The Glass Prison

[evilbenfranklin]

"Along the avenue of hope
footsteps falter, fingers grope
and the days stretch out beneath the sun

"No one's born, no one dies
no one loves, so no one cries
and we wait to see just what we will become

"Don't let me falter, don't let me ride
Don't let the earth in me subside
Let me see just who I will become..."

The portable clock radio on the motel's bathroom counter played quietly as Delta Rae stood before the mirror, craning her neck to look her bare green skin over as she turned back and forth on one foot. "I really must say, Katrina, you kept yourself quite well preserved, all things considered. That little treatment of yours might well have given me any number of possible vacation spots to choose from had you gone public with it."

"Go fuck yourself, Tony." came the voice from within, "I got nothing to say to your sorry ass, except "get out."" At this, she gave herself a grim and mocking smile, a minor trick of consciousness projecting the trapped Katrina onto the mirror image. "Tut-tut, Katrina Rae Ellison," at the mention of her full name, the image in the mirror flinched visibly. "We made a deal fair and square. The fellow with the nasty little revolver, the one who shot poor Natalya, was the last surviving one who had a hand in killing you originally." Turning to the shower and twisting it on, Tony ran a hand through her hair, tugging it just so to let the wig pull free, blue tresses dangling a bit as Tony ran a brush through them. "Mmn. Pity about your hair. I suppose that's what huge bursts of radiation will do to you, eh?"

As Katrina watched helplessly from within her own body, she could see that the overload she had set off had done more damage than just making her hair fall out. Her eyes now appeared sunken, irises leached of color until they were a pale shade of green, the color of sickly celery. On her face, blackened and useless veins snaked their way across her temples and gaunt cheeks.

Even worse was the rest of her. Along her arms, back, chest, and legs, the skin had hardened and callused in keloidal scars where it hadn't split open. As Tony reached out an arm to flip the light off, Katrina could see that those same fissures in the scabrous coverings luminesced, glowing the violet-blue un-light of Cherenkov radiation. As she moved, she could see that the light wasn't entirely benign, as it caused a faint cloud to appear around her, air molecules reacting to microbursts of intense radiation.

Eyes and teeth glowing in the darkened room, Tony smiled ferally, "Oh, look, Katrina! We're a walking glow-stick! How utterly FESTIVE!" Cackling to herself, she flipped the light back on and stepped into the shower. "However, it's probably best if I let you see what I'm doing. After all, you should get used to it... in fact, you should thank me! I've set you free from any moral obligations from your old life."

"Thank you? THANK YOU?!" came the incredulous shriek, which only made Tony's smile wider, if a bit pained. "You haven't set me free, you've imprisoned me! You not only ruined my body and my life, you've taken both! You--- Wait, what did you just say about that guy being the last surviving member of the Malta team?"

Clucking her tongue, Tony stepped into the shower, leaving the curtain open a crack to watch Katrina's outraged visage in the mirror. "He was the last surviving member. The others died, accidents or something, I don't really recall." At this, Katrina folded her arms over her chest. "You don't recall? You're Thanatos, the embodiment of Death Incarnate, and you don't recall how the rest of that guy's team died?"

Leaning out of the shower, teeth bared in a snarl at the mirror, Tony replied, "Listen sister, you try handling 1.78 deaths per second. That's 107 different places to be every minute of every hour of every day, on bloody average, and you see how well YOU remember every last Jack and Jill you send on to to their final destination, IF they even have one!" Ducking back under the spray, she muttered as she soaped her scalp, "Bloody Hindi are the worst about that. Like a bloody revolving door with all that reincarnation nonsense. At least with atheists you can just toss them in the metaphysical rubbish bin and be done with it." Snorting a bit, Tony added, "Besides, it's not like it wouldn't have happened sooner or later. They were bloody Malta agents, not Girl Scouts."

