

The Protector, equally surprised to have encountered weight and metal, was slow to follow up, cutting down through the air toward where the girl fell.

Aeon commanded her legs to tense and she pulled herself back over the balls of her feet, bent low, avoiding the coup de grace, driving both her blades and taut fingertips under the woman's ribs and up.

From the force of the blow alone, the Protector was thrown away, curling on the pavement and wheezing. Aeon fumbled with the zip tags, badly shaken, her own breth ragged from the hit.

She had been hit. But how? She'd passed through bullets, walls, even Clockwork and plasma blasts. Everything she had done was correct. How was this hero's flesh an exception?

"When we fall in love / We're just falling / In love with ourselves / We're spiraling" -- Keane, "Spiraling"
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In the bloodlit dark behind her eyes

Post by Karakuriya »

By this point, she was unluckily well-acquainted with the tiles of the bathroom on her floor. The water beat all around her, off the ceramic, in her eyes, in an attempt at deadening her senses. Even so, curled up at the bottom of the shower stall, Aeon was aware of an irregular clunking sound. She shivered violently, her joints rattling against themselves, fighting against their natural alignment. She raised a quivering hand to her face and watched it phase in and out of its own volition, refracting the dim florescent lights bizarrely. Random colors, whispers of things she'd only seen in nightmare, other people's hands.

Purity had removed sin from her that day, though not her own. Some manufactured innocence, now stripped away, had been key to the harmony between her psyche, her abilities, and her deregulated hormone triggers. It was all she could do to keep from falling through the floor or liberating all the molecules of a toe.

She curled tighter into a ball and hiccuped, whimpering for Dr. Vosk, but that option was no longer available, the favor already called in. Crey was no longer a friend. She would have to get a grip somehow. She would have to hunt down Sydney. She would have to return to Daedalus herself. She had known this day would come, but why these unlucky circumstance? Why now?


* * *


The growing knot of anxiety turned in on itself, a small dark heart of crude oil, glistening, churning, and depthless. It breathed, it beat, grew little fingers, a little mouth, little breasts. The little dead girl in ther brain exploded, the ichor rolling out like storm clouds, blackening the fluid in her brain bag, a squid ink death rattle.

The scent of burning plastic high in the back of her mouth, she stumbled into the remote corner of a park and wept for seven hours, tearless and silent and hysterical.

The little girl was fast, inhumanely; she broke it all down, zipped it up. She remembered. Everything, from the moment each little red-headed pin, markers on the graveyard of her brain, had detonated, her memory laid itself before her in a simple sheet of bytes, cross-referenced in a clean lattice, as emotionless and empty as the year she had spent there, utterly wasted, simply wasting.

The girl Violet hadn't died after all, not in the crash, even as yet undeleted, her digital ghost still haunting the brain betrayed by fake neurotransmitters and faker relationships. Manipulating, manipulated, the meat could not be trusted.

Had the AI been aware of her own self-destructive urges, she and the brain might not have come to the same conclusion. Their shared soul gloated, all-triumphant.

"When we fall in love / We're just falling / In love with ourselves / We're spiraling" -- Keane, "Spiraling"
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We all fall down

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She pushed the letter across the reception desk. Sister Mary Constance took it and smiled. "Thank you, Violet. Have a merry Christmas and God bless."

Aeon nodded and smiled in return.

The linen was folded and stacked in a neat bundle on the foot of her bed, next to her uniforms, her MedEvac badge, and the comm. unit they had issued her but she'd never used. She looked around one last time to make sure she hadn't missed anything. Most of the rest of her belongings had been moved to a storage unit earlier that day. She patted her pocket of her suit jacket where the key sat. One last sigh.

She wrapped her scarf twice around her, picked up the small, white, suitcase of lacquered nylon weave and bid the room farewell.


* * * * *


She found Michael poking at a terminal, luckily alone. Though she was quiet, he glanced up.

"What's up? You going to court?"

Aeon wore a simple, black dress suit, the only un-heroic, un-frilly thing she owned. It seemed he hadn't heard...

"I, uh, I'm leaving school for a while."

He jumped at that, surprising her as he suddenly stood to face her. "Why?!"

She carefully smoothed an eyebrow, trying to put the words together. "I... I'm not exactly... Well. I'm not well, Michael."

He didn't understand. She was mostly synthetic, she seemed well. But that was the problem. The girl and the machine--there was a conflict of interests. It needed to be sorted out, and it would take time.

She explained that she had tracked them down finally: Project Daedalus. In the blank between her largely normal life in Pennsylvania and a hospital in Paragon City, she had been there. And she would go back. They would fix her. They had to. Michael was full of skeptical questions.

"How do you know this is even fatal? How do you know they won't just send you out for wetworks or whatever they had you doing the first time around? Are you just going to say, 'Fix me or I'll beat you up?'"

"No..." How to put to words what she couldn't even in her own mind? "They've known where I am. And it's more, 'Let us fix you or you're dead or worse.' And I know they're right."

His dissatisfaction only intensified. "They probably wove some virus into you."

She shook her head. "Worse: genes."

"Bummer."

"But it... I don't know. I've got a feeling the whole thing makes me want to go along with them."

But what could she do? She felt...threadbare.

"I didn't come to be talked out of this."

Then why come? Why not just say, "Good-bye," and be off? Why the discussion. Did she want to be talked out of it? Did she want to want to be talked out of it?

"But... No. I came to say, 'Good-bye.' I'm sorry. No, I have to do this."

"So you're just going to be a little puppet? That's what you want?"

She sighed. It was pathetic, the incestuous mental math. "I don't want to want what I want."

They left her no choice. Her only plan was to just go back, but even if he conceded to her the first point, that wasn't going to be good enough.

"Well, if you have to go back, then you need to plan on what you're going to do after. Don't let them dictate it to you."

But in the past weeks she had come to accept the grim possibility: "...It's hard to say what I'll be on the other side. But something about how I am now...it's just all wrong. Almost to the point that I don't care how it turns out--it'll be better."

He looked a little frustrated like trying to explain consequences to a stubborn child. "Listen, you can't let these people dictate your actions. You have to plan ahead."

"I'm not like you." She shook her head. "You just keep going and going..."

"I keep going because I decide to."

"Well then I'm deciding to go back and then...improvise." It was what she was good at.

"So you want to go back because they've made you want to go back... Well, if they're so in control, then why compel you to return with a genetic time bomb?

The whole thing was making her feel indignant. He didn't get it. Regardless of her incapacity to explain the forces at work or the responsibilities or the fault. He didn't understand the...the beauty of what Project Daedalus was set out to achieve.

"My wants, my genes, my powers' nature, their agenda...it's all aligned. I think it's in everyone's interest that they finish whatever business they were up to before I came here. I don't know...it's hard to say, but these guys aren't like Crey or Portal. They're not scientists or businessmen. They're...more like artists."

He looked incredulous. "Artists?

She just shrugged and sighed. Explaining this all was just making her sound crazier. All the more reason to go back. She couldn't run fast, she couldn't fly under own power. She hadn't been able to phase or fight in weeks. And then her memory...

"Well, uh...do you need help?" he offered. "I mean, killing and maiming people is what I do best, but intimidation runs a close second." She looked up at him and saw genuine concern. "I can come save you maybe. If you needed it. ...And if you could keep a secret."

Her eyes grew wide in surprised, moved by generosity, the first scraps of hope she had felt in months spreading through her, warm.

"I, uh... That would... Maybe... Okay." She stammered.

"...But we both have reputations to maintain, so only if it's like a super-secret squirrel emergency."

She nodded, contemplative. "Though I don't know how I could let you know if I needed saving...since it would probably be from myself..."

A digital time bomb? A tamper switch? A note? Molly. Sydney said he was gathering Generation Zero, too. And if Molly was there, she'd know what to do.

"I think I can rig something... But hopefully it won't come to that."

"Yeah, I tend to get sloppy when I get emotional."

She didn't have to play at being confused. "Emotional?"

"Well, if something actually happened to you, I'd be awfully upset."

