Missing Time: 11/28/12 - This Is What You Are - Pt. 3

10/04/12
Yekaterinburg, Russia
 
"You do not understand our story, O SPYGOD," Orange and Gold says, ever-smiling: "You know only the edges of it. You know nothing of who we were, or how we came to be here, or why. You see our actions as evil, perhaps monstrous, but you of all people should know that a people will do anything to survive."

"And you should !@#$ing understand that we might have helped you, if you'd just !@#$ing asked," SPYGOD says: "All you ever had to !@#$ing do was ask for help."

"That is not in our nature, O SPYGOD."

"Well, neither is rolling over and dying, O !@#$face. We will also do anything to survive. And if there's one thing I can do, it's do anything." 

"You can, indeed. We have clearly underestimated you, O SPYGOD. It will not happen again."

SPYGOD smiles as the Specials re-aim their guns right at him.

"Just so you know," SPYGOD says, looking right at the Imago: "Everything that !@#$ing happens from here on out? That's on you. All of you."

"It is indeed," the Imago says, and gives the order to fire.

The Specials make ready to pull their triggers. Their gauss rifles -- capable of killing even SPYGOD -- hum and hiss.

SPYGOD outstretches his arms, as if he is ready to embrace death at last.

And then, just before the super-swift, heated projectiles can turn him into a hot, gay BBQ, he does something no one's seen him do since just after the War -- he pulls a shining, silvery sword out of nowhere, and puts it down between himself and his foes.

Except that it's not much of a sword, anymore; It's big and bulky, oblong and misshapen. It almost looks like it's developed cancer from disuse, or something. 

As SPYGOD positions it, and quickly ducks down behind it, he forces the sword to expand even more. It becomes an aegis of sorts, creating a barrier between himself and his enemies. 

And as soon as it's as wide as he thinks he can make it, he holds still and prays that this will still work.

That the shooting doesn't happen right away he puts down to their surprise. That it doesn't happen a second or two after they should have stopped being surprised is, itself, quite surprising. But then the seconds roll by, one into another, and SPYGOD realizes that they should have tried to kill him by now.

So he very carefully looks up, creating a small hole in the shield so he can see what's going on.

What he sees is the last thing he saw before he pulled the sword out and ducked down. The Imago, floating. The Specials, aiming. The guns, ready to fire. 

"Well that's !@#$ weird," he says, still not daring to move.

Yes, it is, a voice answers him. He quickly spins to see who it is, and is mystified by what he sees there.

"Who the !@#$ are you?" he asks, searching for an appropriate gun to aim  at the wavering, indistinct figure.

A friend, the presence says, walking past SPYGOD and his sword-turned-shield, and heading for the Specials and their Imago master: I know that sort of answer doesn't make you happy, but a longer explanation would be... well, longer. And you don't have a lot of time. 

"I seem to have a !@#$ing lot of it, all of a sudden," SPYGOD says, watching as the Presence quickly (but carefully) repositions each and every Special so that their guns are pointed at one another: "Are you... I mean, you look kind of !@#$ing familiar, but-"

Here's the deal, (REDACTED), the presence says, surprising SPYGOD by using his real name: As soon as they realize that these people haven't caught you, they're going to use Deep-Ten to wipe out this entire area, just to get to you.

"Unacceptable," SPYGOD growls, still thinking of that train full of doomed people: "We have to stop it-"

We can't. The best we can do is give you time to get out of here.

"What, you mean you can !@#$ing stop time, but you can't !@#$ing do anything to save these people?" SPYGOD shouts, aiming his gun at the figure as he makes the sword-shield go away: "That's bull!@#$, pal. If you can stop time like this, there's got to be something we can do-"

There is, the presence says, sliding over to where SPYGOD stands -- faster than he can see, much less hope to pull the trigger: you can shut up, trust me, and go for a ride. 

And then they're somewhere else entirely. But as soon as SPYGOD realizes that someplace is most likely in Japan -- in an abandoned building, far from prying electronic eyes -- the presence has all but vanished.

"Well, !@#$," SPYGOD says, putting away the gun and looking out the window. He's just in time to hear the Earth's atmosphere part as a pulse cannon touches down, over in Russia.

"!@#$," he mutters, not at all happy at how this rather !@#$ty day has gone.

* * *

Which is how you got to Japan without anyone knowing you were there, the Presence says, patting SPYGOD on the cheek as more of his lungs goosh out of his upside-down mouth: But you had it right. You had seen me before. Sort of.

SPYGOD coughs some more, glaring up at the mysterious figure -- a being not even the Chandra Eye can clearly make out.

That's right. I was at Bastogne, too. I didn't appear until you walked away to try and relieve yourself. And by the time you found out the hallway went on forever, and decided to just use the wall, it was all over. 

But you did catch sight of me, didn't you? Maybe just a little while you shook the last few drips away. Just enough that, when I helped you, last month, you weren't completely surprised to see me.

And then there was that dream, the Presence goes on, getting a little more comfortable, beside SPYGOD's head: Except... wait, that hasn't happened yet. But it will. And soon.

A quizzical look, even through extreme pain.

Sorry, (REDACTED). When it comes to time, I'm on the outside looking in, most of the time. You might see our meetings as a linear progression, since that's how you experience time, but it's more than likely that my schedule for meeting you is well out of synch with yours. 

I go where I'm needed, when I need to be there, and the rest of the time I'm just looking down, or inside, or beyond. 

Yes, I know it sounds confusing, the Presence sighs, still reading puzzlement on SPYGOD's pained face: But believe it or not we have had this conversation, before. Several of them. In fact, while I haven't had them yet, you have had them with me, in my future. Which is your past.

SPYGOD's eye goes wide at that.

Took you long enough, the Presence says, dropping the blurring field. His face is a fantastic silver mask, and his high-tech costume is also silver -- shimmering and glittering and gleaming in the sun.

It's Shift.

"You..." SPYGOD coughs, trying to reach out a hand.

"Yes," Shift says, reaching out to take it: "It is me, my friend. It has been me, all along. And even when it hasn't been, it has."

SPYGOD tries to say he doesn't understand, but fails to overcome the stream of goo rushing from his chest to his mouth.

"I know," he says: "You saw me die, then. You see me live, now. I sounded different, then. I am different, now. Two limited lifetimes, one immortal life. Such is the nature of godhood, when all is said and done."

"Don't... you aren't..."

"I am," Shift says, tapping his chest: "All we ever were was an idea made flesh. And you of all people should know that ideas are very hard to kill or destroy, even if Heaven decides otherwise. If all else fails, we just find a new body to exist within.

"And thanks to you, I have done just that."

SPYGOD coughs some more, twitching.

"Yes, I know. You have more questions. And I promised you secrets. But first, let us look at yours."

With that, Shift gets up, and spreads his hands wide across the scene. As he does, it's filled with tiny, shimmering windows in space and time: pockets of places and scenes from long ago, or not too long ago.

And in those small replayings of times past, SPYGOD sees himself -- however inverted.

He sees his earliest days as a hero, fighting supernazis on the road to Berlin. He sees himself sneaking around behind the Iron Curtain, after the War. He sees himself in Korea, Vietnam, South and Central America, Europe, Africa, the Middle East, Asia.

He sees himself with the Liberty League, the Freedom Force, and the COMPANY. He sees himself with heroes and villains, spies and freedom fighters, destabilizers and nation builders. With President after President, and politicians and appointees galore.

He sees himself running the COMPANY. He sees himself fleeing from it. He sees himself trying to recreate it, however restrained by this new, post-Imago world order.

He sees himself sober and drunk, happy and sad, angry and angrier. He sees himself !@#$ing, !@#$ing, and !@#$ing.

And all the while, as he watches, he sees himself in charge. He sees himself making decisions, for good or ill. He sees himself giving commands, either knowing their consequences or no longer caring. He sees himself doing what needs to be done, however flawed his understanding of what led to these events, or how they might play out.

He sees a man he was, there. He hardly recognizes him, now.

"And that is the problem, isn't it," Shift asks, waving at one example in particular: "Look at yourself, here, (REDACTED). All that hard work you had to do to get the underground armies of the world on your side for that last battle against the Imago. All those deals, all those promises, all those bargains and tricks and called-in favors...

"Oh, look," he says, pointing to one particularly hair-raising negotiation: "You do make a very convincing Chinese prostitute. If I didn't know you as well as I did, even I might have been fooled."

SPYGOD tries to say something but the words get caught on something. It might actually be his diaphragm, oozing into what's left of his throat.

