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    2


  I remembered that I had been wandering for a long time, 
and it was during this lapse that I found the place where that 
loathsome film had come. The film packed into the corners of my 
eyes. Locke differentiated dreams and reality by 'vividness,' which 
was supposedly easy to distinguish. I don't think the man ever met 
my buddy Wells. The clouds and haze I had long associated with 
constant anger and fear had been lifted from my senses in one slow 
tear as he was destroyed. The dreams I fell into became more vivid 
and life-like than anything behind the fog only my transient power 
had been able to pierce.

  Laying back, very slowly, I began to see more through the 
gradual closing of my eyes. The fight had only been the blur in a 
memory. I could still make decisions and distance myself from my 
surroundings when needed, like every other man in the city. But 
when it came to that ugly force, Lewis's hideous strength, I failed 
to operate on anything but instinct. I was like the director who sat 
silently in the audience opening night. My mind had prepared me 
all that it could for him; hate, frustration, and the fatal reflex. I had 
my weapons, internal and external ready for use. It would be 
decided by will alone. It was when I first turned and saw him 
before me that my eyes closed to slits and I heard the whine of the 
air about. Reality retreated, and I felt the dark depths of my own 
body take its place. 

  At the time there had only been that man in black, and the 
only direction my life could take was step forward or fall back; his 
death had lifted this veil of confusion. Some things just never seem 
to change. Afterward I slept, and my mind took me away to heal, 
and through purpose or chance it lead me to a previous life, albeit a 
local one.

  What I am saying is that as I fell asleep, my personality 
resurfaced. I remembered yesterday. I remembered today and the 
prospect of tomorrow. I was again able to think back to my youth, 
my racing, and my parents. The others around me were there, 
shouting and clawing, even if I could not reach out. Screw had 
returned a lost son, maybe for the last or certainly next to last time, 
and not the helpless prey that something wanted and needed him to 
be. I can't explain its manifestation anymore than I could explain 
the me that jumped in its terrible path. It sucked, pulled, dredged; 
every fiber tore at everything I called me, because I called it me, 
and because it wanted me more passionately than I have ever 
claimed to want anything. It was a singularity. A human 
consciousness born of the sole conclusion that I would eventually, 
somehow fail and need to be made over again as his. We would be 
forced to turn ever inward to find new resistance. Pain extreme. 
Promised pleasure-unimaginable, impossible. The feelings came 
and went and I had no control because they were not and never had 
been mine. It had grown from me, most of me anyway. It was once 
the blameless half. The needful half. The half I had promised long 
ago to give my life for selflessly if it ever got *that bad.*

  Yet now it was the source of the 'that bad.'

  It had done so to protect and insure its own continued 
existence.

  I felt it reach out of me for one last try, until Screw 
somehow finally forgot it or pushed it all the way down. It even 
tried to take the credit for its own destruction. Ha. 

  My childhood miracles, stroking touches of god, my 
powers were all around me, waiting to be called into use again. 
What would I say? 

  **Please go home.* I love you, * I need you, * but not 
anymore...**

  Blasphemy, of course. So I returned to concentrating on 
myself.

  My history surfaced again and I considered it. 

  What a joy my mother had been. It was probably my lack 
of clear memories which made me feel this way about the two of 
them. But I felt my entire character had developed from her kind 
words as well as my father's harsh ones. Yin and yang, basic 
preternatural forces shaping me, obligatorily giving me as an 
individual. And this was the truth, really, when all the specifics 
were removed. My personal uniqueness could never have been an 
accident. Too many necessary factors had been there for me to 
partake of, letting me be completed. The only thing that was 
missing in the formation of me as a person was the unnatural.

  My super powers had not come from the blood, but had 
developed because my parents allowed it to. I had always known 
that the form of my perceptions would change with something 
other than mood. I figured it was common to all people. I only 
learned just after my encounter with Wells that the change in 
perception was really a lack of such, a failure to continue what I 
had already been feeling, and that something else was making 
itself felt to pick up the slack. Something my body trusted to do the 
job better. Unlike any of my other faculties, these forces passed my 
conscious mind altogether. They were in the clamoring of a 
beating heart. Completely natural to me, but not a natural part of 
the world I walked in. 

