Comments to KayleeSama@aol.com. Write me (yada yada yada) bones crunch (yada yada yada) lawnmower blades (yada yada yada) rearranging biological assets. (Okay, I'm not feeling inspired enough for a true KayleeThreat™. Use your imagination.)

There's a kind of tired that doesn't have much to do with desire to sleep. You're put on autopilot, going through the motions of whatever you're doing without really having any awareness of what stage you're at, how close you are to being done, what variables might come into play. It's marginally safe, if you're very good at whatever you're doing.

It's stupid to drive a car that way, though. I even found myself thinking that as I guided the rented Camry -- nowhere near as interesting to drive as my poor Jeep, which was in the shop after a mishap with a falling ice-slide, courtesy of Drake -- down the dark back road that I'd ended up on as a detour. Should pull over. Park the car and get a few hours of sleep, then go on to the mansion safely.

But no. I had a bad case of 'get-home-itis,' as some of my pilot friends call it, and I wasn't thinking of stopping at least until I was somewhere with a bed. A bed with comfortable squishy pillows was an even better thought, which ruled out stopping at a motel.

I guided the car by the dotted yellow line, barely able to make out the road itself in the fog and darkness and my exhaustion. For once this sojourn away from the team hadn't been for Three Eyes. Scott himself had asked me to go take a look at a series of 'bizarre' (aren't they all?) murders in a little town called 'Apple Bend' in upstate New York to see if there was anything demanding the X-Men's involvement. I figured he was bored with the lack of megalomaniacs causing us problems these days and he decided to scour the Earth in search of Something To Do until another one popped up. A day after I'd arrived and poked around a bit the authorities had one-upped me and caught the guy, so I spent another night, saw a really pathetic action movie, then turned around in the rental and headed back late this afternoon. My time-budgeting turned out to be flawed when I ran across roadwork, then detours, then a cop who spent half an hour deciding to let me slide with a warning for going five damn miles over the speed limit.

Caffeine, I thought wistfully. Lots and lots of caffeine. I'd probably have to stop and get some at the next opportunity if I was gonna keep on going. Still nearly an hour to Westchester, which was where I figured I could crash tonight, debrief in the morning, then go down to the apartment so I could crash more thoroughly in private. Or in not-so-private. Oh yeah, the thought of a certain someone and a nice, relaxing backrub sounded very appealing just then. Warm hands, strong fingers, a languorous touch easing stubborn muscles into happy mush...

Blinking sharply, I jerked the car back onto the road as it started to drift. Cute. Get a little tired and drop all sense by the wayside. Let's just let our mind wander off into fantasyland while we've barely got enough attention to spare for the road, shall we? Stupid idiot. Brainless moron. Dumb-- And the thought was broken with a yawn. --cow. You looking to recreate his mistake, Kai?

Small differences, though. It wasn't raining. I wasn't drunk. The speedometer was barely nudging fifty.

When you're struggling to stay awake while your car is captured by night and your foot is tired 'cause you're not quite dumb enough to engage cruise control, your mind wanders. You think of things that -- were you more awake -- would normally have your heart doing uncomfortable things. In a state of exhaustion they don't have the same impact, skating lightly over tired echoes of emotions instead of plunging painfully into the buried stuff we all try to ignore. It's like a video you've seen a hundred times; in the right frame of mind it can still call forth a grin or a sniff, but sometimes you just don't feel up to feeling.

That ready pathway was still there after I thought of the accident, so it was no great surprise when I found myself thinking of Sensei. Nothing profound, no great awareness of all he did for me, no impotent raging against his death. Just flickering pictures, images, snippets of voice... the feel of his hands over mine the first time he put that sword into my hands, once he finally believed I wouldn't turn it on him or myself. The day he'd decided that the sword -- his sword, passed down from his own teacher before him -- was to be mine. Myself kneeling in seiza, head bowed, eyes down as I silently placed the sword before my knees and told him wordlessly that I wasn't worthy to claim it.

He walked away from me then with a disgusted sound, leaving me kneeling there. I waited. He worked a while in the back, handling routine management paperwork. I still waited. We'd had many conflicts by then, he and I, and he'd won them all. I wouldn't give up this one, however. I was sure that I could outstubborn him.

