Reign of Conformity

by Baeraad

LAST CHAPTER IN PLACE! Here's the final showdown between the newly Awakened mage Simon Stromberg and the Virtual Adept who believes him to be a deadly threat.

5. Furball

DISCLAIMER: The world isn't mine, the characters are, and so on and so forth…

Oh, and sorry for taking my sweet time with this chapter. A bunch of other projects got in the way.

I have a feeling I might be upsetting some Werewolf: the Apocalypse fans with this chapter, but that is as may be. Come on, the story is entitled Reign of Conformity – did you really expect it to give a positive view of creatures who have a pack mentality by nature? =]

***

I watched in awed silence as Diana pieced together the most outlandish contraption I had ever seen from the contents of her Secondary home. There was no actual structure to it; it consisted of a great variety of different devices, lying all over her bedroom floor connected with wires. Some of them, I noticed, seemed to be modified household appliances. And she had to plunder a flashlight and a walkman for batteries.

  "Why?" I asked when I saw her do it. "It's not like this place doesn't have electricity of its own. It so happens I can testify to that personally."

  She smiled faintly, but didn't look up from her work.

  "Partly, I don't want to entrust more than I have to to what passes for an electric company around here," she said. "This place is impressionable. The head of the powerplant might have a row with his wife in the morning, and that might cause everything around here to shut down. You never know. If you want to make it as a mage, you'd better learn this: everyone and everything will eventually screw you over, but there's no need to make it easy for them."

  "That's a rather depressing rule to live by, isn't it?"

  She shrugged, bent over the black, rectangular box she was currently attaching to her growing network.

  "I seem to get by okay."

  "You said 'partly'. What's the other reason?"

  She turned her head to look at me and grinned.

  "Study advanced electronics for a few years, and you might even understand if I explained that to you."

  I took the point. As Diana had explained magick, it had almost seemed like you had only to wish for something to make it so. Apparently, things were somewhat more complicated than that. I supposed I would have to find a teacher.

  Diana herself seemed like the obvious choice. She certainly knew her stuff, I had seen that often enough. And she actually seemed to care about me, which was always a benefit in a teacher. I looked at her working, putting together whatever machine she was building with complete attention and not a second's doubt to where anything should go. And yes, I also noticed the way her long, dark hair fell around her face when she leaned forward and how gracefully her slender fingers handled the tools and parts. She really looked like a modern sorceress right then, a Circe who had given up her wands and potions in favour of microchips and wires, but who had lost none of her beauty or allure.

  Eventually she seemed satisfied, standing back from what looked to me like a spider-web of gadgets. Some of them were humming, others were blinking, and all of them gave off a definite feeling that something was being done. I just wished that I could be sure that the 'something' was not blowing up both to hell.

  "Well, it sure looks impressive," I said. "But what does it actually do?"

  Diana snorted.

  "Oh, ye weak of faith. This, I'm telling you, is what will get us home. It's a homing device. It yells We want to get out of here! to anyone who's got the right senses to hear it."

  I was not quite sure that I liked the sound of that. Diana might have friends and associates who would be inclined to help her, but she had already admitted to having enemies, as well. I most certainly had one.

  "What if the wrong person hears it?" I said.

  She grinned.

  "Then things get interesting." She laughed at my expression and padded me on the upper arm. "Oh, don't worry. The homing device transmits my name. The... mage community, I suppose you should call it... in the real world knows who I am, and they knows that screwing with me isn't clever. Secondary creatures might not have any idea who I am, because I don't usually hang out around here, but they can't just appear out of nowhere. They'll have to use the door - and it was hard enough getting you in, and you I wanted here."

  "That's true," I admitted. "So do we just have to wait a few minutes, until one of your friends picks us up? Or do they have to get to your house in the real... in Primary?"

  "Er..."

  I disliked that er. I can't quite remember when I last heard an er that I disliked more than the one Diana uttered at that time.

  "Diana?" I said, having a feeling that I was not going to like the explanation.

  "Well, I can't send a signal across the dimensional axis, you know," she said, somewhat sheepishly. "If I could do that I'd have us home in two minutes flat. All I can do is call for help all over Secondary and hope that someone picks up the signal."

  "I see," I said. "When, approximately, will this happen?"

  "I know at least two people who have regular contact with Secondary," she assured me. "One of them will find us, the next time they open a crossdimensional interface."

  "Which they will do as soon as...?" I insisted.

  "Within a few days, maybe."

  I gave her a flat look.

  "A few weeks, at most," she added.

  "You do realise that I'll very likely be fired for taking an unscheduled vacation?" I said.

  She sighed.

  "Okay, I'm sorry, but I can't really do anything more. This isn't my turf. I don't know who has the power to send us back, but I do know that most entities here would kill me for asking. We're more or less safe here, and eventually we'll get picked up, but that's the best solution I have." Suddenly she looked tired. "I didn't want this anymore than you did, you know. The problem with being a mage is that these things sort of happen every now and then. You have more control over your life, but you've also got less control over your schedule."

  "You're right;" I said. "It's not your fault. I'm sorry."

  She smiled thinly.

  "No problem. I'm feeling a bit aggravated myself. But if we're going to spend a few weeks together, we'd better be polite to each other."

  "I have to be polite," I said dryly. "I make a point out of not being rude to cyborg mages who can lift me over their heads like I was a kitten."

  Diana laughed, which made me feel a bit better. I had wanted to get to know her outside of the office, hadn't I? It looked like I would get my wish, whether I wanted to or not. I might as well make the most of it. This was a big place, if you counted the two lower floors; surely it must be possible to spend a little time here together with a charming woman without getting cabin fever?

  As for work... well, I might be able to make up some sort of excuse along the lines of having fallen down the stairs and spent the whole time in a coma. And if they didn't buy it, well, so what? I had enough savings that I could take my time looking for a new job. Patrick would be furious, of course, but to hell with him.

  I walked over to the window and looked out at the street. The antennas that made up the lawn moved peacefully, as if rocked by a breeze. The streetlights were still shining. Apparently, everything in the power plant manager's domestic life was going well.

  "I never knew any of this existed," I said. "But when you see it... Well, it sort of makes sense, doesn't it? A few times I haven't been able to believe my eyes, but thinking back on it, it's not that strange. Even something like Maurin..."

  "I know." Diana walked up to stand beside me, leaning against the window sill. She was smiling gently. "If everyone didn't believe, deep inside, that all this stuff existed, then it wouldn't. That's the Consensus for you. It doesn't just care about what you think you believe, it cares about what you feel. I suppose Maurin is an incarnation of street violence or something. You think you believe that gang members or whatever are just kids with problems and seriously twisted values, but what you really believe is that they're monsters who're lurking in dark alleys and wants to eat you." She laughed, a little sadly. "And since the Consensus doesn't approve of gang members turning into goblins, that belief manifests here instead."

  "So humanity created Maurin?" I turned my head to look at her, but she didn't take her eyes off of the window. "What about what he believes? Doesn't that affect the Consensus?"

  "Now you're going into deep philosophy." She smiled. "There are mages who spend years discussing things like that. Okay, so human belief defines reality, but what counts as human and what counts as belief? Amoebas probably believe that the world is made up of two things; they and the food. Is that why we've got corporate takeovers and megalomaniacs and greed in general? There sure are enough amoebas around to give a settling vote."