  Excessive infantile stimulation causes the brain to be 
cluttered with animal instincts and badly conceived desires. Many 
people spend their entire lives just trying to come to terms with 
themselves. My growth had been so clear cut and simple in 
function that the other thing in my head had been left free to think 
for itself. It had confronted its limits and comforted itself knowing 
them beyond the scope of my brethren. This is where my powers 
had come from. In addition to math, art, dreams, emotions, and still 
constrained by the laws of logic, there is another level to our world 
that very few external conditions have ever allowed us more than 
glimpses. I simply stumbled into one of them one day. I would yet 
meet all the others.

  Thoughts of this ambiguous and incomprehensible subject 
drifted from my mind, returned, drifted more quickly, as I plunged 
feather-like further into that space where the thing had been. I 
needed its space physically as well as mentally and I was gradually 
so glutted and spent that I could not even dream. The time was lost 
to me. Good riddance. Later the blackness ended as suddenly as it 
had begun. Alethea was standing next to me, and we were waving 
to Chris who had climbed into a cab on the street outside Central 
Train Station. 

  When he was safe and gone, Zig turned to me where I lay 
half sitting on the cold asphalt sidewalk, resting my weary head on 
Alie's knee and said, "There's really nothing like someone's 
wanting to kill you to make you want to keep on living, huh?" 

  I stared back at him and had to nod.



---------------



  Guy Jinn's 'King Cobra' was not one of the better cars on 
the track. Recent improvements had made it able to run much 
hotter, though not pacing the Blue Thunder. The frame was 
constructed from some aluminum-tungsten alloy made to resist 
long term deformation though unusually yielding to sudden 
shocks. It had given Jinn many problems in the past with the car 
warping after a hard swipe. I had thought that when he kissed the 
inner wall his right side would be so disfigured that the wheels 
would come away pointing in different directions. I thought that 
his plain rubber tires would shred and that I would see him coaxing 
the wreck up one of the Turbine's two exit ramps hours later. Few 
would have called it an operational failure. Instead I saw the car, 
maybe eight inches off the ground, hurtling toward me at around 
four hundred mph. The ringing, the lack of steering, the shaking of 
my hands and arms, it all came back. I merely sighed this time. 

  Albeit, most people go their entire lives without ever 
experiencing anything even remotely like this. Those who claim to 
be the exceptions usually have low self esteem and low tolerance 
to alcohol. Some are just crazy--if there is such a thing. I was 
unlucky enough to be neither. That's me, Mr. Functionally 
Adequate. In the worst of situations my eyes could deceive me, 
and my screens a little after that. But the energy in the air never 
lied. I blinked a few times to make sure it was not just my eyes. 
Fatigue, hangover, *something please.* The wheel shivered 
uncomfortably beneath my grasp. If Guy Jinn's car really was 
flying, then Wells was not the last of the monsters under my bed. 
He had not lied about his master.

  Now only a half mile behind me and closing fast, he forced 
me to accelerate, and I shot past 370. Edging steadily closer to the 
white car in front of me, and starting to pass the Flyer on the 
outside, it became fearful apprehension. If he even touched me, my 
heavily stripped tires would lose the little traction they had left and 
I would slide out into the small forest of pylons that accompanied 
the last leg of the race. But Flyin Brian had not changed in all these 
years, and as I got next to him he turned right by half a degree and 
gave me the room I needed. The thirty mile-an-hour difference in 
our speeds meant that Jinn could cover the mile that separated us in 
two minutes. I had that much time to get another car between us 
and use it for cover. As I passed the Flyer, I cut directly in front of 
him, and slowed slightly to regain some control.

  Jinn caught up with me almost immediately after that and 
started trying to pass the white car. Brian weaved indecisively. We 
were only a small distance behind Veretti who resolutely held on 
to the lead spot, never taking his eyes from the far spoke's wider, 
grander gate. I bet he was shitting bricks, seeing the three of us 
veering around behind him this late in the race. I saw Jinn fake left, 
then cut right to pass the Flyer on the inside. Maybe eight inches 
off the ground was all he could manage. Brian's white car shook 
visibly when this happened, and then suddenly was thrown left and 
out of control. He was lost from my screen's focal array and I had 
no time to hunt for him. I could tell that there had been a vicious 
flash of force from Guy Jinn's car. So he commanded the powers 
himself. Jarred obviously hadn't; it was confusing. Four lengths 
back, his yellow car was sucked forward as he drafted me without 
interference. I could not attempt to break the slip steam as sharp 
turns would skid the wheels out. I could only wait to be hit.