He turned off the lights, leaving me in darkness, and left the dojo that night without acknowledging me again, and finally my resolve grudgingly folded as I realized that he'd leave me kneeling there all night and on through the next day if that was what it took. I wasn't allowed to question his decisions. I wasn't allowed to have less faith in myself than he did.

I stood, feeling pins-and-needles all through my legs, and tried the sword in the air. It'd been designed for Asian men, whose reach tends to be considerably shorter than Sensei's was. An inch long for me, maybe. A few inches short for him. In both cases, for the value of the sword, the disproportionate size could be coped with. Because of what it meant.

"And you, you twit," I told myself with another yawn, back in the here and now, "went and stuck it in Creed. Who threw it away. Just like that." A few blinks, surprised contemplation behind them. "I should get this tired more often. That doesn't even hurt."

Predictably, that's when my mind started to absorb the reality of it. Which meant it hurt. Which meant it was time to think of something else.

Stars. Stars were always safe. A wonderful distraction, and I had plenty to think about in that vein. Hank's telescope -- a hybrid of human and Shi'ar tech -- was remarkable. Looking through that thing on those nearly moonless nights with the big guy murmuring long rambles about the history of this or the mythology of that had just about been the highlight of recent months, so far as I was concerned. I'd seen cracks on the surface of Europa -- great sheets of what we think is ice, split by dark lines consistent with some of the heavy ice flows we've seen in the Earth's polar regions. Meaning there could be water under there. Liquid water. The most basic requirement for life.

It takes some of the thrill away, I suppose, to realize that the team's encountered alien life forms already, so the mystery isn't as mythic as it once was. Still I get sucked in by the possibilities, the potential, even now. Understanding those heavenly bodies is as close as I think I'll ever want to get to divinity.

So stars. They led me on a merry round of contemplation, touching on ideas that I thought I might like to bring up to Hank next time he could in good conscience take a while to talk on the subject. I didn't quite have the guts to try to drag him out of the lab myself for idle speculation, so it would have to wait 'til he felt like it. Sometimes I got the feeling that Hank got impatient with my utter absorption in the topic. Astronomy was only a small corner of the sciences that he was so interested in.

Bright stars. Not yet choked out by Manhattan's blazing neon signs. Almost seemed to be... moving...

Headlights, Kai. Those are headlights. So they were. First car I'd seen on this road for ages, popping up suddenly behind me as if from nowhere. Way to pay attention. Moreover, the asshole driving the other car had his (it seemed natural to think of a rude midnight driver as a 'he') brights on, shining right into my rearview and damn near blinding me now. I tipped the mirror up to keep the glare from being too bad, then purposely slid my foot off the accelerator. "Get off my ass, you prick."

He didn't seem to hear me or take the hint, crowding closer behind me. I slowed more, coasting down towards forty, feeling my jaw set in that stubborn expression it's so fond of. "Nuh uh. Wrong goddamn night. Get your ass around."

He crowded closer, lights dimmed by the rear of my rental, now.

This time I actually tapped the brakes, once, warningly. He was more than close enough for me to see that it wasn't a cop car, which meant he had no excuse for acting this way, which meant I was fully in my rights in teaching him a lesson. I was starting to feel a good bit more awake, more alert, as the confrontation tickled that part of me that thrives on conflict. Someone was in desperate need of some manners and I, of course, hold a BS in such things.

Capital B, capital S.

I flicked the rearview back down until I could see the vague dark form behind the steering wheel. Looked directly into the mirror, knowing he'd see my eyes glaring straight into his. Then I turned on the look, complete with the smile, and silently invited him to continue pissing me off.

He backed off. I smirked. He gunned his motor. I sent another look his way. He swerved into the other lane, revving up the engine of his sports car -- Camaro? -- and starting to zoom past me.

"Fucker," I told him, holding up a finger in salute. "Go have an accident, you sonuva--"

His car, heavier-bodied than the Toyota, screeched sideways suddenly and smashed into my front end. I had time to shout a curse and slam on the brakes, which squealed alarmingly for the space of a split-second.

They stopped squealing when the Toyota slammed into the tree.

***

Ourfatherwhoartinheavenhallowedbethyname

"... fuh... fuck..."

thykingdomcomethywillbedoneonearthasitisinheaven

"... g-goddamn... w-window... head..."

giveusthisdayourdailybread

"Any... anyone... hear me...?"

andforgiveusourtrespasses

asweforgivethose

"What's this... crap... running th-through my... head?"

whotrespassagainstus

"Ugh. Out... get..."

andleadusnotintotemptation

"... get..."

butdeliverusfromevil

"Out!"

forthineisthekingdom

"Move, s-stupid b-bitch!"

andthepower

"... oh... shit..."

andtheglory

foreverandever

"No!"

amen

***

I couldn't see.

