Kami

She honored her mother at sunrise. She honored her father when the wind raged across the western sea. She honored her grandparents, Izanagi and Izanami, and the eight children that they bore together. She honored her grandfather's mourning that had given her mother life.

The shrine was her sanctuary, the grove, the garden, the reflecting pool. Inside the ancient walls and gates, the towering, bustling city disappeared and the old ways were not forgotten. She drew comfort from the balance of man and nature, the still pool barely rippled by the stream of water falling from the roof, the tended trees whose perfume blossomed early each spring, the carefully placed rocks that grew mossy with lichens, the grain of the worked stone in the temple wall, the red pillars at its entrance and the sweeping arch between. Unity and purpose from another place, another source, another time.

The people who made their devotions here thought she was the spirit of the shrine. They floated candles upon the still waters. They left tiny, rolled scrolls tucked between the stones like prayers, often with just a name designated for a blessing or a curse. Her friends thought her a kind spirit, her enemies a demon. Her uncles, Ren and Koan, had taught her the way of the warrior, the way of the sword.

She knew that Neko, the lucky stray, was the true spirit of the shrine. She only cared for her as much as anyone could care for a wild and independent spirit. She had found her among the overgrown ruins with a broken paw when her spirit had been awakened by the candles, and tended her until she recuperated. She decided to stay, to ensure the shrine wasn't desecrated again, a spirit of justice disguised as an ordinary girl named Kami.

Outside, they thought she was a street waif, another urchin raised in the feral Western wilderness her ancient city had become. Just beyond the garden walls, modern glass and steel shrines dedicated to yen and Euro and dollar loomed over her. Only Ronin Software, whose headquarters her shrine was nestled beside, sheltered her, not having lost touch completely with the ancient ways. Each morning, they sent their custodial staff to ensure the shrine was clean and well maintained. Each evening, they left food for her and Neko. On holidays, they brought clothing and gifts, most of which she donated to the poor as she already had everything she needed. In return, they were content to bask in the glow the rejuvenated shrine cast their way and the luck that Neko seemed to bring.

Today Kami hoped to replay their kindness. Recently, the scrolls in the wall were dominated by a single name: Jimmi Tens. He and his ritually tattooed street clan were no longer content to terrorize just the corporate invaders. Now, he extorted the poor, conscripting street orphans into his illicit enterprises. He coerced the boys into becoming runners and lookouts. The girls, he merely rented or sold. The corporations turned a blind eye. They found it easier to trim their profits to pay for protection and purchase underage prostitutes for their parties than to get into a street battle with a group well acquainted with the tactics of violence. All but Ronin Software, whose extended corporate family were beginning to pay a heavy price for their moral and ethical stance.

Jimmi Tens used to come around with candles. For a while, he had sheltered her like a young uncle protecting his orphaned niece. When she'd first settled, he had helped her clear out the vagrants whose only interest in the shrine was as a public bath and bathroom. When some of the drunks had threatened her, a gun had appeared and he'd taught her how to shoot it. He found the image of a grubby back alley girl pointing a 9mm at a street thug and instructing him to "say, 'Hello, Kitty'" irresistibly amusing. When she'd needed to see the priests and city officials to register the shrine as reoccupied, he'd loaned her his Kawasaki Ninja to get around the city. He used to joke that she liked to feel something powerful and throbbing between her legs. He would never find out. She hadn't realized that even then he was like all the others, that his only agenda was to frustrate his enemies and increase his own power. He had already become alienated from the ways above.

Kami had never truly needed his help. He had been arrogant to think so. Now he dared to threaten not only the people under her protection but Neko. A week ago, one of his minions had the audacity to graffiti a hanging cat in white spray paint outside her garden gate. That act had elevated him from an annoyance to a problem that needed to be solved. When that demonstration hadn't provoked her compliance, he'd escalated.

She gazed down at his handiwork again. She could see the suffering, the depravity. The blood had darkened to rusty brown, staining the bright red gates of the shrine in small rivulets. She had had to borrow a hammer from the Ronin maintenance station, waving the workers away when they'd asked if she needed help. Gingerly, she had removed each of the four nails, extracting one from each paw. She prayed the creature was dead when she had been placed there, but suspected otherwise. Thankfully, by the time Kami found her, she had joined her ancestors. At first, she had thought the poor creature was Neko. Jimmi had chosen a gray tiger, a stray of similar size with similar markings to serve as his final warning.

He had defiled the gateway to the garden to send her a message. She understood that message now, though it wasn't the one he'd intended. She knew what she had to do. He wanted her to know that she'd outlived her usefulness to him. Unlike the sword of his ancestors that he revered, this one had two edges. He was no longer a protector of the shrine. He had sworn an oath. He had strayed from the way of heaven. He would learn what that betrayal meant. The spirits might be sleeping but that didn't mean they would forgo payment.

She knew he was trying to provoke her, to get her to leave her ancient sanctuary and reenter the modern world. In the seat of her power, she knew she was safe, that she could not be harmed. Out there, she was vulnerable just like any other girl. But she couldn't risk the damage Jimmi could do to Neko or the shrine. He thought of her as traditional, bound by the old ways. That would be his mistake. Heaven spoke in many voices. Most days those voices were like a choir singing in harmony. Some days they sang with a slight dissonance, like the J-pop girl bands she'd come to love.

After she'd buried the cat, she exchanged her traditional attire for that of errant schoolgirl, torn black stockings, stained plaid skirt, dingy white blouse, somewhere between punk Lolita and the pre-delinquent look. She gathered her long, black hair and tied it in a ponytail. Just above the ribbon she slashed it short and diagonal with a straight razor, an ancient sign of mourning that would help her blend in. Outside the gates, she would be hard to distinguish from the street girls and alley strays she had grown up with. She would challenge Jimmi on his own territory, defeat him at his own game.

Kami unrolled her spare sleeping mat, uncovering the pistol concealed within. It had appeared at the shrine just after the shooting involving a young anime enthusiast. The police had never identified a cause or suspect in that Otaku murder despite the weeks of coverage in the local and national press. She suspected the handgun was connected to Jimmi somehow. The pistol was an anodized pink 9mm with a Hello Kitty emblem embedded in the handgrip. A custom piece out of Hong Kong, unless she missed her guess. A quality weapon someone paid a high commission to have crafted, and a higher one to have smuggled in. What guilt was associated with it, she did not know, but she intended to redeem it.

She rummaged through the most recent pile of donations until she found the disposable cell phone, one she knew had nearly an hour remaining on its prepaid limit. She made certain it had the ability to send and receive pictures as well as texts and voice. She also found a woman's makeup kit, the compact type some of the female executives donated for the local women's shelter.

Next, she went to the stash of prayers on parchment, the names that had been tightly rolled and slipped into cracks in the wall. She had kept a special pile for Jimmi Tens to serve as a reminder. The one she was looking for was right on top, yesterday's addition to what could be patched together into a rather long list. The difference was that she knew whose hand had drawn the calligraphy of his naming symbols on this one, knew that hand held no stain of enabling him. The characters were perfect, with a slight flourish that spoke of a young girl's script.

With the cell phone, she flashed a picture of the parchment against the flagstones of the temple. There was no point in disguising where it had been taken. Jimmi would know from the parchment who had sent it and what she intended to do. Kami was counting on his reaction. She knew after his demonstration that he'd have his soldiers watching the shrine. If she timed it right, she could use them to allow her to get closer to him.

She checked the clock on the cell phone. Nearly time. She'd have to hurry now. Quickly, she donned the red skirt and white blouse of a shrine maiden over her other clothing. She pulled the white stockings over the black ones, and slipped on the red sandals. She pulled her hair back, and tied the ponytail she had cut off into the traditional red and white scarf. Then she pulled the small, white mantle over her head and settled it onto her shoulders. She straightened the entire ensemble so she would look like one of the mikos who sometimes came to assist her.

She glanced at the cell phone clock before stuffing it, along with the makeup, into the smallest of the three zippered compartments in the pink, camo-patterned backpack she'd selected. The handgun, she slid into the mid-sized compartment just behind it. She placed a pair of more contemporary low, black boots into the large, main compartment.

Neko rubbed against Kami's leg and reached up with a paw to lightly tap it. She squatted down and scratched behind Neko's ears, then under her chin, which drew out loud and gravelly purring. "I have to go outside for a while," Kami told her. "Yes, it's time. Stay out of sight while I'm gone. Hide if anyone unfamiliar comes inside. And no chasing the koi while I'm away." She stooped down even farther on hands and knees, almost in supplication. Neko rubbed along her face, tickling her nose with her whiskers, before disappearing silently into the grove. Kami hoped she would be safe. Neko would be vulnerable if she failed.

Kami picked up the backpack and clutched it to her chest under the white shoulder mantle. This would be the tricky part. She would only have a minute to cross without being intercepted. Instead of heading for the shrine's main entrance that opened onto the street, she shuffled toward the back gate, the one that led to a side entrance off of Ronin Software's main lobby, the one employees sometimes used at lunch to make their devotions which would start soon. She hated the single thong sandals. How did women ever get around in them? She supposed that was the point once upon a time.

As quickly as the sandals allowed, she shuffled across the open space between the temple grounds and the Ronin tower. She kept her head slightly down and her eyes forward, yet her peripheral vision caught the two street thugs in stylish sunglasses smoking cigarettes and watching the main entrance to the shrine. As she neared the glass door into the office building, one of them nudged the other and nodded in her direction. By the time they started toward her, the white gloved security officer stationed in the lobby opened the door, sending a wicked glare in their direction. As she nodded to guard, she saw the pair peel back the other way. They would have to hike the long way around the block to intercept her at the plaza by the Ronin tower's main entrance. They wouldn't hurry, thinking her dress and sandals would slow her.