  I had to chuckle at the thought of countless single-cell organisms creating the world in their image simply because they were in majority.

  "It sure gives your self-esteem a nasty kick, doesn't it?" I said.

  "Yeah. But not even most of the people who sponsors that theory believe in it. They're just using it to make a point."

  "A point?"

  Diana rolled her eyes and shook a fist in the air.

  "'Down with the tyranny of the weak!'" she intoned. She shook her head. "I don't give much for someone who'd compare Sleepers with amoebas. We mages are arrogant bastards by nature, and maybe that's okay, but some of us don't seem to see the difference between individualism and elitism. If there had been less of us like that, maybe we wouldn't be in such a bloody jam right now."

  I blinked.

  "You and me wouldn't?"

  "Mages in general wouldn't." She looked amused. "Please don't ask. It's a long story, and I don't feel up to it right now. I'll tell you about the Ascension War tomorrow."

  The Ascension War? I groaned inwards. Yet another thing I wasn't being told about. I was starting to realise that even though there were answers to all my questions and not entirely impossible for me to get them, there was a whole lot of questions, and every answer led to a bunch of new ones. I'd have to spend my entire life finding the answers, and I'd still not be satisfied when I died.

  But what the heck. There were worse ways to spend your life than to dedicate it to learning. And if satisfaction meant a state of not wanting more of anything, then no one died satisfied. Everyone died wanting more life.

  Then I came up with another question, and it was:

  "Is there a guy standing over there?"

  Diana wrinkled her brow and leaned in closer to the window. As for me, I didn't have to, because I got more certain by ever moment. He was standing in the shadows, right between the circles of light from two streetlights, but there was enough illumination to make him out. He was tall and bulky, and dressed in nothing but a pair of jeans. I couldn't make out his face, but a tiny speck of red light hinted that the guy was smoking a cigarette.

  "Oh, damn," she said. She rushed over to a table and took up some sort of device with a screen and three antennas. She fiddled with it as she walked back to the window. "Please don't be, please don't be, please don't be..." she muttered as she stared at the screen as if hypnotised. Then she groaned and looked up. "Figures. He is."

  "Is what?" I said. I was starting to feel like I was having one of those nightmares where you're hiding in a house and there's something horrible outside of it. The man on the other side of the street didn't look that horrible, though. He was large, yes, but so was I, and Diana had abilities I couldn't even imagine - so what was she getting so worked up about?

  "A furball." She frowned. "Shit, this is bad. I can't go one on one with a fucking furball, no way..."

  "That's a furball?" I looked with new interest. As far as I could make out, the stranger's chest really was remarkably hairy, but not so you'd think it was strange. Some men are like that. "He doesn't look so dangerous."

  "Not now, no. He'll look pretty damn dangerous once he goes feral on us."

  I remembered what Maurin had said.

  "So furballs really do turn into wolves?" I said.

  Diana hesitated.

  "Sort of. It's not really wolves they turn into, it's something much larger and meaner, but they look enough like wolves to get the legend started."

  "What are they?" I was slightly more curious than scared at this point. If nothing else, as Diana had pointed out, this house was hard to get into if its owner wanted to keep you out. "Secondary residents? Like Maurin?"

  "No one really knows, to be honest." Diana drummed her fingers on the window sill in a nervous rhythm, her face tense. "They're human enough that they can blend with mundane society without getting discovered. They've got some sort of magic, though not as strong as ours, and they can pass through dimensions much easier than we can. Silver hurts them, but not much else. And they hate humans, and they really hate mages. I've heard some people say that they are nature mysticks who gave up their free will and most of their magick to some sort of noncorporeal entity, and in return they got the raw power to destroy the corruption in the world." She made a disgusted sound. "And with corruption, they mean pretty much everything that's happened since we came down from the trees."

  "I take it you're not on friendly terms?" I said dryly.

  "Not really, no. They stay away from cities, mostly, so we don't have to deal with them all that often... but Secondary cities don't count. They really hate finding us here. They think it's a place no human was meant to go, so if we do, they try to make sure we don't come back."

  The furball threw the cigarette over his shoulder, left his post in the shadows and started walking, slowly but purposefully, towards the door of Diana's house. He had long hair and a thick beard, I noticed, and was handsome, in a rugged sort of way.

  "Well," Diana said, "there goes my hope of him not knowing we were in here." She went into her bedroom and sat down in front of the computer, waiting impatiently for it to start up. "Maybe if I can modify some sort of mind-altering program a little we might have a chance. If the house's defences can keep him out that long." She started typing frantically.

  "Is there anything I can do to help?" I said, keeping an eye on the furball. He was approaching what I for lack of a better term thought of as the lawn. Considering that Diana had assured me that he was here to kill us both, I was quite looking forward to him making the acquaintance of the antennas.

  "Watch the damn guy and tell me what he does," Diana said absently. "If I'm going to fight him, I have to know how quickly he's coming."

  "Right. He's gotten to the antennas now." I watched as the furball stopped, confused by the metal rods that suddenly folded to block his path. Then he scowled and tried to push them out of his way. I smiled thinly at the sight of him stumbling back, clutching his hand. "It doesn't look as if he and they got along."

  For a moment, I was confused that I hadn't heard the scream the man had very obviously given off. I had seen his mouth open, but there had been no sound, just as his steps made no sound. Then I remembered that there had been no windows on the outside, but a great deal of video cameras. I wasn't looking out of a window, I was looking at an extremely accurate screen.

  Trust Diana not to want anything simple…

  The furball was standing outside of the reach of the defences, studying them with his head slightly tilted, like a man viewing a complicated logical problem. Then he tightened his fists and seemed to take a deep breath.

  I still couldn't hear anything. If I had, his cry would probably have made my ears hurt. I actually thought I could feel the vibrations in the floor from his roar, but that was probably just my imagination.

  For a moment, nothing happened. I realised that I was holding my breath and inhaled again, chuckling weakly. He had just been expressing his frustration. Fully understandable, and a good sign for us. But for a moment, just for a moment, I would have expected…

  This time the ground did shake, and even the floor of Diana's fortified house trembled. The antennas lining the walkway swung back and forth, like the tendrils of a dying octopus. The furball just stood there, with a frown on his face and his fists tightened, like he was daring the world to disobey him.

  From beneath the stone-clad walkway, raw earth rose. Steel and stone was pushed aside, bending and shattering. Dark, moist soil came pouring out of the ground, like blood from a wound. In a manner of seconds, it had created a ramp from the street to the doorstep, out of reach for the remaining antennas.

  Raw power, Diana had said. Raw power – enough raw power to destroy the corruption in the world. This power looked pretty raw to me. And while I was dead set against corruption, I was starting to feel a bit sorry for it.

  "Diana," I said, perhaps a bit unsteadily. "I… I think he just managed to get to the door."

  "I sort of guessed," the mage mumbled. Her eyes never left the screen. "By using some sort of furball hocus-pocus, I'm guessing."

  "He made the ground rise and give him a road," I said flatly.

  "Ah. That's pretty impressive, as furball magic goes." She didn't sound too impressed. "I'd like to see him hack into the Syndicate's bookkeeping files, though."

