Lex turned to see a tall man standing over her, gaunt but muscular; t-shirt, jeans, leather jacket, buzz cut. His eyes were very pale blue, giving him a piercing expression. Suddenly, he was standing right next to the table on her right, blocking her from getting up from her seat.

She looked across at Fil. He was staring up at the newcomer, seemingly petrified.

"Who wants to know?" She kept the knife hidden under the table.

"I'm going to have to ask you to come with us ma'am."

"On what authority? Who are you?"

"Ma'am, I think you'd better just come along with us."

Behind him she could see the blonde giant had abandoned all pretence of not looking at her and was coming their way.

Without waiting for him to say any more she snatched up her beer bottle as if she was about to glass him but as he grabbed her left wrist she used her right hand to plunge the knife into his thigh. He bawled in pain. She pulled the blade free and as he bent to clamp his hand over the wound she leapt up onto the table and kicked him in the face hard. Her boots were tough and heavy and she saw his nose burst in a spray of blood. He went flying backwards, crashing into a group of clubbers, knocking a table and several of them to the floor as he fell. There were screams and shouts of indignation and panic as a slew of glass and alcohol went crashing everywhere.

The blonde giant arrived at a run but she still had the bottle in her left hand and as he got close enough she clubbed him over the head, it exploded against his temple in a shower of weak beer and glass fragments. As he collapsed to his knees, the third man made a grab for her. She sliced at his hands with the broken bottleneck and he fell back, bleeding.

Fil was still sitting there watching her with his mouth open as if in shock as she jumped down from the table, seized him by the arm and pulled him to his feet.

"Come on!" She yelled at him.

"Lex what the –"

"Get up! We have to go!"

He just had presence of mind enough to grab his laptop bag before she sprinted towards the stairs, pulling him after her. They pounded down the steps and onto the dance floor, some of the more sober dancers falling back out of her way as she dodged and pushed her way through the heaving crowd towards the exit with Fil still in tow. She'd already got her knife concealed up her sleeve again but a quick glance back showed her two more men thundering down the stairs and roughly shouldering through the crush after her. She dragged Fil to the exit, running out into the street unhindered because the door security hadn't seen the fight up in the mezzanine bar, they were now busy wading towards the two burly guys shoving kids off their feet on the dance floor.

As they ran out into the cool night air she scanned the street rapidly for a means of escape, the subway station was just a few streets away. She considered just running straight for it but ahead of her the front doors swung open on a large white unmarked van parked a little way down the road from the bar and two more men jumped out and started to make their way purposefully towards her. Up ahead she saw more men getting out of another van, a blue one this time, and start towards them from the other direction, cutting off their escape that way.

She changed direction as she saw ahead of her the two bikers who had sprayed the cheerleaders with booze, still leaning on their motorcycles outside the repair shop across the street. She ran straight towards them, dragging Fil along in her wake, pulled the plasma cannon from her jacket pocket and pointed it at them "Get off the bike right now or I'll fucking shoot you." She said.

They stared at her. For a moment the guy even looked like he might argue but as people around them screamed and started to scatter, they saw the pursuit behind her and their faces froze.

"Here just take it lady!" Said the nearest one, throwing the keys at her in terror. She caught them. Still keeping the gun pointed at them she swung her leg over the machine, a Honda 250, and motioned to Fil to get on behind her. The running men were almost on them. "I'm really sorry boys." She said to the petrified teenagers, revved the Honda up and took off down the street, swerving easily around the men who stood in their way.


Scar watched the fight in the bar unfold; anxiety quickly turning to amusement as she effortlessly took out first one, then another assailant and then a third. The throwing blade he stayed poised between his fingers as she slid through their grasp and began to run like all the hells were on her heels towards the door. He followed her across the dance floor along the rocking gantry, shadowing the men chasing her. The blade was still vibrating impatiently between his talons and, unable to restrain it any longer, he let it go.

