This chapter, too, is by Tian Ning.

Consider the usual disclaimers said. Although the overall story is rated PG13, this chapter is PG.

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Dream

The hiss of the vast, scaled body close by him was more of a feeling than a sound. A vague shape, shining dark enameled red, rolled past him, as grainy and dimly lit as the inside of his own eyelids. Its coils rose from the darkness of space and slid back into the oily blackness without revealing its true shape. The sound of the creature's breath--more a damp sensation against his scalp than a noise--brushed past him. It was seeking prey. That, he could feel. And though he knew the creature was blind to him, a cold line of fear threaded through his guts.

The vision faded to another, of a long, flat plain. In the distance, a tall, slim figure cloaked in black was striding away from him. Even before he saw the face, he knew it was Spike. Under the ever unruly mop of black hair, his partner's face was grey and lifeless. He stared straight ahead, and gave no sign that he knew Jet was there.

"Spike!" Jet opened his mouth, but the only sound to escape was a hollow whisper, too faint for even he himself to hear. The solid, charcoal-grey ground seemed to waver and grow liquid under Spike's feet. With each step, his legs sank deeper into the sea, though he did not seem to notice, even when he had sunk down until his chin parted the water as he moved.

"Spike!" Jet's tried to scream a warning, but all that came was the impotent wheeze.

And suddenly he was in a small, wooden boat. A shrieking storm blinded him, pelted him with searing rain. In his hand he held a single oar. Desperately, he thrust the paddle into the water, striking helplessly against the whitecaps and silently roaring Spike's name into the tempest. Music. There was music coming from inside the storm. He knew the song from his childhood. It seemed thousands of years ago. Aching sadness twisted around him, wrapped him, paralyzed him. His arms grew heavy, and the single paddle became a dead weight against the surging tide.

There was a shape ahead of him. A head, floating in the waves. Spike. His hair was dry and waving as if in a summer breeze, though all around him was turbid with rain and wind.

Jet opened his mouth, let fly another soundless yell, and struggled against his own leaden arms to reach his friend as the oar bent uselessly against the weight of the water. Though he was far behind Spike now, somehow he could see the side of his face. The eyes, distant and filled with sadness, were trained straight ahead at something beckoning him from the storm's still, purple eye. The music was coming from there. A woman's voice was singing. And as Jet scanned slowly forward to follow the train of Spike's gaze, a form took shape in the darkness of the cyclone. It was a woman, her long, pale hair rising, spiraling in the wind. Lit from within, her face was raised to the low sky, her mouth open. It was her voice that rang sweetly through the storm.

The wind rippedthe air from his lungs. He could not breathe. The woman was glowing, unearthly. Her long, slender neck and shoulders sloped down to a dark form melding with the sea. He could not see it clearly until lightning, pale blue and distant, curled its light around the shape. A seal. The body of a seal. He blinked mutely in the darkness and rain. Another flash. No. Not a seal. It was a woman's body, tall, slender and beautiful, emerging from the skin of a seal. She looked impassively past Jet, turned her dark eyes on Spike's floating head, and reached out to him.

He strained to scream a warning. "Spike! No!" But Spike was rising from the water, reaching for her, drawn in by the deadly song. And as Jet watched, the woman's arms lengthened and darkened, sprouted reddish, shining scales. Spike lifted his arms, enveloped her in them, closed his eyes. He did not see the smooth, pale shape of the woman become the coils of a giant serpent closing around him.

The huge, wracking sobs of warning Jet hurled into the storm were shredded and thrown back at him. He watched, helpless, as the muscular coils wrapped around Spike and the woman, who had become neither herself nor the serpent--but both.

It's a dream. Jet heard his own brain coaching him. You can take control. You can save him. He flung the oar aside,tensed his thighs against the flooded bow of the dinghy and leaped--but was yanked up short, caught in something wrapped around his arms and legs. Frantic, he swiveled his torso from side to side and glimpsed thick copper wires completely looped around his limbs, twisting them into ungainly positions. They were huge versions of the wires that he himself had so often used to train young bonsai trees, bending them away from the form nature had chosen and shaping them to his will. He strained against the wires, but could not move. His arms and legs had gone dead in the shining coils. A woman's hand, nails bright red, dropped down out of the darkness, at once life-sized and immense. Its fingers balanced a brush like the one he used to create bonsai, to bleach with lime-sulfur the living wood, exposed with his carving tools, and change its own color and form to what he had chosen for it.

The dripping brush loomed close, hovered over his leg, and he watched, helpless, as its bristles smeared over the copper bindings. The flesh between the wires sizzled, bubbled and melted away to reveal white bone, pocked with oval holes. He screamed, strained upwards, struggling alone. By now, the loops of the red serpent had almost completely engulfed Spike, his face as peaceful as if he had been asleep in his mother's arms.

