Touch the World

Part Six: The Sixth Floor

" e got lucky, that's all."

"I'm sure he did, Mr. Brooks," said Braxis as he removed yet another bullet from Jason Brooks torso. This one had ruptured a kidney and made quite a mess out of the abdominal cavity. Most of that damage had been repaired, but the bullet itself still remained.

"But not..." Brooks looked down at the doctor's arm, which was buried wrist deep in his gut. "...lucky enough."

"Lucky enough to kill you," said Braxis. The doctor's hand slid effortlessly out of Brooks stomach. The hole it had made sealed instantly and perfectly. Braxis was holding a deformed .454 Casull slug, which he carefully placed in the ashtray next to him... along with seven other identical slugs.

"Almost." Brooks corrected. "He ALMOST got me. But see, I'm still alive."

Braxis didn't feel it necessary to explain to Brooks that, were it not for the back-up nervous system that was a part of Brooks' 'improvements', he would be a slab meat cooling on the floor of the apartment building where the real Brooks had killed him.

"I am still disappointed," said the doctor. "I made you as fast and accurate as humanly possible... and yet-"

"Lucky, that's all." Brooks repeated.

"Brooks's reflexes and coordination can't possibly be any better than yours. Not if he were human. So, obviously, either you are are somehow... defective."

"I'm NOT!"

"...or Brooks is not human."

"I can still get him-"

"Oh SHUT up!" Brandon Phillips shouted from the SUV's driver's seat. The doctor had finished re-attaching his spine and lower torso just a few minutes before. "You screwed up! Admit it!"

"He got LUCKY! He's not better than me... he got a lucky shot, that's all!"

"Looks like he got more than ONE," Phillips chuckled. "You sound like a broken record back there... lucky, lucky, lucky.... maybe the doc ought to take a look at your brain, eh?"

"I'm fine," Brooks replied. "I'm ready for another shot at him. This time-"

"This time, we'll let the police take care of him."

"But you said-"

"Don't worry, Mr. Brooks... you will still have your part to play."

"So where are we going?" said Phillips.

"The same place we were going before." Braxis sat back in his chair, turning briefly to look at Tomas Velazquez, who occupied the seat behind him. Tomas looked bored. A bored Tomas was a very unpleasant thing to see. "My plans haven't changed."

"But what about Brooks and the rest of 'em?"

"Brooks has an uncanny history of finding me regardless of how smart it is for him to do so. Let us hope the trend continues..."

At just over 200 feet straight up, Donovan Wilde watched the SUV turn onto main street and weave its way into the steady flow of traffic headed downtown. While Donovan didn't know every inch of the city... he DID know that there were only two things in that direction that Braxis could be interested in. One was city hall... and the other was the more likely target:

The hospital.

"re you sure you're going to be make it?"

"Make it where?" Dobbs looked accusingly at Jason from the Navigator's passenger seat. Brooks had the vehicle hovering at just below the speed limit heading into town. "We aren't going anywhere."

"We're waiting," Sebastian said from the back seat. Ashley was holding Sebastian's first-aid kit... complete with scalpels, sutures, and even a bone saw... and was trying not to squirm as Sebastian cleaned and bandaged the slashes on his chest. The fact that he was doing it in a moving cehicle with no painkillers did not seem to matter to him. "We're going in the same direction he went, but he could have turned off anywhere."

"Yeah..." said Dobbs. "So unless you've got a tracking device on him-"

"Tracking device?" said Jason. "Wrong genre... this is a horror flick, not a spy movie."

"I'm glad you can make jokes while there's a lunatic and his dead friends out there... and the police are busy looking for US."

"I don't think they're looking for anybody right now," said Jason. "Besides, I didn't know there were any cops left in Rock Springs. You guys have been taking it hard lately. Vampires. Ghost dogs. And now this. Maybe you oughta consider a new line of work, eh?"

"Like computer programming?"

"Yeah... you've got a point. Maybe you're safer being a cop."

"You know, Brooks... nothing in this town has made sense since I first heard your name. But you sit there and you ACT like you know what's going on. So... can you even attempt to clue me in?"

"If I told you what my life's been like for the past few weeks... the thing's I've seen... You think what happened back THERE is crazy-"

"Is any of it real?"

"What?"

"How much of what I thought I saw... was real?"

"All of it," said Jason. "All of it and more. Ghosts. Demons. Vampires and werewolves. Monsters. Dragons. Haunted houses and psychic powers. Hell,... maybe even Santa Clause, too. In order to understand what's happening, you have to START with the assumption that all those things are real."

"But they aren't."

"That's what I used to think."

"What about paranoid delusions and hallucinations... are THOSE things real in your world?"

"You can ask that because you're still standing on the outside trying to look in. But me...? I got dropped off right in the middle of this thing, and the view from in here is a LOT more convincing. You can stay out there on the fringes and try to figure things out all day long; but those of us on the inside don't have that option. I don't have time to investigate... theorize... explain. I either accept this craziness as real, or I get torn apart by one of those 'hallucinations.'"

"Do you know how you sound, Brooks?"

"I sound crazy. But WHO was the one that saw James Royce appear and disappear out of nowhere? Who was the one that saw TWO Jason Brooks' out there on that street? Who got arrested days ago for killing a man that was driving around in an SUV just a few minutes back? Like I said, Dobbs, this isn't about me. I can explain all that stuff. You can't."

"So you're saying that there really IS another you? And Braxis really CAN turn people inside out? And that Velazquez boy; he really WAS flying around... and Royce really DID-"

"If you don't think any of that was real, then why'd you get in the car with me?"

"Needed a ride."

"Plus, she figured somewhere down the road she'd knock us all out, take our car and your guns, and go off on her own," Ashley added. She winked at Dobbs.

"Oh?" said Jason. "Still planning on doing that?"

"We'll see."

"You know... this is the longest conversation we've ever had."

Dobbs gave Jason a slow, discerning look.

"So what,... you gonna ask me for a date now?"

"Do you want me to?"

"You're not my type, Brooks. Not even close."

"What IS your type?"

Dobbs paused... and then answered:

"Sane."

"Stop doing that!" Ashley yelped suddenly. Dobbs looked back, but didn't see anything out of the ordinary. Unless she counted Sebastian. Nothing about him was ordinary.

"What?" said Dobbs.

"Braxis is going to Metro Hospital. Downtown-"

"I'm on it."

Jason's foot drove the accelerator all the way to the floor. The black Navigator lurched forward.

"What just happened?" said Dobbs. "How come you know where he is now, but you didn't before. And don't give me any of that psychic bull-

"A little bird told me." Ashley smiled.

hen the sixth floor elevator opened, the guard stationed beside the door turned to verify who was arriving. He'd been expecting Doctor Garrison. That was who his coworkers a few floors down had told him was on the way.

They hadn't mentioned anything about the other three.

Three white males... an old man, a younger man, and a kid were standing in the elevator behind Garrison. They all walked out together, as if they were friends.

"Hey, hold it doc," said the guard, already looking for... and not finding... a visitor's pass on any of the strangers. "These people with you?"

"Yes, of course!" Garrison said. "This is Dr. Braxis, he's here to help with some of the-"

The kid... seven years old, with strange eyes and a smell reminiscent of fresh raw sewage... looked up and hissed at the guard.

Hissed.

"arr-URRK!" Dropping his clipboard, the guard doubled over in pain and grabbed his abdomen. With one sudden heave, he emptied the contents of his stomach onto the floor at the kid's feet. At least that's what it FELT like. What he actually SAW splattering below him couldn't POSSIBLY come out of him. Blood and maggots and chunks of raw, rotting meat-

"-urrrlllk!!" Another heave. This time a black, foul-smelling fluid splashed over his boots. The scent alone made him heave yet again-

His throat opened... his stomach clenched... and an unending fountain of maggots poured out of him. He tried to scream, but the flow of living worms turned his cry into a chocking blubber. A deep red haze came over his vision as-

"That's enough, Tomas," said Braxis. "He's starting to make noise."

The guard collapsed... falling unconscious into a lake of his own perfectly normal vomit.

Dr. Garrison had watched the entire proceeding with only mild interest. When the guard stopped moving, he pretended that the entire incident never happened.

"Where was it you said you wanted to go, doctor?" said Garrison.

"Pathology," Braxis replied politely.

"Oh yes! Of course! This way..." Garrison continued down the hallway.

"Mr. Phillps, would you be so kind as to bring that-" Braxis pointed to the unconscious guard. "I'll be needing the raw materials shortly."

"Yeah," said Phillips. "Hey, I thought we came here for-"

"I'll get to the patients in due time. But now, I suspect our guests are close, and I'd like prepare a proper greeting. Hurry along now... don't linger in the hallways..."

Braxis and Tomas followed Garrison toward the double doors at the end of the hallway. Written in large black letters across the glass was: "LAB."

he driver cut the siren just short of the lane curving past the emergency room entrance. The ambulance came to a hurried halt, and the rear doors flew open.

One paramedic hopped down from the ambulance's elevated chassis. The driver joined her behind the vehicle.

There were two gurneys inside. Both were occupied... one by a vaguely man-shaped form completely covered with a bloody sheet, and the other by a black male with a respirator apparatus strapped over his face. The paramedics grabbed the second gurney and slid it out. Collapsible wheels fell into place as it cleared the ambulance-

"Hey, hey, whoa!" A uniformed police officer trotted up to them, clipboard in hand. "I need ID's on both of you and the-"

"What?" the female paramedic snapped. "What is this, a prison or a hospital!? We got a gunshot wound here! We gotta get him inside stat!"

"Rules are rules, lady," the cop stood his ground... reluctantly. He didn't like this any more than they did. "I'm sorry but I gotta-"

"HERE!" The paramedic flashed her hospital identification. The cop squinted at it, apparently not seeing the look of determined concentration on the woman's face. OR the fact that the picture on the ID card didn't look anything like her.

The patient on the gurney groaned.

The driver reached for his identification, but the cop quickly waved them both toward the door.

"Forget it... get this guy inside."

"THANK you!" the female paramedic snapped as her partner yanked the other gurney out of the ambulance.

They hadn't gotten more than a few feet before the emergency room doors opened and two orderlies hurried out to greet them.

"We got it!" the female paramedic said, waving them back. "They're stable... we got it. Go on back."

The orderlies came to an almost comical halt. They looked at each other... shrugged... and then went back inside.

Several beads of sweat rolled down the female paramedic's cheek and vanished into the collar of her ill-fitting shirt.

"Two at once," Ashley whispered as she and Sebastian rolled the gurneys through the swinging doors. "That was hard."

"How long am I-" the 'corpse' began.

"Shhh!" Ashley hissed. "You're both dead now, so hush." There was a sheet folded over Jason's chest. Ashley grabbed the edge of it and pulled it up over his face.

Beyond the doors was a long corridor buzzing with nurses, orderlies and even the occasional patient. Everyone was busy. Men and women crisscrossed the hallway with a surreal indifference to the new arrivals. The staff was accustomed to the constant influx of wounded, especially lately. They noticed Ashley and Sebastian with only as much attention as their own activities could spare... which wasn't much. There were lives at stake in the ER, and there were people whose JOB it was to process the newcomers. If that didn't happen to be their job, then they focused their concentration elsewhere.

"What do we have?" the head nurse asked. She had spotted Ashley and Sebastian instantly, and was now zeroing in on them through the crowd like a homing missile. "Why didn't you radio ahead? We weren't-"

"DOA," Ashley said solemnly.

The head nurse studied her cautiously.

"I don't know you. Where are you two from?"

"We're from, uhh-"

"Central Baptist," Sebastian said quickly. Ashley saw him glance at her and then move his hand under the sheet covering Dobbs. "We got diverted." he said.

"Why? They don't have enough room in their morgue?" the nurse's frown deepened.

"This one just died. Gunshot wound."