Which was okay. Because everything was hurting.

Making vision less important. And when I tried to crawl

I found that only one side of me was working just right, and the other one seemed content to drag along behind like a dead thing.

Dead?

No. Too much pain to be dead.

I reached with the hand that would. Right hand. Touched my head. Right side of my head.

Promptly threw up.

Skulls weren't supposed to feel that way.

Breathing, just barely, into scorched lungs, but breathing. Only through the mouth -- nose, broken at least, not gonna touch, see if it's worse. Blood clogging nasal passages, scent no good, can't smell can't see can't move right can't

Panic.

Can't panic.

Car wreck. Flagged off the asshole, big car, loud engine, zipping past, crashing into the front. "Fuh-fucker." Probably couldn't hear me. Probably couldn't--

I couldn't hear myself.

No eyes or ears or nose.

Faster. Faster.

Move. Gotta move. Car exploded. Woods dry. Must be a fire all around by now.

Was I in the fire? I couldn't even tell.

"Move," I croaked, and this time I heard it. Distantly, slurred, like another person's voice blubbing under water, but there. Healing already. Symbiont, I love you. But moving was still hard, the left side dragging like someone had disconnected all the straps, cut the strings, severed the connection, bashed the brain-- Cute. --and made it all just not work anymore. I thought of that momentary feel of skull -- the edges that had to've been broken bone, the soft something that felt so fluidy under my fingers.

Then I stopped thinking at all and just crawled.

***

By the time my eyes cleared I realized that somehow I must've been shielded from the worst of the explosion. Or maybe I'd gotten out before I'd been cooked too thoroughly. My clothes were singed, in places burnt through, but still covering me more or less. Hiking boots, my typical footwear, weren't more than darkened. By some weird twist only the bottom half of my ponytail had been burned off, raggedly. I thought I vaguely remembered batting at my head as I rolled across dirt...

The left side of my body was sluggish, barely willing to respond. Somehow I couldn't make myself touch that piece of my head again. I tried once, but my stomach heaved warningly until I dropped my hand and closed my eyes, counting very slowly from one to... for some reason 'eight' seemed about as far as my mind wanted to follow that.

I was on my feet. Foot. Limp-hopping through the woods, trying to ignore the way everything was too quiet, too far away. It didn't sound right, this place. Didn't feel right. My nose still wasn't working. I did find the courage to touch it, then somehow even made myself reset it in place. But it was full of blood, high up, like the blood was coming from sinus cavities or something.

My left eye was blurry, but my right was mostly okay. Thank whatever for small favors. I could see the trees around me and the leaves beneath my feet.

But nothing else, really. It was still dark, very dark, and the branches overhead cut off the moon and stars.

I wasn't quite sure just where the car was. I couldn't have crawled very far, could I? But somehow I had, and now I couldn't even see the flicker of flames that had to be there. Couldn't smell, couldn't hear worth shit. At least it's only temporary. Other people wouldn't have that assurance.

Other people wouldn't have survived that crash.

The guy who ran me off the road, then, was a would-be murderer. If that'd been almost anyone else in the car he would've killed whoever it was, sure as hell.

I leaned against a tree, then blurted something in surprise when the shoulder I meant to prop against the trunk missed and sent me sprawling to the ground instead. Which, yes, hurt. But it was sorta lost in the overall hurt, so I didn't bother cursing it. Besides, sitting was much more comfortable than standing just then, and I might as well allow myself a little more time to heal before stumbling off to get lost in the woods without my senses in working order.

So I'd just... sit.

Here.

Just like this.

...

On second thought, sitting was boring. It made me edgy. Made me feel like there was more I should be doing and wasn't. I could cover a little ground even messed up this way, save myself some small bit of time later, once I was fully healed. Or cost myself more time if I happened to go in the wrong direction, but it was better than just waiting.

I had to struggle a bit to stand, but I thought I felt a little more response from my left side this time. When I focused very hard I made that knee twitch, slightly, which was progress. "Shit," I said, just because I hadn't cursed in a while and was feeling rusty. My hearing was a little better this time, letting me savor the profanity the way such is meant to be savored. "Shhh-IT," I swore more firmly. This was working nicely. I could just stand here all day and swear.