"Yes, I know," Shift goes on: "You really put yourself on the line for that one, and Gods only know how you are ever going to pay that back, much less live it down.

"But that is the point. You didn't even stop to think about any of that, did you? You just looked through your little black book, kicked down doors, and got what you wanted."

"Had to..." SPYGOD croaks, wondering how much more lung he can lose at this point: "No one else..."

"Exactly!" Shift all but shouts, pointing back at him: "That is exactly it, my friend. No one else can do these things. No one else is you. This is your calling. This is who you are.

"This is what you are," Shift continues, stepping in closer and continuing on: "You are the one who makes it happen, (REDACTED). You make the hard choices, the impossible decisions. You throw your life on the line because no one else will do it.

"And that's why all... this," he says, gesturing to the dead and dying around them: "Is so massively disappointing. Because you could have done much better, my friend. So much better than this."

SPYGOD grits his teeth: "So could... you-"

"Could I? Is this my thing to do? I patrol time and space, friend. I deal with things even you can't see, and problems even you can't imagine.

"In fact, as we are speaking, I am several different places at once. A clutch of chronovores are sliding into New Zealand. A time paradox is threatening at the South Pole. Certain safeguards and stopgaps I had put in place, in ages past, need to be checked up on and reinforced this very second, this very day. Locks must be checked, barriers strengthened, the fabric of reality shored up...

"That is my calling, my friend. And while I am happy to help you with yours, when I need to, the rest of the time... well, I'm really busy.  And besides, how would you have taken if if I had just appeared, while you were putting this plan together, and told you it wouldn't work?"

Not very well, SPYGOD has to admit. But then...

"Yes, here I am, berating you on your bad plan, after all. But let us consider this an intervention-"

"Liked you better... when you didn't... !@#$ing... talk..."

"I know. And I am sorry. But this time, it is necessary. And not just because of the dead, here, but because of what it signifies for times to come.

"You've done this before, you know," Shift says, gesturing to the remade nation he's just assassinated: "Gone it alone. Been so angry at your circumstances and orders and leaders that you've ignored all the friends and allies you have, and all the resources at your beck and call, and just strapped on all the guns you can fit onto your jumpsuit, and whatever else you can fit into your sword..."

He looks back at SPYGOD, smiling: "And that, by the way, was a stroke of genius. All those times you amazed people by putting things out of nowhere? They were just all hidden in your sword, all along. That was good thinking on your part, (REDACTED)."

"Thanks..." SPYGOD coughs: "Thought so... myself... !@#$..."

"Of course, it did lead to you having to rely on guns, but maybe that's not such a bad thing, given your profession."

"Can't stab someone from... half a mile away..."

"This is true," Shift continues, stepping through a small portal between two images and reappearing beside SPYGOD's tree: "That is not one of your skills. Not yet, anyway."

"What...?"

"Ah, I forget myself," Shift chuckles: "But then, so have you, (REDACTED). Consider what you have to play with. Consider who you can call for aid. You have geniuses and madmen. You have heroes and villains. You have a demon and an angel, for God's sake.

"Do you not think of of them could have found a way to save these people, somehow?"

No. He doesn't. He grits his teeth and closes his eyes.

"But yet, you went it alone. You told no one, except for your lover. You commandeered the people you needed to destroy that woman's extra bodies. You took the dangerous things out of storage.

"And then you came here, and killed millions of people, just because you did not want to get anyone else involved in your mistake."

"My mistake..." SPYGOD says: "I let her out... she got free..."

"Yes, but it was not completely your fault she did so. She had help, voluntary and otherwise. And just as you did not need to shoulder the entire blame and responsibility,  yourself, neither did you need to solve the problem all by yourself. Plans work better when you get other people involved. You should know that by now."

"Not always..."

"Well, how about this, then?" Shift says, gesturing to himself: "This is the result of one of your better plans, SPYGOD. This is what happens when you really think about what to do, and how to do it, and who to use to get what you need done.

"I am here, today, because of you."

And before SPYGOD can cough up anything else, the Super-God does something that, in all the years they've known one another, he has never seen this man do.

He takes off the mask.

Beneath the gleaming, smiling silver is the face of a youngish man -- and a familiar one at that. It takes SPYGOD a moment to realize who it is, as the last time he saw him he was much younger, and was most certainly not smiling.

"Questions, yes," Simon Pure says, his face flickering: "But I have talked enough for one day. It is enough for you to know that, when the time is right, you and Mr. USA really do need to have a talk about what happened to him, and to me."

With that he gestures, and the many pockets of times gone past disappear. And he kneels down and holds SPYGOD's head up, looking into his eyes.

"Let this be a sacrifice, (REDACTED)" Shift pleads with him: "Let this be the end of your old mistakes. Let what comes from this be the penance you pay for them. Let what springs forth from this be the start of something entirely new and different.

"Learn from this, SPYGOD," Shift whispers, putting his mask back on: "Heal and learn."

And he's gone, and there's nothing but the tree, the dead, and SPYGOD -- somewhere between all of them.

* * *

He hangs on the tree for nine hours, not sure if he's going to live or die -- not even certain that the conversation he just had was real or imagined.

By the end of that time -- reasonably certain that he's no longer in danger of choking on his own fluid -- he carefully pulls himself up, and stands on his own two feet again. 

Walking to the shore is painful, both physically and otherwise. With each step he sees the dead, arrayed around him. He can hear no heartbeats, here. No one has survived this holocaust but himself.

At the shore, he sees one last echo of Zalea, lying face-down on the beach. A massive bloom of brownish-red sand lies beneath her head -- a tombstone of sorts, and an accusation.

For a moment he almost kneels down to pull her head from her shoulders, just so he can have the head of another enemy on his wall. But he realizes that would be a bad idea. For all he knows, she might be able to resurrect herself from even that.

So he leaves her be -- taking only a second to flip her the bird -- and then wanders into the surf, wondering if anything can make him clean, today. 

Anything at all. 

(SPYGOD is listening to Pure (Gary Numan, demo version) and having a lot of shame)

Missing Time: 11/28/12 - This Is What You Are - Pt. 2

"So that's the Nation of Atlas, huh?" SPYGOD said some time later, as the car came to a stop in a lot in the center of Jerusalem, overlooking the remade nation he'd just invaded: "Guys doing all the brute work, girls doing the smart stuff, and no kids?"

"Oh, most of the children are in school, right now," the frontseat Zalea Zathros explained, allowing her backseat self to continue making out with Tish: "But we've gotten a few of them up here, just so this can be seen by a suitable representation of the populace."

"You want to go for an all-in-the-family vibe when you try and kill me," SPYGOD snorted, lighting up another cigarette and looking out the window at all the people that had assembled there, in the lot. The eager look on their faces was !@#$ed unnerving.

"That's a rather crude way to put it, but, yes," frontseat Zalea admitted, opening the gull-wing doors on both sides: "If you'd be good enough to exit the vehicle?"

SPYGOD did, making sure to get a good look around as he did. It was a circular lot, fenced in, with some lethargic olive trees along the periphery. From here you could get a good view of things, and that was probably why she'd chosen this.

That and the center spot was probably in the path of several of her heat beams.

He'd figured that was going to be the end of the guided tour she'd been good enough to give him. All the way from Ashdod, she'd been going on and on about all the great things they'd accomplished since she'd revived the nation. All their societal and technological advances, all their plans for the future. All that stock-standard, gloating supervillain bull!@#$.

He hadn't been listening, though. He'd been looking out the world at the transformed cities, and remembering things that had happened there, both to and around him.

They'd passed a cafe where he'd once told Golda Meir's personal secretary to suck the !@#$ from his !@#$hole, over something that was still !@#$ing classified, all these years later. They'd gone by the building that now stood in the spot where Molchanie once ran their strategic talents program, before one of their own people had rendered it uninhabitable by normal humans. The bar where he'd toasted certain HAGANAH agents for catching up to a rather hideous Nazi war criminal in 1969.

(The sad street in Tel Aviv where BUSH had killed Geri and Johan -- the loss still heartbreaking, even after all this time.)

All those times, all that history -- all of it was gone, now, except as minor pieces in the minds of the frankensteined people that now labored to rework and perfect this transformed nation.

And with each mile -- as one Zalea had essentially kissed a mirror right next to him, while another kept talking and talking -- his stomach had become exponentially sour, and he found himself wishing he'd just done what he'd wanted to do, the moment he'd watched Zalea's televised announcement about what she'd done here.

Nuke the whole !@#$ thing from orbit, just to be !@#$ing sure.