She felt herself blush suddenly, surprised that he cared at all, surprised that she cared that he cared. A small, "Oh," escaped.

He exhaled. "I mean, fighting bad guys is one thing, but scientists touch a nerve."

She nodded again with renewed resolve. "I want to be okay again. I haven't felt really anything in a year. I'd do anything not to waste another. And something tells me this is going to work."

"If it doesn't, I imagine I'll have to start cutting things off of people until it does. They're such brilliant cyberneticists, surely they can replace bits of themselves, right? ...You'd think."

He grinned and she couldn't help but smirk. Though it didn't last, the worry creeping in again.

"Please don't be mad at me if I'm not quite...the same...after..."

"Let's go with sad, not mad."

Her frown only deepened. She couldn't ever in a million years imagine Michael being sad for her.

"People never stay the same, Vi."

No, this was different. A crease formed between her eyebrows.

"But I just feel like I've misled everyone all this time. I haven't been myself, but that's all you know... I'm really sorry."

He looked confused. Maybe she was just being silly. As usual.

"Well I've been such a rain cloud. But more than that I just feel rotten--deceptive. And I'm sorry if I ever caused Franky grief. I'm so oblivious sometimes."

"Naw, she's fine. Anyway I could have stopped hanging out with you."

She nodded, a hint of a smile emerging. "I'm glad you didn't, though."

"Yeah, me too."

They shared a pause.

"You better come back okay, and you better stop letting these people run you like a wind-up doll." (She flinched.) "I don't take well to the type of monsters that prey on little girls."

"You and me both." She pursed her lips, musing. "But I get the feeling that, whether they like it or not, they don't have as much control as one ought to over a little toy like me. ...Maybe that's the idea."

She sighed and took in the library, Michael standing slightly tensed before her.

"I, um... I should probably get going, then... Boat to catch..."

He bent and pecked her clumsily on the cheek. She blushed perfectly, frozen.

"Well, hurry back then, right?"

She could only open and close her mouth slightly in response, startled into a complete loss for words.

"Just to remind you you've got friends out here who want you back more than those 'artists' want to you dance, you know?"

She managed a nod and took a step back, biting her lip. "Good-bye..."

Aeon turned and reluctantly walked away, forced herself not to look back. This shouldn't have been so hard. This was the right thing to do.


* * * * *


Sydney was there at the dock, his silver screen-printed black T-shirt over waffle weave protected by a clear plastic raincoat. He gave her a hand into the speedboat, and after she had pulled on her own wrinkled poncho, he finally smiled.

"Welcome back."

The cold spray felt like bits of glass on her face and hands as she watched the skyline fade behind the quiet morning snowfall. Was she being childish? Some teenage rebellion, the first clumsy stabs at self-discovery? Maybe it was telling that she didn't much care.

She had avoided saying many good-byes. When she came back--if she ever came back--she doubted anyone really knew her enough to notice if anything had changed. Michael had been the only one to try to talk her out of it. She really hadn't expected him to be so upset. But he didn't deserve to be lied to, even if, in the end, it turned out he liked the broken one better.

But existential anxieties aside, she had to face Daedalus on her own terms and cut the puppet strings. She had to see for herself the heart of this beast, see for herself if it deserved to keep beating. At the very least, she intended to rescue the girl who was stolen from her: the girl she once was.

Sydney leaned his elbows on the railing of the cargo ship, turning the laminated card over in his hands. A tiny flame bloomed on the corner farthest from his fingers, taut like chopsticks, and the plastic curled in on itself, the girl's picture blackened and sagged, the security holograms dulled. He reverently flicked the last corner into the navy dark sea.

She leaned into his shoulder at the railing slick with salty rime and it all felt very real, suddenly. The cold and crinkling of her plastic hood banished the ghosts of stray engrams with a sudden wakefulness. The last bit of her false life descending to the bottom of a cold, endless black; a ceaslessly darting colored pencil; six blades flashing from a traingle of shadow. The images lingered, fading as yesterday's nightmares.

"When we fall in love / We're just falling / In love with ourselves / We're spiraling" -- Keane, "Spiraling"
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À la mode

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Her scarf, the icy north Atlantic, and her reservations had long since melted, and now Aeon stood dazzled in the clear morning sun. Pristine streets and monolithic columns of glass and steel glimmered on a backdrop of peach and meringue clouds. There was no sky nor ocean, just a lineless expanse exhibiting every hue and shade of blue she had ever known. She exchanged a hopeful smile with Sydney, who just beamed at her, the light making him squint and only enhance the radiance she felt from this place. Somehow, this city and all of its millions of inhabitants felt like a private paradise for just the two of them. For an idealistic cyborg girl, it was Candyland.

And nestled in the fringes of the city center sat the witch's gingerbread house.

It was a sixteen-story building of pale, rosy sandstone, Art Nouveau angles and angels in high relief worn muted and smooth. Propped above the shallow red awning were free-standing tin letters: l'Hôpital des Poupées. Daedalus' vision had a habit of treading the line between a profound reverence for romance and being utterly tacky; this was no exception. They had commandeered the top five floors of the inpatient clinic and dormitory for new, disabled, and retired cyborg women, remodeling the sturdily built, open spaces to their own use. As far as the trail from conception to product, the North American branch of Project Daedalus was the end of the line. Convert, outfit, train, board, dispatch. The second production generation would already be in full swing thanks to theRikti threat. Aeon imagined Purity's remaining sisters, ten perfect little terrors, having their run of the place, slinking, shrieking, gray eyes and maws hungry for secrets.

Sydney tucked her hand into the crook of his elbow and led them into the building, the French doors, gold handles gleaming, automatically parting before them. The lobby held a cheery, day spa feel, the strangely juxtaposed decor reflecting a mix of relaxed precision and uptight decadence. A few women lounged about the area, luncheoning, visiting with friends, watching the street go by, nearly all of them remarkably beautiful. With the best biomechatronic technologies money could buy, why purposely settle for mediocre? Two turned to look at Aeon as she entered: a woman gracefully nearing middle age, her shaggy red hair falling to the shoulders of a white terry cloth robe from which the steel skeletons of feet emerged, tucked into the armchair with her; and a girl, perhaps even younger than Aeon , with a tiny, rectangular frame, like that of a ballerina, draped over a chaise-lounge, a book in hand. Neither looked ill, yet their faces betrayed a deeper weariness and, perhaps, a passive, sisterly concern. The look they shared bolstered Aeon somewhat, urged her to feel slightly more legitimized in her melancholy. With bought looks, sculpted assets, and engineered skill, it was possible to retain an unadulterated sense of humanity, though with hidden costs far heavier than just the dollar price tag: among the heavily converted, the quiet, schizoid meltdown, according to cyber-psychologists, was not uncommon.

The reception counter was an arcing slab of white acrylic, lit from underneath, supported by Rococo-styled steel moldings. The receptionist, in an immaculate pastel dress suit, an anachronistic nurse's hat perched in front of her beehive, looked up from her books and smiled over the glowing counter-top. "Good morning." She automatically turned to Aeon and asked sweetly, "Combat or entertainment?"

Aeon balked. "Excuse me?" Was that all she was to this--this meatbag? One of two set purposes?

Sydney, feeling the tendons of her forearms tensing, quickly stepped in. "Daedalus, actually."

"Oh, of course!" the receptionist beamed as though she'd just been reminded that Christmas happened every year. "I'll ring you up."

They dragged the weight of a dozen eyes all the way to the elevator, its superfluous brass cage accordioning open behind a layer of Plexiglas to admit them. As the doors enclosed them in a cylinder of brushed steel and soft acid jazz, Sydney inserted a key into a lock on the control panel and pressed the bubble labeled twelve. A scrolling marquee above the door described the floors as the elevator car rose gently past. Five floors for intensive care, diagnostics, and operating theaters, each floor its own department: prosthetics, internal biomechanics, neurology, meta-human care, and cosmetics; five floors for private rooms, psychology, staff amenities, and the dormitories, the latter categorized by the same distinction the receptionist had made: combat and entertainment repurposing.

