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This is perhaps the most explanatory chapter in this story
I have ever written. And good, because a lot of it was pretty
damn confusing up until this point, even for me. But trust me, 
it makes sense and comes together. I have spent too many hours
watching it make sure of that.

Look for my next non-TWIL short work, hopefully coming very soon.
Where are you, miashara?

This chapter, and all others can be found at
www.geocities.com/aescension/index












    12

  Life is but a dream. Row that boat, baby.

  Something in my head rattled into place, and I finally 
remembered. Who I was, where I was, why I was involved in any 
of this. It actually came to me pretty quickly as I lay on the wet 
linoleum floor. The fuzziness which had blocked the pathways of 
my mind was overrun by a river of tangible information spilling 
forth that I was finally willing to face. As if something in me 
finally did the math and came up with the fact that reality was now 
slightly better than the pain of helpless unconsciousness. And it 
was a revelation, I must tell you. Aside from all the boyhood 
memories of the city, and my chaotic life since then, there were the 
shocked-in images of racing cycs and death. The infrastructure of 
some mammoth building was recreated in me where I assumed it 
had stood before. And I rested against it gladly.

  But there was a delicate problem. Even my new 
recollections did not match up in certain places. I had several 
different memories of the apartment I grew up in, and they did not 
coincide. All my life I had wondered about my parents, about why 
they had both left me in my pre-maturity. My life had always been 
chaotic, but there had always been one way of looking at it or 
another that left me with some feeling of sanity. It now seemed as 
if there were a cleft in that timeline. It started about ten years ago, 
and ran jaggedly up until the present, forming striking 
incompatibilities in my conception of myself. It was not that I still 
had bad spots in my memory, it was that my memory was now so 
much clearer that inconsistent memories I had always disregarded 
had become apparent, and troubling. 

  Merusion. Death. Ureasonable power always walking hand 
in hand with unresonable fear. Why had it always been this way? I 
needed time to calm myself and think.

  Disheartened, I opened my eyes and immediately covered 
them with my palms. I was alone in the suddenly brighter room, 
big surprise there. After you knock a bigger man down, you don't 
wait around for him to wake up. I would not have done anything to 
her of course, though I had to admit she knew how to punch. 

  Strange. Luckily, all my teeth were accounted for.

  Laid out next to me in a pile were my civilian clothes. I 
discarded the white lab coats, and put on actual underwear that had 
been recently washed. Fancy stuff, I tell you. Donning my thick 
jeans, leather boots, and racing jacket, I was not surprised to see 
that my holster was empty. I had a good idea that it would not have 
given me a lot of use. Rufius and White could not be killed with 
little nuggets of lead. It was going to take a plan.

  The good news was that I was now in the best possible 
position to do something. White thought that I was willing to 
cooperate with him in exchange for my life, and would not be on 
his tightest guard. Like Diago always warned, let your enemies 
underestimate you. I also had temporary free reign of this little 
Bastille, and I would find its weakness, somehow. The bad news 
was that I was completely alone in my endeavor, and that I did not 
know how I would contact Diago, or Chris or Zig or... well, there 
was one memory which I recalled quite clearly.

  No sense dwelling in the unchangeable past. I wiped some 
sweat off my face and hands; it had become unusually hot in the 
room. For some reason I checked my pockets to make sure my 
wallet was there, and then looked around me. The same computers 
and switchboards that had been thwarting me since I noticed them. 
It was time to leave. Again stepping around the wet spot on the 
floor where the Sexton had been mopping, I exited through the 
open door, and began my trek down the long dark corridors which 
opposed.

  The whole cavernous complex was far too big to be 
contained within one building; something I became convinced of 
in the following hours in which I roamed around aimlessly. I never 
encountered a single person, and after a while I realized I was 
totally lost. Not having paid careful attention to the flights of stairs 
I took, I could not even have been sure if I was on a higher or 
lower level than I had been before. I strode through other rooms 
filled with machinery, and even a hallway lined with humanoid 
looking robots. They were behind an inch of glass though and 
couldn't come out to play. Not that I really wanted to, I noted 
quickly.