Or... not.

Move, I told myself, and I was obedient enough to obey. I moved at a limp-stagger in the direction I thought the road was in, wishing absently for a crutch as I went. I'm gonna track him down. Somehow. Track him down and skewer him with his car's radio antenna, that's what I'll do. And then I'll key his car, screw up that nice red pai--

Red?

Had I really seen red?

It didn't matter. It didn't interfere with my planning. And then I'm gonna peel his eyeballs like grapes. The thought made me vaguely nauseous, but in a nastily pleasurable sorta way. And pluck his eyelashes. One. By. One. And then I'll--

I lurched to a stop, listening as hard as I could with damaged ears, not even disturbing that delicate balance with internal noise.

A low whistle that might've been the wind through the trees.

The old adage started playing through my brain: 'Just because you're paranoid doesn't mean they're not out to get you.'

Good one. Scare yourself after getting toasted in a car crash. Clever, Kai. Irritated, I started walking -- if you could call it that -- again. I'm not the sort to jump at shadows, damnit. I'm not. It's just plain unprofessional, not to mention counterproductive and dangerous in my line of--

There.

I stopped.

Again. There. A soft, furtive... something.

Damn these ears!

I didn't call out. If someone was out there being furtive, I didn't need to invite him or her in closer. Besides, it was probably an animal.

Of course, I'd know if it were an animal if my fucking nose wasn't full of blood.

Again. Another noise, more deliberate. I felt a chill tickle up my spine. Ruined hearing or not, I was sure of one thing: that was no animal.

Animals don't chuckle.

My hand flew to the right side of my head, quickly, unwilling to court my squeamishness any longer. Bone was no longer jagged against my fingers but rather tender, mending, covered in too-soft skin and blood-matted hair. Why isn't my left side working again? Soft tissue is always faster than bone... always. Right?

Like before. What they said happened to my memories. Brain tissue destroyed, slowly regenerating, keeping nothing of the stored memories that'd made me the person I'd been... most of them gone for good...

Leaves rustling when the wind had momentarily paused. I spun and almost fell, but caught a tree with a lucky flail of my hand and managed to stay upright. Closed my left eye so as not to be distracted by the fuzziness it showed me.

Nothing.

Eyes tickled across my back. I could feel the weight of someone's gaze. Watching me.

"Hello," I said hoarsely, not letting it be a question. "Come out." Turned my head slowly, not releasing my death-grip on the tree. "I know you're there."

Wind again, making blood feel clammy against my skin and causing filthy hair to flap tiredly.

Someone's got a really fucking funny idea of a joke. Except I wasn't laughing. Could it be someone who was honestly interested in helping, but who got freaked when he or she saw my state? No normal person should've been walking around the way I was. I probably looked like something from a fright show. Maybe even that shit who ran me off the road... maybe he'd come back to see if I was okay...

Or to make sure I was finished.

Was it bullshit? I knew enough of the scummy types to know that it was certainly possible.

I listened until I heard that peculiar ringing in my ears that meant I'd sunk to the level of imagining up sounds when I didn't actually hear any. And then I listened harder, feeling like if I just tried I could hear... hear...

The wind. Nothing but the wind.

Pathetic, Kai. A shiver passed through me, working up the right side of my body in chilling reminder that the left was momentarily broken. It's the Apple Bend murders, isn't it? You looked into the murders and now you're having a really ugly nightmare. They'd caught the killer. I'd been cautious enough to double-check, and everything they had on the guy was solid, right down to the confession.

So what if it fit his modus operandi to lure women out into the woods and hunt them? That didn't mean anything.

He's in jail. If he wasn't, it still wouldn't fit his MO to run someone off the road like that. He was more subtle. Up until the actual murder, anyway. Running through the facts was calming, helping me to distract my thoughts from the disturbing not-noise. So just relax. Some asshole ran you off the road, you bumped your head and got a little cooked, but you'll be fine in just a little bit so chill the fuck out.

Well then.

That actually helped.

Better. I stepped forward. Dragged my left foot, feeling somewhat zombie-ish. Stepped forward again, studiously paying attention to where my feet went. Woods aren't easy to walk in when you don't have two fully functioning legs. Doing fine. Doing good. Just you and the trees and a bunch of sleeping squirrels, that's all. And a car somewhere that's nice and ruined. Did I pay for insurance? Damn, I hope I paid for insurance...

