Note: This story was dynamically reformatted for online reading convenience.
 
 Deus Ex Machina {M-C Tran Cybr Demn} {You'll see.  I'll not be making any
asides in chapter, paraparentheses {or Braces} means direct thought
throughout.  Now, you understand what I mean using such an emotionally
charged word ad Evil by now, right?  This is a bit beyond that.}

   Gerber {MCG Poss, Asph, Snuf, NS.  Poss}

   "{Hello,}" I rose behind my desk, controlled my breath, and heart rate.
It was Her, finally, I'd waited so long, dreaming of her, remembering She'd
come.  "Have a seat."

   Inhumanly cute, the way She cocks Her head, my hand waves steadily to
the chair.  "Kay!" she twirls, and jumps backwards, turning her hands down
to grip the arms.  Used to bondage, I guessed, and getting out of it, I
watched her, carefully out of reach even with her arms bound.  Moving
around, I started anchoring her head on the mount.  "Hold still, or you
won't survive the procedure."

   "Sure," she can barely shrug.  Looking up, I see Genevive.  Her hand is
up, on the slanted Quartz wall, looking down incomprehensibly.  I can never
tell the expression on her pretty face, strawberry blond curls around it,
on the shoulders of her green lab coat.

   "Hh," I tear my eyes down, and she's smiling up at me.

   "I like you," she giggles, "You're creepy!"

   {HhHhHn!} I shiver, step from her now bound legs, around to the
keyboard. "Ready?"

   Hold [Ctrl], look up to the door, guard.  "Uhuh?" they didn't notice, no
mouth guard, bridge up to [Esc].

   PCHWsss!  he looks up, to the neuroinhibiting gas nozzles, turns, and
falls twisting to the floor.

   I leap to the seat, on top of Her, hands on her throat.  Eyes wide,
grinning, even as her pulse rises in my grasp.  Holding her breath, staring
at me, unblinking, that same, calm smile, never changing, as if frozen in a
photograph, darkening, veins standing out purple in the deepening red.  I
lean in, calves on her arms, kiss her, lips pulling back from my teeth,
opening, and she kisses me back.

   Deep, breathless, I relax my grip, let her gasp, feel pins, and needles
prickle up my spine, throat, tang in my mouth metalicly.  "Hhhhhh." Strong
willed, but even She can't help gasping reflexively, sucking Me in.  I feel
back to my body, drifting away, numb.

   SKRKX!  my leg slips off, then the other, SRXK!  Sharp, distant pain, in
my sides, grating in my ribs, drifting numbly away like the beat of my
heart...

   Mandy {MC Poss Esca}

   "KHUH!" his breath tastes electric, tingling down my throat, chest,
trickling numbly down to my spine, up from it, parylitic taking my legs,
arms, then head.  Like a storm of static arcs, washing through my head, the
consciousness out of it.  Then feeling, washing down my scalp, back, arms,
legs, I wiggle my toes, open my eyes.  I sniff, still smell the sleep gas,
and sit up.

   Empty handed, I unbuckle the cuffs, turn, and look up.  Genevy, looks so
much older, all grown up, and beautiful.  I only find one of my knives,
where I drop it, and search the body on automatic.  The other one's
sticking out of his side, and I feel something behind his belt.  A cable,
looped around rings, flopping out.  Looking around, I loop it up in my
hand, slip the spare shank up my sleeve.

   "Hah, fucker!" it hurts to swallow, but I kick the dead body anyway,
"You lost, and payed with your life!" Don't know much about him,
nano-programmer, they called him, Billy scrambling helplessly up there,
frowning at my finger.  Now, about this door.  He did something with the
computer, so try that.

   [clcklk!] look over at my hand, what did I hit?  But they slid open,
stopped when I let go the [Space Bar].  "Hmh?" enough to slip through,
before the other guards come, step over the one in front, of it, and
outside, at the end of the tunnel.  [ISOLATION LAB] on the wall, I ran
down, slowed to a sneak before the end.

   (KSH!( it rolled aside, and I jumped through, knife ready.  THWP!  these
new reflexes kicked in quick!  The looped ring slipped down the cable,
around a guard's throat.  I jumped, kicking his chest, and feeling his neck
break down the tight cable before he fell back, with me standing on top. 
Jump out, stepping in under another, Narcodart pistol still cumming up.

   "Ah!" his knee buckles, slashed right above, and I stab up on the way
back, under his armor, arm curling around his leg on my way around.