  Perhaps the single most disturbing thing I saw in the 
concrete labyrinth came to my attention after realizing I could no 
longer go without food or water. I had been walking across the 
floor of a multi-story atrium when I thought I heard light footsteps. 

  These rooms being as barren as they were, a space behind a semi-
portable incinerator had been my only cover. Waiting for almost 
ten minutes and not hearing any more, I assumed the noises had 
been imagined. But as I stood again, ready to keep moving, I heard 
my mistake. The tapping I mistook for footsteps was coming from 
above. 

  I titled my head back, and caught sight of the inanimate 
form of a twelve foot spiderbat hanging from the ceiling. The 
faceted spider eyes gave off a violet glow from the surface which 
leisurely lessened and grew in intensity. I stood absolutely still 
until I was sure only its tail was twitching. Figuring it to be asleep, 
I endeavored to slink out of the room unnoticed. Once out into 
another of the building's hallways, I broke into a run, and put as 
much distance between the thing and I as fast I could. 

  I was definitely not in a government building now. 

  I opened a door, much later, and found myself inside an 
antechamber of opaque warped glass. There was another door 
opposite the few feet of white tile, but it was mostly clear. Through 
it I could see the secured space beyond. It was a large oblong room 
which looked like it served some medical purpose, though many of 
the rooms I had so far encountered were similar. In the center of its 
sparkling white walls lined with big-screens was a black merusion 
chamber standing on its end. This one was much larger, though, 
and shaped like a Greek cross. It had the yellow frosted pipes on its 
backside only, so I had an unobstructed view of the front. The 
room was as cold as I had expected, and there was a thin layer of 
mist over the computer decks nearest to the chamber. I closed the 
glass door behind me as I walked forward to examine it.

  Standing sixteen feet tall, the one small window at the top 
was currently inaccessible. I figured that if I jumped up and pulled 
myself onto one of the arms of the cross, I could lean over and 
peek in. I made sure the room was completely empty, and then did 
that thing. The pull up was easy, but twisting around the sharp 
corner and getting a good look inside was difficult. 

  At first I saw nothing, because frost had settled over the 
glass. I wiped it off quickly with my hand, knowing that if this 
thing was on, there would be no way frost could form on the inside 
where it would be unbearably hot.

  I was about to try to see inside a second time, when I felt 
the deep rumbling. The merusion chamber did not look all that 
stable, tipped up on its end like this, so I hopped down without 
having seen through the window. There was another rumble, and 
this one I could feel in the floor. The whole structure was shaking a 
little, but it came in short pulses. I remembered having felt the 
same sensation while in the mirrored cell the day before. The only 
thing I knew that could do something like this was a bomb, or 
series of them. It occurred to me that Chris and his gang boys 
could be shelling the building right now. I jumped down, thinking 
this was not good at all.

  Holding onto a stand of cabinets for support, I suddenly 
heard a hiss of air, and the granite cross jolted visibly. A dark line 
had formed on its side, and was running along its surface 
lengthwise very quickly. The lid was opening! I looked around for 
a place to hide, but then figured it would probably be a useless 
maneuver. With the next reverberation the front face cracked away 
and rotated forward and down on its hinges like a drawbridge. It 
finally touched the floor, a shadow of the real chamber, and I saw 
inside. It was White's tall frame which appeared through the steam 
which billowed out, and he was struggling lethargically against 
restraints. 

  This was perhaps the most I could have hoped for. A nearly 
incapacitated psionics user would not stand up against a live one 
like me. I had planned on surveying the whole place, and maybe 
figuring out more about their plans before I went after Rufius or 
White. But chances like this could not be neglected. As he flailed 
his bony arms around, trying to un-strap himself from buckles 
which remained connected to the chamber's interior, I put my back 
against a wall, and concentrated on blowing his wrinkled ass back 
to middle-earth.

  I think we were both surprised when nothing happened, but 
he more than I. I tried again, but for some reason I was not feeling 
that tingling on my skin, nor the ringing in my ears I heard 
whenever the powers were being used. I concentrated on his vitals 
for a full ten seconds before White clawed himself free, slicing the 
leather like tissue, and dropped to the ground in a crouch. The land 
on his feet was solid though he stumbled forward groggily.