"That's not the point and you know it. I'm half-wonderin' if'n you had something to do with them. I know you nudged me into melting those people when he showed up, and eleven out of twelve were innocents."

"Oh, really? Hmm, let's see, you're Southern Baptist yes? I suppose that means you ought to pack for warm weather once I take you away for good." Tony's voice dropped to a low hiss, "I understand the Big Fellow doesn't like it when innocent blood is spilled. He's not quite as thunder-and-brimstone as He used to be -- a fact which I lament every day of my eternal existence -- but rest assured, He's not just some metaphysical Judge Wapner." Reaching for a scrubber, Tony continued, "As for the rest of that lot, it's none of your concern. They're dead, which means according to the terms of our Arrangement, your body belongs to me for as long as I so desire it."

Looking over at the image of Katrina in the rapidly fogging mirror, Tony growled, "Think of me as a live-in landlord. I'll let you live here, even give you a nice room with all the amenities, and perhaps even trust you to take care of the house if I need to attend to something else for a time... but if you cross me, or throw any wild parties, I can and will evict you for the trouble." Smiling that mocking little smirk again, she asked in a saccharine tone, "Any questions, Katrina. Rae. Ellison?"

Flinching at the use of her name again, Katrina replied, "Just one. I know you're unable to lie to me, you said that the first time we met-- Unless I was lying then, too!-- so I'm going to ask you this one question: What happens when God or Buddha or whoever your boss is finds out you're missing?"

Lip curling, Tony drew the curtain shut to block out the satisfied smile of Katrina Rae Ellison.

"don't let me falter, don't let me hide
don't let someone else decide
just who or what i will become

don't make 'em borrow, don't make 'em bring
don't let them wallow, don't let them sing
let them stretch out beneath the sun"

---

Author's Note: This is the beginning of an arc that will, ultimately, lead to Delta Rae going villain/Rogue side for a bit until someone can figure out her situation, and what needs to be done to break Tony's control over her. Comments and questions are welcome.

Also, for those who don't recognize it, the song is "Avenue of Hope" by I Am Kloot, off the soundtrack to Sunshine.

[evilbenfranklin]

"You know what's great about being me, Katrina?" murmured Tony internally as he/she/they walked into the Blood Angels' base, "Now that I've seen how the other side lives as well as how they die, I have the most amazing perspective on the people around us. Take that one for example," her view flicked to Mr. Conspiracy, reading the Weekly World News and sipping coffee through a crazy-straw plugged into his mask. "He's about as close to the walking dead as you can be without being, well, us or some kind of zombie. Poor, poor man. He really has no idea what he's up against. None of you do, really."

Tony's "inside voice" dropped to a whisper as she settled onto a stool at the kitchen/bar counter, "You know what I find even more delicious than watching deaths happen, Rae-Rae? Causing them. What would you say if I just reached out and snuffed out his life, right now? Answer me, Katrina Rae Ellison."

A quiet mental flinch at the invocation of her full name, then finally Rae responded, "Ah'd ask you why you look and sound like that Alan Rickman feller from th' Harry Potter movies." Another wince as the compulsion to answer grew stronger, then she grunted, "I'd ask why. And I'd ask you to stop."

Laughter echoing off the walls of their shared space, Tony replied, "Oh, how absolutely delicious and lamentably typical. You people squander your lives, until you realize that they're going to end, and then you whine and bitch and moan like a little girl who's had the head twisted off her favorite doll. It's enough to make me violently ill."

Watching Fenix and Caios walk by, Tony continued, "Some of you, though, make it interesting for me. Either you escape into a realm where the Powers haven't worked out all the rules yet, or you fight back hard enough to twist the tits off a succubus while simultaneously giving me more work to do. Those two in particular are on my short-list."

After a sullen silence, Tony's mindvoice clucked its tongue, "I do wish I'd picked someone who was more agreeable, or at least a more interesting conversationalist. Something on your mind? Besides my bootheel, I mean."