"Mmmhmmm." The nurse reached for Jason's sheet. Ashley grabbed her wrist.

"Hey-"

"D.O.A.," Ashley repeated slowly and forcefully.

"Let go of me!" The nurse snatched her hand away from Ashley. "I said I want to see the body-"

Sebastian started pulling something out from under the sheet. Something long and sharp. Ashley had about a second to keep this woman from getting disemboweled right here in the E.R.

Rather than try to force her way through the nurse's will, Ashley decided to try a different tactic.

"What?" The nurse turned suddenly and looked at the intercom hanging on the wall behind her. "Damn.... YOU two stay right here! Don't go anywhere!"

The nurse hurried down the hallway, responding to an urgent announcement that only she had heard.

"What happened?" said Sebastian.

"I made her think she was being paged-"

"No, why couldn't you control her like the others?"

"What, you want a lecture now? Because that's just how it IS... now c'mon..."

Ashley wheeled Jason Brooks away. Sebastian followed, pushing Dobbs ahead of him like a corpse. The head nurse didn't return, and Ashley deftly deflected what little attention they drew from the other staff members.

Halfway down the hall, they turned into an adjoining corridor.... picking up speed as they proceeded into less crowded area.

One security guard stopped to question them... but their stolen 'credentials' were more than enough to satisfy him.

"Okay, we're clear," Ashley whispered when the guard rounded the corner.

Jason and Marilyn threw off their sheets and sat up. Jason snatched the oxygen mask off of his face and grabbed and coat, which had been folded neatly under his feet.

"It actually worked?" said Dobbs.

"Sure beats shooting your way in," Ashley replied, smiling. "But now I've got a migraine from hell..."

"Don't quit yet," said Jason. He dropped his had onto his head and nudged it into place. "My radar puts a whole mess of evil about five floors up."

"Radar?"

"Could be a trap," said Sebastian. "Like last time."

"Trap or not, that's where we're going."

"Maybe we can send..." Ashley let the sentence drop. Donovan wanted to keep his existence on a need-to-know basis. And Dobbs didn't need to know.

At least that was what he was whispering into her ear.

Ashley listened to what else he was saying, then continued:

"Freight elevator is around the corner, down the hall, and to the right. The one guard is about to have a bad case of diarrhea, but the elevator has a special keypass-"

"I can take care of that," said Sebastian.

"Lets hope don't run into too many people between here and there," said Ashley."

"I can take care of that, too." He had returned his scabbards to their proper place on his belt. His fingers played along the pommel of one of the blades.

"That's what I'm worried about,"

But except for an easily-distracted janitor, the hallways stayed deserted. There was no evidence that the strong-willed nurse had alerted security when she noticed that they were gone. Obviously a real-life distraction had followed Ashley's false one, and the woman probably wouldn't remember them for another hour... if at all. It also helped that the section of the hospital they were in was mostly storage closets and equipment rooms. Doctors and nurses rarely came back here.

A sudden bout of gastrointestinal distress cleared the way to the elevator. The guard's quickly shuffling footsteps were still audible when Jason, Ashley, Sebastian and Dobbs... and Donovan... rounded the corner.

Sebastian 'bypassed' the keypad by jamming a knife into it, prying the faceplate off, and twisting four sets of wires together with his fingers.

There was a mechanical 'clang' from behind the wall, and the elevator started down from the sixth floor.

"Is breaking and entering a hobby, or are you a professional?" Dobbs asked Sebastian.

"Professional," Sebastian replied... clearly missing the sarcasm in Dobbs' question.

"I remember you from the police station."

Sebastian ignored her.

"So what are you... Special Forces? S.E.A.L.?"

Again, Sebastian didn't respond. He stared at the elevator doors; and Dobbs moved in front of him to get his attention.

"What's the matter, you shy all of a sudden?"

The elevator stopped. The doors started to open.

"Sebastian's not one for small talk," said Jason. "Don't take it personally-"

"GET BACK!" Ashley screamed Donovan's warning to the others.

Jason and Ashley were standing on opposite sides of the door. Ashley dove for cover. Jason spun clear... drawing his chrome revolver and aiming it into the elevator before Ashley took her first step.

Sebastian was standing directly in front of the elevator. Dobbs was between him and the doors. When Ashley shouted, Sebastian grabbed Marilyn and spun them both around, placing himself between her and the door, then shoving her toward Ashley-

Ashley saw Jason's gun jerk downward, aiming at something on the elevator floor... too late-

The sound was like the beginning of a hiss, but it quickly rose to a loud, crackling POP!

A thin, oily slime splattered against the opposite wall, and with it came a hail of small projectiles that peppered the wall, ricocheted off of the floor.... and tore into Sebastian's back.

Sebastian stumbled, using his own momentum to push Dobbs clear of the blast before falling at Ashley's feet.

There were about fourteen small, bloody holes in Sebastian's back. Protruding from each of them was a something small and white. Sebastian didn't look hurt... at least not much more than he already was. He started to get up, and paused briefly on his hands and knees to clear his head.

Resting on the elevator floor was an object roughly the size and shape of a large watermelon. Its surface had been smooth and skin-colored, but now it... and the elevator's interior... was covered with streaks of bloody mucous that had erupted from the large hole in its side. Inside the hole was a red, bloody mess.

It was a bomb. A bomb packed with-

"What are these?" said Marilyn. The detective picked up one of the projectiles from the floor and held it up. It looked like a smooth, pointed rock... but it wasn't. "Teeth?"

It was a tooth. A human tooth that had been elongated and sharpened into a pointed fang.

The floor was covered with them. And so was Sebastian's back.

Sebastian grunted as he finally got to his feet. He pulled one of the projectiles from his flesh and looked at it.

"Looks to me like the doc is making bombs out of spare parts," said Jason. "Biological weapons. I'm guessing this isn't the only one of these we'll run into."

"Put that down." Sebastian told Dobbs. She was still holding the tooth she's picked up from the floor. "Put it down, and don't touch any more of them."

"Why?" said Ashley.

"Because I feel dizzy..."

Sebastian staggered. Jason caught him before he collapsed.

"...poison," Sebastian said weakly. "...some kind of venom... Wounds burning..."

"Ashley, get him back to the ER," said Jason. "Do whatever you need to do to make somebody help him!"

"No," said Sebastian. "You need Ashley... demon..."

"No, YOU need Ashley. If me or Dobbs show up in there then by the time they finish ARRESTING us you'll be dead."

"Leave me-"

"Yeah, whatever. Ashley, take him."

Jason transferred Sebastian's weight to Ashley's shoulders.

"He's heavy-"

"I can stand."

Sebastian shifted his weight off of her and stood on his own. Then he grabbed her shoulder to steady himself.

"...but I can't fight," he said.

"Stay with him," Jason ordered.

"What about Velazquez?"

"I'll figure something out. Dobbs, c'mon, its me and you now."

Jason got into the bloody elevator and held the door open for Dobbs. She entered. Jason pushed the button for the floor that the elevator had originally been occupying...where it undoubtedly had picked up its deadly cargo: Six.

"o now what do you believe?" Jason asked as the elevator rose. He had one gun drawn and pointed at the wilting remains of Braxis's flesh-bomb. "You starting to get what I was telling you in the car? You get the picture now... because if you don't-" Jason nodded at the bloody husk on the floor. "-you're blind."

"I don't know what that thing is," Dobbs replied. "...but I'm sure there are explanations for it that DON'T involve ghosts and demons."

"Yeah? Name one?"

"Ordinary, everyday explosives," Dobbs said without hesitation. "Packed in a container surrounded by pieces from the morgue. Maybe-"

"Maybe you're stretching; trying NOT to see what's right in front of you."

"No, maybe YOU are." Dobbs planted her sternest stare right in the center of Jason's face. "If anybody's not seeing reality around here its you. Some people don't want to face the truth about the world, Brooks... and the truth is that evil exits.. not in demons or monsters. But with people. You want monsters, Brooks? You see them every day. The man who takes your ticket at the movie theater goes home to beat the hell out of his wife and kids. The guy driving the car in front of you just murdered his own parents for the inheritance. The woman you brushed up against on the sidewalk is fifteen minutes away from drowning her own kids in the bathtub. THAT'S evil, Brooks. No demons. No monsters. Human beings. People."

"If you could only see what I've seen-"

"I'm a cop, Brooks. I've been in a courtroom where three different eyewitnesses tell three completely different stories... NONE of which agree with what was caught on a hidden camera. All THREE can pass a lie-detector with flying colors. You want to convince me of something, you're going to have to start with something other than what you think you SAW."

"The bomb had teeth in it, Dobbs-"

"This is a hospital. Do you know what all hospitals have? Bodies. Do you know what all bodies have? Teeth."

"Fine," said Jason. He turned away from her and faced the door. "Believe what you want."

"No."

Something in Dobbs' voice... the tone of that one word... drew Jason's eyes back to her.

"No, its not that simple," said Dobbs. "I need to know, Brooks... I need to know if you REALLY believe all this stuff you're saying. About demons and-"

"Look, I'm not-"

"THINK... about it." Dobbs moved closer to Jason and lowered her voice. "I need to trust you, Brooks. Think about the situation we're in. We're done, no matter what we may or may not find when we get off this elevator. I'm wanted for one murder. You're wanted for about a dozen. IF we make it out of this hospital, then the only thing we have to look forward to is a few weeks on the run before the cops or the feds catch up to us."

"So what's your point?" said Jason.

"My POINT is the reason I've come with you this far."

"Because I was going the same direction you wanted to go? Or because I've got all the guns."

"That's only a part of it."

"And the other part?"

"Listen to me close, Brooks. I've got a plan..."

r. Francine Cray's day was over, and she was damned glad of it. She couldn't count the number of hours she had spent on her feet... first running, then walking, then shuffling, then barely managing not to crawl from patient to patient, rendering treatment to the unending hordes of sick, injured, suicidal, and not-quite-dead. Such was the life of new graduate who still hadn't finished 'paying her dues' in the ER. She was always the first to be called in, and was always the last to leave. How long had it been since she'd eaten anything? She couldn't remember. Nor could she remember if the next meal she ate was going to be breakfast, lunch or dinner. She had only a vague impression... just a guess, really... of whether sunlight or a darkness would greet her when she finally made it to the door. She'd know for sure when she retrieved her watch and other belongings from her locker... assuming her legs would make it that far. But what she REALLY wanted to do was...

...see what was behind that door up ahead.

It was an examination room, tucked away in a far corner of the hallway. There was nothing special about it. She'd treated half a dozen patients in that room on this shift alone. Someone else was in there now, judging from the closed door. Whatever it was, certainly wasn't her concern. Not her patient... not her problem.

But Dr. Cray couldn't dismiss the sudden urge she had to walk up and peek inside.

She paused in the hallway just a few yards from the door. She looked at it, trying to figure out just WHAT it was about the door that was so... insistent. Her conscious mind drew a blank... yet the more she stood there and looked at it, the more she wanted... and now, NEEDED... to go over there and take a look.

What WAS this? Was this some kind of neurosis? Was this what obsessive-compulsive disorder felt like? Had she snapped sometime during the past shift and not realized it?

"Okaayy," she said slowly... not quite sure of what or who she was agreeing to.

The doctor walked boldly up to the door, turned the latch, and pushed the door open just enough to see-

-a man and a woman, neither of whom she recognized. Both were young and Caucasian, and blonde. The man sat on the edge of the examination table with his shirt off. He had a large ribbon of bandages across his chest, and he looked sick. Weakness showed in his posture, his eyes, and the pallor of his skin. The woman was standing in front of him, but she was turned toward the door as if she were expecting someone.

Some nurse or doctor had obviously parked them here temporarily, and Dr. Cray had just stuck her nose in where it was neither wanted nor expected.

"I'm sorry-" she said.