  "Well, shit," I said out loud. 

  This confirmed that my use of the powers had truly fled 
me. It was a fun ride while it lasted though. 

  White stood up slowly and it occurred to me that maybe he 
couldn't use the power either. Maybe this was a room that 
dampened such phenomena. In which case it was him against me, 
to the best of fifteen rounds or a KO. I cracked my knuckles, 
swallowed, and rushed him.

  Clearly I had been wrong again. 

  Eyeing me with disgust he let me get right in his face, and I 
punched him in the gut. I almost broke my fingers. His stomach 
was like iron, and even clanged when I hit it. I pulled my arm back 
in pain, and he snorted, looking down at me. Nothing was said.

  Then he hit me with a discharge of raw force that sent me 
across the room, right through the pair of thick glass doors and out 
into the hall. I hit the ground somewhere beyond, and slid on my 
back. If I hadn't been wearing my kevlar racing jacket, the fall 
would have torn the flesh right off my body. 

  I yelled, "Stop!" for some reason.

  I sat up with an audible groan and felt around my 
abdominals; no broken ribs, thank god. I did not see White in the 
door frame yet, so I rolled over and ran. Down the hall, around a 
slow curve, up a few flights of stairs. I picked a floor at random, 
and ran out into several adjacent computer rooms, all in the same 
bare, utilitarian theme. I could hear the footsteps pursuing me but 
they were not gaining too much ground. The only thing I had on 
my side was that I had no idea where I was going, and White 
would have a hard time trapping me.

  If it had been Rufius in there, I had no doubt that I would 
have been killed instantly. He could probably have reduced my 
brain to mush with a nod of his head, or rearranged my molecules 
so that I turned into a goat or something. Whatever he would have 
done, it was at least a little comforting to know that White at least 
had to work with vectored pressure blasts. They could kill me just 
as fast if he wanted, but they had weaknesses, as Wells had found 
out. Could these two still be mad about that?

  Running around corners, I finally found another long bare 
corridor, down which I fled as fast as I could. Finally coming to its 
end, I turned around to see if White was following. 

  The space was empty.

  I waited about three minutes to see if he would show up, 
but he did not. Either he was a really slow runner or I had lost him. 
Assuming the latter, I turned around and entered the room I was 
standing just outside of. Without exploring, I slammed shut the 
heavy door and leaned against it since I could find no lock. 

  I looked down at my arms which were hot and shaking 
from the exertion. My skin itched. I tried to swallow the knot in 
my stomach, but it turned out to be a growing cramp. Blowing my 
only chance on a surprise offensive had been costly, especially 
since my secret had been revealed. White would be looking for me, 
and if he enlisted Rufius' help, hiding, running; it would all end up 
useless. They would wipe me out the second I caught their 
attention. I had to come up with a another plan to fall back on. I 
stepped slowly away from the door, as if any sound I made could 
be heard. Staying put was my only thought at the moment.

  I realized I was not alone. 

  I circled slowly.

  It was fairly large office filled with the fetor of stale cigars. 
Along a painted wall there was a rectangular wooden table with 
three people sitting at it, all of whom I knew. Oddly they all knew 
me as well, or knew *of* me, though none expressed any outward 
recognition. For a minute the only sound was the ticking of a wall 
clock as I waited for someone to say something to me first. All 
three faces looked unsure of what I was going to do, and 
apparently had the same plan. So I walked forward and sat in the 
fourth chair which had been neglected.

  "So," I said, having almost convinced myself that I was 
dreaming again. "Is it puff-puff-give, or are we playin by house 
rules?"

  Three repulsed and puzzled faces, but then again I was just 
being a little prick. I fall into that when I get nervous.

  "What do you want?" said the man to my right.

  Just the kind of friendly greeting I would expect from 
Police Commissioner Arkoff, the first person here I had really not 
expected to see in Rufius' place of business. 