* * *

Yes, and that would have helped... how, exactly? the Presence asks him, taking him through the day's events one step at a time: Just scattered their ashes and atoms, again? Sent waves of radiation down onto the neighbors? Made the world just that much more damaged, especially after what the Imago did to it?

SPYGOD tried to talk, but couldn't. It was all he could do to keep breathing, what with his lungs dissolving almost as fast as they could heal. 

You see, that's always been your problem, the Presence continued: They say that when all you have in your toolbox is a hammer, everything looks like a nail. Well, all you tend to have in your toolbox is weapons. Even that sword you don't use, much, anymore? Imagine all the things you could do with that, if you'd just expand your mind a little.

A sour look from SPYGOD.

Oh, I know. Believe me, I know all the work you've put into the spy game, (REDACTED).  All those plots and plans. All those schemes and conspiracies. It's just delicious how much time and trouble you put into making that huge web of cause and effect, and all the little things that happened when one strand or another got pulled on.

But in the end, there's only one thing that can happen with you. One final solution... if you'll excuse the phrase, especially in these circumstances. And that's that, sooner or later, when everything else fails, there's just you, and a gun.

And some poor fellow who walks right into two bullets, right to the eyes.

The presence tapped his obscured peepers for extra effect.

Case in point, what's happened here today, it said, gesturing to the dead and dying: All these poor people. They had no idea what happened to them when they died, and had no way to avoid coming back. And then you come here, today, and all you can bring them is death. 

More angry looks, coupled with a few weak coughs as the bloody stream of lung-mush gets even worse.

Well, perhaps, and perhaps not. But you know what they say about shooting guns, (REDACTED). You fire off one just big enough, and it goes around the world and comes right back to hit you.

With that, the presence made a gun of its fingers and thumb: "Bang, you're dead," I think you said?

And what could he possibly say to that?

* * *

"So, how do you plan to keep the rest of the world out?" SPYGOD asked, looking off into the distance, towards Egypt -- seeing the far-off TU troops massed there, waiting.

"The same way we'll be dealing with you," some of the people closer to him replied, holding up their hands. As they did, a heat beam arced from a tall building, striking the ground right in front of one of the TU's hovertanks.

"Well, that's pretty effective," he admits, watching the TU's line move back, quick as it can: "But aren't you worried they'll ask for their people back?"

"What people?" other people asked, holding up compact video cameras -- all trained on him.

"Well, it wasn't just Israelis and Palestinians who were killed here, that day," SPYGOD said, looking around: "Lots of tourists, even then. I'm sure their countries would like their ashes back... however animated they might be-"

"We didn't return them to life," backseat Zalea admits: "Just so we could avoid that little problem, in fact."

"Well, that was !@#$ing smart," SPYGOD admitted, winking at the nearest camera.

"So what did you think of our new society?" the many people there asked as one: "Is it not glorious? Is it not everything we've promised?"

"It's contradictory bull!@#$," SPYGOD pronounced, playing to the cameras: "You claim you're following in Ayn Rand footsteps? That's bull!@#$. As much as I hated that !@#$, I have to give her credit for upholding the individual over the state. But here? There's no individuals. Just one person."

He points to the backseat Zalea as she exits the vehicle after Tish.

"Oh, that's not really fair," she said, coming closer to him and indicating that he should stand in the center of the lot: "We've achieved something unique, here. We've created a true over-mind. Many minds, all operating together, sharing ideas and memories, innovations and inventions..."

"All under your control," he insisted: "That's not in keeping with the idea of the individual being free from force."

"I think you're failing to see the possibilities."

"And I think I've listened to enough of my boyfriend's early Rush LPs to know you're full of !@#$, Zalea," SPYGOD insisted: "But then, most so-called Objectivists are, anyway. I don't know why you'd be any !@#$ing different."

"Well, I guess we can't expect intelligence from someone who gets his information from concept albums."

He just smiled at that, and then looked at Tish: "Well, let's see what I can find out from real !@#$ing life, shall we?"

"How do you propose to do that?" Zalea asked.

"Tish?" SPYGOD asked, turning to look at the reanimated woman.

"Yes?" the woman answered, stepping forward.

"Zalea says you're an individual, and you can think for yourself. Is that right?"

"Yes-"

"Then what's your husband's name?" SPYGOD demanded, stepping towards her and staring her in the eyes.

There was a moment of confusion, and then she answered: "Amir-"

"How old are your children?"

"Seven and... and..."

"What are their names?" he asked, watching her grow even more confused: "What's their blood type? What cartoons do they like? When's the last time you were !@#$ing proud of them?"

The woman stammered and looked around, uncertain -- knowing that the memories should be there, but just weren't.

"An individual, huh?" SPYGOD snorted, turning to look at the backseat Zalea: "She can't even !@#$ing remember the name of the man she's had two !@#$ kids with, lady. God only knows what else you lost along the way."

The crowd murmured for a moment, and then all smiled and golf-clapped.

"You keep bringing that point up, SPYGOD," they said in unison: "I fail to see why."

"Because she's not alive," SPYGOD insisted, looking around at the cameras: "You're all dead, all of you. This !@#$ took your DNA and brought you back, and she can !@#$ing slip into you like a hand into a !@#$ glove. But you died that day. Your soul's gone on to someplace else.

"And some !@#$ing !@#$ with a god!@#$ god complex is walking you around so she can have her big !@#$ utopia at last!"

"I think that's enough of that, then," backseat Zalea said, stepping forward: "We've been polite, even to the likes of you, but this is where the hospitality ends."

"I thought I still had three days before I stank like fish?"

"Oh no," Zalea said, putting an arm around Tish and kissing her ear: "All those years in that awful hole, never expecting to leave it? I swore vengeance against you, SPYGOD. And now I'm going to get it, and you're going to take it."

"Really?" he said, smiling: "You don't think I'd come here without a backup plan, do you?"

"What could you possibly do?" She asked, smiling just as wide: "How can you fight a foe made of people? Will you kill all these people, here and now, on camera?"

"Eventually," SPYGOD said, a glowing sword appearing in his right hand: "But first? I'm going to kill you."

"Oh, look," the crowd laughed, pointing in unison to his weapon: "The mighty man, hiding behind his penis extension. Do you think you can chop your way through all of us with that-"

Suddenly, they all stopped talking. Then they all cocked their head to the side, looking askance as they did so.

And then they all looked hurt and helpless, as if something precious had been taken from them by a thief too large to stop, too fast to chase.

"That'll be my TU strike team in Barcelona," SPYGOD announced, holding up the sword: "Next up is Minsk. Then Rio."

"No," they all gasped, and then twitched twice as each pronouncement came true.

"See, I know how this !@#$ing game is played, Zalea," SPYGOD said, his sword suddenly changing its shape -- becoming thicker and shorter: "You'd never have your remote bodies anywhere near something like this, just in case someone called your !@#$ bluff and decided to nuke your nasty !@#$ from orbit. So you'd scatter them far and wide, like always, and normally we'd never be able to find them all without a lot of !@#$ time and work, since the signals are so !@#$ faint.

"But that's when you're running maybe 50 bodies? Not a couple million. You need a lot of signal to make that happen. And while it's still too !@#$ing faint for most things to detect, well..."

He tapped his eye, under his eyepatch: "Let's just say I !@#$ing did."

The crowd got very angry, then -- infuriated tenfold with each new twinge as another hidden body died. Then they twitched one more time, and screamed in utter despair.

"That'd be St. Louis, right near the Arch," SPYGOD surmised, doing something with his shrinking sword: "The last body. You're on your own, here, Zalea. Just you and your meat puppets. All you little !@#$ing Frankensteins."

"We'll tear you apart, you pousti," they all shouted, taking a step forward -- hands raised to do the deed: "And then we'll kill a tenth of us, just to show the world their error."

"I think we can !@#$ing do better than that, Zalea," SPYGOD said, holding up a pair of small, metal canisters -- each no longer than a pop can -- and popping the top on each can.

"What is that?" the clones asked as they stopped, and took half a step back.

"That, Zalea, is what we !@#$ing call 'blowback,'" he replied, scowling: "Remember back in the day, when you needed !@#$ing money for your early operations, after we froze your !@#$ accounts? Remember those weird German !@#$s you met with, and the bio-weapons tech you gave them? The viruses that homed in on specific genetic markers?"

There's a gasp, and then they all held their hands up to their mouths: "You didn't."

"That's just it, Zalea. I didn't. You did. You gave ABWEHR the means to drop viruses on Israel that would kill anyone with any !@#$ing Jewish blood in them. Even the slightest little drop. And you even threw in the !@#$ Arabs, just in case they wanted to scorch the !@#$ing Earth and salt it when they were done.