At ten the elevator slowed, dinged lightly and opened to a peal of giggles. A pair of girls stood on the threshold, one in a lime green A-line dress and white ballet flats, a bandage wrapped around half of her head, the other Asian, her unnaturally curvy body swathed in a sleeveless pink track suit, a metal socket where her left arm should have been. They hushed when they saw the elevator was occupied and entered in an ungainly cross between posturing and a shuffle. In the moment it took for the car to travel to the next floor and halt again, the girls had already become enchanted and bored with Sydney's smiles, their attention swinging upon Aeon. Miss Lime batted her one eye appreciatively while Miss Pink discreetly sized her up from bland expression to business pumps. When the doors opened again, Miss Lime lingered in the doorway as if to delay the automatic door for them, laboring to raise her eyebrow. "Isn't this your floor?"

Sydney shook his head and smiled. "No, thank you, though."

She looked surprised, nodding, and stepped into the hall. They were twittering before the doors had even closed again. Sydney smiled down at Aeon with a mixture pride and sympathy.

When the elevator halted again, she was holding her breath.

"When we fall in love / We're just falling / In love with ourselves / We're spiraling" -- Keane, "Spiraling"
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En passant

Post by Karakuriya »

Black and white tiles stretched out like a giant chess board to meet dark wood and scarlet and gold wallpaper. It was a square lobby, an island with a reception desk and half a wall obscuring a bank of observation windows and hallways spidering away into the heart of the building. A cookie-cutter receptionist who would have been equally at home in a Crey lab looked up from her nail file and smiled the same way everyone looked at Sydney.

A small crowd began to emerge from the woodwork, pawns in black suits and white lab coats arranging themselves on the checkered floor. Stares, whispers. Curiosity and skepticism. Had she single-handedly squandered dozens of careers' worth of work? What were they to do with this errant child? Out of the corner of her eye, Aeon glimpsed the shadows a few small, moon-shaped faces peering through the tinted windows of a conference room.

Her pulse pounding in her ears, she was unaware of the undercurrent of murmurs until it was suddenly silenced, the crowd parting for a short, middle-aged woman, immaculately pinstriped, her glossy, black hair pulled into a loose chignon. Purple lips parted in a slow smile.

"Welcome home, dearest Violet. You are--your timing is--most serendipitous." Somehow, the slight Eurasian was even more intimidating in the flesh, her voice low and honeyed, a dangerous step-mother. "Let me reintroduce some of our partners. Doctor Maillardet, the branch director..." She gestured to a slightly stooped, bespectacled man, his hair now more salt than pepper and pulled into a stiff top-knot. "...Professor Ashe, etiquette and folklore expert, currently acting as governess..." A willowy redhead nodded, a perfectly polished gem; the charm she radiated put her sponsored son to shame. "...on loan from Hong Kong, Doctor Quisling..."

The room went mute behind tinnitus as Aeon's bright green eyes met those of her namesake. Long, mousy hair, square jaw with two days of stubble, a friendly, crooked smile. He was as unfamiliar to her as any of them.

"And, of course, you know Doctor Vosk."

He sheepishly stepped forward now from where he had been at the rear of the crowd, looking as rumpled as ever, the wrinkled sleeves of his slept-in shirt rolled up to the elbow.

"He only arrived yesterday, and would not be here at all if it weren't for your efforts against Crey Industries," the woman continued. "And to be honest, if he hadn't been returned to us, there wouldn't be much we could do for you today." She suddenly moved forward and took Aeon's upper arm, removing her from the protection of Sydney's side. "I believe it's an omen that we really shouldn't be wasting any more time." She deposited Aeon in front of Doctor Vosk, intoning privately, "Frankly, you've looked better, my dear."

"What?" Aeon blanched and pried her arm from the woman's grip.

"Doctor, see to it that she's settled quickly so we can have her in the lab as soon as possible."

Vosk nodded and motioned for Aeon to follow him down one of the many corridors that wound toward the center of the labyrinthine facility. As the crowd dispersed, she turned back with a pleading look for Sydney, but he was already engaged in a stern, hushed conversation with the woman with the purple lipstick, the woman he had dubbed, "Mama."

"When we fall in love / We're just falling / In love with ourselves / We're spiraling" -- Keane, "Spiraling"
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Le jardin secret

Post by Karakuriya »

Doctor Vosk was unexpectedly quick on his feet as he hustled down the corridor, so much so that Aeon had to break her dainty stride to keep up.

"Doctor," she hissed after him, but found that the papered walls prevented her voice from echoing very far after all. "Doctor, please, what is going on?"

His pace didn't allay. "Well what do you know?"

She suppressed the urge to snort. "Nothing! I was just as surprised to see you in that lab as you were to see me. And if it weren't for your files..."

Vosk stopped short and looked at her, gauging the depths of her naivety, the calculating of various probabilities reflected in his gaze. Eventually there was a flicker of sympathy as he regarded her entreating expression. Then without warning he spun on his heel, taking off down a side hallway, and motioned for her to follow. "Come on, then. We don't have much time for detours."

And they were off again. The doctor spoke quickly and kept his eyes forward, gesticulating as they marched.

"The work we do, Violet, it's not just genetic engineering and nerve splicing--it's soul grafting. The donor of your abilities--yours and Sydney's--did not just give her DNA. We isolate the framework of the soul--the pattern within the pattern within the pattern. As this isn't my field, I don't fully understand the process, but I know it yields a unique set of genetic fragments that, given ideal circumstances, would facilitate the development of such a soul."

He threw his weight into a hard right turn down another corridor, his dress shoes scuffing on the tiles.

"The host parents give their own genomes and we then construct a zygote--a best case scenario given all three donors--and infuse it with the fragments and implant the result in the surrogate mother. As you can easily assume, this is an imperfect process. However, it has its advantages over simple cloning: while retaining what you could call genetic memory, we gain more customizability in the genome, and it all results in a certain transient quality in the resulting soul..."

At that point the hallway ended at an elevator, and the doctor summoned the car. Aeon found herself too dumbfounded by the implications of what he was explaining to do much more than stand slack-jawed behind him. Contrary to what she had been lead to believe, she hadn't been specifically chosen for the project and infused with these powers, but rather she had been specifically made by the project to house them. That alone had her mind reeling such that this business about host parents and souls was well beyond her consideration at the moment.

They entered the elevator and Vosk punched the button of the floor above, clearing his throat. "Imagine the soul is a seed in the soil of the body. It's a product of its environment. Depending on the body, it grows and flourishes; the body dies, it disperses. Now, like a rose before it blooms, we can liberate it from the soil and move it to a vase, say, to keep with the analogy, and with our technology, allow it to flower indefinitely in any vessel, original or not, biological or not."

As Aeon automatically followed the doctor through the maze of halls, she wasn't sure at that point whether to be horrified or proud. This business of science for science's sake: it was exactly what she had been working against Crey to put a stop to, and the Countess' questionable practices sounded humane compared to what Daedalus was up to. But at the same time, she couldn't begin to fathom the heights of scientific advancement that great minds from all over the world had reached in order to make this project a reality. And she had to appreciate that these thinkers had the a much larger scope in mind than she did; who was she to question the grand design? This marvel that was happening in the very building in which she stood, in her own genome...

The whole thing left her feel very small and conflicted as she tried to corroborate what Vosk was explaining with her subjective experience. Not just created, but farmed in her own body, what exactly had gone wrong?

"Am I...'wilting'?"

Vosk looked back over his shoulder and smiled his approval, pleased that she was at least grasping some of the situation, as abstract as it was.

"Well it's easy to separate a rose bush from its soil but not a bloom from its roots. Because of the risk of shock, it must be a transition You see, you have already been 'repotted,' in a sense: the majority of your body is a prosthesis built around your original central nervous system. But it wasn't meant to sustain you for nearly this long--your soul knows it's not where it belongs and is, in a sense, starving. Especially considering the dissociative nature of your powers, it's a miracle you haven't come undone, Violet, really. If you weren't such a vivacious and passionate young lady... Well, we're all very proud of you."