  I was already closing on Veretti when Jinn rammed me 
hard from behind. The Big Bad Storm shook down through its 
titanium ribs and I heard the fiberglass shell cracking. Minuscule 
pieces sprinkled over my shoulders onto the seat and whitened it. 

  The real problem was that his car had not appreciably bounced 
away from me after the crash and a second later he tried it again. I 
did not know why he wasn't just using his power to throw me into 
obstacles, since crashing me was certainly his goal. The only good 
thing was that his hits were dead straight and I maintained my 
illusion of control. The traction held.

  Suddenly a small screen popped up in the middle of my 
windshield, of all the things a flashing red warning screen, and I 
saw Flyin Brian's white car speed back into the inside lane from 
the outer track, unharmed. He deftly took a pylon on the left side, 
then the right, and then cut even farther in to meet Guy Jinn. Jinn 
stopped ramming me for a second, presumably to take a second 
shot at the Flyer's car. 

  A long, narrow screen showed the viewing multitude out of 
their seats where they had been for the greater part of my advance 
on the lead position. Now, through the pair of aerial feeds, I could 
see through the misty condensation my sweat had caused on the 
glass that they were going absolutely crazy. This much physical 
action at the very end of a race was so rare for them too. 
I got my eyes back on the road, but I was sure that if it was 
even possible, they went even crazier when Flyin Brian broke the 
longest running record in racing history, and rammed the bleeding 
shit out of Guy Jinn's car. 

  The crash was loud, and I looked back to see large chunks 
of either car's shell falling off onto the track. Jinn seemed to have 
had hit his head during the impact, because he was now holding it 
tightly with both hands. 

  The Flyer had also tossed his helmet behind him, and I 
thought I detected a smile play across his mature visage. It was so 
out of character and so human for the old man. I wanted to shout 
out my gratitude to him. 

  He pulled a hundred or so feet to the outside and prepared 
to ram the yellow King Cobra again.

  I held my breath in anticipation. Maybe the Flyer would 
take care of my problem for me. Maybe Jinn wasn't using special 
powers at all but had some kind of illegal high-tech magnetronic 
hovering device. Maybe this really was another bad dream. But I 
didn't think so. I could see Diago in one of the smaller screens 
yelling at me as loud as he could, unaware that I was no longer 
getting any kind of sound transmission from him or anyone else. I 
sort of chuckled at this for a second and gave him the thumbs up. 
('Hey, its all good, calm down.') He didn't seem to notice, and 
continued yelling and pointing. So I focused my attention back on 
the pair a few hundred yards behind me. Any second now this 
would be decided.

  I tapped my fingers on the dash, and I was suddenly 
jolted back into my seat..

  Then and there, before Flyin Brian could make his intentions any 
clearer, and before the expanding circular hiccup of whitish smoke 
from my third and fourth afterburners had dissipated from my rear 
screens, instantly triggered, despite my intention, by a freak gust 
which had lead my perfectly tuned Peygan-component air intake 
valves to believe we had broken the four hundred mile barrier, (the 
sudden rush mashing my helmet back against the headrest, yet 
wholly unable to tear my attention from the rear view screen in 
question, my breath caught wedge like in my violently constricting 
throat, indignant); gun fire erupted from Jinn's car. 

  Four bullets entered the Flyer's vehicle, the last the loudest, 
as it sounded at the time. I heard or at least visualized nitrous oxide 
streaming out through his hood a second before the whole vehicle 
erupted. 

  The car became a rolling, leaping blue fireball which 
ultimately departed the ground and reduced itself to airborne 
chunks of char. 