Once inside the lobby, Kami quickly bowed to the security guard, who winked at her in recognition. She ducked into the sheltered alcove by his station. Out of sight of the employees in the lobby, she quickly tore off her traditional attire, revealing the more modern, younger clothing she had gathered from the castoffs in her charity pile. She removed the black half-boots from the backpack and crammed her feet into them without bothering to tie the laces, then balled up the mantle and scarf with the remnants of her hair into the skirt and blouse and stuffed them into the pack. She mussed her hair to give it the right look. Her makeup would have to wait. She slung the pink camo backpack across one shoulder and strode through the lobby, looking like an executive's wayward daughter who was late for school. None of the busy employees gave her a second glance.

She glanced out the main doors of the lobby as she approached them. The city bus was pulling up to the stop just down the street, right on time. She slowed her pace a fraction as she saw people queue up to get onboard, gauging the distance. She'd run for the bus just as the last person ascended the steps. The driver would wait only a few seconds, even for a scrambling latecomer, the only compromise between an innately polite society and a transit system that prided itself as always running on time.

The last man was boarding just as she cleared the lobby doors. She ran for the bus, careful not to trip over her untied shoes. The two thugs appeared around the opposite corner, but paid her no mind. She reached the bus just as the door was starting to close. A quick bang saw it reopen. She scrambled aboard and grabbed a ticket. Outside, Jimmi's enforcers were milling about the plaza in front of the Ronin tower. When a security guard stepped out the main door to confront them, they split up, going different directions around the block, not seeming to notice the bus pulling away.

She headed toward one of empty seats to catch her breath, wondering if the pair would figure out that she was the girl who had sprinted for the bus right in front of them. By the time they did, it probably wouldn't matter. She sat down as far away from the other passengers as she could and pulled out the cell phone.

First, she entered the phone's menu and set it to answer directly to voicemail. Then, she loaded the picture she'd taken into a blank text message and sent it to Jimmi Tens' mobile phone. He wouldn't recognize the calling number, but he would be curious. She knew he couldn't resist an enclosure from a strange caller, especially to his private number, one he went to great lengths to keep out of the phonebooks of all but the closest associates. Within a few minutes, his street warden would be calling to inform him that she had slipped away from the surveillance at the shrine. Then he would understand that she was coming for him.

She knew Jimmi would put a trace on the phone. Not many people knew he had that capability, but it was easy enough to hack into the NTT database to check on a number. Mothers and fathers did it legally all the time. It was a feature on most phones now. All he had to do was input a bogus security string to take him through the backdoor the police used. Then he could track her phone as long is it was on.

Queuing up the photo once again, this time to load it onto the Internet, she sent it to a special Flickr group she'd created. That upload would generate an automated text message informing all the members of the group there had been an update. She had recruited a small army of keitai, crowdsourcing her own surveillance needs to the children of the mobile phone culture. The message would let them know to start tracking Jimmi Tens, flashing pictures of him discretely with their cell phones wherever he went. They would post those images to her Flickr group. From there, she would know exactly where he was. All she had to do was wait, and eventually, he would come to her.

Oh, and ditch the phone where someone was bound to find it, someone who would use the remaining minutes rather than turn it in. Somewhere like right here on the bus. She scanned the other riders to make sure no member of the green uniformed Smile-Manner Squadron was present. Luckily, there were none. Most of the respectable people were at work by now, as were their children. Whoever picked up the phone was likely to use it. That would draw off Jimmi's minions and bodyguards.

Finally, she returned to the phone's features and reset all the personal data, as well as the log of all the calls in or out. A temporary measure that would buy her time once it was tracked down. She then closed the phone and carefully tucked it between the cushions of the seat, just barely peeking out. She wanted to make sure none of her neighbors were helpful in pointing out she had left it behind. With any luck, whoever discovered it would use it or sell it. At worst, it would be turned into the driver and move around the city with the bus.

With that done, she fished out the small makeup kit from her backpack and began applying the rest of her disguise. Dark eyeliner, heavy mascara, exaggerated eye shadow, bright lipstick. She could sense her fellow passengers watching her out of the corner of their eyes with disapproval, but she didn't care. That meant they were less likely to inform her about the phone should they spot it, since she had broken one of the unspoken rules of bus etiquette. It fit perfectly with her image of a bratty executive's daughter.

When she finished, she looked up to find her stop approaching. As the bus slowed, she sashayed forward, slipped her ticket into the reader and dropped the correct change into the receptacle by the driver, all without making eye contact or acknowledging anyone, pouting slightly the entire time. By trying to draw attention, she ensured she would be less noticed, one of the quirks of modern Japanese society.

She changed busses several times after that, hopping from one to another without much thought of their route or destination, just taking the first available so she didn't have to stand around very long. Her meandering path sketched a modern line drawing of a Japanese character through the city as seen from above. There was a more direct route to her travels, but she wanted to make certain her trail was obscure, just in case. Half an hour later she started paying attention to moving closer to her eventual destination.

From the final bus stop, Kami turned down a well-trafficked side alley. The city was still alive and crowded though not like rush hour when the sidewalks would be packed. Digital advertising brightly lit up the street even against the sun. Deeper down the overshadowed alley, store signs and advertising cast an almost psychedelic range of blinking yellows, greens and reds. Not quite seedy, so it wouldn't attract any of Jimmi's watchers who might be out. Reputable and slightly touristy but off the beaten track. The pedestrian alley opened into a small plaza between the looming buildings. She was near the corporate downtown not far from Ronin Software, on the edge of Jimmi's territory. Were she to look up, which only tourists would, she would see a small square of blue sky above. Instead, she headed for a narrow staircase between the shops at the back of the plaza, then up them to the Internet café.

Inside, she traded cash for a prepaid credit card at an automated vending station. The café wasn't crowded like it might be after school let out. She chose a cubicle facing the windows so she could keep an eye on the plaza while she waited.

She logged on to her Flickr page. At the top she saw the photo of the parchment she had posted, viewed over a hundred times already but uncommented. Below another two dozen newer photos waited. Quick shots, all from cell phones but remarkably focused and composed. Most showed Jimmi Tens making his way through his normal day. He didn't have a routine, per se, or even a regular path. But he did tend to have a few daily haunts and subtle patterns to his movements, more like opportunities, one of which she was specifically waiting for. A sampling of others showed his lieutenants scurrying to carry out his orders. A couple showed the shrine, safe and undisturbed. She hoped it remained that way. She hoped Neko remained out of sight.

She knew Jimmi Tens would approach his day casually, unrushed, as if nothing had happened. It was important to his ego, his image of self-control. But she knew he would recognize the hand that had penned his name and at some point go to confront his girlfriend. He wanted to make sure the girl was unsuspecting, thinking she had slipped something by him, that he wasn't paying attention. Then he would pounce, like the tiger that stalked his arm in ink.

Sipping a cup of mildly horrible tea brewed by another vending machine beside the door, Kami waited. She set the browser to refresh each time a picture was uploaded. So far, it looked like a normal day for Jimmi Tens, the tattoo parlor, the video store, the modeling agency, all providing either direct or indirect income to his organization. Then on to the small-cap real estate franchise that he had bought a token share of on the local stock exchange, one that enabled him to remind the owners that certain shareholders intended to ensure their investment was managed the way they wished. It appeared he might not check in on his wrestler's mother today, one of the many people whose welfare he saw to personally, as a reminder of his power over them.

As Kami waited for the pattern of his movements to compile, she stared out into the plaza, remembering when it was a tea garden with the same cobblestones full of artisans, students, and minor officials, all trying to avoid the samurai and their soldiers. So long ago. So much had changed, some good, some bad. The people were less militant and warlike now. The youth of today seemed more open than any generation in centuries. But they had once again lost their way, had become separated from the spirits. She had thought men like Jimmi Tens could help steer them away from the seductions of modern commercialism. She had been wrong. When she'd first met him, he wanted to reform the corporate culture that dominated the city now, saying he strove for a more balanced future. Now, he was indistinguishable from the other men who led organizations of violence. He terrorized individuals, threatened their families, ransacked their homes, burned their cars, murdered their pets and threw the severed heads over their garden walls, whatever was necessary to force them to comply with his desires. But, he had threatened an innocent, someone not involved in his schemes. Someone who had sought her out for justice.

Jimmi Tens had chosen his fate and driven it home with each nail into the temple door. Kami had no pity for him now, only sadness. He was irredeemable.

She continued watching her Flickr page update. Her keitai were working out better than she had anticipated, covering Jimmi, his lieutenants and street wardens, as well as the shrine. Each seemed to be in a private competition to outdo the others in the photos they captured surreptitiously. They were nearly as good as tapping into the citywide close circuit camera feed and much harder to trace or crash.

Jimmi was on the move again, this time toward the pachinko parlor in which he was a silent partner. That was the destination Kami had been waiting for. From there she knew the pattern. He would meet with his agents for an hour or more, reviewing their books and operations to ensure his sidelight ventures were running the way he desired. Then he would sneak out the back and head for his favorite sushi bar, the one where his new girlfriend worked. The one he had threatened, the one who had prayed to Neko for protection by penning his name to parchment, rolling it tight and inserting it into the temple wall.

She envisioned the route he'd take, out the service door, through the back alleys, touring the older, unmapped areas that still existed between the feet of the concrete and steel giants that had sprung from the ground around them. The city had grown organically over the centuries, and her knowledge of its streets with it. There were alleys and pathways, shortcuts and blind gates known only to a few. She knew more than even the most cunning of Jimmi's street wardens.