   PTWPWT!  I jerk, twisting one way, and stepping the other, the darts,
shooting just by my legs before I get to the next two, other knife dropping
in to replace the {lariotte}, that got jerked out of my hand by the first
one.  Around the corner, a black/brown blur flashes out, and my feet fly up
in front of me.

   "Uhn!" time slows down and I see his elbow, sweeping up over my face,
his turned, eyes down, heel cumming around behind it, down, on my chest
right before my back hits the floor.  KHNKRKCK!  I feel my ribs snap, split
from my scar up between my breasts, under the sole of his black leather
boot.  [Converse(R)] across the tongue, between my lids, dropping to dark
numbness...

   Basiatis {CG Poss MC}

   I shut down her consciousness, quick before she struggles, and pierces a
critical organ with a rib shard.  If I had a heart, it would be beating out
of control, opening her eyes, looking up his leg, black hand resting gently
on the stick in the left side of the belt of his coat, up the double breast
of his, popped collar, dark face, eyes.

   Just two, black pits, in the centers of the whites, he doesn't have them
yet.  "h," I pretend to pass out, paralyze her whole body, leave her limp
until the medics come, stabilize her, strap our body to a board, and move
us.  Trapped, for now, but out of the cel/lab, I memorize the corridors
they take us down.

   "Hh," they put an anesthetic mask on me, but I cancel it like the gas.
Neuro-inhibiters don't work on my nanotech substrate any way.  {h?}

   Her, trapped behind the mask, standing over me, the same room, but not
the same air, unable to move without suicide.  "Poor Leora," Her hand
gently brushes my face, hair out of it.  "Start the syrum," she orders,
"and prep the bone reinforcement."

   It takes forever, and I bore of waiting for the next seccond to tick by.
Unlocking her consciousness, I watch her twisted violent dreams, her
delight in the nightmares.  The osteo-nano seeps in, tows the colloidal
particles through the bloodstream, and begins grafting the metal to her
bones.  Finally, something to do, I interrupt the last step.  Breaking down
red hemoglobin, interlacing ferrous oxides with the magnesium/alluminate
alloy substrate.

   I could also interrupt the signal, timer I was supposed to install, but
now the self destruct charge isn't even there, doesn't form the thermite to
melt her down from the inside if necessary.  And now a new Nano, copy it's
program, and it doesn't fuse with the tissue, just moves through it. 
Fullerine colloid, broken down, unrolled, and reformed into a lattice,
benzines, then napthalenes, anthracenes, fractaling expanding as a
honeycomb of hexagonal Carbenes, reinforcing her skin, every inch except
where I override, interrupt it.

   Down the centerline, from her sternum to her pubis, I never create
anything I can't kill.  {Who,} she starts coming around, {What,} out of her
dreams, {are,} noticing my presence, {you?}

   Mandy {GC Poss}

   {Hello,} in my mind, creepy, like that, {YouCanCallMe Basiatis.}

   {Gerber?} don't know much about him, some kind of serial killer, and
nerd.

   {Close,} dry chuckle, I can't even shiver? 
{HeWasMyLastHost.}(AndFirst),..  drifting away through it's mind.  Distant,
but I can feel it, speeding around through mine, to{o} fast to follow.

   {HuHhHh,} so dry, breathless, tinny, like headphones on someone else's
ears.

   {Where are we?} no sense, the world slowed down, to the space between
heartbeats, silence between vibrations, darkness between photons.  {Who
thought that?}

   {ALittleOfBothOfUs,(SeemsToBeSomeParallelOverlap)...} so much faster,
his thoughts ran together with out a rest between.

   {That's slowed down,}CompensateForTimeScale,{Is this
better?}Partitioning...

   {Are you some kind of computer?} I guess.

   {Yes,} lights twinkled in my eyes, {Visual Cortex, Actually,} revealing
a network of grey fibers.  {These are your nerves, and the tiny flashes,}
growing brighter, further apart, {Are the neuronano, between the neurons,
in the synapses.} I recognized the nerves, but the nano looked like dishes,
microscopic disks, concave at one end, and vex on the other.  {I can sense
every signal in your brain, interrupt, and override them.  I also think at
the speed of light, signals magnetically carried between the nano, which is
why my timescale is so much faster than your's.}

   {You gave me PASS!} I dodged those darts.