He finally slowed to a stop in front of a vault at the end of the corridor and turned to face her.

"You are our proof of concept--a prototype for all of your sisters to follow. And as such, and through all the contingencies, you've been extremely brave. I don't know if that's been properly conveyed to you, but I assure you it's the truth."

Now if only she hadn't been engineered to be such a self-sacrificing exemplar of unfettered scientific inquiry gone insane. The irony of the genuine pride welling up was not lost on her, and the conflicting sentiments fused into a vague sense of indignant self-entitlement. All she wanted now as to get this flower business over with and be done with playing the naive little pawn in all this. If continuing her very existence truly was inextricably enmeshed with Project Daedalus, at the very least she could do her job properly. And in the depths of this new-found fatalism, she disgusted herself.

This wing of the complex was quiet as Vosk worked the biometric lock to the vault, the bolts retracting with a thunk, and he motioned her inside. The room was filled with banks of what Aeon could now recognize as cryogenic storage chambers, each station also accompanied by a stack of glass-fronted incubators and a foot locker. Of the sixty units, only four appeared to be active beyond quietly freezing samples indefinitely.

"As you are a human with free will and are instrumental to Project Daedalus, it's imperative that you believe in yourself as a part of it. If you wanted, you could walk out now and we wouldn't pursue you. You will most likely die within a few months, but you could do so with a clean conscience.

"But know that when I met you almost three years ago, free of any environmental influence from the project, you had decided that this was the life you wanted. You looked to us as saviors. Perhaps, given your genome, you had no chance to see things otherwise, but designed or not, you are who you are, and you should pursue happiness. Otherwise, all we do would be meaningless. As much as you were made for Daedalus, the project was made for young women like you.

"I regret that we can't tell you everything, so if you no longer believe... Well, I think you at least owe it to your past self to understand why she made the choice she did."

The doctor hovered in the doorway, looking tired and pensive, and raised an arm to point down the middle line to one station humming at the far end of the room.

Aeon wove between the rows and peered through the glass of unit alpha-seventeen. Behind the condensation she first saw long slabs of flesh: muscles of all sizes held taut, being warmed, stretched, and grown. An upper cabinet held clear cubes of variously colored buffer solutions, each cell cradling an organ wrapped in silver skins of circuitry, breathing, pulsing, and alive beneath the sheer film. Little glands blinking; a brain, too smooth, exploded as if for a child's diorama, the lobes connected with a net of optical fiber like spider silk; lungs veined and quivering like giant still-wet insect wings; a withered triangle, more undersea creature than body part.

The foot locker was full of clothes in the wrong size, a stack of books, and a violin case. A hard disk was labled "AUDIO/VISUAL ENTERTAINMENT" with stiff, embossed tape. Beneath a row of shoes was a steel lock box containing two small, leather-bound journals, a mini-cassette tape, and a letter addressed, "To Violet," in small, uneven cursive. She flipped open the note written on floral stationery.

Tell Dr. Vosk to leave, then play the tape. You are being lied to. Beware Sydney.

It didn't sound appropriate as written from a past self to the future--rather it ought to have been the other way around. Aeon looked over her shoulder but the open doorway was empty. An eerie feeling crept over her skin as she rummaged for the cassette player, déjà vu playing at the edge of her awareness. She breathed and pressed, "Play."

"My name is Violet Quisling and I'm fourteen years old. I'm making this recording because at some point in the future, if Project Daedalus does not go well, I may not remember these things. Tomorrow I undergo cyberization. The surgeons will replace my bones with stainless steel. They wll remove many of my organs and replace them with synthetic analogues to support the new electric impulse system. All my muscles will be enhanced to support my new skeleton. A computer will be put in my head that will regulate all the systems and tie my brain to my new nerves.

"Of course I'm nervous. I don't know why I'm here or how I got here. Though I remember everything from before...that is, if these memories are even real...

"I think that's why I'm okay with what they're doing here... It feels so real compared to watching my 'real' life shrink away before me."


There was a pregnant pause and some shuffling in the background.

"Though it's empty here. There were supposed to be eighteen more kids like us, but they didn't survive their powers or failed to manifest them as expected. So it's just Sydney Ashe and me. He's a little older and has been here since he was a child. We technically have the same abilities, genetically, but they work completely differently for each of us. I can move through solid objects (and light) and Sydney can break the molecular structure of things. He can even do it to people somewhat; he knows a lot about brain chemistry and uses it to affect emotions. But you can always tell when he does it because his eyes sort of sparkle.

"I think I like him. I hope I still do when this is all over, because I'm sure he'll like me better when I'm perfect. That's what this whole branch of the project is about. I'll still be me, but I'll be the best I can be--the perfect girl. Who wouldn't want that? Besides, it's not like I really have a choice. I'm shrinking away. I'm losing myself. If I go on like this, my own molecules will dissociate. They say I might become a ghost if we wait until I'm eighteen as planned, so we're moving ahead now.

"I remember Mom saying that Grandpapa--Dad's dad--was working as a soul scientist until the end of World War II. His research is what's making Project Daedalus possible. The theory follows that your genes build your body and make a home for your soul, and it's having a soul that makes you more than just a simulation of a consciousness--it's a significance that goes beyond just having sentience, like a Platonic form for what is you. But souls are impressionable and they pick up experience, so even though your genes are what give you things like temperament and meta-human abilities, they attach to your soul, too. It offers an understanding that's beyond simple intellectualization. And even if your body goes away, your soul remembers everything--even if your brain doesn't. It's like phantom limbs on a spiritual level.

"At least that's how the project partners explained it to me, which is more than a little dumbed down. It's why I like eavesdropping when they talk to each other. They're very excited for our prototype generation even though things have gone wrong.

"The other day I was sneaking around and saw a couple women talking to Doctor Salieri. They had code names of course: Molly and Primavera, and I didn't recognize them, but they seemed familiar somehow. They were talking about recruiting someone for 'The Mad Tea Party,' and then Molly turned and looked right at me. It didn't matter that people always overlook me or that I was actually invisible, even to infrared, at the time.

"I really miss being normal. I miss Mom and Dad. I miss the friends I had before the shrinking. I even miss school. I made good grades and I was going to be a professional violinist... Will I be able to hear real music when I'm a cyborg?"


The tape skipped.

"Sorry, I didn't mean to ramble off there. I shouldn't talk about before I came here; it's not important. It's easier if I forget it. If you're listening to this, future me, you're lucky because you don't remember. I mean that from my heart--it's not something they told me to say. The past wasn't bad; it wasn't halcyon. But either way, it's gone now. I will be gone tomorrow. I will be you. And trust me, you're lucky."

The tape turned to garbage data tones. Her thumb crushed the stop button.

So this was the girl she had come to save, and she didn't even want saving. Even then she had felt doomed, haunted by fate, by those who came before and were still to come, and by others' dreams of idyllic futures.

These constituent parts--the cloned organs and marrow, the diaries, the violin, the shoes from Chinatown--they were the only pure pieces of her left. The girl she dreamed, the digital avatar she killed, the axe-wielding nightmare self: they were the real Violet, too, fragments rebelling against the rotting shell they haunted. But not her, the girl Aeon, who over the past months had felt herself grow increasingly isolated from her core self--her soul. What was she now other than tenacious sentience, no better than a chunk of ROM? Just a residue. A psychological imprint on poisoned meat.

So it was decided. Perhaps it had always been.

There was a skittering behind her, like the claws of something small on the tiles, and she spun to catch sight of the end of something white as it darted from the doorway.

"Doctor Vosk?"

Aeon forced the footlocker closed and dashed out into the hall. As the tails of a white lab coat slipped around the corner of the maze of hallways, she could barely hear the man mutter to himself, "Oh dear! Oh dear! I shall be too late!"

"Doctor...?"

She jogged after him, but when she turned that corner and the next, he was gone. Aeon slowed and looked both ways down the hall. They all looked the same. Same checkered tile, same blood-red wallpaper, same peppering of cryptically numbered ebony doors. What sort of decor was this for a clinic, anyway?

