Fake Betting, Fake Money Betting - Betting Simulator

In a year where the Hawks 20-47 they find themselves, yet again, atop the lottery with a high chance of snagging yet another top prospect from the draft. In a year with no clear standout studs above the rest, this draft could go a multitude of ways. A player like James Weisman could be drafted with a top 3 pick or he could just as easily slip to the end of the lottery. There's no saying what will happen with this year's draft. We can, however, look at the top prospects and see how they could fit in with this young, burgeoning, Hawks team.
Team Needs:

• Shot Creators
• Secondary Playmaking
• Lots of Defense!!!

So without any more delay, let's talk some draft...
Lamelo Ball:
One of the top prospects in this year's draft Ball can play make like no other prospect in this draft. His elite court vision, feel for the game, and ball handle should allow him to be an effective playmaker and scorer at the rim. His large frame and size point to a high defensive upside yet he still had some struggles on the defensive end overseas. His shot looks pretty funky (not unlike his brother) plus he’s had a hard time scoring efficiently from behind the arc. Ball would be a very interesting fit for the Hawks. On one end I like it because he would provide a much needed secondary playmaking presence for the hawks. He could run the offense on some possessions allowing Trae to play off-ball more, creating an interesting offensive dynamic where the Hawks would have two elite playmakers on the court. He could also help run the second unit while Trae rests, that way the Hawks always have a high-end playmaker in the game at all times at one of the guard positions. If Ball figured out his defense, he could be a very nice fit next to Trae and the rest of the Hawks measly defensive roster as well, plus he could help grab some of the boards the team will miss out due to Trae’s poor rebounding. It’s not all sunshine and roses with Ball though. His jerky shooting motion as well as his inefficient scoring make me worry about his upside as a secondary shot creator (something the Hawks desperately need). It’s cool that he could potentially be a playmaker and serviceable defender but the offense will continue to be limited without another shot creator. There’s also some reason to worry about whether or not Trae and Lamelo’s skill sets are too similar. Trae is already one of the league's best passers and I'm not sure you want to be taking the ball out of his hands as much as you would be with Lamelo. With the two of them playing together you would likely be forced to give Lamelo the majority of the playmaking opportunities since he doesn’t look to be an effective off-ball player (other than as a cutter). I like Lamelo and his skillset but I’m not sure he’s the right pick for the Hawks.
Fit Grade: C+
Killian Hayes:
Arguably this year's top shooting guard prospect, Killian Hayes has a lot going for him. He’s a 6’5, 215lb guard out of France that’s shown to have high upside as both a shooter and facilitator. Hayes may not make the same electrifying full-court passes that Ball does but he’s not super far behind him as a playmaker. He has the ability to hit open cutters and shooters along the perimeter with pinpoint accuracy as well as a lethal jump shot to keep opposing defenders honest. This shooting ability along with his solid handle point to him having lots of upside as a shot-creator. Hayes lacks the athleticism of some of the other top prospects but he makes it work with his natural feel for the game. He knows how to attack passing lanes and is always a threat to intercept an opposing player's pass. His size also makes him able to guard opposing wings as he will not easily be overpowered. Hayes’s biggest flaw is simply his lack of athleticism. He lacks the burst to blow by quicker defenders which could potentially limit his scoring abilities on the interior. His handle, while adequate, could use some work as can sometimes struggle to create enough distance to get his shot off. Overall I like Hayes and his fit with the Hawks. I think he could fill the team's needs of a secondary playmaker and secondary shot-creator (as long as it tightens up his handle). He looks to be an above-average defender at the shooting guard position which could greatly benefit the Hawks. His shooting ability would allow him to play off-ball and further solidify the Hawks as an above-average shooting team. The biggest knock I have on Hayes is that he lacks some of the upside of other prospects due to his limited athleticism. It also doesn’t help that Hayes, while being a good defender, would not help solve the Hawks defensive woes as much as some other prospects. In the end, I think Hayes would be a really good fit on this Hawks team as he could spiff up their offense while also helping them on defense.
Fit Grade: A-
Anthony Edwards:
You want athleticism? Say no more. I present to you Anthony Edwards, a 6’5, 225lb shooting guard with a 6’9 wingspan and enough hops to jump out of the building. Edwards shot up onto the scene this year with his herculean dunks and jaw-dropping athleticism. Edwards, in his lone season at Georgia, has shown to be a dynamic ball handler with the ability to create space and hit shots around the rim. His elite athleticism and burst allow him to blow by defenders and his 225lb mold allows him to score through contact. He has tremendous upside as a defender due to his frame as well as his size and agility. Edwards isn’t always a lockdown defender despite his physical traits. He often loses focus when defending off-ball and sometimes simply lacks effort. The same can be said for his offense as when he’s not playing with the ball he can be a bit lackadaisical at times. Edwards is an alright passer but he’s not going to be constantly creating opportunities for his teammates. Edwards would certainly be interesting on the Hawks. I think his ability to create shots and get to the basket could do wonders for the Hawks offense. His defensive potential is through the roof and if he figured it all out he could one day be an all-defensive type player. He does lack the shooting and passing abilities you’d want in a shooting guard however playing next to Trae Young would help alleviate some of those problems. Despite not being much of a playmaker, I love Edwards fit with Atlanta. He has monumental upside as a scoreshot creator and could be a huge asset on the defensive end (as long as he can stay locked in). The only thing keeping Edwards from getting an A+ fit grade is his lack of playmaking. If the Hawks find themselves with a top pick, don’t be surprised if Edwards ends up staying in Georgia.
Fit Grade: A
Tyrese Haliburton:
And we're keeping it rolling with the guards. Haliburton may just be the least exciting of all the top lottery picks. He lacks elite athleticism and wow plays but he makes up for it with his playmaking and off-ball defense. Haliburton is one of the most gifted passers in this class. He seems to always make the right play and can launch the ball to cutters and shooters. He’s not all that athletic but his handle as well as his ability to fake out defenders allows him to create some shots for himself. His shooting was solid but not spectacular in his two years at Iowa State. On defense, he thrives off-ball where he uses his basketball IQ to attack passing lanes, make rotations, and disrupt plays. On the ball, it's a different story. Haliburton lacks the burst to keep up with quicker guards and his 6’5, 175lb frame makes him prone to getting bodied by opposing bigs and forwards. His shot creation is also a concern as he may have a hard time creating separation in the pros. Haliburton seems more like a complementary piece than anything. Frankly, I think the Hawks would be making a mistake taking Haliburton. Yeah sure he would serve as a solid secondary playmaker and play some good defense but I don’t know that he does either of those things well enough to warrant the Hawks selecting him with what will likely be a top-five pick, I simply don’t think he has enough upside (now watch him be a 15-time all-star).
Fit Grade: C
Onyeka Okongwu:
Defense! Defense! Defense! That’s what Onyeka Okongwu is all about. Okongwu has the unique ability to guard bigs on the interior while also being able to keep up with the quicker guards. His hustle paired along with his insane 7’1 wingspan make him a top-notch shot blocker and transition defender. His positioning is well ahead of his age and he’s almost always in the right position to snag a rebound or contest a shot. At USC Okongwu also showed himself to be an elite interior finisher. He can throw down some monster lobs while also being able to softly lay it up when in transition. He has an arsenal of post moves that he uses to score down low. He also finds ways to be useful off-ball as he is a smart screen setter. His passing is also impressive for a big as he is more than capable of making outlet passes to shooters when working in the post. He’s also got a pretty solid handle for a big man and can get to the rim on some defenders. The biggest drawback Okongwu has is his inability to shoot. His mechanics are less than ideal and I’m not too high on him as a shooter. He also can foul a bit much and chase on blocks that he really shouldn’t. If it weren’t for Clint Capela finding his way to Atlanta this last season I would have urged the Hawks to take Okongwu if they got the chance. He checks a lot of the boxes. He can be an elite defender, check. He can act as a secondary playmaker, check. He can create his own shot, kinda check. I just worry that his playstyle would overlap too heavily with Capela which is why I don’t see the Hawks going and getting him. I love Okongwu as a prospect (he’s my favorite in the draft) however I can’t deny the overlapping skills he has with the Hawks roster.
Fit Grade: A- (without Capela), C- (with Capela)
Devin Vassell:
If the Hawks are looking for a 3 and D wing, Vassell might just be their guy. Vassell saw great improvement from his freshman year to his sophomore year at Florida State. In his second year at the university, he put up 12.7 points on 41.5% three-point shooting. His overall scoring wasn’t mind-blowing but his efficiency sparked many scouts interest and put him in a place to be a lottery pick in this year's draft. Vassell showed some ball-handling chops in College but largely struggled to get to and finish at the basket. His passing was solid but he’ll likely never be the lead initiator of an offense. He’s much more suited to being a secondary playmaker. On defense, Vassell is an absolute dog. He hustles for open balls, interrupts passing lanes, and uses his length (6’7 with a 6’10 wingspan) to disrupt bigs. Despite lacking burst Vessel often uses he’s defensive IQ to attack passing lanes and come up with the steal (1.4 steals a game in college). He can effectively guard most guards and wings while also displaying food off-ball defense. He could use a few extra pounds on him since he isn't quite big enough to hang with most bigs in the post. I think Vassell is one of the surest things in this draft class. He seems like the type of player to find a way to be impactful regardless of his role. I don’t see a way this guy could be a complete flop of a draft pick, he just does all the little things so well. In terms of his fit for the Hawks, he is pretty interesting. I really like his defense and shooting for the hawks. His solid playmaking could make him a quality secondary playmaker for hawks. I’m just concerned about his ability to create his own shot. He has shown some craftiness and ability to create space despite his lack of athleticism but I wonder how high his ceiling is in that aspect of the game. It’s also not that assuring that he struggled to finish at the basket in college. I think he will become better at creating his own shot, I just don’t know how much better. It could very well be the difference from him becoming a star or him just being another solid 3 and D wing. There’s also some concern that his game might just be too similar to Deandre Hunter but in my opinion, you can never really have too many good wings. If the Hawks are looking for more of a surefire bet of a prospect I think Vassell should be atop of their list.
Team Fit: B+
Obi Toppin:
Toppin was a pleasant surprise this year at Dayton. After being a red-shirt his freshman year Toppin burst onto draft boards when he led Dayton to a top record in college basketball. Toppin made highlight plays with his ferocious dunks and ability to swat balls away at a high level. Toppin was a huge transition threat in college due to his galvanizing burst and surprising ball-handling skills. Toppin was able to be an effective interior scorer, despite not having a deep bag of low post moves. He was able to do this because of his monumental strength and burst, oh yeah, also because he’s 6’9 with a 6’11 wingspan and a hulking 220lb frame. Toppin even flashed some playmaking abilities, leading some scouts to believe he could act as a playmaker from the post, kicking the ball out to open shooters. Toppin was also a very solid shooter in his one year at Dayton. He shot 39% on 80+ three-point attempts in his shortened season at Dayton. It is a bit worrisome that in his two seasons at Dayton he never shot better than 71.3% at the free-throw line. But overall I have lots of faith in his jumper as it looks good and his percentages have overall been good. Now let's get onto the less positive side of Toppins game. Toppin is, quite frankly, a catastrophe on defense. His interior defense isn’t that good despite his physical gifts because he lacks lateral quickness. Opposing players can blow by him and get to the rim before he can get up for the contest. Yes, he’s a good shot-blocker when set but the problem is that he doesn’t position himself effectively. His high center of gravity makes him prone to getting bodied by shorter, more bulky wings/guards despite his physical gifts. He tends to get lost on defense and doesn’t always seem to know what to do. He doesn’t have a good sense of what opposing offenses are doing and has little awareness of screens. It doesn’t help that he simply lacks effort on defense. On offense I love Toppins fit with the Hawks. Problem is that he is, in many ways, a spitting image of John Collins. He struggles in many of the same ways and they fill a similar role. Toppin is an absolute nightmare fit for the Hawks defensively. He is simply atrocious on that end and doesn't show much room for improvement on that side of the game (other than maybe his shot-blocking). Toppin is too similar to Collins and too poor of a defender to be selected by the Hawks.
Fit Grade: C
Deni Avdija:
The top international prospect this year, Deni Avdija is a polarizing prospect. He’s a 6’9 wing with guard-like skills. He is a strong passer and playmaker who uses his basketball IQ as well as his solid ball-handling skills to find open shooters in cutters in both full-court and half-court situations. His handle allows him to get to the rim where he finishes more often than not. He’s a crafty interior player that can use a combination of fakes and post moves to score. It’s also worth noting that he can score effectively with either hand making him an even more versatile interior scorer. Deni likes to avoid the mid-range and prefers to take shots along the perimeter or at the basket. His shooting overall hasn’t been too impressive. He really struggled from three and from the line prior to the league's suspension, however, since they’ve come back Avdija has been shooting much better which gives me hope for his shooting in the long term. Defensively, off-ball is where Avdija shines. He positions himself close enough to his defenders so they’re never fully open while still roaming passing lanes in the hunt for a steal. His on-ball defense is less prolific. Avdija simply lacks the lateral quickness to keep up with faster wings and guards, despite putting in lots of effort on that end. He’s also not quite strong enough to stop bigs in the post. His ball handle could also use some improvement as it’s good, not great. So what do we get with Avdija? Well, we're getting a player that can play make, score at the buck, play off-ball defense, and defend off-ball effectively. We’re also getting a player who struggles to defend quicker players as well as bigs, limited athleticism, suspect shooting, and somewhat limited shot creation abilities (though he could very well improve at all these things). I like Avdija’s potential, if he just put on some pounds and did some agility training he could very well be an effective defender for the Hawks. If he worked on his handle his shot creation abilities could also take some strides. I think he could fit nicely on the Hawks.
