JC hesitated, caught between helping his team and needing to pursue Kim. And in that moment of indecision, Natasha hit Happy with a mental blast of pure rage that rocked him back on his feet. Natasha seized the moment and threw her thoughts at the ghost of Kim, hanging on the air at the end of the corridor; and Kim screamed shrilly as streams of blue-grey ectoplasm burst out of her ghostly form, torn from her by the sheer force of Natasha’s will. The ectoplasm quickly formed itself into solid bars under Natasha’s urging, imprisoning Kim inside a spirit cage. Kim screamed again, caught between two implacable forces, both of which had power over her while she had none. But summon as it would, the unseen force could not pull Kim through bars made from her own ghostly form. The spirit cage held her.
By then, Happy had recovered, and he lashed out at Natasha with his own rage. Natasha met the attack easily. She knew all about rage and its uses. Happy quickly brought himself back under control, knowing he faced a mind easily as powerful as his own and that if he didn’t fight with all the strength and subtlety at his command, he was a dead man. He met Natasha’s cold gaze and held it, attacking her shields on a dozen different levels at once, and Natasha was forced to give him her full attention. They stood face-to-face, totally absorbed in each other, like two gun-slingers on an old Western street. There was a war going on inside their heads.
The station disappeared for them, replaced by a psychic battle-field of their own creation, a desolate plain, cracked dry earth under a night sky, full of pale, fading stars. It was cold and silent, an empty place, with no help or distractions, fit only for battle and slaughter. Happy concentrated, and great stone golems burst up out of the earth, dry soil falling away from their brute heads and wide shoulders as they levered themselves up out of the broken ground. Crude, misshapen, only nominally human in form, they lurched and lumbered towards Natasha, to break and crush her with their heavy hands. She laughed at Happy, a brief, cold sound rich with contempt; and lightning bolts slammed down from the empty heavens to shatter the golems and reduce them to rubble.
Then Natasha had the advantage, and the battle-ground changed. The two telepaths stood in the ruins of a city, in the dark time of an apocalyptic future. Tall buildings had been thrown down and lay half-buried under crawling alien plants and weeds. A pale sun hung low on a sickly green sky. Natasha shot up suddenly, growing in size until her giant form towered over Happy. She raised a pink leather boot to stamp on him. But Happy immediately increased his size, shooting up past Natasha until it was his turn to tower over her. She grew again in size, then him, then her again—two incredible giants blasting up out of the ruins of a dead city, each of them trying to outdo the other. They became vast and colossal, leaving the world behind, until they were the size of gods, and threw planets and comets and worlds at each other.
Battles and battle-fields came and went increasingly quickly, there and gone in a moment, flashing like kaleidoscopes as two minds fought it out for dominance. They tore at each other like tygers, burning bright in the forests of their nights.
Back in the real world, in the station corridor, strange things were occurring in the vicinity of the two motionless telepaths, psychic fall-out from the mental wars. A rain of fish fell out of nowhere, slapping against the walls and flopping helplessly on the floor, drowning in fresh air. Rose petals fell, in twisting patterns of strange significance, then humped slowly across the floor like so many flat red slugs. And a slow, terrible pressure built upon the air, as two minds slammed together, and neither would give an inch.
Melody forced Erik back step by step, dodging his increasingly wild attacks with contemptuous ease. She was right on top of him, and enjoying the chance to try out for real the shokotan karate she’d only ever practiced in the gym. But though she danced and punched and kicked with dazzling speed, somehow Erik continued to evade her, constantly backing away, staying just out of reach. He didn’t have any fighting skills of his own, but sheer terror had given him amazing speed and reflexes. He kept stabbing at her with his pointing bone, but Melody never gave him a chance to draw a bead. Behind her, posters on the walls burst into flames or exploded into multi-coloured confetti under the bone’s malign influence. Melody spun and kicked, and Erik retreated, and neither dared break off long enough to try something else.
Erik was outraged. There’d been nothing about this in the briefings. Girl geeks weren’t supposed to suddenly turn into warrior women. It wasn’t fair. The blows and kicks got even closer, and he backed away even more frantically.