Rae replied softly, "Ah don't like what you've done to mah wardrobe, t'say the least. It's almost like you want people to notice that something's up with me." Looking into the mirror over the bar, the point could be conceded. Her wig of choice was blue, cut rakishly to hang over one side of her face, the other side tucked behind an ear. Gone was her traditional yellow-and-black jumpsuit and most of the radiation warning trefoils with it. Instead, she wore an unzipped black biker vest with no undershirt, a black leather skirt, and black stiletto boots with trefoils on the sides.

Not that she needed to warn people of her radioactivity. That much was obvious from the exposed glowing fissures in her skin, causing the air around her to glow faintly like a sickly vapor issuing from her pores.

"Oh, I thought they'd dismiss it as grief. After all, your little friend isn't out of the hospital yet. She might not even make it at all, you know..." Inner voice dropping to a menacing whisper, Tony purred, "I have that feeling." Switching back to a jocular tone, he added, "But I'm a fucking immortal angel of Death, what do I know of current fashions? I know! Let's ask the crowd!"

"NO! Don't you dare, Tony, you fucking bast--"
"Katrina Rae Ellison: Shut up."

Turning around on her barstool and folding her hands behind her head as she leaned back, Delta Rae gave her teammates a slightly disturbing smile and drawled, "Hey folks. Sorry Ah've been gone for a few days after all this mess with Malta an' what-not. Ah've... been going through some changes lately. What d'y'all think?"


(( OOC: At this point, feel free to chime in if you want to start a dialogue, or I can think up and write the next chapter. I am also working on something for AE so folks can actually rescue her from Tony, but that's going to come after I've gotten her to Rogue status.))

[caios]

Caios considered Katrina for only a moment her piercing blue eyes gazing directly into the fellow Blood Angel. She then answered in her typical friendly sarcastic tone, "I think it's a desperate cry for help. But then what do I know." With a smirk she then added, "I admit I like the leather though. Not that this would be shocking to anyone."


(( Just a quick conversational reply. At this point I'd say Caios suspects nothing, in part cause all of the radiation leakage would make it hard for her to pick up any changes beyond the obvious. She probably thinks Katrina needs grief counseling but then the same could be said of everyone on the BA roster. ))

[fenix]

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"Yeaaaah... I'm pretty sure at this point there's enough leather in this group that we could open our own BDSM club... Anyway, Caios. The drug runners are centered in a warehouse down the street from the Indy Icon. You'll be able to find them easily enough, they didn't seem the cautious type. But please, PLEASE try to at least have one of them intact enough to interrogate? I don't want a lead down the drain, okay?"

Fenix walked over to Mr. Conspiracy, raising an eyebrow at the man's twisty straw but saying nothing. " Hey, Wossname. Can we talk for a second?"

Fenix then narrowed his broadcast so that it only came through Conspiracy's comlink. "Could you keep an eye on Rae for me? I'm going to be taking care of some things online for the next couple days, and won't really be available to make sure that she doesn't... you know... take a long walk off a short pier.“

[evilbenfranklin]

Some time later

Every breath you take,
Every move you make,
Every vow you break, every step you take,
I'll be watchin' you...

Music drifted up from the street as a figure crouched unseen on the rooftop of a three-story brick tenement in King's Row, dim moonlight filtering through the clouds and fog covering the streets... and through the stealth field his cloak projected around him.

If you had asked him a year ago what he would be doing with his life, he might have answered like any normal person might - wife, 2.7 kids, house in the suburbs. That life was gone now, replaced by... whatever he was, now. In the past year, he'd become a dark rumor among Paragon City's criminal element, a spectre in mask and cloak, able to touch -- and kill -- but not be killed in kind. He was the Nowhere Man, The Empty Suit, The Faceless Avenger, and any of a dozen other monikers bestowed by the ne'er-do-wells of the city... but most knew him as Mr. Conspiracy.