  I smiled with a mixture of manners and defiant sarcasm, 
and said, "Don't mind me, I'm just a friend of the family."

  This made him stop, and he stared at me. Then turning to 
the other two participants in the powwow, he said, "My business is 
done here, anyway. My offer stands. The Special Forces answer to 
me, not the Mandate. I will offer any assistance I can give you, but 
not if you aren't willing to deal." He stood up, and picked up his 
briefcase. "You have my number, I will expect a call." He walked 
out of the room, and down the hall.

  Of the other two people at the table, only one would face 
me, across the table. She put out her Cuban on the bare wood, and 
said, "I have to leave as well; they are going to wonder what 
happened to me." Turning to her right, she said slowly and 
curiously, "I also offer any support I can give, thought it won't be 
nearly as proficient. I can get the people behind you and even turn 
over a few federal employees and college students. But the 
Mandate is already riding my ass about last week's interview, and 
none of my breed may be on the air for much longer. Please, 
consider what the Commissioner said. I will be waiting for your 
call as well." She stood up, fixed her pleated skirt, glanced at me 
without interest, and finally followed Arkoff out the door.

  Now it was just the two of us, and I shifted in my seat. She 
was turned away from me, and her long brown hair hid her face 
from my view. I was certainly at a loss for words, sitting and 
waiting for I-don't-know-what to happen. 

  Instead of humming to myself I said, "I didn't know you 
were that big of a Sarah Wheeler fan. I always wondered what she 
was like in real life. I sort of imagined that she would be taller, or 
more imposing somehow. She probably could have been more 
polite."

  I drummed my fingers on the table with growing 
impatience, as she hadn't moved or said anything yet. The room 
was cold and uncomfortable for an old office.

  "You know, I don't think '*Dad*' likes me very much," I 
continued. "He almost broke me in half when I punched him, and 
he didn't even have the respect to coldly finish the job. I guess he's 
looking for me right now. Jeez, I mean, I could understand if I had 
gotten you pregnant or something. It was just a friendly punch, in 
the filial spirit-"

  "You have to leave here," she said, interrupting me.

  "Why?" I said indignantly.

  "Because when Rufius finds out you can't use psionics 
anymore, he is going to kill you. And I won't be able to stop him 
either..."

  I reached out and touched the back of her hand. She moved 
it immediately, though not contemptuously. I leaned forward in the 
cushioned seat to see her face better, but it was still turned away.

  "I can show you how to get out of here, but it is far and 
very risky. And though it must not feel like it, it is late at night and 
there is still rioting going on."

  This rung a bell. "So now you're worried about me?" I 
asked. "Wandering around alone at night?"

  "Not alone. You must take Zig with you."

  "Zig is here?!"

  "Yes. He was captured at the same time as you."

  "When was this? I don't remember being kidnapped or 
anything. Of course I was out for at least day and a half there. 
Come to think of it, the last thing I remember..."

  She turned to me for the first time. "Was me trying to kill 
you?" she asked suddenly. Her pretty eyes were wet, but I didn't 
feel like reaching out and holding her like I had thought I would. 
Had something changed? I remained for the moment.

  "That would be it." 

  "I know you can't believe this, and I don't expect you too, 
but I'll get it out anyway. White told me that if you were in danger 
of death, your body would mature itself faster to protect you. He 
told me to give you Anthanol which would keep you awake during 
the merusion, so you would see me do it. Afterwards..." she trailed 
off. "Though if I had been lied to as many times as you have, a 
crying girl wouldn't scratch my surface either."

  Hmm. I had to shrug a little, because it wasn't that she 
wasn't reaching me. Okay, so maybe I did remember Rufius taking 
me and Zig. I really had been unconscious the whole time but that 
had never stopped me from having memories before. The truth 
seems to be that I am never far below the surface, even in death. I 
even know some things that happened to other people in other 
places during that time. My old infectious presence coming back. 
Not the merusion nonsense, but my *true* power. 

  The curse of excessive awareness is that you can't hide 
from the truth when you really want to. 