"Well, maybe you forgot about it, mostly because even those Nazi !@#$s were smart enough to hold off on using them as a final straw. But they !@#$ing kept them, Zalea, just in case. And when we stormed the Ice Palace, last year? I !@#$ing found them. And I took them somewhere safe and hid them, planning to !@#$ing destroy them.

"But, you know, with everything that's !@#$ing happened? I just never got the chance."

"And here they are," he said, holding the opened canisters out, revealing that each one bears German writing, and a bio-hazard symbol interspersed with a swastika: "You've been breathing them in for about a minute, now. They should start working in another minute."

"What?" the crowd said, some of them looking very ill.

"Short version?" SPYGOD said, making guns with his index fingers as he continued to hold onto his deadly cargo: "Bang. You're dead."

And then he laughed -- long and black. 

The crowd was no longer leering, nor threatening. All the faces that were of one, menacing expression just a second ago -- as they surrounded SPYGOD where he stood -- now shared one of fear. All those hijacked bodies took a step back, and then another, holding their hands up to their faces.

All of those voices screamed "no" -- many mouths, one mind.

One soul that realized it was about to meet its maker.

SPYGOD dropped the small, metal canisters to the ground. As they pinged and bounced on the concrete, he wondered: how much blood has been spilled over its ownership?

None more than today, he realized, watching as his enemy started to die

He wanted to stop looking as the men, women, and children of an entire nation fell down dying around him, but he could not. He wanted to stop hearing their wet and ragged screams, but his ears betrayed him.

He had to see and hear this because there was no way to tune out or block it. Her could not, and dared not. It was his penance -- his karmic payment having to do such a horrible thing.

For a moment, he thought he was crying. But then he coughed once, then again.

Then he looked at his hand and realized there was blood, there.

"What the !@#$ing !@#$?" tried to say, but it all came out bloody and ragged, pieces of his lungs flying up into his mouth...

* * *

Did you even know your Great-Grandmother was Jewish? the Presence asked, looking at him as the stream of blood gets even worse, somehow: Or was that just not discussed around the table in your Catholic living room?

More coughing, more blood. Now maybe some tears to go with it.

Ah, I see. Your grandmother never talked about her. And, given how she was, you never asked her. That makes perfect sense, now, (REDACTED). Just another mystery in a family full of them.

Only now, that mystery is going to kill you, it says, looking away: And just how ironic is that?

It pats SPYGOD on the side of the head, and then leans in to whisper -- But before you die? We have Some secrets of our own, you and I. Big secrets. The kind that change destinies and shake the world.

And I'm going to make sure you live long enough to tell me yours before I show you mine.

(SPYGOD is listening to Pure (Gary Numan) and having... lung junk. Lots and lots of it.)

Missing Time: 11/28/12 - This Is What You Are - Pt. 1

11/28/12
Jerusalem, Israel/Palestine
14:48

First there is nothing in SPYGOD's world but pain -- intense and searing, like the noonday sun in the desert.

It is his beginning and his end. So all-encompassing that he has forgotten how he came to this pain, or what has caused it. So amazingly complete that he wonders if he has finally died and gone to the Hell he's sent so many others to, over the years.

(Is that hell, he wonders: punishment without explanation? Pain without prologue?)

But, gradually, pieces of that blazing pain break down and away, so that other things can appear.

There is sound as hundreds of invisible others cough uncontrollably -- unable to scream as their bodies betray them. There is an intense, red smell as they void blood and filth from their ripped, billowing mouths. There is the sticky feel of that blood, carried on the breeze, and the horrid taste of what's coming from his own lips.

And then there is sight, as a mysterious, shimmering figure -- upside down, along with the rest of the world -- strides around the bodies of the stricken, walking towards him as though they weren't even there.

It's time, (REDACTED), the presence says to SPYGOD as an entire nation dies around them, felled by a deadly virus.

"Like !@#$ it is," he says between ragged, red coughs as he hangs upside-down from an olive tree -- his lungs turning to mush in his chest almost faster than he can heal them.

Being upside-down the only thing saving his life. 

No, it is, the presence gently insists, carefully walking up to him so as to avoid the stream of chunky, bright blood that's flowing from SPYGOD's nose and mouth like water from a weak firehose: This conversation's been scheduled since the day you put that eye in your head. You were always going to be here. I was always going to join you.

And we were always going to have this talk.

"I got... !@#$ing nothing to say,"

Wouldn't that be a first?  Well, maybe when I say "talk" I really mean "I talk, and you listen." And for once that's just about all you can do.

"!@#$ you," SPYGOD hacks, wondering if he's just hallucinating this. Is the virus melting his brain along with his lungs?

(What all does this !@#$ do?)

No. No hallucinations, the presence says, kneeling down so as to have his cloudy and indistinct head next to SPYGOD's: I promise you, (REDACTED), this is as real as it gets. I am here. You are here.

And they are dying around you because you couldn't think of any other way to stop her. 

And SPYGOD looks around them -- seeing men, women, and children writhe on the ground, bleeding out through their mouths -- and finally allows himself to admit the depth of his mistake.

And that, if he dies here and now, it would be highly justified.

* * *

"Welcome to the Nation of Atlas, SPYGOD," Zalea Zathros said as he stepped out of his personal torpedo, shaking the wet from his black leather jumpsuit as he did.

Of course, it wasn't exactly her standing on the beach at Ashdod. It was some large woman, dressed in a skintight, white jumpsuit padded with sophisticated electronic gear. But she spoke in her voice, and her mannerisms were exactly the same.

She was a meat-puppet, just like everyone else within the borders of what had once been Israel and Palestine.

"Not much of a !@#$ing welcome wagon," SPYGOD snorted, lighting up a cigarette and looking around: "Did I actually slip under your !@#$ radar, for once?"

"No," the woman answered, taking a step closer to him: "We saw you coming well before you got to the Terre Unifee's blockade. We just chose to allow you to land. You're really not as threatening as you seem to think you are."

"That remains to be seen," he said, scowling at her: "This person. What's her name?"

"I'm Tish Allon," the woman replied in her own voice, her own mannerisms coming through as well: "I'm a first level computer engineer, assigned to improving our data infrastructure."

"Well, ain't that just !@#$ing spiffy," SPYGOD spat, walking past her and looking around, observing all the new, high-tech construction: "'Assigned.' Like you had any choice about !@#$ing anything, after she turned you into an extension of herself."

"I'm alive," Tish said, walking up to him as he strides away from the beach, and towards the road beyond: "Isn't that enough?"

"Not in my book, it isn't."

"Easy for you to say, mister. You weren't here, that day. You didn't see what happened to us. To me..."

She fell silent, then, looking askance. 

"What happened to you, Tish?" SPYGOD asks, turning back to look at her as he taps some ashes out.

"The Imago... they cornered my family in a cafe, that day," Tish said, her eyes becoming red and wet as she did: "At first, I thought they just wanted to talk to us. But then I heard the screams from outside, and saw what was happening. And..."

"Go on," SPYGOD said, tossing his smoke away: "Please." 

She looked away, but then shook her head and went on with her story: "They ripped my husband's head from his shoulders, like he was a doll. They used their eyebeams on my children, leaving me holding piles of dust. And then they decided to kick me through the glass window, just to conserve power.

"I died screaming and in pain, bleeding on the streets while they floated above them, turning people to ashes. I think one of them might have stepped on my head, at the end. Or maybe I'm just imagining it."

SPYGOD nodded, and stepped forward to hug her. She tentatively allowed the embrace, and soon began weeping onto his shoulder. He stood there for quite some time -- his arms around her, his hand on the back of her head.

"I am sorry," he said after a time.

"For what?" she asked.

"That this happened to you," he said, slowly disengaging from the hug: "That you were !@#$ing victimized by those metal-plated !@#$s. That you got victimized again-"

"How can this be victimization?" Tish asked, shaking head head: "I'm alive, !@#$ it! I think, I feel, I-"

There was flurry of movement, and then a loud BANG, and then Tish Allon was lying on the ground -- her forehead a wet, red ruin from where the bullet had entered.

SPYGOD put the gun away, and then checked his watch. One second, two, five, ten. By the time it got to 15, the red mess he'd made of Tish's forehead was mostly healed, and her eyes were focusing on him. After a full minute she was wiping the muck from her totally-healed skull, and slowly getting up, as if she'd just fallen asleep. 

"And what did you think that would prove?" SPYGOD heard Zalea ask through Tish, as well as all the mouths of all the people nearby, over the bluff before the road.