She knew the exact place she would intercept him. Buried in the maze of streets and ancient alleys was a traditional soba noodle shop, catering mostly to delivery and contract lunches in the office towers, Ronin Software among them. They crafted some of the best thin noodles and miso in the entire city and had for generations. It wasn't much to look at, just a lone holdover with a narrow storefront wedged between two towers. It had a pair of windows that looked out onto the dark, alley maze, marked only by a hand-painted sign.

She logged off her terminal, being certain to clear the browser of any traces of where she'd been. As she left, she tossed the remnants of tea into the clean, white receptacle by the door, exactly where it belonged. She descended the stairs but instead of emerging back into the plaza, she turned toward an unmarked, age-darkened wood and steel door at the back of the adjoining hallway. Few knew the door was always unlocked, one of the only surviving remnants of the ancient daimyo's watchtower that once dominated the landscape here.

The heavy door slid shut quietly behind her. She emerged from beneath an arched overhang at the corner of a narrow, stone alley, deep in the maze that clung tenaciously to the margins of modern society. One day, one of her aunts would rumble her discontent and this last vestige of a bygone age would disappear beneath stone and dust. But not today.

Kami wended her way through the maze, turning down narrow passageways, opening and closing unlocked gates, moving though stone-lined canyons that rarely saw the sun. Unlike their newer counterparts in the remainder of the city, all of them were clean. The families and businesses whose rear doors exited onto them still swept them each morning and rinsed them once a week. It pleased her to know that not all of the traditions in the city had died.

Ahead, Kami spotted the noodle shop sign hanging across from a doorway flanked by a pair of windows. Each window had a small, two-person table behind it for the scant customers who dropped in rather than called. Mostly, it was a convenient waiting area. The windows were from a day when the alley was actually a bustling back street. The ancient owner, who doubled as the chief cook, could clearly remember that time, decades before the firebombings had transformed the city both in geography and in temperament. He relished having someone stop in and take the time to appreciate his craft. He received so little direct feedback these days. She enjoyed his fare more than any other in the city, simple yet elegant. Hot or cold, you could taste the time-honored tradition in every bite.

She approached the counter and gave her order to the owner's daughter, a grandmother in her own right. No chitchat like the modern restaurants, just a simple attentiveness and courtesy. The afternoon was warm so she ordered a plate of chilled noodles with a nori seaweed topping and a pot of tea in case she had to wait. Though it went against the usual custom, she paid in advance. She would need to leave quickly once Jimmi wandered by.

Setting her backpack on the stool by the door, she settled onto the seat in the corner. She faced the side alley where Jimmi would emerge and turn away from her, the perfect location to intercept him, where he would have little time to react. The pink camo backpack contrasted nicely with the traditional amber wood seat, a perfect blend of past and future.

The noodles and tea came out promptly, giving her plenty of time to savor them before her target was likely to appear. She had to stay alert. Her wait could be half an hour or three; there was no way to predict. But she knew he would come before the day was out.

As she slurped her noodles noisily, the final wave of delivery boys, mostly grandchildren and great grandchildren, entered and left the shop with piles of boxes bound for the corporate towers. This was their last run in a two-hour marathon of deliveries to feed the office workers who had long since replaced the artisans who once made the city great. They would be gone for many hours, fanning out across the city afterwards to pick up supplies for tomorrow's fresh batch before they returned for the evening deliveries.

Sated by the noodles and nori, Kami turned toward the tea, savoring its green, slightly nutty flavor. Sencha, she presumed. The pale, steaming liquid flowed so gracefully from the cast iron pot into the sky and cloud glazed, handleless pottery cup. The comparison between this and her early sampling in the Internet café was simple: there was no comparison at all. She felt sorry for today's youth who had turned to that insipid substitute, or even coffee, over this delicately flavored jade brew.

Time stretched with each sip from the rough-thrown earthenware that warmed Kami's hand. The grandmother had long since disappeared into the back to help her father with the cleaning up. He came out briefly to sit at the table across from hers, smoking a cigarette in silence, another anachronism from a distant time she recalled so vividly, a time before Christianity or even Buddhism, had spiced the city's already flavorful stew. He met her gaze once and nodded. She smiled wanly and nodded back. He took no notice of her attire only her demeanor. With Kami, people saw only what they wanted to see. He soon disappeared back to his daily routine.

When the alley began to dim as the sun retreated behind towers of glass and steel, Kami feared she had miscalculated. She was thinking about heading off to another Internet café to check her Flickr page again in case Jimmi's routine had changed when she noticed a cat stroll down the alley, a large, gray tiger that she could have mistaken for Neko had he been striped rather than marbled. An omen. She set down her cup, knowing Jimmi couldn't be far behind. In the back of the shop, she heard the splash of water and the clank of metal as lunchtime dishes were washed. No one would hear her leave.

A moment later, she spotted movement at the corner. Jimmi Tens emerged and turned away from her, his long black overcoat flowing behind him. He didn't so much as spare a glance in her direction through his dark, designer shades. As she stood to retrieve her backpack, outside the gray tiger rubbed Jimmi's legs, trying his best to trip him with affection. Jimmi continued on his way, undaunted.

Before she left the shop, Kami unzipped the middle compartment of her backpack, then picked it up by the small carry handle between the straps with her left hand.

Back outside, Jimmi had disappeared. The alley jogged through a series of sharp corners beyond the intersection Kami had been watching. As she turned the second corner, the alley began to change from stone to concrete, from natural to manmade, the threshold of a transition from old to new. She could feel the power and rightness of this place. Her right hand delved into the open backpack compartment until it found the cold steel grip of the pistol.

When she turned the next corner, she found Jimmi had paused to scratch the gray tiger behind its ears. He sensed no immediate danger, unlike the cat, which saw her, perked his ears and darted back the way he had come. Only as Jimmi turned to see where the cat had disappeared to did he notice Kami. Even then, he didn't look even mildly concerned.

"Kitten," he said with his typical false sweetness and surprise, "just the person I've been looking for. You've become shy and elusive recently."

"Hi, Jimmi, I was starting to think you wouldn't come," Kami replied evenly.

Jimmi spread his hands wide, "Here I am, girl. But what's with all the drama? What's so urgent?"

"You received my message," she said, a statement not a question.

"On the phone? Yeah, it was kind of cryptic. Who wrote that anyway? Don't tell me someone's been spreading lies about me."

"You know better than that, Jimmi. I don't get involved unless someone asks, someone who needs my help, someone pure."

"There is no one pure in this city anymore," he said, shaking his head, "not even you.. Your time here is done. But you can stop by my apartment tonight and we can talk. Maybe we can take the Ninja out for a ride again, like old times. Right now, I on my way to see my new girlfriend."

"To raise your hand to her again? I don't think so" Kami's left hand dropped the backpack carry handle. The pink pistol slid free from its concealment in her right.

Jimmi raised his eyebrows in feigned surprise. "Oow, Kitten thinks she has claws. Where'd you pick that toy up?"

"You should know, Jimmi;" she answered casually, "it traces back to you. Someone dropped it at the shrine after the Otaku murder. What did that child do to you?"

Jimmi smiled his cynical smile. "He promised to create a buzz for a new manga my sister's daughter had an interest in. I told him only girls and children are involved in that anime culture. He said he was ready to be a man. But he couldn't do a man's work."

The gun hung heavy in Kami's hand. Jimmi had just confirmed that its associated guilt was linked back to him. In her hand, it was transformed into a holy weapon, an instrument of the gods. Nothing but atonement could save him now. "What, he wouldn't commit your violence for you? You can still make amend your path."

Now, Jimmi grew angry, "I have nothing to amend. Violence is for street gangs and petty thieves. I am neither."

"I think that captures the essence of you now, Jimmi, petty and violent." She was trying to antagonize him, like Neko playing with her prey. "I used to think you had potential before you went all Martin Luther on me."

His eyes grew as hard and sharp as a katana. "You act as though you know better than I do how I should act and who I should be. You should stop this, Kitten, before someone you care about gets hurt."

"Someone already has, Jimmi, someone you threatened, someone you nailed to my temple door. You said you would defend Neko and the shrine. You swore an oath. You lied." She raised the pistol and aimed it at his chest. "You, off all people, should understand what betraying your word means."

"You think anything I promised you is important?" he retorted, maintaining his defiance. "You're just a schoolgirl playing in a man's world for excitement. What were you before I met you? The same thing you are now, a street slut pretending to be a priestess. You didn't even know how to shoot that before I taught you. Do you even remember?"

Kami let the hint of a smile creep across her face. "I remember what you told me once, 'don't point a gun at something unless plan to shoot it; don't pull the trigger unless you want it dead.'" She cocked her head inquisitively and let her smile blossom. "Did I get that right?"

Only then did the gravity of his situation begin to sink in. His fingers twitched as he longed to draw the weapon she knew he had secreted somewhere in his clothing. His eyes flicked around quickly as if trying to identify anything nearby that could save him. They found nothing. "You've never shot anyone before, have you, Kitten, never actually watched someone die." He held out his hand for the gun. "Leave a man's work to men like me and you'll live a much longer and happier life. Girls like you aren't strong enough to shoulder the load."

"You're wrong, Jimmi," Kami replied, her hand unwavering. "You only taught me to shoot, not to kill. It's time for you to face your ancestors. It's time for you to atone for what you've done." She thumbed the hammer back until she felt it click. "It's time to say, 'Hello, Kitty.'"

Jimmi's hand began to move toward his coat as he began to dodge to one side. Kami squeezed the trigger, just like he'd taught her, slowly, deliberately, until the hammer fell in explosive silence.