"Get in here," said the woman. "Now."

Dr. Cray opened the door wider and moved halfway into the room... unaware that she was doing so.

"Who's treating you?" she asked.

"You are. He's hurt... some kind of poison or something."

"What nurse-"

"Get IN here!" There was considerable strain on the woman's face. And in her voice. "And close the door."

Dr. Cray closed the door behind her and walked over to the man... who was regarding her with unveiled suspicion. His eyes locked onto her... scanned quickly up and down her body in an oddly non-sexual way... then moved over to the blonde.

"Can we trust her?" said the man. The woman nodded.

"Lemme guess, you don't like doctors, right?" said Dr. Cray. When she got to the examination table she saw the man's belongings piled on the floor beneath him.

Two very real-looking swords. And an equally-realistic gun.

"Props," the woman said quickly. "We're actors. There was an accident on the set... he got hit with some kind of... thorns or something. I dunno. But now he's sick."

"Thorns?" said Cray. She wasn't buying the 'actors' story even a little bit, but... strangely enough... she didn't care.

"See for yourself." the woman pointed to the man's back. The things sticking out of his flesh were NOT thorns, and the wounds they had made did not look healthy.

"How long did-"

"Just a few minutes."

"Okay, the first step is to get these out of him," said Dr. Cray as she dug some gloves and a pack of sterilized instruments out of a drawer. "And I need to know EXACTLY what these things are."

"Anti-venom." The man's voice was weaker than it had been a second ago.

"What?" Dr. Cray prodded the skin around one of the wounds. It was soft and spongy.

"Need... anti-venom. Don't know what kind... best to use all of them..."

"That would kill you. Looks like these are already infected... you sure this happened today?"

"Not infected," said Sebastian. "He wouldn't use a... biological agent. Virus or bacteria would take too long. He'd want to kill faster. Some kind of venom. Snake. Spider. Or a combination. Symptoms consistent with... both hemotoxin and neurotoxin... m-maybe mycotoxin..."

Dr. Cray pulled a long, white, sharpened tooth out of the man's back. A small jet of foul-smelling pus spurted from the wound. The flesh surrounding the hole was beginning to decay.

"...oh, my..." Dr. Cray tried not to look shocked. Localized necrosis was not new to her, but SHE had only seen it on a cadaver... not on a living patient.

Part of what the man had just said... the part about someone trying to kill him... had somehow slipped right out of her mind. But the portion that stayed with her agreed with what she was seeing. Hemotoxin destroy tissue, and that was exactly what was going on.

"Are you having trouble breathing?"

"Yes. H-hard to keep eyes open."

"Neurotoxin," said Dr. Cray. But no animal venom was both a hemotoxin AND a neurotoxin...

"Look," said the woman. "You're wasting time. He's got some kind of super-venom in him... he knew that before you started poking at him. Now go get your antivenom and-"

"We can't use an antivenom until we know exactly what it is that bit him. There's no such thing as a universal anti-toxin."

"It's man-made," said the man. "No animal..."

"Then we need to get a sample from one of these... teeth... and take it to the lab. If its similar enough to a known venom, then we can try whatever antivenom works against it. IF we have it. If this is something new... then they'd need to MAKE an antivenom-"

"How long would that take? A few hours?"

"Try a few days."

"He'll be dead by then!"

"F-figure..." the man was on the verge of speaking, but he suddenly went limp and fell sideways onto the table.

"Sebastian!"

"We need to get him to-"

"He's not going anywhere!" the blonde woman snapped suddenly. "He can't leave this room... and neither can you."

At that moment, Dr. Cray wanted-

-whatever it was that she wanted evaporated into a blast of mental static. She winced, then her thoughts returned to her. She needed to get the patient out of the ER and into... somewhere...

...she couldn't think straight. What was happening to her?

"Sebastian!" the blonde woman was shaking the man, trying to wake him up.

"...na-...na-...narrow..." the man mumbled. He slowly came back around, but made no effort to sit up.

But then, if he had as much hemotoxin in him as he seemed to, then the pain would have rendered him unconscious a long time before now. How was he even AWAKE?

"...v-venom is... saliva," the patient said. "Braxis modified... enzymes... but he.... had to know... what to make. Figure... what venoms would... he be familiar... with..."

"He's an American doctor," the woman looked up at Dr. Cray. "What are the most dangerous venoms you know?"

"In North America? Rattlesnakes and spiders. Black widow and brown recluse. These actualy DO look like brown recluse bites... only larger-"

"...need all of them... choose antivenoms for the deadliest... fastest acting... poisons..."

"A cocktail like that might kill you," said Dr. Cray.

"Then kill me."

he sixth floor was eerily silent and empty... even for a section of the hospital that didn't see a lot of patients. There should have been doctors and lab-workers wandering the hallways. There should have been a guard at the freight elevator. And another at the main elevator, and yet ANOTHER at the stairwell.

But when the elevator doors opened, Jason Brooks stepped out into a deserted hallway wrapped in the same ominous stillness he had found at the apartment building across town.

He remembered the creatures that been lurking behind that stillness, and, even though Donovan had already scouted the floor and declared it (reasonably) safe, a chill still slid down Jason's spine.

Dobbs was right behind him.

"Where is everybody?" she whispered.

"In the lab," Jason replied.

"How do you know-"

"Except for one. Up ahead and to the right..." Jason pointed at the intersecting corridor ahead of them. To the left, it led to the lab. To the right, it emptied into another hallway that ran between the main elevators and the stairs.

"Someone we know?"

"Someone YOU know," Jason replied. "Braxis is mine. I don't know where the kid is, but I'm gonna take care of the doc while he's still vulnerable."

"And by 'take care of...' you mean what?"

"Dobbs." Jason looked at her. He REALLY looked at her... giving her the same facial expression that she given him in the elevatore. "You don't want to go in that lab. You don't want to see what's in there... or what's going to happen."

"Our plan depends on you NOT being a murderer, Brooks. Assuming you aren't already."

"I'm not. But I'm not gonna let Braxis and that dem-... Velazquez slide out of here just so you can get your life back."

"Your life, too." said Dobbs.

"That's already gone," said Jason. "Your man is that way. Keep your eyes open. If you see the other me, or ESPECIALLY Velazquez, you run."

"I don't run."

"Then I guess you won't have to worry about getting your life back."

Jason turned right and left Dobbs standing in the hall behind him. A second later, he heard her take the other corridor. He hoped she wasn't about to get herself killed.

"Donovan, you there?"

"Yes." The ghost replied.

"Just checking..."

Donovan had already told Jason what to expect inside the lab. Jason knew what he was going to see, and he had already decided what he was going to do when he saw it.

It was all planned. All rehearsed in his mind.

The laboratory's double doors were unlocked. Jason grabbed the latch with his left hand while cocking a revolver with the right. He pushed the door open slightly... then shoved it violently. He stormed in, sweeping the room with peripheral vision while aiming his attention... and his gun... at the dark stain spreading across the rear wall of the lab.

The stain was an aura. At the center of it... perched like a spider in a web... was Dr. Anthony Braxis.

"Hello Mr. Brooks," Braxis drawled.

The spider had a fly. Braxis's back was against the wall, and he had one arm wrapped around the midsection of another man... supporting him... keeping him still. It was a doctor, judging from the age and the expensive shoes. The man's shirt was open, and Braxis's hand was wrist-deep in the center of the his chest. The man looked at Jason with pure terror on his face.

"...my heart..." the man gasped. His voice was so low that Jason barely heard him.

Jason aimed his revolver at the center of Braxis's forehead. The Affinity buzzed in his brain... his finger tightened on the trigger.

"-ah, now before you do something rash-" Braxis blurted with uncharacteristic speed. "Perhaps you should take stock of the situation. My hand is the only thing keeping this man's heart beating. If you shoot, you kill him as well."

The doctor's aura was clean. He wasn't one of Braxis's slaves; he was an innocent man. Probably somebody that deserved to live.

Unfortunately...

"I'm not here for conversation," said Jason. "I'll ask you one time, and ONLY one time. Take your hand out of that man's chest and let him go."

"Or what? You'll shoot me... and kill him, too?"

"Yes," said Jason. Jason had to fight to keep the hesitation out of his voice... just as he was fighting the Affinity for control of the gun. Every ounce of his soul wanted to save the hostage... but he knew what would happen if Braxis walked out of this room alive. "I will. Let him go. Do it now."

"You'll throw away a man's life just to get to me? I'm worth that much?"

"Yes," said Jason.

"Well... how about two men? Or five? How many people will you sacrifice to kill me, Mr. Brooks?"

"I only see the one."

That was it. Jason was going to shoot him. He looked the hostage in the eyes. Jason felt as if his own heart was in a vice.

"I'm sorry," he said to the man. "I'm really sorry-"

"Don't be foolish, Mr. Brooks. This lab was full of people. Where do you suppose they are now, hmm?"

The effort that it took to keep the Affinity from pulling the trigger was so great... both Braxis and his hostage recoiled from the strain on Jason's face.

"What have you done?" said Jason. He frowned deeply as a thought occurred to him. "Where is the boy? And the fake me?"

"Did you like my little surprise in the elevator?"

"Where are they?"

"I don't see any blood on you, Mr. Brooks, but I know the device was activated. Tell me... who got hurt? I was hoping for you or the detective... but I made the poison a little less potent in case the lovely Ms. Ricks got scratched. I still need her alive, you see. In hindsight, I probably should have included an eye and a rudimentary brain so that it could deterime-"

"Answer. The Questions."

"Call it an insurance policy, Mr. Brooks. This man here... Dr. Blanchard... is merely for demonstrational purposes. Otherwise you would have shot me on sight. But once I say what I have to say, I will release the good doctor and walk out of here. You will not only do nothing to stop me... but you will probably accompany me as an armed escort to ensure my safety."

"I'm not playing a game here, Braxis. In fact... I'm just gonna go ahead and shoot you right now-"

"THIRTY people!" Braxis blurted. "In this hospital alone there are over thirty people who will DIE if you so much as harm me! All it takes is a second to reach into a man's chest and weaken the wall of his aorta... or introduce a gradually worsening defect into a heart valve. It takes only slightly longer to do the same thing for the arteries feeding the brain. Heart attacks. Strokes. Brain aneurysms. Other things that you're too ignorant to understand. All quite fatal, I'm afraid. I can fix them, of course. I suppose a team of doctors could... in theory... perform all the necessary surgeries, IF they knew who the patients were and IF they knew which patient had which defect. But what about the OTHERS? What about the patients in the OTHER hospitals I have visited? I've been quite busy, Mr. Brooks. Handing out miracle cures for cancer... and a little something extra. Killing me would result in, not dozens... but HUNDREDS of deaths. Do you want to be responsible for THAT kind of slaughter, Mr. Brooks?

Jason opened his mouth to speak... and could say nothing.

"I want all of those people to live, Mr. Brooks," Braxis continued. "I fully intend to find them and repair the defects. But if you kill me... then you condemn them all. Most of them won't even know what killed them. So I ask you again... How many people will you sacrifice?"

Braxis smiled at him. Jason hated that smile. He hated the face that wore it. He wanted to put a big, bloody hole right in the middle of it...

... but he didn't dare. Not with all those people... all those lives...

Jason uncocked his revolver and slowly lowered the weapon.

"All right," he said. "You win."

he doctor wanted to send a nurse to fetch the antivenoms, but Ashley changed her mind for her. With a few mental suggestions concerning the need for secrecy, Ashley sent the doctor on her way. The suggestions wouldn't hold for long. Even fatigued from hours of work, the woman's mind was strong, and would soon snap the mental restraints Ashley had placed on it. Hopefully the doctor would be back before that happened... or before Sebastian got any worse.