"You're so !@#$ing smart, you figure it out," SPYGOD said, extending a hand to the woman he just shot, so as to help her up the rest of the way. She thanked him by slapping him full across the face. 

"You're pathetic," she said in her own voice: "I feel sorry for you."

"I am sorry for you," he said, tapping her forehead: "How can this be life, Tish? I just shot you dead. You just came back. That's not !@#$ing life, hon. And I oughta !@#$ing know."

 "Did you come all this way to kill one woman?" the voices demanded.

"No," SPYGOD said, lighting up another smoke and turning around in a circle to face his many accusers: "I came all this way to kill you, you nasty !@#$ing !@#$. If I have to return all these poor !@#$s you brought back to life while I'm doing it, I'm more than prepared."

Then he turned back around, and continued on towards the road, Tish not far behind him As he crested the hill of the beach, he looked around at the newly-reborn city, and watched as every person that could see him suddenly turned in unison to regard him.

"This is not life, you stupid !@#$holes!" he shouted to the men and women on the street, all wearing white jumpsuits padded with electronic gear: "This is slavery! This is living death! You've all been !@#$ing Frankensteined!"

"And we're so happy to be that way," every single person announced, all in her voice.

A high tech, luxury car pulled up before he could say anything else. Inside of it were two Zaleas -- one driving and another sitting in the back.

"Get in, (REDACTED)," the one in the back gently commanded as the door gull-winged open: "And lose your weapons, please."

"Or what?" he asked, flicking his cigarette at her face.

A beam of light arced from one of the buildings, just then -- incinerating the cigarette less than a foot from his fingertips. Then another beam came, going over his head and towards the beach.

He heard something explode, back there, and knew it was his personal torpedo.

"A heat beam, capable of destroying you," the Zalea behind the wheel explained, smiling: "You're currently surrounded by twenty of them, and they're everywhere, here. I could kill you at any time."

"So cooperate, please," the Zalea in the back added, somewhat languidly: "I have a lot I'd like to show you before this comes to its logical conclusion." 

"Well, okay then," SPYGOD chuckled, beginning the process of stripping off his many weapons. His pistol, his other pistol, his other other pistol. Micro-grenades, macro-grenades, stun-grenades. Tasers, masers. Laser pistol. Knife after knife after knife. The sword no one knew he carried. 

Even the !@#$ build-a-gun -- dropped down to the sand at his feet.

"That good enough, or you want to go up my !@#$ with a camera?" he asked, holding his hands up.

"I think you'd like that too much," the Zalea in the back replied, gesturing to the seat: "Tish, you first. Sit next to me."

Tish seemed really happy to accommodate that directive, for reasons SPYGOD didn't need to wonder about for long. The moment he got in, behind her, the backseat Zalea began to kiss her passionately, as though she was a long-lost lover, seen for the first time in years.

And then they were all in the car and driving off into the Nation of Atlas, its many perfections on display.

* * *

Are you back with us, (REDACTED)? the presence asks, running its hand before SPYGOD's blood-soaked face: For a moment there I thought you were out of it, again.

"Still here..." SPYGOD gurgles: "Wish you weren't."

Well, we can't always get what we want. If we could, you'd have been smarter, today.

"!@#$ you."

I'd ask if that was the best you could do, but given all this... well...

"And you could have done better?" SPYGOD tries to say, angry at how squished and helpless it sounds -- like a whimper.

Given time? Yes. But I have a unique perspective on this. For me, it's already happened. For you, it's just now taking place.

In retrospect, I can see a dozen ways to have avoided this sorry mess, and what's going to come after. But I have a different set of tools in my box than you do.

SPYGOD tries to tell him what to do with his !@#$ing box, and where to cram it. What comes out is a pathetic mewl mixed with bloody vomit.

I'm sure you'd like me to! the presence responds, smiling a little: And maybe, if you weren't dying by your own hand, you'd even try to shove it on up there. Gods know, I've had worse offers.

But here you are, dying on a tree. Your last moments in this world spent as upside-down as you've lived your life since you put that eye in your head. Since you decided to be a God, rather than a man.

More gurgling, and more blood.

Yes, I can see that's worked out for you. Pretty well, all in all. You've saved the world dozens of times. Saved your country millions of times. All the things they say about you, they're true. Especially the good things.

But what about you, (REDACTED)? What about your soul? What about your future? What are you going to do when you can't just tell people you killed Hitler, so their argument is invalid? What are you going to do when you can't bully a President around, or work behind his back? When there is no COMPANY, when there are no allies, no victims, no patsies?

What are you going to do when even your immortality fails you? the presence asks, pointing to the stream of bloody mush that's rushing from SPYGOD's face like a weak firehose: What's your plan for that?

And SPYGOD screams in pain and rage, if only to prove his plan is to live. 

Even if he doesn't think he deserves to, anymore. 

(SPYGOD is listening to Hybrid (Gary Numan) and drinking his own lung junk)

12/26/12 - Randolph Scott - No Words But the Truth - pt. 3

11/15/12

Who is Zalea Zathros?


Before today, if you grabbed a microphone, hit the streets of DC, and asked a dozen people, you'd probably get a dozen answers. Maybe a baker's dozen, if someone wanted to hedge their bets.

You see, there's the Zalea Zathros the authorities want you to know: the amoral mega-genius supercriminal who's been on the loose since last January. The one who kept trying to take over the world, back in the 70's, and was so duplicitous and dangerous that even the Legion didn't want her on board.

(That and she probably would have supplanted and killed The Big Man, for many obvious reasons.)

That's one Zalea Zathros, and -- thanks to the authorities -- probably the best-known one. But there are many others, depending on your point of view. And all of them are equally valid.

There's Zalea Zathros the socialite, who was born into the wealthiest family of Lamia, in Greece. They say she only needed to snap her fingers and every servant in the house would crowd around her, asking how they could make her day just that much better.

There's Zalea Zathros the coldblooded killer, who schemed to do away with her father for her tenth birthday, and kept her mother so out of her mind on tranquilizers that she was effectively running the house. Some say this was self-defense, but there's been no proof to suggest that her patrician father was physically or sexually abusive. It's more likely she just really wanted to be in charge of things.

There's Zalea Zathros the child prodigy, who astounded all of Greece by attaining a dual doctorate in Genetics and Robotics by the time she was twenty. They say that she literally rewrote the book on human genetics in her office at the University of Athens, achieving insights that stunned even people like Dr. Yesterday.

There's Zalea Zathros the robotics savant, who created a self-replicating army of humanoid robots in her spare time, just so she'd have time to work on "important things." Zalea Zathros the cloning pioneer, who created a working, fully-adult copy of herself by the time she was 25. Zalea Zathros the mental engineer, who perfected a working hive-mind at 26, allowing her to simultaneously exist within ten clones at once.

And then there's Zalea Zathros the feminist icon, whose third Doctorate -- in Sociology, at age 27 -- laid out a near-perfect blueprint for a genetically stable world. A planet where women took specially-prepared pills to become pregnant, and produce children that were perfect, 50/50 genetic amalgamations of their lovers and themselves.

A planet where men were useless, and not worthy of further production.

Zalea Zathros the sexual revolutionary, whose book -- One Love with No Limits -- advocated the love of the self as the highest and purest form of spiritual, mental, and physical love. Zalea Zathros the objectivist, who found in Ayn Rand's teachings the perfect philosophical support for her ethical and sexual revolution. Zalea Zathros, who planned to create a floating island paradise for her and her female followers (and all their clones), but never quite got enough people on board.

Zalea Zathros the controversial firebrand, who spent her 30's being both lionized and demonized for her achievements and ideas. Zalea Zathros, who, by the time she was 39, seemed so intent on putting her theories into action that Athens University barred her from the premises, and destroyed her equipment for fear of her doing something "rash and hasty."

Zalea Zathros the science terrorist, who -- on her 40th birthday -- unleashed a genetic plague on AU that targeted only men (and women of inferior genetic stock). Zalea Zathros the super villain, who declared that the "Athens Action" would be the first of many "genetic geldings" until the world was ready to accept her blueprint.

And Zalea Zathros, who was captured by SPYGOD after one of her better, subsequent schemes went awry, and spent the next thirty years locked up in a cell in the Heptagon basement. Shackled and stuffed away, knowing that her original body was gone, and all her clones were likewise dead and burned.

Mostly because he handed her a bag with the ashes, and told her to choke on them.

Thirty years, down there in the dark, stuck in one perfect, seemingly non-aging body. Three meals a day and no news of the outside world. Somehow she maintained her sanity and her resolve. Somehow she persevered.

