‘That does look official.’
‘Well… I needed to ask you about Rory Taylor-May and I don’t want your mother hearing.’
‘Oh. No. Twilight spoke to you then?’
‘Andrea, yeah.’
‘Isn’t she Twilight?’
‘Um… yes. It’s a little complicated. Is Rory still a problem?’
Marie winced. ‘It’s… He doesn’t seem to want to take no for an answer.’
‘Have you talked to any of the teachers?’
‘They’re all scared of Rory’s father. He read them the riot act last year after they put Rory in detention.’
‘Right.’
‘Bianca…’ Marie trailed off.
Bianca walked closer, putting her hand on Marie’s shoulder. ‘What is it, Marie? You can tell me.’
‘It’s embarrassing. He… grabbed one of my boobs yesterday. He was joking about with his friends and I was walking past and he just reached out and… You’re not going to hit him are you? My allowance isn’t going to cover the bail.’
‘No,’ Bianca said, smiling, ‘I’m not going to hit him.’
‘Then, um, what are you going to do?’
‘Oh, I’m going to do something much worse than hitting him.’
~~~
‘I know it’s just a stakeout,’ June said as they waited, ‘but that makes this perfect for a try-out.’
Bianca shrugged. ‘They’re ready, so why not? Nothing’s going to start happening for another hour and Cygnus said she’d fly me out to the city.’
‘Yeah. I have to admit, the disguise really works for you. What did you say she was called?’
‘Sugar. Sugar Gold.’ Bianca smiled with brightly painted red lips. ‘Prostitute and occasional stripper. It’s a stage name, obviously.’
‘Obviously.’
‘You’d be amazed at what people will talk about in front of a lap dancer. It’s like they think you’re functionally deaf.’
‘Huh. So… You’ve actually done the jobs? I mean, you’ve, well… sold your body?’
‘Yes. The woman who trained me in martial arts runs a brothel. Um, the form I use, sichou xian quantou, originates from the arts taught to a warlord’s bodyguards. They were all women, and all his concubines, so they learned to employ all their skills to ensure their lord’s safety. It’s like ninjutsu for sex workers.’ Bianca paused. ‘Besides, I wanted to know what it was like to do it. Partially just… curiosity, but if I was going to protect these women, I wanted to know what I was protecting them from.’
June gave a shrug. ‘I’ve slept with a couple of guys I thought could help my career. A while back, not recently. It turned out sleeping with a girl was more useful.’
‘Svetilo?’
‘Uh-huh.’
‘I thought you were a lesbian?’
‘I am. I also have flexible enough morals to justify sleeping with a man if there’s a good enough reason.’ Now June paused and frowned a little. ‘Had. I had flexible enough morals. I don’t think I’d consider it anymore.’
‘People change,’ Bianca said and then looked up at the sound of footfalls on the stairs.
Cygnus was the first to come down, a shining goddess who lifted a few inches into the air as she got to the ground floor to sweep into the lounge. At first sight, her new costume appeared to consist of skin. There was a bodysuit with a sort of halterneck. The collar was quite high, but it was open over the throat, and that opening continued down, widening to expose most of her chest and stomach, finally closing a good four inches below her navel. Her shoulders and arms were bare and the back of the suit dropped down to just above her ass. The high-cut hips had silver scrollwork ornaments mounted on them. Tucked into the front and back was a skirt, of sorts: more like a long loincloth of sheer, silky material. The skirt at the back fishtailed a little at the bottom, and did far more than the suit toward hiding Cygnus’s behind. There were thigh-high, high-heeled boots. Like the suit, the material was a metallic silver which was almost white, but the boots also had silver shin guards and various curls of decoration which looked like metal but bent like fabric. The tops of the boots rose to points on the outside of each thigh where a large, pearl-coloured oval shape was set into a metallic scroll which went up almost to Cygnus’s hip.
To complement the suit, June had suggested appropriate make-up, so Cygnus’s blue eyes were surrounded by ghostly white eyeshadow to make them stand out. Her lips were painted a pale pink, and her nails were silver.
