Kasdaye/The Escape

From Unofficial Handbook of the Virtue Universe

The first part of this was written by me. The second part was written by Chaoshornet and his name has been retained on the byline. He helped when I wrote Kasdaye's origin, and her story is not complete without his contribution, so I include it here. There's another piece that describes interaction between Recoil and Lord, but it's not necessary for the narrative and I've chosen to leave it out.

This was interesting. Giving it some thought, she decided she liked it. He had no balance, he couldn’t free himself. His black shoes squeaked like frantic mice on the linoleum floor as he scrambled for purchase. His chubby fingers clawed at his neck, scoring his own skin in a vain attempt to pull the chain away. She couldn’t even see his eyes anymore, not really. Just a crescent moon of color, the irises were rolled back so far. Her leg was getting tired, though, with his fat body bent over it. The ends of the chains were digging into her palms. Pain, but self-inflicted and therefore it didn’t count. She had never strangled someone before.

He was there, of course. He was always there. The Cigarette Man. He looked upset. “Please, Amy, you’ve got to let him go!” He was yelling. He didn’t usually yell. Probably because she was strangling the guard.

Behind him, the door to the small room rattled and pounded as more guards tried to get in. She had flipped the table over, braced it so that even if it slid, it would hit the far wall and still block the door. Across her knee, the guard’s face turned a funny shade of purple-red.

“Amy, let him go. If they get in here, they’ll kill you. You don’t want to die, do you?”

She tipped her head to one side, black hair sliding over the orange shoulders of her prison jumpsuit. She had never died before, either. She didn’t think it sounded interesting. That’s why she was strangling the guard, she suddenly remembered. She didn’t think prison was all that interesting either. “Keys,” she said to the Cigarette Man.

“I can’t. I can’t, Amy, I swear to God I can’t.”

When the guard was dead, she could take the keys from him. Until then, she had to keep holding the chain. He should be dead soon. Strangling someone took a lot of time. She wondered if the Cigarette Man should die too, and stared at him for a moment to consider the question. No, she decided. She only needed the keys. There were guards outside. There were lots of guards. She would need to get past them. She would keep the Cigarette Man alive, and they would let her go to keep her from killing him.

The Cigarette Man lost color in his face. “Amy... whatever you’re thinking, it won’t work.”

Whatever reply she would have made, she forgot about. The table actually snapped. She blinked at it. She hadn’t thought that would happen.

“No!” the Cigarette Man yelled, leaping at the guard who came in the door and knocking his hand aside.

The shot intended for her head hit her in the shoulder instead. She hit the wall, then the floor, and lost her hold on the guard. She screamed, exulted in the perfect agony of a shattered scapula, of pulverized flesh and spattered bone and burnt flesh and spilling blood.

The kick to her stomach was nothing, a mere punctuation. The crack of nightsticks across her now-exposed back broke ribs, licks of delicious torment. She knew pain, she knew how to ride it even as it ripped her apart, she loved it because pain was the only thing she felt. It was a wonderment to her, something that made her understand what people meant when they talked about being ‘touched’ by something or ‘moved’ by it. Those phrases were empty to her except that there was pain. Pain reached inside the caverns of her soul and made her feel.

Her familiarity with pain kept her from vanishing entirely, and by the time the truck was in motion, she was again cognizant of her surroundings. She was still wounded, shot, beaten, untreated. She was still chained, this time to a ring on the floor of a truck. There were guards again; now they had guns pointed at her as if they didn’t care that a stray pothole would jostle a finger and put a bullet through her brain. The Cigarette Man was there too, sitting across from her. He looked pale, and he didn’t take his eyes off her. She stared back at him, licking her lips as the bumpy ride caused shivers of torment to spill through her.

“-whack job,” the guard nearest the Cigarette Man said. “Look at her, she’s gettin’ off on it.”

“She should go to the hospital,” Cigarette Man said.

“She’s lucky I don’t blow her brains out. If the Zig wants to put the rabid bitch in a hospital, let them do it.”

“Rabid animals have no purpose for what they do. She does.”

A few of the guards muttered, groaned. “Aw man, frickin’ doc’s as crazy as the patient,” one said.

Cigarette Man ignored them and looked at the guard nearest him. “Do you have a hobby?” he asked.

The guard frowned, but shrugged. “Yeah. I paint.” He sounded belligerent to her.

“Velvet Elvises,” another taunted.

Cigarette Man replied only to the Painter. “Imagine, then, that you have painted hundreds of canvases, and none of them were satisfying. You have searched all your life for one thing, for one perfect model, one perfect moment to capture. And then one day you’re walking down a street, doing nothing in particular, not seeking at all, and you see it. Maybe a girl looking out a window, daydreaming of a lover, her tiny chin cupped in one delicate hand.”

Cigarette Man nodded his head to her. “Amelia Anne Livy is my perfect subject. You look at her and see only an insane woman who kills because she can. You do not see her as I do. She is, at heart, an animal. Not in the sense that she is feral or wild or uncontrolled, but that she has only wants and responses. You think she kills for the fun of it. She does not. She kills because she finds it easier than any other way of getting what she wants. And her wants are those of an animal: food, shelter, warmth.”

“I thought she was a nicotine junkie,” Painter said, attempting humor but only because he was uncomfortable. Even she could see that.