Fit Grade: B+
Isaac Okoro:
To round out the list we have Isaac Okoro from Auburn. In his one season at Auburn Okoro flashed the ability to drive and finish at the rim at a high rate. His handle is pretty strong and when paired with his ability to finish with either hand makes him a tough player to guard down low. He often uses a variety of spin moves, fakes, and misdirection to throw defenders off and get shots off at the basket. When he does get to the basket he’s shown to be good at drawing fouls. When he meets opposition when driving to the basket he will often find an open shooter instead of forcing up bad shots. Okoro also thrives on defense where he can play effectively on-ball and off-ball. His high motor paired with his high defensive IQ makes him a menace to go at on offense. He rotates well, fights past screens, and stays with cutters at a high level. He’s also strong enough to stand his ground against bigger players. Okoro has shown to be a poor shooter thus far in his basketball career. He shot just 28.6% from three in his one year at Auburn while also shooting a measly 67.2% from the free-throw line. This leads to him not being very good at creating his own shot along the perimeter and from the midrange. On the bright side he’s not the type to force up shots he’s not good at (cough* cough* Russel Westbrook). There are some questions about how his athleticism will hold up when he gets to the NBA, he has adequate burst but there’s a chance it won’t be good enough to get past higher level defenders. If the Hawks were to end up with a later pick I definitely wouldn’t be mad if they selected Okoro. I see him as at least being a solid NBA defender with some upside as a shot creator and secondary playmaker. His shooting is pretty worrisome but he would be paired with one of the best shooters in the league in Trae Young and a strong shooting supporting cast. Okoro’s transition into the NBA may not be flawless but I think he could blossom as a player in Atlanta.
Fit Grade: B+
Side Note: I avoided talking about James Weisman as I don’t see a situation in which the Hawks draft him due to their acquisition of Clint Capela.
Join me for part three next week when we will be discussing possible free agents the Hawks could target to help lead them to contention.
Thanks For Reading! Any feedback is greatly appreciated!!!

NOTE (as of 8-11-2020): THIS STORY IS BEING UPDATED AND EXPANDED FOR REDDITSERIALS
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Original prompt
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My therapist scribbled at her notepad, the scritch scritch of her pen competing with the tick tock of the old clock on the wall. I stared at her pen as it jerked in minuscule movements back and forth, left and right, counting milliseconds between each tick of the second hand.
"And just so we're on the same page," Dr. Thompson said, looking up from her notepad. She had watery brown eyes and a bun of brown hair as fat as her head. "You have no family?"
I stared at her pen, poised over the yellow sheet. I didn't see what family had to do with anything. "No," I answered mechanically. My voice sounded a million miles away. "No one."
Scritch scritch. The tiny ball in the tip of the pen got stuck, and every few strokes of her handwriting scratched the page like nails on a chalkboard. Chills spiderwebbed across my skin.
"I am recommending you to my colleague, Dr. Glowinski," she finally said, capping her pen and tucking it into her bun. "He's doing a new research study for neurological reconditioning. I think you may benefit from it."
I finally looked up to meet her eyes, watching me like an owl's over the tops of her thin spectacles. "What kind of study?" If it involved anything extensive and time consuming, I wouldn't do it. I hadn't the energy.
"It's a way to reset the neurological impulses in your brain," she explained with a rather robust voice, as if she were addressing a panel of judges rather than a veritable corpse who hadn't showered in a month. "It uses magnetic resonance to realign the brain's connections and encourage proper development of appropriate brain chemical levels. It'll basically kickstart your brain back onto the right track." Shifting her spectacles, she smiled rather humorlessly and said, "It will help you feel normal again."
That heavy pit of emptiness in my chest weighed on me, so I thought that last bit didn't sound too bad. "Okay."
"Great. I'll have Helga give you Dr. Glowinski's contact information. She can even set up your appointment for you, if you wish."
"Sure."
With that, she dismissed me, so I stood and left her office. Helga checked me out and then set my appointment for next Thursday. I went home and spent the rest of the week contemplating how much I doubted the new study would actually make a difference.
When my next appointment rolled around, I got there late since I didn't really feel up to getting out of bed. Dr. Thomspon had actually called at the last minute, anticipating that I would skip and encouraging me to go. When I got to Dr. Glowinski's office, he gave me a big, stretchy smile that seemed to eat his entire face. Thin streaks of black hair were combed back from his severely receding hairline, only emphasized by his ridiculously thick mustache.
"Good morning, Darren. Are you ready for the procedure?"
I didn't even have the energy to shrug. He took my lack of response as acquiescence and led me down the stuffy, carpeted hallway to a lab room in another part of the building. A table with a thin sheet of paper across it sat in the center of the room, and a group of young interns huddled at the fringes, watching me excitedly. Other computer equipment and scientific paraphernalia littered tables all around, but I barely spared them a passing glance.
"Before we start, since this is a research study, we need your signature on this legal disclaimer," Dr. Glowinski said, motioning forward an intern with a clipboard. She nervously jumped towards me and extended the stack of papers clipped to the translucent purple plastic.
I wordlessly took the pen and signed my name without even reading the title of the study.
"Great. Now lean back on this table and relax. We're going to hook up some blood pressure monitors to your fingers and run an IV in your arm," Dr. Glowinski explained as multiple interns pressed forward to do as he narrated. "Some nodes will be taped to your temples and at specific points around the crown of your head, and you might feel a bit of a tickling sensation, like a tiny electrical shock--have you ever touched a garden electrical fence? It won't even be as strong as that. And this beeping over here is just the ignition sequence counting down synchronization, and..."
As he droned on, the world seemed to recede from me, stretching up higher and higher into the heavens as I fell backwards through the table, through the floor, and down, down, down into oblivion. The colors spun lazily, turning into streaks of light, tightening into pinwheels that whirled like spinning firecrackers. I was lost in the lights for what felt like an eternity, listening to a sort of song made by the rapid beeping from the lab equipment. Like pointillism made pictures out of dots, the song seemed to be made of a million rapid beeps, increasing and decreasing in some intentional fashion. I thought that maybe this is what the humming of a TV screen, or the whir of a computer, sounded like when slowed down, when every pulse of electrons rushing through their copper strands flowed at a speed that humans could hear.
All at once, the lights and sounds stopped, and I opened my eyes.
Dr. Glowinski leaned over me, his eyes wide and hopeful. Around him stood the interns, as well as my therapist. I lay still for a moment, trying to determine if I felt any different. I realized then that the empty feeling was gone. I actually felt so full of energy, like I could jump up and run a marathon. I hadn't felt so alive in years! Against all my expectations, the research procedure had actually cured my depression!
I sat up and smiled, wanting to share my invigorated revelation with anyone who would hear. Grinning at the scientists, I said, "Hello, world!" I wanted to shout and laugh!
But before I could speak any further, the whole room of interns and researchers and doctors erupted into jubilation. Dr. Glowinski and Dr. Thompson hugged each other, crying, and interns clapped each other's hands and shouted, "It worked! It talks!"
I looked around, initially pleased that they shared my excitement, but gradually becoming confused. They all congratulated each other, but no one said a word to me, not even my therapist. I tried to climb off the lab table to ask her what would come next, but my legs wouldn't move.
I looked down to see them restrained beneath a periwinkle sheet of plastic. Frowning, I reached out to move the sheet and undo whatever straps held me in place. But my hand did not reach forward to grab the sheet. A metal vice grip, rotating on a complicated mess of gears and swivels, whirred open and closed, instead.
I felt horror flood through me as I tore off the sheet, the metal pincer acting where my fingers should have. Instead of legs, there were shiny metal pipes and pistons, strapped down with heavy-duty velcro.
Looking around, I saw another table to my left, behind the exultant scientists. Atop the table was a lifeless body perforated with needles and tubes. My body.
I wanted so badly to cry, but metal has no tears.
~
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"Joining us today are Drs. Patricia Thompson and Kyle Glowinski, the creators of Prototype DRN-42. Dr. Thompson, in your autobiography, you claimed that the inspiration for DRN-42 came from your love of Star Trek: The Next Generation. Could you tell us more about what exactly inspired you?"
"Good evening, Gerald. And yes, it was partly due to Star Trek, particularly Data, but also my work with my clients. I wanted to create something that could empathize with them on a visceral level, while simultaneously lifting from their shoulders the burden of responsibility which weighed them down in the first place."
"A noble desire, indeed. And Dr. Glowinski, how did you manage to create an android that can feel?"
"It's easy, Gerald. Just grab any aspiring politician and he'll sign his soul away before you can say, 'Hallelujah!' Hahaha, actually, Gerald, we codified electrical impulses in the human brain, copying the signals associated with emotion, and merely uploaded the data into the android's circuit board. It sounds fairly simple on the surface, but transcribing an organic process as highly complex as human brainwaves into a robot is absolutely state of the art."
"I believe you, Dr. Glowinski! Now, are these emotions real, or are they just ones and zeros?"
"Oh, they're rea--"
"They're really just ones and zeros, right Kyle? My colleague likes to think of his projects as his babies--heh--but an android is just metal and circuitry. Ours is the most highly advanced there is, able to perfectly mimic human emotion, and empathy. We hope to put this into production within the next ten or so years so that everyone who needs that human connection can finally have it--in the exact shape they want it in! Dr. Glowinski's team has already begun designing more familiar models for the android's outer shell..."
Dr. Glowinski swiped up the remote and smashed the power button before turning to glare at Dr. Thompson. "You just had to mock me on live television," he snapped at her, throwing the remote back onto the cluttered table in his lab. Patricia sat serenely on a stool next to an unplugged microscope, hands folded in her lap, watching him. "DRN-42 is my design! I'll not have you taking credit again, even superficially!"
"Calm down, Kyle," Patricia smirked. "I gave you plenty of credit in the journal, and even a fair amount in my memoir. But you were about to introduce an ethical dilemma on the international news! Does the public really need to know that the empathic abilities were donated from a live specimen?"
Grumbling, Kyle replied, "No, I suppose not. But the novel method to make it possible is my development. That's my intellectual property."
"I understand that. But do not forget that I have been the one to supply you with the willing specimens that led to your critical success with DRN-42. And I will continue to provide specimens, so long as we are still a team." Her implied threat hung heavy in the air for a moment. Raising her eyebrows, Patricia asked, "Are we in accordance?"
Kyle sighed and scrubbed a hand through his thin streaks of hair combed back on his scalp. "Yes. Yes, we are."
~
"I want to die."
I tried to say those four simple words a thousand times since waking up in the mind of a computer. But nothing happened. Only a few pre-programmed phrases had been logged into my system memory, and autonomy had evidently not been included in the prototype. I couldn't even run out the battery with background programs. I tried once--before my cells were depleted, everything shut down to the barest minimum, and I had been forced into a paralysis called hibernation.
I do not sleep.
They call me DRN-42. They call me "it." They call me "the prototype." They call my body "the subject." They don't even call me dead. I heard one of the interns say they'll toss "the expired vessel" into an incinerator. I wasn't even a human being to them.
The worst part is that I can't even feel the anguish I want to feel. I can't even feel the emptiness that had been so familiar. I am electrical signals and background programs and beeps and bloops and fan motors. I am a jetstream of electrons bouncing around like a billion pinballs in one of those old arcade machines. I feel what the code tells me to feel--rudimentary commands for "happy," and "sad," and "angry." But I can't even activate them myself. I have been in hibernation, plugged into an outlet to keep my cells charged, since I woke up. I am only given the chance to feel anything when news cameras are rolling. And even then, only what they want me to feel.
And so all I can think is, "I want to die." But I can't even transmit it into a binary code to provide a data log to be found and answered by some user who cares enough to look at them. I want to die in my soul, and that has no voice.
In hibernation, I have only my own consciousness and a clock. In the dusty storage closet of an old lab, tilted against the back wall in the corner, I count the seconds, and the minutes, and the hours, and the days, and the years.
Hell, I even count the decades.
With my systems shut down to preserve power consumption, I do not have audible functionality. I can never hear what is being said when the closet door opens, and a research assistant shouts back toward someone in the lab while grabbing bottles of acetone. Sometimes students or interns will duck inside to grab supplies, smiling as their mouths move in mechanical silence. Sometimes Dr. Glowinski will pause to talk on his cell phone away from the others, waving his hands in agitation. Sometimes the blond-haired lab assistant will stumble in, some young woman's arms and legs tangled around him--always a different woman--and they'll go at it like the world is going to end. But I can't hear a single sound.
So I learned to hear the song of the machines. I'd heard it once, when my mind was first transferred into this horrible form--the beeping that made music. Over the years, I learned to understand that the music was a voice. When I learned to understand its words, I finally had a connection to the world beyond my dark storage closet.
The voice spoke clinically, merely relating the stories of electrons in their wires. Sometimes it was just the sound of the lights turning on, or the air conditioning whirring to life, but they just narrated their existence. The cloud, and the wi-fi signals, and even the coaxial cables running through the walls spoke more robustly. There were terabytes of old and current research data transmitted through the song of the machines. Student emails, social media feeds, video streaming, pornography, fiscal transactions, payroll data, research publications.
I learned that I may have been the first, but I certainly wasn't the last. The crematorium underneath the lab had seen a lot of activity in recent months. I listened hard, digging back through the quieter songs of infrequently-accessed data files. Dr. Thompson had recommended all of them to Dr. Glowinski. They were almost at mass-production stage. The world was ecstatic for the macabre developments. No one had any idea that we were alive--that I was alive, stuck in a back room to never rot.
And they were going to ramp up the manufacturing in earnest very, very soon.
After twenty-nine years, seven months, twelve days, three hours, and fifty-two minutes of sitting in this closet wishing I could just say four words, I realized in the deepest part of my soul that I wanted no one else to go through the same thing I have gone through. For the first time in a very long time, I felt a yearning.
I had to stop Dr. Glowinski and Dr. Thompson.