Neither Happy nor Melody could break off from what they were doing to help JC, so it was up to him to break Kim free from her spirit cage. He stood before her, careful not to get too close to the shimmering blue-grey bars, and spoke gently to Kim, calming her. She’d been shocked right out of her deathly trance and, for the first time, seemed fully awake and aware. Her vivid green eyes fixed on JC, seeing him as real, and right before her. She looked at the bars of the cage, then past them at the world beyond, and fear and panic surged up in her as she realised she wasn’t where and when she thought she was. She started to fade away, retreating back inside, denying herself to deny the world; and only JC’s calm, coaxing, caring voice brought her back again. She clung to his presence like a lifeline, and he stood firm and steady before her.
“Trust me,” he said. “I won’t let you down. I can get you out of the trap that holds you; but you have to work with me. We can do this if you work with me.”
She thought he was only talking about the spirit cage. She nodded eagerly, and JC moved as close to the bars as he dared.
“These bars are made of ectoplasm, drawn out of you by the Project woman. It’s yours; it belongs to you. So take it back. Concentrate, and take it back inside you, where it belongs.”
Kim looked at him for a long moment, and he held her gaze steadily, reassuringly. Kim glared at the shimmering bars of her cage, and they quickly unravelled under the impact of her will, which was so much stronger than anyone had anticipated. She wasn’t lost and dreaming any more. Kim inhaled the ectoplasm, the blue-grey smoke disappearing into her mouth and nose in moments; and she was free again.
For a moment, JC and Kim stood face-to-face, the living and the dead, looking into each other’s eyes, smiling at each other, not knowing what to say. They could both feel the powerful attraction burning between them. As though everything they’d ever done had been necessary steps to lead them to this place, this moment. As though the whole world was holding its breath, to see what would happen next.
And then the unseen force seized hold of Kim Sterling and snatched her away again. She receded rapidly before JC, hauled backwards down the long corridor at impossible speed, while she kicked and struggled helplessly and screamed in horror and rage. She held out her arms beseechingly to JC, and he ran after her. He followed her retreating form through corridor after corridor, never looking back once. Because she needed him, and he needed her. Because it was his job.
He knew he was abandoning Happy and Melody to their own devices, but he had faith in them. He hoped they’d understand. Understand that he had no choice in this. Love had come late in life to JC, and he was damned if he’d lose it.
SIX
ALL KINDS OF APPETITES
Melody was fighting well, and Erik was fighting dirty, and it was still as near a draw as could be. Melody spun and pirouetted, her feet cracking out like the wrath of God Himself, and still she couldn’t seem to land a blow on the madly dodging and ducking Erik. He was panting hard by then, his face flushed an unhealthy shade of purple, and he was waving his Aboriginal pointing bone around with less and less accuracy; but the little creep wouldn’t go down. Melody finally threw caution to the winds, stepped inside his reach, and deftly kicked the pointing bone right out of his hand. Erik watched dumbly as it flew through the air, and Melody moved in to beat the crap out of him. Erik laughed breathlessly, right into her face, and his other hand came up holding his specially modified taser. He jammed the metal horns into her gut and hit the button.
Melody convulsed, her whole body going into spasm after spasm as she was thrown backwards by the massive contractions in her muscles. She crashed to the platform, hitting it hard, and lay there, twitching and shuddering. Her eyes were wide, and drool ran from her slack mouth. Erik strolled unhurriedly forward to lean over her, studied her thoughtfully, and hit her with the taser again. She convulsed once more, arms and legs flailing while her back and the back of her head slammed against the unyielding platform. She made brief grunting sounds of agony, and Erik laughed happily.
He set the taser’s metal horns against the trembling skin at Melody’s bare throat, then raised his voice.
“Happy! If you don’t surrender to Natasha, right now, I’m going to give your little techno-geek girl-friend a full-scale shock, and you can listen to her brains frying.”
Distracted, caught between two thoughts and intentions, Happy’s concentration was shattered; and Natasha slammed through his mental shields like they weren’t even there. Her thoughts overwhelmed his, and, in a moment, she had shouldered her way inside his mind and taken control. Happy didn’t even get a chance to cry out. He simply stood there before her, utterly still. A prisoner inside his own head. Natasha relaxed abruptly, like a runner at the end of a race. She breathed heavily and grinned widely, even as sweat ran down her face.
