Death's Handmaiden

by Niall Teasdale

  ‘Yet. There’s nothing to worry about yet.’ And then the door was closing behind her.

  Staring at the closed door of her apartment, Mitsuko voiced her concerns over the matter. ‘Oh. Crap.’

  ~~~

  If anyone asked, Kyle was patrolling the residential blocks. It made the students feel safe to have the SSF checking up on things in the late evening. Most of them would not have actually cared that the real reason he did this was so that he could end up with a personal tour of his captain, but Courtney and Kyle were determined to at least keep up the appearance of not being a couple.

  It was gone nine and about time to head toward Courtney’s apartment. They used Courtney’s place most of the time because she had one of the bigger places and Kyle was in one of the better capsule buildings. His bed was not right under the ceiling, but it was a single and Courtney’s was… huge. She liked a big bed.

  Kyle was just considering what he was going to do in that big bed to relieve Courtney of some of her stress when he felt something, a pressure on his mind. He had about enough time to wonder whether this was what Lambert Stenger felt when he was taken over when Kyle’s mind went entirely blank.

  ~~~

  Kyle had access to Courtney’s apartment via his ketcom, not that either of them would admit it to anyone. So, when her apartment door opened, she rushed out of the bedroom in time to see him walking in. She had been expecting him, obviously, and she smiled warmly at him.

  Still, she waited for the door to close, just in case, before speaking. ‘Any trouble on the way? I hope not because I really need you tonight and I don’t want to be disturbed.’

  ‘No trouble,’ Kyle replied. He did not comment on the fact that Courtney was stark naked, but he did move closer with a predatory expression on his face. ‘No trouble at all.’

  Courtney backed up toward the bedroom door, grinning. ‘Oh, I don’t like that look in your eye. I think you’re trouble.’

  ‘You’re absolutely right. I am.’

  He advanced and she retreated. He was not always this forceful, but she loved it when he was. She felt the foot of the bed against her calves and stopped. ‘You’ve got me cornered.’

  ‘I have.’ He raised his hand toward her and…

  Courtney gasped as she felt a spell sweeping over her. For an instant, she felt as though she had to sleep, but she pushed the sensation away. ‘What–’ Another spell hit her and this one took hold. Her muscles cramped and fire burned through her veins. She managed more of a croak than a scream before her legs crumpled under her and she fell. She was in agony, her mind unable to work through the pain, but she heard Kyle’s voice.

  ‘You’d have suffered less if you’d slept. Well, I lie. You’ll suffer. I’ll make you pay for disturbing my–’

  There was a noise a bit like someone hitting an off-key gong and Kyle crumpled onto the carpet beside Courtney. She did not notice immediately, but a second later the pain stopped. Breathing hard, her vision swimming, she struggled to sit up. She saw Kyle, sprawled beside her. Raising her eyes, she saw a saucepan hanging in the air briefly until a hand appeared around the handle.

  ‘Are you okay?’ Nava asked.

  ‘N-Nava?’

  ‘No mental damage then. I figure that was an Agony spell, or the equivalent. I guess Kyle won’t be arguing against this disembodied spirit thing when he comes to.’

  Courtney’s eyes widened. ‘That thing? Where–’

  ‘It’s gone. Ran off after I hit Kyle. Oh, he’s bleeding on your carpet.’ Nava lifted the saucepan. ‘I’m going to put this away and get a meditech over here.’ She turned and started for the bedroom door. ‘Then I’ll call Suki and have her come over. You should probably put some clothes on.’

  Courtney struggled to her feet, still groggy. ‘Wait. How did you know it was here? How do you know it’s gone?’