  My mouth hung open as I watched, unable to believe. 
Whatever else may be tolerated in the name of racing, Guy Jinn 
...he was a murderer. The racing board did not put up with this 
kind of shit at all, much less the city Police Commissioner. The 
Special Forces were going to descend on this race like a plague of 
locusts. I suddenly wished to god my fucking radio would come 
back online. 

  The marked man turned his attention toward me, and I 
swerved left as he started firing again. I was pulling away quickly, 
ahead and left to the red zone whether I thought it safe or not. 
Uncontrollable Levy's swooped and fell closer to get a better shot 
of us for the eleven o'clock news.

  Veretti had obviously seen and heard the explosion too 
because he began to reflexively slow down. I took this chance to 
swerve in front of him and take cover. But I never made it that far. 

  Attempting to clear his line of sight, Jinn's next volley of shots 
were at Veretti himself, and fearing that I might get him killed, I 
curved away. I had cut all four burners and was down to 345, but at 
this speed I could zigzag and make it harder for Jinn to get a bead 
on me. I was naked in the middle of the track, and it might not be 
long before I was the next explosion to highlight Freq 720's 
weekend race report.

  There was one other option, though. With about thirty 
miles to go before the finishing gates, there was still ample room 
and time to return to the obstacle-studded middle lanes. Here it 
would be much harder for Jinn to shoot and keep from crashing 
himself. I pulled another hard left, crossed into the red zone and 
kept my face pressed low against the wheel. The yellow car 
followed me close and the firing ceased.

  The two of us slalomed through pylons with practiced ease. 
I took chances with ones that seemed at first too close to dodge, 
trying to get Jinn to slip up. But he drifted right behind and came 
even closer. He may have been using his powers to deflect his car 
away from immediate threats, which was smart. It made what I had 
to do harder.

  The thought occurred to me then, that I remembered 
actually having done what he was doing. When I had killed Wells 
on the train two days ago, it had not been with any gun. Alethea 
had refused to talk to me about it after we got back to Zig's 
apartment, and only said that somewhere along the line I had 
fainted. Zig had been equally unhelpful, claiming that he had been 
'way fucked up' at the time it happened. And of course Chris was 
nowhere to be found for his own reasons. He had said nothing 
about leaving us when we first got on the train, but after I dealt 
with Wells for the last time, he had split as soon as he could. I did 
not understand it then, and I was not coming up with anything 
now, either. All I knew was that for an instant there, I had been the 
one in control of the power, and it had been the only thing that had 
ever twisted the fear back in Wells' own face.

  The thing was that it had come up on its own. Glancing at 
Guy Jinn in my screen, I tried to exert a little force back on him. I 
visualized it happening. It didn't. I felt no increase in the veil of 
television screen snow that had been surrounding me. Failing in 
this, I returned to my driving. I had to keep my eyes on the road; 
new obstacles were appearing every five seconds. I was only ten 
relative miles away now and I could see the far black spoke 
looming up ahead.

  Pylons are set into holes in the tarmac. They pop up 
randomly, and after a minute or so, return below the surface. They 
have doors above the holes that keep tires from getting stuck. This 
was how I knew Jinn was behind the one that suddenly shot up 
directly next to my car. Its door had not opened, but cracked 
outward and was torn free by my fender. The tip of the steel 
pyramid went right through my front quarter panel, my drivers side 
door, and I barely avoided losing my left arm. This was the least of 
my problems though, because when the pylon punched through the 
cage and hit the rear wheel well, the whole frame caught on it. My 
car spun into the air.

  I was whipped forward as my tail end jumped, and my 
helmet bounced on the ceiling. The Storm's seatbelts had been 
severed by glass shards earlier in the race so there was nothing 
holding my body back. My face plate broke off, and the rest of the 
helmet flew out my window with it. Careening through the air in a 
barrel roll as loose parts were flung in all directions, I bit my 
bleeding lip and covered my face with my right arm. A second 
later the wheels pounded against the track again, luckily right side 
up.

  The motor was still going, and so for a second, I was 
driving straight again. But now all of the electrical systems in the 
car were gone, including the hydraulic steering, and I was missing 
the back half of my frame. Looking over my shoulder I saw three 
wheels, a set of broken axles, and lots of fire. I was going to fast 
for the flames to catch up, but it was only a matter of time before 
the rear fuel line caught. 

