A Simple Game

Prologue

Thursday, 27th September. 00:15

Tennyo tried to gasp as a glove of cold leather closed over her mouth, punching through mid air where her attacker should have been. As her misty eyes cleared, a floating set of boxing gloves and a ‘speaker disc’ hovered above her head.

“Shhhh! Tenyo, its me.” One glove covered the disc as it whispered, which was its best approximation of putting a finger over its lips.

Tennyo calmed down immediately and the boxing glove over her mouth was removed. “Jinn,” she hissed, “You nearly gave me a heart attack!”

“There’s something you’ve gotta see. Take a look out the window.”

Tennyo rubbed her eyes as she floated over to the window. Following Jinn’s lead, she slid slowly through the air just underneath the windowsill so she could peek over. Under the light of the moon, she could make out what looked to be a baggage train of four men in grey jumpsuits. Directly in front of them, she saw the familiar figure of Beltaine leading Ms. Shugendo, Dr. Bellows and a young Goth girl towards the cottage.

The girl was fairly small, less five feet tall, with long black hair down to her waist and a very racy outfit. A long sleeved black leather shirt covered only down to just below her small, pert, breasts; A pair of matching, cut off, leather pants tucked into heeled black leather boots; and a sleeveless black leather long coat with a hood, thrown back over her shoulders, completed the image. The costume seemed to be designed to show off as much of her well-sculpted abs as possible.

Tennyo squinted, trying to make out the girl’s features. She only looked to be about 13 or 14, but was wearing enough make-up to deflect low caliber projectiles at close range. All of her exposed skin was dead white and flawless, except for her midnight black nails, lips and eye sockets. The girl’s slitted eyes seemed to burn red in the darkness, but Tennyo was sure that was a trick of the light.

“Do you see her?” Jinn whispered. “Scary isn’t she?”

Tennyo cocked her head to the side, “I don’t know. She might give Fey a run for her money if she’d lose the clown face.”

Jinn giggled, “Oh, that was just mean. What do you think, new student?”

Tennyo nodded, “Probably.” When she turned back to the window, the girl was looking straight at them.

Jinn pointed, “Eep! Your hair!”

Tennyo flattened herself to the floor, pressing her gravity-defying locks flat against her skull.

A minute passed.

Jinn took another peek, “It’s OK, she’s gone.”

Tennyo leant back against the wall, breathing a deep sigh of relief.

“She had a really weird aura,” Jinn commented, “shot all through with black lightning. Do you think she’s one of us?”

Tennyo shrugged, “We’ll find out soon enough, I guess. Come on, I need to get back to sleep.”

Chapter 1: Death and Rebirth.

Sunday 17, September.

‘…Bill felt the splinters dig into his fleshy palm as the gargantuan tentacle crushed it against the ancient plank. A glance up into the thing’s cyclopean eye foretold the immanence of his untimely demise…’

Michael read and re-read the paragraph over and over, each time his splitting headache forced him to look away from the final sentence. Sighing, he pushed himself up from his desk and dragged himself into the kitchen. It was late, very late. The streetlights outside provided the only illumination for the suburban wasteland, cast Sydney’s sprawling new western estates in a sickly yellow tone. A quick check of the clock confirmed his suspicions: 03:42.

His hands shook slightly as he made another cup of coffee. Headaches be damned, he told himself, this story has to be told. “Before it literally burns a hole in my skull.” He added under his breath. Looking around his home, one could be forgiven for assuming that the man who owned it was a penniless slob. Paint chipped and flaked away in places, clothes strewn about, dirty dishes piled in the sink, grungy old mats covering the worn floorboards of the aging home which had once belonged to his mother, and his grandparents before them. Built in the days before the suburbs, like a living carpet of cultural desolation, had taken over the farms and fields and given way for city life to take over.

Michael sipped his black coffee and tried to take his mind back to the story. The pain in his head flared up once more, confounding his efforts. It was as if his mind itself were rebelling against the topic, the very point he was trying to make. Inevitability. Bill’s defeat was inevitable. To a mind great enough, say some unfathomable being from the netherworlds such as the Thing of his story, every man and woman’s destiny was clear. Their choices were set in stone, destiny would steer them on the proper course, the only course their lives could take. The Thing knew what Bill was going to do before he did it, therefore Bill’s death was inevitable.

“But why on earth can’t I WRITE IT!” Michael shouted, flinging his coffee mug into a nearby unoffending wall. The noise caused the neighbor’s dog to start barking again. His vision blurred for a moment and Michael suddenly found himself kneeling on the grimy linoleum. A startled cockroach scuttled back to the safety of a crack in the wall. He breathed deeply, massaging his temples to try to fight back the ache in his head.

Looking down at himself, he wondered at the red spatters that slowly ran down his grey shirt. Immediately, his hands clasped the bridge of his nose, meeting a warm, wet, sensation that he was all too familiar with. Racing to the bathroom, the world seemed to blur and whirl about him, forcing him to take slow, gingerly, steps. He looked at his face in the mirror. About five-eleven, pale skinned as only a man who spends all his time indoors can be, unshaven (it had been a day or two since his last shower) with unkempt dark brown hair he kept fairly short to avoid maintenance. Dark circles encompassed his bloodshot eyes from surviving the last three days without sleep.

He leant over the sink to allow the blood to pour freely from his nose while pinching the bridge to cut off the blood flow (as his doctor had told him to do many times). After a minute, the dribble stopped and Michael felt it would be alright to stand straight again. Muttering to himself, he pulled his shirt over his head… and froze. His ribs stood out from his skinny body in stark relief. His collar bone was plainly visible, as well as the outline of his abdomen. Two small spokes of skin testified to the presence of his hips.

Quickly, he stepped up onto his scales. “98 POUNDS!” He exclaimed. He was missing almost eleven. Though always a lightweight, due to his condition, Michael thought that he had managed to eat well and stay in relatively good shape. His occasional binge writing (usually indulged near deadlines) had never affected him like this before.

His shout sent him into a coughing fit for almost two minutes. He bent back over the sink just in time to lose his dinner into it. The faintly green mixture of stomach acids and vegetables was interlaced with swirls of red.

It took Michael about fifteen minutes to clean himself up enough to change clothes, grab his wallet and keys and make for his car. He breathed deeply behind the wheel, but started the ignition immediately so that he couldn’t convince himself not to drive to the hospital. Despite the pounding headache, he managed to pull into the parking lot near the emergency room a half-hour later. It took all the willpower he could muster to drag himself to the front desk. The duty nurse grabbed him before he could fall.

“Sir? SIR? Can you hear me?”

She did sound a little distant, but Michael chalked that up to the ringing in his ears. “Yes. I’m sorry. My name is Michael Waite,” he said each sentence slowly so that he knew that he was saying it right, “I need a doctor.”

At that point, he feinted.

Michael woke in a dark green room, draped across a couch. The overhead florescent light seemed to burn his exposed face and hands. A tall blonde-haired man in the ubiquitous doctor’s white lab coat scribbled some notes on a yellow pad. “Ah! You’re awake. I’m sorry we couldn’t find you a bed, Mr. Waite, but we have been rather busy tonight.”

“Do I know you?” Michael asked, shaking his head to clear away the cobwebs.

The Doctor laughed, “No, I apologize, the nurse who brought you in took your details from your wallet, though I would have recognized you anywhere.”

Michael silently cursed himself and whatever vanity had caused him to print a real picture on the inside fold of that damn book. ‘Incongruity’ had been the title and it had been hailed as one of the most imaginative horror tales of the new millennium. It had also placed the name of Michael Waite next to Stephen King as a household name, but if only he hadn’t put in that photograph, then he’d never be placed in situations like this. All of a sudden, he could sympathize with the Thing of his current work, he could see with stark clarity the future actions of the man in front of him.

The Doctor coughed to cover his embarrassment (strike one, Michael ticked off in his head), “I’m Doctor Abernathe, but please call me Phil.”

Phillip Abernathe? Michael chuckled ironically to himself, If I named a character that, I’d be laughed out of my career. “Pleased to meet you.” Michael said aloud, shaking Phil’s offered hand.

“Look, I don’t want to be a bother…”

“No.” Michael interrupted.

Phil blinked.

“No, I’m sorry, I don’t do autographs. Please, Doctor, I need to be examined now. Lets get on with it.”

Phil looked slightly hurt, “I… well…”

Michael sighed, “I’ll tell you what. You examine me. Then I’ll sign whatever you darn well want me to, OK?”

That seemed to perk him up a little, “Yes, it’s a deal. Thank-you Mr. Waite, can I call you Michael?”

“No,” Michael answered, “as I said, to the business at hand, Doctor. Recently, I have been plagued by splitting headaches which I thought was due to my lack of sleep over the last few days. But tonight, I experienced a nosebleed followed by a fit of vomiting which contained blood. At the same time, I also noticed that I have lost a considerable amount of weight. I brought myself straight to the hospital despite feeling groggy and disoriented. As you know, I then fell unconscious… how long was I out for?”

It took a moment for Phil to catch up with Michael’s rapid fire dialogue. “An hour, hour-and-a-half. Any other symptoms, like blood in urine or stools, persistent dry cough, swelling, lumps?”

Michael did a bit of a double take. He knew enough medicine to see where this was leading. “No, at least not that I’ve noticed. I have had a dry cough over the last week, but I thought it was just spring. I have allergies.”

“Yes, I noticed that in your file.” Phil tapped his computer screen, obscured from Michael’s vantage point on the sofa, “You also suffer from Porphyria, correct?”

Michael nodded, “A genetic disorder, I inherited it from my mother. Among other things.” He felt his lips tighten instinctively.

Phil tried to smile reassuringly, but his face looked strained, “Well, I can suggest a few tests, and then we’ll know for sure what’s wrong with you. But, I’m afraid my initial diagnosis is a bit grim.”

“Cancer.” Michael nodded. It was inevitable, he told himself, they always told me how my mother went…

“I am sorry. I can’t be 100% sure until we do some tests, but considering the description of your symptoms and your medical history… how long has it been since you’ve seen the sun?”

“Four months,” Michael mumbled, “When can we get started on these tests?”

“Right away.” Phil stood, absently picking a thick volume out of his bookshelf. “But before that… could you please sign my copy of Incongruity?”

Phil absently rubbed the blue dot on his forehead while Michael’s X-rays cycled across the light board. “You didn’t have to stab me, you know, it was just a joke.”

Michael could smell the lie like a steaming cow-pat right under his nose, “I signed it didn’t I? Just tell me what the fuck I’m looking at.” His patience was wearing thin. Four hours, one nosebleed and two more vomiting fits later, Phil had assured him that he was on the fast track. Treatment of cancer was a race against time.

Phil circled several white blotches among the X-rays. “Here, here, here, here and here. Five tumors, no mistaking it. Definitely malignant. The one causing the bleeding into your lungs and stomach is the size of your fist. No hope of stopping it, I’m afraid, but chemotherapy may slow it down for another month. Without it…” Phil shrugged.

“No.” Michael shook his head. “Chemo didn’t help my mother. It won’t help me.”

“I’m sorry, Michael.” Phil shook his head.

“Look on the bright side, Phil,” Michael managed to put all the malice he felt into the one word, “your book just got a lot more valuable.”

The young Doctor’s jaw worked up and down a moment before he took the hint and backed out the door, slamming it shut behind him. An offended silence hung in the air. Michael breathed it in and let it escape. It was petty, but so was Phil. He massaged his chest around the left breast where the tumor was supposed to be gnawing at his core. Absently, he noted that the flesh was slightly puffy and sore.

