Touch the World

Part Four: Horror Show

t started with a glance.

Sebastian's eyes darted to the gun by the couch, and then to the sword laying in the far corner of the room.

The instant his eyes left hers, Dobbs was on him. She closed the distance between them with a run, springing at Sebastian as soon as his eyes found the sword. His eyes snapped back to her instantly-

Would he fight.... or go for one of the weapons?

The gun was closer. He lunged for it, but at the last instant he stopped... pivoted his hips and threw a spinning kick at Dobbs' head. The kick was perfectly executed... but Dobbs not only knew it was coming; she was hoping for it. She ducked under the kick and kept running, intending to plow into him and drive him back into the wall. There was a rustle of wind as Sebastian side-stepped her charge. His fist came for the back of her head in a short, powerful arc... but Dobbs was already spinning-

Their forearms crossed as her punch met his... each attack blocking the other. Dobbs' left hand shot downward to the boy's crotch. His knee jerked up, knocking her hand aside.... an unorthodox but effective block. The boy twisted, throwing his weight behind the open-hand strike to her face. Dobbs rolled away to her left, and Sebastian's extended hand jerked backward suddenly, driving his elbow back toward her throat. He hit her shoulder instead. It felt like she'd been shot.

"UNGH!" she grunted, exaggerating the sound to make it seem like he'd really hurt her. He spun, arm coming around in a solid back-fist strike that Dobbs' easily blocked, while simultaneously firing a punch at his face. Sebastian's head leaned to one side; the punch just clipped his ear. He grabbed at her wrist and almost got it. She grabbed for his hair and almost got it. The kid was fast. So was she.

Dobbs took a quick half-step back, as if trying to separate from him. If the roles had been reversed, she would have chased him with punch and kept on him until he missed a block... but he didn't bite. Instead, he went for her gun. He turned to the right and started-

Dobbs's spinning kick almost caught him in the gut. He blocked. Dobbs reversed directions-

-he ducked under her second kick and charged her.

Front-snap kick... as fast and as hard as she could make it. It would have ended the fight. She had PLANNED on it ending the fight. She had drawn him into it and he had taken the bait... but the plan dissolved as Sebastian slid to one side, allowing the kick to just BARELY miss his head as he kept running. Dobbs had to move quickly to avoid him... but not completely. One step, twist-

The momentum of Sebastian's stride was transferred to his fist as he punched... a glancing blow to Dobbs' exposed side. Dull pain clenched her from hip to armpit as her own fist drove into the side of the boy's skull... using the boy's right ear as a flesh-colored bullseye.

Dobbs hissed at the pain. She had hoped to knock the boy unconscious, or at least stun him... but Sebastian shrugged off the punch and quickly retaliated

-Backfist-
-Elbow strike-
-open-hand strike to the face-
-ridge hand strike to the neck-

Each attack followed its predecessor so closely that they all blended into one motion.

He was good.

Two blocks... dodge... block... He never touched her. His strikes rolled off of her blocks like water. While throwing her last block, she eased backward. He followed with a solid punch aimed at her throat.

Her THROAT!? What... was this kid trying to KILL her!?

Of course he was.

Both of Dobbs' arms came up, forming an 'X' that caught the boy's arm. Her right hand snapped around and caught his wrist. She yanked him toward her. He twisted, about to throw a transverse punch with his free hand. She drove her knee up into his abdomen as hard as she could.

Suddenly, his hand vanished from her grasp. He snatched it free and then threw it right back at her.

Dobbs felt the wind as it blew past her face on the heels of the punch. That one would have cracked her skull.

Both of Dobbs' arms were already drawn back. She buried two fists into his side. Two fists... one punch. The boy exhaled sharply and went sliding back... one step...

Her block made it up in time, but his roundhouse kick plowed right through it-

The apartment shook around her like an earthquake.... a quake contained entirely within the confines of her skull.

Dizzy, Dobbs skipped backward... bobbing and weaving from side to side as the boy chased her with.... one kick... two... thr-

Dobbs' right hand came across her body, blocking the third kick while spinning into the boy with a ridge-hand strike. He blocked.... and at the same instant, she jerked her leg forward. She had hooked her foot around his left ankle. While he absorbed the momentum of her strike, she snatched him off balance-

He made a quick, hopping motion-

His foot rushed past her surprised face as he threw himself into a back flip-

BACK FLIP!?!

Dobbs lunged and spun-

The instant BEFORE he landed, her foot caught him dead-center of his solar plexus.

WHAM!

He hit the floor already off balance. He leaned backward; her spinning hook kick missed him by an inch. He ducked under the next kick and came up swinging... arms flashing past each other like the blades of some rotating machine. It was a style Dobbs hadn't seen before... and she had seen quite a few styles. She aborted her third kick and backed away-

-almost. She halted and prepared to block. One hand came for her throat, the other for her gut. They both retracted before they got anywhere near their targets and then shot forth again, seeking-

Dobbs snatched the speeding hands out of the air, pulled the boy forward, and head-butted him. He turned his head at the last moment, and she caught him on the cheek instead of the nose. His up-thrusting knee buried itself in her stomach as she shoved him away. He went back... turned and was gone...

Going for the sword!

Dobbs took two steps, putting as much power as she could into both of them. Then she was sailing toward him in a flying side kick. His back was to her, and when he turned, she knew she had made a mistake.

His hands came from nowhere, moving in the opposite direction as his body. One step... one grab... one twist/throw...

...and suddenly Dobbs was flying backwards into the wall.

CRASH!

The cheap wallboard crumbled around her, and one of the wall studs cracked from the impact. Any harder and she would have gone straight through the damn wall!

-and here it comes-

Nowhere near as stunned as her opponent expected her to be, Dobbs side-stepped the boy's punch at the last instant.

CRASH!

While she had NEARLY gone through the wall, the boy's fist DID go through. He was buried in wallboard up to the elbow... a position which shielded one delicious target (the elbow itself) while exposing another.