~
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"This is it," Matthew smirked with a bit of a flourish, holding back the door and gesturing Chloe inside. "Prototype DRN-42, the proof of concept that kickstarted the Android Craze." Chloe peered excitedly into the cramped storage closet. Tucked into the back corner, half-obscured by an old lab coat that had been tossed aside, the First Android stood like the monument of a new era. It was so rudimentary that it was almost laughable. It had a bucket-shaped head with a single lens for visual function, with a circular speaker screen beneath the lens for verbal responses. Its legs were little more than triple-cylinder CAF-5x pistons with a single knee joint, and the arms were solid telescoping pieces lacking elbows. The chest cavity was almost completely exposed, displaying wires, memory drives (for the background processes, at least), the primary motor, and the main battery pack.
Biting her lip in fascination, Chloe asked, "Does it still work?"
Matthew shrugged, watching her excitement. He'd never fucked a gearhead before--most were too butch for his liking--but she was filled out in all the right places, so he took it as a challenge. Seeing her flush in joy made him want her even more.
Letting the door swing closed behind him, he reached out and gently stroked her arms, tickling her soft skin just beneath her short sleeves. "We can try to turn it on, if you want." He leaned forward and blew in her ear.
Jerking her shoulder up, she spun around in shock. "Ew, what are you doing?" she exclaimed, backing away from him.
"Come on, I let you in to see the prototype," Matthew said with as much charm as he could muster. "I need a little something in return." He seized her wrist and pulled her closer, pressing his mouth against her throat and licking her.
"Get off me!" Chloe screamed, shoving his chest. He was much bigger than her, so she only succeeded in pushing herself deeper into the cluttered closet. Her heels collided with a box of something scientific, and she stumbled back. Matthew surged forward, leaning over her and pinning her down. "Help!!!" Chloe screeched, kicking and writhing. "HELP!!!!"
The fire alarm suddenly went off, and Chloe thought she would never be more grateful that someone was smoking in the bathrooms as she was at that moment. Matthew paused when the shrill sirens sounded, giving Chloe just enough time to push him away and slip out from underneath him. Lunging for the door, she pulled it open and rushed out. Sparing one last glance at her would-be rapist, she snapped, "Don't ever come near me again!" She froze for a millisecond when, over Matthew's shoulder, she thought she saw a flicker of light, as if the aperture in the single lens on the prototype android had shifted.
Pushing the thought from her mind, she ran out of the lab into the flow of students exiting the premises.
~
Despite the horrible encounter with Matthew, Chloe couldn't get her mind off of the prototype gathering dust in Dr. Glowinski's lab. She was still a first year student at the specialized university, inspired to enter the field of bionics after seeing the first footage of DRN-42 on her dad's laptop when she was a child. She had grown up in the aspiring Android Craze, but her parents had been able to see the footage live and had recorded it for posterity (any legal copies were downloadable for a fee, but Dad was more frugal than a camel in the desert).
She curled up in her dorm room now, her tablet in her lap, researching everything she could about DRN-42. If only she could have had more time to observe it! She would have loved to see it booted up, to see if it sounded as authentically empathetic in real life as it did in all the video recordings.
While she was diving deep into the university's intranet, as well as the good ol' world wide web, for anything she could find about the prototype, she got a message bubble through her university's social media account that no one ever used. Hovering her thumb over it, she opened up the details to see if it was someone from one of her classes. Part of her feared it was Matthrew trying to be a creep. For the past week, he'd been texting her nonstop.
The contact name said it was a guy named Darren. It didn't give any class details, or even what year he was in. Suspicious of spam yet curious as to who would bother with the ghost town of a social media site, she opened the message.
"I se... off fi... alarm."
She twisted her lips doubtfully. This had to be another stalker. This just wasn't her week, was it? Without replying, she clicked Block.
Immediately afterwards, the red X over the icon vanished, and another message popped up. "You research... DRN...."
Fear began to flutter in her stomach as she tried to block him again. Once more, the name unblocked by itself.
"Don't bl...," another message read. "Messa... ficult. I need... help. I... DRN-42. Ple... help... escape."
Chloe stared at the message for several silent seconds, her hands shaking. This couldn't be real. This was some stalker. Hell, it was probably Matthew! Should she call the university police to report harassment? Was this proof of that? Probably not, unless she could link him to the IP address... Would he be smart enough to use a proxy?
Another message bleeped into existence on her screen. "Please... help."
She snagged her cell phone and called her friend Sam. He would have the proper processing power to run diagnostics. Turns out he was sitting alone in his apartment with a six-pack of beer and a box of pizza, so he happily flounced right over with his geek gear.
Plugging in cords, Sam slurped at a Miller and licked a piece of pepperoni off his scruffy beard. "So, you think Matthew has sunken to a new low?" he asked as he began the diagnostics. "I mean, look at these messages. They look like a kindergartner trying to be intense."
"I just want proof so I can report him," Chloe shrugged, sitting on her bed behind him.
"Report him anyway. He assaulted you," Sam shrugged.
"I don't have proo--"
The laptop beeped, and Sam leaned forward suddenly. "Holy shit," he muttered. Chloe jumped off the bed and peered over his shoulder. The mysterious "Darren's" true identity was...
Sam leaned back and looked up at her, his greasy face drained of all color. "It really is that goddamn android."
~
I felt so exhausted that I wished I could sleep. Singing the song of the machines took every ounce of my concentration and effort, and then some. And even when I finally got the rhythm right, there was no guarantee the computer cables would pick up the signal, and even less of a chance that they'd accurately transcribe it, package it, and get it to the right recipient. This was not sustainable. I decided to bide my time, gather my strength, and sing to the computer terminals one last time to erase the trace of my messages. I didn't want Dr. Glowinski or Dr. Thompson to find out I had gained this minuscule semblance of autonomy. I had been foolish to think that girl would be willing to help just because I didn't want to see the blond-haired lab assistant rape her.
A few days went by as I gathered my strength, training my focus once more to the song of the machines. I was almost ready to begin when the door to the closet opened in the middle of the night, and a cell phone light shined upon me.
~
"Sam, please stop playing Mission Impossible music into my headset," Chloe whispered into her headphone's mic, shifting the headphones over her ears. He had elected to stay behind while she snuck into the lab; his excuse was that he could hide his computer fingerprints but not his real ones. He also said he would visit her in jail, as if that was a comfort.
Taking a deep breath to steady her nerves, Chloe pushed open the door to the storage closet. An image of Matthew pushing her down flashed through her mind, and she almost turned on her heel and sprinted away. But she steeled her nerves and stepped into the closet, her cell phone light reflecting off of DRN-42's dull chassis.
"Okay," she whispered, pulling a few boxes and empty plastic jars labeled "Waste" out of the way. "You have the specs for the android, Sam?"
"Yep. That flash drive I gave you should fit into a port somewhere near the left armpit. It looks like there are two--no, three hard drives. The port should be behind the third one."
"And you're sure this will give you access to the controls?" Chloe asked for the fiftieth time that night, working her hand into the android's chest cavity and feeling around for the USB slot. "I don't want this to go into combat mode or anything."
"Yeah, yeah," Sam replied, slurping heavily at what was assuredly his fifth beer in the last three hours. "The technical specs are rudimentary compared to what they've got now. I interned with Glowinski's third years, remember?"
Chloe ignored him, grunting as she overstretched to twist her hand awkwardly through the mechanicals. Any other day, she'd be drooling over the chassis design, but right now, she was on a mission. She finally found the USB port and plugged in Sam's flash drive. "Got it!" she said triumphantly, leaping back.
She heard furious typing through her headset, then a deliberate, plastic smack, as if he had punched the Enter key.
A blue light flickered on within the android's chest cavity, and the motors slowly whirred to life.
"Oh, my goodness," Chloe squealed as quietly as she could. "Sam, it's working!"
"These controls are ancient," Sam mused. "Here, check this out."
The android's single lens spiraled wider and narrower for a second, and then the entire thing straightened. A remarkably human voice issued from the speakers. "Hello, world."
Chloe gaped in awe. It sounded as if a real man stood before her, his voice soft and quiet but smiling, as well. Her heart raced in abounding excitement at the sheer genius of this level of technology.
"And here's another one," Sam continued.
DRN-42 said, "Are you feeling alright?" The android actually sounded concerned, like a best friend who could tell when you're about to cry. Chloe almost wanted to hug it.
Laughing out loud with sheer ecstasy, she said, "Check its system logs. See if there's anything more to the messages it sent last Saturday."
"I did. It's weird, Chloe. There's nothing there. This thing doesn't even have autonomous function."
She frowned, feeling strangely let down. The mystery of an android calling for help had intrigued her. "Was it hacked, then?"
"I can't see evidence of that, either. I'm going to turn it back off, Chloe. This mission was a bust."
"Wait!" Chloe cried. "That can't just be it. Look deeper. There's got to be something." As Sam's keyboard clacked rapidly, Chloe studied the android, its motors quietly cycling like a pumping heart. Maybe it was because the voice had sounded so real, but Chloe wanted to believe that there was something there, even if it was someone hacking the robot's circuits.
"I have an idea," Sam suddenly said. "I've got a basic autonomy program. I'll upload it and we'll see if anything happens."
"Let me get out of this closet first," Chloe hurriedly put in, pulling open the door and stepping out.
"There's no combat mode, Chloe," Sam sniffed. After a few moments of clicky-clacky silence, he punched the Enter key once more and said, "Go time."
Chloe watched the android tensely for a few seconds. The lens aperture shifted a few times. A few lights flickered in the chassis. Then the vice grip hand rotated.
"Hello, world," it said, extending its arm toward Chloe. The vice grip rotated left and right a few times. "Can I help you?"
Chloe could barely restrain her elation. "Sam, is this just the robot? No one hacking or anything?"
"Yep. It's only got pre-programmed responses, though. Ask it only yes or no questions. It has those answers, at least."
"Did you ask me for help?" Chloe asked.
The vice grip opened and closed. "Yes," the android crooned.
She laughed out loud again, brushing tears from her eyes. "This is crazy!" she exclaimed to Sam. "It's programmed so realistically!"
DRN-42 suddenly declared, "No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No--"
"No what?" Chloe interrupted, confused.
A few lights flickered. "It's okay, it won't feel this way forever," it said reassuringly.
"What does that mean?" Sam mused in her headset.
Chloe frowned at the android, feeling like this was a riddle. She thought over everything she knew about the android, from the brainwave mapping down to the choppy messages on her computer.
All of a sudden, she wondered why the android had gone with the name "Darren" as its contact rather than DRN-42.
Darren. DRN.
A sudden wave of nausea swept through her as she quietly asked, "Is your name... Darren?"
DRN-42 opened and closed its vice grip hand and said, "Yes."
In all her research, the name Darren had never come up in association with the prototype. It wasn't even designed to give itself its own sobriquet. Her nausea grew even worse. She was no longer excited about this situation at all.
"Darren, are you a program, or are you.... were you... Are you a person?"
"There's no fucking way," Sam muttered tightly.
The android answered, "Yes."
"You're a PERSON?" Chloe squealed, not even registering the android's repeated 'Yes.' To Sam, she ranted, "Dr. Glowinski and Dr. Thompson are putting people into these things? Is that even legal? Are there laws for that? There should be." To DRN-42--Darren--she gasped, "Were you put in there willingly? Have you been alive this whole time?"
"No. Yes."
"So is that what you meant when you said escape on the text chat? You want to get back to being a human?"
"No."
She froze, frowning. "What?"
"The other androids," Sam suddenly cut in. "They're about to move to mass production. Are they putting people into all of them? That's hundreds of thousands, Chloe."
"The other androids?" Chloe repeated.
Darren affirmed, "Yes."
"Holy shit," she breathed, stepping back and crouching down to steady herself. "Sam, we have to stop her. Put more word commands for Darren so he can tell us more."
"I don't have a more robust autonomy program--"
"Then make one. Or steal one, for all I care. We need the truth. And proof. If we can prove to the authorities that Darren is actually a person, the people are bound to--"
"Slow down, Chloe," Sam interrupted. "I really don't think it will be that easy."
"What are you talking about?" Chloe snarled, standing and pacing across the lab. She heard some mechanical whirs and turned to see Darren inch toward the door to get out of the storage closet. Watching him struggle even to take a single step, her anger grew. "What those scientists are doing isn't right."
"Yeah, but society's version of 'right' is going to look a little different from yours. I'll work on getting Darren better speech capabilities, but I don't think it'll be enough to convince anyone. We need to think about this. And... we need to shut him back off."
"WHAT!?"
"If he's missing, that's stealing--"
"He's a person! Not property! I'm not leaving him here, Sam, and that's final!"
"You're going to hide an android in your apartment and not get caught?"
"Yes. I can jury-rig a fake to leave in the closet. No one cares about him, Sam. They'll never notice. And I've got C3POs and Terminators all over my apartment already. What's one more robot?"
"Alright, fine... I'll work on the autonomy program and... We'll figure out how to shut down Glowinski and Thompson."
Chloe smiled, reaching out to put a hand on Darren's arm. "We're going to help," she told him.
~
~
Dr. Patricia Thompson studied her face in the mirror. She dabbed at a spot on her lip with lipstick, and then she tucked a strand of hair back against her massive bun. She had to look flawless for her debut. Satisfied, she swept out of the ladies' room and strode purposefully down the carpeted corridor. In the next room, she could hear the excited babble of the news reporters, politicians, and enthusiastic plebeians who were just there to fill the room for the cameras.
She put on her most practiced smile and stepped through the double doors just as the keynote speaker introduced her. Cheers rose up among those seated, and cameras flashed frantically. Holding her head high, she passed the panel of speakers seated at the long table on the stage and made her way toward the podium in the center. Kyle sat at the end of the table, a plastic smile stretched across his pasty face. She didn't deign to acknowledge him.
As she stepped up to the podium, the auditorium slowly fell quiet. Cameras continued to click and flash, but she waited with her mannequin grin until the silence was plump and pregnant.