‘Malignant cancers,” Phil had said in his office more than an hour ago, “are cells that have gone out of control. Benign tumors are little more than nature’s mistakes, they have a membrane that separates them from the other organs, the only danger they present is by squeezing the organs nearby and taking up room. Malignant tumors grow and infect the cells around them, destroy tissue and can spread to unrelated places in the body. The ultimate disease, it just keeps eating until a vital organ fails, then you die.”

He rubbed his sore chest more vigorously. A slight pain rocketed down his left arm. The  pang of guilt over Michael’s insult evaporated, remembering Phil’s child-like glee as he glorified the disease and almost gloated over the condemned. Maybe if he hadn’t stabbed him with the pen…

Something clutched Michael’s heart in a vise and began to crush it. Blood pounded through his ears. A blink, momentary darkness, then he was staring at the ceiling. Glaring white fluorescence stung his eyes. Agony exploded down his nerves, fire wiped his mind clean of rational thought. Later, he was never able to remember if he had screamed.

Michael woke to suffocating darkness. Cold burned his back, his right toe was numb, but the rest of his body was encompassed by… something. If he didn’t know better, Michael would have said it was a sheet of plastic. At least it felt like plastic.

His bones creaked in protest as he tried to sit up, but every movement seemed to be constrained by the plastic sheet. Cold metal stung his nose. He reached up to his face and pushed the covering away, digging his nails into the fabric. It split immediately, cold light gushed through the crack, blinding him.

Michael groaned, the light was unbearably bright. The glare permeated the space outside, appearing as an endless void of white to his eyes. Slowly, shapes came into focus. Black blurs became bags. Bags lying on steel tables, neatly aligned in straight rows. White tiled walls were lit by halogen lamps on a pure white ceiling. Spotless, powder green, linoleum covered the floor.

“T-the morgue.” Michael stuttered. He had written this place, oh how many times? He had never visited one. Now he was a guest of honor.

“They think I’m dead.” He observed, still in shock. He pulled his aching legs out of the bag and looked down at himself. The only item of clothing he had left was the toe tag that cut into the flesh of his right foot. His nails, both toe and finger, had darkened to a purple-black and seemed… longer, sharper than they were before. His skin, never graced with the healthiest of tans, was now china white and appeared totally devoid of life, though that might have been the glare of the lamps. His muscles felt wrong. Like liquid. The sensation was shared by his gut.

A lump rose in his throat a moment before he vomited once more, except more than bile and blood poured fourth. Dark, shriveled, chunks of flesh bounced across the tiles. His stomached contracted and heaved, losing girth with each convulsion as what was left of his innards were expelled from his mouth. Another great heave literally sucked his genitals into the void in his abdomen, bones and muscles popped and cracked as his hips split in half momentarily before reforming into a slightly wider configuration.

When the convulsions stopped, Michael’s knees collapsed, sending him sprawling into the dark purple mess on the floor, gasping for breath. Against all reason, he reached out and pulled himself across the cold floor into a corner, curling into a whimpering ball.

Some time passed before he regained his senses. Small things came into perspective first, like his legs. They were quite a bit longer than they had been, making them easy to tuck under his chin. His chest itched. His skin felt soft and smooth. His hair was plastered to the back of his neck, much longer than he’d ever worn it in his entire life. His stomach still churned and bubbled, but the need to retch was greatly diminished. Slowly, he decided to open his eyes.

The sight that greeted him was disgusting to say the least. Unfolding from his fetal position, Michael felt the stickiness of the congealing purple blood that covered his front. In the darkened corner, he noted that his first observation had been correct, he really was completely hairless below the neck and white as fine bone china. His stubble had vanished. Even the gaping hole in his crotch was entirely devoid of hair.

As he took all this in, something in the back of his mind clicked and all the tension washed out of his limbs. A comforting lightness washed over his body as an ache developed in his stomach. He felt a grin stretch across his face as he hopped lightly to his feet, much easier than he had ever done in his life. The constant pains of his old body were washed away, all those small imperfections that had nagged him every day of his life melted into nothingness.

Michael tip-toed through the mess on the floor towards a small mirror hanging on the opposite wall. His face had changed as well. Thinner, his cheekbones slightly more prominent, his chin came to an elegant point. His eyes were sharp and penetrating, set into the dark circles that surrounded them. His iris glowed a malevolent blood red while his pupils were slit like a cats. His lips pouted slightly, enough to be called cute if they hadn’t taken on a deep black coloration of their own, matching her new velvety hair.

“Great, I’m a Goth.” Michael said to his reflection, watching the strange creature’s lips move at his command. He held a hand up in front of his face, noticing how thin and delicate it seemed, the long claw-like black nails adding a dangerous element as he waved to himself. He looked down, “Herself. That’s definitely a girl down there.” He didn’t have breasts yet, but the absence between his legs put paid to any arguments to the contrary.

He looked back up at the face in the mirror, and took a deep breath, “That is me. That is what I look like now. I am a girl. This is not a dream, it is happening to me now, so what do I do next?”

The mantra seemed to help him… her (she corrected herself) cope a bit better. Aside from the blood crusting down her front, the hunger building in her stomach and the trauma of barfing up her own lungs (literally), she felt good. She marveled at how light she was on her feet, how free from constraint.

A burble in her abdomen urged her to seek out food quickly. After a quick rinse in a nearby sink, she spotted a light cotton sheet draped over one of the other bodies. “Sorry, pal, but I’m sure you won’t be needing this.” A quick flick of the wrist liberated the sheet and it was wrapped around her new assets (undeveloped though they were) a few moments later.

The hallway outside the morgue was surprisingly dark. A cursory glance out of a small, high, window told her it was nighttime once more. How long have I been out? Michael wondered, A day? Two at the most. Absently, Michael realized that she didn’t exactly know what happened to dead people if there were no next of kin to collect them. “There might be a book in that.” She whispered to herself.

The end of the hallway opened into a small waiting area, with a few chairs, a coffee table and… “Jackpot!” She grinned. Two vending machines dominated the west wall, one contained chips and candy bars, the other soda pop. Her elation lasted a moment before she realized that she didn’t have any money, let alone change. She scowled as another, more insistent, growl issued from her stomach. “Wait one second, will you?” She admonished it, looking around for something she could use.

The hunger grew. She didn’t want to make too much noise, so she tried scratching the perspex window. Aside from a few small furrows, no luck. She rocked the machine slightly, hoping that some loose item would fall. She felt ravenous. She could smell the chocolate on the other side of the window, wafting through the dispenser tray. Frustrated, she punched the plastic.

The window shattered. Clear plastic scattered across the floor, the machine rocked backward on its feet before settling back with a jolt. Michael blinked. “I didn’t punch it that hard.”

“FREEZE! Don’t move!”

The voice was panicked, fearful. It was a man’s voice, though unused to issuing commands, it wavered. Michael slowly turned to find a trembling Uni boy wearing a security guard’s uniform. He pointed a revolver straight at Michael’s heart. “I’ll use this! Don’t make me…”

She raised her hands slowly, “I’ve already died once today. Don’t…”

The gun went off. Time seemed to slow for Michael, not just figuratively, but actually. The bullet rocketed from the barrel and whizzed past her head, slamming through the metal plated side of the other vending machine. Soda pop gushed from the wound. The second, third and fourth bullets burst through Michael’s right hip, abdomen and shoulder, tearing out great chunks of flesh and bone. She fell back, but caught the side of the vending machine before toppling to the floor. The fifth and sixth shots flew wild, shattering a window further down the hallway.

Michael looked up. Black blood poured from her wounds, staining the sheet, but she was still standing. She saw red, a growl escaped from the back of her throat. The kid was still panicking, plucking the shells from his revolver one by one rather than emptying it all at once onto the floor. Michael could smell his blood, hear it pumping through his heart at a hundred miles an hour. Several colors fought in his aura for dominance, hot red fear winning out over cool blue, alongside veins of purple running throughout.

Michael felt his body move by itself. In a blink, the gun was battered out of the guard’s hand, spent cartridges scattered across the floor. His scream for help was cut off as Michael’s teeth lengthened into fangs and sank deeply into the guard’s throat. Sweet blood pumped down her throat as she sucked on the wound, plunging her tongue deep into the guard’s chest cavity to ravage the blood rich organs within.

She watched his aura flow from his body and into hers along with his blood. The taste of him, his blood, his hormones: testosterone, adrenaline; sent a thrill through her body. She felt hot and flushed. Something screamed at her from the back of her mind but her body wouldn’t stop until the last drop left her victim. The guard simply crumpled into a pile of clothes and blue-green dust when she let go.

When reality returned to Michael, she screamed. Blood flowed from her eyes when she cried, rather than salty water. She ran howling from the scene, unable to bare the sight of the damning pile of ash before her.

Dawn found Michael on the rooftop of an apartment building, now completely naked. The sheet had fallen from her in an alleyway more than an hour ago. Despite her horror, the telltale itch on her skin reminded her to look for shade. The itch gave way to a burn as the sun rose above the horizon.

A sharp blow to the lock forced the door of the air conditioning shed to give way, allowing Michael access to the shade inside. She slammed the entranceway shut behind her and wedged it closed with a small table before falling onto the floor in despair. The weeping started again. It was hours later that it stopped.

The strange lightness and calm had given way to heat. She could feel, and sometimes see, things shifting under her skin. Tendrils squirmed just below the membrane; her nails grew, becoming more and more like claws. Strangely, her teeth had regained their original length and shape, though her incisors seemed to be slightly longer and sharper than they had been. Her hair continued to grow, at times she could almost feel it. She also found that she was shrinking, her bones cracked and re-formed every now and again, particularly her spine. The heat spread out from her crotch, causing a tingle of pleasure throughout her body, particularly in the chest area. Try as she might, Michael couldn’t help groaning in ecstasy as her new body bloomed.

When it was over, pleasure gave way to rage. She looked down at herself in disgust. All the marks of her fight… no, the slaughter of the guard were gone without a trace. The bullet holes had simply closed themselves, without even a single scar. Small, yet firm and shapely mounds graced her chest, the thing between her legs still pulsed with disgusting waves of pleasure, it seemed to Michael that it was smug, satisfied with its creation.

Wailing, Michael began to scratch and tear at her body, but each new wound sealed as quickly as it was opened. There were slight twinges, but nothing even close to the pain she felt she needed to wash the blood off her hands. In desperation, she searched the tiny room, finding to her delight a rusty old pocket knife. Clearing the workbench, she held her left hand flat on the gritty wooden surface and lifted the blade over her head.

Her finger was severed at the knuckle. Rather than a burst of blood and pain, there was a sting and a pop as the finger fell free. No blood, no fuss. Michael gasped in shock as a forest of small black tendrils erupted from the stump, tangling together, growing, merging and reforming into a new, perfect, finger. The old finger simply disintegrated into black ash as a fresh claw erupted from the tip of her new finger with obstinate finality.

Michael snorted to herself in disgust. “OK, I can take a hint,” She said to the empty air, “what the fuck do you want from me? I never wanted to kill anyone. I work hard, I pay taxes, I’ve done everything you’ve ever asked me to do. So God, why the fuck did I have to be the one to have to deal with this?”