Sebastian grunted as Dobbs rained punches down the right side of his body. The first punch was to the armpit, pounding the nexus of nerves hidden within the joint.

Suddenly his arm was tearing out of the wall and swinging toward her. His knuckles grazed across her left temple.... it felt like he'd hit her with an iron skillet, and THAT was with an arm that should have been immobilized from the nerve punch.

What kind of pain threshold did this kid HAVE!?

She twisted out of the way of his next punch... aimed once again at her throat, but stepped right into the path of a fierce side-kick that drove her back toward the table in the dining room. She bumped into the table, and grabbed edge of it for balance. The punch and kick had her reeling, and the kid knew it. He pressed in hard, with a kick that she ducked under, and a downward hammer-fist strike that avoided only by spinning clear-

CRASH!

Sebastian's fist tore through table like a bullet through paper. The table split down the middle. Shattering furniture was no amazing feat; a pre-teen girl could have done it with proper training. But the fact that SHE had been in the way of that punch only reinforced the fact that this kid was playing for keeps. So did the boy's next move. Sebastian grabbed a piece of the table... a short plank ending in a tooth-like pattern of fractured wood... and tried to rip her throat open with it.

He spun quickly, snapping his body around almost before Dobbs could see that he had something in his hand. But she DID see it, and she knew that the fight was over. The plank was coming for her neck. Dobbs leaned back-

CRACK!

She shattered the board with the heel of her hand, driving from the outside inward, in the same direction as Sebastian's swing. Half of the board went tumbling through the air between them-

CRACK!

Dobbs punched... her fist collided with the wood in mid air and sent it flying back-

-right into Sebastian's face.

BOK!

The fist-propelled projectile bounced off of the boy's forehead, carving a gash between his eyes as it did. The gash was harmless, but the split-second of distraction it caused was not.

"BULLSEYE!" Dobbs screamed as her front snap kick caught Sebastian squarely on the chin. It was not a gentle hit. The boy's head snapped backward, and before it could do much else Dobbs had delivered a spinning kick to the upper abdomen. Sebastian's feet left the floor, and he landed on his back a few feet behind where he had been standing.

"Oh, is that it?" Dobbs gloated, smiling. "Hmph... and I thought maybe we was gonna fight!"

She looked around for something to tie him up with, but as soon as her eyes left him, Sebastian moved. It was a sudden burst of motion that took him from flat on his back to a crouched, defensive position in the blink of an eye. He leveled his eyes at her and spat out a mouthful of blood, along with what may have been a tooth. More blood streamed down from the cut on his forehead and dripped off the end of his nose.

Dobbs returned the boy's glare, and they stared into each other eyes just as they had done at the beginning of the fight...

...except that now, the boy looked mad.

is head hurt.

There was a fierce, white-hot buzzing sensation near the back of his skull, and for a moment, Jason thought that maybe someone had walked up and driven a railroad spike into his head when he wasn't looking. But Jason knew that the pain wasn't physical... it was the Affinity working overtime, trying to figure out The Answer to the One Big Question:

What The Hell Was He Gonna Do About THIS!

'This' was the large-caliber bullet coming toward him. Behind the bullet was the gun that had fired it... a .454 Casull identical to the one in Jason's hand. Behind the gun was... Jason Brooks. It was like looking in a mirror, and Jason (the real Jason), would have had a half-dozen witty remarks for his doppleganger if it weren't for the small matter of his impending death.

The fake Jason had gotten the drop on him... snuck up behind him.

Wasn't this how Donovan died!? How ironic...

Jason put the thought out of his mind, concentrating instead on the bullet headed for the center of his face.

Yes, that was exactly where it was going to hit... the Affinity had already told him that. What the Affinity HADN'T told him, however, was what to do about it. At the first sign of trouble, the magic had done its job and slowed the world to a nice, leisurely crawl. (Or rather, Jason's perceptions had accelerated). To him, the fatal bullet was slow enough that, if he were someone else, he could walk up to it and swat it out of the air with his hand. But he wasn't someone else. He didn't have that kind of speed. The Affinity made him fast, but that speed was confined to aiming, shooting, reloading... It didn't turn him into the Flash.

But it did do some rather interesting things... like estimating the bullet's speed and comparing it to the maximum speed that it could get out of Jason's muscles. The conclusion: Jason would never get his own gun up in time. If he COULD, then he could shoot the fake Brooks' bullet out of the air, saving himself and hitting the fake Brooks with a well-placed ricochet.

Affinity: Not gonna happen. Even with enhanced reflexes, by the time he got his gun aimed it would already be too late.

Second choice.... dodging the bullet.

The rest of Jason's body was even slower than his gun hand. If he moved as fast as he could, the bullet would juuuuuust hit him. He'd have a neat little hole it the SIDE of his head rather than dead-center. But he'd still be dead and it would still be a closed-casket funeral.

Panic began to set in. The bullet was moving not-so-slowly and steadily toward its target. If there was going to be a solution that didn't involve his brains being blown out the back of his skull, then he would need it now.

And there it was.

The concept of what was about to happen flashed through Jason's brain, resulting in a storm of nerve impulses that cascaded out toward the far reaches of his body. Those nerve impulses vanished the instant they left his brain... only to reappear instantly at their destinations, without having gone through the intervening distances. The Affinity didn't play dice with propagation delays of the human nervous system... no sir, not even a little bit.

The result: Everything happened all at once. Before Jason even knew he HAD a plan, his body was already carrying it out. He was too slow to dodge or fire his gun... so he did both.

Jason's hand... still off to one side... tilted upward slightly, firing the .454 revolver. The bullet left the barrel at 1800 feet per second, and would go on through several walls before it stopped moving. But the Affinity was not concerned with the endpoint of the bullet's trajectory. Once fired, the bullet had already completed it's job. The recoil of an 1800 foot-per-second slug shoved back against Jason's arm, adding its own momentum to the perfectly timed thrust from Jason's own legs. The result of the added push was minimal... an additional fraction of an inch to one side.