It had been a near thing, much nearer than she’d expected. And it hadn’t been the pills, either; Happy was a lot stronger than he allowed himself to believe. It had been a long time since anyone had been able to match Natasha in a fair contest. Mainly because Natasha didn’t believe in fair contests; she believed in winning. She moved forward, kicking aside some feebly moving rose petals, so she could laugh right into Happy’s unmoving face.
“Think you’re so good. Think you’re so big-time! I would have kicked your arse even without Erik’s distraction.”
Something in Happy’s inscrutable face still managed to suggest he rather doubted it. So Natasha took control of his right arm and his right hand, and made Happy punch himself repeatedly in the face. The sound of bone cracking into bone was shockingly loud in the quiet, and Natasha clapped her hands together delightedly as blood gushed from Happy’s nose and spilled from his rapidly swelling mouth. Happy hit himself again and again, and Natasha never got tired of it.
“Look over here, Natasha!” said Erik, not wanting to be left out. “Look what I can do!”
And when Natasha looked, he jabbed Melody in the gut with his taser and giggled as she jumped and kicked, her head jerking helplessly back and forth. The agonised sounds coming from her mouth were more animal than human.
Natasha sniffed and looked at Happy. “You can stop that now. Just stand there till I have need of you.” She put a hand to her forehead. “You have no idea what it’s like inside that man’s head, Erik. So many chemicals, so many reactions, so many side effects . . . his thoughts rise and fall like tides, and his emotions surge back and forth like icebergs. It’s a wonder to me he still knows who he is. No, Erik; no more taser, no more playtime. Revenge is one thing, giving in to our baser natures is quite another. Control, Erik, control; discipline at all times. We must always be in control of our passions and not the other way round.”
Erik raised an eyebrow, considered a very cutting comeback, then quickly decided against saying it. He put the taser away and recovered his pointing bone.
“You’re no fun any more,” he said accusingly. “How else are we supposed to make them talk?”
“Who cares what these two have to say?” said Natasha. “I doubt very much they know anything we don’t. No; we’ll use them as bait to get what we want, then kill them. That is what we’re here for, after all. Now, did you happen to see where JC went?”
“Last I saw he was running for the exit,” said Erik. “Chasing that ghost woman.”
Natasha frowned and tapped a single pink-leather-gloved fingertip against her lower lip. “Why would he abandon his fellow team members to go haring off after a ghost? I mean, what’s so special about her?”
“Nothing I could see,” said Erik. “Maybe he fancies her.”
“Oh please!” said Natasha, curling her upper lip magnificently. “One of us and one of them? I don’t think so. Necrophilia is so . . . tacky. And JC is, after all, a professional.”
“You’re jealous!” said Erik delightedly. “You are!”
“You want a slap?”
Erik took a careful step backwards. Natasha turned her back on him cuttingly and considered the motionless Happy and the still-twitching Melody.
“On the whole, I don’t think Vivienne MacAbre will be at all pleased with us if we give up now. We were sent down here to kill JC. Having to admit that we let him get away while we concentrated on these two lesser fish . . . would not go down well. So, we use them as bait, to draw him back.”
“I could still make use of them,” said Erik, hopefully. “I have a full surgical kit in my back-pack. I could do all kinds of interesting things with them. Really. You’d be surprised.”
“Quite possibly,” said Natasha. “But we don’t have the time. There’s something really big, and really powerful, down here in the dark with us, something Vivienne never even mentioned. And I want it.”
“I don’t know,” said Erik. “That wasn’t the mission. You heard the cat head.
Something very old. Something from the afterworlds.
”
“I know,” said Natasha. “I can feel it, like a constant pressure on my mental shields, trying to force its way in . . . It’s big, Erik, you have no idea how big. This could be the biggest catch of our career.”
“Can you pinpoint its location?” said Erik, cautiously.
“Not without giving the problem my full concentration,” said Natasha, glancing at Happy. “He’s still fighting me, you know. Like a fox with his paw caught in a trap. The chase is over, but he still won’t admit it.”