Michael just curled up into a corner and tried to ‘sleep it off’, but she couldn’t. She wasn’t even tired. Her sleeplessness led to melancholy, brooding thoughts. She couldn’t punish herself enough for the death of the guard. Besides, as soon as she was caught, the cops would take care of that for her. All she had to do was wait. “I must have left a trail wide as an elephant,” she reassured herself, “they’ll come and take me to jail, or kill me. It’s what I deserve. They’ll find the sheet, that should lead them up here.”

She looked at her hand, “Gunshots won’t work, knives won’t work. Maybe fire. Or gas. Acid or something. There’s got to be a way, I’ve got to end it before I kill someone again.”

She breathed deeply once, calming her nerves, trying to think, “Hang on, I don’t want to die. If I did, I could just drag myself out into the sunlight, maybe that’d do it. But I don’t want to die. I’ve been holding on for too long, I promised her I wouldn’t. But I can’t kill again, I don’t want to kill again. I’m so confused.”

Michael was crying again. “STOP IT!” She growled at herself, “Crying never solved anything. You’re not going to die, by your own hand or anyone else’s. It’s time to stop crying and start thinking. Right, you killed the security guard, but he fired on you without provocation. Even if you did look a bit scary, that’s no excuse. It’s unfortunate that he’s dead, but it was self defense, maybe you can make it up somehow later. Right now, you’re naked, have turned into a girl but gained vampiric mutant powers. No money, no resources, no clothes and you’re covered in blood. Face it, you need help. But who in their right mind will want to help you?”

She mulled that one over for a bit. “Nobody. I’ll have to help myself. First I need clothes, then money. If I get hungry again, I’ll find a stray cat or something. No human, never again. But all that can wait for the sun to go down.”

Michael shook herself to sweep away the memories of the security guard, and settled in to wait out the sun. No cops came. No maintenance crew, no super heroes. Finally, the sun crept below the horizon and Michael was able to leave the shelter. She moved quickly and quietly down the fire escape. A light was on in the top story apartment, along with the stereo, so she bypassed it to the next floor which seemed to be dark. She had to break the window to unlatch the lock, and entered quickly before anyone would notice.

Though it was dark, Michael found she could see perfectly well in the dim light, thanks to her new eyes, she guessed. She found herself in the master bedroom, the sheets of the king-sized double bed stank of booze and sweat. Clothes, male and female, were strewn about the room. Grinning again, Michael opened the cupboard and rifled through the clean clothes, searching for something he could wear. She discarded the bras, all were too large for her anyway, but found a lacy pair of panties that were only one size too big, and slipped those on. A set of Capri’s that were baggy and reached down to mid calf covered most of her legs at least. A pink shirt that fit her like a tent, one shoulder poking out of the neck, at least made her decent.

“Hello.”

Michael jumped. An eleven year old kid stood in the doorway. His clothes, a dirty Power Rangers T-shirt with holes across the hemline and ancient jeans without the knees, didn’t fit him well, the top of his undies plainly visible where the pants sagged around his hips.

“Uh…” Michael grimaced. “How long have you been there, kid?”

“Don’t worry, miss, I didn’t look much.” He smiled.

Michael felt her cheeks flush in embarrassment. “Much?”

He continued before she could say anything else, “Are you a Goth? That pink t-shirt doesn’t look that good on you.”

“Uh…” Was all Michael could manage.

“You could borrow a black shirt of mine. It might still be a bit small, but you’re thin, so it should be alright.”

Michael blinked. “Uh, kid, you do know I’m robbing the place.”

The kid scratched the back of his neck, “It’s no sweat, just my foster parent’s stuff you’ve got there. I’ve run away a couple’ times myself, so I know how it is. Who took your clothes? Oh, no, forget I asked, it don’t matter. C’mon, their jewelry’s in the box under the bed, you can pawn that to get you started. I’ll get that shirt, you can wait here.”

All Michael could do was stare at the empty space in the doorway and blink after what was THE strangest conversation of her entire life. A second later it occurred to Michael that the kid was probably phoning the police, so she sprinted after him.

She found him in his room, searching through a pile of ‘clean’ clothing. “Here it is, try that on for size.” He threw the plain black T-shirt to the girl and turned his back. Michael felt guilty, so she decided to try it on. Surprisingly, it fit perfectly.

“Just how small am I?” Michael asked herself.

“Not too big, I’ll say. Bit on the scrawny side, but, hey, my dad always told me to look out for girls. Oh, and I think I have a message for you.”

Michael blinked again as the kid rummaged through his backpack on the floor, pulling out a black and white business card. The logo on the top left spelt ARC, underneath it read Arkham Research Consortium. The card belonged to Dr. Donna Bell, senior case worker, and listed two phone numbers and an e-mail address. Both numbers included area codes for the United States. On the back was scrawled in hasty handwriting: There’s no shame in calling for help. Nothing that has happened was accidental. Be careful, Mrs. P.

“What’s your name, kid?”

“Gary.”

“Who gave you this, Gary?”

Gary scratched the back of his head again, “It was a bit weird. This old-ish woman in a floral print dress came up to me in the park about three or four days ago. She gave me fifty bucks and told me that I’d meet a good looking Goth chick in a few days, or somthin’ like that. Made me promise to give you that. Never gave me her name, but I thought what the heck, it was a free fifty. Then there you are in Bob and Sally’s room, clear as day. You really freaked me out, you know.”

“I freaked you out?”

Just then, we both jumped as the front door burst open. “HEY GARY, you worthless piece of crap, didn’t I tell you to take the garbage out today?”

“Shit,” Gary whispered before raising his voice, “I’ll get right to it Dad.”

Gary turned back to me, dropping into a whisper again, “Back from the pub early. Whatever happens, stay here. Alright? I’ll be fine.”

Gary closed the door behind him. A moment later, the stepfather’s voice rang out again, “Where the fuck were you?”

“I just got back. I haven’t had time to do it yet…”

“Don’t you lie to me you little bastard.”

The meaty sound of flesh striking flesh set her blood racing again. She fought the red haze that was slowly trying to cloud her vision. The second grunt of pain caused something inside Michael to snap.

Calmly, Michael stepped out into the corridor. Bob stood over Gary’s crumpled body, giving the lump another swift kick, receiving a screech of pain in response.

“Let that be a lesion to yer.” Bob slurred, taking a sip from the bottle of Foster’s Red in his left hand. He looked up at Michael drunkenly. His aura was a sickly green clashed with angry red. Michael felt the hair on the back of her neck rise in anger and hatred. She took a single step towards the giant of a man.

“Who the fuck are you? One of Sally’s friends? Get back onter the street with yer, this shithead’s too young.” The bastard chuckled at his ‘joke’.

Michael smiled, “I’m not here for him…”

She hoped that she was managing to sway her slender hips seductively as she sashayed over to the reeking drunkard. Slowly she ran a hand down his chest, toward his crotch, pressing her body against his. His breath stank, but he was breathing heavier. Purple lust overcame his aura, he reached for her…

And screamed falsetto as Michael sunk his claws deeply into Bob’s crotch.

Bob went wild, slapping her face. Red welts swelled across her cheek and faded almost immediately, not even managing to wipe the toothy grin off her face. Finally letting go of Bob’s manhood, Michael switched targets, choking off his air supply by grasping his throat, forcing the big man to his knees, bringing the two eye to eye.

“That was three shots on a helpless little kid, you fucking coward.” Michael growled. She felt the hunger well up from her stomach, tiny tendrils wormed their way out of her skin to lap up the blood that dribbled from under the tips of her claws. She couldn’t resist, she bent forward and kissed him full on the lips, her tongue snaked down his throat. Tentacles sprouted from her arms, back and chest, penetrating the bastard’s skin with the fanged maws at their tips, burrowing deeper.

As the last of Bob’s aura faded, he too fell to dust. Michael spat on the remains as her tentacles retracted. Gary wheezed on the floor, trying to laugh, “Take that, bitch.”

“We need to get you to a hospital.” Michael whispered urgently as she tried to prop up her companion. Gary was looking the worse for wear, with a black eye and two great bruises across his stomach. They sat in a back alley far away from Gary’s old apartment, the green of Hyde park visible far down the road. Banners lined the long, deserted, thoroughfare, depicting a strange stone idol as the centerpiece of the museum’s latest exhibition of indigenous art.

Gary pressed an ice compact to the fresh bruises (bought from a petrol station with his step parent’s newly pawned jewelry), “Nah, I’ve taken a lot worse from Bob over the last year. Never would take me to the hospital, even for the cuts on my back.”

Curious, Michael lifted the back of his shirt. The young boy’s back was a criss-cross of white scar tissue. “I wish I had your powers though. Does it hurt when someone hits you?”

Michael shook his head, “Not any more, not really. I cut my finger off this morning and all I felt was a twinge.”

“SHIT! Which finger?”

Michael showed him.

“Wicked.”

“Hey, do you watch the news?” Michael asked.

“Nah, I don’t got no time for that stuff. School, y’know. Why?”

Michael sighed, “Something happened at the hospital today. I was involved, I was just wondering if you’d heard anything.”

“Nah, just that Michael Waite had a heart attack yesterday. Big blow to the writing community and all that. Hey what’s your name?”

“M-,” Michael stopped for a second before changing his mind, “Sara.”

“Sara? That’s a little strange isn’t it?” Gary looked puzzled.

Sara shrugged, “It was my mother’s name. Our family comes from the States.”

“Where’s your mom, then?”

“Dead. Cancer.” Sara said simply. She’d gotten over it a long time ago.

Gary nodded, “My parents were mutants. They got into the whole hero gig, like the Grey Wizard and the Outback Avenger. Then they crossed Deathlist over in Germany.”

Sara winced. Deathlist was known as one of the most deadly super villains of the age, his world record body count of heroes in his path remained unmatched, but had forced him to lie low for several years. He was now one of the most wanted villains in the world, with a bounty of no less than two billion dollars on his head, dead or alive.

“They didn’t come home, neither did their team. The government put me up for adoption, and I’ve been bouncing from home to home ever since.”

“What were their codenames?”

“Ergo and Magna. Dad could skip through time for a limited duration, sorta like a warper. Villains couldn’t pin him down and several of him could punch a guy out at once. Mom could manipulate the earth’s magnetic field and electricity. Fry computers, levitate metal objects, that sort of thing. There wasn’t enough left of them to bring home, so they set up a little marker on the War Memorial in Canberra, next to the grave of the unknown soldier. The bank foreclosed on our house and sold all of our belongings, the rest was put into a trust account I can’t access until I’m 18. Blah, blah, blah, well that’s my sob story.” He shrugged, an almost wistful expression crossed his face, “But the laugh’s on them, Sara. Both my parents were mutants, and so was my grandpa. That means, if being a mutant is genetic like most people think, I’ve got about an 80% chance of being a mutant too. Then I’ll be able to do something real, I’ll save the Earth, I’ll track down Deathlist once and for all. They’ll all regret forgetting about me then, won’t they?”

Sara just sat there, too stunned to answer.

“I wish I was like you, Sara.” Gary sighed. “You’ve got the power, you have the strength to do something with it. Bob must have beat me up every second day for the last year. I swore that I’d stand up to him every single day. But he was just too strong. He was like Deathlist, only smaller. Someone, anyone, needs to do something about those sorts of people everywhere. Someone has to sort them out. The cops won’t do it, the social workers are a joke. Super heroes are too busy with the big fish to worry about people like Bob. I wanted to kill Bob in his sleep a thousand times, but I could never do it. I’m too weak.”

Sara sighed. “Maybe I’m the one that’s weak.”