The false Jason's bullet zipped past Jason's face, missing him by that EXACT SAME fraction of an inch.

If the Affinity were a person, then she would have been smiling smugly somewhere in the depths of Jason's brain.

But the job wasn't over yet.

The world began to speed up slightly as Jason's second gun came into play. The first revolver fired at the same time that his evil twin fired a second shot. The bullets collided in the air somewhere between them. Bullet #1 went up through the ceiling. Bullet #2 pierced a wall (or three) and was gone. Jason's second revolver spat another lead projectile, but the other Jason was already throwing himself backward and to the side... using his own enhanced reflexes to achieve the impossible:

Jason Brooks missed.

The false Jason kept firing as he backed into the hallway... emptying his revolvers in just under two seconds. Jason shot every one of his bullets out of the air, using one revolver to create a storm of ricochets while trying to hit his twin with the other. He put three bullets through his doppleganger's trenchcoat and another through the wall behind him.

Then he was gone.

Jason reloaded and went after him.

he had hurt him.

He had entered this encounter already wounded, and now, because he had underestimated the woman, he had come within a millimeter of biting off his own tongue when she'd kicked him. Her second kick had seriously bruised or possibly cracked at least two ribs. Shallow breaths hurt. Deep breaths hurt a lot. The wound on his shoulder had re-opened, and now his arm felt like a sandbag attached to his torso with large nails. He had almost been unconscious for a second...

...but he could still move, and THAT meant that the woman was still going to die. Probably within the next eight seconds.

He searched out his knife and her gun. Both were out of reach, and he had to get within striking distance of Dobbs to get to either. Therefore, getting his hands on a weapon was only a secondary objective.

He went for the sword.

Everything about his movements broadcast that this was an actual attempt to get the weapon, even though it was not. When Dobbs rushed to cut him off, Sebastian lurched forward, falling... just before the fall became a roll, he caught himself with one hand, and propelled himself upward in a forward-flip that carried him over Dobbs' attack.

He landed in a crouch, one hand reaching for the sword that was now at his fingertips-

Only it wasn't. The woman had kicked it away an instant before he reached for it. Sebastian's weapon was skidding across the bare floor, about to join the gun on the other side of the room. The woman's foot was still extended. He grabbed it and yanked her even further off balance. Dobbs' other foot left the floor. Her body went down; the foot came up. Sebastian released her and leaned away before the foot could catch his jaw (again). When Dobbs hit the floor, one of her feet came up toward his crotch while the other tried to hook around his ankle.

Predictable. He was a quarter-inch out of range. One quick, shuffling movement... Sebastian's right foot came down in a bone-breaking stomp aimed at Dobbs' left ankle, while he caught right foot in his hands (again)-

CRACK!

The sound was not the woman's ankle breaking.

A sharp jolt of pain exploded up and down his already bruised right side. The woman had hit him with a piece of the table he'd shattered earlier... a hard shot to the kidney with a narrow piece of wood, which broke in half on impact.

In the same instant, the heel of her free foot collided with his wrist. He let her leg go as he backed away, clutching his side-

The woman took the bait and came after him. She was on her feet in an instant, with one of her ubiquitous front kicks arcing upward toward his gut.

Perfect.

Sebastian struck, throwing himself forward in a powerful lunge. The hand that had been 'clutching' his side came away from his torso like a missile... too fast to dodge and too strong to block even if she DID see it coming. The same punch that had went through the wall collided with the woman's chest just below and between her breasts. Breath exploded out of her, and her eyes widened comically-

That was initial pain and realization. The agony of cracked ribs, jostled organs and a badly bruised diaphragm would be hitting right about... now.

A quick spinning backfist caught her at the height of distraction. The woman went stumbling to Sebastian's right. Sebastian paused to fight back a sudden wave of weakness... and mild concern at the numbness spreading down his arm. He looked down and saw droplets of blood hitting the floor around him. It was mostly from his shoulder. It wasn't bad, but it was already affecting him.

He waited for Dobbs to fall, but she didn't. Instead, she steadied herself and raised her hands like a boxer. One of her eyes looked glazed and unfocused. Blood was drooling out of the same corner of her mouth. She was out of breath.

So was he.

"So are you gonna tell me what you're doing here," she said... obviously stalling to clear her head. "Or am I gonna have to keep embarrassing you?"

"Leave now and I'll let you live," he replied... obviously stalling to clear his head.

"Have it your way."

Sebastian expected her to attack, but she just stood there. For a second it looked like she was about to fall over. It was either a ruse to draw him into an attack, or she was hurt more than she seemed. And she was STILL between him and the weapons. Either way, Sebastian took the invitation. He approached cautiously but quickly, eyes searching the dozen or so targets available for attack.

Sebastian was already blocking when the 'surprise' attack came. He deflected the kick with his forearm, and drew back to throw a punch... but his punch turned into a block. Her hand was on a collision course with his jaw. He could easily have slapped the fist out of the air, but instead Sebastian jerked to one side and twisted out of the away of Dobbs' speeding fist. Spinning, he came around behind her and drove his elbow into the back of her skull. The blow never landed. Dobbs ducked while turning at the waste and bringing her arm around. A ridge-hand strike capable of snapping a 2x4 caught Sebastian in the side, just under his extended arm.

All the strength and feeling instantly drained out of his right side.

"UNGH!"

Dobbs stepped back and fired an axe-kick at his head. Sebastian wanted no part of it. He ducked and pretended to dodge to one side. When the woman prepared to take his head off with another kick, he launched himself forward. He brought his left arm up at the last second and thrust it across her neck as he slammed into her. Off balance from her kick, Dobbs was thrown back... and she kept going back as Sebastian's charge drove her across the room.

CRASH!