‘You just had to outdo yourself on the nudity factor, didn’t you?’ Cygnus said. ‘Is this actually going to stay on if I move faster than a walk?’
‘Yes and yes,’ June replied. ‘The fabric is a bioplastic designed to adhere to the wearer’s skin. Given the shaping, that thing actually provides a little uplift for those huge boobs of yours.’
‘You do know yours are a cup size bigger than mine, right?’
‘Maybe I should make a costume for me then. You look great. Exactly how I imagined it.’ June turned to Bianca. ‘The modelling software is fantastic.’
‘Thank you,’ Bianca replied. ‘FTI product. We buy in some of the fabrics we use in that lab, but the production equipment is all ours.’
‘I guess I’ll have to try this out and see how it goes,’ Cygnus said.
‘I guess I will too,’ Andrea said as she walked in holding her mask. She sounded less than sure about it, however. ‘Are you just trying to see how far you can bend the decency laws, June?’
As befitted the Avatar of Shadow, the new Twilight costume was black. It was the same latex-like plastic material as June had used on Cygnus’s suit, but this was black with a very slight sparkle in it. There was, sort of, more of it than Cygnus’s. Just about. Twilight’s suit had sleeves, long ones which hooked over her middle finger. The collar was higher and curled out from the neck, giving a bit of a ‘wicked witch queen’ look, but the throat was more open. Andrea did not have Cygnus’s impressive bust, but the suit made the most of what was there: it was open at the front with cut-outs forming three spikes above, across, and curling under her breasts. Below that, the suit was wide open to a few inches under the navel, and this suit exposed more hip with a very thin thong back. The high-heeled boots came up over the knee. As usual, her sword was fixed over her right shoulder, running diagonally down to her left buttock.
Again, June had complemented the look with make-up. There was a black stripe running from a low point at the nose, around each eye, and rising to a point over the outside edge. Andrea’s lips were painted a dark red. Her nails were black.
Looking self-conscious, Andrea lifted her mask and set it in place. The new mask was the same basic shape as the old one, a wing or butterfly shape, narrow over the nose, rising high over her eyebrows, and coming down to points over her cheekbones. This one was made in the same black fabric as the suit, however, and as soon as it was on her face, her posture shifted.
‘This is awesome!’ Twilight said. ‘Andrea will get used to it. I think it’s great. I can really move… You are sure it’ll stay on though, right?’
‘You have to peel the stuff off,’ Bianca said. ‘Doesn’t hurt, but it takes conscious effort. It’s getting very popular with designers of… more risqué dresses.’
‘Like June,’ Cygnus said, grinning.
‘No comment. Okay, we all know what we’re doing? Tonight is going to be observation only. We’re checking out the six sites I managed to identify as potential locations for the labs.’
‘I’m dropping you off and then going out to the two remote locations.’
Bianca nodded. ‘I’m not hopeful about those, but they need to be checked and you can do it faster.’
‘I have my two objectives,’ Twilight said. ‘I checked the maps and they shouldn’t be a problem.’
‘If you do see Kopf,’ Cygnus said, ‘you wait, okay? No dashing in on your own. You don’t know what he could have in there.’
‘Nothing I can’t handle’ – Twilight raised a hand – ‘but
I’ll wait. It’s only fair given he tortured you.’
‘And I’m manning the console downstairs,’ June said. ‘I can’t believe I’m actually getting in on an operation like this.’
‘I’d get Elaine to do it,’ Bianca said, ‘but she has the Stars to take care of. You’ll coordinate with her, but we’re keeping the communications separate since most of them don’t know about me. I’ll take the two other locations. They’re both in Tenderloin and Sugar’s pretty well known there.’
‘You’ll be turning customers away,’ Twilight commented.
‘Huh, yeah. Don’t you go standing on any corners or you will be too.’
~~~
‘Are we sure about this address?’ Twilight asked.
‘Your GPS has you at the right location,’ June replied. ‘Just off Bush Street. And, just saying, I want this system at home so I know where you both are while you’re out.’