  Jinn had remained farther behind me now, but began 
closing in again when he saw I was still somehow mobile. I wanted 
to shout again.

  Bleeding, battered, I turned back toward the inside lanes, 
expecting explosions at any minute. I was far enough along the 
track so that the Turbine's one exit ramp was going to come up 
directly on my right. I made for it, knowing I would not make it the 
last ten miles to the finishing gates out in the open. Guy Jinn 
followed me out of the red zone, still accelerating. He had pulled 
his black visor down again, so I could not see his face. But I knew 
who he was looking at. Even though I had never met the man, I 
could tell by his motions and actions that he was no racer. Under 
that chipped and scared yellow crash helmet was probably not even 
a man named Guy Jinn. 

  Crossing the inside lanes quickly, I started to turn off onto 
the exit lane. The gigantic steel ramp had been constructed along 
the Turbine's inner wall a hundred years ago. Originally there had 
been another ramp at the beginning, and the two were used to get 
cars on and off the track. When the on-ramp fell off of the wall 
before my parent's generation, the gates were installed as a safer 
and more ordered way of transporting cars on and off. The exit-
ramp itself extended from where I was to the finishing spoke 
where the other gates were, ten miles ahead. It took you directly to 
the top without the wait. I finally felt a bump as I got on, keeping 
my speed.

  I was not surprised to see the King Cobra on my tail as I 
went up the low angled incline. He would not attempt to ram me 
again, because even the slightest contact to my stern could blow 
both of our cars into grape shot. I was actually a little surprised that 
there was not a van full of Special Forces agents coming down the 
ramp already. I heard faint sirens, and could see some of the crowd 
above me fleeing the stands, but it did not look like the Mandate 
had made its presence felt yet.

  Guy Jinn stayed about a tenth of a mile behind me and 
opened fire again. From the screaming sound the bullets made as 
they pierced my car, I could tell he was using zeppelins. The ramp 
was only about ten feet wide, and I was unable do much swerving, 
so most of the shots connected. The only thing in my favor was 
that eighty percent of my car was already beyond repair anyway, 
and his bullets did not seem to be doing anything that had not 
already been done. I just hunched myself into a tight ball, and 
hoped he would not hit me.

  ***Jesus, I thought. I hope in some long-past pathetic 
underground dream I hadn't prayed for an encounter like this. 
With Father Lefty or his existing clone. Please, I take it all 
back.***

  I was rising further and further from the black asphalt 
below. My face stung. Was that smoke? It suddenly smelled like 
something inside the cab was burning.

  And then, with only another half mile to go until the top of 
the Turbine's inner wall, Jinn took a shot that went all the way 
through the body of my car, and through my right front wheel. The 
tire shredded off instantly, and soon the axle was scraping against 
the ground. A horrific shower of sparks erupted from that side of 
my car, and as I turned my face away from it, I mistakenly turned 
the wheel too. The car swiped the left guard rail hard and I felt the 
thing start to give. My left front tire could not take the weight of 
the car by itself and suddenly burst. The Blue Thunder's entire 
front end dropped half a foot onto the track; my brand new air dam 
not breaking the fall. I slowed from a little over three hundred 
miles an hour to less than eighty in three seconds. Unfortunately, 
Guy Jinn could not do the same. I screamed in frustration, and 
again at my consistent bad luck. I didn't have to say nothing was 
going right for me this race. Racing never goes the way it's 
supposed to. But all this... It was true that Jinn had been behind 
most of my misfortune, but I sure wasn't catching any breaks 
either. His car collided with mine at a speed differential of two 
hundred clicks.

  My car immediately exploded, and my body departed the 
ramp, and soared gracefully into the wide open air over the track. 
His body remained in his car, which plowed through my wrecked 
vehicle like it was a toy model. He broke through the guard rail 
and followed me into the air, still aiming those headlights right at 
me.

  The force of the fuel tank exploding had thrown me 
through the windshield, and if it had not been for kevlar I would 
have been shredded. I was facing backwards, and watching Jinn's 
car fly at me, going much faster. He was even still holding the 
damn steering wheel.