The back of her head hit the wall a fraction of a second before her upper torso. Sebastian expected... and had planned for... her neck to snap under his forearm. Or at the very least to felt the satisfying crunch of her windpipe. Instead, the already weakened wall gave way behind her, sending them both charging into the next apartment.

renchcoat flying behind him, Jason swept into the hallway like-

"EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!!!"

-Oh. He had forgotten about the monsters.

There were seven semi-human figures ambling down the hallway, with another pair just turning the corner from the elevators and more coming out of the stairwell. They were the former residents of the building. Braxis had 'reworked' them and left them behind as a little surprise. They had let him get in, but getting out was going to be an entirely different story.

...a story that was looking a lot like a horror movie.

The first creature looked like a cross between a human being and a giant cricket. It was crouching a few yards away, and when Brooks emerged, it sprang at him. Grotesque, oversized legs propelled it down the hall in one leap... its circular, fang-filled mouth wide open in a high pitched screech that made Jason's ears burn.

Jason shot it out of the air... firing three times. One bullet to the head, one to the chest, and the third to the throat (to stop that God-awful NOISE!). Jason threw himself to one side, and the creature dropped past him, hitting the floor sliding a few feet down the hall, leaving a smear of blood-like goo behind it.

But it wasn't dead.

It turned and leapt at him again. Instead of a scream, a stream of blood squirted out from its ruined throat. Two more shots... one to the gut and a second to the chest, slightly off-center. The creature ceased its attack and began flailing around on the floor, throwing goo everywhere as it died.

"WWWWWWWWWOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!"

Next up, was some kind of.... hell, Jason couldn't tell WHAT it looked like. Whatever it was was running toward him, waving the long tentacles that it had instead of arms. Instead of a face, it had a giant sucker in the middle of its skull. The sucker had a large, sharp beak buried in the center of it. The beak was open, and the noise coming out of it was even worse than the cricket-thing.

"WWWWWWWWWWWWWOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!"

BLAM!
BLAM!
BLAM!
BLAM!
BLAM!

Jason put five shots into it and it kept right on coming, knocking down some of the slower-moving monsters in its way just to get to him. Braxis must have shifted its internal organs around; where this thing's heart and brain were located was ANYBODY'S guess. He certainly had no clue.

"Oh, well..."

Jason shoved the empty revolvers into their holsters and drew his second pair of .454's.

Two shots: Left knee. Right knee. The monster hit the floor.

Now it was time to leave; the hallway was starting to get crowded. There were about twenty more 'things' between him and the stairwell.... all different.... all ugly. He reloaded his guns and started running.

Jason didn't waste bullets trying to find vital organs. He went for the appendages. Arms, claws, tentacles, suckers, barbed tongues... Whatever these things intended to grab him with, Jason put a bullet in it. He maimed each creature before he got to it, and after he passed he turned and shot the legs out from under it so that it couldn't follow. He went through both pairs of .454's in a few seconds. Then he dropped back to the .357 revolvers hidden up the sleeves of his coat. When they were empty, he stopped running and pulled the one .45 semiautomatic from the small of his back. He kept shooting with it while re-loading the other weapons with one hand. By the time the .45 was empty, he was ready to run again.

He was halfway to the stairwell.

He sent bullets down the corridor ahead of him to clear the way. The stairwell door opened and a small, dog-like thing bounced out into the hall. Somebody's pet. It looked like a wingless bat with legs. Jason shot it... the bullet send it skidding back into the stairwell. He turned his attention back to the big thing looming ahead of him. Its hands were larger than Jason's head... but two shots to each wrist and the hands weren't a problem any more. Jason ran past it... turning to blow out its ankles before moving on to the next target, which was-

The lights went out.

"Wha-"

Everything was pitch black for a second. Then the emergency lights came on... bathing the corridor and its parade of monsters in a feeble yellow light. Jason took aim at the nearest creature-

The EMERGENCY lights went out. They didn't come back on.

Everything in the corridor went totally and completely black.

Jason turned and put his back against the nearest wall. He was alone... in the dark... with monsters all around him. The buzzing of the Affinity increased as it started targeting the creatures by their sounds. He could hit them, but without SEEING them he couldn't place his shots. He could bullets into these monsters all day without hitting anything vital. Then he would run out of ammo. Then it would be over.

"Think, think, THINK!..."

Something ran toward him.

Jason shot it-

BLAM!

-and for a split-second, he could see. He didn't LIKE what he saw, but he could SEE!

The MUZZLE FLASH!

Jason felt the Affinity ramp up in his mind like an revving engine... buzzing so loud that he could almost HEAR it. Muscles in his hands... his arms... and even his EYES tightened in preparation.

He targeted the first shot by sound. Then used the flash from the first shot to target the second... then used the second to target the third...

Each blast of light was less than a second long, but it was enough. It was more than enough... with the supernatural speed of Jason's reflexes, he may as well have been shooting under stadium lights in broad daylight.

Braxis' monsters had closed in around him, moving in for the kill. Of course they could see in the dark.... OF COURSE they could! The first six shots cleared two of the things (the ugliest so far) out of Jason's way. He ran, leaping over one of the monsters who had recently discovered the difficulties of standing upright with shattered kneecaps. When Jason's feet touched the floor, he turned and shot off the clawed fingers that were reaching for the back of his neck. The bullet tore the fingers off of the twisted hand... and went straight into one of the creature's three eyes. By the time the bullet exited the skull (making quite a mess in the process), Jason was already firing at two other targets.

All the creatures that looked fast enough to catch him were now blind, crippled, or otherwise out of commission.

Now he only had to worry about the ones in front of him.

In the span of one muzzle-flash, he put three of them on the floor. He ran past them, turning to shoot one in the hip as it got up to follow. Shattered pelvis = no possibility of pursuit.

He reached the stairwell and kicked the door open, firing into the darkness as he did. He didn't KNOW that something was there, but he did know that that little dog-creature didn't open the door on its own-

Did he just see.... no. No, it couldn't have been.