And then the storm was gone. Jet stood in the stillness of a red rock canyon. He knew this place. It was Bull's homeand yet not Bull's home. The sky was blacker, the stars even more numerous than in the old shaman's asteroid sanctuary.

Jet could neither walk nor move, for his limbs were numb, still strapped tight in the lengths of copper wire. Bull was nowhere to be seen, but his voice was suddenly close in Jet's ear.

"Running Rock."

He cast his gaze around, and finally found the old man perched high atop a cliff, overlooking his wire prison.

"Running Rock," the medicine man again spoke the name he had given Jet as a child. "The time draws near when the rock will come to rest."

"My friend is in danger," Jet found he could speak. "Help me get loose. I have to find him."

"You might free the Swimming Bird. But you are more ensnared than he."

Jet strained helplessly against the coils. "I can't get loose. Someone is trying to stop me. Help me!"

"The coils are placed by your own hand. You must remove them yourself."

Jet struggled against the paralysis, breathed in shallow, starving gasps and gave a garbled roar of frustration. "I can't!"

"Find the White Deer and loose your bonds."

There was a noise in the distance. A sharp, electronic sound, repetitive and insistent. He searched the sky, looking for its source.

"The Swimming Bird calls to you through another's voice. Even in the coils of the Red Dragon, he lives. The Swimming Bird yet lives."

As the sound grew louder, the sky and red rock faded to the bleak, patterned umber of closed eyelids. The noise blared and cut off sharply as Jet heard the automatic pick-up answer the call with a terse message in his own voice, "You know how to leave a message. Do it."

He sucked in a long, shaky breath. He could not feel his arms or legs. He tilted his head and found that it was because their circulation had been cut off by a wild tangle of twisted sheet tourniquets that held him in the same awkward position he had dreamed. He must have been thrashing like a noosed cat to get himself stuck like this. He grimaced as he tried to wriggle blood and life back into his limbs, each one feeling as if it belonged to someone else. As his circulation slowly returned, he listened to the disembodied voice in the main room leaving its message.

"Jet. Are you there?" It was Bob. "If you are, pick up now! I have some important information for you, and I won't be able to call again. It's about your partner. Jetpick up!"

Jet nearly fell out of the bunk with the effort of throwing himself towards the door and hallway, and his limbs, burning with the annoying needles of returning sensation, still would not obey him. Groggy and winded, he dragged himself around the corner on all fours just in time to see Bob casting a furtive glance over his shoulder before turning back to the screen to utter. "Sorry, Jet. Can't stay on this line. Too risky." And the screen went blank.

This time Jet's vocal chords had no trouble delivering a stream of curses. He reached the com and stabbed at the keyboard, desperately trying to activate the I.D. retrieval system, to no avail. Bob had called from a stream of anonymous IP's that would take Ed's expertise to unravel. He took a deep breath through his nose, swallowed back the rising bile, and cursed the ephemeral salve of the whisky bottle. The deep burn in his wounded leg was coming back. He crawled up to sit on the couch and clutched his throbbing head in his hands. No more for me, thanks. I'm driving.

The dream came back to him in slow waves. A dragon. The red dragon with Spike and the woman. Man, what the sleeping brain could do on a rip-roaring hangover and some stale saltines. He'd always been prone to wild dreams, but this one was the craziest yet. "You could be a bit more subtle with the metaphors," he chided himself.

What else was there? It was fading quickly. Bull. Bull had been there. Yes. In a red canyon. The Swimming Bird yet lives.

Jet rubbed his scalp, slowly shook his head, and laughed out loud, the pressure of it making his swollen eyes ache. And to think he'd accused Faye of having gone out of her mind with grief for Spike. At least she probably was realistic enough to simply accept his death, and not make up ridiculous, wish-fulfilling dreams. He almost felt embarrassed.

Why had Bob called? What had he said? It's about your partner.

Adrenaline sent a chill from behind his ears all the way down his sides and curling into his empty belly. "No." he said flatly. "Don't be stupid. You saw the vid. Spike is"

He could not bring himself to say it aloud. And somewhere, deep inside himself, he felt an ember spark to life. Dreams could be powerful messengers. He always had believed it, though he never could speak it.

No. Spike was dead.

Still, Jet was alive. And as long as his leg had him laid up, Jet had little to do. It might prove interesting to visit the scene of the crime and try to find out just what had happened. Certainly no harm in that. It might allow him to finally put this to rest. And he at least owed Spike a graveside visit, to say a final goodbye, though there probably wouldn't be a burial for a few days yet. Plenty of time to investigate.

He stretched his legs, finally back to life, stood up and limped back to the observation deck. The Bebop hovered over the dark side of Mars. It would be another hour or so before he would be close enough for an easy Hammerhead drop to the city in the crater beyond the horizon. By then, he would be ready.