  I was in the air a while, long enough to think it strange.

  And then I felt him use his power on me. He was pushing 
me down, getting rid of my upward momentum. I started falling 
fast, and eventually found myself crossing into the heavier body's 
trajectory. The car was falling on me from above, and the only 
thing at my back was the Turbine spoke, lined with gear trains that 
raised and lowered the gates. I was going to hit the wall at a steep 
angle and be flattened.

  Still, I decided there was no reason not to try to grab onto 
something. 

  As the car, the spoke, and I got ready to collide, Guy Jinn 
threw open his door and fell out. He seemed to be controlling his 
fall quite well. Like Wells had done back at my apartment 
building, he was now hurtling toward me of his own volition. The 
last time I had been attacked, I had only been able to resist Wells' 
force wave when it was directly on me. My earlier attempt to 
generate some power on my own had not been fruitful, but maybe 
the necessity had not been great enough at the time. Now, in four 
seconds a three ton car was going to crush me against a wall of 
stone. Needless to say, I had to try again.

  I swallowed the lump in my throat and thought about 
Alethea's bottle of champagne, now gone. That really hurt.

  Instead of concentrating on Jinn, I looked down and 
focused on the huge metal gates below me, and tried to push them 
away. I felt the humming around me rise to the next harmonic 
octave, and for a second the scene below me blurred out of 
recognition. There was a familiar sense of isolation.

  But I snapped out of it when I heard the thunderous 
explosion fifty feet below me as the King Cobra met its fiery end 
on the Turbine spoke. I had halted my descent, and was hanging in 
mid air a hundred yards off the track. The peculiar thing was that I 
was still moving relative to the Turbine, so it was only the ground 
spinning away from me at 225 mph. Jinn, who was also moving at 
such a speed, adjusted his flight, and came right at me with 
obscenities on his lips.

  He stuck a fist out and aimed it at my head, and I got ready 
to counter it. I leaned away from him, and when the punch came I 
brought both of my palms together on his arm, one at the elbow 
and the other at the wrist. I expected his bones to break like sticks, 
but he turned out to be sturdier that I thought. He shrugged it off. I 
threw a kick into his stomach, which did nothing but make him 
grunt. Arms extended, he attached one to my waist and tried to 
stick a digit in my eye. I kept my foot in his midsection to keep 
him at arms length, and slipped my fingers in between his. He tried 
to bend my wrist back, but to no avail. Guy Jinn may not have had 
any working nerve endings, but I had always been good at this 
game. I applied more pressure and his own wrist bent back in the 
wrong direction. Then there were those cracking sounds I had been 
waiting for.

  With the other hand I ripped Jinn's helmet off. Now I had 
seen the man on the screen before, talking with Sarah Wheeler 
after a win, and there was definitely a resemblance. But this face 
was buried behind deep lacerations long since covered by scar 
tissue. It was like he had fallen into a barrel of nails. I dropped the 
helmet to block a groin kick, and returned the favor. Jinn emitted 
an animal like scream, and grabbed me in a bear hug. My left side 
had hurt like hell ever since the pylon totaled my car. My jacket 
covered the injuries, so I had assumed he did not know. He did 
know. The sick pain and nausea was too much. I returned the 
scream.

  Then we were suddenly falling. I tried to push away from 
the ground with even more force, but he was obviously using his 
concentration to pull us down and was more of an adept than I.

  I was still clench my fist around his left hand, and I tried to 
mangle it even more. He squeezed tighter, but eventually unable to 
hold his arms together, I wiggled out of his grasp. I kicked off of 
him and slowed to a stop in mid air. He did the same, and looked 
up at me from below.

  "Allan Wells was my master."

  "I'm sorry for you," I replied, the incredible wind blowing 
the spit right out of my mouth the second I opened it.

  "He only underestimated you. You would never have killed 
him if he was ready for it."

  "Whatever makes you sleep easier."

  His eyes narrowed, and he bared a set of very metallic 
looking teeth. "So it comes down to the little ant 
patronizing me... Consider yourself lucky I was only trying 
to shoot your car. I could have killed you back on the ramp, 
or even earlier. But I wanted you to 
see that I could beat you fairly. He was my master!"