When the people of her island were born, their parents penned their names to the Shinto lists; when they married, they sought a Christian blessing; when they died, they were purified by Buddhist flames. Somewhere in the city, Buddhist gongs called their monks home from the fields, Christian bells called their monks to Vespers. She had never been threatened by either of their traditions, had always enjoyed them both. Perhaps one of them would claim Jimmi Tens. The Christians would condemn his soul to eternal torment, the Buddhists to another cycle on the wheel. To the spirits, he would serve the city better dead than he had alive, as an example. He had been chosen for greatness. He could have been a new leader. Instead, he had selected a divergent path, one that had separated his spirit from the ancestors. Now, he was like a candle at dawn, no longer necessary to combat the darkness. As her own temple chimes echoed like a choir in the distance, his spirit flickered out.

Kami stared down at the man who used to be a warlord, an oyabun, and now might become someone's revered ancestor. Only if a sister or a niece mourned him earnestly and reinserted his name somewhere in the temple wall. She reached into her backpack, pulled out the miko's hair scarf and wiped the pistol's grip and trigger. He would be found in an hour or so when the sabo shop's delivery boys returned. The gun alone would be enough for the national police to dismantle his organization, though they would wonder what had killed him. She didn't think there was a box for guilt on the coroner's official forms. She doubted it would be ruled a suicide, which undoubtedly it was. In the end, the report would probably say that Jimmi Tens had died as he'd lived, by violence.

Kami deposited the pistol onto his chest before drifting back through the ancient city toward the shrine where she would burn his name from the lists and tell Neko that she, too, had received justice.

© 2008 Edward P. Morgan III

Connecting Flights

"Connecting Flights" - a reading (on YouTube)


"Incoming" he yelled, ducking as the large shadow darkened his peripheral vision.

The plane had just turned onto the runway after an exhausting hour of creeping toward takeoff as rain and fog descended in a tattered curtain that played hide and seek with the blue and green tarmac lights, all but closing the airport. The air inside the cabin had grown warm, thin and stale. His face had grown flushed, his head light.

The cabin grew silent. His fellow passengers stared, apprehensive that he was one of them, one of the crazy or difficult ones that the evening news always warned them about. The men nearby tensed, ready to subdue him if he did anything more than raise his voice. The women slithered as far away as the cramped conditions allowed. Two flight attendants unclipped their harnesses and rushed along the aisle toward him, one forward, one aft. The farther was five rows away, the closer three when another passenger screamed, "Oh my God...."

She was cut off as the plane jerked to the right when the pilot swerved and gunned his engines, realizing his mistake, too late.

He hugged the seat in front of him like an infant desperately clinging to its mother. He curled his knees tight to his chest, his feet perched on the seat, hoping he could maintain his embrace with the cushioned security that his arms had wrapped completely around. He closed his eyes and turned his head like a lover moving in for a kiss.

His vision stuttered to a series of freeze frames jumping from one to the next. Reality became a strobe light at a rave with his mind clouded by ecstasy and his heart providing the thunderous beat. In the continuous-shot photography clicking through his head, he could see the shadow of the other plane descending, getting longer and larger and darker as each picture snapped by, click, click, click, until a wheel dropped into the frame bounded by the window and the wing, first brushing the top edge, then one quarter, mid-frame, contact. At that moment it seemed to snag on the wing frame after frame after frame with only slight waves of distortion around the connecting point as the metal folded and buckled. For those instants, time might have stood completely still, his mind refusing to move to the inevitable conclusion of the photographic montage.

Sound maintained its continuity but distorted. Like the Doppler effect after a sports car with a booming stereo had zipped passed, frequencies elongated, tones slowed and deepened. The high-pitched agony of tearing, twisting metal became a groan, the creaking he might hear in an ancient elevator as its cable strained to lift it. The scream of the jet engines receded to a gentle breeze stirring across the distant shore of a private beachside paradise that he alone occupied.

An instant later, time accelerated to ten times normal speed like a bachelor's DVR on extreme fast forward as he scanned recorded movies for the barest hint of exposed female flesh. Sounds returned to normal pitch though the volume increased until the highs and lows distorted. They pushed the limits of his eardrums like a high-school death-metal band amplified over aging speakers by an amateur mixer at 2 a.m. one Saturday at a nightclub called Diabolique. Metal screeched as the wing and wheel crumpled, rubber squealed as tires lost their traction, engines shrieked at impossible attempts at acceleration or air braking. Aluminum tore and crushed and rended. Children wailed. Adults screamed. Time stopped.

Perhaps his will had suspended the laws of physics. Perhaps his mind had become drawn into the moment as captured by a modern sculpture constructed from diminutive I-beams and rivets, all struts and scattered panels, alluding to aircraft without filling in all the details. One perched atop the other like skeletal dragonflies approaching a midair mating, seemingly defying gravity, connected only by one's wheel resting behind and beneath the other's wing. He could see the piece touring the country, garnering rave reviews stop by stop, with an itinerary crisscrossing the busiest air corridors, hitting all the major hubs: New York, Chicago, Dallas, Denver, Los Angeles. Its final destination Washington D.C., just off the fourteenth street bridge outside the Air and Space museum where a tour guide in a blue blazer detailed how the artist had captured the instant of impact with one plane seeming to float above the other, noting the roll and pitch and yaw as the top plane attempted to veer away and the minor skew as its partner had just begun to react. The gathered crowd studied the piece dispassionately beneath a cerulean sky with its unblemished puffy whites reflected in the tidal pool, contrasting the greens and pinks of the cherry trees as their blossoms shed one by one and floated toward a soft, water landing, stunningly beautiful even as their detachment signaled a slow, spiraling death.

The impact threw him backward, pressing him deep into his seat as the other plane imparted its momentum, lifting its partner's wing with its wheel as it attempted to continue flying, even just a few yards farther until it was clear, throwing them toward the white shroud draped just beyond his window. The plane struggled for lift like a young osprey thrown from its mother's nest. His stomach told him the pilot had succeeded, however briefly, in gaining air beneath their wings. He felt light, almost ephemeral, as the pair separated with a screeching whir and a reverberating thunk. He squeezed his eyelids tighter as he waited for the secondary impact, the one he knew would end in his shattered or fiery death.

"Ladies and gentlemen, this is your captain. Sorry for the bumpy takeoff. We wanted to get airborne before the ceiling dropped and closed the airport. We just squeaked out before the last plane landed. Even though our departure was delayed, we should be able to make it up en route and get you to your connecting flights on time."


© 2008 Edward P. Morgan III

Sky Cell (Abrami's Sister pt. 2)

"We’ve got a new one arriving this morning. Prisoner 108. Dahl’s started a pool on how long this one will last."

"Who is he?"

"He’s a she. That’s all my people will say. This time they’re citing regs."

"They always cite regs."

"This time they’re serious. But there’s only one ‘she’ that makes sense."

"Abrami’s sister? No way, Boyd. The guys back home are screwing with you. They haven’t even backed up her conviction records yet. Besides, conspiracy can’t land you here."

"Conspiracy to commit genocide can. I hear they amended the charges again, right after her conviction."

"The tribunal went for that? Good. It’s about time they used section 37 the way it was intended."

"So how long do you think she’ll last?"

"Up here versus ratting out her own brother? I give her five weeks, but only if it’s her."

"Five weeks? Are you nuts, Shay? Prisoner 106 didn’t make ten days. By the end of that, he was mess. From what I hear, it took the psych-techs weeks to put him back together."

"You haven’t been up here long enough, Boyd. Prisoner 106 was a wannabee. I remember when Prisoner 12 went eighty-four days. And he was only Abrami’s pilot, not a blood relative. Real Greens are tough."

"Guess that’s why we still have a job."


The grav-car circled the plateau lazily once the reinforced window-shields slid back, giving prisoner 108, as she’d come to think of herself, a panoramic view of her destination. In the time since her conviction, her captors had stripped away almost everything, her clothing, her possessions, her makeup, her freedom, her name. But not her identity, nor her desire to resist.

Below, amid the low outcroppings and sandy gray-brown hills strewn with rocks and boulders, a spire rose above the desert, as smooth and black as obsidian, which it both was and wasn’t. Technically, it was a synthetic with a similar composition to volcanic glass, but with a much higher tensile strength from a tighter molecular matrix though it still lacked an overall crystalline structure. Technically, it was also grown rather than extruded from the earth as quick-cooling lava.

Prisoner 108 didn’t know those details. She only knew that it was tall and impressive, even from far above. She wasn’t sure how tall, there was nothing below to give it scale. It was the dominating feature on a desolate plain. The sides were polished and vertical. There was a slightly rounded platform on top, like a nesting box sitting atop a pole.

The grav-car hovered then slowly descended. The top of the platform was flat and enameled a blue nearly identical to the cloudless sky near the horizon, nearly identical to the color of her jumpsuit. Perhaps not enameled but grown with a surface layer of the desired color. There were discontinuities on its surface, items grown in the same color that she thought might be a bed and some kind of seat.

The pre-departure briefing told her a great deal about her impending incarceration. She had received a number of modifications to ensure her safety. The first was a series of medical nanite injections to boost her immune system, both to detect and clear out any internal overgrowths and to deny access to any external vectors. That meant no colds, no flu, no pneumonia, no Candida outbreaks. She had also been injected with a series of highly tailored impulse-control modifiers to ensure she ate and drank when such necessities were provided. There would be no hunger strikes. LOW OrbIT had learned from its early failures.