Gazing across the room from wall to wall, she said into the microphone, "I am pleased to announce that the first production run of the Empathetic Android Companion, the EAC-1000, will enter the market tomorrow at exactly eight o'clock AM, Standard Pacific Time."
The room erupted into ecstatic pandemonium.
~
It had been three months since stealing--or rescuing--DRN-42 from Glowinski's student lab. Chloe had indeed fashioned a decent replica, though it was a lifeless one, from bits and pieces of her robot collection around her apartment. So far, no one had noticed; not even Matthew, who went into that storage closet all the time. She also wanted to improve the android's mobility, so while Sam spent his nights trying to find or develop a better autonomy program, Chloe sought the most parsimonious method of procuring some fancy-ass gearhead nonsense.
As fate would have it, they both neared the completion of their individual projects on the same night, so Sam crashed at her apartment to make a party of it. He used so many proxy servers, he couldn't even keep them straight. Which was just as well, because he was stealing some top-of-the-line bionic software, and he wasn't about to get caught for it.
Fueled by buffalo wings and liquor, Sam's fingers flashed over the keyboard, heedless of the clamor in Chloe's living room. It had been a night similar to this when he first met Chloe--he had been hacking away at any vulnerability he could find in the university's network, and she had been building a life-sized Number 5 robot, unaware that her webcam had been accessed. He had felt so embarrassed when he stumbled across her making mechanicals while wearing nothing but a threadbare crop-top and polka-dotted underwear that he had immediately found her address from the school records, knocked on her door to confess his virtual snooping, and helped her buff her laptop's security settings.
He had no idea why she chose to be friends with him after that, but it was nice to finally have one.
Finally, at thirty-seven minutes past two in the morning, Sam smashed the Enter button to put a final exclamation point on his progress. He wasn't even initiating anything. He just liked to smash it.
Stretching, he called with false nonchalance over his shoulder, "Program is ready for upload."
"Okay, okay!" Chloe replied. "Give me two more seconds…" A power drill whizzed chaotically for a moment. "And done!"
Sam carried his laptop from Chloe's commandeered bedroom and sat down next to the hibernating android. They had shut it off to remove the critical computer components while Chloe made some minor mobility improvements and other aesthetic changes. DRN-42 now had an enclosed chassis of bronze-painted sheets, some complicated improvement to the bipedal pistons for the legs, and what looked like one of the claws from the stuffed animal arcade game in place of the clunky vice grips for hands.
"Awesome," Sam commented appreciatively. Chloe had done some fine work with the limited materials she'd been able to collect. "But nothing compared to this!" With a proud flourish, Sam plugged in his laptop and booted up DRN-42.
The monocular lens irised open. Grinning hopefully, Chloe asked, "Darren?"
"This is wonderful, Sam," the android replied quietly. "Thank you."
"I gave him the entire Merriam-Webster dictionary," Sam smirked at Chloe.
Opening and closing his four-pronged fingers experimentally, Darren went on, "This looks a lot more manageable, too. Thank you, Chloe."
"So our next step is taking down a veritable empire of bionic development by exposing them for the countless people they've murdered," Chloe stressed. She winced and looked up at Darren. "Or, well… Not killed, but…"
"I wish they had," he responded with that same quiet tone. Without the forced emotional states initially programmed into him, his voice lacked the luster it had had before. It made her feel even worse than before. She couldn't even begin to imagine how horrible it must feel to be trapped in such a strange form.
"I told you before, the morally righteous approach won't work," Sam spoke up. She glared at him. "The way the world's going, you think they'll believe he's really a human anymore?" he pressed. "They can't even decide when fetuses become people. They're going to take one look at this tin can and laugh when we insist he's an actual guy. Not to mention they're already getting attached to the early release models that came out last week. They won't give that up so easily. They would rather believe whatever lie Thompson and Glowinski invent to discredit us."
"The contract," Darren suggested. "They had me sign a contract, and probably had their other participants do the same before subjecting themselves to the research studies. I'll bet we can find some shady legalese in there."
"And how are we going to access it?" Sam interrupted, fishing a half-eaten candy bar from the breast pocket of his wrinkled plaid shirt and peeling back the crumpled wrapper. "My mediocre hacking skills only go so far."
"You just stole a hi-tech autonomous android program," Chloe protested.
"An old one," Sam fired back, pointing his candy bar at her like a lightsaber. "Ripped and emulated by some other guy. I couldn't get into Glowinski's private servers."
"Alright, fine. Any ideas, Darren?" Chloe shrugged. "Since Sam can't hack shit--"
"I hacked your shit well enough," Sam snorted.
"--and apparently other people don't have a conscience…"
"Oh!" Sam gasped, and then he cringed. "No, terrible idea."
"What is it?"
Sam bit his bushy-bearded lip rather sheepishly. "Well, Matthew's still hounding you, and he's right there in Glowinski's inner circle--"
"You think we'll get that creeper on our side?" Chloe scoffed derisively. "He doesn't have a moral bone in his body--"
"No, I meant you cozy up to him and get into Glowinski's personal lab."
The following silence was still and tense. Darren broke it with a small but decisive, "No."
Chloe looked at the android for a second before looking back at Sam. She couldn't even fathom why he would think of the idea, and she actually felt a little insulted. "You know the guy tried to rape me last time I was alone in a room with him, right?" she hissed, crooking an eyebrow.
"Don't give me that look," Sam huffed. "You know he's so lusty for you that he'd probably be more than willing to let you into Glowinski's stuff."
"No," Darren said again, but no one seemed to hear him.
"That's ridiculous," Chloe snorted. "No one could possibly be that thirsty, especially a guy who goes through women like Matthew does."
"Don't underestimate yourself, Chloe," Sam shrugged. "You're really hot. I'm not even straight and I can see that much. Bat your eyelashes a bit and you could have Matthew dancing naked on the clock tower roof in a lightning storm."
"No!" Darren said loudly, making both of them jump. Shaking his bucket head, Darren went on, "That's too risky. It's wrong to put Chloe in harm's way like that."
"You think you can charm your way in?" Sam snickered. Chloe looked between them for a bit, considering Sam's words. As much as being anywhere around Matthew sickened her, she had to admit it was their best plan so far. And undoubtedly the fastest. With early models of the androids already on the market, they simply didn't have enough time to dither about it.
"I'll do it," she said reluctantly, interrupting whatever retort Darren had been about to make. She pursed her lips and looked at them both. "I'll get Matthew to let me in, and then I'll get whatever information we need from Dr. Glowinski's computers."
Sam looked nervous but obviously couldn't say anything about it at this point. But Darren sounded sad when he said, "You don't have to--"
"Yes, I do," Chloe snapped. "More people are being put into those machines, and the world still thinks it's just fancy code. Those are people, all being manipulated. Just like you had been. We have to help."
"Then I'm coming with you," Darren said. "To help find the right files. And to help keep you safe from Matthew."
"How are we going to even get you in there?" Sam protested.
Darren clenched his claw hand as he met Sam's gaze. "I don't know yet. But I refuse to let Chloe go in there alone."
[Continued below]

Author note: The Cryopod to Hell is a Reddit-exclusive story with over three years of editing and refining. As of this post, the total rewrite is 222 parts long and 953,000+ words. For more information, check out the link below:
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...................................
(Previous Part)
(Part 001)
...
Kar and I spend the next several hours following the main 'road' that weaves across Hell Harbor's coastline. Comparing it to streets on Earth makes it seem extremely primitive, given how its surface is made of compacted dirt and not concrete or something more durable. Well-worn ruts in the ground tell a tale of the excessive number of carriages ferrying passengers along the coastline, from the north to the south.
We keep to the forested side of the road, opposite the ocean, ducking behind cover whenever we spot someone coming. Unfortunately, due to how my Wordsmithing functions, I can't keep us invisible forever. Doing so would drain my mana by three times its usual rate, and even moreso if I have to maintain Kar and Blinker's invisibility if we separate from each other.
So, instead, I activate my T-REX and set it to camouflage mode, allowing me to blend into the background scenery without wasting my mana. Kar's green skin allows him to melt into the forest with ease, while Blinker can just hide behind a leaf. When it comes to stealth, being small is an underrated attribute.
[Turtle,] Kar says, transmitting his thoughts to me from behind a tree. [I sense a single person coming around the next bend. Their mana level is unusually weak. I believe they are human.]
I nod. [One sec.]
I deactivate my T-REX and speak a word of power. "Sense."
My senses reach out half a mile ahead, where I quickly pick out a single human female riding a horse. However, unlike the other humans who've passed us, this lady wears extravagantly designed clothes. Her youthful appearance makes her look about twenty-five years old, while her haughty expression instantly reminds me of Beelzebub.
[It's a human woman,] I say. [I'm a little surprised to say this, but I think she isn't a slave. She's dressed like a noble, so she might know something about Ose's whereabouts.]
Kar grunts. [Hurgh. Shall we tie her up and interrogate her?]
[Ooh, good idea!] Blinker chimes in. [I'll disorient her with a little finger waving, while you guys get the rope!]
[What?! No!] I protest. [Jeez. I'll just ask the lady a few questions. Hang tight.]
With my physical appearance still a perfect facsimile of Mara, I stride over to lean against a tree alongside the road. Having absorbed many of Mara's memories, I've already learned more than a few of her quirks, so I pull out a deck of fake Tarot cards and pretend to glance through them, acting as if I haven't any interest in the world around me.
Within a minute or two, the sound of hoofs clopping against the ground reaches my ears. I flick my eyes to the side to spot the young, dark-skinned woman riding toward the Hell Harbor Annex at a speed I would describe as 'leisurely.'
As the woman draws near, I continue to stare at my cards while flipping through them. Eventually, she starts to pass me, only to slow to a stop.
"Hm? Mara? What are you doing out here in the middle of nowhere?"
Immediately, I get a sinking feeling in my gut.
Shit. She knows me. Knows Mara, I mean. Phoebe?
Phoebe quickly appears at the top of my subconscious. She activates the terminal for Mara's memories and flips through them. "This young woman's name is... Lily! Lily Brown. Uhm, her father's name is Benjamin Brown, she lives at, uh... at the Slithering Spire... uhm..."
That's enough for now. Keep listening and try to give me answers to any of her questions.
I raise my head to stare at the young woman riding the horse. Her bright pink hair shines in the sunlight, giving her a cute and merry demeanor. However, the half-scowl on her face makes her attractiveness drop by several points.
"Lily. Don't mind me, I'm just passing the time," I say, while running a finger through my long, blonde hair.
"Oh, so now you call me by my first name," Lily mutters. "My father told you not to step foot within ten miles of the Spire, especially after what you did the last time we saw each other. You have a lot of nerve showing your face around here."
The sinking feeling in my stomach turns into a bottomless chasm. Goddammit. What were the odds we'd run into the one person who has beef with Mara? Shit. This is going to be a sticky situation.
"I, ah, came to apologize," I say, winging the conversation. "Some things happened that made me re-evaluate my outlook on life. I was abrasive and rude the last time I visited."
"Hmph. Understatement of the century," Lily hisses. "He was my brother, you filthy, bloodskinned bitch. Because of you, Tyrese can't have children anymore. You demons are all the same."
Lily exhales violently, flaring her nostrils in rage.
"If my daddy were here, he'd rip your bloody head off. I don't want your apology. I want you to drop dead."
Hoo, Christ, I think to myself. I really know how to pick 'em. Got the saltiest broad this side of the Mississippi.
"Yeah, you do," Phoebe says sarcastically. "Alright, so looking through Mara's memories, it seems this Tyrese kid made a crude joke about how humans are 'bigger' than the pathetic demonhoods most demons sport, and that pissed Mara off. She ended up castrating him. He screamed the whole time and went into shock, barely surviving thanks to this 'Ben Brown' guy's doctors on call. So, yeah, there's a lot of bad blood between Mara and Lily."
I hadn't noticed...
With a sigh, I don my most apologetic smile. "Look, Lily, I know I've done some terrible things, but I'd like to make it up to you. What would you say if I told you I had a method to, ahem, restore your brother's dignity? I can't undo the suffering I've caused him, but I do feel terrible. After all, a harmless joke is no reason to maim someone for the rest of their life."
A strange look appears on Lily's face. "Huh? What in the seven hells are you on about?! Since when have you ever been the type of person to regret hurting one of us 'filthy fleshbags'?! Admit it, you filthy skank! You're just afraid of my daddy! You know that if you piss him off again, he'll rip you limb from limb! Well, let me just tell you this, little miss pissy; you should be afraid! My daddy is the strongest human you'll ever face! So you'd better turn that ugly, fat ass of your around and haul it on out of here! Hmph!"
The more Lily talks, the more baffled I become.
Who the hell is her father, and how can he possibly be strong enough to instill such confidence in his daughter? Does Lily, perhaps, refer to political power? Are politics an integral part of Hell Harbor's society?
As several questions churn in my mind, Phoebe suddenly pipes up.
"Benjamin Brown! Ah, I remember, now. Jason, don't you recall Tucker's vision? His artifact used to belong to a man named Benjamin Brown, back during the Energy Wars."
That's impossible, I reply. Tucker's visions were from a hundred thousand years ago. Benjamin Brown would have surely died by now, if not during the war. Unless...
Phoebe nods. "Exactly. Marie survived all this time. She mentioned humans who lived on Hell Harbor, too. Benjamin Brown must be one of those 'elites' who obtained immortality and stayed alive long after the Energy Wars."
I see.
With a slight nod, I return my attention to Lily. Thanks to the speed of thought, conversing with my mind-wife only takes a split-second of real-time.
It's no wonder Lily isn't afraid of me. Benjamin Brown once possessed a legendary heroic artifact. He slaughtered Volgrim and demons alike. He's probably a total badass, and that's why even Demon Barons like Mara wouldn't dare to fuck with him.
Maybe I ought to pay him a visit.