The wounds on his back had gotten uglier, and an ominous trembling had developed in his extremities. Ashley took a quick peak into his mind, but one taste of the pain he was in nearly caused her to black out. It was worse than anything she'd ever felt, but Sebastian was enduring it patiently and calmly. She offered to block the pain from his mind, but Sebastian declined, and even seemed offended at the very suggestion. He wouldn't last much longer, though. High pain threshold or not, dead was still dead... and there was a better than even chance that he was going to be just that before long.

"Cannn we trust her?" Sebastian asked for the second time. "cannn you conntrol her while she..."

"She's not a puppet, you know," Ashley replied. "All I can do is make suggestions... push her in the right direction if she strays."

"Mmmmm."

"But you leave worrying about that to me. That's my department."

"Mmmmhmmm. Yoou sh-should find Brooks. He'll need you... up there."

"And leave you here alone?"

"I could die," Sebastian's words came with such indifference that he may as well have been talking about a goldfish and not himself.

"That doesn't bother you, does it?" Ashley said.

"No."

Ashley scanned the surface of Sebastian's thoughts... not deep enough to sense the pain, but deep enough to see that Sebastian wasn't lying. He really didn't care if he died or not. His only concern was whether Jason and Dobbs could do what they needed to do without his help. Beyond that... he was utterly unconcerned

"Well I care!"

"Why?"

"Because... just because!"

"In what I do," said Sebastian. "Without the Gifts... without power... like yours... I have already exceeded my life expectancy."

"That's BULLSHIT! Magic or not, you're waay better than Jason OR me! You're... you're SEBASTIAN! You're like a superhero or something! You can't die from some stupid poison! That would be like... that would SUCK!"

"Maybe... maybe I won't. She's coming back."

"Huh?" Ashley sensed the doctor's mind approaching down the hall. "How did you-"

"Can't fight... but I can still hear."

"Oh."

The latch turned and the door opened... just as something else fell across Ashley's psychic senses. Something that wasn't the doctor... but was nevertheless approaching them at a very determined gait.

"Uh-oh," said Ashley as Dr. Cray entered. The doctor was carrying a tray with four small glass bottles.

"What?" said Dr. Cray.

"Uhhh..." Ashley looked nervously at Sebastian, then at the doctor... then back at Sebastian. "We've got company on the way. And not the good kind."

Sebastian almost looked like he was going to sit up and strap on his swords. Left alone, he probably would have succeeded... but Ashley slipped into his mind and removed the remaining strength from his arms, causing him to flop back down on the examination table. "...weaker than I thought..." he moaned. "Who's coming."

"IT. I think it knows where we are... coming for me..."

"What are you talking about?" said the doctor.

"Go..." said Sebastian.

"I'm not going to run away and leave you-"

"Go and kill it," said Sebastian. "Get it right this time."

Dr. Cray was looking at both of them with a growing suspicion that Ashley didn't need any psychic powers to detect.

"uhh... rehearsing lines?" said Ashley.

"You two aren't actors; I knew that the whole time. I don't know what you are, but this man is hurt and I'm going to do what I can to help him. But if you're going to go out that door and endanger this hospital-"

"Oh come on," said Ashley. "Do I look like I'm a danger to anybody?"

Dr. Cray looked her up and down. Ashley didn't wait for her to say anything. She hit the doctor with a strong desire to keep Sebastian safe... and then left the room. Dr. Cray was already loading the first syringe when Ashley closed the door behind her.

obbs suspected that Jason was either sending her into a trap, or was lying to get her away from him... so that he could go and kill the old man that, as far as SHE knew, was the key to what was really going on here.

But things were so desperate... the situation so serious... that she had no choice but to go along with it.

After all, what if Brooks was RIGHT?

Not about the demons... That was crazy, even if Brooks himself didn't seem insane. But what if he was right about who was at the other end of the hall?

Phillips was still alive, of that she was (almost) positive.

And there really WAS a Jason Brooks look-alike. Of THAT she was even more (almost) positive.

The faint, fading glimmer of hope that was her future depended on finding those two people... IF they existed. But for Jason Brooks to simply point down a hallway and say "there, go get him" was just... too easy. It had to be a trick. Part of her hoped that it WAS a trick, because Brooks betraying her made more sense than any of the alternatives. Trusting Brooks... a violent fugitive most certainly headed for the electric chair? A man who had admitted... ADMITTED... that he was here to kill one or more people? And Brooks trusting HER?

Yeah... yeah THAT made perfect sense.

But when Detective Marilyn Dobbs paused to listen, she heard footsteps in the corridor just around the corner. One person. Male.

Dobbs had been moving as quietly as she could, so WHOEVER it was probably didn't know she was there. She listened as the footsteps got further away... and was just on the verge of following them when the person turned and headed back toward her. She waited.

The person in the hallway walked past her-

Had Marilyn not been a detective, she would have thought that the person in front of her was a hospital security guard... at least for the split second it would have taken for the man to pull out a gun and shoot her.

But the first thing Dobbs saw... even before the ill-fitting uniform... was Brandon Phillips' face. She didn't notice the uniform until after she had already thrown herself into him... knocking him across the corridor and slamming him into a wall with her arm thrown across his neck. With her other hand, she snatched the gun out of Phillips holster and held the muzzle to the man's left temple.

Then, with her face three inches from his, Dobbs got a good long look at him.

"My God," she said. "It's true. Brandon Phillips."

Phillips smiled.

"I shot you."

"Yes, you did," said Phillips.

"You died."

"No. I didn't. But you got charged with murder anyway... funny how that works out, eh?"

"What happened to the gun. How come they didn't find it?"

"Gun? Oh, you mean... this gun?"

Phillips' arm was moving. Dobbs already had his gun, but he was going for something under his shirt. A backup weapon?

Did he not REALIZE that she had a gun to his head?

Not that she could use it... that would ruin everything.

Dobbs stepped back and grabbed the man's forearm. She pulled it away, but he had already grabbed...

Dobbs did a double take. Phillips did have another gun... and he was pulling it out of his STOMACH?!

...She didn't see it. Maybe that flesh-pocket in his abdomen was real, or maybe she was imagining it, but the best and most logical course of action was to pretend she didn't see it. Pretend it never happened...

So, completely ignoring that fact that Phillips was some kind of kangaroo/human hybrid, Dobbs grabbed his wrist and gave it a hard, sharp twist. The bones broke with a wet and very audible snap. Phillips dropped his gun... just as his other hand closed around Dobbs' throat.

The man's grip was quick and strong. He shouldn't have been that fast... but he was. His hand was on her neck before she knew it was coming. Not only could Dobbs not breathe, but the man's grip threatened to break her neck almost as easily as she had broken his wrist.

Active reflexively, Dobbs reached for Phillip's crotch. She got a handful of something delicate, and gave it a good squeeze.

Phillips didn't flinch.

Whatever drugs this guy was on, they were GOOD.

Dobbs's second reflex drew her fist back and plunged it into his gut was hard as she could...

...where it slipped inside the flesh-pocket that Dobbs had already forgotten about. After all, it wasn't real... right?

Suddenly, her hand was inside a warm, muscular cavity. It felt like...

...Dobbs didn't want to think about what it felt like. Instead of thinking, she unclenched her fist and sank her fingers into the fleshy walls.

Then she made another fist and pulled it out.

"AAAOOOGH!"

The look on Phillip's face was more surprise than pain. Having his innards snatched loose and turned partially inside out was just enough of a distraction for Dobbs to slip free of his grasp... back up two steps... and deliver a spinning kick to the head.

Phillips stumbled out into the center of the hallway. Dobbs squinted back the wave of dizziness and pain that had accompanied her sudden exertion. She had already been used as a punching bag once today... she doubted she would survive a second bout. She THOUGHT she'd kicked Phillips hard enough to knock him out, but he was still standing... trying to tuck his insides back in.

"BITCH!" he hissed. "I think that HURT!"

"You think!? How about you tell me some answers or I'll make it a sure thing! Where is Brooks?"

"Yours or ours?" Phillips said with a smile. "Yours is in the lab, getting disappointed. OURS is downstairs arranging a little reception for you. Your cop friends are gonna be all over this hospital soon. Brooks is gonna shoot enough of them to get the rest nice and bloodthirsty, then lead them up here. You and the real Brooks are gonna die in a shootout, and everybody else lives happily ever after. How's THAT for answers?"

"Pretty good. Thanks."

Dobbs had been inching her way forward while Phillips was talking. And once he was done, she hit him with a front snap kick that closed his mouth... knocked out a few teeth... and turned his smile into a bloody smear.

Dobbs' foot returned to the floor just long enough to catch her balance... then she broke his jaw with a well-placed roundhouse kick.

"UNK!" Phillips grunted as he felld backward. Dobbs put him out of his misery with a spinning ridge-hand strike to the temple.

At least, that was the plan.

He wasn't unconscious when he hit the floor. In fact... despite the fractured skull, Phillips jumped up and ran for the door leading to the stairs. He was fast... but he had to stop to open the door, and that was when Dobbs caught him.

The door opened onto the stairwell, and Dobbs shoved him forward... while sweeping his legs out from under him.

Phillips tumbled wordlessly down one flight of stairs...

...then he got up.

Then he collapsed.

Dobbs hadn't expected him to actually fall DOWN the stairs. She checked to make sure he was still alive... then grabbed him by the arm and started dragging him down to the next floor.

"Brooks is downstairs, eh?" she said. "Cops on the way? Good. No, better than good. That's perfect..."

inding Tomas Velazquez was not a problem. It took no effort whatsoever. The demon had burrowed deep into the boy's undeveloped psychic abilities, and was using them to home in on Ashley like a moth to a light. She could feel its thoughts dripping across her mind even before she'd left Sebastian. It could find her wherever she was, but it couldn't get inside her mind yet. It couldn't read her thoughts...

...it didn't know that she was leading it into a trap.

Since Sebastian and Donovan were determined that SHE was going to be the one to deal with Velazquez (wasn't JASON the demon-killer here!?) Ashley had come up with her own plan during the ride from their last disastrous encounter. Things were going to go differently this time...

...differently, yes, but whether she was going to win, or even survive, still remained to be seen.

But whatever was going to happen, it needed to happen away from other people... especially Sebastian. The last thing she needed was him leaping off of that table and getting himself spattered across a wall.

Tomas was traveling down the hallway leading from the freight elevators. Ashley wove her way through the crowded ER, then veered unnoticed into the corridor to head him off.

He was just around the corner.

Ashley didn't even slow down. She rounded the turn... and there he was. Tomas didn't look like a little boy any more. He was more like an abstract painting of a child that had mysteriously sprang to life... with the mind and movements of some dangerous tropical lizard. At the first sight of Ashley, Tomas hissed with wet, oozing glee.

Ashley kept walking toward him, as if she were intending to snatch him up by the arm and give him a spanking.

The demon's thoughts rushed over her. It wasn't an attack; it was more of a probe. It wanted to know what she was up to.... but when its attempts washed harmlessly off of Ashley's thoughts, it decided to push a little harder.

Ashley's mind... and her stomach... recoiled from the tight beam of hatred that tried to burn its way into her thoughts. She shrugged it off, but now worry began to gnaw at her.

She had been expecting more. Why wasn't it pouncing on her like last time? Did it know what she was up to?

If it did, then she was screwed.

Tomas's throat produced a rapid series of insectile clicks that Ashley knew was a growl.

Ashley kept walking toward it. Tomas had stopped moving, and was now standing in the center of the hall, staring at her.

An invisible force shoved Ashley backward. She halfway expected to go flying down the hallway back toward the ER, but no... the demon wanted her intact. The telekinetic push became an crushing grasp that held Ashley tight. Ashley responded by opening her mind and-

Tomas Velazquez recoiled and went flying backward, squealing and clicking angrily until he hit the floor near the freight elevators. The impact would have killed a normal child, but Tomas hopped up and slithered/scampered toward her.

Ashley braced herself.