So, he asked himself, What the blue hell am I doing sitting here on a rooftop across from a teammate's window? Because the chip-head had a hunch about Miss Radioactive Smurf Village 2011 acting "funny?" Christ on a cracker, he snorted quietly, dialing up the magnification on his goggles, I feel like a peeping Tom.

Watching the windows of Delta Rae's apartment, he tensed slightly as the bathroom light clicked on, and Rae, clad in tank top and boxers, smiled at herself in the mirror and started talking. Well, hell. Talking to herself isn't a sign that she's bugnuts. Hell, I talk to myself all the time, and I'm as sane as a man in my position can be! He reached up to dial down the goggles, musing, Besides, I didn't sign on for no peep show. I oughta go-- He paused as something nagged at his vision. Dialing the goggles back up again, he blinked in surprise as he finally noticed Rae's reflection in the mirror... and the fact that it wasn't mirroring her motions. He thumbed his recorder on, and reached in his pocket for the small but sensitive combination laser/parabolic microphone he habitually carried. Just hope this works through the fog that's rolling in off the bay...

Meanwhile, inside Rae's bathroom, she was arguing with herself. Again. "I don't see why you're so blasted upset about it, Rae-Rae," Tony slurred to the reflection in the mirror, "It's not like we're going to kill anyone... yet."

"Ah'm upset because it's WRONG, you friggin' undead pantywaist! Ah'm a HERO. Heroes do not go robbin' banks, then buyin' first-class plane tickets to fuckin' Aruba under the name 'Ineida Moorecock, ESPECIALLY not with MY BODY!" This last was said hard enough to cause the mirror to physically flex, slightly, leaving a fading ripple behind that Rae stared at, wide-eyed. "What was that?"

Tony waved a hand negligently, a dour look on her face. "It was nothing. Trick of the light, never you mind." Clasping her hands in front of her, "Look, it's obvious we both need a vacation. I mean, your girlfriend almost died -- might still die, you know, this hero gig is dangerous after all. Seriously, Rae, we need to just get away for a spell. I'm perfectly happy to do it without you, but I'd rather do it with your cooperation." Throwing her hands up and pacing in front of the mirror, Tony exclaimed, "I mean, that was the point of this whole blasted Agreement in the first place! I've been to Aruba. I've been to Russia. I've been to Antarctica and Iceland and everywhere in between, but I've never actually experienced any of it. That's what all this about, Rae. I wanted to see how the other half lives. Feel what you lot feel! Like this whole 'being drunk' experience... Rather refreshing. See that's what I'm after, the feelings... Welll," she shrugged a shoulder, nearly losing her balance, "And have fun causing mayhem, chaos, and disorder. Maybe a few deaths, see how those other bastards get along without me for a spell."

"'Other bastards?'" Rae echoed, folding her arms across her chest while Tony stumbled and rambled, her mind working furiously. She'd thought her body couldn't get drunk anymore, between the damage to it from the original accident in her lab, and the damage done since Tony had taken over in Natanya's apartment two months prior. Still, it seemed as if she had a pulse, at least, and her body had started to metabolize food again after the overcharge that had taken out an entire Longbow squad while she watched, trapped in her own mind. Given Tony's hedonistic streak, she mused privately, Convincing the li'l shit to go to the titty bar was probably the best idea I've had so far to help me get a handle on this.

"Yeah! The other Reapers, poncey gits, the lot of 'em." Tony yelled, perching on the bathroom counter and kicking her feet. "Buncha fuckin' workaholics, wouldn't know fun if it bit them squarely on the genitals while singing the 'Hallelujah Chorus.'" Reaching around the corner to the kitchen, Tony brought another glass of rum and Coke around, taking a long, appreciative sip as she drawled to her reflection, "A stodgy, depressing, and hidebound lot. Always concerned with their rules and regulations, natural order this, preserve the balance that, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah!" Raising her glass to the mirror and pointing a finger at the scowling image, she slurred, "If you ask me, I'd be better off dead myself than goin' back to that... un-life of mine. The end's rollin' in, and I'm just going to try and have a little fun before we're all doomed. Is that so much to bloody ask?"