Gary looked up at her with a weary, disbelieving stare.

“My real name is Michael Waite. Yesterday I had a heart attack and died.”

“No shit?” Gary whispered hoarsely.

Sara shook her head. They were walking again, toward a chemist. Gary really needed some disinfectant for his bruises, one of them had ruptured.

“Look, if half of what you’ve just told me is true, then you’re going through some pretty fucked up shit right now. But look, keep your head. Bob was an asshole with a capital ‘A’. His wife? Sally? She’s out tonight turning tricks for him. If she doesn’t, he’d beat the snot out of her like he did to me. Straight up, the world won’t miss him.” Gary paused. “As for the guard, he shot you first. I don’t know about you, but if it’s a choice between me or my friends and the other guy, it’s the other guy plain and simple. Cop or not, that’s the way of the world.”

Sara let that one go. It was a child’s view of the world, too neat and too simple. There was some merit in what he said, but there were higher sets of laws to follow. Laws not written on paper.

The door beeped as they made their way through. Sara grabbed a small bottle of disinfectant and a bottle of water from the fridge while Gary went and sat down again on one of the waiting chairs. The only other customer was a tall guy in a brown leather bomber jacket and jeans, who seemed engrossed in what type of condoms he should buy. A thirty-something man in a lab coat manned the counter and seemed engrossed in something on Sara’s shirt. His orange aura was encompassed by purple, which strengthened as she walked forward. His gaze dropped as she approached, apparently he had a hard time looking at her face.

Sara dropped the two items on the counter as hard as she could. The noise startled him out of his reverie. “OH! I-I’m sorry, miss, Um…”

“Just those two things thanks.” She cut him off reaching into her pockets. Out of the corner of her eye, Sara caught a glimpse of a girl peeking over the barricade that separated the prescription drugs from the rest of the store. Her aura was bright purple as well.

“Uh… that’ll be eight forty-five, miss.” The counter clerk interrupted.

“We’ll grab two packets of these as well.” Two packets of Titan ribbed condoms bounced off the bottle of disinfectant. I looked up as a muscled arm encased in brown leather closed over my shoulder. The guy was unshaven yet handsome in a GQ kind of way. His boyish grin widened as he let his jacket fall open revealing a gold detective’s shield hanging out of the pocket. Sara noticed that he too had a purple tinge over a blue and green aura. “I’ve missed you all day, Waite.”

Sara decided to play along, snuggling into his side, “I’ve missed you too, big boy.”

The clerk’s face dropped. Sara broke out into a grin, she had an idea, “Oh, don’t be so gloomy, boy.” She reached out across the counter and pulled his chin close, “Hmmm, I’ve been dying for some two on one action. How about we sneak into the back room for a minute or two and you give us this stuff free of charge? Whata ya say?”

The lick Sara gave him with the tip of her tongue in the hollow underneath his bottom lip sealed the deal. It also caused the girl behind the barricade to fall over with a muffled squeak. A moment later, Sara was dragging the bewildered detective into the back room while the clerk led the way, carrying the bottle of water in her other hand. She absently noticed that Gary slipped into the room behind them before the door closed.

She whipped the bottle up across the back of the clerk’s head before he could turn around, sending him sprawling unconscious to the floor.

“Freeze, dickhead.”

Sara turned slowly around to see Gary pressing his index finger into the small of the detective’s back. The detective was frozen halfway between drawing his gun.

“You know the drill. Two fingers, slowly draw the weapon and drop it to the floor.” Gary sounded as if he’d done this all before.

The detective complied. Chrouching slowly, Gary picked up the automatic cannon and worked his way around beside Sara. “Thanks for the gun, dude.”

The detective snarled at the kid. Sara interrupted the impending tirade, “OK, who are you, what do you want and why on earth would I ever consider having sex with you?” She tried to put as much disgust as she could into the words, but her heart wasn’t really in it. As much as she tried to deny her feelings, he was cute.

“I’m here to bring you in.”

Gary snorted, “Fat chance.”

“Look, I’m Detective Nathan Coleman, Homicide. There are elements in both the government and private interests that are sparing no expense to track you down and eliminate you at this very moment. Those classified as dangerous mutants are to be confined or exterminated if the danger they represent manifests as an inherent part of their powers.”

“What?” Gary’s eyebrow twitched.

“He’s saying that the government wants me dead because I’ve eaten people.” Sara translated from bureaucratic to English.

“Oh.”

Nathan nodded, “I’m here to make sure they don’t get you. Look, I know I’m probably the last person you should trust but... oh, hell, I don’t think you’re dangerous, Mr. Waite.”

“Call me Sara. Mister doesn’t really fit with this body.”

The purple aura brightened as a grin split Nathan’s face, “I noticed.”

Sara sighed, “Why is this happening to me? OK, give me a reason to trust you.”

“I was one of the investigating officers on the morgue. Black blood, the dust on the floor, we knew this was either a mutant attack or a hoax. The security cameras in the morgue and along the hallway were off during the hour of your escape, which we found kind of strange. At first, Forensics thought your blood was motor oil, like robot’s servos or something, until closer examination revealed that it was mostly like blood, except it didn’t contain iron and didn’t have a known blood type. Immediately, the mutant alarms went off. We tried to track you down, but only got as far as a sheet covered in blood down a back alley, the dogs couldn’t pick up your trail.”

Sara nodded, “I think I went up. I was a bit distraught.”

Nathan grimaced, “We’d lost you, anyway. We found the mess you made in the morgue and your toe-tag in the hallway, so we knew that, against all odds, Michael Waite had risen from the dead. The strangest thing was the gun we found on the floor, no-one in the building at that time was licensed to carry a firearm. Additionally, a second man had entered the building approximately an hour beforehand. We caught him entering the parking lot on the secret surveillance camera across the road. It was a rented car, so we tracked it back to its hire company. Guess what? The clerk at the desk that morning could remember every detail about renting the car, except exactly who rented it. The paperwork wasn’t signed, but he swore blind that they both sat there that morning and did it. A trip to a specialist later and we were convinced that a second mutant, probably a super villain, had altered the minds of the employees of the rental agency and Mr. Mullins, the security guard at the morgue, causing him to empty the revolver at you and provoke a reaction. We guessed that the revolver had been brought along by this villain. You did react, but whatever you did caused the asshole to leave the area in a big hurry, we’ve got that on tape as well.”

Nathan paused, waiting for an explanation. Sara didn’t know what to say, so she shrugged, “What I did scared the shit out of me. If it did the same to someone else, it’s no surprise.”

“What did you do? The eggheads think you used a disintegration ray of some sort, all that they found was constituent salts throughout his uniform.”

“I suck the life out of people. It’s not pretty.” Sara grimaced. Gary kept his eyes square on Nathan, holding the gun steady, “So, what brought you here? We didn’t know we were coming here until five minutes ago. And how’d you know that she was Michael Waite? You said yourself that you didn’t have a picture.”

Nathan scratched his head, slowly, “Well, that’s where this story gets weird. A few hours ago, my partner and I were stumped. We had no leads, no idea where you were, so we hauled ass back to base to report to the captain. And low and behold, we find the MCO all over our desks.”

“MCO?”

“Mutant Commission Office.” Nathan supplied, “An international agency funded by America, seconded to the CIA, ASIO, MI6 and others rather than the state police forces or interpol, but in reality is an autonomous agency. They handle various mutant education and relocation programs, but they’re the ones who the government holds in reserve in case the mutants decide to take over the world, or some nonsense. In the meantime, they sharpen their skills by hunting down dangerous new mutants like yourself. Most are norms with a chip on their shoulder, others are mutants who hate their own kind for one reason or another, or just like killing things.”

“So,” Nathan continued, “the case is out of our hands. Deputy Director Loman, the MCO hardman, says the word and we’re off. Raised voices are exchanged and then raised fists. I broke his nose. So, I’m suspended for four months, while my partner gets a desk job. He’s got a wife and kids, so I tell him to leave it to me. Despite that, I found myself in the Krispy Kreme in Bondi Junction sipping coffee, trying to figure out where the hell you could be when, lo and behold, this old lady sits opposite me. She says hi like we’ve known each other for years. Then she spills the beans, she says ‘Michael Waite will be visiting this chemist at exactly 1:16 with an eleven year old boy called Gary. He’ll look a bit different, but don’t worry, it’ll be him. Then she left a business card on the desk, got up and said, ‘Tell her that her choices do matter’. So, I came and I was waiting and there you were right on time. Was that message for you?”

“I think so,” Sara nodded, “put the gun down, we can trust him, Gary. Who’d believe a crazy story like that except us?”

“What was it about?” Nathan pressed.

“My last story. I was writing it, day before last.” Was it really that short a time ago? She asked herself. “It was about the future, destiny and helplessness. If a being can tell the future perfectly, then it is undefeatable because it knows all moves in advance. Thus, destiny exists because there are no other choices, and all mortals cling to an illusion of choice simply to perpetuate their existence. Therefore, what we do doesn’t matter, because it will happen anyway if we like it or not. But now…” Sara trailed off.

“I don’t believe it. This Ms. P seems to be a friendly mutant trying to help me. Either way, she can tell the future, and can change it. That’s obvious because she gave both of you notes letting you know what to do in order to help me. That means she has a choice, she could help me, or she could leave me. Therefore, she’s telling me that we do have free will and I don’t have to be a killer.”

Nathan and Gary stared at her, speechless. Then, they looked at each other and shrugged.

“If you say so…” They both said in unison.

Nathan’s car was a beat up old Ford Falcon, from before the turn of the millennium. He’d parked it straight across the road from the chemist. Sara filled Nathan in on the events of the afternoon while she disinfected Gary’s wounds.

“Bob? Bob and Sally Thomas? I know those names.” Nathan snarled. “Bob’s… er, was a small time pusher. Sold dope outside the local high school. Too small to fry, but god knows vice won’t miss him. How the fuck did he get custody of a kid?”

Sara glanced out the back window.

“No prior convictions.” Gary winced.

“Shit.” Nathan summed it up.

Sara took another glance out the back window. “Nathan? You see the car, black sedan, tinted windows, Canberra plates in the left hand lane, 20 feet back?”

Nathan adjusted the rear vision mirror, “Yeah.”

“That car was parked six cars behind yours at the chemist’s. It’s been following us for the last fifteen minutes.”

Nathan glanced at the mirror again, “You sure?”

Sara nodded, “There’s a white scratch on the right hand side near the rear wheel.”

“Now that’s a catch.” Nathan whistled. “You both got your seatbelts on?”

Gary nodded, “Yeah, why?”

In answer, Nathan planted his foot down and twisted the wheel, rocketing over the meridian, tires screeching, into the oncoming traffic. Sara and Gary screamed as the car left the road, leaping into mid air over the off ramp into the city. As the car straightened out, Sara whipped her head around in time for the sedan to copy their maneuver. “They’re right behind us, Nathan.”

Nathan weaved through the traffic, “How the fuck did he know? How could he have known?”

“You’re bugged,” Sara surmised, “It’s the only possible explaination.”

The back window shattered, a millisecond later the sound of gunfire echoed down the freeway. “Who the fuck are these guys? There’s civies all over the place!” Nathan yelled.

“We’ve got to lose these creeps,” Sara answered as the tire on the car next to theirs exploded, sending it spinning out of control, “get to a less populated area.”

“Easier said than done, got any bright ideas?”

Two more bullets pinged off the trunk.