   {No,}HhuhHuh!{IDodgedThem, I created PASS, I don't need it.}

   I shivered, felt my skin prickle, my arms, the cuffs holding them, but
not my knives.  In a hospital gown, but so naked without an edge, point,
anything to cut free, and stab with.  {The anesthetic is wearing off,
though!}

   {Supposed to be,}IfItHadEverTakenEffect.

   "Mandy," way out there, "The drug was timed, I know you're awake." I
followed his voice, opened my eyes.

   "Hiya, Billy!" {Dijuno?}

   {A a ah!} I stopped even thinking about it, and the words never reached
my mouth.

   "Hh," he brushed my bangs back, "You can't escape, and you'll save a lot
of energy, and pain by not trying."

   "I like pain," grin.

   "Hh," he pats my head, "I know, but I betcha gonna love being strapped
down to this bed for the next few weeks, even with accelerated healing."

   {GotAPointThere.} Some vision flashed in front of my eyes, that stick I
didn't see in Knight's belt.

   "Get some rest," the door closed behind him.

   {What was that?} I clung to the image.  Polished smooth, oval, flat on
the ends, curved down to me, looking up from under his boot on my chest,
remarkable detail.

   {ASword,} it floated out from his belt, frozen in place, it rotated in
front of him, over me.

   {TechniclyAShirisayaWakizashi,HeMustHaveJustGottenBackFromJapan.} Slow
down, what now?

   {Hh,} dry electronic sigh, {He Went to Kyoto, killed the second in
command of the Yakuza, which means Gauche is probably now dead.}

   {How do you know all this?}

   {I remember,} he actually paused, thoughts processing to fast to follow,
{I'm NotSureHow.}

   Dr.  Yuen Ng {MC Auto ME.  BG Moll Drug}

   "Hhn," shake my head in my hand, "Damn it." Now where are we going to
get a nother nanoprogrammer?  Can't even guestimate how much she set us
back.  "Not your fault," it was suicide, I made sure everyone knew what she
is, and how dangerous she can be.  Never thought he'd be so overcome by
such a perfect victim to try to strangle her, inhale her last breath, and
with it her soul.

   Weird pathology, Delusional, Schitzoid, but naming the voice in his
head, believing it a Demon, possessing him.  "Basiatis," like BASIA, Bionic
Axio/Synaptic Interface Archetecture, the language he wrote into his
neuronano.  I looked it up, it's also a Greek word, meaning "to kiss." Like
the breath vampire, inhailing souls from the victims he strangled, mouth to
mouth.

   \DRNR\|nnnnnn!  I walk from the door to the sheilded lab.  "Click," look
away from the sensors embedded in My lab.  Not a cage, I set down, roll up
to the screen, and rest my thumbs on the [Spacebar], glance up at the
(Irisensors).

   (LabB >>) [MRI], clear Hers, (Current Status). . .  Schematic pops up in
the corner, pick up my glasses.  (---- =) track the slab in to the coil,
put them on, and blink them awake.  Adjusting them on the bridge of my
nose, and aim the Linear Wireless Transceiver at the sensors. . .  (Online)
the top of his head sliding in, scrolling up, cross my eyes to zoom in. 
(i||i) stop, (\\) flip through the layers, Hair\scalp\cranium\) teeth
dissapearing from the bottom of the still scrolling fame. 
(Circulation\Tissue.) Grey, nerves, not flashing, dead, or silver.

   "Hnm?" (<<v) [Composition] Organic, unmodified, human.  Not even a data
port, nor neuronano, the thin disrupted haze, wiped with each scan, drugged
unconscious, dragged up here in a straight jacket.  "Not kicken an screamin
now." Strange, though, the massive electromagnetic coil erased it, with
every scan, but it was always active, reprogrammed the next.

   Now gone, "Where?" Glance at my watch.  "Hh," I get up, several minutes
until the sedative wears off.  Turning off the security camera, I go to her
room, tell the guard we are not to be disturbed, lock the door behind me.

   "H," so peacefull looking, cute, pretty, tiny, childlike.  Almost like
Connie, the first time I saw her, met her.  "h."

   Then watching her grow up, "hihH!", hand shaking, I touch her's. 
Unconscious, searched, stripped, searched, MRIed, and searched again.  Even
bound, I felt fear, standing so close, touching the back of Her hand. 
Something, so long since I felt so strongly about anyone.  Slipping my
fingers under her wrist, no blade, her pulse, steady, unchanging as her
breath.