  "*Fair?!* I never had any master to teach me anything! I 
don't even know what I'm doing here! Gimme that gun, and we'll 
call it fair!"

  "I don't think so."

  "Then go to hell. I'm out of here."

  I concentrated on Jinn and pushed him away from me. Or 
me away from him. This was the extent of my control, but it served 
its purpose. As Jinn tried to fly up at me, he just put more distance 
between me and the ground. When I reached the top of the Turbine 
spoke, I leaned to my right and plopped down on top of it.

  A mistake. No longer using my power to keep me up, I was 
immediately thrown forward onto my face by the Turbine's 
incredible centrifugal force. I slid along the polished basalt until I 
clutched hold of a set of massive winches used to haul gates up 
from the track. They were riveted into the stone, and I slid behind 
them. My hand hit several of the switches and gates started 
rumbling up the spoke. Not weighed down with cars, they moved 
faster than usual. This did not really do anything for me, but it 
made Jinn look down long enough for me to get back to my feet.

  He walked toward me completely upright, and I saw that 
his feet were an inch off the black stone. Smiling now, he said, 
"You little shit. I can't believe I wasted my time with bullets when 
you can't even fly. I had been prepared for a lot more than this."

  "You know, your master was a lot more refined than you 
are."

  "He was twice the man either of us could ever be. I don't 
know what you think you've accomplished. Screwtape, do you 
know what they give to the last place finisher in the Gold Cup?"

  I shook my head, eyeing his feet. "I don't know, Prozac?"

  Jinn smiled. "No. They kick him out of the circuit all 
together. The board has it in the rulebooks that no matter how fast 
you go, if you can't beat at least one other car, you aren't wanted 
here. No A's for effort. You catch my drift?"

  "Mildly."

  "You don't learn very well."

  "Oh *that's* below the belt," I replied calmly.

  He opened his mouth to give me a better view of his 
strange looking teeth. They were not really metal, but were 
covered in something that gave off a bit of glare.
"Anthanol." He said. "Your flesh will tear itself right off 
your bones just to get away."

  "What?" I said.

  Jinn smiled. "It is a muscle contracting hormone found 
exclusively in spiderbats. In small amounts it simulates super-
strength. Large doses are tremendously lethal. The last man I bit 
practically turned himself inside out in an involuntary attempt to 
get it out of his system. I wonder what will happen to you when I 
bite your face?"

  This stopped me for a second, as I stared at him with a 
mixture of awe and a little fear. "Then why doesn't it do all that to 
you?"

  He smiled now, and chuckled. "You figure it out."

  He dashed at me, and I let go of my hand hold. I was flung 
up and back, kicking off the stone to remain somewhat erect. I 
focused on the Turbine itself over my shoulder and a second later 
was airborne. Jinn wasted no time in coming up after me. I cut it 
off at the last second and fell back down while he shot over head. I 
broke my fall a foot off the Turbine's smooth top, and with my 
head down and eyes focused firmly on the ground, ran toward 
uniformed men who stood nearby watching us.

  The News-Levys were just starting to get here, slicing and 
hooking through the sky, attempting to train countless angles of 
aerial feeds on us, hoping one would come away with a clear 
picture. The police officers were holding onto support rails, 
beckoning me toward them, and one even took a shot at Jinn. 
Good, they were somewhat aware of the situation.

  I looked back for a instant to see where he was, and saw an 
entire winch apparatus flying toward me. I tried to fly over it, but it 
clipped me on my lame left side and took me down. We, the winch 
and I, tumbled over the edge of the spoke and unable to summon 
anything more than threadbare power, I fell a hundred feet down 
onto a gate which had stopped short. The fast adrenaline rush of 
cars, guns, and my own flight ended. The pain took me somewhere 
on it own, I am unable to describe it. There was no crying out 
because of the weight sitting on my chest. The frayed edges of my 
concentration were stretched beyond their limits just keeping the 
hulking metal machine from killing me. 

  Jinn peered over the edge at me, and opened his mouth like 
he was laughing. The roar of the wind and cars below lacking gates 
to pull them up made tear-clouded sight my only sense.

  "Help..." I started in gasps.