“The Harbour, up ahead,” Sara suggested, “ditch the car, we can swim for it. If any of us are bugged, the water will take care of it.”

“That’s crazy.” Nathan answered.

“You got a better idea?”

THUNK!

Sara blinked.

Blood spattered her skin. But it wasn’t her own dark ichor. It was red. Gary stared at his chest in shock, a small hole was torn through his chest just beneath the collar bone. A second hole punched through the front window, sending a cobweb of cracks throughout the pane.

“GARY! NO!” Sara screeched, pressing her hands firmly over the bullet hole to staunch the blood flow. Gary’s eyes rolled up into the back of his head.

“HOLD ON!” Nathan yelled. Sara looked up in time to see the hood crash over the side of a bridge and dark blue water rush up to meet them.

The impact and water pressure simply ripped the weakened front windshield apart, sending small shards of glass through the cabin. Water filled the space in moments. Sara hardly noticed the impact, but Nathan seemed to be dazed. Taking the initiative, she used her claws to shred their seatbelts apart, freeing the captives. With Nathan firmly in one hand, and Gary’s limp form in the other, she kicked out the back window towards the light of the city, the current whipped them away.

By the time the group surfaced, the bridge was nowhere to be seen. Nathan spluttered as the cold air hit his face. “Did it work?”

Sara was too busy dragging Gary to shore to bother looking, more worried about sharks than gunshots with Gary’s blood in the water. A second later, Nathan was helping her, “What the hell happened to him?”

“He got shot right before we took a dive. They got him.”

Nathan took off his jacket and laid it on the muddy bank, giving the eleven year old something to lie on. Sara obliged, ripping Gary’s shirt away from the wound and compressing the wads of cloth on both sides of the gaping hole, front and back. Nathan checked the kid’s pulse, then put an ear to his chest. “He’s not breathing.”

Nathan put his lips to the boy’s mouth, breathing forcefully into his lungs. A second later, Gary spluttered, spitting water out onto the ground. Sara laughed with joy.

“S-Sara? We get away?” Gary groaned hoarsely.

“Yeah, yeah we did Gary. We made it.” She smiled down at him.

“You’re really beautiful, you know.”

Sara blinked.

“You’re the first person who was ever there when I needed help, y’know?” The kid coughed up some blood, “My Mom and Dad, they were great and all, but they were always fighting crime. Going after the bad guys. I was an afterthought. They weren’t there, then they died and couldn’t be there. My foster parents? I was a convenience. A tax break, a scam. When I wasn’t, they hit me. They weren’t there for me. You were.”

Sara’s black tears dripped onto Gary’s chest. Gary smiled, “Don’t cry, Sara. Hey, Nathan, you believe in anything? Y’know, like the hereafter? Go to church?”

Nathan paused for a moment, then shook his head, “Not for a long time. When you see the things people do to each other, like I have… you kinda lose faith. But, yeah, I do believe. I have to, or I’d stop trying.”

Gary smiled weakly, “Good, that’s how I feel sometimes. It’s hard holding onto that hope isn’t it? I’ve always liked the idea of reincarnation. You know about that? When your spirit comes back for another chance? I’d like that.”

Nathan nodded, “Sounds pretty good to me.”

“Hey, Sara?” Gary whispered.

“Yes Gary?”

“Think next time you could be my mommy?”

“I promise, Gary, I promise.”

Sara lent forward to kiss the dying boy on the forehead. His body collapsed into blue ash and was swept away by the breeze.

Chapter 2: The Covenant of ARC.

Sara stumbled through the undergrowth behind Nathan as he led her through the waterside park. It’d taken her some time to calm down after Gary’s death, and a bit longer to dry off their clothes. Try as he might, Nathan couldn’t find a bug anywhere, even checking his underwear for wires. “Must have been on the car,” Nathan continually muttered to himself, “Must have been on the car.”

Sara could tell that Nathan was having a hard time as well. After breaking down on the beach, She felt numb to it all. She didn’t like the feeling. “I should be feeling something now. What am I missing?”

Nathan glanced over his shoulder, “You’re exhausted. We’ve been shot at, fallen off a bridge and had a friend murdered. It doesn’t get rougher than that.”

“Unless you’re the one who killed him.” Sara retorted.

“Cut that out,” Nathan snapped, “in all of my career as a police officer, I’ve lost one partner. That was enough for me, I almost quit. I said the same things to myself, ‘I killed him’, ‘I should have been there’, ‘I could have saved him’. And maybe if things had been different, yeah, he might be alive. You like to talk about choice? Try this one: he made his choice to be with us tonight, knowing that it was dangerous. But the killer made the choice to pull the trigger. The best we can do now is honor what Gary died for and find his killer.”

“I sucked out his soul!” Sara screamed.

Nathan grabbed her shoulders, “You don’t know that! Besides, I daresay that kiss was the kindest thing that kid ‘d ever experienced. Now, come on, we’ve got to get you inside before dawn.”

It didn’t take us long to find a motel. Nathan sauntered up to the cashier as if he wore half-soaked clothing every day of his life. I kept my back to the window, trying to hide my new eyes.

The cashier seemed to be happy to accept cash. “That your daughter, sir?”

Nathan glanced over his shoulder, covering his double take, “Yeah. I was bringing her back from a costume party when our car broke down.”

“Oh. Bad luck, eh?”

“Yeah. Got that key for me?”

Sara kept Nathan between her and the clerk as they headed for the room, making sure that he didn’t get a good look at her face. She didn’t speak until the door was closed behind them, “Daughter? What on earth could have provoked that?”

Nathan stared at her for a minute before answering, “How long has it been since you’ve taken a good look at yourself in a mirror?”

“Er… I saw my face in the morgue, but… I guess I haven’t had a good look since this all started.”

Nathan shook his head, “Then you better take the first shower. Take your time, I’ll put the heater on and get the place warmed up.” He opened the cupboard, threw Sara a bathrobe, then put the ‘Do not disturb’ sign on the door handle.

At first, Sara tried to ignore the full length mirror to the rear of the bathroom, keeping her back to it while she stripped out of her ill-fitting clothes. She then screwed up her courage, turned and opened her eyes.

The person in the mirror was nothing like her old self. As Michael Waite, he’d been a 6 foot tall, gangly, 25 year old man with pasty yellow skin, hair from chest to crotch and no muscle tone to speak of. His hair had always been greasy and prone to split ends, and was never very lustrous or healthy. His condition had prevented him from getting any decent exercise, particularly because he’d never been able to stand sunlight for more than a few minutes at a time without heavy clothing, sunblock and glasses.

Sara, on the other hand, was slightly less than five foot tall, with perfect, hairless, white skin, slender yet well defined hips, delicate shoulders and kissable lips. Her legs were smooth and gracefully curved. Her stomach, while not ‘ripped’, was pleasantly toned as was the rest of her body. The line of her rib cage was visible beneath the swell of her small breasts. While too skinny to be a classic beauty, the girl Sara was staring at in the mirror had her own mysterious, dangerous, beauty. Even her dark nails, eyes and lips seemed to simply add to the look.

And she appeared to be about thirteen years old.

Sara stared for about five minutes before she shook herself and span to check her back. Her curves were far more visible from the side. Her back arched gracefully over her buttocks, which were slender and pert. This led her to lean forward to get a better look at her face, which had changed slightly over the last day. Her skin and bone structure had smoothed out, lending her features a much more feminine touch. She now had a small widow’s peak on her high brow. Her slender cheeks and pointed chin lent an aristocratic look, along with her cutely upturned nose.

She shook herself again. She was beautiful, certainly, but sinister. As hard as she rubbed, the black around her eyes and mouth wouldn’t come off. Her eyes themselves seemed to burn red in the dark pits of her eye sockets, framed by the black locks of her hair. They were more like the eyes of a cat, crossed with a lizard. Unnatural. Combined with her jutting canines, she looked like a vampire from a bad Hammer flick.

She sighed and stepped into the shower. The hot water running down the curves of her body was soothing and relaxing. She just let the water wash away all her worries and, for a while, forgot everything outside of the cubical.

Nathan fell off the bed when he saw Sara come out of the bathroom. She blushed and unconsciously tried to adjust the hem of the silk robe, which only reached to just above mid thigh. Blood pounded in her temples, “The guests must usually be a bit more racy around here.”

Nathan grinned, “I’m not complaining.”

Sara glared at him, “Aren’t I a bit young for you… daddy?”

Nathan chuckled, grabbed his robe and pushed past her into the bathroom door, “Just remember dear, daddy knows best.” He closed the door before she could retort.

Sara threw herself onto the bed and waited. The sound of spurting water preceded a sharp scream by only a millisecond.

“By the way, daddy,” Sara grinned wickedly, “I think I used the last of the hot water.”

Sara couldn’t sleep that day either. While Nathan slept, she unconsciously poked and prodded her body in various places. She could feel the tentacles underneath her skin, even make them ripple and move. She decided to test the limits of her control, concentrating, she made a tentacle pop out of her wrist. There was no pain or any unpleasant sensation. She made the tip sprout a fanged maw and throat, then a claw, then an eye. Startled, she found herself looking at herself from two different perspectives, and quickly retracted the tentacle. At least she knew she could do it.

The day passed slowly, so she decided to read some of the magazines on the bookshelf. Thirty minutes later, she had read everything in the room, including pamphlets and menus. “Nathan! Nathan!”

Nathan shot to his feet, yanking his gun out from under his pillow, “What! Where are they?”

“Not that,” Sara sighed, “come and check this out.”

Nathan groaned, putting his gun into the waistband of his jeans (he’d worn them to bed ‘just in case’). “Can’t this wait until tonight?”

“No, I’ve got to test this. Pick a book out of the book shelf and ask me a question from it.”

Nathan groaned, not in the mood, but complied, “OK. Page 151 of Natural Aromatherapy, third paragraph, second sentence.”

“Mixing different oils may have a less positive effect,” Sara quoted, “always test the solution before applying to the skin.”

Nathan plucked another book from the shelf, “Vittorio the Vampire, by Anne Rice. Page 35…”

“Has a squashed mosquito in the bottom right hand corner over the word ‘freebooter’.” Sara interrupted.

Nathan stopped. “Have you always had a photographic memory?”

Sara shook her head. “This is new to me. I couldn’t sleep, so I tried reading something. I’ve read everything on the shelf already.”

“Crap,” Nathan swore, “I’m not going to be able to sleep either now. When was the last time you got some kip?”

“Four or five days ago. If you don’t count being dead for a few hours.”

Nathan blinked. “Hardy-ha-ha. What the hell is going on with you?”

“I’ve been asking myself that for two days.” Sara sighed. “I think it might be time to call for help.”

“No way. I’m taking you in, the State Police can protect you, get to the bottom of this…”

Sara shook her head, “No they can’t. On the bright side, the guys that shot us yesterday and… killed Gary… were super villains, or their agents. Either way, there’s someone out there after me who can control people’s minds. The State doesn’t have a charter to go after SPB’s, they’re not equipped, that’s why they leave it to the hero teams or other agencies like the MCO. On the other hand, if the MCO are gunning for me as well, they might have been behind the attack on our car. They’re government, they had both the motive and opportunity to bug your car, and they don’t like mutants. The Police would probably just hand me over to them wrapped in a tight little bow.”

“You’ve gotta trust someone, Sara.” Nathan sighed.

“Yeah, I do.” Sara replied, “I trust you and I trust the old lady. It’s time to call Dr. Bell.”