Something touched my ankle. Grabbed my ankle, like hard, dry fingers, arresting my motion mid-step and making me trip and fall with what I hate to admit was a blurted scream. Whatever-it-was gave my ankle a good wrench, hurting like hell, but I didn't really care too much about that right that second because goddamnit, what the fuck is that, what's touching me, get it off get it off my mind was on other things and oh shit, some fucking psycho's out here, I'm out here with some fucking psycho, and I'm all messed up, I am not liking this I was busying myself with staying rational and calm and no no no no no

And... it was a root.

A root buried in leaves and dirt that I'd somehow missed seeing. Curved, leaving just enough space between it and the ground to catch a toe, it stared at me with poisoned innocence from where it rested against my throbbing ankle.

I blew out a breath, from my abdomen, like we learn to in martial arts. Another, drawing in a deeper one, trying to spread calm throughout my limbs. Scalding words hovered at the edge of my mind, ready to swoop in and berate me so that I could feel like less of a fool.

But somehow I didn't feel any better knowing it was just a root.

That quiet, earthy chuckle, like a soft rumble for my ears alone.

That's it. I am not alone out here. My instincts said to go ballsy. "I'm glad someone's getting a laugh outta this," I said with a tone intended to be disgusted, but it came out a little too slurred for that. "'Cause I left my sense of humor in the car."

The noise stopped.

"That's more like it."

Then started again. From the opposite side of me. Closer.

All right. Stay calm. Stay focused. I think we can trust that I'm not having an auditory hallucination here. Even if I couldn't trust that, I was going to. Better safe than dead, right? 'Dead.' Why'd I have to think 'dead'? Shit. So someone was out there, watching me, laughing at me, until I could prove otherwise. And it stood to reason that someone laughing at a woman who'd come (way too) close to dying just a bit ago wasn't trying to build a long-term, meaningful friendship.

Someone's out there, and I can't hear him right, or see him right, or smell him _at all._ He could sneak up on me before I knew it. Fear always equates to some part of my anatomy feeling cold. This time it was my throat, surrounded by a chilling grip that constricted it tightly. Can't fight with half a fucking body, can I?

But they'd caught the guy. I'd seen it. And his psychological profile said there was no way he could be working with anyone, not as unstable as he was, so this couldn't be someone involved in the same...

Copycat?

There was something that sounded like a whisper, but I couldn't make out the words. I strained, listening harder yet again, and still missed that soft brush of sound. Cleared my throat, feeling a catch in my chest.

"What?"

Now it caressed my ears as if the person were very, very close.

"Run."

"Fuck that," I got out. "Fuck you."

"Fuck you..."

"That's what I said."

"I will."

My heart felt frozen, like ice crystals ready to shatter. There was one memory screaming shrilly in my mental ears, sounding off every alarm I had. Victor. The woods. My habitual profanity as I told him what he could go do with himself-- How the fuck did I get so cocky? --and his grating voice as he held my chin and said why bother with himself, when he had me there...

Breath caught in my lungs. Somehow I untangled my foot and lunged up, trying to balance, turning sharply, scanning with eyes and poor ears and struggling to sniff past the blood in my nose. "Where the fuck are you?!" Yeah, like he's gonna answer that. "Come outta hiding, you goddamn coward!"

Nothing.

"C'mon!"

Not even wind.

Every minute he holds back is a minute that gets me stronger. "Little shit!" Put out the front. Invulnerable. Unafraid. "Lemme see how big and brave you are when you're not hiding behind the trees!"

Nothing, and then--

Behind me: "Soon." Right behind me, only when I spun there was... nothing.

And, "Soon," someone said again, three feet away only... not.

It wasn't comforting in the least to realize that.

***

My watch was dead, the cheap plastic melted, presumably from the car fire. I wasn't quite good enough with the stars to be able to accurately tell time that way, but I contented myself with the assurance that it couldn't be more than an hour until dawn. Surely no more than that.

I walked, sorta, as well as I could. I'd like to say that something instinctual was guiding me toward the road... but that'd be the height of wishful thinking. Or the depths of it, depending on your perspective. No 'higher power' or 'animal nature' was trying to help me out here. If there were such things, I was pretty sure they'd tired of my stubbornness ages ago.