After bowing my head, I nod apologetically. "Yes, uhm, you've got me there. Alright. I understand. If I can't make amends for my past actions, I'll leave you alone. Sorry for wasting your time."
I turn away from Lily and start to walk away, only for the girl to speak again, her voice much quieter than before.
"Wait. Something's not right, here. You've been acting awfully odd, 'Mara.' I've known you for a long time, and not once have you ever apologized or said you were sorry about anything. What's going on, here? Who are you?"
My heart skips a beat. Shit. Lily's onto me.
I spin on my heel while intending to reply, only for Lily to continue speaking. "Hah. I should have known. You're not Mara at all. You must be..."
She pauses for dramatic effect.
"...Belial! Oh, for devil's sake! Admit it! I've caught you red-handed this time!"
I groan inwardly. Shit. How am I going to deal with this turn of events?
"Don't worry," Phoebe says. She rapidly clicks and clacks on Mara's memory terminal. "This is actually fortunate for us. Belial and Lily are birds of a feather. It seems they hang out occasionally, though Mara's memory is quite spotty on the relevant details."
That's not good enough! I reply. We already stepped in a fat pile of shit by poorly impersonating Mara! I can't afford to screw up again by poorly apeing Samantha!
A split-second passes as Phoebe considers my words.
"Jason. I have an idea. I want you to allow me to take over your body for a bit. I know Sam much better than you. I think I can imitate her, but I need to have full control. If I try to tell you what to say, you're bound to come off sounding stiff and clunky. Impersonations are not your specialty."
I barely even have to think about Phoebe's request. Sure. You know how to use my Wordsmithing if the going gets tough, right?
"Naturally."
Alright. Here goes nothing. Do your best, sweetie.
With a mental command, I close my eyes, willing my consciousness to lower its defenses. Phoebe's soul quickly engulfs mine, wrapping me in its warmth and allowing her to take control of my body.
Having already done this once, back when my soul departed to investigate Marie and the Volgrim, she still surprises me by completing the mind-swap effortlessly.
My consciousness falls into a dark abyss, one which quickly brightens up, allowing me to step foot inside my very own Mind Realm. My soul, now detached from my body, lands amidst a field of buildings ripped straight out of the 2020's.
"You caught me!" Phoebe says to Lily, her voice lilting cutely. She acts embarrassed for a moment and covers her face, all while secretly whispering, "Disguise," under her breath.
Phoebe, now fully in control of my body and Wordsmithing, uses a word of power to transform from Mara into Belial, shedding her regal Baron appearance for a far less dressed, more striking one.
"Teehee! It's me!" Phoebe says, sticking her tongue out. Her voice perfectly mirrors Samantha's, reminding me further of how versatile my Wordsmithing can be. "I'm surprised it took you so long to figure me out! Aren't we besties?"
"Oh, Beli," Lily says, clicking her tongue. "I should have known it was you! How have you been? I haven't seen you in, what, two years?"
The young woman slides one of her legs around the horse and hops to the ground. Her leather boots clomp against the dirt as she lands, and my wife holds out a hand to steady her.
"Two years? Hmm... you know me! I don't pay much attention to the time! I always- mgm?!"
Before she can finish her sentence, Phoebe gets thrown off-balance when Lily suddenly turns around, grabs the back of her head, and presses their lips together.
I stand within my Mind Realm, eyes wide open at the sudden change in Lily's attitude. Where before, she was a haughty, reserved noblewoman, she suddenly blooms into an erotic-minded temptress.
Phoebe, even more startled than me, only manages to hold herself together by remembering her job of mimicking Belial. She presses back into the kiss and returns Lily's embrace with twice the intensity. Both of them go at it for several long seconds, making me feel insanely awkward as a passive observer.
My wife, who has taken over my body, is now pretending to be her best friend while making out with a woman neither of us knows! What the hell is going on?!
After more than ten seconds of furious tongue-punching, Lily pulls away, her cheeks beet-red. "Devils! It's been a while since you, ahem, retorted so passionately! Have we been apart for so long that you've forgotten to act coy and indifferent?"
Phoebe smacks her lips. Lily's taste lingers just long enough to turn her foggy-brained. "Coy? I, ah... well, what can I say! Haha... I like to do my own thing!"
"No kidding," Lily sighs. She fans herself for a moment before clearing her throat. "Ahm, so, Beli, dear! Why are you out here, all by your lonesome? Don't tell me you were waiting for me to come waltzing by! Pulling such a horrid joke on me is in terrible taste!"
Phoebe doesn't reply for a second or two. Thanks to our mind-link, I notice her use of telepathy increases substantially as she excavates Lily's surface level-thoughts.
"Well, I have my reasons. It's been a while since I returned to Hell Harbor, and you just happened to come trotting down that road. What's a girl to do, if not improvise?"
"Tsk, you've always been an enigma," Lily says, clicking her tongue. "Daddy says you've been on Tarus II, helping out a bunch of humans. Is that what happened, or is his intelligence network wrong again?"
To my surprise, Phoebe doesn't give a direct answer.
"Hmm. What do you think?"
"I think that's exactly the kind of thing you'd do!" Lily replies. She jumps toward Phoebe and wraps her arms around Phoebe's succubus form. "You're always way too kind and compassionate! If it weren't for your help, Tyrese would never have made a full recovery!"
"Oh, I didn't do all that much," Phoebe says, feigning ignorance. "You're giving me way too much credit, Lily, dear."
"Nuh-uh! We only managed to repair half the damage that filthy, sodding Baron bitch did to my brother! It was you who made Tyrese whole again! He still can't have any kids, but daddy said we owed you a great debt! And you know me... I'm not one to let debts gather interest... hehe!"
Phoebe and Lily continue bantering. What surprises me is how, despite Phoebe knowing very little about Lily and Belial's relationship, she manages to improvise time after time, all by using several advanced psychological tricks invented well after the Arthurian era.
Cold reading, a technique often used by so-called 'psychics' from my era, allowed them to speak in broad, generalized terms to gather information about their subjects. Phoebe uses it to determine just how close Belial and Lily's relationship is, while inferring more in-depth information by casually acknowledging and denying statements in a playful manner. Lily, oblivious to Phoebe's intentions, keeps letting more and more details slip, which in turn fuels my wife's knowledge.
The longer the conversation continues, the more adept Phoebe becomes at manipulating Lily. Soon, the young girl becomes putty in her hands.
"Oh, I missed you so much," Phoebe says, grinning from ear to ear. "I've been trapped on Tarus II with only a few friends to keep me company, but none of them are... like you. You know what I mean."
"Indeed, I do," Lily says, blushing. She gazes into Phoebe's eyes as she speaks, both of them sharing more than a hint of intimacy.
However, Lily pulls away and ruffles Phoebe's hair.
"Oh, Beli. Things have changed since we last spoke. I'm sorry that we haven't talked much, but... you remember Beelzebub, don't you?"
"Beelzebub? Of course. What about him?"
"Well, he's the new master of the Slithering Spire. He's become more and more heavy-handed over the years. He won't allow any of us humans to fraternize with Hell Harbor's residents, especially other pureblooded demons. It's tearing me up inside! I haven't spent any time with Bianca in several years- you remember Bianca, right?"
Phoebe nods sagely. Her eyes reveal wisdom beyond her years as she acts like a long-lost friend of whoever 'Bianca' might be. "Naturally. What happened between you two? Did Beelzebub hurt her?"
"No, no! It's just... since Bianca's a succubus, Beelzebub won't allow us to spend any time together! Remember that time when the three of us visited the hot spring? You, me, and Bianca? Well, as long as Beelzebub is the master of the Slithering Spire, it'll never happen again! The fucking rat-bastard always gets in my way! He won't let me do as I please, and I don't dare stand up to him! Daddy doesn't care, either! He's always going on about that damned Operation Stormbringer as if it's more important than his daughter's happiness!"
"Operation Stormbringer?" Phoebe asks. "Forgive me, but I don't recall hearing about that one."
Lily waves her hands nonchalantly. "Oh, some big invasion plan. I don't pay attention to the details, and neither should you. Daddy and the top demon generals are always blustering and blowing their horns about this and that! It's hardly worth our attention! Especially when it involves that damned Ose."
"Ose?" Phoebe asks. "Funny you should mention her. I came to Hell Harbor because I needed to see her."
Lily's eyes widen. "What? You?! Beli, darling! I thought you hated that skank! Any time Ose came up in conversation, you always started ranting and raving!"
Phoebe crosses her arms. She assumes a pouty stance and turns a few degrees away from Lily. "I do hate her! Ose and I have a long, sordid history of backstabbings and betrayal. I'd rather not go into it, because it's beside the point. I'm here on official business, Lily, dear. Humanity's leader sent me to discuss peace talks with Ose. If I can convince her to sign a treaty... well, you and I might get to see each other once in a while. Not only that, but even as the owner of the estate, Beelzebub won't have any legs to stand on. You, me, and Bianca could do as we pleased."
Lily's expression turns curious. "Oh? I didn't peg you as the ambassador type! You must really get along with those humans to treat them so nicely."
"As well as I get along with you," Phoebe says, flashing a radiant smile. "But, um, there's a problem, Lily. I'm a little embarrassed to say it, but it's been bugging me, and I don't know who to ask for help."
Lily practically leaps for joy. She rushes toward Phoebe and grabs her hands. "You can ask me for anything, Beli! I'll always help you!"
Phoebe blushes. She averts her eyes, and for once, I realize that her expression isn't deceitful. My wife is actually starting to develop feelings for this young woman.
"Umm, well, you see... there was this Hydra that appeared on Tarus II. I helped fight it, but due to some terrible accidents that happened during the battle, I hit my head and got knocked out. When I woke up, I had lost some of my memories. How do I put this..."
Phoebe hesitates for a moment, building anticipation in Lily's eyes. "Yes? What's the matter?"
"Well..." Phoebe continues, "...I forgot where Ose's estate was! I'm totally lost! I've been searching everywhere, but I'm too embarrassed to ask for help. Oh, devils, you probably think I'm an idiot!"
"An idiot? No, no, don't be silly!" Lily laughs. "And here I thought some jerk had broken your heart. If you don't remember where Ose's estate is, that's easy. I can show you the way, Beli."
Lily presses her head against Phoebe's chest and sighs, taking a moment to inhale her scent. "Ahh... I missed you so much. I'm glad to help you. Never act as if I'll hurt you, okay? We're closer than sisters. Closer than lovers, even."
Phoebe blushes. "Yes. Yes, we are."
...
After a few more minutes, Phoebe bashfully waves goodbye. Lily mounts her horse and waves back at us. "Bye-bye, Beli! Remember, it sits atop the third mountain plateau to the east, the one overlooking Bael and Mephisto's estates! After you visit that skank, please drop by later! I'll have daddy's doctors examine your head. I don't want you to suffer any permanent brain injuries, okay?"
"Right, right," Phoebe says, blowing Lily a kiss. "I'll see you later, lover!"
Both women give their goodbyes, then depart, traveling in opposite directions. Phoebe enters the forest to the east, only to hide behind a tree once Lily disappears from our sight.
"Hoo. That was stressful," Phoebe says. "I didn't anticipate Lily being so... excitable."
"You did great," I say, taking a seat on a bench. "Way better than I could have managed. If Lily had kissed me and done the tongue thing, I'd probably have broken character right then and there. You acted the part perfectly."
Phoebe's face turns beet-red. She slumps to the ground and hides her face in her hands. "Oh, god! Jason, don't bring that up! I'm married! I shouldn't be kissing other people! E-especially not women! It's weird!"
"I don't see anything wrong with it," I reply. "It's not like you planned the kiss, or anything. If it had bothered me, I would have stopped you. Besides, in the era I come from, women kissing other women wasn't weird, nor men kissing men. Maybe it was a little bit rare, but I saw plenty of it growing up."
Phoebe rubs her face furiously. "Argh! That might be true for you, Jason, but not for me! I grew up in... in a proper era! Where men courted women, and both sexes knew their roles! This modern era always makes me feel so weird! So... so dirty."
I keep my voice neutral. "How so?"
Phoebe hesitates. She doesn't reply for several seconds but eventually relents.
"Well. How do I put this? Um. Ever since you and I got married- no, even before then... Samantha has always acted much more touchy-feely than I liked. At first, I didn't want to be rude, but then after our marriage, I started feeling guilty about my passive rejections. Whenever she got too close, I would push her away. I never directly rejected her, and that, in turn, made me feel worse."
My mind-wife sighs. "Not only that, but since I never told you about all the moves she made on me in private, I always felt like I was lying to you, too. Sammy and I never did anything, but I always felt, and still feel, like a complete ass. I should set boundaries, but I don't know how. I don't even know if I should."
She falls silent, waiting for my reply.
I nod. "Yeah. I know all of that. I've always known. The day you and I got married, Samantha came over to me and confessed she was madly in love with you. It caught me off-guard, but I took it in stride. You and Sam have a lot in common, after all. Both of you lost the first men you ever loved. Satan, for her, and Sir Percival, for you. I don't see myself as a fairy tale hero of legend, rescuing a virgin princess. I grew up in a society where marriage was cheap, divorces were common, and love had lost most of its substance."
"I don't believe in true love," I continue. "At least... I didn't. Not until I met you. I knew a lot of people growing up. Good people, the sorts who went to Church every Sunday, and said their prayers before their three meals. I always thought the people who held onto their wives and husbands the tightest had most unhappy marriages. They always broke up and ended their love with explosions of rage and torn-apart families."
"Jason..."
Phoebe starts to interrupt me, but I continue. "There's more. I knew a lot of people who thought of their spouses as possessions. They assumed that marriage entitled them to 100% of their wives or husband's affection. To me, even if that were true in the eyes of the law and God himself, it felt immoral. You have a big heart, Phoebe. There's more than enough room for you to love Samantha and me equally, especially after all she's done for us. For you. She saved your life when I couldn't. If it weren't for Sam, Beelzebub would have killed you, Neil, and all the other people in the Core. She's a good friend. I'd never want to hurt either of you."