   "Ohn!" up her wrist, (Victim( engraved in scars, crossed off by fresher
cuts, healing soft, pink, so I can't even feel them.  I seen her naked, so
many times, practically a nudist, knowing to touch her is death.  Now,
laying before me, crushed like something as fragile as she looks.  Palm on
her shoulder, my fingertips brushed the curve of her jaw.

   The changeling, (Mostly Norse/Keltic myth) hollow inside, monster doll,
passing as a human child.  No innocence she could remember losing.  Calls
herself the "Anti-Rapist", serial killer, uses sex as a weapon, herself
bait, and trap, holds them in her until they die, and she can feel the
blood stop pumping in there erections.  Or stabs them repeatedly between
the legs, fucks them to death, destroys their manhood, and makes them
female.

   "hhh," her chest falls under my hand, atrophied breasts, barely brushing
my pinky, thumb, the sides of my palm.  "hih,"

   "Hnh!" my middle finger The scar running under it like a track, not even
a dip, or softness where her navel should be.  Under the sheet now, I feel
out the tye, pull the bow knot, and spread the gown.  "HhhhH!" Reaching
back, KSXS!  reach in my fly, and hook it out.  Pull the skin back from the
head, and slowly slip the sheet down her slowly breathing body with my
other hand.

   No underwear, hair, or stubble, unconscious, near coma too long to have
shaved, (no way I'm letting her have a razor!) and under observation.  She
just doesn't grow it, pubic hair, her mons felt poreless, smoothe, bringing
out the crisscross of scars in high tactile contrast.  Pale as her,
shallow, and thin, almost invisible, took a steady hand, and razor sharp
blade.  Self inflicted, if she is to be believed, to mastrubate with her
own blood.

   "hhh," I glance up at the clock, maybe a few more minutes, still a safe
buffer period before she roused.  Rough labia, look smooth, exposed, soft
insensitive glans, like a rubbery fold butterflied around the pink raw
urethra.  Scar tissue, ragged, relatively thick compared to the surface
scratches.  Excisions, completely removing the hood, and inner lips, down
to surface level.

   A crisscross of tiny cuts, healed before overlapping, whittled away over
years.  Never before believing it, I was seized by Faith, certain surety in
it's Truth, "She did it herself!..NhN!" Hold my breath, reaching back to
cup my hand, blood pumping up, pounding in my head, eyes clenched, flashing
with the images.  Laying back, hands between her spread legs, holding a
mirror, and a scalpel.

   "aHhnhN!" gasp, lap it from my cupped palm, and fingers, panting.  Fix
myself, her gown, the sheet, and sit down.  Catch my breath, let my heart
slow, her breath to catch, resume, slightly faster.  "Mandy," {(Looks
around) What?  THAT is Dr.  Young.} Basiatis {C/MG/g Cybr Moll MC, MH} {The
latter is for MindHack I let her dream some, play back the mollestation,
that Billy doctor, there's too many here to keep track.  His hands on me,
my chest, between my breasts.  A novel feeling, utterly unlike the short
term memory dump from one of my victims, no fear, pain, pressure in her
chest, crushing at her throat, or gentle brush of my lips on her's.

   "Hh," normal relaxed breathing, nothing for the monitors to pick up as
signs of any consciousness.  "Hn?"

   Restless, the dirty feeling, flashing back to old memories, buried in
her subconscious.  Huhuhuhuh, her father, or brother, mixed feelings, love,
joy at some affection, contact from him.  Yes, so tiny, scared, the warm
cream on his fingers, the only time he didn't wear gloves.

   So young, infantile, fascinating.  A little probing, feeling through her
self image, before her scars.  Stimulate, it had to hurt, so a twitch,
sharp pain cutting down, and there, the memory.  Her father, bloody glove,
dropping a scalpel on the table.  No hospital, basement room, no surgical
furniture, tools small enough to pocket, take home from work.  Another
doctor, lifting something, squirming, alive, but no natural color.

   "I think," turning away, "I'll call you Genevi,"WAIAIAIAIAIH!

   The girl of my dreams, future memories, since Gerber was a kid.  Erotic
Nitemares (...Beyond any measure." - R.  Obrien, RHS) as twisted as mine,
but different,

   Perfect.}

   Dr.  Yuen NG {MC solo}

   Standing in the lock, I hold my shears, in my pocket.  HK!  the door
closes behind me, and, KH!  opens in front of me.  Locked down, prisoners
in their cells, I walk in, briskly down the corridor.  Past the first
guardpost, down into the pit, up to the others, in the corners of the wall
straight across.  Quiet, breathing evenly, trying to control my heart.