The demon's thoughts rolled over her again... this time with all of the fury and power she'd been expecting. Her defenses buckled. Ashley strained to keep her knees from doing the same.

Snippets of the most vile thoughts imaginable began to seep through the widening cracks in Ashley's mind. The girl tightened her grip in one last effort to squeeze the demon's influence out...

...but she failed. The demon pushed hard, and her mind flew open before its charge. With a roaring rush of triumph...

... the twisted form of Tomas Velazquez took shape within the massive Victorian mansion that sat at the center of Ashley's thoughts. The house did not exist. It was a construct; a representation of Ashley's psyche. Each step on the ascending stairwell behind him lead deeper into her subconscious. Each sealed door on the hallway above was an untapped facet of Ashley's mind. But they would not remain untapped for long.

The demon... which now existed within TWO bodies... would throw each door open and bask in the delicious power that lay hidden behind them. The boy had been a good host, but now it had reached the end of its strength. It's limits were now a leash that held the demon back; but once it had fully infested THIS host...

"Comfortable?"

Tomas's head swiveled awkwardly on his elongating neck, slowly bringing his increasingly insectile eyes to the source of the voice.

He was not alone. He was inside the girl's mind, but the girl had placed herself in here with him.

Ashley stood in front of the main doors as if just entering the room. The edge of her brown trenchcoat... familiar, but not on HER... swayed around her legs, shifting in a nonexistent breeze. In one hand she held a chrome .454 revolver. In the other, she held one of Sebastian's swords. Both weapons were polished to a mirror finish, and the light reflecting off of them played across Tomas's face, causing his skin to blister and burn. The second skin that lay beneath was clearly not human.

"sssSSSSSS!!!!" Tomas drew back from the light that now came off of Ashley in wide streams, like sunlight through an Ashley-shaped window.

"You wanted in," said Ashley. "You're in. Lets see if you've got what it takes to stay."

Without warning, Tomas's head jerked forward. His jaws unhinged, and a spray of half-liquid, half-gaseous filth belched out of the inhumanly-wide mouth. The cloud filled the space between Tomas and Ashley with an oily black stench. The floor beneath the cloud began to sizzle and rot...

...as did the human skin that was stretched obscenely over the boy's transforming body like a rubber band. Rips and tears sliced through Tomas's face. Beneath the tattered skin was not muscle and bone, but something more resembling stained wicker or bamboo.

There was a loud CRACK, and Tomas's chest split down the middle. A large, grotesque form unfolded out of the resulting black chasm

Discarded flaps of skin and clothing dropped to the floor as the demon charged its own cloud of stench-

"yyyYYAAAHH!!"

Ashley came spiraling out of the cloud like an whirlwind.... sword in one hand, gun in the other... coat flying behind her. Tendrils of filth peeled away from her... not DARING to touch her. Tomas snatched himself backward, but the tip of Sebastian's sword struck a perfectly straight line across his face, throat and chest. Ashley wielded the weapon with only one feminine arm, but it struck like a hundred Knights.

The resulting shockwave sent more of Tomas's little-boy form flying off in red splatters, while throwing the demonic whole back across the room.

Were the wall behind him real, he would have crashed through it easily. But it... like the sword that had struck him... was built from the steel of Ashley's will. The demon's thunderous impact did nothing to the house, but it sent a cascade of snapping, crackling fractures radiating through its hardened body.

"UNNNnnnrrrggGRRRGAA!"

The demon absorbed the damage and the resulting pain with masochistic glee. He continued to transform... getting taller and wider as he peeled himself off of the wall and charged Ashley.

Ashley's torso twisted, sweeping the gleaming sword behind her while she swung the monstrous revolver... now even bigger than the real thing... across her field of vision. She pulled the trigger three times. Three projectiles of equal parts iron and light streamed out of the chrome barrel. Ashley's eyes followed them toward their target-

The demon crouched and leapt over the bullets-

-which immediately veered upward after him, catching him in mid-leap.

The first bullet exploded inside the demon's chest, blowing a sizzling hole from neck to gut. The second ripped through its left leg, leaving it attached to the torso only by thin strings of bubbling black spaghetti. The third removed one of its arms at the shoulder.

When the arm hit the carpet, it transformed from a clawed demonic thing into the perfectly normal arm of a seven-year old boy.

The force of all three impacts launched the demon into another wall, where it left a greasy streak all the way down to the floor. It rose slowly, balancing itself on one leg as the torn flesh of its shoulder grew out to form a new arm. Perhaps in the physical world, the demon wouldn't have had the power to regenerate itself so easily... but this was the realm of thought. It would take more than a sword and three bullets to put this creature down.

But Ashley was just getting started.

Ashley had Jason's gun pointed right at its head. She pulled the trigger once... and four bullets came out simultaneously.

(The fact that the .454 revolver only held five bullets was completely irrelevant)

The demon reacted by running... in five different directions. The still-transforming creature split itself into five identical images. One ran left, the other, right. One shot up the wall toward the ceiling. One ran for the door. The other came straight for Ashley.

Ashley dispersed her four bullets after four of the images while bringing her sword back around to catch the fifth as it reached her-

The shots veered way from each other and ALMOST got to their targets. Then, at the last second, they turned away and re-converged on the fifth demon-

-catching it in the back as Ashley's blade cut removed its intestines in one physically impossible slash.

"What?" Ashley taunted as the resulting pieces of the demon slid across the carpet. "You think I can't tell real from fake inside my own mind? Please..."

The demon sprang at her. It had been in pieces an instant before, but now it was beginning to catch on to the rules of the game. The thing that came at Ashley was bigger and uglier... some bastard offspring of lizard and insect that had been twisted into a hulking, ape-like shape. Its skin was not skin at all, but now looked even more like strands of dried wood twisted and hardened into place, forming a kind of natural armor.

This was probably close to the demon's true form.

"Nooow, we're getting somewhere," said Ashley as the demon struck. The creature's claws were small, but the fingers that bore them were each a foot long. Ashley darted to one side and swung her sword in an upward arc across the demon's wrist. Instead of severing the hand, the blade carved only a superficial gash across the wooden flesh. The demon swept its other hand across her face, but Ashley spun out of the way, slashing again with her sword and cutting a bleeding chunk out of the demon's arm.

Not wanting to give the demon a chance to recover, Ashley fired three shots into its face, throat, and upper chest... obliterating each target with the explosive power of her will.

The headless demon stumbled backward, spraying filth from the jagged stump of its neck. Then it dropped into a crouching position. It was now sporting a new head that was even larger and uglier than the previous one.

"HSSSsssss...."

Its oval mouth drooled corrosive saliva onto the carpet of Ashley's mind...

...and then it spat a thick stream of it at Ashley's face.

"Forget it," Ashley pointed one dainty finger, and the acid ignited into a bright blue flame that traced all the way back to the mouth that had spawned it. The demon's upper body ignited in a blaze of fire.

With a thought, Ashley expanded the blaze to consume the demon's entire form.

The demon screamed and flailed within the inferno.

"Burn," Ashley hissed. She made the flames hotter.

The demon roared in pain.

"Not enough..." Ashley's jaw clenched tightly as she focused more and more of her will onto the blaze. "Hotter..."

The fire was so thick that Ashley could no longer see the demon roasting within them. But it was still there. She could hear it screaming; the beast's roar became a loud screech of agony.

"Hotter!" Ashley grunted. "Burn!"

A towering dark shape began to push its way through the flames.

"BURN!"

Ashley aimed Jason's weapon at the shape and pulled the trigger. One jerk of her finger unleashed a stream of white-hot bullets that tore into the demon's hardening flesh, driving it back into the heart of the flames.

"BURRRRN!!!!" Ashley's eyes squinted almost shut as she focused more and more power onto the inferno. The demon's screech rose in pitch to an ear-splitting wail.

Ashley's muscles... both real and imaginary... trembled as she doubled the fire's heat... then doubled it again. And again.

The ball of flames was now a sphere of plasma reminiscent of a small sun. Ashley kept firing the gun, sending bullets of pure thought into the demon's charred hide.

Ashley kept burning... kept shooting...

The demon's wail became an exploding roar that shook the walls.

No... it wasn't the ROAR the shook the walls, it was...

...footsteps.

The thing that waded through the flames, swatting Ashley's bullets aside like flies, was more than twice its original size. Its monstrous frame now had muscles piled chaotically on top of one another like a bad car accident. The demon's horned head rotated toward Ashley, and three compound eyes glared at her. The OTHER eyes swam maddeningly in their sockets, opening and closing in an almost hypnotic pattern.

The demon's five-jawed mouth swung open like a blooming flower... a flower filled with fangs and steaming black saliva.

"Oh... hell..." Ashley gasped. The demon thundered toward her, raising its two monstrous fists and bringing them down-

Ashley vanished... and reappeared three yards back, safely out of reach. The demon's fists slammed into the floor where she'd been standing.

"AAAAAAAA!!"

The floor shattered, and the impact sent a single pounding bolt of pain through Ashley's mind. Sebastian's sword fell from her hand and vanished before it hit the carpet... but she held on to the gun.

Realizing that it had missed, the demon caught her in its multi-eyed stare and started to charge once more-

Ashley fired once.

A single, tiny bullet leapt from the barrel...

...but as soon as it left the gun, the bullet elongated and transformed into a full-sized sword, traveling at over 2000 feet per second.

Ashley focused her will on the sword as it impaled the beast through the chest, halting its charge before it could even begin.

The second and third swords followed an instant later. They knocked the demon off balance... and just as it fell, a dozen more speeding swords thundered into its torso and propelled it across the room.

A brief wave of nausea jolted Ashley when the demon hit the wall... this time with enough force to damage it. Ashley kept the gun trained on the demon's body as she shifted her concentration to the swords she'd already fired.

The blades started to glow. They lengthened, exploding out of the demon's back and pinning it to the wall. They started to burn... and then vibrate in place. The vibrations increased until the swords were rotating in the demon's flesh like drill-bits.

Black blood sprayed across the wall and carpet in foul fountains.

The demon's gurgling scream became a string of wet coughs that almost sounded like... laughter?

"Uh, oh..."

Ashley watched in shock as the beast's tortured body began to grow larger... stronger. One by one, her swords popped out of place as the surrounding flesh restored itself. Barbed horns protruded from its shoulders and back. Already-bulging muscles expanded into new, even more twisted configurations along its chest and extremities. The tiny claws that it had wielded before were now the size of butcher knives. The floor beneath the demon's clawed feet groaned in protest as its weight increased.

Ashley realized her mistake too late. She hadn't fooled the demon by bringing it into her mind to fight it... IT had fooled HER! It was feeding off of the energy she was using against it! All the time she thought she'd been fighting it, she was really just making it stronger!

The demon took its first step in its new form.

THOOOM!

Its foot obliterated the floor and sent spasms of pain through Ashley's mind. The floor... and the house... was HER will, and this creature was now stronger than she was.

Thanks to her.

The demon took another step-

THOOOM!

-and it was all Ashley could to not to collapse. Gun, swords, trenchcoat, and much of her self confidence vanished in the resulting surge of pain.

She fought her reflexes, which wanted to wake up and return to the real world. But that would leave the demon here to roam free in her mind. The beast was dangerous enough with Tomas Velazquez's power. But with HERS...

Ashley couldn't let that happen.

THOOOM!

...even if she had to destroy her own mind to prevent it.

heep.

That was what they were. That had always been what he thought of them, even though he had never actually SEEN a sheep with his own eyes. Enemies were one thing.... they had to be hunted down and slaughtered like dogs. But people he didn't know... people who were neither friend, nor family, nor enemy... they were just sheep: Useless, helpless, and worthless.

Jason Brooks could no longer remember just who his 'family' and 'friends' had been, but the sheep were still the same. In fact, the doctor's constant chattering about 'saving them' only fueled Jason's dislike of them. Maybe they weren't even sheep any more... maybe they were bugs. Bugs that needed crushing.