Her jumpsuit was proactive, embedded with genetically engineered organisms that thrived on dirt and sweat and dead skin for built-in self-cleaning, thus circumventing any hygiene concerns. The organisms had been designed for deep-space, military EVA’s. They could even live on her excrement in extreme conditions should she choose not to use the minimal facilities provided. If she chose to live in her own filth, it would only last a little while and provide her no legal, humanitarian respite.

Her skin had been modified to provide it with an inherent resistance to UV radiation, the equivalent of a near-complete UV block to prevent any complications from long-term exposure. Even her corneas had been modified to prevent damage or blindness in case she took to staring overlong at the sun, as many prisoners did. Her mouth had been colonized with bacteria that ate plaque and her teeth coated to prevent decay. Her head had been shaved and her scalp treated with a hair growth inhibitor.

Her brain had been infected by other colonies of nanites responsible for maintaining proper brain chemistry, keeping her endorphins balanced, ensuring she didn’t slip over the edge into depression or full-blown psychosis. The people watching her wanted her to experience the mind-numbing nature of her surroundings completely, but to remain relatively sane. Near the lymph node cluster of her left arm, they had lodged a medical suite the size of a small analgesic capsule that monitored and broadcast all her vitals, from heartbeat to hydration to brain and blood chemistry.

What she hadn’t been told is that the area of her brain responsible for auditory interpretation had been colonized by another set of nanites that responded to a narrow range of overlaid, sub-audible frequencies which would at first make her increasingly anxious and tired, then quickly put her to sleep if the sounds persisted or increased in volume above a certain threshold. In practice, it meant she could approach but never reach the edge of the platform, so she could never see the planetary surface below and not end her confinement through a creative use of gravity.

This modification also meant her watchers could put her to sleep on demand, using the same sub-audible tones. This way, they could drop her, pick her up, examine her if something unexpected happened, all without her knowing or having to interact with anyone. It also meant they could resupply her provisions occasionally while she slept.

Provision replenishments came at random intervals to prevent her from gaining any sense of time or routine. The nutrition packets in each drop were identically packaged, but varied in caloric content and time release so that a set of three meals would sate the average person between nine and seventy-two hours, depending on how they were tailored. Only water provided any sense of routine, though even that requirement varied slightly with the moisture content of each nutrition pack. Everything, including the water, was dispensed from the waste disposal unit which was fashioned to look like a standard recycler, though only the water was recycled and that only partially. A variant on the jumpsuit flora inhabited the recycler, reducing everything but the recycled water to a fine, powdery dust that only needed removal once a year.

Rumor had it that the planet itself had been selected very carefully. It was tidally locked so it had no day-night cycle. It was just the right distance from its star to maintain a temperature between 15 and 25 degrees C, varying very slowly over the course of its elliptical wanderings. No hypothermia, no heat-stroke. Not even any real weather, discounting the occasional low dust storms that lapped at the base of the spire. The planet was barren of all indigenous life. It seemed to replenish its own oxygen, though without life the initial survey team was baffled as to how. No scientist had been given an opportunity to examine this unique phenomenon. The planet was the exclusive domain of the military now, housing up to 144 prisoners at a time spaced in identical sky cells distributed so that none was within visual range of another even on approach.

At first LOW OrbIT had denied the existence of the sky cells and refused to release any information about them. But over time, they found that giving briefings about certain conditions and rumors about others was more effective than a complete information blackout, as it gave the minds of potential inmates something to chew on before they landed. The strategy was so effective that fully one third of the people sentenced to the sky cells never made it beyond the isolation of the interstellar trip to the planet. Another twenty percent started talking soon after they hit the platform.

In the sky cells law and ethics collided with society’s need for information and intelligence to protect itself. LOW OrbIT had tried various mechanisms for ripping what it wanted from people’s minds, everything from truth serums to vocal impulse inhibitors to nanite memory stimulators. All either had devastating, sometimes irreversible side effects or had been shown to be less than completely effective. The only acknowledged side effect from a sky cell was a mild to severe case of agoraphobia, a condition deemed neither cruel nor unusual in a society so heavily populating closed and artificial environments. The medical nanites and other modifications to the prisoner would be washed out immediately upon her release, so that she suffered no lasting alterations.

Everything was provided for the safety of the prisoner. Nothing was provided for her comfort. To end her isolation, all she had to do was tell them what they wanted to know. Or convince them that she didn’t know anything, which could take some time as military personnel with clearances high enough to have access to the sky cells tended to be a rather cynical group as a rule.

All this meant that once prisoner 108 was dropped, she would be completely isolated and alone, with no human contact. Every moment would be observed and recorded from an orbital platform. Every utterance would be analyzed. There was no escaping the anonymous watchers, though she would never see them. The opportunity for personal interaction was gone, a right stripped away by her lack of cooperation. Her only companions would be her own thoughts and the unchanging, unending sky.

Even the grav-car was fly-by-wire and unoccupied except for the prisoner, both to prevent any interaction between passenger and crew as well as a security precaution to ensure there was no way to hijack the vehicle from on-site.

As the grav-car hovered, prisoner 108 felt a slight throb below and behind her ears that resulted in a feeling of pressure on her sinuses. She would come to recognize that sensation as the sub-audible stimulation that slowly turned off her senses and put her into a conditioned sleep. She barely saw the grav-car begin its descent before gravity called her eyelids shut and a dreamless darkness claimed her.


When she awoke, she was lying on a thin, foam mattress encased in a synthetic cloth that felt like vinyl, but wasn’t. The casing was probably some carbon nanotube construct that was stronger than steel and bonded to the obsidian base of the bunk on a molecular level. Even if she could damage it, she had already been informed that the punishment for that destruction of LOW OrbIT property would be to do without even that minor comfort for the duration of her incarceration.

Beside the sleeping platform was a cube with a lid and a slot on one side with a blue plastic spigot beside it. The lid lifted to reveal a commode, a standard, waterless recycler rife throughout the cells she’d inhabited already. Fortunately, she’d already gotten over any shyness about her body functions no longer being private, but she still felt an odd sense of vulnerability about doing those things completely exposed to the sky.

When she examined the side slot, she found a pre-packaged ration bar. As soon as she saw it, she realized she was hungry, very hungry. The nutrition bar filled that need as water from the spigot slaked her resulting thirst, but neither provided any real sensation to distract her mind. The food bar was odorless and the color and consistency of the skin that formed on oatmeal left uncovered too long. It was wrapped in a rice paper like skin that she had peeled away and set aside. The bar had about as much taste as she figured the wrapper might. It was nearly flavorless, like a chewy granola bar without the chocolate or raisins, or a slightly soggy, salt-free rice cake bound together with flexible silicon caulk. But she devoured it quickly, her impulse to eat making her ravenous to the point where she couldn’t resist wolfing it down. Later, she would wish she could savor its disgusting texture in her mouth.

Even as she thought the wrapper might at least provide something to occupy her time, she noticed it melted into a pool that rapidly disintegrated until it was nothing more than dust that slowly drifted away. As she experimented over the next few meals, she found the process began quickly after the seal was broken. More nanites or tailored bacteria. She also discovered the wrapper was edible, and provided a contrasting, papery texture to the nutrition bar but no real flavor. She stopped receiving even that distraction after she crafted a wrapper into a paper glider that disintegrated as it sailed beyond the edge of her platform, much to her delight.

She got her fill of water after every meal, sometimes between if she was thirsty, but never if she just felt bored. To operate the water dispenser, she had to sit on the bed and bend her head beneath the spigot before she flipped up the tab opening the tap. No bottles to watch melt from towers into molten flows of dust. At least the water tasted clean and clear, not tainted with any metallic or plastic tang as were most of the recyclers she’d used before. After a few meals, she longed for a break from the monotony of that flavorlessness, even with the implications of where that tang might come from.

Sated, she investigated her open cell. She had access to an area about the size of a standard tennis court. The bunk and recycler stood at the very center of the platform. While from above, she could clearly see the platform against the landscape below, here the blue blended seamlessly into the sky. There was no distinction, no horizon, nothing to focus her attention. She suspected the platform edges were equipped with camouflage transmitters to blend it with the sky.

The last human voice she’d heard before she’d been dropped had told her the exact information they wanted from her. It told her resistance would only prolong her isolation. Other prisoners had advised her to try not thinking about what they wanted, but she thought they had been planted by the people holding her. She knew that would only make things worse. Trying to resist thinking about something just seeded thoughts of it within her brain. Just like by telling a toddler to ignore a cookie jar just within reach while you were out of the room, you ensured it would become the object of her every obsession.

At first, she enjoyed the freedom of the sky, the openness after so many weeks confined in cramped conditions under artificial lights. She lay on her bunk for hours soaking up the warmth of the distant, pinpointed sun that was not her own. Soon she found it lulled her into a twilight between thought and dreams. If she closed her eyes, she sank into the cushion of the bunk and could feel the platform sway slightly beneath her. It seemed to move just enough to reinforce the sensation that she was floating in the sky. Almost like a monochromatic version of sensory depravation, only she had just enough markers to anchor her to reality, the sun, the bunk, her hands and feet, the recycler. Her mind refused to drift into hallucination, however much she wished it might just to break the crushing boredom between each sleep, the unchanging sameness of this moment and this moment and this moment.

She lived for any stir of breeze, anything to distract her from the thoughts circling in her brain, reminding her in someone else’s voice that she held the keys to end her captivity, and that her punishment fit her crime. By turning her back on the security needs of her society, she had forfeited her right to human interaction.

Her feet made no sound upon surface of the platform when she walked. She had no blanket to rustle, no pillow to fluff. When she screamed occasionally to remind herself she was still alive, the sky absorbed her protest like a formless void, leaving no echo, no ripples, no telltale indication her voice had existed at all once it faded from her ears.