Nathan fished the card out of Sara’s discarded capris, “Shit. Water’s destroyed it.”

“555 030 74698.” Sara quoted, tapping her temple.

Nathan passed across the phone, “You’re starting to enjoy this, aren’t you?”

“You have no idea.” Sara confirmed while she dialed the numbers. The phone rang three times before someone answered.

“Hello, Dr. Bell speaking.” The voice was of a young woman, probably in her late twenties.

“Doctor Bell? I…” Sara considered her choice of words for a moment. “I’m a mutant, I need your help.”

“Are you in immediate danger?”

“No, I don’t think so, but people have tried to kill me over the last two days.”

“Who gave you my number?”

“An older woman arranged for me to get your card yesterday. She called herself Ms. P.”

There was a pause. “Where are you now?”

Sara scoffed, “I’m not comfortable telling you that just yet.”

“Yes, I understand, I’m sorry. It’s just…” The voice sounded flustered, “I’m sitting in the car park of the Bay View Motel, Sydney. On the recommendation of a woman calling herself Mrs. P.”

Sara sighed. Her guardian angel seemed to have done it again. “We’re in room 9. Come on up.”

Nathan’s eyes almost popped out of his head when Doctor Donna Bell walked through the door. She was easily six foot tall, tanned skin and long blonde hair down to her waist, held in an attractive ponytail. Her smart business attire was conservative and tasteful, yet managed not to conceal any of her femininity, while her glasses simply screamed ‘brainiac’.

Sara casually snapped his jaw shut before he could start drooling and embarrass himself. “Doctor Bell, I presume? I apologize for the cliché, but it was all I could think of on short notice.”

Donna smiled, “Michael Waite. Honestly, you’re not what I was expecting. Was that a clichéd enough reply?”

Sara chuckled, “You’ll do nicely. Don’t you think so, Nathan?”

Nathan just nodded, not trusting his tongue yet.

“And please,” Sara continued, “call me Sara.”

Donna raised an eyebrow as she sat down, “Why not Michelle?”

Sara shrugged, “Seemed a little passé to use the feminine variation. Besides, Sara was my mother’s name, and she kept telling me that I looked much more like her than my father.”

The doctor took out her palm pilot and made a quick note, “I hope you don’t mind if I keep a record of this.”

“Not at all. Now, if you could explain to me what ARC is, who you are and why you decided to park outside this morning, I’d be very grateful.” Asking a laundry list of questions was starting to become easier the more she had to do it.

Donna chuckled, “Yes, of course. Forgive me. As you know, my name is Donna Bell and I am a field researcher for the Arkham Research Consortium, based in Arkham, Massachusetts. What that means is, I track down, aid and study mutants who find themselves in trouble. We are an international corporation with a world wide charter and deep connections with various other mutant groups. The majority of our sponsors are mutants or those related to mutants. We do liaise with various governments and attempt to influence mutant policy, but we are not a government agency.”

She took a deep breath, “I, myself, am a mutant, classified as an Exemplar 2. I was fortunate that my changes were wholly beneficial and not too far above the human norm. My parents switched my school and I went on to university, gaining a masters in both psychology and parapsychology from Miskatonic U. It was through my course in parapsyke that I came into contact with the mutant community and earned my place at ARC.”

Sara smiled, counting her questions off with her fingers, “Two down and one to go.”

Donna chuckled, making another note on her palm pilot, “Last, but not least, one of our major contributors decided to drop in on her way through from Boston a day or two ago. She came straight to my office and gave me very specific instructions on where I had to go and what would happen when I got here. So far, she hasn’t made a single mistake, and I can tell you, for a prognosticator, that’s pretty good.”

“Prognosticator?” Nathan asked.

“A mutant who predicts the future,” Sara supplied, “very rare. Most burn out after one or two manifestations. There are also Augers, but their gifts are usually more limited to yes, no or maybe answers.”

“Very good,” Donna clapped, “most teens that I work with don’t know the first thing about mutants. Shows what our education system is coming to.”

Sara blushed, “Er, Doctor, you do know who I am, don’t you?”

Donna tapped her chin with her finger, “No… I’m sorry, I don’t think I’ve heard your name before, though it does sound familiar.”

Sara sighed. Fame was a fickle thing, “I am… was, excuse me, Michael Waite, the writer.”

Donna just stared blankly.

“I wrote horror books. Like Stephen King? H.P. Lovecraft? Bram Stoker?”

Donna shook her head, “I’m sorry, I don’t really read fiction that much. Were you popular?”

“Uh, yeah. My second book, ‘Incongruity’, was the 1# bestseller for eight months.”

Donna whistled, “Well, that’s quite an achievement for a 13 year old.”

Nathan was busy trying to stifle his mirth, sputtering into his hand.

“I’m… I was 25.”

“WHAT!” Donna shouted, rather piercingly. “You regressed! But that’s unheard of!”

Sara shrugged, “Hey, I didn’t ask for it.”

Donna started wringing her hands, “If you regressed back to 13 years old along with a change in gender, that means the BIT probably consolidated when you reached puberty, but somehow it didn’t kick in until recently. OK, I think we can save these questions for the car. We’ve got a long trip to Arkham and a lot of explaining to do.”

“Exemplar 2, no, maybe 3.” Donna surmised as Darling Harbour disappeared far below into the distance, the ARC sub-orbital shuttle carrying them far away from Sydney. Though Sara had never heard of ARC’s private shuttle, or even that there were privately owned sub-orbital shuttles, she found herself mesmerized by the view out the window as they speared through the clouds. They sat in a private cabin, Sara facing backwards while Donna and Nathan faced front. Nathan took the outer seat next to the door, one eye out the window into the hall. Donna leant over her briefcase trying to work out a preliminary classification of Sara’s powers, “Shifter 3, limited? Darn I’m not sure. Regen 4 or 5 for certain… wait the same thing could happen if you were Exemplar 6, Shifter 3…”

Sara sighed. Getting from the door of their motel to the car in the sunlight hadn’t been simple. Though the burns faded seconds after entering the BM with its tinted windows, watching her flesh smoke and blister wasn’t fun. In contrast, the Airport was easy, moving from building to building via covered walkways and conveyors, Sara hadn’t ever really noticed the tinting on the windows at Sydney International Terminal before. Whatever pull ARC had with customs was impressive, the customs agents hadn’t even given the group a second glance, Nathan still carried his service pistol.

“You said something about reading auras?” Donna interrupted her thoughts.

“Yeah. Everyone’s got feint colors to them. Purple seems to be lust or something… I get that a lot. Sometimes its almost like I provoke it, like I’m controlling people’s emotions, or minds. I’m not sure either, I haven’t done it on purpose.”

“Hmmm. Esper of some type, still uncontrolled power. And what about this ‘feeding’.”

Sara shuddered, “OK, you had to know sometime. So far, I’ve vampirized three people. Each time, it was like I was possessed, I couldn’t help myself. I get hungry, ravenous. When it becomes too much, my body seems to take over a bit and I grow tentacles. The tentacles have little mouths on them and they burrow into the victim’s skin, where they start draining blood. I do it with my mouth and tongue too. Along with the blood, I draw in the person’s aura like a black hole. When I’m done, the body disintegrates into blue ash.”

Donna frowned, “Have you seen that, Mr. Coleman?”

“Not exactly. The boy who was shot had time for a last confession of sorts. Sara kissed him on the forehead and he disintegrated. The forensics team that analyzed Joe Mullin’s remains said that the blue powder was made of the same atoms and compounds that you find in the human body, only in solid configuration.”

Donna tapped her chin again, “Yes. There are rumors in the occult world of a spell that can destroy a living organism by breaking it down into its components. The end result was supposed to be a cobalt blue powder.”

“Doctor,” Sara licked her lips nervously, “am I sucking out people’s souls?”

Donna glanced over her glasses at Sara, “No, I don’t think so. The existence of the soul is still in debate among parapsychologists. The proven existence of ghosts and other forms of undead is a much maligned study that has muddied the waters on the subject. Practitioners of Necromancy claim to be able to call a soul back from the dead and place it in a corpse, but most of these Zombies are mindless husks animated by life energy with only a semi-autonomous mind. A few mutants have been able to live on after death as decaying corpses, but the source of their power comes from elsewhere, apparently. Personally, my theory is that you take the blood and life energy from living organisms, disrupting the being’s pattern and causing it to collapse into its components. The soul, if it exists, would depart for whatever awaits over the boundary. If you sucked out someone’s soul, you’d just have a corpse, or at worst a living machine.”

Nathan looked puzzled, “Did you understand that?”

“Scarily enough,” Sara answered, “Yes. So I’m just a murderer, not a soul-sucking monster.”

Donna sighed, “Some mutants, like myself, have it easy when they change. Some have it hard. What you’ve done is regrettable, but not entirely your fault. I’ve seen trained and prepared super heroes lose it in the face of the enemy, and had to put them back together afterwards. And against much better odds than what you’ve had to endure. Ever heard of a Rager?”

Nathan piped up, “Yeah. They gain strength when they get mad. Some buddies of mine in Civic Repair had to clean up after a few got into a brawl downtown.”

Donna nodded, “Exactly. Ragers can be dumb, smart, educated or ill-mannered, but once they get mad, there’s going to be property damage. Any day that a Rager doesn’t kill, maim or injure someone is considered a good day. ARC funds several programs that combine methods of hypnotism, relaxation and meditation to help Ragers control their emotions and their actions during a frenzy. Most have up to a dozen kills to their name within the first year of their manifestation. Compared to Ragers, your problem is minor. You are in control of this hunger, Sara. You can redirect it to suitable targets, I daresay like this odious ‘Bob Thomas’. Or more positively, animals and plant life.”

“I’m not sure I could… I mean, is it right for me to suck out the energy of a dog or cat? What did they ever do to me?” Sara vacillated.

“I had a steak for dinner last night.” Nathan answered, cryptically.

Donna and Sara looked at each other in bewilderment.

“The point is, did that cow deserve to die because I was hungry? No, probably not. But I’ve got to eat, don’t I? Or I’ll starve. I had vegetables with it too, did my carrots deserve to die because I want to live? No. But if it’s a choice between me or them, It’ll be them, every time.”

There it was again, Sara chuckled to herself. The chuckle became full throated laughter. Soon, Donna joined in and Nathan laughed along with them, not wanting to be left behind.

They were interrupted by the stewardess, who poked her head politely through the door, “Good evening. We’ll be landing at the Sanitorium in a few minutes, Donna.”

Donna smiled back, “Thanks, Liz.”

Sara watched the stewardess walk down the hallway, “She’s another mutant, isn’t she?”

Donna nodded absently, “Yes. 85% of ARC employees are mutants of one type or another.”

Nathan was watching the stewardess as well, though his gaze was directed somewhat lower than Sara’s, “I’ve gotta see this place!”

The ARC building was a sight to behold. Built over and under the refurbished Arkham Sanitorium, the grounds were splendid rolling hills of green, punctuated by artificial lakes and Japanese rock gardens. The building itself was a magnificent amalgam of old, 18th century, gothic styles with 21st century chrome and glass.

“It’s beautiful.” Sara assessed as they stepped onto the runway.

Donna smiled proudly, “Yes, we’re rather fond of it ourselves. Impressed, Mr. Coleman?”

“Please call me Nathan.” He answered shyly.

Donna grinned mischievously, “Like a big, cute, puppy-dog isn’t he?”