"What...the hell..."

She wandered a bit further, peeking into the reinforced glass windows of the rooms she came upon: dark labs, chain link storage cages. And then she passed a shallow alcove lined with a one-way mirror that made her look twice. Beyond was a vast operating theater, the vaulted ceiling of which was dominated by a giant octopus of technology--something that looked to be the unfortunate spawn of a clockwork quantum computer and a wet/dry/dark matter shop vac. It dwarfed even the egotistical cybersurgeons and the hapless patient around whom they buzzed.

It hung above them, pitched forward in the shadow of the machine, its limbs unhinged and strung out on long nets of cables like a robot pterodactyl in flight. Its skull was split open in weird origami, the grotesquely demi-virginal lobes a split peach offering up their cyberbrain pith to the chthonic machine god idol above. It might have been beautiful if it hadn't been human once.

Aeon stood transfixed at the window. A hypnagogic jerk from the dying thing rattled the whole apparatus, setting tentacles of thick cables swinging. From the disembodied face plates, poison-green eyes bored into her. The glossy lips pursed once, twice, mouthed, "Help me."

The moment crystallized, the oscillating organic geometry spelling out death runes; there were omens in the pulsing LED stars. She was overcome by the sensation of something icy skittering beneath her skin like inverse Novocaine.

"Am I...already under...?"

Those eyes were her own.

"When we fall in love / We're just falling / In love with ourselves / We're spiraling" -- Keane, "Spiraling"
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Karakuriya
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La nausée

Post by Karakuriya »

She felt reality sag around her. Perhaps the floor pitched, or maybe it was the sudden realization that any part of her life up until now could have also been a fever dream that left her reeling. She stumbled toward the wall for support, but it gave as though there was nothing behind the lacquered paper, and her palm came away stained red. It was a veneer, all of it. But was it trapping her here or protecting her from the truth beyond?

Over the pounding of her blood in her head, her combat drugs depleted and no longer helping to calm her, Aeon became aware of a muffled sobbing, seemingly coming from the wall itself. Curious, she put her hand to the wall again, feeling along the membrane of the paper as it quivered with the sound like the head of a drum. The epicenter was close.

Her fingers skipped along, and then, inexplicably, the wallpaper began to blister, water beading at the seams. As the first drops, stained from the paper dye, dripped off the chair rail to the floor, a cascade of ruin spread with alarming speed to the rest of the hall. The floor buckled and cracked with algae and grime, the discolored tiles falling over one another like bad teeth. Even the painted tin ceiling caved, heavy with mold; rust-backed slivers of wilted enamel fell wetly all around her. The whole scene was rotting away up to within an inch of where she stood, and then just as suddenly as it had begun, the groaning of the timbers, creaking sheet metal, and popping ceramic, all of it quieted except for the dripping of the wall. The brain magic was beginning to lose its grip. The dream world was shattering. Aeon peeled the soggy paper back.

Ocean water gutted from the rift and littered her shoes and the hall with kelp and bits of dead sea life. And inside the now-drained wall stood Purity with a doll's head of chipped and smudged porcelain, one weighted glass eye broken and lolling as she wept. The girl raised her arms to be picked up, and Aeon balked, slipping on the uneven tiles as she backpedaled. Then Purity began to wail.

"Oh no. No, no, please don't," Aeon pleaded, the doll-girl's skin already darkening. She would try to placate even this nightmare thing if it would stop the maw from opening; it had been bad enough before when the universe had laws. But too late. Just as their fingers touched, Purity came undone, crumpling backward as her chest unhinged from within, loosing a sound that terrified as it deafened. Aeon fell from the blast as the girl was reduced to nothing more than sucking void and that unholy, hungry noise.

Behind her the call was returned and Aeon jerked around to see the spider-squid machine disengage itself from the ceiling and clamber down the fiber optic web toward the window and the sound. A bundle of pneumatic hoses fitted with tiny whirring tools coiled and blasted through the silvered glass, the body of the thing immediately jamming itself into the opening, straining the frame. Its swirling core, a reddish plasma orb more caged than protected in glass and wire, vibrated and sparked with seeming rage. Tentacles of cables writhed through the gaps in the shattered glass and flopped to the wet tiles, groping as the whole thing struggled mere feet from the stunned girl. One found it's way to Aeon's wrist, it latched on, and the machine's core rolled like an eyeball to look at her and, from the depths of it, screamed.

Automatically Aeon was up, the cable was severed, and she was running down the hall as the tentacles shot after her. There was a massive crash behind her as the monster broke through the wall and tore after her, not far behind and beginning to gain. The hall went on forever, miles of rotten red paper and broken tile, and she was losing her lead. Aeon steeled herself, prayed phasing would work this time, and dropped through the floor.


* * *


She was blinded by sunlight: red and green and gold. The saints smiled down at her with painted faces. She rolled across the red rug and out of the sunbeam to find herself in the school chapel. Everything was as it was, smelling of wood polish and dust and people. Her heart was pounding, but her fingers found her wool uniform whole and dry, if a little rumpled. She heaved a sigh, watching motes of dust float beneath the lattice of dark rafters and plaster.

"Here we go, Miss Lam." Father Montoya extended a hand and helped her to her feet, smiling lightly. His fingers were made of articulated steel.

Aeon jerked her hand back warily. She wasn't free of the nightmare yet, it seemed.

"Is something wrong?"

"...No," she stammered, twisting her fingers together. "No, I'm alright. Thank you. I should...be getting back..."

She backed away as the chaplain gave a silvery little wave and scurried outside. The sunshine was too bright here, too, washing out the details in Gaussian bloom. She shielded her eyes and made her way across the quad, the crack of a baseball bat and a teammate's cheer echoing off the old stones.

It was quiet inside the girls' dorm. The sun streamed in through the skylights cheerily and the ficus was well-watered. Somewhere a door closed with a giggle. Aeon made her way to quad five and let herself in with the brass key. It was vacant, as usual. She sat down on the edge of her bed, which groaned unhappily, and looked around. Something wasn't right here, though she couldn't put her finger on it. Was she safe from the machine now? Was it that easy?

She rose to look out the window but the glare was too intense to make out much of the quad. It didn't make any sense. The books had no words. She was obviously dreaming. The people in her photograph had no faces. Was she hiding or was she being held? Fragments of the surfaces around her began to detatch themselves and float away like dust in the sunlight. Even a harsh reality was better than a disintegrating dream. Why couldn't she just wake up?

The mirror on the wall pulsed like mercury and showed a dark haired girl with acid-green eyes, arms uplifted to that grotesque thing, that...

"Transcendence Machine." The words came to her from somewhere forgotten, and with it a fear of knowing too well what she was up against. They would suck out her very soul.

"Wait! Don't do it!" she screamed at her mirror self.

Aeon ripped the door open, but instead of the hall, found herself dashing into her own room again. The image in the mirror taunted her, the machine drawing ever closer, its red core pulsing. She spun and opened the door again, stepping into yet another iteration of her quad. But why? Was there already nothing left? The girl was grasping the machine's wire cage, her lips inches from the swirling red abyss.

One last door: one last place untouched by the project, a secret heart. Aeon flew into the room and dove beneath one of the beds. She huddled there for an infinite moment between the dust bunnies and half a bag of stale marshmallows, waiting for it all to be stripped away, from the the hospital corners to the bittersweet churning in her stomach.

It was the end of the third life she had known, and only when the carpet began to unravel around her did she realize the mistake she had made. She whispered her final wish into her fingers as they came apart in motes of brilliant light.

"Take me with you."

It had all looked so real. It tasted so real...


* * *


The medical waste incinerator, maker of little Joans of Arc, burned white hot through the night.

"When we fall in love / We're just falling / In love with ourselves / We're spiraling" -- Keane, "Spiraling"
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Karakuriya
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Les demi-vierges

Post by Karakuriya »

She dreamed about tigers, Molly's razor manicures, velociraptors, and birds of prey. Japanese ghosts and their horror movie stutter-step. A lizard dropped its tail. Her cheek burned as though touched by the sun and the world melted like wax, leaving only wire frame behind. N-gons, line segments, points, ones and zeros, little nanomachines skittering without need for bravery. Each bit part of greater truth and yet itself already wholly true. Divine information.