And then came the day they made the mistake of letting her out, not really realizing that she would find a way to turn the tables and get loose. Sure, they took precautions, but they should have known better than to think she wouldn't see a way past them. And they should have known that, given enough time, she'd come and get revenge.

But no one could have ever expected something like this. 

* * *

I'm looking at a live satellite feed from the former state of Israel, right now. Former both because the Imago killed every single person within its borders -- Israeli, Palestinian, or other -- one day, during their occupation, because both sides refused to serve them.

And because it's new owners have given it a new name.

I say "owners," but I really only mean "owner." That would be Zalea Zathros, who has been burning up the airwaves to tell us about what's just happened, there.  

When she speaks it's with many voices, from many mouths. This is something she's done before, when broadcasting demands or manifestos to the world. It's distinctly unnerving and yet strangely compelling to watch several Zaleas Zathros speak and move in unison, which is probably why she does it.

This time, it's just outright eerie and wrong.

Eerie because, this time, it's not a multitude of Zaleas doing it. And wrong because of who it is. 

You see, when the Imago destroyed Israel (and Palestine, to be fair) they blanketed the entire area with their deadly eyebeams. Anyone who was struck by them was killed automatically, with effects ranging everywhere from a pair of holes burned through them to total destruction -- a process that left a puff of ash-cloud in the shape of a person.

The entirety of Israel and Palestine was reduced to ashes, that night. Ashes so thick that they rolled about like sand in the wind, forming strange, pale dunes in the streets and the fields. 

Ashes that, pulverized as they were, still contained enough DNA to do something with -- especially to a mega-genius who solves complex genegineering puzzles while having wild, sweaty, four-way sex with herself. 

This is what Zalea Zathros has done, since the end of the Reclamation War. She has brought the entire population of Israel and Palestine back to life -- men, women, and children -- and incorporated them into her hivemind. Over eight million people, give or take a hundred thousand.

And all of them are Zalea Zathros.

What does she want? Autonomy for the Nation of Atlas, as she has rechristened the area. A lack of interference from the Terre Unifee, or any nations that also choose to retain their independence. The ability to do their own thing, in their own way.

And if they attack, or interfere, or cause the Nation of Atlas any problems whatsoever, she will retaliate by killing a thousand members of the population per "unfortunate incident."

This is the twisted genius of the situation. The memories and lives (and maybe the souls) of all the people who died in Israel and Palestine, on that horrible day, are there, within the bodies she's controlling. We know because she let some of them speak, for a time, before resuming control as easily as slipping a hand into a glove.

And so she is both hostage and captor, using the bodies of those she's recreated to carry her consciousness as she goes about creating her perfect world, at last. 

It's like something from a comic book: how do you strike at a foe made of people? How do you dislodge her from their minds without killing all those people, all over again?

How do you make this kind of thing right?

I have no !@#$ idea. I can only sit and watch and recoil in horror at what I'm seeing on the screen.

And realize that, after today, there's no denying what Zalea Zathros really is, past all her achievements and atrocities, nicknames and titles.

The most dangerous person alive.

(SPYGOD is listening to Phantom Living (The FIXX) and having a Goldstar Dark Lager )

9/10/12 (ARACHNIDS) Listen to the Silence - pt 4

When Khalil was a young boy, growing up in the mega-slums of Addis Ababa, his mother would keep her children in their beds with terrible stories of the monsters that lurked in the night.

She knew them all, that woman: the millions of horrifying creatures that Allah had created for reasons of his own; the scrabbling, ravenous things that lurked just outside of His purview; the beasts of a hundred different lands and religions, all eager to clamber into a young child's bed at night and slurp up their sweetmeats -- or worse.

Khalil loved a good scare, of course -- all children do, in their own way. But one of the stories really bothered him.

It was the legend of the most gruesome of the many, terrifying hungry ghosts of Malaysia. A terrifying being that had a different name in every country, but was essentially the same. A disgusting she-vampire that detached her head at night and flew, pulling her guts behind her as she went, and lapped the blood of pregnant women and young children who didn't mind their parents.

And while it had many names in many lands, the one that always stuck with him was Penanggalan.

Such was the fearful power of this thing that it not only made him nervous to go out at night, but also had him jumpy during the day. It even made him wet his pants at loud, sudden noises in the dark, and continued to disturb him all the way into manhood. In fact, every time he met a new young woman who seemed just a little "off" he would keep tabs on her, just to make sure her nighttime activities were legitimate, and that her head was always on her neck at the right angle from day to day.

One could say that this heightened sense of awareness served him well when he went into the NGUVU. And one could only imagine his reaction when he learned from its strategic talents handlers that the !@#$ things were actually real.

And one can only imagine his reaction, now, as one of those creatures is less than five feet away from him, floating in the air and drinking the life from his MI-6 contact.

It's nothing like what he imagined, though. He'd imagined something like what he'd seen in the movies or supernatural television shows, but this is much more terrifying. And as Mikhail bellows and throws his bottle of vodka at her, and Dosha pulls out a gun that he's not supposed to have in this bar,  Khalil leaps back to ready some kind of defense and get a better look.

The woman's head is at least three times the size of a normal head, all puffed up like an obscene basketball. Her black and red eyes seem about to burst from her blood-filled sockets, and her mouth is a roiling playground of teeth the size and random shapes of jagged, broken dinner plates. A long, red, and barbed tongue anchors her to Sir George, who's about as pale as a sheet after just five seconds of being drained.

As for the train of guts, the legends do not do this creature justice. They're not being pulled behind her like the manacles on a stately English ghost, but are actually part of her overall motion. The lungs have dissipated into millions of fibers and webs, forming sinister, batlike wings that keep her aloft. Her distended stomach and liver seem able to reach out and clutch objects, perhaps the better to perch with.

And her long, looped intestines purl and curl behind her as she goes, coiling and roiling like the tail of some magnificently long dragon. As Mikhail's vodka bottle arcs towards her, a quick, meaty flick of that tail sends it bouncing away -- off to land on the deaf waiter, who tried his best to run past the evil and down the stairs along with the rest of the guests.

(Crash goes the bottle. Thump goes the waiter. Stomp stomp go the frightened patrons' feet on the waiter.)

Khalil's mind reels with possibilities, and fear. He tries to remember what his mother told him to do if he saw one, and what defenses NGUVU's supernatural handlers advised him to take, but nothing that either of these wise fonts of information ever gave him is making itself evident, today.

"!@#$ me," Dosha spits, finally just shooting at the thing. Of course, the bullets just go through the ghostly head; it seems that she can hurt them, but they cannot hurt her -- not without magic, which he doesn't have on him, right now.

But then, there is something else...

"I can protect us, I think," Khalil offers, and crosses his arms just before his chest, willing there to be something between the monster and the rest of them. The effort makes his nose bleed, and his eyes turn red with burst vessels, but in seconds there is a strange opacity in the air between the creature -- and its victim -- and the other three.

But how long it can last is unknown.

"I am thinking strategic withdrawal, my comrades!" Mikhail says: "The window! Quickly!"

"It's no good!" Dosha shouts: "Internal Security's got snipers outside, by now."

"Who?" Mikhail shouts.

"Internal Security! ISOC! They know we're here!"

"How in the !@#$ are they !@#$ing knowing this? And how in the !@#$ are you knowing this?"

"I just do! And I know the only reason they haven't shot in is-"

A window blows out. The floor rips up and splinters. The sharp, echoing crack of a rifle comes a split second later. 

"You were saying?" Mikhail says, trying to find someplace that isn't accessible by a window.

"!@#$!" Dosha spits, looking at his watch scowling: "They should have been here by now..."

"Who should have?" Khalil asks, but then another bullet takes out another window, and he's showered with flying glass. A cut springs up on his cheek and he loses concentration, and the sudden, angry migraine that comes with using his new power smacks his brains into the back of his skull.

He winces and falls down, holding his head. St. George falls through the now-absent shield and hits the floor, pale and whispering. The Penanggalan laughs, twirls in the air, and lashes out with her tongue, ready to take on the next victim...

... and then recoils violently from something that's just entered the room, and hisses like a snake run over by a wagon wheel.

That something is an eight-sided medallion, made from strange, dark metal, and embossed with gold writing that looks like ancient Thai script.

It's being held up at eye-level by an old man, clearly not dressed for this climate. He wears a thick, heavy coat, a dignified European hat, and old-style "horse blinder" sunglasses. He also carries a silver-chased cane that seems heavier than it should be.

And on his tanned face is a commanding scowl -- the sort of look that says "you came here to die."