  Like now. The thing was that this situation had become so 
confused and so many people had gone for the throats of everyone 
around them that by now it was just revolting. Zig had betrayed me 
once, Chris had betrayed us both, Alethea had ticked off another of 
my own lives for some reason I'm sure she might have truly 
believed on some level. Hey, in times of war, times of great 
change, this sort of thing was to be expected, right? Sure. But what 
do we do now? No one ever writes about the personal aftermaths 
of the great changers of society. The only things I had left were the 
hard tools and skills of creation I had honed in the last month. All 
my relations with other people and places were shot to shit. I mean, 
what the hell was I supposed to go live now? What the hell would I 
do with a girlfriend who had tried to kill me? Who now *seemed* 
sorry, though was blatantly admitting she still had grander goals in 
life than simply being with me, the very thing she had fully denied, 
crying in my arms, a mere three days ago in bed. Maybe this was 
one of those times I was supposed to exercise my humanity. To 
think outside the lines. Nothing but *nothing* was coming to me. Not 
that I could expect it to.

  "I mean, you're alive now aren't you?" she continued. "But 
I thought you were dead, and it was my fault. Then I came back 
here and heard Rufius asking White why a machine said your 
vitals had suddenly recovered. I just about had a heart attack. He 
was certainly trying to kill you, and then I knew I had done a 
terrible thing."

  I sat back against my chair and listened. "Does that mean 
you were on his side even before?"

  Her head sank down again. "Oh, Screw. It's just so hard. 
Whatever else they are, they are my family. A long time ago my 
parents both split up. Mom thought the Institute was putting too 
much pressure on me, and they were. White had me in and out of 
the damn chamber every week. I was never maturing fast enough, 
he said. He once even questioned my blood to my mother's face. 
So she woke me up one night and we got the hell out of there. I 
never wanted to come back or see my father again. Rufius had 
corrupted him. White was a good man, once, even though I know 
you can't see any of that now. He was a good father, too. But 
Rufius found him and saw that he knew a little bit about merusion 
and psionics, and changed him. He didn't always look like that 
either. As he became more and more a slave to that bastard, his 
body reformed.

  "Yet he was still my father, you see? Eventually I called 
him, I needed closure, and he...well, he has this way of talking to 
you, that makes you desperately want to believe in someone as 
wretched as he. If I could just believe, then everything in the past 
would be forgotten and we could both move on together. So I did. I 
was in the back of the yellow car when Wells came after you on 
the subway so long ago. I guess it was that, his willingness to 
sacrifice us all just to get to you that made me jump out and leave 
on my own. It was awful being so alone until I found Zig who took 
care of me. And then I met you in person. I had no more solid 
ground to stand on; my loyalties cycloned around inaccessibly. 

  "It's easier to hate yourself with everyone else than it is to 
hate everyone else by yourself, you know?"

  I nodded.

  "And when I met you face to face... everything suddenly 
changed. You were the focal point of all of this pain and hardship 
in my life, maybe the reason that Rufius and my father turned evil 
in the first place, and yet I could do nothing but love you. You 
were my center too, and I could do nothing but chose shat face I 
would show in my defense. It was impossible to really run away 
this time."

  "Wait," I said. She looked so serious, but it was impossible 
to tell. "Not all of that adds up. If they had you, why did they want 
me at all? And why go to so much trouble when they could just as 
easily find someone else who reacted?"

  "It isn't that simple. The number of people who 
successfully react to merusion is pitifully small. And most do not 
even survive the tests. A long time ago when I was young, I heard 
that they were prepping an alternate student whom they had found 
somewhere else. Someone special that they were going to use if I 
didn't work out. I think they were talking about you. They had 
already found Wells and he was treated, though he did not have the 
level of potential they were looking for. When the problems 
between my parents escalated, they put him to work on tracking 
you. He put the bug in your head, and he followed you around 
waiting to see if you matured. I don't think at any point he was 
actually trying to kill you, except of course at the end on the train."

  "How do you know?"