Her bones sang clear; each muscle lay cradled in honeyed milk; her lattice of bright new nerves, some she didn't know she had, shrieked with virgin excitement.

She dared to open her eyes and was blinded by hot fluorescents. Laying down, looking up. A bright red-purple blur moved over her and she instinctively lashed out with her right arm, flicking that little trigger, expecting the rush of spring-loaded steel disengaging and the give of something being entered. But there was no trigger--no tension in her metacarpals as her fingers flexed taut. She was defenseless.

Slowly the image resolved: a startled young man, her outstretched fingers less than an inch from his throat.

"Oh," she stated simply. "It's Sydney."

A grin spread across his face. "You remembered me."

She smiled back, a little confused. Her arm felt so very heavy. "Of course I remember you, silly."

Sydney turned to someone across they room. "Hey, she's awake! She remembers!"

A voice returned, "Good, good." It's owner came in to view: a scruffy doctor with long, mousy hair, eyes dark and shining. "Welcome back, Violet."

Elation bloomed in her chest. How long had it been? "Dad!" Violet nearly lept out of the hospital bed and into his arms. "What are you doing here?" As he hugged back her tightly, she couldn't ever remember being so happy.

"Why, with my method being applied to my own little treasure, I had to see it done properly." His Nordic accent still rang clear.

She nodded and sat back down, confusion beginning to surface on her features. It was as if waking from a lucid dream, only to find she had been sleepwalking after all.

The doctor gently turned her chin to face him, his expression serious. "Violet, the procedure was completely successful. But understand: your brain is a clone." He held up a stern finger as she went tense with anxiety. "Now don't get excited. It has been imprinted with all of your memory, it's just a little weak. You'll need to rely on your cyberbrain's data bank at first and exercise those neural pathways, understand?"

She nodded slowly, eyes skittering as though over text as she scraped for data to give any bearings on her situation.

"Also?" He captured her dazzled attention once more. "Know that a lot has happened in the last two years, not all of it pleasant. Prepare yourself."

Violet blinked and gazed around, though not quite seeing what was there. "Two years...?" Her fingers twitched, pinching, aiding mental math. "It's...January?"

"That's right."

After a moment she nodded to herself a bit, then again with more confidence. "Okay. I think I can do this."

The doctor smiled broadly. "That's my girl. Sydney, why don't you see her to her room. Get some real rest?"

"Yes, sir."

Sydney helped her off the bed and onto wobbly legs, her muscles strong enough, but untuned. The poured concrete floor was chilly but the clear sensation made her smile. With his arm around her back, her hands in his, they made their way down the twisty corridors to the dormitory wing.

Sydney sighed after a time. "I can't believe it's finally over."

"Don't you mean finally beginning?"

He looked to her to see a wry smile he'd long since forgotten and couldn't help smirking himself. "Here, I'll piggy-back you."

Her apartments were small but cozy: a bedroom and adjoining full bath, nicely furnished. Her things--books, clothes, and violin--had been housed in a tidy, impersonal way. The bed was dressed in white and black satin, and a vase of roses and an electric kettle sat upon the desk.

Violet sat gently on her bed, taking it all in as Sydney pulled over the 1890s reproduction writing chair and perched crookedly on it, attentive.

The boy had always kept an air of self-aware charm, careful in contrast to his more spontaneous personality, but something had transformed him in the past year. Precise ease was the only way she could describe it, how he relaxed too naturally, his gaze noncommittal, his button-up shirt draping off his thin shoulders to reveal a triangle of tanned skin at the collar, framed by a white shell necklace.

By comparison she felt uncultured at awkward, unpracticed at best, unintentional candor leaving her vulnerable even beyond all she had recently endured. She folded her hands in the lap of her ecru silk robe, a safe default, and affected a friendly smile.

"You've come a long way, since..." She couldn't quite place the time frame.

He smiled half-shyly and some of the pretense of his posture melted--though whether this was yet more artifice, she couldn't be sure.

"You, uh...made me see something I'd been missing."

Violet wanted to be suspicious of his devices but found a fluttering in her stomach a welcome distraction. Besides, what reason did he have to manipulate her? They were on the same team again.

She leaned forward to convey her earnestness. "I want us to promise now: no using abilities or training or tools on one another. No games."

Sydney smiled a little wryly. "Like old times?"

She tried to recall but came up short, her brows creasing in frustration. She wanted to remember him, why she liked him, why it was okay to let herself feel safe around him.

"Don't worry. I promise." He rose, and brushing a loose strand of hair behind her ear, kissed her gently on the lips. "You should probably sleep now, though. We can catch up tomorrow." He gave her a final, fond smile and slipped out of the room, the lock automatically clicking behind him.

It was all so subtle. Promises aside, she knew they would never be without play-acting and little courtship games. Be artificial for too long and it begins to feel natural. Though while they might practice on one another under the guise of friendly rivalry and familial affection, as Violet shed her robe and crawled between the slick sheets, she remembered the night of the raid and Sydney's desperate honesty. She would just have to trust that he knew where the training stopped and the boy started--and the same for her as well.

"When we fall in love / We're just falling / In love with ourselves / We're spiraling" -- Keane, "Spiraling"
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Karakuriya
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Fièvre du printemps

Post by Karakuriya »

Alderman Geoffrey Doyle was a good man, a family man. He arbitrated straight down the party line, putting money in schools and health care and Green prospects--"our children's future." It put people at ease. They could cast their vote and do their civic duty and sleep easy knowing someone smarter and stronger was thinking for them. Paragon needed more men like Geoff. Men who stayed strong when their wives drank themselves into a car, a tree, and rehab. Men who still loved their daughters even when rumors flew that she had dropped out of college to strip in a local nightclub. Men who took it upon themselves to see bright, young interns in their sharp, new, navy skirt suits succeed in the harsh, man's world of city politics.

So when a whip-sharp reporter from the Talos Island Tattler named Lilly Devaly called his office, said that she may have come into possession of some interesting photographs, and would he like to see them over dinner, what could he say? She had a child's voice with a cat's purr and a Chinese housewife's vocabulary, and she would meet him at eight.

She arrived only two minutes late in a flourish of bouncing flaxen curls and a wispy floral print wrap dress. She slid into her chair and tossed her head, murmuring apologies as she daintily gulped ice water, pinkie up. She smelled like apple blossom scented shampoo and taxis and was prettier than poor Geoff could have imagined.

"Miss Devaly..."

"Please, call me Lilly."

The salad arrived and Geoff began to sweat.

"Miss...Lilly. As pleasant as your company is, I understand you have something for me."

She popped a carrot straw into her mouth and smiled wolfishly. "I do."

She reached into her messenger bag, withdrew a manila envelope, and placed it on the table. Geoff reached for it, but it remained caged beneath her palms, her long fingers, tipped with navy, splayed out across the flat, yellow rectangle.

"Mr. Doyle..."

"Geoffrey is fine, dear."

Lilly smiled as hard and sweet as rock candy. "Geoff..." (And ignored his blanching.) "I have a confession. For a long time, I've admired you. Your conviction and tenacity, your strong ethical mind, your...jogger's physique. And with all you've had to withstand recently from the media... Well, I wondered if there wasn't some consolation...I might..." She blushed and lowered her long eyelashes to avoid his gaze.

Geoff cleared his throat. "So...there are no photos?"

She suddenly giggled musically, bordering on hysterical, quite amused. "Oh, there are photos. Gobs." She drummed her fingers on the envelope. "I have here all of the negatives. There are no other copies. But I was thinking...that I might let you have them...if you took me out to a movie."

"A movie? That's it?" He blinked. Likely, this supposed blackmail was only a bluff to entrap him in even more scandal. But Geoff imagined the stacks of negatives beneath Lilly's streak-free manicure: his perfect little girl with her perfect legs wrapped around some greasy brass pole, her panties bristling with the allowance of law students broken into stiff, twice-folded singles, and he sighed.