  Whose bookkeeping files? I wanted to ask. I decided not to, however. There was an angry gentleman with significant power approaching, and Diana was trying to prepare a defence against him. Curiosity had its time, but this was not it.

  I would also have liked to know what was pretty impressive as mage magic went, if Diana could be so unconcerned about controlling the ground itself. I also hoped very much that I would live to acquire that level of magic.

  The furball was disappearing beneath the lower edge of the screen. I recall that the outside cameras had moved as they watched us, so presumably I could lower this one and get the furball back in sight again. The theory was sound, but there didn't seem to be any buttons or leverages around.

  But… since the dominant theme around here seemed to be high technology…

  "Down," I mumbled, not wanting Diana to hear me in case it turned out I was wrong. "Camera down?" The scene remained unchanged. "Lower? Lower camera?"

  Nothing happened, except that I started to feel silly. This wasn't working. Despite appearances, this was not science fiction, but real life. Machines didn't normally respond to voice commands, so why should this one? Diana probably ran them from her computer or something.

  Still… if it was magick, then it should be less a matter of what I said then how I said it. Or so I had seemed to understand by Diana's explanation. So, if I wanted a reaction, I needed to try and remember how Patrick had managed to get me to do whatever he said. I was pretty sure that that had been magick too.

  "Down!" I ordered.

  The view in the window slowly tilted downwards, finally showing the furball from above. He was still standing by the door. As I watched, he punched it. It was a serious punch, with all his considerable weight and muscle-power behind it, but the door was made of steel. I flinched at the sight. This guy was out of his mind!

  "He's hitting the door," I said with awe. "He's actually hitting the door. Damn, he's got to have crushed every bone in his hand, but he's still going at it…"

  "Don't count on it," Diana grumbled. "I told you, silver hurts them, but almost nothing else does."

  "Can they punch in steel doors?" I asked, feeling that this as more to the point.

  "Not usually, no."

  But the furball was certainly trying. Whatever power he had over the earth, it was obviously not enough to tip the entire house. Equally obvious was that he didn't like that fact.

  Something from out of a bedtime story came into my head. Then I'll huff, and I'll puff, and I'll blow your house down. I smiled. In the end, the Big Bad Wolf of the fairytale had been defeated by superior technology. Maybe this one would be too.

  The furball paused, giving the door a glare that should rightly have disintegrated it at the spot. Then he just vanished. One moment he was there, and the next he wasn't.

  "Er, Diana?" I said. "He just disappeared. Do you think he gave up?"

  "Highly doubtful," Diana said absently. "But he might have crossed back to Primary." For the first time, the tapping of the keyboard buttons seized as Diana froze. "Oh, shit. In Primary, this house isn't defended at all…"

  It took me a moment, but then I understood. If the furball could just switch between dimensions as easily as taking a step forward, there was nothing stopping him from entering the room in Primary and then crossing over again, effectively sidestepping the door, the elevator and whatever else the house had planned for him. He could just walk through the door any minute.

  This might get ugly.

  Diana s started typing again, even faster this time.

  "I won't be able to be as thorough as I'd like to be," she said through clenched teeth. "But if I just change a few more lines, and then compile it all…"

  I certainly hoped that she would hurry up. Not knowing where the furball was made my skin crawl. I kept wanting to turn around to see if the half-naked thug was standing behind me, with those powerful hands gripping for my throat. I gulped. I really do hate physical violence. I just don't seem to be equipped for it.

  At the same time, my own fear made me angry. What right had that brute to make me feel this way? What had I ever done to him? He was coming to kill me and Diana both, and I didn't even know him. What sort of person went around killing people he didn't even know? Destroying corruption? Defending nature? For all he knew, I could have been donating a fortune to Greenpeace every year. I wasn't, of course, but I could have been.

  I went into the kitchen. If nothing else, I could at least get a knife. I'd be damned if I was going to give up without a fight, even if it'd take silver to hurt the furball for real. I could at least annoy it.

  As I went through some drawers – most of them contained electronic gadgets instead of cutlery – I felt it. It was like a tension in the back of my head, like a rough touch on a half-healed wound. It didn't exactly hurt, but it felt unpleasant.

  I saw his shadow before I saw the man himself. It was long and dark, and it fell on the floor next to me. I looked up without hurry, knowing what I would see. He was standing there, a disgusted scowl on his face, like he was looking at something that had climbed out of a toilet.

  "Warlock scum," the furball snarled.

I backed away from him, keeping my motions slow and calm. If he was really half wolf, sudden movements might make him attack. The furball followed, matching step for step, that repulsed frown still curving his lips.

  "I haven't done anything to you," I said, struggling to make my voice steady and precise. "You have no reason to be hostile."

  "Done nothing, he says," the furball growled. "Done nothing, when the earth moans for every step you take!"

  I wondered faintly if he meant that I ought to go on a diet.

  "Does it, now?" I said, raising an eyebrow. "That's funny, because I've never heard anything."

  "Of course you haven't, asshole. You've plugged your ears. You don't listen to anything but your own voice. You make me sick!"

  I couldn't back away anymore. I had my back against the wall. The furball stopped one step away from me, filling my sight with his massive bulk. I could smell his breath, beer and tobacco and something sour that I thought might be raw meat.

  "I don't listen to anything but my own voice?" I said coldly. "You waltz in here spitting out accusations, but you don't for a second think to ask for my opinion. You have some nerve!"

  He laughed, then, loudly and harshly.

  "You want a trial, warlock? Huh? Fine. I'll give you a fucking trial, okay? I accuse you of being an arrogant son of a bitch who's forgotten the mother who gave you life. I accuse you of breaking the laws of the universe." He brought his face closer, until our the tips of our noses almost touched. His eyes were big and brown and angry. "How do you fucking plead?"

  "Not guilty," I said flatly. "I called my mother as late as last Tuesday, I'll have you know."

  He laughed again and punched me in the face. Or, well, as far as he was concerned it was probably a playful slap. I think he even used the palm of his hand instead of making a fist. It didn't matter. My head was still struck to the side with such force that I for a moment was afraid that he had broken my neck, and unbelievable pain flared up in my jawbone. I gasped, struggling to stay on my feet.

  "Don't give me that bullshit. You know what I mean. The Earth, warlock. You've used the hell out of it, and not given shit back! That's kind of like raping your own mother. But maybe you've done that too, huh?" He chuckled. "You denying that you're a fucking warlock?"

  There didn't seem to be an awful lot of a meaning with that. If I wasn't a mage, how had I gotten to Secondary? For a moment – just a moment – I had the idea of saying "I don't know what you're talking about, it was this horrible woman who took me here, she's in the next room, please save me from her!" I'm not sure I'll ever stop feeling ashamed of even thinking that, but to my credit, I disqualified that idea after half a second or so. Maybe I could have sold someone else out to save my own worthless hide, but not Diana. Hell, no.

  "No," I said, my voice a bit blurred by the fact that I was afraid to move my jaw too much, fearing that it might fall off or something. "No, I'm a mage."

  "Yeah?" The furball smirked. "Well, then you've admitted that you're invading on Gaia's territory. She gets to make the rules, asshole. You fucking well don't!"

  I ignored the ache in my jaw enough to give off what was supposed to be a defiant sneer.

  "I don't take orders from her. I don't take orders from you. I can't see why I should."