No, no... crushing bugs was unpleasant... THIS would most certainly be enjoyable.

The main elevator doors opened, and Brooks moved out into the hospital hallway with all the assurance of a veteran doctor. The fact that he was dressed in bloody, bullet-ridden clothes seemed not to matter to him. Nor did the fact that he was holding a loaded .454 revolver in his hand.

They mattered to the armed security guard, however.

The guard did a comical double-take as Jason brushed passed him.

"HEY!" the man called..... 'hey' was the nearly universal sound of a sheep in distress. One of the guard's hands reached for the pitifully small gun hanging from his belt. The other extended toward Jason-

Jason's torso snapped around with robotic precision. His arm made a slight whooshing sound as it came up... moving faster than the guard's reflexes could ever hope to match-

The .454 revolver roared and jerked in Jason's hand. Perfectly coordinated muscles and reflexes absorbed the recoil and prepared to fire again... but the first shot had done the job so beautifully that a second was not necessary.

There was a small but ugly hole in the center of the guard's forehead... and a huge, even uglier hole where the back of his skull used to be. The dead sheep made a gurgling sound as he collapsed on the floor by the elevators.

Jason shot him again anyway.

Two shots from a .454 caliber revolver echoed through the hospital like an alarm. Guards, doctors, nurses, and patients all paused and looked up... looking very much like frightened gophers scanning the surroundings from the safety of their holes.

Then someone sounded the REAL alarm, and the already chaotic emergency room became an outright circus of frenzy and panic.

As the staff hustled patients into locked rooms or out into the parking lot, guards began to converge on the lobby like ants to a pile of bread crumbs.

Jason didn't wait for the chaos do die down... and he CERTAINLY didn't wait for the staff to get everyone to safety. He walked right into the middle of it all... both guns drawn... and headed for the front door with calm, deliberate slowness.

When anyone wearing a uniform arrived... he shot them.

When anyone ran TOWARD him instead of away from him... he shot them.

When anyone was a bit too slow getting out of his way... he shot them.

When anyone screamed too loud...he shot them.

Everybody else, he left alone.

There were twelve bodies... most of them dead... on the floor by the time the guards stopped throwing themselves at him. Some hid behind doors or around corners and waited for the patients and staff to clear out before trying to take the armed invader down.

Three guards and four police officers that were already on the scene had arranged themselves in a nice little shooting gallery in the courtyard outside.

How very nice of them.

Two patrol cars were parked in across from the doors, and the 'heroes' were standing behind it, using the vehicles for cover. That wasn't counting the five guards still inside that were just itching for a chance to shoot him in the back.

"FREEZE, BROOKS!" One cop shouted when Jason walked outside. Good. They knew his name. "DON'T MOVE!"

Jason moved.

Twenty-three seconds later, Jason was walking calmly back through the hospital lobby. He had let one of the cops live juuuuust long enough to get on the radio and call for backup. Backup was already on the way, of course, but Brooks wanted something specific.

When the wounded cop said his name... said that 'Jason Brooks' was at the hospital... Brook shot him in the face and went back inside.

Mission Accomplished.

"o what is it that you want?" Jason said solemnly. He still held his revolver... but now it was pointed harmlessly at the floor.

Hostages.

He'd been expecting ONE hostage. But not hundreds. There was no way he could play a part in killing that many people... even if it would not technically be HIS fault. He couldn't do it. And the fact that he was standing there wrestling with himself, trying to MAKE himself do it... appalled him all more.

As usual, Donovan was not helping.

"Shoot him, Jason."

Jason didn't answer. In fact, he was trying not to hear Donovan at all. His mentor... his 'Guide'... was trying to get him to murder over a hundred people.

And he was going to do that why? Because the VOICE in his head told him to?

No.

No, murder was not an option; so that left negotiation. Or, as Donovan was calling it: Terms of Surrender.

"Want?" said Braxis. Braxis still had one hand buried in the captive doctor's chest... apparently as further insurance against Jason having a change of heart. It was working. The hostage had cried himself into a state of nearly incoherent blubbering... begging Jason Brooks and Anthony Braxis not to kill him. "I don't want very much Mr. Brooks... at least not that I haven't taken steps to get for myself. I want you and Ms. Dobbs dead, of course. I'm sure that wish will be satisfied by the end of the day whether you let me out of this room or not. AndI want Ms. Ricks... whom I've already sent Tomas down to fetch."

"So, what do you want from ME?" said Jason. "In exchange for fixing all those people?"

Braxis smiled.

"Perhaps you don't understand," the doctor replied. "I don't want ANYTHING from you, Mr. Brooks. Nothing at all."

"So you're going to just let those people die-"

"You are just NOT paying attention, are you Mr. Brooks! I'm not so cold blooded that I would endanger them for no reason. And when you're dead, there will BE no reason. If you are so concerned about their safety then I suggest that you put that loud gun to your head and pull the trigger... but beyond THAT, there is nothing that I want from you."

"So," Donovan whispered into Jason's mind. "How's the negotiation going?"

here weren't going to be any mistakes this time.

This wasn't going to be like the police station.... or the bank... or the half-dozen other encounters that had left the police bloodied and embarrassed in the past few weeks.

Jason Brooks?

In the hospital?

Fine.

The helicopters were the first to arrive, circling the ten-story building like a pair of mechanical vultures over a corpse.

The hospital itself could not be evacuated. Not completely. Some patients couldn't be moved, and their caretakers were not going to leave them.

Understood... but traffic on the street was cleared away for a radius of four blocks. Then, the occupants of the adjacent buildings were evacuated... told to go home and STAY there. That included the media. There would be no embarrassment on this one. If the operation DID go wrong, then it would not go wrong on cable television for the whole world to see. There would also be no reporters... no cameras... no news helicopters... no 'on-the-spot' footage.

There WOULD be snipers and lots of men carrying large, ugly weapons.

A third helicopter descended out of the west and hovered over the hospital. A door on the side of the helicopter opened, and the flying machine spat out a brief but steady stream of armed men dressed in black from head to toe. As each pair of black boots hit the rooftop, the man wearing them sprinted for cover, and then turned to guard the next man's arrival. When all six men were on the rooftop, the helicopter sped off...

...and another one swept in to replace it. Less than a minute later, two squads of men armed with automatic weapons bashed down the door to the stairwell and swarmed into the hospitals interior. One squad began sweeping across the tenth floor, going methodically from room to room, searching for hostiles and securing whatever 'hostages' they could find. The second squad bypassed the tenth floor and went straight to the ninth, where they performed a similar search. When the first squad had completely searched and secured the tenth floor, they headed down the stairs to the eighth...

Seven floors below, Marilyn Dobbs was tightening the straps on Brandon Phillip's wrists. He was unconscious again, but there had been a minor scuffle on the forth floor, during which Dobbs broke Phillip's other wrist and cracked a few of his ribs. Now, the 'victim' who's death had sent her to jail was sleeping peacefully on a restraining gurney, with straps around both arms and both legs. She hoped that would hold him while she went and secured Impossibility #2: The 'other' Jason Brooks.

The hallways were empty, and in fact the entire hospital looked deserted. Dobbs knew that wasn't the case. The announcement she heard on the intercom on the way down had instructed everyone to hide in a room and remain there until help arrived to rescue them. That would keep them out of the way and safe... as long as there wasn't too much gunfire.

The fake Brooks could have been hiding anywhere in the building, but Dobbs got the feeling that he wasn't hiding at all. If his job was to get the cops stirred up, then he'd do it the same way he did at the bank and the police station: he'd stand right out in the open and let them come.

So Dobbs headed for the lobby.

Her hunch was right.

Brooks was in the hallway just short of the lobby. He wasn't exactly out in the open, as she doubted anyone on the outside could see him. He was staying clear of the snipers that were no doubt setting up kill-zones from a dozen different positions.... but when SWAT team came in, HE would be the first thing they saw. That's what he wanted. That's what SHE wanted, too... but not the way he was planning.

Dobbs stood at the opposite end of the hallway and aimed her gun... formerly Phillips' gun... at his back.

"I heard ya coming," Brooks said immediately. He didn't move... not even to turn and face her. Dobbs could see both of his hands, and they were empty. "This is a hospital, you should be quieter than that."

Dobbs HAD been quiet.

"But then I guess it could be my ears. The doc fixed 'em up good, you know. Ears. Eyes. Everything else. So.... you got a gun pointed at my back?"

"Yep," Dobbs replied.

"Finger on the trigger?"

"You're pretty good," said Dobbs.

"Better than you," said Brooks. "Watch this-"

"Don't move," Dobbs warned. "I mean it."

"Oh, I know you mean it. See... my guns are still in their holsters, but yours is already out and pointed. Seems like you got the drop on me, right. But I want you to watch what happens now-"

"I said don't move!"

"I haven't moved yet. But watch close, or you might miss it..."

"If-"

Brooks turned. He had a gun in his hand... a gun that had been somewhere else an instant before. Before Dobbs could so much as think about pulling the trigger of her own weapon, Brooks aimed his gun at Dobbs and fired.

shley ran for the staircase.

THOOOM!

The demon's foot came down, and the beast's head pivoted to follow her.

"K-k-k-k-k-k-k-ckchssss..." the demon gurgled. It turned and stormed after her.

THOOM!
THOOM!
THOOM!

"I've had headaches and nightmares worse that this," Ashley lied to herself as she took the stairs two and three at a time. "Yeah... plenty..."

THOOM!
THOOM!

The demon approached the base of the stairs, Ashley stopped and turned to look down-

The demon's foot came down-

-and sank into the floor suddenly liquid floor. Everything around it had suddenly become quicksand. The demon's bulk quickly sank with a thick gurgling splash-

-then the floor turned solid again, leaving the demon trapped from the neck down.

"How ya like me now, eh?" said Ashley.

The demon flexed its muscles. Something beneath the floor CRACKED. It felt like Ashley's skull.

"...rock..." Ashley hissed. She concentrated on the floor around the demon. "...rock... iron...steel...titanium..."

The floor took on a metallic sheen.

The demon looked up at her and roared. Again, the house shook... and beneath the rumbling was the high-pitched squeal of tearing metal.

It would hold for a while.

Ashley raced up the stairs. She didn't know if her indirect attack would feed the demon or not. If it did, she didn't want to be nearby when it finally broke loose...

...ohhhh, was THAT going to hurt...

She had to get upstairs.... but she wasn't running away. If anything, she was raising the stakes even higher. 'Upstairs' was the deepest part of her mind. She was retreating within herself in hopes that she'd find something there that she could use. But WHAT!? The mirror. She had to get to the mirror... the representation of her clairvoyant abilities. Maybe it could SHOW her a way to-

"RRRRAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAGGGHGH!!!"

The pain threw Ashley forward onto the stairs.

THOOOM!

The demon was free, and now it was following her up. Following her IN.

Ashley took the last few steps on her hands and knees. Behind her, the staircase shook violently, swaying and nearly collapsing at the demon's ascent.

...collapse...

She could collapse the stairs and shut the demon out. But if she tried that here, then she'd be severing the connection between her conscious and subconscious minds... placing herself into a permanent coma. And that would leave the demon 'out there' in control of her body. No... it was better to let it come in deeper. Then she could trap it here in her subconscious as a last resort. And if THAT didn't work... there was the other option.

Ashley was at the end of the Long Hallway. Hundreds of doors lined the walls on either side of her. Almost all of them were closed and locked. Some bore chains and padlocks. Behind each one was a memory or some deeper aspect of what she was.

She had never opened most of these doors. The few that she had explored were... confusing and unpleasant.

But she could already hear the voices calling to her from behind the walls. Most of the voices were her own, but some came from... somewhere else.