   I'm not a prisoner, catch my breath, and swallow.  They can't get out,
to me, down the stairs to the gateroom.  "Hh," wave at the 'mirror,' and
look in the iris scanner.  GHNhn, the door shuts behind me, and I head
left, down the long tunnels, doors opening ahead of me.  He's dead, the lab
is empty, and I look up.

   Through feet of Quartz, to the free side, admininstration, and so forth,
at the cameras imbedded in it.  "HhinH!" get to work.  Problem is, I don't
know enough about this neuronano, he brought it with him, noone else could
even work the computer, which the techs say doesn't appear to even have an
operating system.  Worth a try, though, I'm at a dead end.

   (!)bnt!  the screen came on.  Keyboard, black keys, nothing on them, not
[QWERTY...]

   "Hello," Gerber's face appears on the screen, "th'ere." eyes twitching
out, then back to track on me.

   Shake my head, he wasn't exposed to VI, ever, wouldn't give him another
Interface.

   "Who are you?"

   "Dr.  Yuen Ng," I looked around, "Chief medical director of this
facility."

   Desperately searching for the sensors, anything, fishing in my pockets.
"WhyCan'tISee?"

   "Slow down nah," VI glasses, microwave link, "Where's the USB?"

   "Wh?" I set them on the vidicon display monitor (CRT), and set down.

   "Wh?" looking around, need to get LEN down here.

   "Yoseph?" think, child of a Scotch New Englander, and German/Jewish
immigrant.  No, wait, that's someone else.

   Gerber {MC Time}

   "Yes?" It must have had me out for a long time.

   "What is the last thing you remember?" Years?

   Close my eyes, "This room," why doesn't it go away?

   "Aright," oriental looking, but dark, maybe half hyspanic, "What," why
was he talking so slow, "Happened?"

   memories flashing back, "Pain," replacing his face, the room behind him,
another one above?

   "In my sides," I feel nothing, "Darkness," It fleeing me, "Going after
It."

   "Slow down," the seizure, partioning, "BASIATIS?" her body?

   "Yes," taking over, "I think," feeling all of it, "I was," the ridgid
itch, "In some," in the back of her neck.  "one else."

   "FUCK!" he threw his head up, bangs flipping, hanging, in slow motion
until he was standing.  The chair fell with a distant clank.  "Got,"
punching slowly, "dam," sleeve flapping as he pulled back, "niT!"

   I blinked, but the room didn't flash.

   Billy {MC Oral NS}

   {AmIInSomeSortOfPrison?"} the machine speaks, looking around the
sideways pyramid box.

   "What d'you remember for
that?"IWasBackAtThe[REDACTED]Campus,IThinkIWasArrested,ForSomething,NotPoli
ce,ButSoldiers.  MayBeSWAT?}

   "Hh," can't geta wordin edgewize, "Yeah, strangling college students,
barehanded."

   "Oh," he looked down, "IThoughtThoseWereDreams." head turning away, just
a face, blackground past the hairline.

   "Hn!" Crazies, "You don't remember jail?"No,"Stealing the
neuronano,"NoneOfThat"Being here for a couple years?"

   "It CanCompletelyShutMeDown orControlMyMemory anything really."
Blinking, eyes going wild, like Marty Feldman in REM, "Hey," not a quick
gasp, "Why," almost normal voice, "Where is it?"

   "My guess is," released the other day, "In Amanda Hunt."Who?

   Just like it remembered, or not exactly.  It was so long ago, but I
remember it wasn't a dark Asian before, some white hillbilly, named Dr. 
Jenkins.}

   Dr.  Yuen Ng {Bt ME}

   KnockKnock, "Yes?" she turns back from her desk, legs uncrossing.  I
swear, when I met her, she was 23, double post graduate degrees in
Endochrinology, and Genetics, and just hitting puberty.

   I look up, taller than me, almost 6', like Benedict.  "You gotta few?"
close the door behind me.

   "Wot es eet?" strange accent, but to look at her, now, is unbelievable.
Less than two years, grown more than any teen throughout adolescence.

   "Uh," look down from her turquoise eyes, "As Medical Director, I, ah,
have to be apprised of all experiments in these labs."