  "No. Fucks like you never do." One of those big, calloused hands lashed out and grabbed me around the throat. "So the verdict is guilty, and the sentence is death. Bye-bye, warlock."

  He squeezed, and suddenly there wasn't any air to be had. I tried to pull his hand off, but despite the fact that I've to plenty of muscle power, it was like trying to lift a mountain.

  Furiously I willed something, anything to happen, some twist of fate to save me from this maniac. I was Empowered; I should be able to change reality to suit me. Reality right now was that I was in the hands of someone much stronger and tougher than I, and if that kept going, I would die in a minute or so. Probably less. So reality would have to change. The Consensus would have to budge just a little.

  He'll have a change of heart and decide to let me live, I thought, putting all my mental strength into the idea. He will! He will!

  The thick fingers kept squeezing my throat. The brutishly handsome face kept staring into mine, without a hint of remorse in it, only hatred and grim satisfaction.

  His arm will cramp! I thought. He'll have to let me go! Damn it, I demand that his arm will cramp! Cramp! CRAMP!

  This time I thought I could feel the power rushing through my Empowered soul, feel the fragile strands of reality break from my touch. In retrospect, it was probably just wishful thinking. In either case, the furball's arm didn't grow any weaker, and the furball's face didn't betray any signs of pain.

  Something will bloody well happen! I thought wildly as flashes of light appeared in front of my eyes. My lungs felt like they were bursting. I refuse to die here! Something has to happen to stop that!

  "Put him down, you fucking throwback!" Diana's voice said. Vaguely, as if I was just watching from a distance, I was aware that the furball opened his hand and gave me a chance to take a long, wheezing breath. It felt as if I was inhaling liquid fire instead of air, but it didn't matter. It still felt wonderful.

  My legs folded under me, and I sank down to the floor. I would have found that to be very humiliating, had anyone currently paid any attention to me. No one did. Diana and the furball were occupied with each other.

  She stood in the entrance to the kitchen, arms crossed over her chest. She looked tired, and very small compared with the furball, but she also looked like someone who had had a rough day and was not going to take any crap from anyone.

  Did I make her come? I thought. Was that magick? I figured that it probably wasn't, but I supposed I couldn't be sure. I had demanded that the situation would chance, and it had. And considering the circumstances, did it really matter if I had performed magick or not?

  Apparently the furball didn't agree with me that Diana looked menacing. He just smirked.

  "So the warlock's got a witch buddy," he said. "You're gonna save your pal, bitch? That's cute. That's really cute. So what, you're gonna turn me into a frog? Huh? Are you?"

  Diana grinned mirthlessly.

  "You might look sexier that way, but we don't really do that sort of thing anymore."

  "So what's it you do these days? Aside from fucking up the planet?"

  Diana lifted a hand. Something shiny stuck out from under her fingers. With a metallic sound, a sharp blade snapped out from it. Diana pointed at the furball with the switchblade.

  "I could neuter you," she suggested sweetly.  "I'm sure the gene pool can do without you."

  The furball laughed harshly.

  "Oh, I'm shaking in my bones! That's not a weapon, that's a fucking toothpick! Get over here and die, bitch!"

  He rushed her, and then things started happening very quickly.

  The furball ran at Diana so quickly that he practically became a blur to my sight, but Diana was just as fast. As he got within her reach, she jumped into the air – at least two or three feet, from standstill – and kicked the furball in the stomach. He grunted and slowed down for a second – or more like a fraction of a second; I'm telling you, this happened quickly – and Diana used the momentum gained by the kick to throw herself backwards, away from him.

  The furball, seemingly completely unaffected by being kicked in the gut by a cyborg, kept going and slammed his fist into the place where Diana had been a moment ago. By then she had slipped to the side, so his punch struck the wall instead. There was a crash of breaking wood, and the furball ended up with his arm in the wall up to the elbow.

  I stared. I had experienced firsthand how powerful those muscles were, but this was something else. No one was that bloody strong!

  Apparently the furball was. He tore his arm loose, gave off a roar that didn't sound the least bit human, and ran after Diana into the living-room. I could hear them fighting in there; quick breaths, gasps of pain, shouts of anger, sounds of furniture breaking. Meanwhile, I was still lying where the furball had dropped me.

  I have to get up, I tried telling myself. Diana can't fight that! He's as strong and fast as she is. Even more, maybe. And she isn't exactly in peak condition; she used those implants of hers only a few hours ago, and that knocked her out. It'll be even worse this time, and it'll happen soon. She's dead meat. And a moment after she stops keeping his attention, I'm dead meat. I've got to get up! I've got to do something!

  Slowly, my body started to co-operate. First my hands agreed to push against the floor. Then my legs gave in to my demands that they provide some lifting power. Finally, I managed to stand up straight, if so a bit unsteadily.

  Good. Good. Now move, you idiot! You don't have time to be weak!

  I moved, staggering through the room. I felt cold and tired and wanted nothing more than to fall asleep and be rid of this nightmare. In retrospect, I suppose I was in shock. Right then, though, it just felt like I had had enough and more than enough of violence and danger, and I wanted it all to stop. A childish urge, and irrational, but I wasn't really at my logical best at the time.

  I managed to get out and into the living room. It was a wreck; Diana and the furball hadn't really been kind to it. There was hardly an undamaged piece of furniture in the room, and technological gadgets were spread all over the floor, most of them broken. Diana's intricate web of equipment, the one that was supposed to act as a beacon, had been shattered.

  The furball was driving Diana through the room, aiming wild swings with his great fists. Diana dodged every one of them, but I could see that she was getting slower. Her feet weren't as steady as they had been a moment ago, and every time she jumped out of the way for a punch, she ran the hazard of slipping, falling and dying. Her face was frozen in an expression of desperate hatred.

  The furball, in comparison, looked as fresh as a daisy, and judging from his wide grin and the gleam in his eyes, he was enjoying himself. He was killing a witch. He was doing Mother Earth's good work. There is nothing better than doing a job you love.

  He was wounded – I could see bloodstains on his chest and his arms – but he hardly seemed to notice.

  Groaning as I bent down, I picked up half a table, lifting it awkwardly. A weapon was a weapon, and I had already proven that I couldn't wrestle this guy empty-handed. On consideration, I broke a thick leg off of the table, making myself an improvised club. I grasped it in both hands. It felt comfortably heavy.

  Neither Diana nor the furball seemed to have noticed me, or at least not considered me worthy of note. They were busy with each other, after all; even the furball wasn't so superior that he could afford to make a mistake. I took full advantage of this as I slammed the table leg into the back of his head.

  I could hear his skull crack, and blood and bone splinters spilled out over the top of my weapon. The furball roared, staggering forward towards Diana, who gracefully stepped out of the way. For a moment, I was sure he was going to fall.

  Then the wound stopped bleeding. And then it seemed to bubble, like something was moving just under the surface. In a second, it had resumed its earlier, healthy form. There was still blood in the furball's long hair, and I could see something brighter and gooier that I thought must be brain tissue, but the wound had just… closed.

  He smiled as he turned around.

  "Oooooh, the monkey's got a stick," he mocked. "Well, it's gonna take hell of a lot more than that to do me in, monkey-boy."

  Well, I had known that already. Silver and not much else. But what bloody choice did I have? I swung the club again.