‘Huh. Well… This place is dark. Nothing seems to be happening. I’m going to try sending in an imp, but this one looks like a wash.’
‘Okay, Twilight. HQ over and out.’
Twilight smirked. ‘You’re really digging this, aren’t you?’
‘Hey! I said “over and out.” You’re not supposed to add extra stuff after “over and out.”’
‘You’re not supposed to say over and out. Just out.’ Twilight focussed herself, sending out whatever call it was that brought the imps running.
‘I’d blow a raspberry, but it wouldn’t work over the radio. Go talk to your imp. Out.’
Twilight looked down at the freakish little monster which had appeared to fawn at her boots. ‘So what do you think of the new outfit?’ she asked it. The creature, which looked like a monkey had had mutant offspring with a Hell hound, turned burning red eyes up to her and gibbered. ‘Yeah, I suppose human aesthetics aren’t exactly your forte. Okay, I want you to go down to that dark building across the alley… Yes, I know you like darkness. Go down there, take a look around, report back with what you find. Understood?’
There was gibbering and then the imp vanished over the side of the building. Twilight waited.
‘Probably nothing there,’ Andrea commented.
‘True.’
‘But it’s always worth checking.’
‘Also true.’
Something shrieked: a combination of animal howl and some form of entirely unnatural scream. ‘What the Hell was that?’ Andrea asked.
‘No idea,’ Twilight replied and pulled the shadows up around her to step down into the alley. She looked quickly around: there was the still dark building and a flight of steps leading down to a basement door. There was no sign of the imp, but there was… something. ‘You getting that?’
‘It’s like…’
‘A wall.’
‘More like a screen, a barrier. I think it either destroyed or banished the imp.’
‘And I can’t sense shadow beyond it.’
‘I think we need to come back and take a look at this place in daylight,’ Andrea suggested.
‘Okay,’ Twilight replied, stepping back into shadow and out across the city, ‘but it could be anything.’
‘Yes, it could, but Epps said Kopf had some way of hiding himself from the Court. Whether it’s technology or magic, something there stops imps from getting in and I find that interesting.’
18th October.
‘I’m not saying it’s definitely him,’ Andrea said, ‘but I want to check out that location in the light. I can’t see colours properly in the dark and he might know that.’
‘Well, all mine were a bust,’ Bianca replied. She was busy dismantling her Sugar Gold disguise. The wig was already gone and she was working on her face with wet wipes. ‘I’ve no problem with checking out anything that looks interesting.’
‘My second one looked promising,’ Cygnus said. ‘A lot of movement for a warehouse building that late at night. There were lights on inside, but they were doing their best to keep them shuttered. I think it’s worth a second look after dark with one of Twilight’s imps.’
‘Okay,’ Andrea said, ‘you help me with the alley in the afternoon, and then you can fly me out to this warehouse in the evening. And tomorrow morning we should talk about what we’re going to do about these places if we confirm they’re the right ones.’
‘Not now?’ June asked. ‘I’m kind of wired. I know I was just sitting back and watching, or listening, but it was exciting. I felt like I was actually part of the op.’
‘“The op?”’ Cygnus said, grinning. ‘You’ve been watching too much TV.’ June pouted at her.
‘I’m sure Cygnus can sap your energy,’ Andrea said. ‘Twilight has a little errand to run for Bianca.’ Andrea got to her feet and started for the door. ‘I’ll be back in a bit.’
‘I’ll wait up for you,’ Bianca said. ‘I want to hear how this works out.’
~~~
Rory Taylor-May slept the sleep of the righteous. Well, he did if you defined ‘righteous’ in terms of excessive confidence, a bullying attitude, and a rich father. He was not really the kind of man who remembered dreams, and if he had remembered one and it had not contained scantily clad supermodels, he would never have admitted it. He claimed never to have had a nightmare because nothing scared him. This was entirely untrue, but even as a child he had never had the form of disturbed sleep known as ‘night terrors’ and so had never heard the term.
So when he found himself struggling to wake up with the uncomfortable feeling that something was sitting on his chest, making it hard to breathe, he had no name for what was happening to him. Then again, night terrors come with the feeling that something is sitting on your chest, not an actual something.