A giant head.

It was... a giant... head.

A human head the size of a full grown man hung in the center of the stairwell, supporting itself with a network of tentacles that squirmed out of its mouth, neck-stump, and eye sockets. It had turned the whole place into spider web of tentacles, each of which ended in a long fang. The face was a bizarre amalgamation of Braxis and Tomas Velazquez... and it smiled at Jason in the fading light from his last gunshot.

For two seconds.... two full, actual seconds (an eternity in Affinity-time)... Jason just stood there and stared at the darkness with his mouth open and his mind deep in the recesses of a horror movie he'd seen a long time ago.

"You've gotta be f@#$^!ing KIDDING ME!"

Then the fang-tipped tentacles started tearing through his trenchcoat. The bullets started flying.

One gun belched streams of hot lead into the center of the thing's face. The other fired at the tentacles. There were dozens of them, but each bullet did more than its share: ripping through one appendage... ricocheting off of the metal railing to tear through another tentacle... bouncing off of yet another railing...

Jason emptied two pairs of revolvers and was halfway through the .357's when the giant head... now riddled with holes and explosive exit wounds... finally lost its grasp. It jerked downward... caught itself... and then fell with a wet, muddled scream-

"gglllurrrrrrrmmmmmmmm"

-punctuated by sharp 'chirps' when it hit a wall or bounced off of a railing. When it finally reached the bottom, it splattered with the sound... and appearance... of a large balloon filled with chunky vomit.

Jason saw it all, because he kept shooting at it all the way down.

Behind him, the hallway erupted into crazed screams. But these weren't screams of rage or monstrous intent... this was something else. Pain. Horror. Shock. Someone was even screaming for help.

"What the hell...?" Jason started to turn back, but then he realized what was happening.

He'd killed the brain.

The giant Braxis/Velazquez head was controlling all of the other creatures, and now that it was gone-

Jason felt sick. Sicker than he did when he saw the thing hit the bottom of the stairwell... sick not just to his stomach, but to his soul.

Braxis hadn't changed them. He had changed their bodies and turned them into monsters, but he had left their minds intact. The brain thing was controlling them like puppets, and now that it was gone, his victims were waking up from a nightmare only to find out that it was real... that they really WERE monsters. And Jason had just shot his way through the lot of them like...

"Oh, my God..." he gulped.

"GOD HELP ME!" someone shouted. Then came more shouts. More screams.
"WHAT'S HAPPENING!!"
"OH JESUS NOO!"
"WHAT HAPPENED TO ME!"

Jason's hand was on the latch. He was going back to... to do what?

The screaming got louder as more and more of them fumbled around in the dark...

Jason's hand slowly fell away from the door. How much of that screaming was HIS fault? How much of that horror was due to what HE did? And what he didn't do. He had let Braxis get away once. He hadn't killed Tomas Velazquez back when the boy was controlling the demon hound. Had he done either of those things, the people on the other side of that door wouldn't be in hell right now.

"...all my fault," he said, stepping back from the door.

They were in hell because of him. A living hell. And there was nothing he could do to help them.

But he COULD make sure it didn't happen again.

Jason holstered one of his guns and used his free hand to grab the railing. He started down the stairs.

The tortured screams followed him all the way down.

he kid hit like a charging rhinoceros.

One instant she was about to cave his skull in with her foot, and the next instant she couldn't breath because he had damn near crushed her throat. And the NEXT instant, they were both plowing through a wall.

Yeah, this was going REALLY well...

As soon as they cleared the wall, Dobbs dropped in a fall that was only half controlled. When she hit the floor, she brought her legs up, planted her knees in Sebastian's chest and flipped him over her head. Her intention was to get up immediately and pound the living hell out of him before HE could get up...

...but a fit of gasping and coughing intervened. The tissues of her throat were sore and swollen. Breathing was painful. NOT breathing was even MORE painful. Damn it, he had almost killed her! Dobbs filled her lungs with air, got up-

And thrust her knee up into Sebastian's abdomen as he charged her. Sebastian blocked and hit her with a back-fist strike...

...that she hardly even felt.

His knuckles skidded painfully across her forehead, but the punch was weak. He was hurt.

Hurt, bleeding, and still trying to kill her. Bleeding...

Dobbs reached for his throat, but Sebastian knocked her right hand away... just as her left hand clutched his shoulder, her fingers tearing at the wound that lay under the crude bandage.

Sebastian hissed and tore himself away. Dobbs chased him with an obligatory kick, which he parried with the obligatory block... but to that block, he added a solid punch to her calf.

"AGGGH!"

His hand hit her leg like a hammer, coming so close to shattering the bone that it took several seconds for Dobbs to realize that it WASN'T shattered. Sebastian didn't give her those few seconds. He tried to kick her one good leg out from under her. She hopped over his leg-sweep, throwing a punch the instant she landed. Two fists passed each other in the air, but Sebastian's punch turned into something else. He hooked his arm around hers and yanked her toward him. He released her suddenly and then drove a spinning elbow strike right into her face.

"UNGH!" Dobbs staggered back, dazed... but when Sebastian came for her, she caught him with a spinning hook kick to the side of the head. He didn't even try to block it... he snarled and waded right through it with fist drawn back. The few fractions of a second before and after the punch vanished in a spray of pain. Dobbs regained her senses just enough to see the next attack coming (ridge-hand to the neck... killing blow...) and dodge it, almost falling in the process... yet still managing a weak kick to Sebastian's injured shoulder.

The kid grunted and almost winced. He lunged toward her, then stopped suddenly and spun to one side... a repeat of a move he'd tried earlier. Anticipating, she fired an axe-kick that caught him on the side of the head.... just as HIS kick caught HER in the exact same place.