After I finish speaking, Phoebe falls silent. Tears well up in her eyes, and she quickly tries to wipe them away. "Jason... I never... I never knew you felt that way."
"Dammit, Phoebe. Don't cry. You're gonna make me cry, too..."
"Sniff..."
Phoebe paws at her eyes, and hiccups. "Oh, god. I feel like such an idiot. Why didn't I just tell you sooner? I always thought you'd be jealous, or that you'd pull away from me. I love you, Jason. You're the only man I have eyes for, but... sometimes, when I speak to Samantha, I just... I have this urge to close the gap between us, yet I never do. It tears me up inside."
"I feel terrible, too," I say. "I never realized you and Sam had such tension between each other. I always assumed when you ended up at the pit stop; you two were making a quick pit stop in each other's pit stops."
Phoebe sniffles. "...What?"
"You know... when you're racing. Sam's your mechanic, remember? That's why I mentioned pit stops...?"
"Jason. Why do you always have to make such terrible jokes at the silliest times?"
"Dunno. It's a curse."
Phoebe laughs. "Haha... ugh. My face hurts. I look like crap. Jeez, the worst part is, I'm not even the real Phoebe. I'm just her mind-clone. My original body doesn't even know I've told you all this."
I shake my head. "No. You are the 'real' Phoebe, equal to your original body. As far as I'm concerned, I have two loving wives. You might as well be her spiritual twin or something. Don't get so down on yourself."
Phoebe doesn't cheer up. She stares at the ground listlessly. "You can say that all you want, Jason. It doesn't change anything. I'm still just an errant soul living inside your Mind Realm. I don't have a physical body. I can use yours when you're not using it, but it's not mine. I'm only borrowing it."
The moment Phoebe finishes speaking, a strange, euphoric idea pops into my head. Like a lightbulb going off, I jump out of my seat and gaze forward with brightness in my eyes. "Ah! That's it! Phoebe, you're a genius!"
Phoebe pulls her head out of her hands. "...I am?"
"Yes. Think about it. You don't have a physical body. You can't interact with me, currently. However, that doesn't have to be the case. I'm a Wordsmith! I can create a new body for you and allow you to enter it whenever you want!"
Phoebe stares at the ground for a few moments before jumping to her feet. "N-no way! Jason, that's genius!"
"Yeah. I don't know if it will work, but it's worth a shot. Try making yourself a new body, then let me take over mine and I'll transfer-"
"STOP!"
Before I can finish my sentence, a masculine voice shouts from behind me, making me jump out of my skin. I whirl around to see Raphael, Gabriel, and Michael standing less than twenty feet away. The expansive city park somehow seems much smaller with Gabriel's giant form towering above the nearest trees.
"Thou shalt do no such thing, foolish child," Raphael hisses. "Already, thou hath cloned thy wife's soul without comprehending the consequences. Verily, I tell thee now, that if thou go through with thy foolish plans, thou shalt irreparably harm the one thou claimeth to love."
With my mind still in a daze, I merely stare at the old man. "Huh? What do you mean, Raphael? Explain."
The Archangel of Wisdom flaps his wings. He slowly hovers nearer to me, all while maintaining a contemptuous grimace.
"Imbecilic child. Thou knoweth nothing of Soul Links. Tell me, Jason, what are souls?"
I shrug. "Um. The essence of a person? Their... core?"
"That description is not far from the truth," Raphael concedes. "However! It is far from encompassing the importance of a being's soul. Souls mustn't be considered trifles and playthings. Those who manipulate souls freely will accumulate terrible injuries, ones incurable by even the greatest healer. Look no further than Valac and Mephisto, necromancers who manipulate the dead to do their bidding. In exchange for tremendous power, they lost the vitality from their bodies."
"Alright," I reply. "What about Satan? He seemed just fine, despite being a soul manipulator like Valac. Hell, he was worse, in many ways."
Michael, instead of Raphael, replies. "Indeed. The Devil was a crafty bastard. He, too, manipulated souls to a fearsome extent. However, while he may not have lost his body, he lost his link to the strands of fate. That is why he eventually perished not ten thousand years after his emergence."
"Put another way, the Devil rapidly accumulated fatal amounts of bad luck," Gabriel explains. "Fate conspired to kill him. The Devil proved incapable of resisting the Creator's divine will, and thus, he expired."
I nod. "Fine. Manipulating souls is evil. I get it. What does that mean, though? What would making a body for Phoebe cost me?"
Raphael shakes his head. "I do not know. Each soul manipulator suffers their own agony. In my case, I ended up trapped alone inside this ring. However, in thy case, I speaketh of the evils of soul manipulation not to protect thee, but to shield thy wife."
Raphael continues. "Every time a soul separates from a vessel, it suffers irreversible trauma. Thou hath cloned thy wife's soul. Her clone has, no doubt, suffered some level of memory loss. Her mood swings are not a mere byproduct of her situation, but directly linked to the circumstances of her creation!"
Raphael stabs a finger toward me.
"Thy reckless use of soul manipulation has caused thy wife's errant soul to suffer! Thou art the cause of her pain. Further, by trading places with her, not once, but multiple times, the two of thee have injured thy souls even further!"
This time, Raphael's words hit home.
"You mean... by allowing Phoebe to take over my body, I've somehow injured both our souls?"
Raphael nods. A solemn look appears on his face.
"That is correct, young Hero. Imagine, for a moment, that someone were to take a piece of paper and draw a face on it. We might call this the creation of a soul. However, if one intended to remove the face and place it upon another piece of paper, how might they do so?"
I shrug. "Um. Maybe they'd wet the paper and place another piece against it?"
"Indeed. They might succeed in copying half of the original image, but in doing so, the copy and the original would only be half as vibrant as before! This situation is a suitable allegory for when thou dids't copy Phoebe's soul from her original body. The copy and the original body were both harmed by thy actions."
"Another method," Raphael continues, "would be to take a drawn face and tear it from the page. Thou woulds't then be capable of gluing the face to another page. And thus, thou woulds't perfectly move the face from one page to another."
I frown. "But wouldn't that damage the original page? It would still ruin the paper and it wouldn't look good at all."
"That is correct," Raphael says, nodding vigorously. "After copying Phoebe's soul, thou inadvertently attached the copy to thy Mind Realm. By detaching thy soul from thy body and allowing Phoebe to take over, she ended up tearing herself away from her anchor point, and then tore her anchor yet again when she returned to thy Mind Realm. These repeated actions have injured thy soul, as well as hers."
Raphael cocks his head.
"Tell me, Hero. Have thou suffered any mental issues over the last few years? Headaches? Indecision? Paranoia? Irrational bursts of emotion?"
After closing my eyes and thinking for a moment, I shake my head.
"No. I don't think I have."
"So thou sayeth. The effects of soul manipulation can be both subtle and dramatic. Tis' difficult to spot their effects until they have become irreparable. However, this aged one has a method!"
Raphael makes a motion with his hands. Several magical symbols appear in the air, forming a diamond within a circle. After a few moments, the sensation of a whirlpool swirls within my head, yanking me out of my Mind Realm.
I awaken moments later, fully in control of my main body. I turn my gaze inward to see Phoebe standing before Raphael, her soul having returned to my Mind Realm.
Raphael forces a grim smile. "'Tis no secret to thee that I am one of the mightiest soul manipulators in existence, young Hero. Worry not. My powers are severely limited, so long as I reside within my ring. I have safely swapped thy mind with thy wife's, but doing so again without harming either of thee would be beyond even my means. Now, look closely at Phoebe's errant soul with thy Wordsmithing."
A sense of worry seizes me as I realize what Raphael just did to me. Without my permission, the old man actually managed to manipulate not only my soul but Phoebe's as well, all while possessing a sliver of his former power.
It's dangerous, allowing Raphael inside my Mind Realm. I'll need to come up with countermeasures to protect myself from not only him, but others of his ilk.
I shift my focus onto Phoebe. "Examine."
Unsure of what to look for, I turn my attention toward my mind-wife's mana pathways, as well as her internal magic structure. As a non-Hero, she possesses a complete lack of mana, similar to any other human. However, thanks to my various Wordsmithing empowerments, she appears far more fit and full of vitality than other people.
I gaze at her with clinical dispassion, but even after five minutes, I don't see anything wrong.
"Sorry, Raphael. What am I supposed to see?"
"Look toward Phoebe's brain," Raphael replies. "Or, more specifically, the area of her soul which she visualizes as a brain."
I frown. "What do you mean?"
"Souls can take any form they wish," Raphael explains. "For example, if Phoebe wished, she could transform her soul into a giant arachnid, or a fearsome dragon. However, 'tis all but impossible for someone untrained in soul manipulation to morph their soul into anything beyond their self-image. Thy wife still remembers her physical appearance, so she materializes within thy Mind Realm as a facsimile of her physical body."
This time, it's Phoebe who responds. "Wait, are you saying I can change my appearance if I just imagine myself looking different?"
Raphael scoffs. "Nay! All beings possess an indelible image of themselves. To merely change thy appearance would require a tremendous amount of willpower and self-actualization, unlike any I've seen before. For example, if I were to imagine my soul possessing four arms instead of two, I might succeed two times out of ten, due to the image of myself I've implanted in my mind over the- what?!"
Raphael stops mid-sentence. He stares, wide-eyed, as Phoebe's hair color changes from white to crimson. Freckles appear on her face, and her height increases by half a foot.
"Wow! This isn't hard at all!" Phoebe marvels. Her skin becomes noticeably more youthful, and her eyes change from green to yellow and red, mimicking a demon's irises. "Amazing! I can feel all the changes happening in my soul every time I imagine them!"
Raphael's eyes nearly bug out of his head. "W-w-what?! Preposterous! How can an untrained mortal- gah! I wouldn't believe it if I didn't see it with my own eyes!"
Phoebe laughs, oblivious to Raphael's astonishment. Behind the old man, both of his brothers wear equally long faces.
"Impressive," Michael mutters. "The human wench is a damned natural at altering her self-image."
"Long has it been since I've seen Raphael in such a confused state," Gabriel adds. "The look on his face is more than a little amusing."
It doesn't take long before Phoebe changes her appearance to mimic Belial, then she changes into Daisy, Raphael, and even me. Each change makes her clap her hands and dance around excitedly. "Boo-yah! Haha, I'm the best! That's right; Queen Phoebe is here!"
I smirk, sending a smug look toward Raphael. "You were saying?"
Raphael tugs on his beard angrily. "No! Dammit, Jason! Look closely! Thy wife's situation is far from optimistic. Do as I said and gaze at her mental pathways."
I nod and follow Raphael's instruction. When I peer more closely at Phoebe's 'brain,' all of my smug satisfaction vanishes.
Inside my wife's head, along with the bright blips indicating her brain's activity, I notice several tiny, almost insignificant-looking 'smudges.' Resembling drops of ink spilled onto a piece of paper, each one appears far darker than the area surrounding it.
"Oh my god."
Raphael nods furiously. "Thy wife's actions are far from normal, young Wordsmith. Even her vocabulary has changed since I swapped thy souls. If she is capable of changing her appearance so easily, it can only mean she has lost her sense of self-image. This means her condition is quite dire. Use thy Wordsmithing and attempt to repair the blemishes staining her soul. If we are lucky, thou shalt return her to normal."
Phoebe continues changing her appearance. To my horror, I realize that each time she does, the blemishes on her soul increase in number, adding another spot or two.
"Phoebe. Please, stop," I say. "You can't keep changing your appearance. You're hurting yourself."
My mind-wife scoffs. "Psh! You're just jealous, hubby! I can do something you can't. Nyeh!"
Phoebe sticks her tongue out at me. Her pose makes me nauseous.
The Phoebe I know would never do such a thing. She's always been a stoic person, not someone who indulges in her emotions.
Without hesitation, I target Phoebe's soul.
"Repair. Repair. Repair."
One by one, I target each of the soul blemishes, erasing them bit by bit.
It takes me nearly fifteen minutes to repair the damage. Eventually, I finish, allowing Phoebe to slump to the grass inside my Mind Realm. She rests her face in her hands. "I... I feel like shit."
Raphael places a hand on her shoulder, comforting her with his touch. "Were thou to continue for much longer, I fear thy memories might have degraded permanently."
"Maybe," I counter, "but I did heal all of her soul blemishes. Doesn't that mean I erased all of her soul manipulation's negative symptoms?"
"Perhaps, but I would not bet my life on it," Raphael cautions. "I have done my part to avert thy crisis. Now, moving forward, thou knoweth enough to avoid placing thy loved ones in precarious situations."
With a dismissive wave of his hands, Raphael turns his back on Phoebe and starts hobbling away.
"Continue with thy plans, Wordsmith. However, do not assume thy Wordsmithing is omnipotent. It has many points of failure, like any power. Rely on it at thy own risk."
"Oh," Raphael continues, "be certain to check thy soul for blemishes, too. If thy wife possesses them, thou surely do as well."
Raphael and his brothers fade away, leaving Phoebe and me alone.
"Are you okay?" I ask.
"I don't know," Phoebe replies. "But now I understand why I was so good at impersonating Sam. I doubt I could do it again, the way I am now."
"Maybe. Maybe not," I counter. "Inspect."
I turn my gaze inward, examining my soul with Wordsmithing.
However, after more than ten minutes of searching, I find nothing wrong with myself whatsoever.
My soul remains uninjured.
Why would Phoebe suffer wounds to her soul, but not me?
...Have I, perhaps, overlooked something?
Next Part

Kar and I spend the next several hours following the main 'road' that weaves across Hell Harbor's coastline. Comparing it to streets on Earth makes it seem extremely primitive, given how its surface is made of compacted dirt and not concrete or something more durable. Well-worn ruts in the ground tell a tale of the excessive number of carriages ferrying passengers along the coastline, from the north to the south.