"Well, I'm going to need some kind of story, of course. I do write for the Tattler, after all. But, you know," she shrugged, "if you don't feel up to it, I have seen the pictures--I could always make something up. I have a very colorful imagination, Geoff." Her too-white teeth flashed dangerously, her smile dripping with schadenfreude.

The waiter approached with the red she ordered and Lilly took the bottle, pouring generously for both of them. Finally Geoff nodded.

"Alright, Miss Devaly. You have a deal."

Lilly raised her glass. "You have a date. Drink up, Geoff, you might as well enjoy yourself."


* * *


Hours later, Geoff was indeed enjoying himself, and on their way out of the theater, he excused himself to use the restroom. He should have expected Lilly to choose a small, art house theater, so maybe he shouldn't have allowed himself so many overpriced tap beers, but he felt invincible. With business behind them, Lilly had been the perfect date: effervescent, sharp, and eager to shower him with flattery. He must have looked fantastic with her on his arm, laughing at his jokes. And with the manila envelope locked safely in his briefcase, nothing could go wrong.

That was until he saw a mess of blond curls bobbing behind him in the mirror as he washed his hands. "Hey, hey, what are you doing in here?"

Lilly only grinned up through her lashes and backed toward the bank of stalls, curling her index finger at him.

"Huh-uh." Geoff held up his hands and backed away, his foot knocking into his briefcase. "No, you got your date, Miss Devaly. I think," he gulped nervously, eyes darting for hidden cameras, "I really ought to be getting home."

A strange thing happened then. A shadow passed over Lilly's features; she was still as beautiful as ever, but it took on a dangerous quality, like fine Japanese steel. She sank into a hip and rolled her eyes dramatically, her smiles used up.

"Oh, come on Geoff, I do not have time for this."

He was about to call out when she grabbed his face, her hand incomprehensibly strong, and slammed the man's head into the ledge above the urinals. She let him slump naturally, smearing blood down the tiles, and she sighed at the mess. She really would have preferred to sedate him in the stall, take what she needed, and leave him in a puddle of his own vomit--you know, subtly--but it turned out that good, old Mr. Doyle had some scruples after all.

Lilly Devaly of the Talos Island Tattler, better known as the lady thief Primavera, hitched up her skirt and squatted over the unconscious alderman, clucking her tongue with dissatisfaction.

"You disappointed me, Geoff. I even wore blue just for you."

She seized his chin and turned his head to inspect the messy wound. She regarded his facial features, his posture. Finally Primavera put two fingers to the pooling blood and had only just touched them to her lips when she heard the bathroom door swing open. Silently furious, but out of options, she cooked up some tears and faced the intruder with a look of stunned panic.

He was just a kid. Just a high school kid with a mess of dark hair. But something was amiss.

Why was he just standing there? Wasn't he the least bit surprised to walk in on a beautiful woman crouched over an old geezer who was bleeding from the head on the floor of the men's bathroom?

He was human, she could smell it. But it was still off--too tangy. He was built too well. His eyes were all wrong. This kid had seen more than just alien wars. This was bad.

Primavera assumed the worst. She wouldn't fight him. At least, not now. Not alone. Anyway, she had what she'd come for, even if just a taste.

The blonde sniffed, quavering. "He...he slipped."

"When we fall in love / We're just falling / In love with ourselves / We're spiraling" -- Keane, "Spiraling"
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Karakuriya
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De l'autre côté du miroir

Post by Karakuriya »

In the gymnasium she moved through what could be best described as a kata--a European take on a Shao-lin moving meditation. Circles transformed into lines of focus, lines redirected inward, recycling, every flourish of her wrist of head serving as both feminine artifice and clever feint like the dance of Chinese opera. She imagined she was a tableau vivant in motion: life imitating art, art imitating life in a Neo-romantic wabi-sabi.

It had been two weeks now since the transplant, and an intense regiment of strength and coordination training was attuning her new body, deepening the folds of her brain. She felt like a child again when learning was so easy, it was simply a matter of practice until she unlocked a wealth of knowledge hidden just beyond a trigger memory or a dream, and suddenly she could blackflip or speak a phrase of French or read sheet music again.

Two weeks had passed, and although she was kept busy, Violet was still doing all she could to calm her nerves. So far nothing had gone wrong, but it was finally time to see if the neurosplicers and the Transcendence Machine had done the job. It was time to see if she still had her abilities--if she still had a soul.

Failure was a distinct possibility. She could just be a clever puppet--a clone who only thought it was the original simply because it held all its memories. If it became apparent that she had none of the abilities that Daedalus had spent the last twenty-one years nurturing into developing in "subject Alpha-17," then this version was just a clone, they had failed, and they Violet they knew was dead, lost to the ether. They would have no use of this one, then, except as a badge of shame. Like Sydney. Ghosts in the halls, evidence to the failure of the Minerva strain, the Aeon generation, the Transcendence Machine, and Project Daedalus. She wondered if the Icaria Foundation--the parent, the brain--had a Plan B.

Sydney entered the gym then and kicked off his slippers. He caught her gaze and smiled, moving lightly across the blue spring floor, everything fluid, practiced. He stopped near Violet as she finished the kata, his pose jaunty beneath black gi pants and white T-shirt, though she noticed his bare toes spread wide across the carpet, grounded and prepared.

"What are you doing here?" She drew a strand of hair from the corner of her mouth.

Sydney turned his face to look at the second floor observation deck and then back to her. "They realized, some time ago, that they have no idea how we do what we do. Even the assessment of 'molecular excitation' is inconsistent." He briefly made sarcastic air quotes. "So..." She could see his bravado fade slightly, his place in this world suddenly remembered. "Now that you're transcendent, maybe you'll see it. Behind the scenes. The impetus." His hands went quiet, rested on narrow hip bones. He was upset. He was dependent on her and that upset him. The boy, the mistake. He was the black sheep where she was the golden child, try as she might occasionally to undo the project that bore her and loved her and hung its fate on her whims.

"Maybe." She inspected her colorless, silicone, analog fingernails. "If I am..."

There was a glimmer in Sydney's eye, as though he silently wished she was broken like he was. "Don't worry, Vi. I'm sure everything went fine."

The PA crackled and the voice of Doctor Maillardet reverberated through the gymnasium. "Alphas, we will begin now. Seventeen, you are to transition into a fully phased state. Go slowly, interpolate, and proceed as far as you're comfortable. Thirteen, stand by."

A myriad of sensory equipment peered down from the ceiling as Violet gave Sydney a final, weak smile. She drew into herself, into the tiny node of being she imagined at her center, and from that focus, let her extremities, her thoughts, her ego disperse. It was so easy. While even the act of breathing was mired by the shunting of molecules, this was simple, clean, and insubstantial. She felt she was simply falling backward, stringing out like a kite in a strange spiritual wind that howled softly by, washing the color from the world.

From Sydney's perspective, the girl didn't move an inch. She grew wispy, flickered, and then, like slipping beneath the surface of a glassy pond, disappeared. The observers heaved a collective sigh of relief for the project. Alpha-seventeen had survived. She was complete. Project Daedalus had just witnessed its first true success in twenty-four years. The boy frowned.

In the space between molecular bonds and photons, hovering on the brink of completely dissociating from her physical form, Violet's cyberbrain struggled to make sense of what she was perceiving. Whispers of forms radiating life; quiet forms noted by the lack; herself, incoporeal: a ghost, a disembodied ego. To learn to parse these numinous blips into spacial information she could intuitively understand would take time; but, eventually the blackness and flashes of dreams resolved into a sparce grid, and upon it the spiritual skeletons of the world's inhabitants emerged. Like sonar she sensed the patterns of the objects before her, their souls shining like bright little handles at the center of each crystalline frame.

Here concepts were self-evident, their connection apparent. She could distinguish each foam cube that made up the larger form of the crash pit, and, at the same time, each particle contributing to the concept of a polymer foam. It wasn't overwhelming, amazingly, but more a matter of the resolution of her focus.