Ashley didn't try to ignore them. Ignoring them would take effort, and all of her attention was focused elsewhere.

Ashley turned around and formed a brick wall at the top of the stairs. The demon would smash through it easily, but maybe it would buy her a few seconds.

THOOM!
THOOOM!
THOOOOOM!

Each explosive footfall was like a railroad spike being driven into her skull. It was getting closer.

Ashley sprinted down the hall. Her own frantic heartbeat echoed back at her from the walls.

There was an explosion behind her. The brick wall didn't even buy her a second. The demon was here.

Ashley made the mistake of turning around to look at it.

It was a nightmare. All the fear she had ever felt in her entire life was staring back at her from the end of the hall.

Ashley caught her own scream before it left her throat. It was an attack... the demon had soaked up so much of her own power that now it was able to pull her mental strings... make her afraid....

...it was toying with her.

"NOT SCARED OF YOU!" Ashley shouted at it. The fear subsided. Ashley turned-

And the demon was RIGHT in front of her! It reached-

"TRY AGAIN!" Ashley taunted as she ran through the illusion.

The thing at the end of the hallway bellowed.

Ashley didn't see the creature raise one huge fist and bring it down on the floor in front of it.

The carpeted floor SPLIT down the middle, and a huge dark crack raced down the hallway after Ashley, bisecting the floor as it chased her.

This time, Ashley did scream. The crack in her mind was no trick. No illusion. And it hurt like hell.

Ashley hit the floor and felt the willpower drain out of her for an instant. She gathered her strength and managed to roll over onto her knees. She held out one hand-

-and the crack halted. Her fingers stiffened, and the floor began to pull back together-

-then it shook as the demon came toward her. It was running now.


The voices behind the walls were screaming... but not in fear or pain. They were yelling at her to DO something!

Ashley made a fist. The crack in the floor... the 'break' that would have become full-blown schizophrenia if left alone... slammed shut.

"...I'm stronger than you..." Ashley huffed. Her words MIGHT have been true before, but healing her own mind had taken every ounce of what she had left. She couldn't even get to her feet. But she still had to fight. "...this is MY mind." she said.

"MIINNEEEE!!!" The demon's cry churned out of its mouth like steam from a locomotive. "MINE! MINE! MINE!"

"...I can't do it..." Ashley said weakly. She couldn't defeat this thing. She couldn't.

Ashley closed her eyes and concentrated on the staircase. The demon would be trapped in here for a while, but by now it was probably strong enough to either smash its way out on its own... or use her own power to put the stairs back.

So she wouldn't stop there.

With the last strength she had, she was going to bring this house down around them both. She was going to destroy it. And her. And the demon.

It seemed poetic in a way. After all... she had destroyed Tomas Velazquez's mind, and that was what brought the demon here to begin with. So it was only right that she destroy her OWN mind to get rid of it.

And like Braxis said... she'd be careful not to leave any doors open for the NEXT demon. There weren't going to BE any doors... not when she was done...

Ashley heard a loud, metallic 'clank' over the sound of the demon's charge. She gave no thought or energy to what the sound was, until she heard it again... and again.

Padlocks.

The locks on the doors were coming undone. One at a time, the locks fell away and the doors began open.

The first door flew wide just as the demon passed it. The demon was transfixed by a bolt of light that took up the entire doorway. The demon roared in surprise, and stopped to turn toward the light just as another door opened.

Bright, golden light sprayed across the demon's back. Gurgling deep in its throat, the monster turned toward Ashley. Its face was too far removed from human for Ashley to judge its expression. Perhaps it was angry... or surprised... or even ecstatic. Ashley had no way of knowing. A dozen moist, compound eyes clicked at her as yet another shaft of light blared into the corridor between them.

Doors were opening all around them now. The light in the hallway became so bright it was painful... or it should have been. Ashley could look directly into it without wincing, but the demon began to hiss and back away. It growled at Ashley as if SHE were somehow responsible for what was happening.

But she wasn't. She had no idea where the light was coming from, and she had only a vague idea of what was behind those doors. Ashley certainly wasn't opening them on purpose... they were doing it themselves, and than was even more terrifying than the demon before her. She wasn't in control. Something significant was happening inside her own mind, and she had no idea what it was or how to stop it...

The hallway of Ashley's subconscious was alive with sound and light. Doors continued to throw themselves open as the demon slowly retreated the way it had come. A door immediately beside it flew open, bathing the twisted thing with eerie luminescence. The beast's head rotated on its stalk-like neck, and it peered into the light-

"EEEEEEEEEEEEE!" The demon screeched. It moved back from the door. Another opened. More golden light touched the beast... and this time, its flesh began to sizzle.

A tentative half-smile came to Ashley's lips. Whatever was happening, the demon didn't like it...

The demon turned its back to Ashley and began to run for the stairs, but every remaining door in the corridor came open at once. The resulting explosion of light brought a yelp of surprise from Ashley... even though she felt no heat, pain, or danger of any kind.

The demon's screeches of agony flew up and down the corridor like a horde of angry bats. Ashley winced and turned away, but when she looked again she saw that the hallway around her was filled with a light so thick it was almost liquid. And that there were even brighter shapes swimming around within it. Large, amorphous pools of radiance glided out of the doorways and enveloped the demon with glowing tendrils... tendrils that were completely alien, yet somehow human. Like the house itself, the 'beings' were symbolic representations of something in her mind... but WHAT?! What WERE they?! Where did they COME from!?

The demon's scream grew so loud and so high pitched that it hurt Ashley's ears. She screamed... and she couldn't even hear herself over the monster's cries.

The glowing shapes had completely covered it only for an instant, and now they were pulling away. Their graceful, flowing bodies floated back toward the doorways, but the tendrils remained wrapped around the demon's form like the wrappings of some grotesque mummy. They, too, began to pull... gently... like an old woman tugging on a Christmas bow...

...and, just like that Christmas bow, the demon came undone.

Its body gave the beginnings of a shudder, and then ribbons of harden flesh began to peel away. The demon's screaming continued even as its face, mouth and throat were pulled away into oblivion. Muscle, sinew, bone... and all of the power that it had absorbed from Ashley herself... vanished into the glowing, golden secrets behind the doors.

Beneath them was another form: young Tomas Velazquez spun and whirled in the air. When the last of his demonic outer layers had floated away, Tomas hovered above the floor, looking down at Ashley with eyes filled with pleading fear.

"...don't hurt me again..." the boy whimpered.

"Tomas?" said Ashley.

"...don't hurt me..."

"No, I won't-" Ashley started toward the boy, but suddenly, a magnificent sound... like a trumpet and a roar... shook the house. The light in the hallway intensified a hundred-fold, and Tomas... still hovering in the midst of it... screamed.

"TOMAS!"

The little boy's face wrinkled, and then shriveled and twisted into something inhuman... a smaller, uglier version of the demon's horrific visage.

"I'll KILL YOU, YOU BITCH!" Tomas... the demon... hissed at her. "KILL YOU! KILLYOU-KILLYOU-KILLYOU-KILLYOU-KILLYOUUUUUEEEEEE!"

The demon's final squeal ended with a sizzling POP as his body ruptured down the center... and exploded.

Ashley recoiled from the sight... and from the chunks flying past her... and from the sudden surge of power that struck at the center of her mind, blasting her out of one hallway...

...and into another.

The hospital. The hallway in the hospital... in the REAL world.

It took a few seconds for her to realize where she was. Coming out of a trance so quickly, and involuntarily, was something she couldn't just shake off. She blinked and squinted at the darkness, only to realize that the hall wasn't dark. It was just as bright as it had been earlier, but it just SEEMED dark because...

...because her eyes had adjusted to another light. A golden light that SHOULD have only existed in her thoughts. But had it been HERE too? Had her physical eyes seen it as well? There was also a strange sulfur-like scent in the air... and the distinct, but fading impression that there had been someone else in the hallway. Someone who'd vanished the instant before she returned to consciousness.

She found Tomas standing not far away. The boy was motionless... body frozen in a half-lunge, face locked in a perpetual sneer.

He looked dead.

His skin was a deep gray, and even his hair had a burnt, ashen appearance. The boy didn't respond as Ashley approached him. She stood directly in front of him... and waited. When nothing happened, she poked her finger into the center of his forehead.

Cracks radiated from her touch, and each dislodged large chips of ashen skin along its path. Each chips spawned more cracks... which traveled further and deeper across Tomas's face... then down his neck and across his naked chest. Half of Tomas's face slid off and hit the floor... exploding into a spray of fine gray ash that drifted over Ashley's shoes. More chunks followed, and Ashley realized that what had once been Tomas Velazquez was now a statue made of ash.

And he wouldn't even be THAT for much longer...

Tomas's body collapsed in on itself. Ashley jumped back quickly, just managing to avoid the sudden gust of ash. The thick cloud of dust threatened the fill the entire corridor... but the breeze from the air conditioning system caught what was left of Tomas Velazquez and whisked it away with silent efficiency.

" think you'd better get going, Mr. Brooks," said Braxis. "I think my ears did detect the sound of helicopters on the rooftop."

Jason had heard no such sounds, but Donovan confirmed them after a
quick jaunt to the roof. SWAT team was on the way, working their way down floor-by-floor. When they got to the sixth floor, they would most likely shoot him on sight.

"I thought you wanted to see me die," said Jason.

"I did. I do. But you know how the police can be in these situations; I might be wounded in some hideous crossfire. And let us not forget all the lives that would be in danger if I were to pass away."

"So you're going to stand here with your hand in that man's chest until-"

Braxis sighed.

It was a long, ugly sigh that did not end when it should have. The doctor's body went limp and he sank back against the wall, his body deflating like a ruptured bladder. The black aura around Braxis gave a fluttering shudder... and vanished.

The doctor that Braxis had been holding yelped in pain as Braxis's limp hand slipped out of his chest. Normally, Braxis's magic closed any such wounds as soon as he was done...

...but this time, a tremendous gush of blood spurted out of the hole in the doctor's chest. The poor man screamed and grabbed at his exposed heart, just managing to feel the bloody texture of it with his own hands before his brain realized he was dead.

"NO!"

Jason pointed his gun at the pile of clothes and limp, boneless flesh that had been masquerading as Braxis.

The doctor had done it again.

Jason had surrendered to a puppet... a false body created from spare flesh and animated with the demons' magic. Braxis had been controlling it from somewhere else in the hospital.

"...a puppet?" Jason said incredulously. "I've been bluffed by... by a f#@!ing PUPPET!?!? AGAIN!?! Donovan, FIND that bastard! Find him NOW!"

"Jason, in a matter of minutes this building will be filled with trained security officers. You will be out-manned and out-gunned. You WON'T be able to get out of here without killing a significant number of them. Are you prepared to do that?"

"So what do you want me to do... let Braxis GO!?!"

"I can find him, but YOU have to think of the greater battle."

"WHAT 'greater battle'!?"

"We don't always win, Jason. Sometimes we have to lose in order to make a future victory possible."

"But Braxis-"

"Won't get very far. I will find him... trust me. The next battle will come sooner than you think, but NOT if you get gunned down in this hospital. Who wins, then?"

"So what do you want me to do?.... Donovan?"

Donovan wasn't there.

"You'd better find him, old man," Jason growled as he started searching the lab. Braxis was not forgotten, but now there were more urgent... though less important... matters to tend to. The first step was finding some strong acid...

f she had blinked, she would have missed it. But even WITHOUT blinking, the attack was still only a blur that both began and ended before the first movement registered on Dobbs' brain.

She was looking at the back of Brooks' raggedy trenchcoat - then there was a bright light... muzzle flash. She tried to return fire, but her gun was gone. It hit the floor behind her. The firing mechanism was ruined by the single shot that had snatched it out of the detective's grasp. Dobbs didn't see it. Her attention was focused on the barrel of the very large revolver that Brooks had leveled at her face.