She paced off each day, each hour, each minute of her indeterminate sentence until even her steps lost their meaning. She tried approaching the edge of the platform, but could never get close enough to see even a hint of the ground below. Each time she tried, anxiety gave way to pressure, then grogginess then sleep before she came within a dozen paces. Each time she woke up back on her bunk, drifting in the blue. She tried running toward the edge, but found she could never build enough momentum to make it before she collapsed. Once, she tried repeatedly, as a demonstration of her resolve to her watchers. Each time she awoke on her bunk, she jumped to her feet and sprinted outward again. The last time, the tickling behind her ears changed. Her muscles still went to jelly, but she didn’t lose consciousness. She just became trapped as within a nightmare, floating, falling, anxious and terrified, yet unable to move. After enduring that limbo for what could have been minutes or days, she managed to summon the strength and resolve to crawl back to safety. She didn’t test those boundaries again.

She played with shadows in her bunk like a child, inventing games and characters within her mind. In her desperation for human contact, she took to reciting monologues about her childhood, all the stories, all the moments, every incident she could remember however trivial. Everything she’d told them before. She didn’t always stick to her half-brother, but constructed a random, broken, schizophrenic family history, like pieces of a puzzle they might fit together into a complete picture where she had failed. Or a mirror they might reconstruct from the shards she clutched in her bleeding hands. No new memories or insights emerged. Nothing she uttered ended her isolation.

After that, she began to forget how to speak, how to communicate, how to form even fundamental words. After what might have been weeks passed, she became an automaton. She ate, she drank, she urinated, she defecated. The rhythms of her body became her only markers of time, her clock and calendar until she forgot to wind them and they, too, became unreliable. Finally she drifted, spending hours just staring at the sun. She floated in the endless blue before slowly sinking beneath its surface, drowning in the sky.

She knew she was near the breaking point. She knew she couldn’t hold on to her sanity much longer. The childhood memories she had recounted were still too sharp, too fresh, almost new in their ability to bleed her and beat her and bring her pain again.

A change in her surroundings brought her back to consciousness gasping for air. At first she thought the static in her mind had taken over her hearing until she realized that the sound came from outside her head. A wind had risen, a real wind strong enough to ruffle and snap and tear at the cuffs of her jumpsuit. When she sat up, she felt it along her scalp and the stubble of her hair. Wind, glorious wind, strong enough to raise billows of gray-dun dust to define the edges of the platform, thick enough to darken the sky and anchor her back to this life, this reality, this torment her captors put her through. She was here, really here, in a prison of someone else’s construction not trapped within the sky and a past that had passed her by. As the sun faded to a tiny, dull orb, she became giddy in her excitement. She jumped up and danced and laughed and screamed her joy, until her savior became a dark and angry god.

Lightning slashed across the sky, blinding her with its fury. Nearly simultaneous thunder rolled through her in waves of sound that made her heart stutter in its regular, rhythmic beats. She spread her arms wide, throwing back her head, daring the storm to take her, as she had once dared her mother before a particularly vicious incident. As she did, an epiphany overtook her, a memory that flashed like a slide or a single frame of video across her mind. The exact information her watchers wanted. A name she had heard only once and only for an instant, when she was four and recovering from one of her mother’s worst ministrations, one that left her with a swollen head and blackouts and memories that came in jumpy visuals like stuttering scenes from several silent movies randomly spliced together to make a disjointed film. Souleymane had whispered the name of a friend who wanted to hide her once she recovered, the only time he had mentioned him. He was ten and had said this was the only person he would ever trust, a person she remembered, one who had kept in touch and watched her if only from a distance.

Tears streamed down her face, dried instantly by the wind, leaving her cheeks streaked with smudges of dust. She knew she now held the key to her release. Before she could stop herself, she remembered speech and shouted toward the sky the words she’d longed to say to Souleymane all those years ago but had been too afraid to utter. The wind tore her voice away before it even reached her own ears.

When she came back to her senses, she covered her mouth with both hands. She fell like a stone unto her bunk as the nanites in her brain were overloaded by the sudden release of the chemical imbalance that caused depression as she realized her mistake. She curled up tightly and wept, thinking she had lost her only advantage, thinking she was once again at the mercy of the unseen eyes in the sky.

No one heard her confession. At that moment the technicians were scrambling to boost the signal of the audio emitters surrounding the underside of the sky cell to overcome the noise floor raised by the gale force winds. The unprecedented dust storm had obscured their satellite visuals. The lightning was chewing huge holes in their monitoring systems, briefly taking them offline, overloaded by the wild swings in electromagnetic flux. The systems would survive. They were speced for the military so they would reset, but some data might be lost. They needed her sleeping to minimize that risk. After several unrecorded minutes, the technicians finally cut through the noise and sent prisoner 108 into a deep and dreamless sleep.

She awoke uncertain whether she’d imagined the storm. There was no evidence on the platform to suggest it had been any more than a dream, not even a sensation of grit inside her jumpsuit. But even if was a dream, it had restored her sanity to where she now knew her way out. They hadn’t taken her, so perhaps they hadn’t heard what she’d said. But what to do with the information? They had nearly driven her mad and she hated them for it. They had no regard for her life or her sanity. She did not feel inclined to sacrifice someone who had helped her to people who had actively tried to harm her. So, she chose to continue her resistance.

Even though she was afraid they already had what they wanted, new words escaped her lips, words she reshaped subtly to suit her purpose by simply adding one "s." She said something new, a sentence of four words with one variation, words they’d never heard before. Words her watchers at first couldn’t make sense of but then came to recognize one by one, breeding excitement that prisoner 108 had finally broken, eliminating another threat, scoring another victory in their endless twilight war.

Their celebration lasted until they understood the meaning of the sentence she repeated over and over again, if only to hear a voice in her ears as she stared at the empty sky. Linguists parsed the words to make certain they had them right, that there were no alternatives they had missed. Analysts consulted and cross-referenced their databases to correlate the name. When the results came back, their jubilation faded and they became increasingly convinced they had suffered a major setback if not an outright defeat.

The sky cell would no longer work on prisoner 108 because someone, a rival on a different team playing a different game by a different set of rules, had turned her to his own purpose. He had embedded hope somewhere deep within her, an alternative to cooperation which she had latched onto like a lifeline in a critical moment, a lifeline that kept her from crossing into the controlled insanity they desired. They had seen this behavior before and it was always terminal. In their experience, hope could not be vanquished, only extinguished through careful, patient means. But this individual had sabotaged that effort for his own selfish ends to preserve his own selfish theories on how best to approach not only these interrogations but the very foundations of how intelligence should be stockpiled and shared and used. He would have them throw out the results of years of well-documented experiments, honed to a precise, psychological edge as sharp as any surgeon’s scalpel in favor of the blunt instrument of his own intuition, brilliant as that sometimes might be. One day, they swore to demonstrate their methods to him personally, but only after his powerful allies had passed the way of dust. Until then, they could only hope he was right, at least this once.

The psychological risk analysis revealed it was unlikely they could push her back to this breaking point without making her completely useless in the process. After a series of animated briefings and discussions, the psych-techs finally convinced their superiors to terminate the eighty-seven day, silent interrogation and remove prisoner 108 from her cell. Until the grav-car arrived and the watchers forced her brain into a deep catatonia, Josephine Sorin repeated that phrase with the one variation over and over in tones ranging from whispers to screams to sobbing mumbles until it became a mantra even in her sleep.

"Tell him I’ll go, tell him I’ll go. Tell Michaels I’ll go."


Next Vengeance (Abrami's Sister, pt. 3)

© 2008 Edward P. Morgan III

Convictions (Abrami's Sister pt. 1)

"Under the articles of section 37, we find the defendant, Josephine Sorin, guilty."

Guilty? The last word rang in Jo’s ears. Guilty?

She stared at the jurors, who would not return her gaze. Guilty? This wasn’t the way it was supposed to go. Her attorney had promised, promised, no jury would ever convict her. Even the prosecutor had as much as admitted it was a pro forma prosecution. Guilty?

Her mind was in a haze. She didn’t hear the lead judge of the tribunal thank the jury for their service, didn’t hear him hold her over for quick sentencing. She never heard that the charges had been amended after the jury was sequestered. She never heard the secret evidence against her.

She only heard that one word crashing down on her existence: Guilty.

By the time she thought to look at her attorney, the woman had already turned to confront the prosecutor. Strong hands latched onto Jo’s upper arms and guided her toward a door midway between the defense table and the judges’ bench. It was off-white with a small, mirrored window cross-hatched by wire reinforcements or sensors. A sturdy door with clean, almost sterile lines. This wasn’t the door she was supposed to exit through. She was supposed to leave by the main doors leading into the hall then down onto the courthouse steps where the press would be waiting. Instead she was led through a door into the unknown.

Beyond was a dimly lit, short hall, almost a small room, ending with a blackout curtain. Her guards held her there until the door clicked shut behind them, then swept the curtain aside and guided her into a vestibule with two holding cells, both empty, behind a wall of clear glas-steel on one side, and what appeared to be an elevator on the other. There was another blackout curtain opposite her that looked very much like the one she had just come through, probably leading to another courtroom.

One of her guards, a tall, broad-shouldered, muscular man, went to a computer pad and keyed open one of the cell doors with biometrics and his badge. The other, a sturdy woman about Jo’s height, guided her inside.

"Hands on the glass barrier, please," the woman ordered, then spread Jo’s feet apart as far as her skirt allowed and pulled them back to where she was leaning off-balance against the transparent wall.

