60. A Death In The Family

Time slowed to a crawl.

Myria's eyes, seemingly of their own accord, fell to the sight of the man's hand, holding the hilt of a knife.

She could not see the blade, because it was buried in her too-fragile flesh. But she could feel it, buried deep in her chest.

No. Nonono.

Do something!

Stop the damage!

The heart! He has damaged the heart!

Kill him!

Heal the tissue!

Stop the pain. Stop the pain. Stop the pain.

Like hummingbirds trapped in a jar, multiple demands fought for primacy in her mind, demanded action. But she could not focus. The light dimmed, and she began to feel light, as if gravity were losing its hold on her.

I do not wish to die, the voice in the darkness behind the eyes wept.

She tried to speak the words, to tell reality that she wanted to live, to see Jonathon and Jessica and Susan again. Her mouth worked, but refused to form words. All she managed was a bubbling sound, and she tasted something metallic as a hot, thick trickle of fluid ran from her mouth and burned its way down the corner of her cheek.

Then the pain began receding, but it was being replaced by a numbness. She could feel, through a fog, urgent messages from the body that it was dying.

As Myria's sight dimmed to blackness, the last thing she saw the smiling face of the man who had murdered her.

"Good night love. Name's Flasher. It's been a pleasure meetin' you," he crooned through the final fog of nothingness.

There had been an additional requirement. A promise made, those weeks ago.

Sharps had cleared his throat. "We have been thinking. We can lure the LeJean away from the bodyguard, but we have requirements for our part in this."

Flasher went very still. "Oho. Re-quirements you got, do ya?"

"Yes. We request that you cease threatening us. You need our assistance, and we will give it. There is no need to resort to threats of violence."

"Huh." Flasher turned that around in his head, then smiled brightly. "Alright. Fair cop, guv. You got me. I'm all talk, ain't I? No more threats, just two blokes working together, innit?"

"Correct. And we have one additional condition." This, Sharps decided, would be the tricky one. He took a deep breath. "We will bring the LeJean to you, as you demand. But in return, you must promise not to hurt her."

Flasher's face twisted for a few moments, then settled. "Not hurt her." He laughed oddly. "And just what d'ya imagine I would get from talking to this woman?"

"Perhaps… perhaps if you met the LeJean, you could reach an understanding? An agreement? She can be trusted. If she were to agree to compensation for your losses, perhaps you could claim a victory?"

Flasher was very still, except for his left hand, which pulled his favorite knife from somewhere about his person, and begin flipping it handle-over-blade, seemingly without realizing it.

"Hmm… so yer saying that if I were to talk to her, alone like, I could find out what happened to my mates. And maybe get some money out of it… then I could get some rest, like?"

"Yes!"

"And if I agree to this, you'll help me. But if I don't, our little partnership is at an end."

Sharps braced himself. "Yes! This is our demand!"

That laugh again. "Damn me for a fool if you don't make a kind of sense, Trashman. Tell ya what, you got a deal. I talk to the lady, no Sammies, and you make sure you're right there, so you can see how I keep my promise. Deal?"

"You promise?"

"You got my word. You get her to me, and we'll have us a nice long talk, and I'll call myself satisfied and I'll never bother her again. Cross my heart and hope to die."

Heart muscles contracted, stuttering. Once. Twice. Caught. Protested. Contracted a third time. Set up a painful, partial rhythm, like a drunk staggering down a street.

Lungs sucked in air through flaccid throat and coughed, spraying scarlet everywhere.

Brain synapses fired, fitfully at first, then with more vigor.

Skeletal muscles about the body contracted, too far, receiving incorrect signals from the brain.

The seizures lasted several seconds, before releasing the mind of Myria LeJean from its grip, and turning over the body, ill abused, to its tentative control.

Myria opened her eyes and tried to scream, and only managed to choke herself again. She rolled over onto her hands and knees, and tried to clear the remaining blood from her airways.

And saw the man. Flasher. The man who had done this to her. He was trying to lift himself to his feet, and shaking his head as if he had suffered some great blow.

To her left, she saw Mister Sharps, unmoving, on the ground facing away from her.

Why do I live?

Mister Sharps could not understand what was happening.

He had brought the LeJean to Flasher, as they had agreed.

Flasher had stepped behind the LeJean. She had turned. He had spoken to her, but she did not answer, she just continued facing him.

Then he heard the drip-drop of liquid on the alley surface and saw the scarlet spatter, increasing by the second. Brain cells processed, calculated probabilities.

"YOU LIED TO US!"

Flasher stepped to the side, pulling his hand away and revealing a bloody knife, releasing a surge of blood from inside Myria's chest that had been stoppered by it.

"See Trashman," Flasher smiled, "I told you I keep my promises. I call myself satisfied, that I do."

"LIAR!"

Flasher's face drew up into something between a sneer and a snarl as he moved quickly, the knife seeming to flow toward Sharps, his hand following like water. A dark torrent flooding toward the all-too fragile flesh of Mister Sharps.