  ‘I honestly have no clue how I know, and the reason I’m not healing him myself is that I’m not absolutely sure it’s gone. Let’s get him to the infirmary and we can worry over my weird feelings once we’re sure he’s okay.’

  ~~~

  The first thing Kyle thought upon regaining consciousness was, ‘What happened?’

  He was, he thought, on a bed. He was certainly lying horizontal on his back, but not in a position one would normally sleep in. When he tried to move, two things impinged upon his slowly returning consciousness. One: he was attached to the bed by soft cuffs around his ankles and wrists as well as a band around his chest. Two: his head felt as though someone had used him as a target dummy for Concussive Force spells. Opening his eyes seemed like a bad idea.

  ‘Oh… Shit. Did someone hit me with a sledgehammer?’

  ‘It was a saucepan.’ Female voice. Deadpan, pardon the pun. That had to be…

  ‘Nava?’ Tentatively, Kyle opened his eyes. The sight which met them was too damn bright – he had been right about it not being a good idea – which just added to the impression that he had died and gone to heaven. Three beautiful faces looked down at him from various points around his bed. If his head had not been throbbing to the beat of an unheard heavy metal band, he would have been really happy. Considering that he was naked and not under a sheet, really happy might have been really embarrassing. ‘Uh, hi,’ he said. ‘I don’t generally mind a bit of bondage, and a foursome sounds great, but this seems a little excessive. And why did you hit me with a saucepan? No, wait, when did you hit me with a saucepan?’

  ‘I think it’s really him,’ Nava said. She was at the foot of the bed. ‘I guess whatever I’m feeling is real. If he can recognise me from my voice, there’s probably no neurological damage.’

  ‘I agree,’ Courtney said from Kyle’s right. She looked worried. ‘I guess we can take the straps off.’

  ‘Oh, I don’t know,’ Mitsuko said from Kyle’s left. ‘I think we should keep him tied up and do further checks.’ She was just about managing to keep a straight face, though there was a hint of worry about her eyes too.

  Nava, of course, was unreadable. ‘You just like the view.’ She reached for the padded cuffs holding Kyle’s ankles down and about forty centimetres apart. ‘Whatever had him is gone, and I suspect he has need of the analgesics. I did hit him quite hard.’

  Courtney and Mitsuko began working on the other cuffs. Kyle decided he deserved some answers at this point. ‘Okay, so why did you hit me? With a saucepan, of all things.’

  ‘It was a good, solid saucepan. Solid metal with a bolted-on wooden handle. I figured it would knock you out.’

  ‘Yes, but–’

  ‘What’s the last thing you remember?’ Courtney asked.

  ‘Uh… I was doing a patrol. Heading toward your block. And…’ He frowned. Then his eyes widened. ‘That thing. It possessed me?’

  ‘Do you normally use Sleep and Agony spells on your captain?’ Nava asked.

  ‘I don’t know either of those.’

  ‘Apparently, it does.’

  Kyle turned his gaze upon Courtney, who was now holding out a pill and a glass of water. ‘Are you–’

  ‘I’m unhurt. Okay, so now I know what Agony feels like, I’d be quite happy if I never got hit with that again, but Nava bashed your head in before that thing could do anything worse.’

  ‘It seems to like using someone with a close relationship to its victim to attack them,’ Mitsuko said. ‘If Nava hadn’t thought there might be a problem, the two of you might be in the same positions as Lambert and Candide Stenger.’

  ‘And now,’ Courtney said, turning to the foot of the bed, ‘Nava is going to explain how she knew.’

  ‘She’s not,’ Nava replied. ‘She doesn’t know how she knew.’ She held up a hand to forestall a response from Courtney. ‘When Lambert Stenger took us to see the artefact, I had this weird feeling of unease as soon as I entered the lab. I figured, okay, it’s a weird, black, somewhat ominous object with slightly disturbing carvings on it.’

  ‘But you’re never nervous or uneasy,’ Mitsuko said. ‘You’
re not afraid of anything.’

  ‘Not true, but I’ll admit that I don’t react to threats the way most people do. Still, I felt weird around the artefact and I got the same feeling when you arrived with Kyle for the meeting, Courtney.’

  ‘That’s why you were so quiet?’ Mitsuko asked.

  Nava nodded. ‘I didn’t connect the two feelings until the meeting was wrapping up. It was more intense in Suki’s apartment… And then it went away when Courtney and Kyle left. I theorised that I was somehow sensing the whatever it is. The spirit. So, I left and caught up with Courtney on the way to her apartment, sneaked in behind her, and waited. At best, I was going to end up being a voyeur.’

  ‘You know Invisibility?’ Kyle asked.

  Another nod. ‘Turns out, I wasn’t just a pervert. That feeling came back when Kyle turned up, and when he started attacking Courtney, I got a saucepan from the kitchen. And the rest is history.’

  ‘So, where is it now?’

  ‘No idea. It’s not here. The feeling vanished not long after I knocked you out, but it could’ve gone anywhere. I can tell when it’s close to me, but I’ve no way of searching for it aside from searching the entire campus.’

  ‘And no way of doing anything to it if you found it,’ Courtney added. ‘Let’s hope Lambert Stenger or Chess can come up with something tomorrow, because right now, I think we’ve established that we have an unkillable, psychotic murderer walking the campus who could be pretty much anyone at any given time.’

  235/5/22.

  Nava was expecting it, so it did not come as a surprise when Darius spoke up as soon as she stepped through the door. ‘What is she doing here?’ Because she was expecting it, and because she did not care, Nava continued into the room and took a seat at the table.

  ‘Nava is here at my invitation,’ Mitsuko said, ‘and that of Courtney. She has a unique talent which makes her exceptionally useful in this current emergency. Therefore, if you can’t keep a civil tongue in your head, Vice President Darius Miller Fosse, you are not required here and can leave.’

  ‘What unique talent?’ Darius was not backing down entirely. His tone was sullen and a bit defensive.