Her male partner initiated a security scan on equipment that whirred down from the ceiling in front of the glas-steel Jo leaned against. As he watched the results roll up on the display, the guard reviewed orders on his comm, all while keeping an eye on his partner and his ward. "Something suspicious in her bra. And it looks like she has a visitor already."

"Do we take her back to the attorney’s conference room?" the woman asked as she had Jo turn around so they could scan her back.

"No, down below," her partner responded. "We’re supposed to drop her in Interrogation 2."

"Probably a new lawyer for her appeal." The woman managed to sound neutral. It annoyed Jo that both guards spoke as if she wasn’t there unless they wanted her to do something. "Turn and put your hands back on the barrier. Now, take off your shoes, please. No, keep your hands on the barrier," the woman interrupted when Jo started to reach down. "Just kick them off one at a time. Ok, I want you to lean your head against the barrier and undo your belt." Once Jo did, the woman had her remove and drop it, keeping herself in a position where she was both protected and could react if Jo made any sudden moves, as though that were likely. The floor felt cold and hard through Jo’s sheer stockings as the guard had her remove her jewelry and drop it on the bunk.

Everything inside the holding cell and out was an off-white, not quite cream color. Nothing modern, more an annoyingly institutional surplus color that no one else would buy because it just looked off somehow. The walls, except where they were clear, were all that same color. The bunk and the commode, both seamlessly molded into the floor, were also the same, as was the synthetic blanket covering the foam mattress. Even the tear-away fiber bag on the blanket had only a slight variation in tone, not quite sterile, but not quite dirty either. Dingy, without being unclean. The guards’ dark uniforms and the blackout curtains, along with the scanner display were the only points of contrast in the room, and even the menus of the scanner had similar tones. The color picked up whatever other hue it was exposed to, so that the floor beneath her feet had taken on a sickly green cast from her skirt.

"Do we have a jumpsuit?" the female guard asked her partner. Jo suddenly wondered what would become of her clothing now. She had agonized for hours on what to wear today. Red would show up nicely in the holos but might remind people too much of Blood. Blue would make her seem too cold. She briefly considered a conservative gray, but opted instead for a green and gold combination. Dusky green to show off her color and make her look vibrant. Gold for a touch of nobility. She had wanted to make just the right impression for the cameras when she was vindicated.

"They’ll take care of that over at central processing after her meeting. But search her anyway."

The woman’s hands were quick, efficient and asexual yet still managed to make Jo feel mildly violated as they left no portion of her body untouched. "She’s clean, except the underwire," the woman announced.

"Put it in with the rest."

"Ok, ma’am, I need you to remove your bra." Jo just stared at her then her male partner, neither of whom gave any indication of turning away. Nor did they look as though they were anticipating her next actions. They just maintained the bored expressions of their jobs. After dropping her jacket on the bunk, she unlatched her bra and began to wriggle it out of her sleeve all without removing her shirt. She felt as though she was in an advanced yoga class trying to pull that trick off with her feet still spread wide. While she contorted, the female guard stood where she controlled both Jo’s position and the cell’s exit.

After a momentary struggle, Jo let her bra dangle from one hand, smiling slightly at her minor victory. Neither guard seemed at all impressed, which left her feeling even more exposed. She reminded herself that no matter how humiliating this experience became, she had been through worse. Much worse. At least here there seemed to be some rules.

"Turn around with your arms straight out and drop it on the bunk. Now pick up your shoes in one hand and put them in the bag. Good. Now the belt. The bra. And the jewelry. Fold the bag over once and set it back on the bunk. You can put your jacket back on." The woman turned to call to her partner, "We’re ready in here."

When Jo looked through the glas-steel barrier into the vestibule, the other guard held a set of plasti-steel, electromagnetic restraints.

"Four point?" the woman asked. "Can’t we get by with two’s? It’s not like she’s going anywhere in bare feet and a skirt."

"She’s section 37; she has to be fully restrained."

"What’s section 37?" Jo asked. Neither guard answered.

"What about my stockings?" she tried instead. "They’ll run."

"Sorry," was the woman’s only response, not sounding particularly sympathetic.

Quickly and expertly, the two guards shackled her hands and feet then had her clutch the tear-away fiber bag containing her shoes, belt and bra against her abdomen. The restraint lines didn’t allow her to raise her hands much higher or wider.

The female guard locked her in the holding cell as the male guard keyed the elevator and they waited. The holding cell smelled faintly of stale sweat covered by disinfectant. The scent of a public locker room, or of years of desperation.

When the elevator arrived and both guards had verified it was empty, they led her from the cell into the back of the car. She could only take short, one-foot steps and was afraid the restraint cables would snag her skirt even though they had a protective polymer coating. Her arches ached and felt as though they would cramp against the cold, hard surface beneath them. Her left foot clung momentarily to the elevator threshold before tearing free. She felt the run extend halfway up her leg. Great.

The guards latched her restraint lines to an eyebolt in the prisoner’s area. Once she was safely locked in, the guards scissored a plasti-steel barrier at the rear of the car into place and keyed the lift down. Security cameras monitored both her and the guards from two different angles. Her hair, so finely coifed this morning, had begun to spill into her eyes. She couldn’t lift her hands to brush it away. Blowing it only lifted it briefly before it settled to tickle her face again.

Slowly, they descended from the courtroom to the basement. The elevator was old and needed maintenance, so Jo could feel the pull of gravity in the pit of her stomach as it creaked along. It smelled of machine oil with a hint of ozone, like an elevator in a public housing block.

When the doors opened, Jo was looking out onto a wide, starkly lit hallway running to a near perspective point in the distance, perhaps a quarter mile away. Once she was unhooked from the wall and led out, she saw there was a waiting area lined by hard, foam covered benches with latch hooks beneath them where prisoners could be secured while they waited for their day in court. There were a series of adjoining security doors with observation ports, exact replicas of the door from the courtroom to the holding cells. Everything was the same institutional off-white as the holding area upstairs. From the recessed, overhead lights the walls took on an eerie, mildly pinkish tone like a few drops of blood from a shaving knick tinting an ivory bathtub full of water.

The male guard peered through one of the windows and nodded to his partner before opening the door, again with his badge and a biometric scan.

"Through here ma’am," the female guard said, motioning her through the open door. Jo wished she would stop calling her that. She had a name.

Inside was a small room of the same monochromatic color with several plasti-steel chairs and a conference table extruded from the plasti-steel floor. The guards had her set her bag on the table then sat her down and latched her restraints to an eyebolt beneath the seat between her legs before retreating to stand by the door. She wondered when she would be fed, or allowed to go to the bathroom. There were probably procedures for all of that judging from how things had gone thus far. She wondered how long it had been since her conviction.

Within a minute, the door sighed open and a man entered. She looked up at him with expectation and relief. Now something would finally get done, this whole incident would be revealed as a misunderstanding. He had the appearance of the type of man she wouldn’t remark on or even remember if she met him in a bar. He was a little shorter than average, and perhaps a little round. Not exactly chubby, he just didn’t fill out his suit in an attractive way. He had a well-practiced smile plastered on his face. His hair could have been brown or blonde, perhaps even auburn depending on the light. His eyes, too, seemed changeable, brown, black or green depending on which way he faced. When he turned to face her, she saw they were also neither warm and open, nor cold and calculating. They were dead, betraying no human emotion. Any hope of him helping her died when his eyes met hers.

"I am here to take possession of the prisoner," he said, holding out a comm pad with his credentials. The guards exchanged surprised looks.

"We were told this was a meeting, not a transfer," the male guard said, puffing out his chest defensively which might have intimidated any other man.

The smaller man seemed unfazed, not even straightening his posture. "She’s section 37, which means she falls under my purview at any time, as you can see. And I’ll need her restraints re-keyed to my biometrics."

He waited patiently, his smile never fading, while the guard pressed the button to page through the comm pad’s display. The stranger signed and thumbprinted the guard’s comm completing the transfer after flashing over the appropriate documents.

"You two can wait outside while I talk to her. Actually, bring us some coffee. Not that sludge from the bailiffs’ break room, either. Go up to the third floor lounge. Prosecutors know good coffee. Oh, and bring a Danish. Make that two."

"What do we look like," the female guard asked indignantly.

"You, Bailiff Carsley," the man said after scrutinizing her badge, "look like an individual who doesn’t want to antagonize someone who can take possession of a section 37 prisoner on signature authority. Now run along." His smile never dimmed.

The guards left sowing disgusted glares over their shoulders. The man just smiled until the door closed behind them. Then he strolled over to the seat next to hers and pulled the tear-away fiber bag toward him.

"Let’s see, what do we have in here." He unfolded the bag and exposed each item without removing it as he named it. "Shoes...belt...watch...jewelry...bra... They only take these things from dangerous prisoners." He folded the top of the bag back over and looked up at her. "Are you a dangerous prisoner?"

"No," Jo answered cautiously.

He leaned in and casually rested the palm of his hand on the seat between her legs, never breaking eye contact, his predatory smile never wavering. She shivered as his other hand lightly touched her left wrist, then jumped when she heard the electromagnetic bolts in the shackles clack open. She felt slightly faint as he pulled away, the restraints dangling from the hand that had unlatched them from beneath her seat. "Then we won’t need these, will we?" he said cheerily.

He set the restraints on the table, then moved around to seat himself across from her.

"Who are you?" Jo asked once she felt her voice wouldn’t betray her.

"Nick Michaels," was his only answer, other than his unrestrained smile.

"Where’s my lawyer?" she demanded.

"You’re a prisoner now, not on trial. Lawyers only complicate things at this point." Michaels still smiled a smile that died at his eyes. Though for a moment, they almost sparkled. Almost.