‘Wake up, Rory.’ The voice was calm and female and it came out of a darkness which was too thick, too dark for his bedroom.
‘Whu–’
‘Shut up. You speak when I tell you to speak and not otherwise.’
‘I don’t take that from– Ah!’ Something like ice-cold claws digging into his chest brought him to a sudden stop. It felt as though the strength was being sapped out of him, drained away by icy fingers.
‘I want you conscious, you little ingrate, so shut up and listen. You’ve been making a nuisance of yourself around school. Hitting on girls who don’t want you to. Getting that waitress pregnant was just stupid. If your lawyers hadn’t buried the paternity test results, she’d have not only got you locked up, given she was underage, but you’d have been hit with some nice, big bills. Maybe you’d actually have had to get a job!’
‘I didn’t–’
‘Shut it. I have the real results and I’m very, very tempted to hand them out to a few newspapers and blog sites, but I believe in second chances and the greater good. So here’s what I’m going to do. You are going to be a model schoolboy from now on. If I hear about you so much as looking at a girl, your sordid past will come to light.’
‘My father–’
‘You’re going to tell your father all about it. And he’s going to arrange for that waitress to receive an anonymous donation, a substantial one, to make sure your daughter is cared for properly until she’s your age. He’s going to do that for the same reason that he isn’t going to get you out of the mess you’re in. Tell him I have a nice package tied up in pink ribbon ready to go to the IRS. Understand?’
‘I… yes.’
‘Good. One last thing, in case you might wake up tomorrow and think this is all a dream and you can ignore it. When you were a kid you were probably scared of the monster under the bed. I know you won’t admit it, because you’re an arrogant dick, but I bet you were.’
The darkness seemed to thin, drawing back from the bed. Rory could see the sheets, then the bedposts and footboard.
‘I bet you never thought it was real,’ the voice said and the thing appeared on Rory’s chest. It hissed and its red eyes burned as it glared at the supine boy, and Rory let out a shriek of terror. ‘Probably better change the sheets,’ the voice said, a
nd then both monster and shadows vanished from the room.
~~~
‘Wet himself?’ Bianca asked
‘Oh yeah,’ Andrea replied.
‘Sometimes life is good.’
~~~
Kopf peered with interest at the three young women currently being held in the unyielding grips of three of his Blood Zombies. Each girl had been roughly gagged, their hands and feet tied, but they struggled, despite the fact that it should have been obvious to anyone with even a modicum of brains that it was futile.
The desire of all living things to survive was fascinating. Humans were, relatively, rather bad at it. They were fragile, so easy to damage or kill. Yet a few additional components could return them to a semblance of life: the organism sought to continue, even if the person it had once been was dead and gone.
Ultrahumans, Kopf’s chosen field of expertise, demonstrated the will to live better than anything else on the planet. A latent Ultra exposed to sufficient stimulus would adapt to survive beyond any other capability found in nature. If only that adaptability could be controlled, shaped, directed. If only…
Kopf shook his head and smiled at the nearest of the girls, a petite blonde whose large breasts were trying to escape from a too-small bra. There was another aspect of humanity Kopf found fascinating, though in a rather more disdainful way: why was it that men found big-breasted blondes so appealing? His own interest in a woman who fitted that description was entirely scientific.
‘Get that one in the frame,’ Kopf said and the zombie began to move, lifting the blonde off her feet to carry her toward one of the two restraint structures.
Three girls to be fitted with the new implants. A trial run. Jade Flame had mentioned ‘going into production’ if these three proved successful. Kopf’s smile broadened: the tong leader would be paying through the nose for that.
~~~
Cygnus dropped onto the rooftop Twilight had used for her observation the night before. Then she lowered Twilight to her feet.
‘Andrea’s complaining that that’s even worse now that I’m dressed in, and I quote, the “fantasy lingerie” version of our costume.’ Twilight was smirking.
‘I’m going to assume you like the new outfit more than she does,’ Cygnus said.
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