He -- and I was pretty sure it was a 'he,' though that bare whisper hadn't been enough to tell for certain -- was silent. But watching. I knew he was watching. And as I walked I sometimes... saw things. Dancing just at the corners of vision, gone the moment I turned a full glare on them. I tried to study them with peripheral vision, as I'd learned to do a long time ago when dealing with multiple enemies. If you try you can train your peripheral vision to be nearly as good with details as the straight-on version. But somehow that did me no good out here, where my senses were taking far too long to return to normal and my body kept insisting on fouling me up at every opportunity.

Occasionally a crunching leaf would tell me that he still wanted to be noticed. I answered each sound with a challenge, hoping he'd have enough fun with that game to keep from pushing into a more dangerous one before I was ready to play at full strength. My head pounded with every word I said. I wondered distantly if I'd forgotten anything important when my brain was damaged.

I wondered if I could blame the cold fingers against my neck on the head injury.

Eventually I stopped in my tracks, blinking as I looked around me. My attention had been on him. On his location, his slight sounds, his very damned presence. I hadn't noticed the thickening brambles as more than obstacles in my way. I hadn't noticed that...

A deliberate crunch of leaves, off to the left... I thought. He wasn't happy that I'd stopped.

Where... where is he pushing me...? Goddamn this fucking head... My ears were... better, not good. At least I could see decently. But every nasty-sounding effort I made to clear my nose only dripped fresh, iron-tangy blood into my nasal passages and down the back of my throat, and my head was ringing more with the exertion. Since I had a little more control back in my left side I knew the symbiont was working... but it was apparently prioritizing. Attacking the worst first, saving minor things like perceptions of outside reality for later.

I didn't know if there would be a later.

He's copycatting the Apple Bend killer, I told myself, struggling to hear him over the pounding of blood between my ears. Gotta be. And I'm...

No. Injured, yes, but I was still tough as hell, damnit, and no pissy little human murderer-- You're human, Kai. And how do you know he is? --was gonna be the end of me. I'd faced the worst. I'd survived things that this creep couldn't even... imagine...

Or could he? Just what nastiness was he capable of imagining?

The voice, in front, coming from shadows blacker than pitch. "Scared."

"Not hardly," I said hoarsely. The slur was fading from my speech.

"Tired."

"Tired of this shit." Take a stand. Better here than at ground of his choosing. "Enough games. Get your ass out here."

Behind me. I didn't let myself turn. "Don't you want to see... your sisters...?"

Sweat itched at my skin. "Look, you sick fuck..."

A scream, ear-piercing even to my dulled senses, in front of me past the trees. High-pitched, maybe feminine, scared and agonized and--

Fake, my mind hissed, but I was already shoving through the underbrush with a pounding heart. Gotta be fake... he can't push you so he'll pull you... fuckin' A, Kai, what the hell do you think you're doing out here?

But maybe there was really someone in trouble out here... maybe he'd gotten another woman before setting sights on me...

The underbrush wasn't being my friend here, tangling around me, catching at legs and wrapping them with barbed fingers. I got hung up, cursing and fighting, feeling a sudden surge of overwhelming panic as it hit me that I was bound, trapped, as effectively as if he'd netted me. Struggling to reach the source of the scream suddenly became struggling for my own freedom.

Then the scream came again, allowing me to refocus my thoughts and efforts. Left leg... that's it... little higher... good... break that vine... I concentrated on my feet, and on blinking sweat from my eyes, and on my breathing. One thing at a time. No panic.

And then I was through, and the screams were going on, louder, more shrill, something - mocking - in the tone, and I stumbled gracelessly when my left foot forgot how to lift, and the damned screams kept going and going, but they were followed by laughter now, turning into laughter, and I raised my head and tried to stop my feet and tried to see what the fuck I'd just gotten myself into and--

I fell. Facedown, flat, without a hint of any sort of attempt to break my fall. My eyes felt like saucers, bigger even, in my face. A scream tried to burble up in my own throat. I swallowed it barely.

Two inches from my face the small ravine started. Broken, naked bodies were stacked nearly from end to end. Female. The ones nearest to me were almost fresh, from the looks of them, no more than a couple of weeks old. I could see the terror on their ruined faces, frozen in a macabre mask. At the far end I caught a glimpse of skeletal figures lying slightly askew from the rest.