As Tony weeped into her cups, eyes closed, Rae tested a theory. She poked and prodded at the surface of the mirror before her, each point of pressure causing a faint sensation of give. Folding her hands into a point, she backed up against the reflection of the wall, and got a good running start at the mirror as she dived through it.


Mr. Conspiracy blinked in surprise as he saw the mirror in Delta Rae's bathroom explode into splinters, blowing out the window in the process, and now... two blue-skinned women, one picking herself up from the corner where she had landed coming out of the looking glass, the other starting awake on the counter, bleeding from numerous cuts. He turned up the gain on his microphone, training the laser on one of the larger shards of glass...


"How the hell did you do that?!" exclaimed Tony, scrambling to her feet. "How the hell do you get off lying to me?" screamed Rae in reply, grabbing her doppelganger by the shirt collar and slamming her against the wall. "You said you were Death, you said that you'd work with me, not keep me fucking trapped inside my own goddamned body!"

Holding up both hands in a placating gesture, Tony murmured, "Look... I realize I may have left out a few details, Rae-Rae. That's not the same as lying. I am Death, or an employee of the big fellow at any rate. Think of me as a collections agent: He taps some poor fat bastard in a pizza joint on the shoulder, said fat bastard dies from a heart attack, and I come in to take his soul off to the Hereafter. It's something I've done for millenia... Until you." As Rae released her and stepped back, Tony continued, "You should have died that day, Katrina, but you didn't want to go. Normally, when someone dies, their body's more or less a sack of useless meat, whether they get hit by a bus or have a broken ticker, but you... Your body was healed by that medi-gel project of yours spilling all over you. Better than, even, since the radiation catalyzed the process, making you more than human." She shrugged. "I've been disillusioned with my job for centuries, but it's not like they can fire me without killing me, and I saw an opportunity to give my notice, as it were." Tony stepped forward, slowly moving in front of the window, blocking Rae's escape. "And now, here we are, you and I. Together, we can do so much if we work with each other. If you'd only stop fighting me, we could even--"

Rae felt it almost as soon as Tony did. Being able to project radiation also meant being able to detect it -- one shouldn't fire a gun while blind, after all, and she felt the tingle between her shoulderblades of a tightly focused beam of infrared mere moments before Tony's face contorted in a snarl, turning almost skull-like with ferocity. With a gesture, the mirror reassembled itself. With another, Rae was lifted off the floor, and thrown back through to land hard in the tub on the other side. "You stay there." With that, Tony flew out the window, and landed neatly on the rooftop next to Mr. Conspiracy.

"You sneaky, cheeky, pervy bastard," she growled, casting a beam of high-powered X-Rays at his recording equipment, causing it to die in a fit of sparks. "Thought you'd get a bit of a look-see, eh? Well, you're going to have a hard time seeing anything without your eyes." Her own began to glow a searingly bright blue as she prepared to burn his optic nerves out with a gamma pulse.

Mr. Conspiracy smiled as reached up to his mask, unclipping it and the goggles. "I don't think so. You see, I was never here at all." Watching Tony's face start to twitch involuntarily, he added with a tiny note of smug malice in his voice, "Hi, nice to meet you. I'm Walter Sczepanski." As Tony dropped like a sack of bricks onto the rooftop, eyes rolled back in her head, Walter whistled jauntily, retrieving an overly long scarf from his pocket. Unclasping his cloak, he folded it neatly, tucked it into his suit jacket, and wrapped the scarf around his neck and face, then clambered down the fire escape to the street, just another citizen out for a walk on a cold, foggy night.