  This time he caught it as it came towards him and tore it out of my grip. He looked at it for a second, and then broke it in two. He didn't even use his knee for support; he just took the thick length of wood in both hands and twisted. He hardly seemed to put any effort into it, but the table leg broke apart in the middle anyway. The furball threw the pieces over his shoulders, not taking his eyes off me.

  "A lot more," he repeated and took a slow step towards me. He was still grinning, enjoying himself. Then, suddenly, the grin faded. "Hey. Where did that bitch go?"

  I looked around. Diana was nowhere in sight. She must have gotten out while I had stood dumbstruck. Very sensible of her, by all means. No use in both of us dying horribly. But speaking as the one who was going to die horribly, I felt a little disappointed.

  "Away," I said offhandedly. "She'll be back, though. And if you hurt me, well… you won't see her coming. You won't know she's there until she cuts your throat with a silver version of that knife she's got. On the other hand, if we were to just part ways peacefully here…"

  I hadn't really expected anything out of the attempt – I had just felt that I'd be damned if I was going to do anything except go down fighting. Therefore, I wasn't too surprised when the furball snorted.

  "You fucking warlocks think you're so smart. Think you can go and piss on the laws of nature and get away with it. Well, think again, asshole!"

  He lifted me off my feet again, in the cloth of my shirt this time. As far as I was concerned, that just meant that I got about half as much air as I needed instead of being fully choked. I gave off a wordless scream of equal parts rage and fear and clawed feebly at the powerful arm that was holding me suspended. Somehow, I managed to make a row of four bloody gashes with my well-manicured nails – and saw them close up a second later. I couldn't even hurt him that much.

  He pulled back his other hand, clenched into a fist. It was clear that he was going to hit me. It was also clear that once he did, my head was most likely going to fly off.

  "Damn you!" I gasped helplessly. He didn't answer.

  Suddenly, colours were flashing all around me. For a confused moment I thought that he had hit me, and that I was now walking towards that light at the end of the tunnel, except people had neglected to tell me that it was more of a neon sign. Then I realised what was going on. All the windows – well, screens designed to look like windows – were suddenly showing swirling patterns of shapes and colours. I recognised the makeup a moment before I heard Diana's voice confirm my memory.

  "Look at the colours," she said, "and be still."

  The furball's hand went limp. For the second time that day I dropped to the floor. This time I had the presence of mind to crawl backwards and away from the furball, who didn't seem to notice me. His eyes were locked on one of the screens.

  I couldn't help glancing at the screens myself, but I didn't feel at all like I had when Diana had used this technique on me. The patterns were made to affect a different sort of mind; mine, it seemed, was not affected.

  I felt pretty good about not having the same sort of mind as this maniac, to be honest…

  Diana came out of her bedroom, knife ready in her hand. She frowned at the frozen shape of the furball.

  "Bastard!" she said with feeling.

  "Quite," I mumbled. "What are we going to do now?"

  "First of all I'm going to cut this self-appointed saviour of the world where he won't regenerate," Diana said grimly. "Then we're going to put him somewhere downstairs, where we don't have to look at him all the time. And then I suppose we'll have to go out and try to find some new components, because these ones are beyond saving." She looked down at the wreckage of her beacon. "Damn!"

  "I agree with you there." I rubbed my throat. It was still aching. "I don't think… that I have ever met anyone who… who hated me so much. And he didn't even know me."

  Diana looked at me for a moment, her face tired. Then she smiled, that wide, teasing grin that I had come to know and love. It made her look like herself again.

  "I can't imagine anyone who knows you can hate you, Simon. You can probably win anyone over."

  My ears were ringing, I noticed. I hoped I wasn't going to pass out. It would be so dreadfully embarrassing, especially considering that I was the one who had been rescued here. Twice, even. The way I saw it, I was already behind.

  "Why, thank you," I said. "Have I won you over?"

  Diana hesitated, then sighed.

  "I suppose you have," she said. To my surprise, she almost looked vulnerable, saying that. Defeating a werewolf, apparently, was one thing. Talking seriously about feelings was quite another.

  "No more suspicions that I'm Patrick?"

  She smiled again.

  "You came out here to help me, but all you did was distract the furball for a moment, and that could have gotten you killed. Patrick Farson would either have run away or found some more efficient way of helping me."

  "So I'm well-meaning and helpless instead of selfish and competent?" I said, raising an eyebrow. Diana laughed.

  "There are worse things. And I wouldn't call not being as good at fighting as a furball incompetence. Fighting is what furballs do."

  I shook my head to clear it, but the ringing in my ears just got louder. Now I thought I heard words in it. That worried me even more. I hadn't been without oxygen for long enough to take brain damage, had I?

  "Is Patrick a mage?" I asked. "Can you tell me that much, at least? Is he Empowered?"

  "Empowered? Definitely." She grimaced. "A mage? Er… that depends on what you mean by that. I'll explain later, okay?"

  … raate mochta doreth morene, karem dior rech morene… the voice in my ears said. Nonsense-words, spoken in a chanting, half-singing tone. I was starting to feel distinctly uncomfortable. Was I losing it? Had this whole thing gone too far for my humble mind to take it anymore, and now I was losing it?

  "Do you hear that?" I said, closing my eyes and rubbing my forehead.

  "Hear what?" Diana said.

  Wonderful. Maybe I was having a stroke or something. What a way to go – survive an attack from a monster and then die from pure excitement…

  … dior m'mene sathe mochta, siar kan dheros valan do'llore…

  "Like someone chanting. It's like he's standing right next to me. Are you sure you can't hear anything?" I could detect a hint of pleading in my voice.

  "No, I…" She paused. Her eyes went wide. "Oh, shit!" she said. "Not now…"

  "What?" I said.

  Then the world disappeared.

I was falling; that was the general feeling. Falling very quickly, in complete darkness. I knew I had a body, because I could feel the chill of the wind sweeping around me. It felt as if it was going to turn my blood into ice. What I didn't seem to have was eyes and ears. I was a bundle of terrified self-awareness plummeting through spaces not of this world, and that was all.

  And yet, even now my Empowered mind couldn't stop its demands to know everything. Why? it cried as I fell. How? Where? Who? Tell me!

  I hung on to that. If I couldn't get any answers, it was at least a comfort to have the questions. It meant that I was still myself.

  Then, without warning, the light returned. I got a confused impression of colours as I fell to the floor. In retrospect, I suppose I just lost my balance at the surprise of standing, but right then, it felt like the completion of my earlier, longer fall.

  My face hit floor boards. With my newly-regained vision, I could see every line in those right next to me. They were beautifully mundane and normal. Floor boards I didn't have a problem with. You knew where you stood with floor boards.

  I had gotten hearing back, too. I could hear a scream of rage close by. The voice was deep and rough, and didn't sound completely human.

  "Mother of God!" another voice yelped. This one was high-pitched with fear and sounded as human as you could ask for.

  It seemed to be a great sacrifice for me to raise my head and look around. It had been peaceful, lying there and staring at the floor.

  I was still in Diana's apartment; that was my first impression. The shape of the room was the same, so was the jumble of computer entrails and strange devices lying everywhere. But all the furniture was whole again, as by… well, as by magic. And after a second or so, I realised that it wasn't quite as much machinery lying around – just as much as could be expected from a woman with a passionate interest in computer mechanics and an equally passionate disinterest in housekeeping. And there was a ring of chalk-drawn signs on the floor.