“An addiction, though I do not know where she acquired it. Satisfying addiction is also basic, animalistic. But her mind is that of a human. She would likely score quite high on a Stanford-Binet test, if she could be induced to take one. I daresay a good bit higher than you. She thinks, she reasons, she plans. You think you’re safe from her right now because she is chained and you have guns. She doesn’t see that. She sees only that at the moment, you have nothing she wants. Believe me, Sergeant, you never want to have anything that Amelia Livy wants.”

Painter eyed Cigarette Man uneasily, then looked at her. She looked back at him, whimpering faintly as the truck swung around a curve. Painter had nothing she wanted. She had Pain. She was content.

Painter snorted and closed his eyes, settling his head back against his side of the truck. “They’re right, doc. You’re as loony as she is.”

Cigarette Man said something, but she couldn’t hear it. Her heartbeat pulsed sluggishly in her ears, and she found it impossible to keep her eyes open, her head up. The world irised to a pinpoint of light, then vanished into blackness. Blood loss, she knew.

When the driver yelled a warning and slammed on the brakes, skewing the truck sideways, Amy had already lapsed into unconsciousness.

____________________________________________________

by John Talbot

Devon St. Clair felt the warm wetness of blood upon his face, his ears, his hair. He had suffered a head injury due to the overturning of the truck, but his concern wasn't for himself. His thoughts immediately turned to Amy...his perfect little Amy. "Oh dear lord!" he cried out, scrambling over the unconscious bodies of the guards to check her vital signs and unchain her from the now vertical bottom of the vehicle. "We have to get you to a hospital!"

St. Clair heard the sound of whistling. It was coming from the outside of the truck. He yelled to the whistler, "Hello! Please help! There are injured people in here! Help!"

"Okay...hold on, my friend...help is on the way!" A friendly British-sounding voice called from the back of the truck, "The doors are stuck...stand back and plug your ears! Don't worry, pal!"

"Plug our ears?" Devon St. Clair thought as he grabbed Amy's unconscious little body, secretly thrilling at the touch of her skin, and crawled to the front of the vehicle. "Okay! We're back as far as we can go!"

A few moments of silence were shattered by a deafening explosion. The doors of the truck fell open, smoke clouding it's opening. "You okay in there?" the voice called out.

"W--we're fine...w-what the hell..?" St. Clair asked, "You could have k-"

"PE4" said the voice. "It's pretty much the English equivalent of C-4...plastic explosive...well known for its durability and reliability. You may remember Bill Murray using it against a gopher in Caddyshack...a very humorous film." A man stepped through the smoke and into the truck. He was dressed in black leather and body armor, a face mask and red-shaded goggles. "Hello, citizen. I'm Recoil."

Devon St. Clair was now officially terrified.

"...Cigarette Man," said the masked man, pausing. "...She called you 'The Cigarette Man'."

"W-what...?" St. Clair asked, confused and shaking.

"In her head...she called you The Cigarette Man. I heard it right before the big crash...or I guess I mean the second big crash. I had to blow up an ambulance a few blocks away to distract the police...so we could have this little chat we're having...though you really aren't contributing all that much...whoops...hold on a sec..."

Once of the guards was stirring. Recoil's forehead crinkled as whipped out two glocks from behind his back and fired. The man's head exploded in an obscene display of brain matter, bone fragments and blood.

"Oh crap...that's a mess. You hit them just the wrong way and it's like some frikkin...I dunno...I'm thinking water balloon." Recoil turned to St. Clair, who had only just completed urinating in his trousers, "Don't you think? ...water balloon?"

St. Clair made little protest when Recoil picked Amy up and slung her over his shoulder. The masked man went around to the other guards and delivered a muffled shot to their foreheads and hearts. "Well, I guess that's about it."

Recoil started to walk out. St. Clair spoke pleadingly, "Please, sir...will you at least call an ambulance for me? I think I have a head injury."

"Oh...well...no, Gopher. You won't be needing one," Recoil turned, drawing his pistol once again. "You see, she's not the only one who's thoughts I've read tonight."

Two slugs hit Devin St. Clair in the chest like twin strikes of a sledgehammer. Recoil turned carefully with Amy still over his shoulder and muttered under his mask, "...bloody stinking pervert."

Back in a van marked "Yin-Yang Heating & Cooling", Recoil placed his unconscious guest on a stretcher. "Oh...she's awfully pretty." he said, looking at her through the blood and bruises. He took off his mask and kissed her forehead. "I can tell you're special, my sweet...I don't know if I want to give you to Nigel. He's not a very loving sort."

Recoil climbed into the driver's seat just as his comlink went off. "Now who in the world could that be...?" he said, pressing the reception button.

"Recoil."

"Hello, Recoil, this is Scion. I understand you have done a job for Lord tonight?"

"Yes sir, I have."

"You still have the object in question?"

"Yes sir, but it needs care...and rather soon."

"You will bring it to me."

"But sir, Mr. Lord said..."

"Leave Mr. Lord to me. Bring it to the coordinates on your comlink, Simon."

"Yes sir, I will sir....wait...how the heck do you know my name?"

"It's flouride, Simon. The government puts it in the water to be able to mind control us...but it gives certain individuals psychic powers. ...Scion out."

Recoil drove off into the night, through Brickstown towards the specified coordinates.

"Flouride....I knew it..!"