  He jumped down and landed next to my head. The gate's 
platform vibrated under me, shaking the winch. I tried to push it 
off but Jinn was pushing it back down. He bent over, and talked in 
my ear. The smile was now unmistakable. Open sores near his 
mouth made it look vile.

  "You know, Rufius bid me bring you in alive."

  "Damn charming, whoever he is."

  "But do you think he would ever really know if I killed 
you, and claimed it was the weight of the machine?"

  "What about all those cameras?"  I croaked, pointing at the 
Levy "We're being broadcast live right now."

  "Not anymore. I popped the cameras from the air a minute 
ago. And I am afraid psionics don't show up on film anyway."

  "Is that what you call it? Psionics. How about-" I grunted 
as the weight became more intense. 

  The gate had started to move up the spoke again, powered 
somewhere by an auxiliary motor. I tried to force the winch off of 
me, but the pain in my ribs was making it impossible to focus 
properly. Jinn looked me in the eye, grinning playfully, and the 
metal gears bit deeper into my flesh. Tethered officers leaned over 
the edge, shouted at Jinn, and began firing at him. They could not 
see me under the thing. Not looking up, he deflected the bullets, 
and they smacked the wall behind us. I couldn't breathe, I felt 
dizziness overtaking consciousness. 

  He smiled again and said, "I've had to wait a long time for 
this."

  Opening his mouth, he bent over to bite my temple. I 
struggled to get away from his disgusting teeth, but could only 
thrash my head around. I spotted the cable responsible for 
retracting our own gate, and tried to will it to break. It quivered 
slightly, so I tried to simply force it away from me. Since I wasn't 
going anywhere, it bowed outward. Jinn did not notice.

  "Now Rufius will have to use me instead." He said. I did 
not know what that meant either.

  His dripping teethe an inch away, the cable finally snapped. 
Immediate downward acceleration snapped Jinn's head back, and I 
put all my force into moving the machinery on top of me. Without 
the weight of it to hold me down, it flew upward and hit him under 
the chin.

  I rolled over, stood, and felt the pain. Jinn shook his head 
as I did this, put one hand on his neck and dived at me with the 
other outstretched. I retreated backward, but found myself at the 
edge of the gate platform. As the gate continued to slide down I 
grabbed Jinn's hand and tried flipping him over my shoulder in a 
makeshift ugoshi, a low level hip throw. I held onto his hand 
though, and as he went over the edge of the platform he swung 
underneath it. When I felt the strongest tension on my arm, I let go. 

  He held onto my sleeve, but it was in tatters and completely 
came off. I leaped into the air, flying straight upwards. A second 
later Guy Jinn shrieked as the plummeting gate hit the ground, 
hard. It crashed apart, the big steel doors crashing inward. 
Then the entire gate base, to which all fifty gates were 
connected, began to tear out of its rivets and off the spoke. More 
gates fell, dragging cables, winches, miles of gear train out of their 
welds, out into space, tumbling down to be dragged along the 
tarmac behind the Turbine. Jinn was trapped under much of it, 
partially back in sight now, and I watched as his body was frayed 
apart. 

  It was incredible. The chaotic whirlwind of disjoints motion.
His gritting teeth disappeared from my view last of all. 

  Hanging in the air, my stomach turned in what might have 
been irrational guilt. It was a gruesome sight, but he had planned 
worse things for me. A less than fitting end for such a monster. I 
looked away and exhaled.

  I did not see any more Levys or cameras, but to be on the 
safe side, I grabbed onto a loose cable trailing the Turbine, and 
held on waiting for a rescue team to pull me up. I tied the loose end 
to my belt and relaxed my aching body. Again I remembered 
Alethea's handwritten words, and sighed again knowing they were 
destroyed. I had wanted to share the victory with her. 

  An officer started shouting to me from above and I waved 
my arm lethargically. My wounds were not deep. I would heal like 
always. What hurt most was the realization that Wells was not the 
last of these bastards. The idea of a 'Rufius' seemed to carry with 
it unending havoc until I either succumbed or could root out the 
problem from its indiscernible source. Neither alternative sounded 
like it would do miracles for my new life.

  The cops slowly began to hoist me up.











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