Jo’s emotions hovered between anger and fear. "Then what’s this about?"

"You’re Souleymane Abrami’s sister. That’s Sub-Commander Z’s real name, isn’t it?"

Jo closed her eyes and almost passed out from the weight of dread that settled over her. So that was what this was about. "Half sister, and I wouldn’t know. Like I’ve told two dozen agents before you, I haven’t seen him since I was seven. We never really kept in touch. I know that you think he’s dangerous, but I don’t know where he is."

Nick Michaels set his comm on the table and started fiddling with it, as though he were distracted or bored. "You probably know more than you think, even if you don’t remember it consciously. There are some very interested parties right now who are counting on that and are working to exploit it as we speak. But I’m not one of them."

"What do you want?" Jo asked warily.

Michaels looked up, almost startled. "To help you get a better sentence, of course. I can get you time served if you help me. Or help me to help you, as the case may be."

"I turned down a better deal than that before," Jo responded.

"That was before you fell under section 37," Michaels replied smoothly.

"What is section 37?" she asked with some exasperation.

"The articles of the League of Worlds general charter that governs acts of terrorism."

"I’m no terrorist," she protested. "I was convicted of tax fraud."

"Oh, but you are," Michaels replied casually, then slid his comm unit across the table to her. "This is a report that was recorded just after you left the courtroom. In four hours it will have been broadcast planet-wide."

Jo watched the clip of a female reporter on the courthouse steps, exactly where she had imagined she would be talking to the press. The reporter explained in an overly-dramatic style how Josephine Sorin, sister of Souleymane Abrami, who was widely suspected of being Sub-Commander Z, had been convicted of conspiracy to commit terrorism and other charges related to the Green Revolution. A jury had been empanelled by a secret tribunal after an initial charge of tax fraud had uncovered financial irregularities that led to several terrorist organizations. Now Jo understood exactly what was at stake. Now she was afraid.

"There was never any discussion of these charges at my trial," she said.

"Precisely why they were secret." Michaels continued to sound as though at any minute he might laugh at some private joke.

"I never had a chance to defend myself," she protested.

"You were defended vigorously and more than adequately, I can assure you," he replied, unfazed. Making a point of glancing at her rumpled suit jacket, he added, "Though looking back, you probably should have gone with another color. People will think you were making a political statement and support the Revolution, even if your suit is the wrong shade of green."

Jo hadn’t thought about that this morning. "My lawyer will have this thrown out within a week," she said with as much arrogance as she could muster.

"Your lawyer might not be able to find you in a week," he replied.

"I don’t like being manipulated, Mr. Michaels." She tried to set steel into her eyes.

Her glare rolled off him. "It’s a lot like paying taxes, Ms. Sorin; no one expects you to like it, just to tolerate it and cooperate. Besides, I didn’t do this. There are other parties willing to exert a lot more pressure than I am. I’m actually here to help you. And you don’t have a lot of time. Those bailiffs will be back once they verify my credentials and figure out I’ve exceeded my authority. If I don’t have your cooperation by then, the next people who talk to you will have even less of your best interests at heart. They are waiting down the hall, and probably getting impatient."

"But I don’t know anything," she cried in frustration.

"For what I want you to do, you don’t have to. I just need you to make contact with someone. Someone somewhere remote. If everything goes well, that person will lead me to your brother."

"Half-brother," she corrected, trying to hold back the tears that would likely ruin her makeup, "And why would he do that?"

"Our profile indicates Sub-Commander Z has always shown a tendency to take care of the people he feels responsible for. We have it on good authority that your brother, half-brother," he corrected when she glared, "felt responsible for your mother taking you away. He feels he could have prevented some of what happened."

"That was a long time ago," Jo whispered, looking down, ashamed.

"Not to him. Our profile suggests he has an overdeveloped sense of responsibility, so things like that remain fresh in his mind as though they had just happened. He would have been, what, thirteen then? Believe me, what happened to you makes an impression on a thirteen year-old boy."

"Why didn’t you ask me to do this up front, before all these bogus charges?"

"If we’d asked you to go to Terminal, would you have volunteered?"

"Terminal?" Her head snapped up in alarm. "No!"

"Now you know why I didn’t ask." His smile brightened.

"You’d send someone to that genetic hell-hole of a prison on arranged charges?" Jo stared at him in disbelief.

"I didn’t arrange these charges. Another interested party did that. But, you should really be more careful who you bank with. Besides, you admitted your brother was dangerous."

She didn’t correct him this time. "You don’t have to remind me how dangerous he is. I lived with him."

"Then you know he’s dangerous on an interplanetary scale now, Josephine. People take what he did on Darwin very seriously. Blood, Grant, The Farm, Down 2, those were gains the Green Revolution made under fractured and incompetent leadership, gains LOW OrbIT has yet to recoup. Imagine with your brother in charge. They are still out there, and our intelligence indicates they are planning another offensive. Soon."

"But Terminal?" she pleaded. "I thought that was the prison of no return for those socio-genetic Darwinists."

"After the Green Revolution, LOW OrbIT had to open it up. They had nowhere else to put the people who were too dangerous to risk any possible escape. There is more than the Green Revolution in play now. We can’t drop our guard."

"That’s a death sentence," Jo said. "Souleymane never did anything to me. He protected me when no one else would."

"We can protect you and extract you. I’m trying to save you from worse, believe it or not."

"But I don’t know anyone who knows him. I never have. I’ve been over that a dozen times. I thought all that was behind me. What makes you think I can lead you to him now?"

"Because you may be the last chance we have." For the first time, Nick Michaels sounded completely sincere.

But he was talking her in circles and it was giving her a headache. She leaned her elbows on the table and massaged her temples with her fingers.

"Headache?" Michaels asked. "It’s probably the lighting in here. Most people don’t know that pink is one of the few colors that changes the emotional response it evokes the longer you’re exposed to it. For the first half an hour or so, it’s calming, almost soothing. After that, it becomes increasingly annoying and agitating. That’s why they use it where they want you cooperative at first, but don’t want you hanging around."

She looked up at him wearily.

"You look surprised. There are any number of psychological tricks used in places like this. Take the coffee I sent the guards out for. I was using it as a stall for time. But normally, an interrogator offers you something to drink, especially coffee, to put you at ease and build a bond of trust. Plus, in about half an hour, you have to pee. Full bladders make people more likely to cooperate quickly. It’s a well-documented technique. Old, but quite effective."

"Like releasing a prisoner’s restraints," she asked sharply, glaring at them on the table. "Or telling her a few tricks someone else might use to make her trust you?"

"Exactly." Michaels actually sounded pleased. Was he being honest or was this just another psychological trick? Or both? She had been through the good cop, bad cop routine before. But Nick Michaels was like a whole, insane cop posse.

Her head sank down into her hands again, likely smudging the rest of her make-up. A second later, the door to the interrogation room rattled but did not open. Nick Michaels’ comm buzzed a warning tone.

"It looks like the bailiffs are back, Ms. Sorin. I reprogrammed the door lock, but it will only take them a moment to circumvent that. Once they do, they will not be in a tolerant mood. I need your answer now." He held out his comm, waiting to record whatever she said.

Before she could decide whether to trust him, the two guards burst in, this time with biometrically-keyed stun batons. Slowly, Nick Michaels rose from his seat and put his hands up in front of his shoulders, palms out, his left still holding his comm pad.

"Back away, Michaels," the male guard ordered, pointing his stun baton at him in full, flexed intimidation mode. "Carsley, secure the prisoner."

"Please, Ms. Sorin," Nick asked, "where do your convictions lie, with yourself and your own past or with the millions of people who will suffer when your brother leads the Greens back again?"

"Shut up, Michaels," the male guard snapped. "If you interfere with so much as a harsh word, I will take great pleasure in subduing you, I don’t care who you work for."

Josephine didn’t struggle as the female guard quickly re-shackled her. With a gentle prod from the stun baton that tingled but did not really shock her, she was hustled toward the door.

Slowly, cautiously, careful not to provoke either guard, Nick Michaels followed into the corridor, his hands still clearly in front of him.

The male guard turned and sneered at him, pointing again with his baton. "You move beyond that red line on the floor, mister, and you will have officially exceeded your mandate."

Michaels continued walking as though he hadn’t heard until his toes nearly brushed the line, then he stopped short. "You continue down that corridor, Josephine, and there’s no turning back. I won’t be able to help you on the other side. But say the word and we have a deal, no matter what anyone else tells you."

"Don’t listen to him," the woman whispered to her, pulling her forward. "He’s already in a lot of trouble."

"Let’s go," her counterpart ordered.

Josephine wasn’t sure what to do. She wasn’t sure if she believed Nick Michaels or anything he’d told her. She wasn’t sure her half-brother was alive never mind Sub-Commander Z, though she knew in her heart he was capable of what that man had done. What were the rules here? Were there any? How could she be certain of anything with the way her own government was treating her after failing to protect her when she was young? Was Nick Michaels a guardian like Souleymane or was he like her mother, who would say anything to get what she wanted? How could she ever know which was right? She knew she was being manipulated. Michaels was asking her to pit a thousand "ifs" and the lives of people she’d never met against working to betray the one person who had protected her from the monster who had helped create him, no matter how psychotic he might be.

The guards gave her no opportunity to pause, sort things out or decide. Midway down the hall, she glanced back over her shoulder to see Nick Michaels still toeing the line, his comm held out before him ready to catch any word she might utter before she crossed beyond his reach.


Next Sky Cell (Abrami's Sister, pt. 2)

© 2008 Edward P. Morgan III