  "Because I was in the car that first time. White radioed him 
on the CB, and they had a whole argument about it. Wells wanted 
to let his students have open season on you to give you practice, 
but White said no. When you killed Wells, the imposter Guy Jinn, 
a man named Geese, ran off to get revenge and they couldn't stop 
him either. Merusion always warps your conception of loyalty. The 
fact that you managed to kill him at a immature state proved that 
you had more psionic potential than anyone had originally thought. 
And more intelligence, drive. This scares them and it is why they 
would kill anyone to get a hold of you."

  "For what though? What did they need me for that was so 
hard neither one of them could do it themselves? And why can't I 
use the psionics anymore?"

  "I don't know. Their long term plans were constructed long 
before you were approached, though. Testing me, testing you, and 
building their stupid machine in the basement is all Rufius and my 
dad ever did for as long as I can remember. They never told me 
anything specific about it. They just kept saying I had to mature 
faster, and that I would be a failure to the city if I didn't. That's a 
hell of a thing to tell a little girl."

  "So why are you working for them now? You said yourself 
that you hated the old man, and that when you saw what Wells was 
like, you jumped out of the speeding car. Why didn't you just stay 
with me? Alethea, I would have taken care of you no matter what 
they did."

  Her tears ran openly now, and I could not sit still any 
longer. I stood up, and pulled her into my chest and held her there. 
A bold move, considering the situation, but I usually get away with 
that kind of thing. Seeing women cry drives me crazy, and 
especially when it's because of things about me I refuse to give in 
on. It's like there is nothing I can do which could possibly display 
my core empathy and devotion, and maybe in this case, love. 

  It's just that it wasn't so easy this time. I really _had_ been 
lied to, and openly betrayed. I was still angry and in emotional 
disarray; explanations don't always set everything straight. How 
did I know that she, like those who originally screwed with my 
brain in the first place weren't still deceiving me? It would 
obviously be something like this, something that made me think it 
was my interests that were being looked after. A safer bet. Yet did 
that change the way I felt about her? Because I knew that there was 
a lot of my own past she didn't know about either. There were still 
many things I was not sure of myself that it would be better for her 
not to know. True, my intentions had not been to deceive, but I 
could see myself telling the very same lies if I thought it would 
smooth over certain circumstances. It all led back to the confused 
state of frustration. So I merely held her there, and she cried semi-
dramatically into my arm. 

  Finally she said, "Oh, I wanted to stay, I would have. But 
when Mom put you in the chamber, I thought that she was just 
going to do to you what my father wanted to do to me. My damn 
parents, they're fucking crazy. All they care about is their 'Cause.' 
In White's case, it's slaving away for Rufius and killing himself 
for the man's every whim. The old woman is all about 'revolution' 
and leading the Cabal to overthrow the government. She doesn't 
just want the Mandate out, she wants herself in. Your friend Chris 
is just under her little spell, like White is under Rufius'. And the 
worst thing is that they will never, ever stop, even if it means 
killing each other, or us."

  "So you tried to kill me so that I wouldn't side with either 
one?"

  "No!" she said, pleadingly. "I never wanted to kill you at 
all! I just thought that if I could get to you first, you would forget 
both of them, and take me away with you. At first I wanted to 
consume your every thought and show you how selfishly you had 
been living. No money, no job, no effort into life; I was going to be 
your savior. But then I thought you died, and I knew the old lady 
would be furious with me if she found out, even if I told her I had 
just been trying to help you 'mature.' So I went back to my father, 
and he said he would protect me if I obeyed him." She gestured 
with her hand behind my back. "And he had been trying to kill you 
all along. That was it. Game over. Finally. I decided to stop him 
myself. I contacted the two people who had the most tangible 
power in the city, and promised that I would deliver the terrorists 
to them, if they would kill Rufius and my father. Sarah Wheeler, 
woman of the people, and Commissioner Arkoff, man of the state. 
You just saw them agree."

  What do you say to that? I really had been a pawn all along. 
And even as I tried to figure out who was good, and who was evil, 
it turns out that everyone had their own agendas for me from the 
beginning. I was probably the only person who hadn't been 
involved. After learning that the merusion had failed, the old 
woman had probably sold me to White in return for not interfering 
with her revolution. Now, stripped of my outward powers, I could 
no longer put up the brawn to stop Rufius. It was all just too much.