Though one form stood intact before her, refusing to break down or become part of a larger whole. Its soul shone bright: nearly difficult to look upon. In time, she could see that its wireframe shell was more solidly filled than the others. Sydney.

Violet reached out to touch him, to see if she could pass through as she did everything while in this state. There was no force, no inertia, no momentum here, just the intent to alter herself and then making it so. Her hand moved to his space but was met with a bizarre and absolute resistance. There was a flash of will, the form reasserting itself in a shimmer of a million hexagonal scales. Like a school of silver fish caught in a ray of sunlight, they fluttered brilliantly for a moment and then laid inert an dull, an armor.

Suddenly she recalled the Paragon Protector that had seemingly, inexplicably, shaken her from this state with a mere punch that had sent vibrations through her entire skeleton. She recalled tearing Purity from her body, forcibly dragging her through this dark purgatory. It made sense now.

Violet returned to the world of three spacial dimensions over time, collapsing the forms into texture and light and the probability fields into causality and quantum entanglement, slipping into the gaps between air molecules and shunting them out of the space she claimed. She felt as though someone had changed the channel on an analog television in her brain, the cathode ray resetting with a clunk, tracking, revving up to paint the world in new colors.

Sydney stood where she had left him, inspecting the skin on the back of his hand. His eyes lifted to study her form, her expression, to learn what she learned.

"I felt a ghost." He smiled.

"When we fall in love / We're just falling / In love with ourselves / We're spiraling" -- Keane, "Spiraling"
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Karakuriya
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En face

Post by Karakuriya »

The elevator doors slid closed, framing Dr. Ashe as she waved cheerily from the lobby. Violet clutched a string of photographs as the descent woke the butterflies that had recently taken up residence in her stomach. She hadn't missed their absence this past year.

The doors opened at floor six onto a furniture-cramped waiting room. Arcs of padded, black vinyl sofas surrounded pale wooden coffee tables arranged with the latest issues of "Vogue," "Jane," and the Crey Industries "Humanetech" catalog. A pretty girl in an orange and striped yukata ferried complex drink orders to the clients from a kitchenette behind the reception desk, where another woman busily tampered with scheduling software and shuffled insurance paperwork. The latter smiled over the blaring indie rock and rack of sleek business cards and asked for her name.

"Miss Evelynn?" A smartly dressed man emerged from the back of the room to usher his next client, a woman with a red paisley scarf over the steel skeleton she kept for a face, into one of the consultation offices that lined the lounge area.

The receptionist looked up from her keyboard and smiled again. "Have a seat, dear. Nicholas will be right with you."

Violet had barely sat down and received her green tea when Nicholas called her name. Black, waxy hair, black eyes, black turtleneck, black designer jeans, black Converse. He had a pretentious, knowing smile that made Violet feel somehow at ease in spite of herself. He gave her a beckoning wave. "Let's go straight back to the studio."

The roomy salon was brightly lit with vanity bulbs that glinted off the black marble counters and leather reclining chairs, some like barbers', others more like dentists'. A few vases of pussy willow boughs were the only decoration, the rest of the space dominated by the stations and their massive arrays of tools. Wig styling, cosmetics, dentistry, dermal modifications: these trades were recognizable, though they sat side-by-side with welders, plaster tape, vices, and electric sanders. Violet was seated at one of the stranger stations, next to a woman who was having her fingernails replaced and was bleeding liberally into a pan hanging from the armrest while she blandly perused a magazine, the technician hard at work.

Nicholas plucked the photos from Violet's hand and placed them on a stand by the mirror. She hadn't so much as glimpsed one since the transplant and she was taken aback by what she saw: a girl so plain, so indistinguishably featured, so sterile, she would not have recognized her own face if it wasn't for the shock she saw reflected there; though, this quickly bled away to a profound irritation at Daedalus for not even bothering to give her a face or call her by her name until she had proven herself in the gymnasium that morning. Already treated like an inverse Nepalese kumari, she didn't need help feeling less human. Only Sydney had shown her an ounce of kindness, but that had all but dried up now that they could no longer commiserate over their shared failure.

Nicholas placed his hands on the back of the chair and leaned down to look at Violet's reflection from her perspective. His eyes flicked to the photos of Violet, taken before Daedalus had even laid a scalpel on her, the disparity between the images and her reflection augmented by a large magnifying frame on the stand.

"What ever did they have in mind for you, I wonder?" he mused to himself, touching the sides of her cheekbones. She shivered involuntarily as she felt Nicholas' fingertips and inky gaze search for her personality sequestered beneath the layers of polymer, carbon fiber, and silicon. "Oh, don't look so terrified, dear. I did your Lilly and Rose and they turned out just fine, didn't they?"

"They're beautiful," Violet murmured, barely above a whisper.

Nicholas hovered at her ear, studying her expression. "Ah, but beauty is easy. What matters is whether it fits the girl who wears it."

After a few moments of contemplation, he moved to a shiny, black tool bench and slid out one of the deep drawers to rifle through its contents, all the while muttering to himself. "All three of you have this...je ne sais quoi...fictional--no...stranger than fictional quality..." He turned to glance at the photos and then her face again. "Violet, Violet, who are you...?" Flip, flip, flip. "What are you trying to be...?"

The artiste stopped short and spun at her again, a hand pinching his chin thoughtfully. "Now I wonder..." Nicholas squinted at her photographs, suddenly ducking to peer at a few further down the strip: Aeon in combat, Aeon in flight, Aeon glaring bold faced at a security camera. "These are you, too...?"

She was about to protest when Nicholas stood straight up, wringing his hands. "Oh, I've got it, of course! Sit tight, I'll be right back." He hustled off, calling to one of his colleagues. "Oh, Midori...! I need to borrow your weirdo foreign pornography collection."

A voice from a back room responded, "It's not porn!" but, just the same, Violet sat vaguely mortified in the salon, now all too aware of the other women being preened and painted so seriously. Her neighbor looked up for the first time, around, and then to Violet and her photos.

"Hey... I know you..." Her red irised eyes narrowed discriminately. "Aeon, right?"

Violet started, a paranoia creeping into the spaces between the butterflies in her stomach. "How do you know that name?"

"Ah, I knew it," the redhead slapped her magazine on the arm of her chair. "One of my girls ran into you back in Paragon. A bank job. You busted her chops real good, I remember, all slice'n'dice. Poor girl only just got out of the Zig last month."

"I see..." Violet just studied her blankly; milky rose skin, cherry lips, brand new retractable fingernails varnished red. What could one say in such a situation?

"So, anyway, what brings a cape so far from home? Is this your grand fall from grace of just the price you're willing to pay for perfection?" When Violet hesitated, the woman winked a red cat's eye. "Don't worry, sugar, I'll keep your secret. Just curious. 'Cause if you're looking for a job..."

Violet shook her head minutely, lowering her eyelashes. "I'm with Daedalus. Now."

"Upstairs?" The woman's surgery-taut eyebrows nearly rose off her face. "Well..." She laughed, revealing daintily sharpened canines. "Now I don't feel nearly so bad for Maurine. Ouch!" She jerked her hand away from the technician with a sneer and returned to her magazine.

Nicholas strode back into the salon and tossed onto the counter a stack of comic books, their covers arrayed with spider webs of cabling and purple haired pin-up girls. He tutted to himself as he stripped Violet of her wig and made a cast of her facial contours, and when he retreated to the back room to work his magic, he could only shake his head at himself and mutter, "Should have known, sick bastards."

Two hours later Miss Cherry's newly clawed hands were wrapped in bandages and she climbed stiffly out of her chair. "Well, Little Miss Hero, it's been a trip." She smiled at the sleepy Violet as she let the technician tip herself from her purse. Red cat eyes winked and white eyeteeth glimmered. "If anyone needs a proper ass-kicking from a proper lady, I'll send them your way."

"When we fall in love / We're just falling / In love with ourselves / We're spiraling" -- Keane, "Spiraling"
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