Rae waited. She couldn't see much beyond the portal that the reconstructed mirror offered her, but she knew someone had been out there, and now, assuming they had survived, they knew something was wrong... and she knew that if she tried, she could learn the rules and use them to her advantage.

She sat on the edge of the tub in her little mirror world, and smiled, humming contentedly until morning.

[evilbenfranklin]

Hush now don't you cry
Wipe away the teardrop from your eye
You're lying safe in bed
It was all a bad dream spinning in your head
Your mind tricked you to feel the pain
Of someone close to you leaving the game of life
So here it is another chance
Wide awake you face the day
Your dream is over or has it just begun?

The jukebox in the Blood Angels' base played Queensryche's "Silent Lucidity" softly as Tony entered, a scowl crossing her features as she stalked over to the bar, completely ignoring the man in the gray opera cloak and suit, as if she didn't even see him.

Behind his mask, Mr. Conspiracy smiled to himself. It wasn't the first time his little "medical condition" had come in handy, but it was the first time he hadn't been certain that it would work. Now for the fun part...

There's a place I like to hide
A doorway that I run through in the night
Relax child, you were there
But only didn't realize and you were scared
It's a place where you will learn
To face your fears retrace the years
And ride the whims of your mind
Commanding in another world
Suddenly you hear and see
This magic new dimension...

As the... thing that was posing as Delta Rae settled in at the bar, Mr. Conspiracy -- "Frank" as Fenix had dubbed him -- leaned back in his seat in the booth of the base's hangout spot, and casually pulled out the smartphone he had purchased earlier today. Another advantage to the psychotechnological virus that caused others to forget him, after a time: he'd never get billed for it. Still, it was one of the fancier models, with GPS location (disabled), social media integration (also disabled), and a host of other features he had turned off to make it more difficult for the device to communicate who and where he was, and what he was doing, more for others' protection than his own. As "Tony" had found out the other night, the full shock of being introduced to the real him had a tendency to scramble the neurons while paths were being rewritten, and he had no desire to cause any unintentional accidents.

Still, it had some lovely features, including bidirectional text-to-speech translation... and a forward-facing high-resolution camera, which he carefully aimed at the mirror over the bar, cranking the zoom up as high as it could go until he centered the reflection of the blue-green woman at the bar in the screen.

Tapping lightly on the screen, he activated the video recording function, pulled up the phone's keyboard, and thumbed out, << Anyone home? >>

The image on his phone's screen blinked and looked around wildly, as if looking for the source of a sound. Smiling a bit, he tapped out another message: << Relax. It's Mr. Conspiracy. I don't think we've been properly introduced, but I understand you've got a problem with a troublesome tenant. I may be able to help, if I can convince the others to believe me... but first, I have to believe you. >>

The image of Delta Rae on the screen swiveled her head this way and that, and looked straight at him, mouth working silently -- he'd tuned the sound off for this. Words appeared on the screen in the message area: << What do I have to do?>>

Fingers tapping softly, he replied, << Convince me. Tell me your side of it, the whole story. I know a little something about having one's identity stolen. =p >>

Crossing her arms under her breasts and self-consciously tugging her black leather vest closed, Rae replied, << Well, let's see, Mr. Conspiracy. First, I died when I got my super powers. Tony there -- >> she jerked her head toward her body at the bar << made me a deal: When the last person responsible for my death also died, he got to take over for a 'holiday' as he put it. I didn't realize he was planning on making it a permanent vacation, though, and I figure he had something t'do with the Malta team that killed me passin' on before their time. Just couldn't wait to take that fucking Princess Cruise, I guess. >> She huffed silently. << And now, I'm stuck in a little box in my head, only able t'see and hear and not speak or touch, 'cept when I can work my way into a mirror. >>

<< I saw you jump straight out of the mirror in that hotel room the other night, though, so you can do it, if you're properly motivated. >>

<< And if Tony's schnockered or distracted. Sometimes, it almost feels like I can slip back in and kick his poncey ass back out... but he always spots it. Always. >> She glanced off to one side, looking pensive. << And there's his threats to my friends and family. Said he could get other renegade Reapers or even nastier things to visit them. >>

Sighing quietly, Frank rubbed his forehead with his free hand. The phone buzzed as << HEY! Don't shake this thing, you're makin' me all queasy an' shit! >> popped up on the screen.