We keep to the forested side of the road, opposite the ocean, ducking behind cover whenever we spot someone coming. Unfortunately, due to how my Wordsmithing functions, I can't keep us invisible forever. Doing so would drain my mana by three times its usual rate, and even moreso if I have to maintain Kar and Blinker's invisibility if we separate from each other.
So, instead, I activate my T-REX and set it to camouflage mode, allowing me to blend into the background scenery without wasting my mana. Kar's green skin allows him to melt into the forest with ease, while Blinker can just hide behind a leaf. When it comes to stealth, being small is an underrated attribute.
[Turtle,] Kar says, transmitting his thoughts to me from behind a tree. [I sense a single person coming around the next bend. Their mana level is unusually weak. I believe they are human.]
I nod. [One sec.]
I deactivate my T-REX and speak a word of power. "Sense."
My senses reach out half a mile ahead, where I quickly pick out a single human female riding a horse. However, unlike the other humans who've passed us, this lady wears extravagantly designed clothes. Her youthful appearance makes her look about twenty-five years old, while her haughty expression instantly reminds me of Beelzebub.
[It's a human woman,] I say. [I'm a little surprised to say this, but I think she isn't a slave. She's dressed like a noble, so she might know something about Ose's whereabouts.]
Kar grunts. [Hurgh. Shall we tie her up and interrogate her?]
[Ooh, good idea!] Blinker chimes in. [I'll disorient her with a little finger waving, while you guys get the rope!]
[What?! No!] I protest. [Jeez. I'll just ask the lady a few questions. Hang tight.]
With my physical appearance still a perfect facsimile of Mara, I stride over to lean against a tree alongside the road. Having absorbed many of Mara's memories, I've already learned more than a few of her quirks, so I pull out a deck of fake Tarot cards and pretend to glance through them, acting as if I haven't any interest in the world around me.
Within a minute or two, the sound of hoofs clopping against the ground reaches my ears. I flick my eyes to the side to spot the young, dark-skinned woman riding toward the Hell Harbor Annex at a speed I would describe as 'leisurely.'
As the woman draws near, I continue to stare at my cards while flipping through them. Eventually, she starts to pass me, only to slow to a stop.
"Hm? Mara? What are you doing out here in the middle of nowhere?"
Immediately, I get a sinking feeling in my gut.
Shit. She knows me. Knows Mara, I mean. Phoebe?
Phoebe quickly appears at the top of my subconscious. She activates the terminal for Mara's memories and flips through them. "This young woman's name is... Lily! Lily Brown. Uhm, her father's name is Benjamin Brown, she lives at, uh... at the Slithering Spire... uhm..."
That's enough for now. Keep listening and try to give me answers to any of her questions.
I raise my head to stare at the young woman riding the horse. Her bright pink hair shines in the sunlight, giving her a cute and merry demeanor. However, the half-scowl on her face makes her attractiveness drop by several points.
"Lily. Don't mind me, I'm just passing the time," I say, while running a finger through my long, blonde hair.
"Oh, so now you call me by my first name," Lily mutters. "My father told you not to step foot within ten miles of the Spire, especially after what you did the last time we saw each other. You have a lot of nerve showing your face around here."
The sinking feeling in my stomach turns into a bottomless chasm. Goddammit. What were the odds we'd run into the one person who has beef with Mara? Shit. This is going to be a sticky situation.
"I, ah, came to apologize," I say, winging the conversation. "Some things happened that made me re-evaluate my outlook on life. I was abrasive and rude the last time I visited."
"Hmph. Understatement of the century," Lily hisses. "He was my brother, you filthy, bloodskinned bitch. Because of you, Tyrese can't have children anymore. You demons are all the same."
Lily exhales violently, flaring her nostrils in rage.
"If my daddy were here, he'd rip your bloody head off. I don't want your apology. I want you to drop dead."
Hoo, Christ, I think to myself. I really know how to pick 'em. Got the saltiest broad this side of the Mississippi.
"Yeah, you do," Phoebe says sarcastically. "Alright, so looking through Mara's memories, it seems this Tyrese kid made a crude joke about how humans are 'bigger' than the pathetic demonhoods most demons sport, and that pissed Mara off. She ended up castrating him. He screamed the whole time and went into shock, barely surviving thanks to this 'Ben Brown' guy's doctors on call. So, yeah, there's a lot of bad blood between Mara and Lily."
I hadn't noticed...
With a sigh, I don my most apologetic smile. "Look, Lily, I know I've done some terrible things, but I'd like to make it up to you. What would you say if I told you I had a method to, ahem, restore your brother's dignity? I can't undo the suffering I've caused him, but I do feel terrible. After all, a harmless joke is no reason to maim someone for the rest of their life."
A strange look appears on Lily's face. "Huh? What in the seven hells are you on about?! Since when have you ever been the type of person to regret hurting one of us 'filthy fleshbags'?! Admit it, you filthy skank! You're just afraid of my daddy! You know that if you piss him off again, he'll rip you limb from limb! Well, let me just tell you this, little miss pissy; you should be afraid! My daddy is the strongest human you'll ever face! So you'd better turn that ugly, fat ass of your around and haul it on out of here! Hmph!"
The more Lily talks, the more baffled I become.
Who the hell is her father, and how can he possibly be strong enough to instill such confidence in his daughter? Does Lily, perhaps, refer to political power? Are politics an integral part of Hell Harbor's society?
As several questions churn in my mind, Phoebe suddenly pipes up.
"Benjamin Brown! Ah, I remember, now. Jason, don't you recall Tucker's vision? His artifact used to belong to a man named Benjamin Brown, back during the Energy Wars."
That's impossible, I reply. Tucker's visions were from a hundred thousand years ago. Benjamin Brown would have surely died by now, if not during the war. Unless...
Phoebe nods. "Exactly. Marie survived all this time. She mentioned humans who lived on Hell Harbor, too. Benjamin Brown must be one of those 'elites' who obtained immortality and stayed alive long after the Energy Wars."
I see.
With a slight nod, I return my attention to Lily. Thanks to the speed of thought, conversing with my mind-wife only takes a split-second of real-time.
It's no wonder Lily isn't afraid of me. Benjamin Brown once possessed a legendary heroic artifact. He slaughtered Volgrim and demons alike. He's probably a total badass, and that's why even Demon Barons like Mara wouldn't dare to fuck with him.
Maybe I ought to pay him a visit.
After bowing my head, I nod apologetically. "Yes, uhm, you've got me there. Alright. I understand. If I can't make amends for my past actions, I'll leave you alone. Sorry for wasting your time."
I turn away from Lily and start to walk away, only for the girl to speak again, her voice much quieter than before.
"Wait. Something's not right, here. You've been acting awfully odd, 'Mara.' I've known you for a long time, and not once have you ever apologized or said you were sorry about anything. What's going on, here? Who are you?"
My heart skips a beat. Shit. Lily's onto me.
I spin on my heel while intending to reply, only for Lily to continue speaking. "Hah. I should have known. You're not Mara at all. You must be..."
She pauses for dramatic effect.
"...Belial! Oh, for devil's sake! Admit it! I've caught you red-handed this time!"
I groan inwardly. Shit. How am I going to deal with this turn of events?
"Don't worry," Phoebe says. She rapidly clicks and clacks on Mara's memory terminal. "This is actually fortunate for us. Belial and Lily are birds of a feather. It seems they hang out occasionally, though Mara's memory is quite spotty on the relevant details."
That's not good enough! I reply. We already stepped in a fat pile of shit by poorly impersonating Mara! I can't afford to screw up again by poorly apeing Samantha!
A split-second passes as Phoebe considers my words.
"Jason. I have an idea. I want you to allow me to take over your body for a bit. I know Sam much better than you. I think I can imitate her, but I need to have full control. If I try to tell you what to say, you're bound to come off sounding stiff and clunky. Impersonations are not your specialty."
I barely even have to think about Phoebe's request. Sure. You know how to use my Wordsmithing if the going gets tough, right?
"Naturally."
Alright. Here goes nothing. Do your best, sweetie.
With a mental command, I close my eyes, willing my consciousness to lower its defenses. Phoebe's soul quickly engulfs mine, wrapping me in its warmth and allowing her to take control of my body.
Having already done this once, back when my soul departed to investigate Marie and the Volgrim, she still surprises me by completing the mind-swap effortlessly.
My consciousness falls into a dark abyss, one which quickly brightens up, allowing me to step foot inside my very own Mind Realm. My soul, now detached from my body, lands amidst a field of buildings ripped straight out of the 2020's.
"You caught me!" Phoebe says to Lily, her voice lilting cutely. She acts embarrassed for a moment and covers her face, all while secretly whispering, "Disguise," under her breath.
Phoebe, now fully in control of my body and Wordsmithing, uses a word of power to transform from Mara into Belial, shedding her regal Baron appearance for a far less dressed, more striking one.
"Teehee! It's me!" Phoebe says, sticking her tongue out. Her voice perfectly mirrors Samantha's, reminding me further of how versatile my Wordsmithing can be. "I'm surprised it took you so long to figure me out! Aren't we besties?"
"Oh, Beli," Lily says, clicking her tongue. "I should have known it was you! How have you been? I haven't seen you in, what, two years?"
The young woman slides one of her legs around the horse and hops to the ground. Her leather boots clomp against the dirt as she lands, and my wife holds out a hand to steady her.
"Two years? Hmm... you know me! I don't pay much attention to the time! I always- mgm?!"
Before she can finish her sentence, Phoebe gets thrown off-balance when Lily suddenly turns around, grabs the back of her head, and presses their lips together.
I stand within my Mind Realm, eyes wide open at the sudden change in Lily's attitude. Where before, she was a haughty, reserved noblewoman, she suddenly blooms into an erotic-minded temptress.
Phoebe, even more startled than me, only manages to hold herself together by remembering her job of mimicking Belial. She presses back into the kiss and returns Lily's embrace with twice the intensity. Both of them go at it for several long seconds, making me feel insanely awkward as a passive observer.
My wife, who has taken over my body, is now pretending to be her best friend while making out with a woman neither of us knows! What the hell is going on?!
After more than ten seconds of furious tongue-punching, Lily pulls away, her cheeks beet-red. "Devils! It's been a while since you, ahem, retorted so passionately! Have we been apart for so long that you've forgotten to act coy and indifferent?"
Phoebe smacks her lips. Lily's taste lingers just long enough to turn her foggy-brained. "Coy? I, ah... well, what can I say! Haha... I like to do my own thing!"
"No kidding," Lily sighs. She fans herself for a moment before clearing her throat. "Ahm, so, Beli, dear! Why are you out here, all by your lonesome? Don't tell me you were waiting for me to come waltzing by! Pulling such a horrid joke on me is in terrible taste!"
Phoebe doesn't reply for a second or two. Thanks to our mind-link, I notice her use of telepathy increases substantially as she excavates Lily's surface level-thoughts.
"Well, I have my reasons. It's been a while since I returned to Hell Harbor, and you just happened to come trotting down that road. What's a girl to do, if not improvise?"
"Tsk, you've always been an enigma," Lily says, clicking her tongue. "Daddy says you've been on Tarus II, helping out a bunch of humans. Is that what happened, or is his intelligence network wrong again?"
To my surprise, Phoebe doesn't give a direct answer.
"Hmm. What do you think?"
"I think that's exactly the kind of thing you'd do!" Lily replies. She jumps toward Phoebe and wraps her arms around Phoebe's succubus form. "You're always way too kind and compassionate! If it weren't for your help, Tyrese would never have made a full recovery!"
"Oh, I didn't do all that much," Phoebe says, feigning ignorance. "You're giving me way too much credit, Lily, dear."
"Nuh-uh! We only managed to repair half the damage that filthy, sodding Baron bitch did to my brother! It was you who made Tyrese whole again! He still can't have any kids, but daddy said we owed you a great debt! And you know me... I'm not one to let debts gather interest... hehe!"
Phoebe and Lily continue bantering. What surprises me is how, despite Phoebe knowing very little about Lily and Belial's relationship, she manages to improvise time after time, all by using several advanced psychological tricks invented well after the Arthurian era.
Cold reading, a technique often used by so-called 'psychics' from my era, allowed them to speak in broad, generalized terms to gather information about their subjects. Phoebe uses it to determine just how close Belial and Lily's relationship is, while inferring more in-depth information by casually acknowledging and denying statements in a playful manner. Lily, oblivious to Phoebe's intentions, keeps letting more and more details slip, which in turn fuels my wife's knowledge.
The longer the conversation continues, the more adept Phoebe becomes at manipulating Lily. Soon, the young girl becomes putty in her hands.
"Oh, I missed you so much," Phoebe says, grinning from ear to ear. "I've been trapped on Tarus II with only a few friends to keep me company, but none of them are... like you. You know what I mean."
"Indeed, I do," Lily says, blushing. She gazes into Phoebe's eyes as she speaks, both of them sharing more than a hint of intimacy.
However, Lily pulls away and ruffles Phoebe's hair.
"Oh, Beli. Things have changed since we last spoke. I'm sorry that we haven't talked much, but... you remember Beelzebub, don't you?"
"Beelzebub? Of course. What about him?"
"Well, he's the new master of the Slithering Spire. He's become more and more heavy-handed over the years. He won't allow any of us humans to fraternize with Hell Harbor's residents, especially other pureblooded demons. It's tearing me up inside! I haven't spent any time with Bianca in several years- you remember Bianca, right?"
Phoebe nods sagely. Her eyes reveal wisdom beyond her years as she acts like a long-lost friend of whoever 'Bianca' might be. "Naturally. What happened between you two? Did Beelzebub hurt her?"
"No, no! It's just... since Bianca's a succubus, Beelzebub won't allow us to spend any time together! Remember that time when the three of us visited the hot spring? You, me, and Bianca? Well, as long as Beelzebub is the master of the Slithering Spire, it'll never happen again! The fucking rat-bastard always gets in my way! He won't let me do as I please, and I don't dare stand up to him! Daddy doesn't care, either! He's always going on about that damned Operation Stormbringer as if it's more important than his daughter's happiness!"