It found its target, burying itself in the vertebrae of one of the humans unwisely pushing their way towards his female and the human went down, disappearing underneath the writhing crowd. He sent another blade in the direction of the second pursuer who also collapsed. Screams started to drift up to him as the humans started to realise something was amiss and he purred in satisfaction "Let them try and follow her now!"

Quickly he sprinted back up the staircase and out onto the rooftop, just in time to see her and the human male come running out into the street. He saw the vehicles doors open just as she did, saw the two humans get out and hurry towards her, saw more pursuers getting out of another vehicle further up the road. She was surrounded!

He growled in alarm, he couldn't stand by and let her be captured… but he was just too far away to use the throwing blades. He'd either have to use the plasma cannon or kill them up close.

He was already poised on the ledge of the building, about to leap to her defence, when he saw her pull her own firearm on the two juveniles. The crowds around them – the more alert ones anyway – started to scream and run. She'd stolen another vehicle! A small one this time, but it seemed able to go at quite a speed. And she'd taken the human male with her. Her pursuers stopped their headlong dash as they realised they weren't going to catch her up on foot and began the scramble back to their own transports. Scar began to scale quickly down the building, getting as close as he could to the enemy vehicle. He knew what he had to do. "Now there is no other way;" He smirked to himself "Now I will have to take much more direct action."

He leapt, landing with a muffled thud on the roof of the white transporter just as it sped off in pursuit.


Lex tore down the street, weaving past the few cars on the road, trying hard not to do anything too dramatic that might spill them off the bike. She'd spent a year riding round dirt roads on bikes not much different to this one in Cambodia and Vietnam but that had been years ago and her instincts were rusty. Plus Fil had obviously never rode pillion before, he didn't know how to lean into the turns properly so it was hard enough stopping the bike from spilling over. She checked her mirrors, the blue unmarked van was a few cars back, but they were gaining.

Coming up to a junction she undertook a Toyota that was idling in the middle lane and sped over the lights just as they turned red, feeling Fil's grip tighten around her waist as they flew across just in front of the revving traffic. In the rear view she saw the pursuers dodge around the Toyota and come hurtling out into the intersection, wheels screaming on the tarmac and a blast of angry horns as a Porsche narrowly avoided going right into their passenger door. The van swerved around it and managed to get across but they had lost ground on her. She saw the freeway coming up and hung a left beneath the overpass, hoping she could lose them, cursing when she saw the blue van follow and then a flash of white. The second van was creeping up.

She pushed the bike harder, trying to leave them behind, but it was already going at pretty much its top speed already and it was carrying two passengers "I had to steal from some kids on chicken chasers; I couldn't have run into someone on a real bike!" She thought as the van overtook a bus behind her.

She saw a turnoff to the right and peeled off as sharply as she could without turning the bike over, shooting off in another direction down a palm tree lined avenue. She heard tyres squeal as the van swung round, trying to turn. Then she saw both the vans appear behind her, blue was getting closer now but white was coming up fast in the distance, and she realised that going down a straight road without many cars on it wasn't a very good idea because they could definitely overtake her on the long stretch.

She pushed the bike as hard as she dared, jinking and weaving in and out of the traffic, the occasional blare of an angry driver. Cutting across onto another minor road she tried to shake them off and noticed suddenly that there were many more partygoers packing the pavements here. Turning another corner she suddenly saw why; the road was closed, blocked off with barriers for an enormous Halloween street party. Throngs of people in costume crowded the road, making it impossible to get through even on the bike.

In her rear view mirror the van pulled round the corner behind them, she made a split second decision and stopped. "Come on!" She said over her shoulder to Fil swinging her leg off the Honda "We can lose them in the crowd!"

"I'm going outta my mind here Lex," He panted "Just what the fuck is going on?"

She didn't answer him, just concentrated on squeezing through the press of people, hoping the crowd would swallow them up – make them disappear. Competing sound systems blasted a variety of different music and all around her there were people in elaborate costumes dancing and drinking.