Old skeletons.

Older than the Apple Bend killer's murders.

My throat wanted to seize up, refuse to allow sound. I made it work. "You... you weren't copycatting him..."

The chuckle. Ice tickled up my ribs.

"You weren't... oh fucking hell... He was copycatting you."

Pressure against the back of my head. Small, round, very hard. I closed my eyes tightly and swallowed.

"That's right," he murmured, this time without that haunting note. Now he was willing to sound purely, coldly human. "You figure things out quick."

My breath rattled. The pressure on my skull pressed my forehead down into the dirt. He was throwing his voice. Or maybe I was fucked up enough by the accident to help him screw with my head. "Look... we can make a deal..."

The hard-round-cold thing pressed hard enough to hurt. "Shut up."

I shut up.

"You're different," he told me in that cold, gleeful voice. "Not like the others. They couldn't last."

"I--"

"Shut up!" A kick, metal-toed boots, to my short ribs on the right side. I hissed and bit my lip. "Shut up! You don't get to talk!"

("You don't get a voice here," Vic growled. "All I wanna hear from you is screams.")

"Good," he said. "Good." A sharp nudge with the toe. "Roll over. Slow."

I did, turning to stare up at a shadowed face set atop a medium height, medium build Caucasian body. Closer at hand was the yawning mouth of a twelve-gauge Remington shotgun. One of those things, loaded right, will air out your skull of all its old dirty laundry.

I was rather fond of my dirty laundry.

He cocked his head, voice dropping, becoming solicitous. "You're just a mess, aren't you? Look at you." Headshake. "Just look at you. All filthy." I said nothing. He leaned a little closer, not shifting the shotgun by an inch. I could see his eyes glinting feverishly. "Are you scared, little girl? Are you crying?"

Yes. No.

"You don't need to be scared." Bullshit. "I don't wanna hurt you." The bodies... shit, all the bodies. He had to've been active for years to get all of them. "I think you're just... beautiful."

I tried to breathe through my nose again. Not much more luck than before, though at least the blood seemed to've stopped flowing. Couldn't take my eyes off the dark 'O' that stared at me, so close. I'd survived gunshots, knives and claws... shattered bones and evisceration and bullets tearing open my heart. Even had a bullet go through the brain once, straight through the frontal lobe. I lived.

If the symbiont could repair what that thing would do to my brain -- and it was possible that it could, given all it'd accomplished so far for me -- it still couldn't reconstruct the pathways of memory. No way. Memory is encoded in our brains as we experience the events, and everything that made me 'Kai' would be gone.

Sensei. Maggie. Darius. John. Zach. Arashi. Candy and JoJo. Mama Francis. Hank and his telescope.

Logan.

Even Vic.

It was more frightening than even contemplating death, I thought. The possibility of losing all self again, just like that. All that I was.

"You can answer," he said gently, eyes of some indistinguishable color gleaming more brightly in the dimness in his roundish face. "Are you scared?"

"Yes," I said honestly. Don't anger him while he's holding all the cards.

"Aww..." The barrel of the shotgun slid down, slowly, in a skin-brushing gesture. "You don't have to be scared so long as you do what you're told. Can you do that? Do what I tell you to do?"

You'll be begging me to kill you before this is over. "Yes."

Just as I was hoping that he'd leave the barrel pointing at my midsection or something -- somewhere that wouldn't kill me, but would only make me wish it had -- he jerked it back up with his broad hands to point at my face, the tremble from his fingers shaking the whole weapon slightly. "Don't get any ideas! I'm onto your ideas. You always think you're so smart, trying to sweet-talk me. But you never do what you're told!"

"I will. I'll do what you tell me to do." I'll feed you that shotgun barrel-first up the most painful orifice I can imagine.

He smiled suddenly, teeth glinting faintly, barely visible. Backed a step. Another. "Sit up."

I sat up, considerably shorter hair sliding against my shoulderblades.

"Good girl." He cocked his head again. It looked like a habitual motion. "How'd you survive that car wreck?"

"I was lucky."

"You should've died."

"I--"

"Shut up!" I shut up. He smiled again. "I'm glad you're back. This time, this time, it'll be perfect."

"Take off your shirt."

I straightened a little and tugged at it. He watched avidly. I thought of the bodies in the ravine right behind me. Thought of the ones that'd been close enough and in good enough shape for me to make out small details. Faces. Expressions on faces.