  ‘For whatever reason, perhaps a quirk of genetics, Nava is sensitive to the entity we are dealing with. She can tell when it’s nearby.’

  ‘That’s–’

  ‘That saved my life last night,’ Courtney said. ‘We’re as sure of it as we are of anything in this case. We may also need her firepower to defeat this thing, so she’s staying and, as the president said, you can leave if that bothers you.’

  ‘As vice president, I need to know what’s happening,’ Darius stated, lifting his nose rather imperiously.

  ‘You could read the minutes,’ Mitsuko said flatly. Then she continued before he could protest. ‘Now, I did call this meeting in order to brief the student council on what’s happening, so let’s get started. We have established within a reasonable margin of surety that we are dealing with some form of immaterial entity. For want of a better word, a spirit. This spirit is capable of possessing people. It uses those people to commit crimes, namely murder by torture. Thus far, it has not actually succeeded in killing anyone, but its intent was clear.’

  ‘That’s a… quite fanciful story, President,’ Marie Royce said. ‘Are you quite sure about this? It sounds like the plot of a horror vid.’

  ‘Oddly enough, it possibly is the plot of a horror vid, but it’s also the best hypothesis matching the evidence we have. Mercia Reynell has examined the literature on mind control methods and can find nothing matching the symptoms experienced by the victims. However, there is a match to be found in literature. Mel, have you finished your analysis?’

  ‘Well, enough to say that the stories match the experiences of Kyle and Lambert Stenger,’ Melissa replied.

  ‘Wait,’ Naomi Himura said, ‘Kyle Maynard was taken by this thing?’

  ‘Apparently,’ Courtney said, ‘it decided to pay me back for stopping it getting its first victim. It picked Kyle as its tool because it knew I trusted him. If Nava hadn’t figured it out, I would have been tortured to death by Kyle.’

  ‘I see… Please, Melissa Connelly, continue. What “stories” are you speaking of?’

  ‘Well, they’re sort of urban legends really. There have been stories told about the worlds where Harbinger sites have been found for almost as long as there have been spacer tales about the Harbingers. I found a couple of studies on them. The research was done because, well, the spacer tales turned out to have a hint of truth about them, so maybe the urban legends did. The recurring factor is a form of possession. The victims of this have missing periods of time during which they’re entirely unconscious. Not sleeping. Totally unaware of time passing. They suddenly find themselves somewhere unexpected and have no idea how they got there or what they’ve been doing.’

  ‘What about that thing you mentioned with the possessed lovers?’ Mitsuko asked. ‘Didn’t that just involve missing memories?’

  Melissa blushed. ‘Uh, yes. That’s the exception since there generally isn’t some peculiar travel involved. However, the research agrees that those stories are just stories. There was an obscure porn vid made in one thirty-six with that basic plotline. It’s thought that embellishments of that are the source of all the, um, saucy ghost stories.’

  ‘I see.’

  ‘A general summary of the papers on the subject suggests that there is something to the Harbinger spirit idea. They may really exist. Certainly, no one has been able to satisfactorily explain some quite well-documented incidents and these incidents only happen on worlds which used to be Harbinger colonies.’

  ‘Shinden was never a Harbinger colony,’ Darius pointed out.

  ‘No,’ Mitsuko said, ‘but we recently took receipt of an active Harbinger artefact which could have contained some kind of immaterial entity. Lambert Stenger was possessed almost immediately after turning the thing off.’

  ‘Foolish,’ Naomi said.

  ‘Yes, but he’s paid a rather steep price for his curiosity. His wife won’t, no, she can’t see him. She’s been emotionally destroyed and it’s possible that she’ll never be able to go near him again.’ Mitsuko looked down at the table for a second, frowning. Then she looked up at Melissa. ‘So, there is at least apocryphal evidence to support the existence of these spirits.’

  ‘Yes,’ Melissa replied. ‘There’s considerably less evidence for direct action by them, but the possession stories have a reasonably solid basis in fact. There are two Harbinger sites which were uncovered due to someone finding themselves there, kilometres from where they last have a memory of. It’s like the Harbingers don’t want to be lost in time, so they pointed someone at the sites.’

  ‘It’s preposterous,’ Darius said. ‘But… I suppose if it fits the facts…’

  ‘Exactly,’ Courtney said. ‘I don’t want to believe it myself, but we don’t have a better theory.’

  ‘Besides,’ Melissa said, ‘we’re magicians. We make things happen every day that scientists would have said were impossible before the discovery of metaphysics. We know the Harbingers had magical technology far beyond our capabilities. Who’s to say they couldn’t somehow transcend the need for physical bodies?’

  ‘What can we do about this?’ Naomi asked.

  ‘Lambert Stenger is currently trying to uncover any secrets the remains of his artefact might be hiding,’ Courtney said. ‘It’s not easy for him, considering what that thing cost him, but he’s working on it. We have someone examining old metaphysics papers. There was some research done into “spirit magic” back in the early days. We’re hoping that might produce some results we can use.’

  ‘He’s still working on it,’ Melissa said. Neither of them were mentioning a name because Darius would likely blow a fuse if he discovered a first year on the support stream was doing the work. ‘He’s hoping to have some results tonight.’

  ‘Good,’ Mitsuko said. ‘We need a method of containing this thing.’
/>
  ‘No,’ Nava said. ‘What we need is a method of killing it. The mistake the Harbingers made was that they locked up some criminal, an insane serial murderer. It got out and it’s just started up where it left off. We work out how to end it, and then we show it absolutely no mercy.’

  ‘I’m not sure the metaphysics specialists in the faculty would agree. They’d say it was of crucial scientific importance.’

  ‘They can tell that to Candide Stenger.’