"Time to die, Trashman."

And finally in his rage at being betrayed, Sharps found his power, and lashed out with it. Air took on the consistency of a solid surface in front of Sharps and moved. Forward it flew, slamming into Flasher like a moving brick wall and knocking him unconscious to the ground.

His own head suddenly aching, Sharps stared at his own hands and felt a laugh bubble up as he realized the pure, raw possibility at his disposal.

"I am not Trashman, human. My. Name. Is. Mister. Sharps." The temperature in the alley dropped like a stone, and he turned wild eyes to the body at his feet.

He laughed again, and set to work.

Flasher was up again, and staring at her in disbelief.

"How many times I gotta kill you!?" He bent down and retrieved his knife, and with a snarl advanced upon her.

There was a… a room. An innocent. A knife in the hands of a monster. And a cold, cold hate. For a moment, the vision of a young girl was superimposed over that of the once-Auditor, Mr. Sharps.

The laws of physics are already weak in the magical field of the Disc. It requires little to twist them into knots, or worse. In the span of a heartbeat, Myria's burning cold rage analytically considered the intricate workings of the flesh, and she smiled.

I have done this before.

The first time her reaction had been horrifying, but practically painless to its recipients. It had been intended to stop men from hurting her and the ones she loved, not to punish them for their transgressions.

This time is different.

They say that time has an underlying tick. The smallest amount of time in which anything can occur. The moment that separates now from then. In that micromoment, every single pain receptor in Flasher's body began firing in a cascading sequence.

Another tick, and every skeletal muscle in his body tried to contract, to coil the body itself around pain that had no center. It would probably have torn his very muscles from his bones, or broken half the bones in his body in the process, had she allowed it.

The knife, the knife that had taken her life, disintegrated in his hand.

New pain flooded her as well, and was ignored.

Grey on grey eyes assessed. His own body's chemicals flooded muscle tissue, overriding nerve impulses' demands to contract, just enough to lock them in place. His body swayed, but stood. Another wave of pain struck, searing through his brain.

Another tick, and his lungs began to fill with air, seeking maximum inflation to be expelled and to broadcast his agony for all around to hear. To scream until his vocal cords were wrecks of abused tissue.

Cold intelligence observed. Myria's smile grew, and his diaphragm muscles locked in place, lungs full and unable to release.

Do you understand how I can kill you? He heard echoing in his mind.

Starting at the furthest extremities, nerve by nerve, cell by cell. Death by an infinite number of cuts. And you would feel every moment of it.

He stared into that beautiful, terrible face, spattered scarlet with her own blood.

All your body's natural defenses against pain neutralized. Chemicals that would have stopped your heart to spare you the agony would never make it to their destination. A timeless eternity of agonies.

I would save your sight for last.

I would revel in it.

Eyes wandered over his body, intimate as a lover, and she frowned.

But I will not do this. It is not what I am. It is not who I am.

I am not a monster.

Flasher suddenly found he could breath again, and drew a ragged breath to curse her, his hand twitching toward his belt where his backup blade was.

And gasped as he felt a sudden tearing searing pain. He looked down to see his hands, bone by bone, starting at the fingertips, pulped to jelly.

Hands that would never hold a blade again.

"I am not a monster, but I am not weak either."

Flasher screamed with the pain and the realization of what he had lost, and Myria's smile returned, cold as the vacuum. Pain still washed through her own mind, exquisite, it throbbed through her like a pulse as she turned that cruel smile to Mr. Sharps.

From this side, she could see that he was damaged. Blood flowed, weakly, from his nose and ears. He kept blinking, feebly and randomly, without focusing on anything she could see.

The scarlet hues of his blood burned through her joy at punishing Flasher, leaving only the pain. Pain that made her body spasm and drove her to her hands and knees with a gasp and bringing her back to herself.

As she crawled to his side, his mad eyes rolled and settled onto her. Reaching up, he grasped her shoulder with one hand, her dress with the other. Suddenly in his eyes was fear and sadness and a horrible awareness. "I… is…" only one side of his mouth seemed to work, and his speech slurred, "…dying?"

Myria tried to assess the damage, to understand the injury through her own pain. "No. Do not die." Each word hammered her skull.

"So cold." One side of his face smiled. "No more pain."

"No! I will not... not allow!"

Ignoring the agony already in her head, Myria grabbed at Mr. Sharps, stretching her awareness. The damage was throughout his brain. It was a miracle he could still speak at all, but many organs seemed to no longer have correct control signals. She could… she could repair the damage. Heal him! She felt the pressure build almost immediately, a resistance, as she pictured the damaged neurons, torn tissue, arteries, and veins in the once-Auditor's skull and the loss of blood. She could feel his heart trying vainly to compensate for the loss of blood pressure, his body surrendering to shock. She threw her entire being into the fray, fighting to knit the flesh, seal the leaking vessels, mend the torn tissues.

Heedless of the pain, she charged through the resistance and into the darkness on the other side. A darkness that enveloped her completely.