I pulled off my shirt, leaving myself in singed jeans and a bra.

The tip of the shotgun bobbled. "Pants, too. Now."

He was three feet away. When I stood he took another step back; not warily, exactly, but as if he wanted a better view.

The dead women. I saw the expressions on their faces.

"Y'know what?" I said roughly. "There's a problem."

He stepped forward sharply in threat. "What problem."

Their faces. He hadn't shot their faces. And this sort of killer may use a different MO from time to time, but his signature is always the same because his fantasy demands it, and from what I'd seen each of those women had died from a shot to the heart -- just like the Apple Bend murders. Like a ritual. And psychos do so love their rituals.

I lunged at him. Straight at him, hoping distantly that he'd panic and forget how to fire, giving me the opportunity to slam that barrel safely skyward. Didn't quite work out that way -- he was a good hand with the shotgun, and obviously experienced -- and instead my lunge slammed me into the extended barrel that he suddenly jerked down into place. I tried to roll around it, avoid the shot, get inside his reach. Was only partly successful when the gun roared, curiously quiet, and clipped my ribs on the left side, spinning me back and down.

Way down.

"No!" he shouted, something like - grief? - mingling with the fury in his thick voice. I could hear it all clearly, preternaturally so. Hearing was back.

Goddamn, I hurt.

"Damn you! I wasn't finished! You didn't let me finish!"

Yeah, rampant apologies, asshole. I tried not to breathe. Hard to do when I wanted to hyperventilate. My head was resting against a too-soft form that'd once housed a woman. My stomach roiled and tried to rise.

"No!" he said again. "You're going to finish! You will." His feet scrabbled at the edge of the shallow ravine, then he was suddenly there, touching me, grabbing my left arm and jerking hard. "I said--"

I still wasn't fully functioning, I couldn't quite get full sensation in my left side, my nose was still blocked and my head still screamed. But I was myself enough to snap my right hand over to close over his on my left arm, digging beneath his grip and tearing it free before twisting sharp and hard until several somethings cracked. His right hand. His trigger finger.

I dragged him down rather than pulling myself up, and this time I made sure that his screams were genuine. Desperation does amazing things to a person. You do things you... don't quite want to remember later. Things to forget the fear, to make them feel it instead.

Sometimes the "value of all human life" spiel just doesn't wash.

His face was red, bloody beneath my hands when I paused for breath. Features had been smashed and blurred. He was saying something between his cries -- it sounded like, "Stop, stop," over and over again.

I caught a breath and went at him harder. "Did they say that?" Ignored the fact that he was barely even thrashing anymore. "Did they?!"

His good hand flailed. Closed over a long dark shape, dragging it over and trying to raise it to use it as a club. I snatched the shotgun clumsily with my still-numb left hand and whipped it around with an echo of the ease I should've shown, and then his puffy eyes were opening to see exactly what he'd been kind enough to show me.

And all these women.

His words were barely mush, but I understood them. "D-don't," he gasped. "Money, I have... I'll pay..."

"Oh, now you wanna make a deal?" I hissed. "Izzat right?"

"Puh-please..."

I pumped the twelve-gauge, chambering a round as I scooted back off of him, first on knees, then gaining feet as I cleared his prone form. "Who was driving the car? Was that you?"

At that point he would've probably given up his mother. Didn't have to go quite that far. "My bruh-brother. Raymond."

"He does that for you? Runs women off the road like that?"

"He just... scares 'em, usually... just makes 'em pull over..."

"And then you hunt them. Herd them. Here." He was practically on top of the bodies. The stench of decay was creeping past my blocked nose, now, invading my lungs. "You just..." I was beginning to feel lightheaded, sick to my stomach, damn near ready to pass out. "You..." I could've been one of 'em. Tonight, here, or back there with Vic. I could've been one of them.

"Lemme go... please lemme g-go..."

Now he regretted it, when the price was pain. Now he made a connection between action and consequence. "To sit in a prison cell while you get a thousand appeals to keep you from getting those lethal injections?" My body wanted to shake, but my hands stayed steady. "That's if the prosecutor doesn't flub the case and let you walk."

"I j-just wanted--"

I shook my head to clear stinging sweat from my eyes. I only made a promise to one psychopath.

The shotgun sounded much louder this time.

***

Comments to KayleeSama@aol.com.