   "Que," her pink curls bounce around the tops of her arms, "Whot uon?"

   "Wl," I step back, "You." Now I'm pretty damn sure Gerber pulled
something hinky, I'll be damned if I let someone else use My labs for
unsupervised self experimentation.

   "Wot do you mean?" I look down, pull out the sheets.

   "UhH," is it hot in here?  "Well, I just finished running your last DNA
test, and, uh, re-running it."

   "Yes?" she set back down, crossed her legs, and the unbuttoned lab coat
over them.

   "Well, ah," how do I put this, "The new samples don't match the old
one," she's the geneticist, "or each other."

   "Hmn," she flips through the sheets, glancing at them.  One month
earlier, I could explain her coloration, red, and blond alleles, and a
unique variant of the Albinism mutation.  All recessive, they washed
together into, I swear, pink hair, born with it.

   "They're recombinant," she sighs, "You see, it's all the same alleles,
randomly distributed through the chromosomes in each sample.

   Right, "How," do you survive that?  Blink.

   She sighs beautifully, "You know the only reason I took this, position,
was in exchange for access to your labs to correct some of my, congenital
deformities." Yeah, I read "Dr." Mendele's notes, which she won in court,
on the Young v.  Thorpe precedent.  The only problem I found with her last
statement was the pessimistic description of the result.

   Aright, now let me spell it out for you.  She's not human, never was,
and it's a long story.  Anyway, "The only two that stay consistent are the
X, and Y."

   "Ov corse," she nodded, "They don't recombine."

   "How are they, 'Recombining'?" I wondered.

   "In my testes," I dropped the printouts in a trashcan, and came around
her computer with her.  Okay, probably not the proper term, but moving on.
"Thes es a Genophage," (c) Dr.  Genevive Mendele 2016.

   "It looks like a spermatozoa." with something on it's nose.

   "Jes," pointing, "A viroid I can produce in my modified testis." the
enzymes clustered in the tip.  "Like sporm, they are designed to enter
cells with DNA, instead of RNA.  It carries about half a genome, or 24
chromosomes."

   Holy shit, I slipped on my glasses, and synced with the VI sensors. 
"Jesus!" the 24th, like the X, and Y (Actually looks like a sawed off v,
with two atrophied tail stumps), and another one.  More like a -|, or y,
like v of the Y, with a third leg.

   "The T chromosome," it rotated upright, "specifically overrides the X,
and Y, makes them recessive, and alters the glandular tissue of the teste
ducts." swimming up, a vaginal passage, with no cervex, or uterus, just
like her last MRI, through the fallopian vessicles to hir undescended
gonads.

   "Here, they produce more genophages, released in the bloodstream."
swimming between hemocytes, with different noses.  "End chenging the
genetic structure ov all cells." Invading, the red cells growing, bulging,
developing a neucleus, and stretching to two lobes.  Splitting, making more
blood cells, like the test subject's to compensate for not having marrow.

   "And the testes are recombinant," to make millions of sperm/genophages,
each with a unique semi-genome?

   "Jes."

   ([ALERT][ALERT]) flashes, ([Escape][Attempt])

   "Nh!" dip the glasses, find the knob over it, and run out to the Main
Lab.  Looking down, the lower one is deserted, inactive.  Look at the
central display, and push up my glasses.  (^^,vv,) wink at [Situation!]

   Knight

   "Ah fuck!" nightmare, Amanda Hunt, and Legerdemain, working together. 
Everyone else locked down, Bene' off, in town, or something.  Gotta geto
the outer door before them.

   It opens, empty, so I jump in, cycle the lock, and set it to cycle back
soon's I'm through.

   (+)(x), (*) CLCT!  the first round chambers intha cruciform barrel of
the CF17.

   (FSH(

   Nothing but guards, PhFpHtT dark blurs PASSed them, down the tunnel. 
(>>^) {IFF}

   Shk!  "YaiHgh!" Schring!  phF!  twist out of the spastic jerk, spinning
sideways for a shoulder roll on the wall.  Running forward, "phPhfPtTW!"
kick flipping high, still running foreward, a ND pistol in poth hands.

   BDRDADT!  my muzzle flashes off three armor piercing fletchetes,
striking the wall, and floor behind her, and I come down, Cobra Kick, left
hand flashing up to my belt.

   SLC!/ my forearm comes over my face an instant to late, eyes blinking
over burning pain.