  Diana was getting to her feet a short distance away from me, the knife still in her hand. On the far side of the rune-circle, over by the window, a man I hadn't seen before stood. He was about my age, tall and slim, with a delicately handsome face framed by golden-blonde locks. He was dressed in long, purple robe and held a thin wooden stick, and a heavy silver chain hung around his neck.

  The furball was standing in the middle of the rune-circle. The position perfectly matched the place he had been standing in the Secondary version of the apartment, and that was the only thing that allowed me to recognise him. He didn't even look remotely human anymore.

  It was a little bit like a bear, along with a great deal of wolf, some human, and a bit of nightmare thrown in for salt. Whatever it was, it was large, its pointed ears touching the ceiling, and it was roaring in fury. And its claws were thick and sharp.

  "Kill… you… all…" the furball grunted, forming the words with great difficulty, using a mouth that had never been intended for speaking.

  Diana threw her knife at him, aiming for one of the yellow-gleaming eyes. He swatted the blade aside like a fly and ran towards her, but then Diana wasn't there anymore. She had ran behind the table whose Secondary twin I had broken apart for a weapon, and was starting to throw everything she could find on it at the monster.

  The robed man had dropped his staff and dived for a bag that was lying on the floor, and was now rummaging through it. He looked scared, but it was a controlled fear. That was more than I could say for myself. The very sight of the furball in his full feral glory seemed to shake me to the core of my being. I had seen this sight, it seemed to me, in a thousand nightmares, all of which I had forgotten upon awakening. It was Death come to get me.

  The furball threw the table to the side, leaving Diana without cover. She tried to jump to the side, but a great paw struck into her side as she did, throwing her to the floor with a cry of pain. The furball took the one step that separated them and raised its paws for the killing strike.

  A loud bang, almost deafening in the small space of the room, was heard from right next to me. The furball shuddered and staggered forward as a dark spot suddenly bloomed out on the fur on his back. Another bang, and the flesh of his upper left arm was torn asunder by some unseen force.

  I turned my head. The robed man was holding a large, black gun in a two-hand grip that looked very professional. As I watched, he fired again. This time, the back of the furball's neck seemed to all but explode, spraying thick, red liquid over the floor.

  I felt faint. Blood. Oh, I really did hate the sight of blood…

  The furball changed again, but not back into a man. Instead, all in his form that reminded of a human being disappeared, and he sank down on four legs, shrinking as he did. The werewolf was turning into a wolf.

  For a moment I wondered what help he meant that to be. Then I realised that he didn't mean for it to do anything. It was just that whatever magick allowed him to take on a different form was dying along with him. The wolf collapsed on the floor, not the least bit monstrous and very dead.

  There was a moment of silence.

  Then the robed man gave off an exasperated sigh and shook his head.

  "Really," he said. His voice was light, but when he spoke calmly it sounded clear and pleasant. "That was most unpleasant, though all those money I put into buying silver bullets no longer seem like such a waste, which is always nice. Are you all right, Diana?"

  "I, I, I think so…" Diana said and tried to get to her feet. About halfway up, she got a strange expression on her face and dropped to the floor again, her eyes closing before she had even stopped moving.

  The robed man sighed again.

  "I guess not," he said tiredly. He turned to me. "Look, you're larger than I am. Would you care to get her to her bed?"

  I walked over to Diana and picked her up. She was surprisingly heavy. Maybe it was because of all that metal she carried around inside of her.

  "She's bleeding," I noted. There were four gashes in Diana's white dress, and the cloth around them was turning red.

  The man grimaced.

  "Blast. Then he must have hit her harder than I thought." He stepped closer and unceremoniously lengthened one of the gashes enough that he could get a good look at what was under it. After a second, he smiled, relieved. "Just scratches, really. We should probably clean them up, though. Who knows where those claws have been?"

  He went to find some disinfectant, while I carried Diana into her bedroom and gently put her down on the bed. In Primary, the sheets were indeed black.

  I sat down at the side of the bed and allowed myself a moment to enjoy the feeling of being in my own dimension again. And of being alive, of course. I had doubted that I would stay that way for much longer, but somehow, things had worked out all the same. That was pretty amazing, to be honest.

  Now, of course, Diana had fainted – again – and left me alone with some mage of whom I knew little except that he was armed and dangerous, but it was still a huge improvement. And the guy had been friendly enough. It would have been nice to think that any friend of Diana's would be a friend of mine, but Diana had already as much as revealed that she had some friends who would not at all approve of her having been overly helpful to me.

  I glanced out the window. The sun was rising. I had only been gone one night, then. It felt like forever.

  And why shouldn't it? I was a different man than I had been when I left. I could now think about someone as a "mage" without using it as a figure of speech. I was home, true, but home was not the place I had always assumed it was.

  And I wasn't the person I had always assumed I was. I was a mage. Apparently. Though of course, I had yet to see any proof of that. Diana appearing while I was being killed by the furball was not unlikely enough that it deserved an arcane explanation.

  I glanced at Diana's bunny-free sheets and smiled. At a certain plane of existence, they looked different. Shouldn't it be very easy to make them that way here, too?

  I waved my hand in the air.

  "Alakazam?" I said hopefully.

  Nothing happened, but I hadn't really expected anything to happen, either. That wouldn't do. The world was shaped through belief, Diana had told me. I had to believe.

  "Alakazam!" I commanded, demanding obedience of those sheets with every fibre of my being.

  Again, nothing happened. I sighed. Presumably there was some kind of trick to it. Empowered arrogance alone couldn't change the world.

  "What on earth are you doing?" the robed man said. He was standing in the doorway, though I had not heard him approach. He was holding a plastic bottle in one hand and a piece of cloth in the other.

  I willed myself not to blush.

  "Just… carrying out an experiment in practical magic," I said, making every effort to sound like he was stupid even to ask.

  "I see," he said, not sounding like he thought he was the least bit stupid. He crossed the distance between the door and the bed, knelt down beside it and started to gently clean the gashes in Diana's side. "I'm terribly afraid that I forgot to introduce myself. My name is Kevin Harsh." He glanced at me and smiled. "I don't think I've had the pleasure…?"

  "Simon. Simon Stromberg." I rallied some of my social graces. "Thank you for getting us out of there."

  Even if the timing could have been better – for instance, he might have done it five seconds after Diana had carved the head off of the furball. Breaking his line of sight to the screen Diana had used to hypnotise it had almost gotten us killed despite it all. But it would be impolite to bring that up, and he had dealt with the appearance of the furball very efficiently.

  "Oh, think nothing of it," he said. "I owe Diana a few favours."

  "You two go back a long way, then?" I said.

  "Oh, yes." He nodded absently, focused on the work at hand. "We were both members of the Neon Rose for a few years, until the black hats broke it apart. Then we fought together in the battle for New Eden. A dreadful mistake, really. We were lucky to get out of there with our lives. But we stuck together after that too, even if we haven't been members of the same cabal for the last year or so. We overlap each other pretty well. She needs someone to talk sense into her every now and then, and I need someone to shake me out of my own sensibility ever now and then."