Sebastian shrugged off the blow, but Dobbs was forced to jog backward to get some distance between them. The edges of her vision were starting to grow hazy; this wasn't going to go on much longer-

Sebastian made his move. He charged-

And Dobbs ran. She ran for the hole they'd made in the wall...

And then suddenly turned and threw the hardest punch she had ever thrown. Sebastian would have run right into it-

-if he hadn't seen it coming. He ducked to one side while Dobbs' own punch threw her off balance. One kick to the midsection sent pain exploding up and down her torso. The haze at the periphery of her vision closed in a little further. The pain doubled her over, but Dobbs was not going to fall. When Sebastian's foot came past her face, she grabbed it while throwing her arm out in a ridge-hand strike to his crotch. Sebastian twisted his torso out of the way... which threw him off balance, just as Dobbs had planned. She threw herself into him. He took one step back and blocked her first punch with his good arm. Her second punch plowed through his weakened arm, grabbed the bloody bandage on his shoulder, and snatched it off.

She spun away, narrowly avoiding a strike to the head. She kicked... her foot collided with his retreating hand. She threw the bandage back into Sebastian's face. He ignored it and went into a fighting stance, with blood visibly leaking from his shoulder. It looked like a shrapnel wound of some kind. The kid's face was bruised and bleeding as well... just like hers.

"You're going to bleed to death," said Dobbs.

"Not soon enough to save you," he replied.

"You really want to die fighting a cop?"

"Do you want to die serving a madman like Braxis?"

"What-"

"But you have no choice," said Sebastian. "In the serving OR the dying..."

"Wait, I'm not-"

The few seconds of conversation had been more than enough for him to gather his strength. He exploded toward her in a blaze of kicks... fast, hard, and all aimed at vital areas of her body. Dobbs threw block after block... backing away at first, and then standing her ground... arms moving in continuous arcs to counter the boy's assault. He got faster... and Dobbs started giving ground again. Realizing that she was headed into a corner, Dobbs threw a leaping front-kick that Sebastian blocked easily. When she touched the ground, his foot came around in a powerful roundhouse the he obviously expected her to block. Instead of blocking, she ducked, twisted hit his knee with a ridge-hand strike that not only put the leg out of commission for a few seconds, but also knocked him slightly off balance. Before the grunt of pain was fully out of Sebastian's throat, Dobbs's fist pounded the boy's kidney... then the armpit... then the side of his head in a vicious three-punch combination.

Sebastian swung his arm in her direction, but missed. Dobbs snatched herself back out of the way... realizing too late that she had set herself up. Sebastian's arm sailed over her head while his OTHER fist slammed into the side of her face.

"Unnk!"

The room spun... and kept on spinning. The only thing that kept Dobbs from hitting the floor was the fact that Sebastian had punched with his weak hand. But even that WEAK punch had sent her consciousness into a downward spiral. Dazed again, she jogged to one side, trying to circle around-

Sebastian threw another roundhouse kick that bounced off of Dobbs' skull. Now moving on pure anger and inertia, Dobbs hit him with a back-fist to the side his head. Her effort slid off of his skin like a caress. Next, her hand went to his shoulder... her thumb slipping INTO the wound and ripping it open.

"AAAAAAAARRRRGH!"

Sebastian threw her back... No punch, no kicks, he just shoved her away.

Perfect. That's where she wanted to be anyway.

She paused... taking the second she needed to gather her energy. Then she unleashed a spinning hook kick-

CRACK!

Her heel snapped across Sebastian's left temple. The room continued to twirl around her... so she might as well spin with it. She brought that foot to the floor and, still spinning, kicked with the other one... turning the one kick into five... six... then seven, trying her damndest to crack this maniac's skull open like a melon. She finished with a side kick to the forehead. Dobbs stumbled backward, thrown back by the recoil from her own kick. Sebastian took one step to the side... and collapsed. He landed on his injured shoulder then rolled over onto his back.

"...unnngh..."

Dobbs had stopped spinning, but the room kept right on going. She stumbled around in a circle, watching Sebastian fall.

He lay there for a second. Then his left hand curled up into a fist. He lifted his head... and then dropped it to the floor with a hard thump.

He was out.

Finally.

"You..." she said, her voice a slurred whisper. "...are under.... a- f#$@!ing -rrest!! You... have the f#$@!$ing right... to remain... awww, f#@k..."

Dobbs' legs gave way under her own staggering dizziness. She blinked... and realized she was falling. She blinked again, and now she was laying draped across Sebastian like... like two people who'd just beaten themselves unconscious.

The room finally stopped spinning... just before everything went dark.

ot wanting to see the mess waiting for him at the bottom of the stairs, Jason took the long way down. He went to the second floor and cut through to the other stairwell.

That was a mistake.

Not all of Braxis' creations were behind him on the top floor.

They'd been hiding in their apartments... a second wave of creatures to rush out and get him if he got past the first. Only now, they weren't creatures... they were a freak show of twisted human forms that were staggering and stumbling down the dark hallways, screaming for someone to help them. Some of them were carrying flashlights in their... claws. Others had left their apartment doors open, allowing sunlight to stream into the hall from their windows. It hurt Jason to look at them, and it hurt even more to listen to the screams.

"HELLLP!" a bird-like thing squawked into his face. "WHAT HAPPENED TO MEEEE!"

"I- I-" Jason stammered as he backed away... stepping on something that looked like a small sabretooth tiger with a human face sewn onto it. Another pet... with part of its owner thrown in for good measure.

"AAAAAAAIIIIIIIIIIIIIII!!!" The thing howled.

"-Sorry!" Jason hurried away.

"KILL MEE!" screamed something... someone... coming out of an apartment behind him. It was another one of those cricket-things, only this one was walking upright. Short braided hair still hung down from its mottled scalp. The thing hopped... HOPPED!... toward him, still screeching. "KILL MEEEEEEE!!"