"We have to get back to the shuttle," She thought "But it's just such a long way. Maybe I should use the wristcom, call Scar. We may need him!" Again, she felt a surge of regret that she had told him not to come but what other choice had there been?

There was a squeal of brakes and she turned her head briefly to see the blue van screech to a halt just next to the barrier.

She and Fil pushed their way through a group of dancers in skeletal bodypaint in front of a bar blaring out music with a pounding, shuddering bassline into the night air. Glancing back quickly she saw several men working their way through the crowd in the direction she had come, fanning out around them.

"Oh God, we're surrounded." She said quietly.

"Angel," Fil said in a whisper "Whoever these men are, can't you just try reasoning with them?" As the circle of enemies closed around them her gaze flew from one grim faced, dark clad man to the next. There were too many people in the way right now for them to start shooting at her but she had no doubt that they were armed – though with what she didn't know. They hadn't shot at her in the club which probably meant they were intent on taking her alive but she couldn't be sure.

"I don't think they're going to listen to me Fil," She said pulling out the plasma gun, keeping it low so as not to attract too much attention "I think the time for talking is over."

There were so many people here in crazy costumes that nobody else seemed to notice but Fil's eyes widened as he saw the weapon.

"Lex!" He hissed "What the hell are you doing?"

She turned to him, eyes unnaturally large and glittering "Not going down without a fight!"


As the van lurched underneath him Scar held on tightly to stop himself from being thrown off. Up ahead, with his targeting system gunsights, he could see the distant shape of the blue vehicle and the even more distant shape of Lex and the human male.

Abruptly she dodged off to one side and disappeared from view. The transport underneath him swerved off after her and he hung on grimly, crouched low against the metal. With the mask's thermal imaging he could see there were several humans inside this vehicle; two in the cockpit (as he thought of it) and four more inside the main cargo area. All of them were heavily armed. There also seemed to be a lot of machinery or electronic equipment inside it too. He wondered if that was unusual, his knowledge of the workings of human vehicles was limited.

As they swung onto a long straight stretch of road he saw Lex again as they started to gain ground on her.

"I must do something! Neutralise these humans before they can catch her!" He thought. The other enemy vehicle was gaining on her even more rapidly. Then coming up fast in the distance, he suddenly saw a sprawling morass of heat signals; lots of humans, a big crowd unexpectedly congregating around an upcoming crossroads, blocking their path.

"If she is forced to go on foot they will surely overtake her." He thought "She runs fast but there are simply too many of them, I have to kill them now!"

He began to crawl forwards, pressed against the metal. The transport was fairly hurtling through the night; the wind drag pushing him flat. When he reached the part of the roof that was above the cockpit he looked up, they were coming up on the huge crowd. Any moment they would stop and then all these humans would get out and start running after her with all their nasty weapons.

Looking down at where the two humans were with his thermal vision he hung over the side and smashed the window with his fist. As shards of glass rained down into the cockpit he grabbed the nearest human, yanking him from his seat and tossing him out onto the highway. His startled scream dopplered away into the distance. The other human, the one who had the wheel, fell back into the corner fumbling with his automatic weapon. Scar pulled himself back up onto the roof, then jerked to one side as a line of steel slugs ripped upwards, perforating the metal just inches from his face. Shifting quickly to the other side of the cockpit directly above the man, he drew his arm back, extended his blades and rammed them down through the roof with a crunch, skewering the human right through the head. The man shuddered and went limp, sagging sideways in his seat, but his foot must have stayed on the accelerator because the vehicle did not slow down. If anything its velocity increased.

Pulling at the metal at the edge of the jagged hole to make it wider Scar reached down through the roof and seized the wheel, knowing this was how the vehicle was steered from watching Lex do it. He heard panicking voices coming from the cargo area but they were much too late to stop him now. Looking up ahead he saw the huge mass of red heat signals coming closer and closer, now starting to split apart and dissipate into its component atoms.

He grinned and wrenched the wheel hard.