  ~~~

  Lambert Stenger looked uncomfortable as he walked into Mitsuko’s apartment. He looked downtrodden, defeated, but those emotions were kind of expected of a man whose wife thought had almost tortured her to death. The discomfort was because he had been invited to a single student’s apartment. Of course, he was hardly there alone with her, but…

  ‘Perhaps we should have done this in the student council room,’ Mitsuko said. It was getting a little crowded in her lounge. Nava was perched on the arm of one of the sofas, but that still left five seats to find. ‘Oh well, we’re all here now. Sit beside Kyle, please, Mister Lambert Stenger. I’m sure he won’t mind scooting closer to Courtney.’ Mitsuko was standing having taken the job of chairwoman.

  ‘Never let it be said that I won’t sit closer to an attractive woman,’ Kyle said.

  ‘Don’t think I won’t put you on double patrol duty,’ Courtney replied, though her heart was not really in the banter.

  ‘Uh, let’s skip the formalities under the circumstances,’ Lambert said. ‘If you keep calling me “Mister Lambert Stenger,” this meeting will continue until tomorrow morning.’

  ‘Fine,’ Mitsuko replied. ‘If everyone is okay with that, let’s proceed. Melissa, for those not present at the council meeting earlier, a twenty-word summary of your findings, if you would.’

  ‘Okay,’ Melissa said. She pursed her lips briefly. ‘Research suggests that the idea of immaterial entities, spirits, on Harbinger colony worlds is not without foundation.’

  ‘Admirable. I think you have two or three words spare.’