The black-clad, young Indian man who brought Dosha here, earlier, stands beside him, holding onto his shoulder. He steps back and takes a few deep breaths, and then assumes a place by Dosha, who's covering the old man with his gun.

"What took you so long, old man?" Dosha asks.

"I took a wrong turn in Turkey," the younger Indian says: "He squirms too much-"

"Be quiet, both of you," the old man commands, his voice thick and Polish: "And you, creature. These men are under my protection. You will leave, now. And consider yourself lucky I didn't have time to find your body."

"You will not leave here alive," she hisses, flapping away and becoming insubstantial: "The streets are lined with my people. You will be killed."

"Oh, do be quiet, you stupid !@#$," Sir George mutters from the floor: "At least let me die with an absence of bad dialogue. I'm owed that much, surely..."

"Away with you!" the old man shouts, and the metal suddenly seems more there, somehow. More solid. More real.

The Penanggalan shrieks and ripples, as though they were seeing her on the surface of a pond that's just had stones thrown into it. She turns even more ghostly, and within seconds she's vanished.

"Well, that was being anticlimactic, yes?" Mikhail asks from his spot between windows.

"We need to leave," Dosha says, extending a hand to the Russian: "Now."

And by the time the ISOC kill team runs up Poke's staircase to finish the job their pet vampire obviously bungled, they have.

* * *

"So, please to be explaining all this, again?" Mikhail asks, having another bottle of Dosha's emergency vodka as the old man tends to Sir George's wounds, over on the ratty couch. Every so often the fellow looks up and scowls, but he hasn't ventured a prognosis, yet. 

"We were bait, were we not?" Khalil asks from where he sits, up against the wall, holding a cold glass of water up to his left temple and checking to see if his nose really has stopped bleeding.

"Yes," Dosha admits, standing close to where Anil sits -- tired and dejected: "We were."

The apartment's small, with just a few pieces of furniture and minimal supplies. It used to belong to the Central Intelligence Agency, but the DIA took it over a few years back, when Thailand's most recent junta shifted numerous intelligence "understandings" around the board. So far as the DIA knows, it's been abandoned and decommissioned, but ISOC would probably think it to be the first place a former Indian Intelligence agency would go, which means it'll be the last place they search.

(A trick Dosha's used before, with some success.)

"A risky game, Dosha," Khalil accuses.

"Not really, no," Dosha explains: "We needed to know if we could trust what's left of Thailand's intelligence, right now, given their access to certain unique assets. We made an overture, and in reply they decided to turn on us, no doubt to curry favor with the Imago. I suppose they like having the illusion that they're still in charge of something."

"What about your sister, Anil?" Khalil asks, looking at the young man, who's still out of breath.

"I don't know," he says: "They say they have her, and they'd hand her over when this was all done, and you were all dead. But I think..."

He doesn't say it. He wipes away a tear, instead, and ventures nothing more. Dosha puts a sympathetic hand on his shoulder, but the young man brushes it away.

That's the last thing he needs right now.

"So you see why I couldn't tip you all off," Dosha says, trying to recover.

"No, comrade, I am not seeing that," Mikhail says: "Do you think they had me under surveillance? You could have told us we were walking into trap."

"That would have been nice to know, yes," Khalil says.

"I don't even know how they found Anil's sister," Dosha protests: "For all I know they have us all under some kind of observation. The best I could do was bring in Dr. Krwi to deal with their Penanggalan, and even that required me to be a lot more subtle than usual-"

"Krasue," the old man corrects him, standing up from his patient: "That was unmistakably a Krasue. The Penanggalan lives further south, and rarely ventures this far up the Malay Peninsula. It is an issue of territory and feeding styles, but nothing to be so concerned about... unless you wish to banish or kill them."

"Or be bitten by one," Sir George says, opening his eyes as much as he can: "How bad is it?"

"I can do nothing more," Krwi says, sadly: "I advise you to pray. It is all that is left."

"Well, then that's that," the Englishman says.

"George, I'm so sorry-" Dosha tries to apologize, but the dying man holds up a hand.

"Someone get me a brandy. If I'm going to die, I will have a brandy."

"I don't think we have any, here?" Dosha says, looking at his liquor cabinet. 

"There is being liquor store outside, and down the stairs," Mikhail says: "I will go and get you best brandy yankee dollar can buy-"

"You're not to leave this apartment until we're clear to teleport out," Dosha insists: "We've lost too much to risk more over a !@#$ing glass of alcohol-"

He doesn't see the Russian's fist flying for his face until it's knocked him across the room. Then Anil's up and at Mikhail's throat with a knife faster than the burly man can react, but there's a sword at his own before he can drive the blade home.

"Killing each other will not fix things," the old man says, adjusting his grip on his swordcane ever so slightly.

"You do not hit him, ever," Anil hisses.

"This man's stupid sister and idiot handler got good man killed!" Mikhail shouts at Krwi. 

"Neither will recriminations," Krwi insists, calm as winter snow: "Mistakes have been made. War is full of such things. Either we pull together and learn from them, or we lose."

"I am not going to war with a !@#$ing idiot who uses us like toys to save his boyfriend's family," the Russian spits, walking away from the knife: "Drop me where you like, but I am being done with this."

"Is that how we are to honor the dead?" Khalil asks, getting to his feet: "All those people in Israel and Palestine? Do they die for nothing, then?"

"Look at us, my friend," the Russian says: "We are nothing. Whole point of us was to get together and share information. To tell truth between lies and help each other.

"And now, what do we have, eh? Dosha uses us as bait for trap, and brings in outsider we know nothing of. Khalil, you do not tell us about your power. And God !@#$ only knows what Sir George is !@#$ing hiding-"

"That I know that Khalil wasn't... wasn't just hiding the fact that he's recently developed a strategic talent," the Englishman says, trying to avoid sounding as weak as he actually is: "In fact, I was going to bring that up before... we were so rudely interrupted."

"What do you mean?" Khalil sighs.

"The Object, Khalil. They should... know about the Object. They should know what a bad thing NGUVU did... handing it over to GORGON."

"We did not hand it over to them," Khalil protests: "If you think we would hand it over to anyone-"

"Then you don't know, do you?" the Englishman says: "Well, I guess that's that, then. I wasn't sure whether you were dangerous or clueless, Khalil. I suppose.... I suppose..."

"Oh, do be quiet, both of you," the old man sighs, putting his swordcane down, and reaching into his coat pocket to pull out a flask. He kneels down to the dying man and hands it to him. 

"Is this...?" Sir George asks, taking a good whiff of it.

"It is," Dr. Krwi says: "Honey vodka. It is the best thing in the world."

The Englishman smiles, takes a good swig, and hands over the flask: "Then I die content."

"Is there anything else we can do?" Dosha asks, finally getting up off the floor.

"Other than make sure my dead letter gets sent?" George asks: "Don't let my death be for nothing. I hated you all, each and every one of you. But we did good in our time. Do more good, gentlemen. Be better than this."

He takes a last breath, exhales, and is gone. 

Mikhail's face gets so red it's a wonder blood doesn't explode from his pores, and punches the nearest wall. His fist goes through the plaster right to the wood.

"NGUVU gave the Object to GORGON?" Dosha asks, looking at Khalil. 

"We didn't..." Khalil sighs, putting his head in his hands and wondering whether the others in the room are going to listen to what he has to say, or kill him.

"Will someone please tell me what this Object is?" Anil asks, finally putting his knife away, but still keeping himself between Dosha and the Russian. 

"This can wait for another time, surely," Dr. Krwi offers, having a slug of his own drink: "This room is burned. You must leave it. You must leave this country now and not look back.

"But as soon as we can reconvene, gentlemen, I think a number of things need to be said?"

Dosha nods, looking to Mikhail and then Khalil: "We'll leave here as soon as we can. Then-"

"I am being done with you," Mikhail says: "We have many supers left. I have rolodex full of names. I will !@#$ing go door-to-door if I have to."

"It would be quicker if I teleported you," Anil says, holding out a hand.

"I don't think-" Dosha starts to say, but one look from Anil shuts him up.

"I may not know everything there is to know about this world I've been brought into," the young man says: "And I may not have been 100% honest about certain things with you. But I do know that if we don't work together, we are !@#$ed. And we know who's going to be wearing the condom, don't we?" 

Dosha takes a moment, and then nods. Mikhail takes Anil's hand, and also nods. Khalil doesn't feel like moving, but nods as well.

"No more !@#$ing secrets, then?" Mikhail asks, looking around the room: "Not from each other?"

"No more secrets," Dosha says.

"No more secrets," Khalil adds. 