Jason ran. He leapt over something slithering across the floor... ducked UNDER a similar something that was hanging from the ceiling. He made it to the stairwell and paused to throw up before continuing. As he deposited the remains of breakfast on the concrete steps, he heard something bumping down the hallway he'd just left.

That thing... person... was coming after him!

Jason quickly drew his .45.... and placed it on the stairs. It had one round left in it.

He was halfway to the first floor when he heard the single gunshot behind him. A few steps later, his heart froze.

Something above him screamed:

"I'M NOT DEAD!"

Jason scampered to the bottom of the stairs. He burst into the lobby.

His peripheral vision caught the figure standing by the mail kiosk. He turned and fired-

BLAM!

-the bullet went through Donovan's translucent form and into the wall behind him.

"Nervous?" said Donovan.

"Where have you been?"

"Heaven. Well... the suburbs."

"Heaven, eh? Hell is upstairs, go take a look. Or better yet, go scout around for my evil twin. I took a few shots at him earlier and he vanished."

"He's just outside the other stairwell corridor. I thought he was you for a second."

"I HEAR YA TALKIN' OVER THERE!" Jason's voice called out.

"Damn, he even sounds like me," Jason whispered to Donovan.

"I SEE YOU MADE IT OUT OF THE DOC'S LITTLE HORROR SHOW UPSTAIRS! I KNEW YOU WOULD. MUST BE RUNNIN' LOW ON AMMO NOW, THOUGH."

The twin was right. The .357's were empty. Both pairs of .454's were loaded, but once those bullets were gone, there weren't any more.

"I GOT PLENTY!" Jason shouted back.

"YOU THINK SO?!"

"Donovan... where, exactly, was he?" Jason whispered.

"Back against the wall, three feet in front of the stairwell door."

Donovan's description matched what the Affinity was telling him based on the sound of the Evil Jason's voice. Good.

"YEAH," Jason shouted. He he had a clear view of the lobby, and a clear shot at everything in it. But his target wasn't IN the lobby... he was in the hallway on the other side of the elevators, around two corners from where Jason was.

Jason searched the lobby for something he could bank a shot off of...

"LOOKS LIKE YOUR FRIENDS DESERTED YOU!" said Evil Jason.

"I COULD SAY THE SAME THING ABOUT YOURS!"

"DOC? NO, DOC LEFT ME BEHIND TO TAKE CARE OF BUSINESS. YOUR FRIENDS JUST HAULED ASS!"

"DID YOU SEE WHAT BRAXIS DID TO THOSE PEOPLE UPSTAIRS?"

The evil twin laughed. Jason Brooks heard his own laugh... and it sounded sinister.

"WHERE IS BRAXIS?"

"MAKING HIS ROUNDS!"

Jason looked at Donovan. They both shrugged.

"Do you have a shot?" Donovan whispered.

"Absolutely."

"Take it."

There was nothing in the lobby he could use to ricochet around a corner. The walls were too soft... everything else looked too delicate to risk wasting bullets. But there was another way...

"YOU STILL THERE, BROOKS!" the evil twin called.

"RIGHT HERE... JUST WAITING FOR YOU TO COME OUT IN THE OPEN AND FIGHT LIKE A MAN!"

"...THAT'S FUNNY... I WAS WAITING FOR YOU TO DO THE SAME THING!"

"HOW ABOUT WE SKIP ALL THE MACHO BULLSHIT AND I JUST SHOOT YOU FROM HERE?"

"AND JUST HOW YOU PLANNIN' ON DOIN' THAT?"

"LIKE THIS-"

Jason extended one arm in front of him and held the other off to one side, away from his body. He fired both revolvers into the lobby... pulling one trigger a millisecond before the other. Both bullets streaked into the open space in front of him. Their vectors converged twenty feet in front of the elevators-

The second bullet struck the first... transferring much of its momentum at an angle to the first bullet's trajectory. Both shots veered off course- one shattered a window at the front of the room.

The second went around the corner.

"AAAAGH!"

Jason darted out of the hallway into the lobby, guns already swinging in position, hoping to catch his twin while he was distracted.

The twin was thinking the same thing.

Each man saw the other, and opened fire.

Jason fired two shots, each aimed at his opposite's chest. The false Jason dodged to the left... the first bullet grazed his shoulder, and the second punched a hole in the edge of his trenchcoat. He fired two more shots that turned evil Jason's bullets into a hail of ricochets... none of which hit anything of any significance...then two more...

Both shots missed. Jason's twin changed directions in mid-run and twisted into the air... still firing... while Jason's bullets punched more harmless holes in his trenchcoat.

Somewhere in the middle of all that, both men passed each other. Jason hadn't stopped running yet, he rounded the corner.. and ended up in the other corridor where his twin had been hiding before.

He pressed his back against the wall and checked his guns to make sure his mental count was right. It was. He had two bullets left.

"HAHAHA!" his twin bellowed. "WOO-HOOOO! That was fun! You ready to try it again!?"

Zeroing in on his twin's voice, Jason leaned out into the open and fired. His twin was standing perfectly still, but he exploded into motion as soon as Jason's gun came into view-

The next-to-last bullet sailed over his shoulder, nicking the collar of his coat.

Jason leaned back as the twin returned fire... and kept returning fire... reloaded and fired again.... He wasn't even AIMING at anything; he was just shooting for the hell of it. Bullets tore through the wall, forcing Jason to retreat further into the hallway.

"HOW MANY BULLETS YOU GOT LEFT BACK THERE, HOSS?" his twin shouted.

One.

"I'M STANDIN' RIGHT HERE! COME SHOOT ME!!"

He was. Evil Jason was standing right there in the lobby... right out in the open. All Jason had to do was hit him...

"He's too fast," Jason whispered. "I got one bullet... if I use it, he'll dodge it and then I'm out. Any ideas? Donovan? Dammit, not again... Donovan?"

"You could always retreat," Donovan offered, slowly appearing beside him. Jason regarded him coldly.

"I've still got one bullet left," he said with a scowl.