Jonas Haagens was not having a good night. He'd read all the FBI stuff about Lex, he knew she was a wanted criminal, but nothing had prepared him for the moment in the bar when she'd suddenly stuck a knife in that guy's leg.

Three of them! There'd been three of them and she'd just taken them all out one after the other. It had happened so quickly he'd not even been able to comprehend it before she'd wrenched him out of his seat and dragged him down the stairs.

What had disturbed him the most was her face; it hadn't changed at all. From sitting there at the table to stabbing someone her expression had remained serene throughout, like a statue of the Madonna in church. It had frightened the shit out of him.

He glanced sideways at her now; she still had that same look. He shuddered a little, the movement sending a little needle of agony shooting through the old injury. The pain made him think of that time on the mountain.

The long cold, trek up there had been tiring but exhilarating although his enjoyment of it had been tempered by the presence of her surly, resentful, climber boyfriend. Inexplicably for someone so intelligent she had always seemed to be attracted to these double Y chromosome types who he suspected probably took ice baths and beat themselves with birch twigs for fun and – worse – never seemed to have any discernible sense of humour.

He didn't even recall swinging the ice axe, just the astonishing, world-ending pain and shock.

Then… he'd been glad of her unnatural composure then. He remembered looking into her huge dark eyes whilst she told him he was going to be alright; he was going to make it, help was on its way and so on and on for what seemed like hours. Calm, measured, poised; she'd saved his foot. Actually she'd saved his life he realised afterwards. He could easily have bled to death on that mountainside.

Maybe one of her jock friends would have helped him – her boyfriend, that big, blonde Swedish douchebag who looked like a member of the Waffen SS – what had been his name; Kurt? Kristoff? Fucking Klaus? Maybe Klaus would have tied the tourniquet on his ankle if she hadn't done it. He doubted it though.

On that day, only her glacial calm had kept him from total and utter panic and despair. Back then he'd felt pathetically, almost religiously grateful. He'd meant it when he called her his Guardian Angel. It made tonight all the more awful.

He thought again about the FBI "Most Wanted" rap sheet: "Hostage taking… Arson… Murder" Multiple murder, actually. He'd read her "Most Wanted" page but he hadn't believed it… until now.

He wasn't sure if he was her hostage at this moment. He'd never been at home with confrontation or in any situation that involved physical violence. When she'd grabbed hold of him in the club he'd been too scared not to obey her instructions, afraid of what she might do. He'd never have thought he could ever feel that way about her.

"This is the girl I went to college with," He thought "We went on demos to save the fucking whale for Chrissakes. I was horribly, futilely in love with her all through my twenties!" He just didn't want to believe that girl who used to laugh at his awful jokes, who did normal stuff, who loved Italian food and Nina Simone had changed into a woman who was capable of doing such terrible things.

He looked around nervously at the crowds that pressed in around them on all sides, an array of leering ghouls, muscular angels and scantily clad witches. He tried to make out the men that were following them. The street was jammed with people, but he could see dark uniforms pushing towards them.

His attention was suddenly pulled away as he heard screams from back the way they'd come. He craned his neck, trying to see over the crowds, but for moment he could see nothing. Then people started to run and he saw the white van speeding towards them, not slowing down even as it approached the crowd barriers. As he watched, transfixed, the vehicle careened out of control and turned over onto its side with a deafening noise of breaking glass and metal grinding on concrete. Terrified party-goers fled for their lives as it slid along the street bursting through the barricades and leaving a trail of destruction in its wake, finally coming to a stop with an ear-splitting crunch as it smacked into a fire hydrant. A geyser of roaring white water fountained up into the air, spraying the surrounding area, the remaining bystanders shrieking at they were caught in the sudden downpour.

Then in front of the van something shimmered, an electrical spark hung there followed by another and another, all coming together and fusing to make up a figure. He wondered if he was hallucinating as a huge humanoid shape appeared, materialising as if by magic.

Jonas stared; suddenly he knew that tonight was about to enter a whole new level of fucked up.