Sara nodded knowingly, playing along, “You can take him home with you if you want, I’ve almost managed to potty train him.”

“That was uncalled for.” Nathan muttered, storming towards the front doors. The girls tittered, following behind. A minute or so later, the shuttle rocketed back into the sky, becoming a tiny dot on the horizon.

The inside was just as grand as the outside, though more reliant on bare concrete than luxurious furnishings, the building was built more like a monolith than an office block. The centre of the building was taken up by the original Arkham Sanitorium, preserved behind three feet of bulletproof glass and reinforced steel. Warning signs plastered over the single airlock declared that neither ARC, nor the US government, was responsible for any persons caught inside without proper clearance.

“Our research includes all things paranormal, including magic, mutations, regular science and devises.” Donna explained as she led them to the upper floors above the preserved building. “As such, many of the experiments are unstable and dangerous, so our headquarters has to be able to withstand regular explosions and accidents. You get used to them after a while. Up here we handle the simple things like administration and mutant assessment. All the really scary stuff goes on deep underground.”

Sara and Nathan marveled at some of the rooms they passed by. Most were offices containing mad scientist types in white lab coats, though a mutant with seven eyestalks ringing the top of his head did pass by. Some seemed to be working on various chemicals or harvesting strange plants. Others were busy soldering or working on their computers. Finally, the trio arrived at a steel door marked ‘Conference Room 1’. Donna entered first, gesturing to two older gentlemen in lab coats and a middle aged lady in a blue shawl, who decided to put down her knitting. “This is Dr. Otto, Dr. Tanaka and our benefactor, Mrs. Potter.”

Sara shook each of the Doctor’s hands before coming to Mrs. Potter, gracing her with a not-too clumsy curtsey, “Thank-you, Mrs. P. I owe you more than I can say.”

Mrs. Potter smiled motherly, “I’m sorry I couldn’t do more, child. Gary was a good boy, but I did what was best for him.” She turned to the rest of the gathering, “Now, you people have a lot to talk about, as Donna is so fond of saying, so I’ll be on my way. Look out for her as best you can, gentlemen, or you’ll have me to deal with and I play a mean game of chess when I set my mind to it. See you later dear, and buck up, things will get better.”

Sara stared after the amazing woman as she left.

“I know how you feel, Michael-san.” Dr. Tanaka smiled, pulling a seat out from under the table for her.

Sara sat, “Please, it’s Sara now. So, where do we start?”

As the schedule panned out, most of the next week was taken up with tests, tests and more tests. Sara’s ability to go without sleep allowed the researchers to work in shifts 24 hours a day, though Donna insisted that she get at least 4 hours of her own time at night. Both newcomers were given their own bedrooms. Not trusting the ARC researchers completely, Nathan carried his pistol, fully loaded at all times. They were also given several pairs of official ARC research clothing, consisting of dark blue overalls, a black singlet and a tracksuit, socks and sneakers.

Though the Wednsday of their arrival was entirely taken up with organizing her schedule, Thursday began with Xavier test, overseen by Mr. Tanaka. “The Xavier Test,” Tanaka-san explained, “is much like an IQ test and a footrace. It consists of several challenges that rate your average performance in different talents based on standardized measurements. For example, we’ll get you to run on this treadmill to test your speed and endurance. Naturally, the barbells test your strength and so on. All fairly simple and straightforward. If you’re ready for the first test, we’ll start you on the treadmill.”

Simple and straightforward turned out to be an utter lie. The first time Sara used the treadmill, everything was going well, the walk wasn’t too fast and the incline gradually raised to thirty degrees. Then a wrecking ball crashed through the wall, aimed straight at her head. Once again, like the bullet before, time seemed to slow, allowing her to dive off the platform and dodge the solid iron ball.

“Excellent reflexes, Sara.” Dr. Tanaka ticked the appropriate box. “Now, back to endurance training.”

‘Endurance training’ turned out to be speed training. The moment Sara stepped back on the track, she was running to keep her balance. Meanwhile, the incline kept increasing well beyond 30 degrees, until Sara found herself climbing a perfectly smooth vertical incline.

“I guess we can add wall crawling to the list, Dr. Tanaka.” One of the assistants grinned.

“Indeed.” Came the only reply.

Though Nathan had several heart attacks in the first few hours, Sara decided to play along, taking each challenge as it came. Every time she thought she knew one of her limits, she kept breaking it. The barbells were the first case in point. Each time they increased the weight, her body would adjust itself to match the challenge. As she lifted, muscle mass would expand, straining the seems of her clothes, then collapse when she let go.

“It’s a shifter trait,” Dr. Tanaka explained, “your body is adding muscle mass to compensate for the weight. At the moment you’re doing it instinctively, but perhaps you can learn to do it consciously as well. We’ll have to work on that.”

The same thing happened when crushing soda cans, though of different strengths of metal. Another assistant whistled when Sara managed to crush the adamantite can after ten minutes of effort. Reflex testing turned out to be a breeze, despite the six hours of previous strength testing. Her body didn’t seem to get tired as long as it was fed. Flexibility was almost a joke, Sara watched with amazement as Dr. Tanaka managed to bend her elbow backwards without any pain or loss of control.

To test her mind, Sara played a very weird game called Dis-Chess, played on a 3 dimensional chess board. Worse, the rules would change randomly once every five minutes, necessitating fast play in order to win. Somehow, Sara managed to win the game 8 out of 10 times. “It’s not the world record,” Tanaka-san smiled proudly, “but it is impressive.”

Over the next few days, Sara took to dressing comfortably in a sports bra and panties, tracksuit pants and singlet, mostly foregoing footware altogether. For some reason, Donna took this as a good sign that she was adjusting to her change. As the days progressed, meals became easier. Sara choked at eating dogs and chickens at first, so her daily meal consisted of a few common pot plants. She graduated to chickens on the third day and managed a cat on the fourth.

“Exemplar 3, Shifter 4, I think.” Dr. Tanaka mumbled to himself the Saturday after the full test was finished, trying to fill out the examination forms. “And from all accounts, Regen 4. I’m sorry, Sara, but we don’t have much of a test for Regenerators. At the extreme ends, people tend to die from injury.”

Sara chuckled at Dr. Tanaka’s wry smile, “I can show you what I know I can do, Doctor. Any knives about?”

Ten minutes later one of the lab assistants was losing his lunch in the hallway.

“By all that’s holy, doesn’t that hurt?” Another assistant stared as Sara’s hand grew back for the second time. He was looking slightly pale.

“No, not really. There’s a slight twinge, but that’s all. I’ve been shot three times, and all that managed to do was stun me for a second. My skin burns in the sun, but it heals as soon as I step into the shade.”

“Fascinating,” Dr. Tanaka smiled, his eyes alight, “do you mind if we try a few more things? I’d like to get a sense of any vulnerabilities.”

Sara shrugged, “Go ahead.”

So began a long list of what would have been, for anyone else, an 8 hour torture session. Stab wounds, with various materials, healed in a second along with bullet wounds and lasers. Fire didn’t work, acid didn’t work, and the tazer tickled. Nathan managed to stop the party at bisection when Tanaka ran out of healthy lab assistants.

With a sigh of pure delight, Tanaka made a big note on his clip board, “Possible Regen 6. REGEN 6. Do you have any idea how rare a 6 is in any stable mutant? I can count the number of known 6 ratings on my fingers and toes. If this is true, and considering some of the details of your transformation it just might be, you’re going to live a very, very long time, Sara.”

Sara gulped. She wasn’t sure if this was good news or bad news.

The next day, Sara was taken to the medical wing and subjected to every scan, x-ray and sensor known to man and mutant kind. Doctor Otto was in charge for that stint, the session ended up with Sara watching various holographic displays of her body in different positions, all of which added up to a complex picture of her physiology.

“As far as we can tell,” Dr. Otto explained with a sigh, “you aren’t human any more, Sara. Not even close. See these cells gathered around your bone structure? They’re almost a solid mass of tendrils. Even the brain has been replaced. Extraordinary.”

“I’m starting to get used to people saying stuff like that. So, Doctor, if I’m not human, what am I?”

“Cancer.”

Sara broke into a fit of coughing, “What?”

“All your internal organs have been replaced by cells very similar to malignant cancer cells. These cells have taken over and replaced all the functions of your major organs. You don’t need to breathe or eat because you have no digestive system or lungs. You can talk by sucking air into a cavity in your chest and expelling it through a simulated voice box. Every cell in your body also acts as a neurone, your whole body is now your brain, which explains your superhuman perceptions and photographic memory. I daresay you’ll find mental tasks such as mathematics far easier than they once were. Also, you have no physical weak points. It doesn’t matter if someone shoots you in the head or the heart, you’ll just grow right on back.”

At that point, Sara decided to take a break from tests for the rest of the day, retiring to a welcome psychotherapy session with Donna. Naturally, they started with less strenuous tests, much to Sara’s chagrin, before moving on to more serious topics.

“How are you feeling?” Donna began once Sara was comfortable.

“Confused,” Sara answered tentatively, “a week ago I was human.”

Donna’s brow furrowed, “What do you consider human, Sara? Are all mutants part of another race?”

Sara shook her head, “No, not at all. Lets take you, for example. You have lungs, a heart, a brain. Liver, kidneys and even an appendix. You’re a bit smarter, a bit stronger and a bit better looking than average, but you’re still human. If I shoot you, you’ll bleed red. I’m not even similar to you on a genetic level. Six million base pairs? More than a billion memo groups? You’re looking at mother nature’s attempt at over-engineering.”

“At least you’ve got a sense of humor about it.” Donna smiled.

“I don’t have much of a choice. Look, everywhere I go people smile at me and tell me how well I’m taking this, or how great it is that I’m doing so well. To tell you the truth, I’m not, I’m just rolling with the punches.” Sara sighed. “As far as I can see, I’ve got a few alternatives. One: Crawl into a corner, curl up and wait to die. I’ve tried that and it’s not all its cracked up to be. Added to that, it seems that I’d be in for a long wait.”

Sara held up two fingers, “Two: Deny that I’m a girl. Yeah, that’s funny. A guy with a vagina and tits, not to mention curves like Uma Thurman. Besides, I don’t see what’s so bad about my new body. I’ve been a dorky looking guy for a quarter of a century, it might be nice to be a girl for a change.”

“Three: Accept I’m a girl and a mutant, get on with my life.” Sara chuckled. “A skirt doesn’t seem so bad, but looks so impractical.”

“Four,” Sara paused for dramatic effect, “Go mad, become a super villain and try to take over the world. I hate paperwork. I know that sounds funny coming from a writer, but filling out forms is a pain in the butt. Besides, I’m not the dictator type. All I want is a bit of peace, a good challenge or two and someone to share it with. That’s it.”

“So, what are you doing now?” Donna questioned.

“I’m going with number 3. I owe it to Gary to do my best. To be honest, I have a love/hate relationship with this body. For the first time in my life, I’m free of pain. I’ve paid a high price for this, though, too high. But, like I said, I’m trying to roll with the punches. I’m a girl now, there’s no denying it. I’m a living cancer as well, there’s no denying that. All I can do is accept it and do my best.”

Donna changed tack, “Your file mentions that your mother died of cancer, four years ago?”

Sara nodded.

“You were 21 at the time, then. How much do you know about your mother? What about your father?”