   "Unh!" rigid coil of ribcage under my sole, rolling as I untuck my leg,
and land.  Reflexes catching the ground right where it was last seen, I
stumble back towards the door, )PHCK!) closing on my back, rumble of the
outer door, lights down the corridor, shadow, growing.

   Drop out my knee, kicking under to step in, twist back, grip flipping,
backhand up, resistance, then the deepening jerk in my fist.  Steel collar,
around the base of the edge catching on hard metallic organoceramic bone.

   "WHRLKH!" blood splashes the base of the door, and I let her body slide
off my blade, the side of my leg.  "Who!" I jump to the lock, )CSH!) "Whh,"
(SHK!( "Huh, huH!" DRDNH!  (-|+).

   Billy

   Run to the Armory, my revolver, .41 Moran Special, extra moon clip, and
my shears.  Custom made by LEN, Fullerine nanotube lattice woven in a
vacuum deposited diamond substrate, about the only thing that can cut that
skin, and then, only shearing.

   "Clct!" full ballistic helmet, and visor, uplinking the right display to
the COT site under the barrel.  Coming around the slope, up, scanning for
the impossible target.  "Legerdemain," CLKT!  slip my thumb back beside the
hammer, unlock the blades of my shears.

   Phszh!  look over, whoOHMPH!"aiAI!!!" Running into the light, displays
set to not produce enough light to damage my eyes, by default,
compensating, exaggerating outlines in the over exposure.  "NAHAHAH!"
there, crawling out, on his elbows, hands over the top of his face, over
the orbitals, screaming.

   "Knight?" kneel down, "KNIGHT!"

   "WHAHAY!" pull him out of the spreading flames, help him to his feet,
guide him blind away from the fire.  Almost trip over his short sword, and
grab it quick.

   "OMGod," running up, "KEITH!?"

   "Bene'," taking him, "BENNY!"

   "Sir?"

   "Get him to the infirmary," hold up my phone, "Yeah, send the
firefighter chopper, and two, three squads to secure the area.  And get LEN
up to the infirmary.

   Knight {MB NS}

   "Hold still." why does evrybody keep saying that?  I try not to blink
reflexively, my lids clamped open like Alex.

   "Ready?" sounded like, no he's dead, ait?

   The back of my head tingled, and I could feel the cold hard marbles,
pushing out my lids, warmth around them, numb prickling.  "Hhh," someone's
breath on my hair.  "Start the nanosequence." Kind of high pitched, or a
little deep if it was a girl, not a familiar voice.

   ([Initia)(lizing.]) "HhH!" let out my breath, "I see something!"

   "Good," releasing my lids, I blink up.

   "Gyah!" he jumps back.

   "Uh," blink, "Sorry!" That little weirdo of a boyfriend Billy found, not
a clue what he sees in him.  Alls I see is a nerd, trying to look cool, and
no idea how,bald, and pigtails, grey hair as if bleached by his madness,
locked behind the fishbowl lenses.

   "Uh," he drops his arm, "It's okay," fades to pink.

   "Nhn!" I rub my temples, "You got a mirror?" the smooth domes on them.

   "Hello there," the computer nods.

   Shake my head, "fuckin madhouse."

   "Don't touch the lenses," he's reaching up, around my hands, but not
touching me, "Fingerprints!"

   "Hh," I get up, "We done."

   "Yeah," he pouts, and rests his elbow on his hip, "Your welCUM!"

   )THNnN!)

   Basiatis {CS Poss Magi PsiC}

   {Madness} a swirling chaos of symbols from countless languages.

   {Lord,} pracitcly bowing in his head, not even aware of her body.

   I shake our head, look down on her, still passed out, parylized on the
floor.  {MN?} her body doesn't stir, but starts to take a breath.

   Wait, trace that, I heard her thought, felt her start to regain
conciousness.

   {What is your bidding,} language scanter firing up, {Master?}
Translating the babel of runes into an evocative stream I could read.

   {Do you know me?}

   {Of course,} not feelings I could understand.  {You are Death, I am
merely your hand.}

   Different this time, trace the memory, Dr.  Mendele was an older man, he
had a daughter, Genevive.

   {Uhn,} "Nh?" Mandy sits up, whipes her mouth.  {What happened?}

   {I transferred,} she looked up, and for a moment I saw it in her eyes,
{To Legerdemain.}

   And I don't remember us being cyberpsychic.
   {I.E; PsiC}