  He chuckled, a soft, pleasant sound. I looked at him, with his all-too-beautiful face, and all the history he had with Diana, and the off-handish way he used words and expressions that seemed to come from another world, and in some cases probably did. A horrible suspicion appeared in my mind. So he and Diana overlapped each other, did they?

  "I see," I said, trying to keep my dirty mind under control. Okay, so they had known each other for ages and had fought for the same causes and saved each other's lives and done each other favours – that didn't mean anything, did it? They might very well just be friends.

  I presented that theory to my jealousy. My jealousy laughed me in the face.

  "There. That should do it." Kevin picked up the bottle and the rag he had used and walked away with it. I followed him as he put the bottle back in the bathroom cabinet and put the rag on Diana's obviously long-overdue pile of dirty clothes. "I don't think Diana has mentioned you. Which Tradition do you belong to?"

  Tradition. I had heard that word before. It was one of many words I did not know the meaning of.

  "I don't know," I said. "What's a Tradition?"

  Kevin looked startled.

  "You don't know? Good heavens. Diana should really have told you."

  "She was busy," I said. That was not entirely a lie. She had been busy, but whether or not she would have told me if she hadn't been was very much up to question. "Would you be so kind as to fill in the blanks?"

  "Well…" Kevin walked into the kitchen and sat down by the table. I took the other chair. "I suppose you could say they're schools of magick. But that's simplifying it a tad too much, I'm afraid. It would perhaps be better to say that they are the dominant schools of magic. The ones with the most practitioners. Those who got organised."

  I nodded. That made sense, after a fashion. It was in the nature of people to bang together with others who were like them. I should probably have thought about it myself, but Diana had always seemed so independent that I had never considered that she might be part of any sort of organisation.

  "So which Tradition are you member of?" I said.

  "The Order of Hermes," Kevin said. He smiled proudly. "The oldest and most powerful one."

  "I'm sure," I said politely. "Thus, I take it, the robe, the staff, the runes…?"

  "All part of the ritual," Kevin said with a nod. "Spells of summoning are complicated. And the use of high magick takes a lot of preparations. Otherwise I would have gotten you two home sooner."

  "And Diana?" I said. "Which Tradition is she?"

  "She's a Virtual Adept." He smiled wistfully. "Which is a terrible waste of talent, but when I got to know her they had already gotten their claws too deeply into her for me to get her to see reason."

  "Pardon me for asking," I said carefully, "but why is it such a waste that she uses magick in that way? It works, doesn't it?"

  "I suppose." He shrugged. "But it's like… like making a faulty TV work by kicking it. That works, too, but it's not the most efficient way to do it, and it's not based on any true understanding – it's just using a trick you've realised gets the job done." He smiled. "We, on the other hand, can teach you to repair that TV for good. If you haven't had any formal training, there's much we can do for you."

  I didn't want to say anything, but after having seen Diana's technomancy, Kevin's high magick struck me as somewhat unimpressive. Couldn't you use supernatural forces and still be modern about it? I decided that I would. No more alakazam-ing. I'd ask Diana to tutor me first thing tomorrow.

  "I'll consider it," I said diplomatically.

  "You should do so." He seemed a bit less than hopeful, though. Maybe he was better at seeing through white lies like that than I was at telling them. "So, would you care to tell me how you and Diana ended up in a shadow reality?"

  A shadow reality? That was one way to describe Secondary, certainly.

  "Someone sent us there," I said. "Picked us right out of the restaurant we were eating in and put us in that other place. I don't know who it was. I don't think Diana knows, either."

  "No?" He looked amused. "Never believe Diana when she says she doesn't know, my friend. She always knows more than she wants anyone to suspect. That way, she is free to make dramatic revelations at the right times. In fact, I can think of exactly one person who could have sent you there against your will and without her seeing him do it."

  "You know who it was?" I said, startled. Could it be this easy to de-mask the mysterious 'he'? "Tell me."

  He shook his head.

  "I don't know anything, not for sure. There might be others with the necessary power that I haven't even heard of. And if Diana won't tell you… well, she might have her reasons. I'd rather not have her mad at me." The smile appeared again, sudden and brilliant like light reflected in a gemstone. "She gets physical when she's mad, and I must admit that I by all accounts punch like a girl."

  I sighed inwards. In the mages' world, apparently, you got information in bits and pieces, or not at all. I was starting to wish for some sort of instruction manual.

  The sound of someone walking through the living room hinted that Diana was feeling better. Sure enough, a moment later she was standing in the doorway, looking tired and groggy, but smiling weakly for all that.

  "Stop conspiring against me," she said. "I could hear you all the way to the bedroom."

  Kevin made a big show out of looking innocently accused.

  "What, would we?" he said. "We were just expressing our concern. Anything else is purely a creation of your overgrown paranoia."

  "My paranoia is overgrown because it gets fed so often," Diana said with mock-gruffness.

  "Now really, old girl." Kevin smiled teasingly. "Just because everyone is out to get you there's no reason to give them the satisfaction of making you paranoid."

  They laughed together. Every word they exchanged, it seemed to me, had years of mutual trust and affection behind it. They were certainly very comfortable together.

  I hated that.

  The strange thing what, I realised as Diana walked up to us, that there was something similar about her and Kevin. He was as fair as she was dark, as ethereal as she was substantial, as tranquil as she was dynamic… and yet, there was something there, something in the way they carried themselves. There was a common glow deep within their eyes, the dark-brown and the pale-blue. It was I-want. It was I-can. It was you-can't-stop-me. It was the look of a person who would never, ever let anyone else decide the rules. Both of them had, in their own ways, rejected the life that the world had had in store for them and gone off to look for something else, and that showed.

  The Empowering, I thought. Can they see it in me, too? I think they can. God almighty! One in every thousand people, was that what she said? How is it that the world is still in one piece, with all those millions of Empowered minds in it?

  "Thanks for helping," Diana said. "Sorry about the furball. I promise that I didn't invite him, he just tagged along anyway."

  Kevin chuckled.

  "I admit that that was a bit of a nasty surprise, but all's well that ends well. And this is one that will at no point storm into Black Moon, yell something about sacrilege and start tearing people apart. Personally, I quite like the idea of him not storming into Black Moon and doing that."

  "Point," Diana agreed.

  "I must be off now, I'm afraid." Kevin walked back out into the living room. Diana was one step after him, and I got up and followed them. He pulled off his robe – he was wearing a very elegant suit underneath it – folded it up and put it into his bag. The silver chain followed it. The staff he took in his hand as a walking-stick. "If you are all right, I do have work that needs be doing. No rest for the wicked."

  "Don't I know it." She looked thoughtful. "Do I have any favour left to call in from you?"

  "One or two, I think."

  "I may need it soon."

  Kevin shrugged and smiled.

  "You know where to find me."

***

After Kevin had left, Diana and I took on the unpleasant duty of cleaning up one dead furball and the assorted mess. To my very great pride, it did not faint once while I wiping the blood off of the floor. I only felt like it.

  "It's lucky, in a way," Diana said. She had put the dead wolf in a big, black, plastic bag and stuffed it in the closet for later disposal. "People are used to hearing strange sounds from my apartment, so that's not so much of a problem, but getting a human corpse out of here would have been bothersome. And he could have turned into a man when he died. Sometimes they do. Other times, like now, it's wolves. It's like they can't even decide themselves what they are, so when the magick disappears, they just go to whatever they're closest to at the moment." She grimaced. "If they really are mages, then that's just another proof that when you give people the power to be anything they want, some of them are going to want to be really strange things."