He hadn't been shaking it. Tony had gotten up from the bar stool and was looking around the room, eyes narrowed in suspicion. Hastily, he tapped out, << Think your tenant's taken notice of us. May not be able to talk again. Will do what I can to get you help. >>

As the song on the juke swung into the final refrain, he thumbed the phone off and tucked it in his pocket just as Tony walked up to him, eyes flaring with a violet-blue un-light as she sat down across the table, hands folded nonchalantly. "I don't remember you... but something tells me you're pokin' in my business, and I get the feeling I've seen you before," she growled quietly, just loud enough to be heard over guitars and hair-band singers, "So I'm gonna tell you once, mate: Stay out of my business. We clear?"

Frank merely sat there for a moment, then removed his goggles, leaving the mask on. A slight tremor crossed Tony's face as the Lethe worm in his system shook itself awake in her nervous system, looking forward to its next meal of memory engrams. He leaned forward, looked her straight in the eye, and replied quietly, "I know who and what you are. I can make you forget that fact any time I like just by taking this mask off. If I do it long enough, you might even forget who you are, or it could burn your brain out so bad that you'd be a drooling radioactive rutabaga for the rest of your unnatural life." As Tony paled slowly, he put his goggles back on, continuing, "I don't know Ms. Ellison very well, but I know the people she associates with here, and on the old Guardian Angels team, and I think I can guess within a two percent margin of error what her decision would be if she had to choose between that, and being stuck with you hijacking her body."

Leaning back in his seat, he opened his arms expansively. "So, I'm going to give you a choice, Tony: You can leave voluntarily, or you can force me to take direct action to remove you."

At this, Tony laughed, a harsh, grating echo of Rae's normal laughter. A bit of British accent slipping back in, she drawled, "Do you really think you could pull that off, you fedora'd buffoon? I mean, seriously, mate, do you have any idea who you're fucking with here? I appreciate the bravado, but I just don't think you've got the resources -- or the minerals -- to take me on."

Nudging his goggles down just enough to look over them at her, Frank replied softly, "I'm the only man in this room with nothing to lose. No family that'll recognize me, no friends that remember who I am for more than a day, three tops, if I stop talking to them. I survived for years without being able to hold down a regular job, much less a fucking credit rating, so you tell me, sweet-cheeks: Do you think I'm resourceful enough to pull it off?"

Tony's face got very, very still as she rose from the booth. Leaning over, almost nose to nose, she hissed, "Very well then. Challenge accepted... but I suggest you visit the library, and look up the accounts of what happened to those who challenged Death to games, and lost." With that, she stalked out of the bar, heels clacking on the wooden floor.

Glancing at the mirror over the bar as Tony walked away, Frank saw the reflection pause briefly, turn to him, and mouth, "Thank you." before being dragged along by the body the reflection belonged to.

Pulling his phone out again, Frank compressed the video down to something manageable, and shot it to the New Urban Legends' computer system, with this message: << Fenix: Distribute this to all Blood Angel and New Urban Legend leaders and senior staff, discretionary security level, Alpha priority. Radioactive Smurf has gone off the ranch. We may need to mount a rescue mission, or failing that... a mercy sanction. >>

Living twice at once you learn
You're safe from pain in the dream domain
A soul set free to fly
A round trip journey in your head
Master of Illusion can you realize
Your dream's alive you can be the guide but
(I) will be watching over you
(I) I'm gonna help you see it though
(I) will protect you in the night
(I) I'm smiling next to you
In silent lucidity...