"Then I suggest you place your shot well," said Donovan.

"COME ON OUT! OH, FORGET IT... I'LL JUST COME IN AND SHOOT YOU RIGHT THERE!"

Footsteps approached the hallway. The other Brooks wasn't even making a cursory attempt at stealth.

"Aim at something you can hit," Donovan offered.

"Donovan-"

"He's still got a lot of bullets left."

"You're not being very helpf-"

"Think. YOU have only one bullet, but HE has all the ammunition you need. He keeps them in the same place you do."

Jason's mouth closed. Then he smiled.

"GOTCHA!"

Thinking that Jason was completely out of ammo, the evil Brooks appeared boldly at the mouth of the corridor and prepared to gun him down. When he saw Brooks pointing his weapon, he did the predictable thing-

-he dodged.

He went one way, and his trenchcoat lagged an instant behind him, flying out-

BLAM!

Jason fired.... at the coat.

Specifically, at the bulging pocket full of live ammunition.

The speeding bit of hot metal collided with several of the .454 rounds, igniting a series of gunshots... all radiating from the pocket of his evil twin's coat.

POW!
POW!
POW!
POW!
POW!

"AAAAAAARRRRGGGGGHHH! WHAT THE HELL-AAA-"

The murderous Jason Brooks convulsed as one lucky... or unlucky... bullet burned a path up through his abdomen, under his ribcage, across his heart... and out through his left shoulder. Another shot went straight into his right side, obliterating his stomach and both kidneys before exploding out of him with a spray of blood, gore, and undigested bits of breakfast.

"UNNNGH!!" He grunted, eyes widening in shock. He shook his head rapidly back and forth, as if denying what had just happened.

The pistols tumbled from his hands.

"...uhhhhhhhnnn.."

He clutched his mutilated side and, staring incredulously at Jason... fell to the floor, dead.

shley had been awake for almost a minute. She lay stretched on the couch, eyes still tightly closed, trying to figure out what had happened.

She remembered the series of events clearly.

The demon inside Tomas Velazquez had attacked them, and she had attacked it back.

But just because she remembered it didn't mean she understood it. What, exactly, had she done? How had she done it?

And why... at the very last instant before she lost consciousness... did she see FEAR on that little demon's face?

Why DID she pass out? She remembered.... something. Something different. She'd fainted before, but this wasn't the same. She felt as if she were being pulled away. No, not away... pulled INTO herself. And even now she had the distinct sensation that she hadn't just been asleep; she had gone somewhere else. Sort of.

And, since she was asking herself questions, maybe she should add "Where Am I Now?" to the list.

She reached out with her mind...

"Sebastian?"

That was the first word she said when she felt the presence in the room. She opened her eyes at the same moment that a further mental push revealed that the visitor was not Sebastian.

"Hello there."

Ashley had never seen this man before. He was a white man in his early thirties. Slightly overweight.

The bottom of his shirt was unbuttoned, and, for some reason, Ashley found that very odd. Even more odd than the obvious bullet holes and blood stains. This man had been shot several times, yet was still very much alive.

"Who are you?" she said while reaching into his mind, only to find that she couldn't do it. His thoughts were... slippery. Slippery in a markedly inhuman way.

"Ohhh, I'm guessing there'll be plenty of time to get to know each other later," he said. "Right now, you have an appointment with the doctor."

"Huh?"

"In other words... get up; you're coming with me."

"I don't think so."

Ashley's will slammed into the squirming mass of the man's thoughts.

"uhngh-" the man stepped back, one hand drifting upward to his temple while the other slipped under the bottom edge of his shirt. "OUCH!"

Instead of falling to his knees, screaming, the man reached into... INTO!?... his abdomen and pulled a .38 semiautomatic out of the flesh-pocket hidden there. He pointed the weapon at Ashley,

"Perhaps I should rephrase that," he said. One eye squinted almost completely shut, and beads of sweat began populating his forehead. "What I MEANT was: if you don't get out of my head right now, I'll shoot off your kneecaps."

Ashley withdrew. She had been gleefully ripping into the pain-center of his brain, but all she'd managed to do was make him sweat. Someone had been doing some work in there, and she had a pretty good idea who.

"Gooood," said the man. "Now get up. If I so much as get an itch up my ass, I'm gonna-"

"-Kneecaps. Right. I got it."

Ashley got off the couch and stood up, taking her first look at her surroundings as she did. It looked like an apartment that had been visited by a tribe of rabid tornados. The dining room table was in splinters, and there was a big hole in the wall next to it.

"Did I do that?" she asked. She already knew she didn't do it... she was stalling, looking for Sebastian. Or Jason. But mostly Sebastian. At first there wasn't any sign of either, but... was that blood on the floor?

Ashley got an uneasy feeling in the pit of her stomach. They wouldn't just leave her alone. Something must have happened to them. Were they... dead?

"Who cares... move-"

The man grabbed her by the back of her neck and thrust her toward the door.

"-the doctor is waiting."

"emind me to start keeping my ammo in a different place," said Jason.

"Good idea," Donovan replied. "Is he dead?"

"Oh yeah." There was no movement and no aura, but Brooks nudged the corpse's head with his foot just to be sure. "Nobody home. Too bad... I wanted to find out who he was."

"Does it matter?"

Jason thought for a moment.

"Not any more."

"Get his ammunition. Let's find the others."

Jason took the .454 revolvers... both fully loaded... and grabbed the remaining ammunition that had spilled out of the dead man's pocket. He loaded his own weapons, gave his evil twin one last glance, and then walked calmly out the front lobby door. The last of Jason Brooks' words drifted back into the building as the door swung shut.

"...still, I wonder what his name was-"

The door closed.

"...jason... brooks..." said a weak, gurgling voice, barely audible over the inhuman screams from the second floor. "...jason...brooks..."

[To Be Continued]

[To Be Continued]

copyright 2005 by Dark Icon Entertainment