"Now tell me you can top that," said Brooks. "Go ahead and lie... tell me you've seen something as good as that before."

"The real Brooks is better," Dobbs sneered. Her muscles tensed... The intersecting hallway was just behind her. She could make a dash for it... or PRETEND to make a dash for it while reaching for the gun she had concealed under her shirt.

But her instincts told her that either action would be suicide.

"I AM the real Brooks!"

"So who were you BEFORE you were the 'real Brooks'?"

"No, no, no... you didn't read the script. See, this isn't the part of the story where you ask me questions and I explain everything.... THIS is the part where the arrogant cop-bitch gets what's coming to her."

"And what do I have coming to me? What have I ever done to you?"

"Nothing," said Brooks. "But you COULD have, and that's good enough to earn you a bullet or two. Hey... I bet you got nice legs-"

The sound reached Marilyn's ears an instant before the bullet slammed into her upper thigh. As the hot, rotating slug tunneled through her flesh, the impact sent out burning shockwaves that pulverized muscles and nerves all along its path. The bullet grazed her thigh bone. The pain from THAT impact was quickly swallowed by the shredding jabs of bone chips ricocheting through the surrounding muscle.

Contrary to what was shown on TV, being shot hurt. A lot.

Most of Dobbs' weight had been on the leg that Brooks shot... so when the bullet struck, she went down. It was the best she could do not to break anything when she hit the floor. One hand flew to the wound. She applied pressure to her leg while her other hand reached for her gun. She grabbed the butt of the weapon, pulled it out, brought it around-

She expected to catch a bullet to the face before she could fire the gun. But when she was still alive with Brooks in her sights she fired-

By the time the bullet got to Brooks, he was three inches to the left of where had been. The slug went past his left shoulder, continuing through the lobby and shattering one of the glass doors... sending the cops out front into a frenzy.

Dobbs sent more bullets after the first one. She emptied the gun at Brooks, but he danced in, out, and around her shots with an embarrassing ease. Finally, the hammer of Dobbs' gun came down with a final, empty 'click'.

Brooks stood there looking at her. She hadn't hit him once. Not one time. She hadn't even been close.

"Finished?" Brooks said as he leveled his gun at Dobbs' head. The detective used her good leg to push herself backward... sliding across the floor in a comical race for the adjacent corridor. "Yeah, I think you're finished. My turn-"

"No, MY turn."

"Huh-"

Brooks' eyes left Dobbs, and the muzzle of his gun darted sideways to point at the new target-

His finger jerked on the trigger, but as the lever began to move, Jason Brooks suddenly flew backward through the hospital lobby as if shot from a cannon.

His gun fired as he flew; the .454 slug buried itself in the ceiling directly above the 'cannon.' A brief shower of plaster and debris rained down on Ashley Ricks... just as the surprised Brooks collided with the main lobby doors.

The reinforced safety glass stopped his flight with bone-jarring abruptness.

"UNGH!"

Glass shattered. The door came free from its hinges.

And, most importantly,... Jason Brooks flopped to the floor in full view of the police that had assembled outside.

There was a brief, stunned silence...

...and then the street exploded with the sound of several dozen shotguns and rifles being chambered at once.

Click-CLACK!

"FREEZE!" someone shouted through a megaphone. "DROP YOUR WEAPONS!"

Despite the flight and collision, Brooks was merely stunned. He slowly got to his feet, with his back to the cops. His chrome revolver was still clutched in his hand. His other hand reached for the second holster on his belt.

"DON'T MOVE!" came another shout.

"Heh, heh, heh..." Brooks chuckled.

"...oh hell..." Dobbs grunted. Still sitting on the floor, she twisted around and shouted at Ashley. "GET BACK!" Ashley started running.... toward her. "I said BACK-"

Brooks spun and started firing. His first shot went straight through the megaphone... and into the mouth behind it. His second and third shots painted bloody dots on the foreheads of the two closest cops. The forth shot tore out another cop's throat.

Four men died before the officers even realized Brooks had moved.

A fifth man was just pulling the trigger on his shotgun when it exploded in his hands... the chambered round detonated by a .454 slug traveling straight down the barrel.

Several yards behind the man with the shotgun... hidden in the bushes... was a police sniper. The sniper fired an instant AFTER Brooks caught sight of him. Brooks darted left while firing both guns. The sniper's body armor absorbed the first bullet. The second went into his right eye.

The remaining cops opened fire.

"HAHAHA!!" Brooks laughed as he jogged backward away from the door. Bullets tore through the air all around him... and some tore through HIM. Brooks dodged what he could, while shrugging off the shots that he couldn't dodge with maniacal laughter. "C'MON! YOU CAN SHOOT BETTER THAN THAT!!!"

Ashley reached Dobbs just as the shooting started. She grabbed Marilyn's arm and tried to pull her to safety, just as the detective had done for her earlier.

Marilyn Dobbs weighed a lot more than Ashley Ricks. Ashley hadn't gotten more than a foot before Dobbs reached up... grabbed her by the collar of her shirt... and yanked her to the floor, thus saving Ashley's life a second time.

The bullets that missed Brooks... and some that had HIT him and continued on through his body... zipped over their heads like a swarm of angry, supersonic bees.

Brooks... his body peppered with bullet wounds... flipped over one of the lobby sofas, landed behind it, and reloaded his guns. A shot from a rifle went through the sofa and shattered his collar bone. Brooks sprang up and started firing. The cop with the rifle caught the first bullet. After that, Brooks fired at random targets as he sprinted back into the hallway and out of the cops sight.

The police kept shooting for about five seconds. Then everything went still.

Jason Brooks looked like a butchered corpse. He had dodged most of what the cops had sent after him, but he'd still taken ten good shots to the torso and lower extremities... ten shots that SHOULD have dropped him in his tracks.

He wasn't dropping. Instead, Brooks staggered toward Dobbs and Ashley... laughing.

"Heh... heh, heh... heh... they think they got me... heh... Now... now they're gonna come in here... and kill ALL of you! Heh..."

Ashley looked at him and frowned in concentration. Dobbs glanced at her; it was obvious that whatever the girl was doing... wasn't working.

"Or..." Brooks pointed his gun at Ashley. "I'll could just do it for 'em. The doc wanted the cops to kill you, but I don't care. Heh... you can't trust cops to do anything right. They obviously can't shoot too good... heh..."

"Maybe they aren't really trying," said Jason. The REAL Jason Brooks appeared in the hallway behind Dobbs and Ashley, slowly walking toward them. Ashley did a double-take... it took both women a second to recognize Jason without his coat, hat, and guns. He had discarded them all... even the guns... and was standing there with nothing but the ruined semiautomatic that his doppleganger had shot out of Dobbs' hand.

Even though he was fully clothed, he looked... naked.

"...maybe they know they're not shooting at the real thing. Why waste a good effort on a fake?"

"...brooks!..." Dobbs hissed. She had to get Brooks' attention... he didn't know that the gun he had wouldn't work! The fool was going to get himself KILLED! "...Brooks!"

Jason glanced at her. Dobbs thought she saw a smile... but then his eyes took on a deep, glazed look. They lost focus for a moment as he took in the scene around him. Dobbs saw that the real Brooks was holding something in his other hand... but she couldn't tell what it was.

"Finally decide to show up, eh? You got lucky last time... but now..."

The fake Brooks raised both of his weapons and pointed them at Jason. One at his head... the other at his heart.

"...luck just ran out."

"Did it?" the real Jason said calmly.

"Oh, you think you can get that gun up and pop off a shot before I squeeze these triggers?"

"Maybe."

"Oh, you think you that good, eh?"

"Good?" said Jason.

"...jason..." Dobbs tried again to get Jason's attention. He was ignoring her. She had to DO something...

"You want to know how good I am?" said Jason.

"Heh," Brooks gave a half-chuckle, half cough. "Yeah. Let's find out-"

Dobbs watched as the fake Jason's fingers tightened on the guns. The triggers eased back...

...Dobbs pushed Ashley aside and tried to get up, intending to throw herself between the two men. Her leg was too numb. She slipped in her own blood and dropped just as the .454 revolvers roared.

She saw the real Jason twist sideways. He moved his arm... his hand... the hand holding the thing that Dobbs couldn't see.

No, not thing. Things... bullets...

The bullets from the empty gun he was holding.

Jason's hand snapped upward, and he tossed the bullets into the air between himself and his twin. Two .454 slugs screamed toward their targets...

-and suddenly, two speeding bullets became four.

The first Jason... the fake one... screamed in surprise as a bullet ricocheted off the floor and ripped upward through his already punctured chest.

The scream ended suddenly when a second bullet struck him squarely between the eyes.

A loooong line of bloody drool oozed from the false Jason's gaping mouth. He was still holding his guns...

...and then he hit the floor in a bloody heap.

"...so good... I don't even need a gun to shoot you," said the real Jason Brooks. He turned to Ashley. "Sebastian?"

"I don't know! I left him with the doctor to go find Tomas... I came straight here when I heard the shooting-"

"Demon?"

"DEAD! I don't know how... but he's toast! Jason where's your guns and your STUFF!?!"

Cops began to storm into the hospital lobby. They had guns drawn, and they were looking for somebody to shoot. Jason dropped the ruined semiautomatic and quickly kicked it away before they saw it.

"What guns?" Jason said with a wink. "What stuff?"

"YOU! DON'T MOVE! NOBODY MOVE! HANDS UP IN THE AIR, RIGHT NOW!"

"JASON what are we gonna-!"

"Just follow my lead," said Jason. He raised both hands over his head and shouted:

"DON'T SHOOT! WE SURRENDER!"

hen the officers kicked open the examination room door, Doctor Francine Cray was hiding under the table, covering her head with both hands... and shivering so badly that the bottles and instruments on the table above her were rattling.

"Please don't shoot me!" she yelped.

"Is anybody else in here!" one of the SWAT officers demanded.

"P-p-patient...I thought he was unconscious," Dr. Cray squeaked.

"Where did he go!"

"Wh-when the shooting started, he... he shouldn't have been a-able to move at all! The pain! The pain was p-paralyzing... no human being could..."

"Where did he GO!!?"

She extended one dainty, trembling hand and pointed at the ventilation duct in ceiling above.

"...up there..."

"Ventilation system," the officer said into his radio. "We got a runner in the ventilation system!"

"You w-won't c-catch him," said Dr. Cray. The officers looked down at her; their silent expressions demanding an explanation.

"At least... you'd better hope you don't..."

"...ut all your efforts into a course of action," Braxis mumbled angrily as the freight elevator approached the second floor. "...and before you know it, the whole thing washes away before your very eyes. Damn that boy! Just when things were going so well-"

The elevator stopped, and the doors opened.

Or, at least, he THOUGHT they had opened.

But the sudden grinding sound wasn't coming from the metal doors in front of him, but from the wall BEHIND him.

The scent of sulfur and burning flesh blasted into the confined space, causing the doctor to choke and fall back against the doors. Tendrils of black smoke poured into the elevator from a second set of doors that had simply NOT been there before....

"What in damnation-"

"EXACTLY!" James Royce growled. His mutilated hand reached out of the smoke and grabbed Braxis by the throat. The doctor's hand grasped at Royce's... but the demon's flesh would not respond to his power.

"You don't know how much your antics have cost me!" Royce spat into the doctor's startled face. "I've lost the ethereal AND the host! That BITCH smoked them like a cheap cigar! Now I'm SCREWED!!! But maybe... maybe if I bring them something ELSE useful... something like YOU!!!"

Royce's hand tightened on the doctor's throat, cutting off his feeble shout of protest.

"COME ON..." Royce snatched the doctor back through the dimensional portal. The 'doors' began to slide shut with a deep, grinding sound.

"...You've just been recruited..."

copyright 2005 by Dark Icon Entertainment