  "Well now what?" I said.

  "Between us?"

  "Between all of us. I can't trust anyone anymore, we're all 
too out for our own good. The Mandate, the insurrectionists, 
Rufius, you, me; no one has any ideas for the future except 
themselves. Its not even that clear that there will be a future or that 
anyone wants one. This is supposed to be a city, a community of 
people who want to live together away from the desolate outside 
world, but no one wants to share the responsibility. I've been out 
there, it's nothing but an infinite plain of rocks and rusted 
machinery. No life, no art, no beauty. Nothing to love or live for. 
The only thing on this planet for real is right here around us. So 
what if the only thing keeping us alive is the Turbine. I don't care 
about that anymore. We are alive and that's the only fact we know. 
It's the only one that matters."

  She was getting tears again. 

  "No one wants to make anyone else happy but themselves. 
Myself included." I sighed.

  In that lonely office we both looked at the floor, noticed 
each other and then turned away. 

  "You said you had undergone the treatment too?" I said 
after a minute to change the subject.

  "Yes, I did. And yes, I can use psionics. I was there when 
you had to break that brick this morning. I did it for you."

  "Then you can get us out of here."

  When she heard this, she pulled away from me, and said, 
"No. I can't leave. I have to deal with Arkoff, because he is our 
last chance. If I leave, White will come looking for us and if he 
finds you with me, he will kill you."

  "I have no doubt about that."

  "Then you know. You have to rescue Zig and escape 
yourself. When this is all over, I'll find you."

  "Alie, I'm not leaving you here with these freaks. You're 
home coming with me."

  "Screw, I can't! You said yourself that we just can't run 
from these people anymore! I have to stay here and make sure the 
job gets done. In fact if the old man even *thinks* that I am in love 
with you, he might kill me too! I don't know why he erased your 
memory, or why they want you so bad, or why they picked you in 
the first place. But they did, and that means you have to get as far 
away from here as possible. You can't do me or the city any good 
if you get killed, and without your power that is exactly what will 
happen."

  "But what about you? Do you think you are better then 
both of them? Did they teach you how to fight?"

  "A little. I can defend myself if I need too. Please, I will 
show you where Zig is. He is in danger as we speak. You must get 
him out, and then escape from this place. It is the only possibility."

  I looked into her eyes and saw the waver. Yes, even now 
she was vacillating. Who could blame her, I had never been all that 
decisive in life either. She had let so much fall onto her shoulders, 
more than on mine. But something in me had thought that right 
now, if she really did love me, she would see what this moment 
meant and take a stand. I don't know against who or what, but at 
least on my side. So that anything that ever happened to us 
afterward wouldn't matter as much as right now. 

  (Well, you know; life just isn't a movie.)

  I sighed. "But what will I do if something happens to you?"

  "You will have to have faith," she said.

  "I'm coming back for you, you know. After I get Zig out, 
and to a safe place, you had better be finished here. Because I'll be 
back and I won't take no for an answer."

  She smiled and leaned into my shirt again. "I'm counting 
on it."

  I pulled her back to me, and in a moment of indecision said, 
"I love you too, Alethea. I have for so long, and I don't give a shit 
about the rest of all life if it means I can't have you." 

  Then I kissed her, and we stood there, sustaining each 
other. Every time I found her she was snatched away again. 

  But I couldn't think of a way out of it. 

  When our senses of apropos-timing clicked, I felt the 
tension returning. If only we had a few hours alone together we 
could get out more of the things we had been meaning to say. 
There was never enough time to try to show her the real me. It's a 
dirty trick played by real life. I wanted to shush her before she 
could say, "Come on," but I heard it said still. 

  Her demure expressions were always combined with a hint 
of hidden self-satisfaction which did everything for me. It meant 
she knew her fault and did it anyway. I never had the will to ignore 
it like most people. I never wanted to. 

  Then she showed me the way.
















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replies always appreciated!
thanks for reading.
aescension




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