  "What do you want to be?" I said. I was wiping the floor clean of Kevin's rune-circle. The crayon he has used was hard to rub off. I supposed that that was deliberate. When all that was standing between you and a demon was a few signs on the floor, you wanted those signs to be drawn to last.

  "I'm not sure yet," Diana admitted. "Efficient as a machine, flexible as a person and passionate as an animal, I suppose."

  "Doesn't sound too bad," I admitted.

  "Thank you. What do you want to be?"

  "Don't know," I said. "Not this, that's for sure. I hate being me."

  Diana smiled.

  "That's narrowing it down a little, I suppose." She stood back and surveyed her work. "I suppose nothing is messier than usual now." She looked down on herself and laughed. "Except for myself, that is. I've completely ruined my favourite dress, and I'm all sticky. I'm going to take a shower. Be with you in half an hour or so."

  She went into the bathroom, and a few seconds later, I heard the shower go on. I did my very best not to think about the fact that all that was between me and a naked Diana right now as a door that – I had not been able to help notice – she had not bothered to lock. I concentrated at wiping the floor, and that helped. Few things are less arousing than housekeeping.

  She did say she was falling in love with me, I thought. And I got the feeling that that's not a common thing for her. Even if she and Kevin are an item, it doesn't mean I don't stand a chance.

  Unfortunately, while she had indeed said that, the conclusions I had drawn about her character were all my own. She found her feelings for me upsetting. Very well. But that might have been because she was already in a relationship, a very long-term relationship, and that they meant trouble for her. She might not be the least bit inclined to act on them, for the same reason.

  She's never mentioned him, I told myself. And she did go out with me.

  On the other hand, she never mentioned a lot of things about herself, and she was assigned to watch over me by those friends of hers. Come to think about it, that's another mystery right there, and it's probably got something to do with Patrick, but never mind all that right now… The point is that she might have decided that she should get to know me up close and personal, that that would help her figure out who I was and what I was doing.

  I had an intense desire to track Kevin down and strangle him, but the man did carry a gun and had proved very skilled at using it. And then there was the fact of his powers. I had no idea what he might be capable of. Opening a gateway between different dimensions was hardly a parlour trick, for starters.

  Besides, someone who got nauseous at the sight of violence should probably not plot to kill people.

  Okay, so just ask her, a sensible-sounding part of me suggested. You might just be imagining things. If he's her boyfriend or whatever, it should be easy enough to find out.

  True enough – once I gathered up the courage to ask. It was ironic, really, that after all the questions I had asked her, something as mundane as this could be so infuriatingly difficult. The universe apparently had a sense of humour. Stupid universe.

  Something in the bedroom went bleep.

  I slowly put the rag I had been using to scrub the runes away back in the bucket. If I was not completely mistaken, that was the sound of a computer starting up, and since there was no one in there to make it do that, the only conclusion was that it was doing it on its own. And that, in turn, meant that it was time for another one of those surreal ghost-in-the-machine situations.

  I supposed that there was no sense in prolonging the inevitable, so I got up and walked into the room.

  The computer screen was lit, and the operative system was just starting up. As I watched, a window opened and a line of text appeared in it.

  I'm glad to see you took my advice.

  "Your advice?" I said.

  You asked her out.

  I relaxed. This was the matchmaker, not 'him'.

  "Yes, and we got hijacked into a parallel dimension and almost killed several times over," I pointed out.

  It was a first date to remember, then?

  I snorted with laughter. You could look at it like that, certainly.

  "Who are you?" I said, without hoping too much for a response. I had learned much in Secondary, but now that I was back, most of the mysteries of my life were still waiting for me. Patrick. 'He'. And this fellow, who seemed to be very concerned about my sex-life. That was of course very touching and all, but I could really not see that it was any of his business. Or her business… or its business… or whatever it might be…

  That's not important.

  "I beg to differ," I said. "If you're going to get involved in my life, who you are is very important to me." I paused, waiting for an answer to that. None came; apparently, my matchmaker friend was not going to dignify that with a response. "All right, so what is important?"

  You going to her right now.

  Had I had anything in my mouth at the time, I would probably have choked on it in pure surprise. As it was, I didn't – but for a moment, it felt like I was choking on the air itself.

  "She's in the shower!" I gasped.

  Yes, but it's a big and roomy shower, the text on the screen said temptingly. Plenty of space for two.

  "She'd kill me if I tried that," I said flatly. "She'd take that switchblade she carries around and she'd cut my throat. Eventually she'd cut my throat. Before she got that far, she'd cut some other things!"

  This did apparently not bother the matchmaker. Maybe he was trying to kill me too. Maybe he just took some sort of perverse pleasure in getting my hormones to do the job for him. Because part of me wanting him to convince me that he was right. Wanted that very much, in fact. Wanted it enough to convince the rest of me to become convinced, in fact.

  If the roles were reversed, he argued, would you kill _her_?

  "Well, no," I said. "But that's different."

  Why?

  I was starting to have some difficulty remembering why. It had something to do with gender roles, I felt sure, but I was in no condition to formulate the principle. Far too much of my imagination was otherwise occupied.

  Go on, the matchmaker prodded me. Do it… you know you want to…

  "I hate you," I said. "You know that, Mister Mystery? I really, deeply, sincerely hate you. It is my profound belief that you are evil incarnate."

  But you will do as I said?

  "Yes!"

  Good, the screen wrote. Then the computer shut itself off, without more of a detectable cause than it had had for starting up. I glared at the dark screen for a moment. Then I took a deep breath and started walking.

  I'm an idiot, I thought matter-of-factly as I walked, my head spinning. I'm a dead idiot. I am thirty-three years old, and still I'm acting like a teenager. An idiot teenager. It must be the whole Empowering thing. It became too much for my poor, dumb brain. It's short-circuited. That's the only explanation.

  I opened the bathroom door. It was hot and steamy inside. I could see Diana's shape inside the rectangular shower-booth (which was indeed very roomy), her hands over her head to rub into her hair some of all the things women apparently feel that they need to subject their innocent hair to. I gulped. The glass was tilted, making it possible to see only the vague outline of who was inside, but it was a very nice outline indeed.

  What do cyborg technomancers do with men who they think is about to try and rape them? I wondered as I took my clothes off. Something exceedingly nasty, no doubt. I wonder if one of those adrenalin-rushes would make her strong enough to dismember me with her bare hands? Probably. Oh, this is really a bad idea, I should give this up right now while I still have the chance…

  I didn't, though, of course. For someone who supposedly could control the very stuff of reality, I had extremely poor control over myself. On the plus side, Diana had not yet screamed and ordered me to get out of there right now or suffer the consequences. That had to mean something. She had to have realised I was in the room by now. Right?

  I took another deep breath, enjoying it extra much since it might be one of my last, and opened the door to the booth.

  Diana turned her head and grinned at me through the stream of water running down her face. Last time I had seen that grin, it had been on a statue in Secondary.

  "That sure took you long enough," she said.

  For a day that started with me almost being killed by a monster, it turned out quite pleasant in the end, really…