Sara took a deep breath, “My mother became pregnant with me when she was very young and living in Dunedin, New Zealand, where I was raised until I was 6. She was about fifteen when I was born, living in a boarding home. We moved to my grandfather’s house in Sydney so I could attend school and she could help grandpa raise the mortgage money. When he died two years later, we’d managed to pay off the house. My family’s had several genetic disorders as far back as anyone can remember, among which was a genetic strain of Porphyria. You’ve heard of it?”

Donna nodded, “Sufferers have a purple tinge to their blood and urine. Prolonged exposure to bright lights burn and blister the skin. Effects can be alleviated with regular injections of heme, a substance found in the blood.”

Sara nodded, “Yeah. My publishers like to bring it up, grabs the imagination of the whole vampire set. It’s good for sales, they tell me. But I had to live with it. I suppose that’s why I’m not more freaked out at the moment, I’ve always been abnormal.”

“We were talking about your parents, remember?” Donna steered the conversation back on course. “Was your mother or father a mutant?”

“My mom? No, not that I ever saw. She was really sickly, had it a lot worse than most of the family did. I don’t know who my dad was, so I can’t tell you anything about him. I’ve never met the man.”

“Has he ever been in contact with you or your family?”

“Other than one night with Mom, no.” Sara replied flippantly, “No letters, no calls, nothing. Mom just didn’t talk about him, neither did Grandpa. I never got any answers, so I just stopped asking.”

“Have you considered that he might have been a mutant?” Donna pressed.

Sara shrugged, “Not really. What does it matter now?”

“I suppose it doesn’t.” Donna gave up. “Oh, by the way, Sara…”

“Yes, Doctor?”

“You don’t look anything like Uma Thurman.”

Donna barely managed to dodge the cushion that was thrown at her.

Monday, September 25.

Sara was in for a surprise when she came out of her room the next morning. Dr. Otto and Dr. Tanaka stood in the hallway, pouring over a sheet of notes, so engrossed she had to cough a few times before they caught on.

“Sara, there you are!” Dr. Otto smiled. “I have good news and bad news. I’m afraid that you have managed to defeat the Xavier test. After the results we obtained last night, it has become unreasonable that you should be tested against standards meant for relatively normal, yet powerful, human beings.”

Sara grinned, “What’s the bad news?”

Tanaka-san smiled, “That was the good news, Sara. The bad news is that the executive board wants us to do a temporal spectroanalysis, and we’re in agreement with their decision. You see, your physiology is alien to this planet, in fact there is only one type of being known to share your traits, and we have a specialist in that field flying in from London on the sub-orbital shuttle right now. The problem with the TS machine is that it’s a devise. Do you know what that is?”

Sara nodded, “I’ve been doing a bit of reading in my time off. What does this thing do, then?”

“To cut a long story short, we don’t know.” Otto admitted. “What we do know is that it will give us your complete genetic history; your current genetic breakdown; a list of powers, abilities and talents; and, in your case, possible origins.”

“That’s it?” Sara laughed derisively, “Why didn’t we do that before?”

“There are a few catches,” Tanaka took up the battle, “which is why we only use it in extreme circumstances. The Xavier test is fairly accurate, takes more time but is more efficient and cheap than the TS, which is expensive, difficult to operate and only works one time in four. It is also a devise, so it requires its deviser to operate it and nobody except he knows exactly how it does whatever it does.”

“I asked for an explanation once,” Otto shuddered, “and, honestly, I still have dreams about the answer.”

Sara stared at them both, then sighed, “Well, if I don’t do at least one mindbendingly impossible task before breakfast, I feel my day hasn’t been fulfilled. Lets do it.”

The TS devise was big. Really big. A retractable bridge led to a podium inside a completely spherical metal chamber about fifty feet in diameter. On the podium sat a single, throne-like chair. Sara had to be re-dressed in a special, form fitting, white neoprene body suit. Dr. Tanaka walked her to the platform and made sure she was comfortable, “You’ll have to sit here for five minutes without moving once we start. You have to remain perfectly still. If you twitch, bat an eyelid or suddenly need to go to the bathroom, let us know, because we’ll have to start all over again. There’s a microphone and a camera in the ceiling, so we can see and hear you at all times. Good luck.”

“And the same to you.” Sara replied, relaxing back into the seat and closing her eyes in preparation.

The procedure seemed to go on forever, and repeated more than twenty times. Finally, Tanaka came back with Otto to escort her to the main booth, where the results were flooding in fast. Donna was waiting outside, holding her breath.

“Anyone would think that this was exciting.” Sara murmured into her ear as the boys practically skipped over to the console.

“Well, it’s a bit more than boys and their toys, this time,” Donna grinned, “they only get to use this contraption once or twice a year. And this is the second time they’ve got it to work, even with the deviser’s help.”

“Where is this deviser, anyway?”

Donna pointed to the other end of the room, at a tall metal cylinder. A small trapdoor popped open in its top, extending a speaker on a scissor arm from the hole. “Hi, Sara, pleased to meet you and all that, wot?”

“Ah… yeah, pleased to meet you too. I’m sorry, I didn’t catch your name.”

“OH! Yes, of course. How silly of me. My name is Microcroft. How do you do?” The cylinder gave a jerky, rattling, bow from the cogs where it was bolted to the floor. “I apologize for my appearance, but I replaced my fleshy body some time ago and have yet to update it using the latest technologies.”

“Oookay. Hey, hasn’t anyone tried to sue you for your name yet?”

The cylinder broke into a tinny laugh (what else would you expect?), “No, I’m too small a fish. I don’t get the same publicity as the Avenger or any of that lot, so they leave me well enough alone. I know it’s odd, but I have a warped sense of humor.”

“I see.” Sara managed to keep a straight face. Donna was having a little trouble though. “How does this thing work exactly?”

“NO! NO! NO!” Dr. Otto clamped a hand over Sara’s mouth. “Ha-ha… er, sorry, Microcroft, but we really better be showing Sara her results now. Nice talking to you, bye-bye now.”

Otto dragged Sara to the other side of the room, Donna following quickly behind. “That was close. I think one mindbending event is enough for one morning, don’t you Ms. Waite?”

“Curiosity may have killed the cat, doctor, but it also invented fire. OK, so who or what am I?”

Dr. Tanaka produced, of all things, a dot matrix printout and read down the list. “Subject: Sara Waite. Height… Weight… Measurements… Shoe Size… A-ha, something relevant. Powers: Exemplar 4, Shifter 4, Regen 6. Instinctive Psychic Potential active. Vulnerabilities: Mild sunlight, binding spells, positive energy, psychic vampirism. Origin:…”

Sara tapped her foot impatiently, “Well?”

Dr. Tanaka cleared his throat, “Origin: Unknown.”

“So, what did we learn today?” Sara sighed, her head buried in her arms at the head of the conference table.

“Quite a lot, despite the surprise ending,” Dr. Tanaka answered, concentrating on the results, “for starters, your powers. Usually when I receive a result like this, I ask ‘when did the subject expire?’. But with Regen 6, I’ll be surprised if anyone ever manages to kill you permanently.”

Sara squeezed her eyes shut, “What do you mean?”

Dr. Tanaka scratched his chin, checking for stubble, “Most books on the subject, even here at ARC, only list the common abilities gained from the first three levels of any mutant trait. Exemplar 4 is easy: Your Body Image Template is significantly different to the human norm and generally stronger, faster and hardier. That’s not entirely the case for you, but it is close. Shifter 4 means that you can multiply your size and abilities significantly from your natural form, as well as make your own alterations, I’d say that you’ll pick that up with a bit of practice and knowledge of biology. Regen 6, however is the draw card of the lot. At level 6, regenerators don’t age, don’t breathe and don’t really have to eat, they just go into hibernation without food or water, or in your case life force. They never tire either. Nothing less than complete disintegration will actually kill a Regen 6, though it may take a while to pull yourself together in the case of more grievous injuries, like being blown to bits.”

Dr. Tanaka sighed, sealing himself to deliver the bad news, “I should warn you that there are some side issues. For starters, you probably won’t grow up, ever. Essentially, your BIT is stuck on this form, though you may be able to alter it for short periods of time using your shifter abilities. Also, since you are now a girl, you won’t have to worry about suffering through a normal menstrual cycle, but you will always be fertile. In addition, you’ll never lose your virginity. Your hymen and other… equipment will return to the state it is now.”

Nathan’s jaw snapped shut.

Sara looked over her shoulder at the red-faced detective, “Shut up.”

Donna pouted, “I’m almost jealous.”

“That goes for you too!” Sara snarled. She turned back to Dr. Tanaka, “And Instinctive Psychic Potential?”

Tanaka paused, considering again how he could answer. “What do you know about magic?”

“Not much.” Sara shrugged.

“Then, I’ll start from the top,” the doctor leant back in his chair, “Mages aren’t classified like the other mutant abilities, because magic covers a wide variety of applications. Mages and Natural Mages manipulate the fabric of reality by harnessing the power of ley lines and other natural energy sources. The key to this is that they must draw the energy from an outside source, which puts stress on their bodies, the price of their versatility. Psychics and Instinctive Psychics are similar, except that they draw on inner reserves of energy and compel their will to effect reality. This puts enormous stress on the mind of the psychic and not a few go mad attempting something beyond their capabilities. Otherwise, the difference between the two ‘schools’ of magic is minor, except that psychics focus their powers internally while mages focus their power externally. This makes mages better at flashy spells such as throwing fire at people, calling lighting down from the heavens and so fourth. Psychics tend to be a bit more subtle, like your habit of speeding up your perception of time to help you avoid incoming projectiles.”

Sara nodded, “But I don’t do that on purpose.”

“Which is why you’re classified as an Instinctive psychic. Instinctive psychics and Natural mages often do things automatically, without having to think about doing it, like having a sixth sense or an extra set of hands. You will require training to harness this potential and stop yourself from having a catastrophic burnout which even you might not be able to recover from.”

Sara put up her hand, “Sir, can we stop now? My brain’s full.”

Nathan almost collapsed with laughter. The two doctors tried to cover broad grins while Donna stifled her laugh, “I think that’s a good idea. As soon as it gets dark, I’m taking you to your most grueling task yet. It’ll be tough, but I think you’re ready for it.”

Sara looked slightly worried, “What?”

Donna drew herself up to her full height, “I’m taking you shopping!”

“NONE of the guys are coming with us?” Sara muttered.

“No.” Donna replied firmly as she unlocked her BMW. “This is a girls only outing. The specialist that’s coming to review your case won’t be here for another hour. So while it’s dark and you don’t have to cover yourself, we’re going to crash in on an old friend of mine in Dunwich. No offense, girl, but from the moment I met you, you looked like a train wreck. You said you wanted to be a girl now, dressing nice to attract the boys is a part of that. A very nice part once you get used to it.”

Sara felt slightly sulky as she stepped into the car, “I’m not entirely sure I’m into boys yet.”

Donna grinned, “Come on, you said yourself that Nathan was cute.”

Sara blushed.

“Besides,” Donna smiled innocently, “It’d come in handy with girls too.”

The look Sara gave Donna had daggers in it.

Dr. Otto poured over the TS transcript, noting something unusual. “Tanaka-san?”

“Otto?” Tanaka looked up from his coffee.

“You kept a few things from Sara today, didn’t you?”

Tanaka nodded, “Sara-chan has been through enough in the last few days. I felt it best not to pile more on her shoulders than was necessary.”

“You should have warned Donna, though.”

“She already knows. What do you think this ‘shopping trip’ is about anyway? We could have left it until after we sent her off to Wh