"No more secrets," Dr. Krwi says.

"And who are you being, anyway?" Mikhail asks.

"Doctor Krwi, of occupied Poland," the fellow says, passing around the Barenjager: "I kill vampires, primarily. But I also worked with the Polish resistance during the War, became far too familiar with Soviet Bloc intelligence after it, and have recently been moonlighting for several people. Most notably SPYGOD."

"I didn't think you wanted to be a party to that, old man?" Dosha asks: "I believe the phrase was 'one favor, since you know him, but that's it'?"

"Well, what can I say? I fear I may have gotten a reluctant taste for it, recently. And we are all that stands against whatever the Imago have planned."

"Oh, very well," Mikhail mutters, nearly downing the rest of the flask with one gulp: "But if any of you play me again, I will be !@#$ing you with my leg."

And on that -- and the need to toast their dead ally one more time before they all leave -- they can all agree.

(SPYGOD is listening to At Night (The Cure) and having a Barenjager)

9/10/12 (ARACHNIDS) Listen to the Silence - pt 3

"How bad is bad?" Khalil asks, getting more and more pale as Mikhail's story goes on.

"Let me put it to you, my friend," the Russian says, downing the rest of his bottle of vodka in two gargantuan swigs: "If you are not drunk now, you had best be soon. Or we will have to carry you out of here, after the story is done."

"You may have to carry him out, anyway," Sir George says, his tone rather archy. 

"It will not be from total destruction of his soul," Mikhail says: "In war, there comes time when every man sees a thing that puts his mind into that war, once and for all. For some, it is the first dead man you see. For others, the first man they make dead. And some must wait for the most horrible of things. Death camps, gulags, torture, slavery, the worthless slaughter of innocents.

"In this war, we have all these things. I would spare him full horror. I would offer him chance to make an anesthesia in his veins, first. I think it is most kind thing I can do."

"Ignorance would be the kindest thing," Dosha opines: "But in its absence, I suppose a good drink would be just the thing."

Khalil takes his point, and, buzzing for the waiter, orders a bottle for everyone -- even Sir George.

* * *

Warsaw is cold and wet, this morning. It's raining like mad, and that's making it hard for the people of the city to go about their business with no electricity. 

In the city, every Monday is a "no" day: no power, no telephone, no internet, and no work. The Imago need the power in the nearest work center, in Pultusk, at least for now. When winter comes, they plan to ease back, and say that only a few hours -- maybe between Midnight and Sunrise -- will be "no." But for now, the people are being asked to do without for the good of all.

Left without work or power, the people tend to take to the streets. They go for walks, read out of doors, play chess in the parks, and barter for goods in the open spaces. The Imago watch these "free markets" with a strange interest -- maybe because they're curious as to how they work, and maybe because they fear them.

They know what can happen when too many people gather in too small a place, after all.

So the Imago aren't really looking as a large, black-clad Indian fellow appears out of nowhere, in the heart of Zoliborz. 

He looks around him and takes a few deep breaths, as though he'd been running to get here. Then he pulls a large stack of photographs out of a deep pocket, and takes the top one to the bottom. He then proceeds to look at the new top one for a full minute, as though whatever he was seeing was the most important thing in the world. 

"Not too far, now," he says. His voice is ragged from crying and exertion. 

He huffs and puffs, and closes his eyes. Then he's gone, again. 

And when he comes back, a few minutes later, he is no longer alone. 

* * *

"The entire leadership?" Khalil asks.

"All of them?" Dosha tries to clarify.

"Yes, my friends," Mikhail says: "All of them, in one go. They knew the general shape of what was to come. Their precognitives, yes? They all woke up screaming, that morning, knowing that the end of the Palestinian Authority was at hand. So they chose to go out with defiant bang."

"Self fulfilling prophecy, eh?" Sir George snorts: "I expected better, quite frankly."

"!@#$ you," Dosha says: "They chose defiance over subservience. That's a !@#$ sight better than either of our governments have done."

"Your former government, you mean," he says, giving Dosha a gimlet eye: "I seem to remember they tried to burn you after your special friend shot his President."

"Is irrelevant, now," Mikhail insists: "All we hang together, or else they hang us separately, yes?"

"You're drunk," Sir George quips, having a sip of his own brew.

"And you're a goat!@#$er," Dosha says: "But at least in the morning he'll be sober."

"Well, if you have to mangle Churchill-"

"I heard they had been genetically farming certain powers in their children, but I had no idea the program was that advanced," Khalil interjects, hoping to change the conversation from an argument to a discussion, again.

"Advanced? Feh!" Mikhail says, having another drink: "Is not too hard to give a power to a person, so long as you do not !@#$ing care about their survival. In fact, is easiest thing in the world, it seems. Soviets, HONEYCOMB, Nazis, they do it all the time, back in the days. They create human equivalent of missiles. You fire them, they do their super thing, and if they die or melt or explode, well, they can not be interrogated if they are pile of ashes, yes?"

"And the Palestinians had a lot of contact with the Soviets, by way of Egypt, back in the 70's," Sir George adds.

"Which would have been when these children were altered?" Dosha asks.

"Their parents," Mikhail corrects: "Parents are altered, but do not show power. Their children show the power. And the power is sloppy, brutal thing, only really good for one use. You can guess which use that is, yes?"

"And how many children did it take to wipe that part of Ramallah off the map?" Dosha asks.

"That I do not know, my friend. I have heard maybe twenty. It was enough to destroy their administrative center, a few blocks outwards."

"And the Imago who came to see them?" Khalil asks.

"Not even !@#$ing scratched."

Khalil sighs, and downs a slug of his drink: "!@#$ me in prison like a white tourist. This is truly terrible."

"Still, it gets worse," Mikhail says, having another slug: "Because this is the moment, my friends. This is the moment in which Imago realize that they cannot rule this land. Not the way that they want.

"They prefer to tell no one nothing. They want the leaders there to tell them, and only speak once in a while. But there are no leaders left to tell the people what to do.

"And no one they approach to become new leaders will do or say these things. In all these lands, they only find people who will say 'no.' No one to say 'yes.' No one to suck their metal butts and tell them how much they love the chocolate, there.

"No one."

He sighs, and pulls out a blown up photograph. He puts it on the table, so the other three men can look at it.

"I'm... I'm not sure what this is," Sir George admits: "It's a little grainy."

"Gavril, he sends me this after he takes it," Mikhail says: "He is high up on building, shooting camera down. He cannot get very good shot, but you can see enough."

"Is that a crowd of people, running away?" Khalil asks: "Some of them falling down and dying when they're hit by... what is that?"

"Bright orange lines," Dosha says, tracing the course of one as it snakes from the top of the photo down to the face of one of the people who is running away: "I've seen them use that weapon. They fire twin beams from their eyes, and the beams follow you, no matter where you hide."

"And they strike you in the eyes," Khalil adds: "Your eyes turn to steam. Your brain becomes ashes in your skull."

"Once they fire these beams, there is being no escape," Mikhail adds: "You are dead man."

"And that's what this is?" Sir George says, pointing to the couple of Imago as they float above the crowd: "They just started firing at this crowd?"

"Firing at every crowd, everywhere," Mikhail says, sadly: "They float above gatherings for one hour, waiting for signal. People who do not know what has happened, they come out to look, wondering if is some announcement. They laugh and play. They have no idea.

"And then, when signal is given, the execution begins..."

Mikhail takes in a deep breath: "It takes them only two hours. They move throughout country, top to bottom, left to right. They fire beam after beam. Each one finds a target and kills. Men, women, children, babes in cradles. Everyone living is dead, and there is no escape.

"Gavril, he takes this picture. He maybe takes more, but they do not come to me. He sends me message, and says 'Remember us. Remember that we lived and died for right to say no.'

"Then he jumps from building, rather than be shot."

The Russian tears up, and puts a hand over his eyes: "My grandfather's brother, he left Russia many years ago. Went to Israel with other Jews. Said we were crazy to stay behind, but my grandfather, he was true believer. He said there was nothing in Israel but capitalists trying to !@#$ you and Arabs trying to kill you. In USSR, there was safety. In Israel, only danger.

"And look! He was right. He was right."

Mikhail sobs. Khalil tries to not be sick. Dosha closes his eyes.

Sir George stiffens and gasps, feeling a long, wet thing impale him through the back of his neck.

"Hello," Amporn says, her head floating up from behind the Englishman as he starts to die, and her tongue sucking the life from him: "I hope I'm not disturbing you gentlemen?"

(SPYGOD is listening to Three (The Cure) and having a Smirnoff, straight up)