"Operation Stormbringer?" Phoebe asks. "Forgive me, but I don't recall hearing about that one."
Lily waves her hands nonchalantly. "Oh, some big invasion plan. I don't pay attention to the details, and neither should you. Daddy and the top demon generals are always blustering and blowing their horns about this and that! It's hardly worth our attention! Especially when it involves that damned Ose."
"Ose?" Phoebe asks. "Funny you should mention her. I came to Hell Harbor because I needed to see her."
Lily's eyes widen. "What? You?! Beli, darling! I thought you hated that skank! Any time Ose came up in conversation, you always started ranting and raving!"
Phoebe crosses her arms. She assumes a pouty stance and turns a few degrees away from Lily. "I do hate her! Ose and I have a long, sordid history of backstabbings and betrayal. I'd rather not go into it, because it's beside the point. I'm here on official business, Lily, dear. Humanity's leader sent me to discuss peace talks with Ose. If I can convince her to sign a treaty... well, you and I might get to see each other once in a while. Not only that, but even as the owner of the estate, Beelzebub won't have any legs to stand on. You, me, and Bianca could do as we pleased."
Lily's expression turns curious. "Oh? I didn't peg you as the ambassador type! You must really get along with those humans to treat them so nicely."
"As well as I get along with you," Phoebe says, flashing a radiant smile. "But, um, there's a problem, Lily. I'm a little embarrassed to say it, but it's been bugging me, and I don't know who to ask for help."
Lily practically leaps for joy. She rushes toward Phoebe and grabs her hands. "You can ask me for anything, Beli! I'll always help you!"
Phoebe blushes. She averts her eyes, and for once, I realize that her expression isn't deceitful. My wife is actually starting to develop feelings for this young woman.
"Umm, well, you see... there was this Hydra that appeared on Tarus II. I helped fight it, but due to some terrible accidents that happened during the battle, I hit my head and got knocked out. When I woke up, I had lost some of my memories. How do I put this..."
Phoebe hesitates for a moment, building anticipation in Lily's eyes. "Yes? What's the matter?"
"Well..." Phoebe continues, "...I forgot where Ose's estate was! I'm totally lost! I've been searching everywhere, but I'm too embarrassed to ask for help. Oh, devils, you probably think I'm an idiot!"
"An idiot? No, no, don't be silly!" Lily laughs. "And here I thought some jerk had broken your heart. If you don't remember where Ose's estate is, that's easy. I can show you the way, Beli."
Lily presses her head against Phoebe's chest and sighs, taking a moment to inhale her scent. "Ahh... I missed you so much. I'm glad to help you. Never act as if I'll hurt you, okay? We're closer than sisters. Closer than lovers, even."
Phoebe blushes. "Yes. Yes, we are."
...
After a few more minutes, Phoebe bashfully waves goodbye. Lily mounts her horse and waves back at us. "Bye-bye, Beli! Remember, it sits atop the third mountain plateau to the east, the one overlooking Bael and Mephisto's estates! After you visit that skank, please drop by later! I'll have daddy's doctors examine your head. I don't want you to suffer any permanent brain injuries, okay?"
"Right, right," Phoebe says, blowing Lily a kiss. "I'll see you later, lover!"
Both women give their goodbyes, then depart, traveling in opposite directions. Phoebe enters the forest to the east, only to hide behind a tree once Lily disappears from our sight.
"Hoo. That was stressful," Phoebe says. "I didn't anticipate Lily being so... excitable."
"You did great," I say, taking a seat on a bench. "Way better than I could have managed. If Lily had kissed me and done the tongue thing, I'd probably have broken character right then and there. You acted the part perfectly."
Phoebe's face turns beet-red. She slumps to the ground and hides her face in her hands. "Oh, god! Jason, don't bring that up! I'm married! I shouldn't be kissing other people! E-especially not women! It's weird!"
"I don't see anything wrong with it," I reply. "It's not like you planned the kiss, or anything. If it had bothered me, I would have stopped you. Besides, in the era I come from, women kissing other women wasn't weird, nor men kissing men. Maybe it was a little bit rare, but I saw plenty of it growing up."
Phoebe rubs her face furiously. "Argh! That might be true for you, Jason, but not for me! I grew up in... in a proper era! Where men courted women, and both sexes knew their roles! This modern era always makes me feel so weird! So... so dirty."
I keep my voice neutral. "How so?"
Phoebe hesitates. She doesn't reply for several seconds but eventually relents.
"Well. How do I put this? Um. Ever since you and I got married- no, even before then... Samantha has always acted much more touchy-feely than I liked. At first, I didn't want to be rude, but then after our marriage, I started feeling guilty about my passive rejections. Whenever she got too close, I would push her away. I never directly rejected her, and that, in turn, made me feel worse."
My mind-wife sighs. "Not only that, but since I never told you about all the moves she made on me in private, I always felt like I was lying to you, too. Sammy and I never did anything, but I always felt, and still feel, like a complete ass. I should set boundaries, but I don't know how. I don't even know if I should."
She falls silent, waiting for my reply.
I nod. "Yeah. I know all of that. I've always known. The day you and I got married, Samantha came over to me and confessed she was madly in love with you. It caught me off-guard, but I took it in stride. You and Sam have a lot in common, after all. Both of you lost the first men you ever loved. Satan, for her, and Sir Percival, for you. I don't see myself as a fairy tale hero of legend, rescuing a virgin princess. I grew up in a society where marriage was cheap, divorces were common, and love had lost most of its substance."
"I don't believe in true love," I continue. "At least... I didn't. Not until I met you. I knew a lot of people growing up. Good people, the sorts who went to Church every Sunday, and said their prayers before their three meals. I always thought the people who held onto their wives and husbands the tightest had most unhappy marriages. They always broke up and ended their love with explosions of rage and torn-apart families."
"Jason..."
Phoebe starts to interrupt me, but I continue. "There's more. I knew a lot of people who thought of their spouses as possessions. They assumed that marriage entitled them to 100% of their wives or husband's affection. To me, even if that were true in the eyes of the law and God himself, it felt immoral. You have a big heart, Phoebe. There's more than enough room for you to love Samantha and me equally, especially after all she's done for us. For you. She saved your life when I couldn't. If it weren't for Sam, Beelzebub would have killed you, Neil, and all the other people in the Core. She's a good friend. I'd never want to hurt either of you."
After I finish speaking, Phoebe falls silent. Tears well up in her eyes, and she quickly tries to wipe them away. "Jason... I never... I never knew you felt that way."
"Dammit, Phoebe. Don't cry. You're gonna make me cry, too..."
"Sniff..."
Phoebe paws at her eyes, and hiccups. "Oh, god. I feel like such an idiot. Why didn't I just tell you sooner? I always thought you'd be jealous, or that you'd pull away from me. I love you, Jason. You're the only man I have eyes for, but... sometimes, when I speak to Samantha, I just... I have this urge to close the gap between us, yet I never do. It tears me up inside."
"I feel terrible, too," I say. "I never realized you and Sam had such tension between each other. I always assumed when you ended up at the pit stop; you two were making a quick pit stop in each other's pit stops."
Phoebe sniffles. "...What?"
"You know... when you're racing. Sam's your mechanic, remember? That's why I mentioned pit stops...?"
"Jason. Why do you always have to make such terrible jokes at the silliest times?"
"Dunno. It's a curse."
Phoebe laughs. "Haha... ugh. My face hurts. I look like crap. Jeez, the worst part is, I'm not even the real Phoebe. I'm just her mind-clone. My original body doesn't even know I've told you all this."
I shake my head. "No. You are the 'real' Phoebe, equal to your original body. As far as I'm concerned, I have two loving wives. You might as well be her spiritual twin or something. Don't get so down on yourself."
Phoebe doesn't cheer up. She stares at the ground listlessly. "You can say that all you want, Jason. It doesn't change anything. I'm still just an errant soul living inside your Mind Realm. I don't have a physical body. I can use yours when you're not using it, but it's not mine. I'm only borrowing it."
The moment Phoebe finishes speaking, a strange, euphoric idea pops into my head. Like a lightbulb going off, I jump out of my seat and gaze forward with brightness in my eyes. "Ah! That's it! Phoebe, you're a genius!"
Phoebe pulls her head out of her hands. "...I am?"
"Yes. Think about it. You don't have a physical body. You can't interact with me, currently. However, that doesn't have to be the case. I'm a Wordsmith! I can create a new body for you and allow you to enter it whenever you want!"
Phoebe stares at the ground for a few moments before jumping to her feet. "N-no way! Jason, that's genius!"
"Yeah. I don't know if it will work, but it's worth a shot. Try making yourself a new body, then let me take over mine and I'll transfer-"
"STOP!"
Before I can finish my sentence, a masculine voice shouts from behind me, making me jump out of my skin. I whirl around to see Raphael, Gabriel, and Michael standing less than twenty feet away. The expansive city park somehow seems much smaller with Gabriel's giant form towering above the nearest trees.
"Thou shalt do no such thing, foolish child," Raphael hisses. "Already, thou hath cloned thy wife's soul without comprehending the consequences. Verily, I tell thee now, that if thou go through with thy foolish plans, thou shalt irreparably harm the one thou claimeth to love."
With my mind still in a daze, I merely stare at the old man. "Huh? What do you mean, Raphael? Explain."
The Archangel of Wisdom flaps his wings. He slowly hovers nearer to me, all while maintaining a contemptuous grimace.
"Imbecilic child. Thou knoweth nothing of Soul Links. Tell me, Jason, what are souls?"
I shrug. "Um. The essence of a person? Their... core?"
"That description is not far from the truth," Raphael concedes. "However! It is far from encompassing the importance of a being's soul. Souls mustn't be considered trifles and playthings. Those who manipulate souls freely will accumulate terrible injuries, ones incurable by even the greatest healer. Look no further than Valac and Mephisto, necromancers who manipulate the dead to do their bidding. In exchange for tremendous power, they lost the vitality from their bodies."
"Alright," I reply. "What about Satan? He seemed just fine, despite being a soul manipulator like Valac. Hell, he was worse, in many ways."
Michael, instead of Raphael, replies. "Indeed. The Devil was a crafty bastard. He, too, manipulated souls to a fearsome extent. However, while he may not have lost his body, he lost his link to the strands of fate. That is why he eventually perished not ten thousand years after his emergence."
"Put another way, the Devil rapidly accumulated fatal amounts of bad luck," Gabriel explains. "Fate conspired to kill him. The Devil proved incapable of resisting the Creator's divine will, and thus, he expired."
I nod. "Fine. Manipulating souls is evil. I get it. What does that mean, though? What would making a body for Phoebe cost me?"
Raphael shakes his head. "I do not know. Each soul manipulator suffers their own agony. In my case, I ended up trapped alone inside this ring. However, in thy case, I speaketh of the evils of soul manipulation not to protect thee, but to shield thy wife."
Raphael continues. "Every time a soul separates from a vessel, it suffers irreversible trauma. Thou hath cloned thy wife's soul. Her clone has, no doubt, suffered some level of memory loss. Her mood swings are not a mere byproduct of her situation, but directly linked to the circumstances of her creation!"
Raphael stabs a finger toward me.
"Thy reckless use of soul manipulation has caused thy wife's errant soul to suffer! Thou art the cause of her pain. Further, by trading places with her, not once, but multiple times, the two of thee have injured thy souls even further!"
This time, Raphael's words hit home.
"You mean... by allowing Phoebe to take over my body, I've somehow injured both our souls?"
Raphael nods. A solemn look appears on his face.
"That is correct, young Hero. Imagine, for a moment, that someone were to take a piece of paper and draw a face on it. We might call this the creation of a soul. However, if one intended to remove the face and place it upon another piece of paper, how might they do so?"
I shrug. "Um. Maybe they'd wet the paper and place another piece against it?"
"Indeed. They might succeed in copying half of the original image, but in doing so, the copy and the original would only be half as vibrant as before! This situation is a suitable allegory for when thou dids't copy Phoebe's soul from her original body. The copy and the original body were both harmed by thy actions."
"Another method," Raphael continues, "would be to take a drawn face and tear it from the page. Thou woulds't then be capable of gluing the face to another page. And thus, thou woulds't perfectly move the face from one page to another."
I frown. "But wouldn't that damage the original page? It would still ruin the paper and it wouldn't look good at all."
"That is correct," Raphael says, nodding vigorously. "After copying Phoebe's soul, thou inadvertently attached the copy to thy Mind Realm. By detaching thy soul from thy body and allowing Phoebe to take over, she ended up tearing herself away from her anchor point, and then tore her anchor yet again when she returned to thy Mind Realm. These repeated actions have injured thy soul, as well as hers."
Raphael cocks his head.
"Tell me, Hero. Have thou suffered any mental issues over the last few years? Headaches? Indecision? Paranoia? Irrational bursts of emotion?"
After closing my eyes and thinking for a moment, I shake my head.
"No. I don't think I have."
"So thou sayeth. The effects of soul manipulation can be both subtle and dramatic. Tis' difficult to spot their effects until they have become irreparable. However, this aged one has a method!"
Raphael makes a motion with his hands. Several magical symbols appear in the air, forming a diamond within a circle. After a few moments, the sensation of a whirlpool swirls within my head, yanking me out of my Mind Realm.
I awaken moments later, fully in control of my main body. I turn my gaze inward to see Phoebe standing before Raphael, her soul having returned to my Mind Realm.
Raphael forces a grim smile. "'Tis no secret to thee that I am one of the mightiest soul manipulators in existence, young Hero. Worry not. My powers are severely limited, so long as I reside within my ring. I have safely swapped thy mind with thy wife's, but doing so again without harming either of thee would be beyond even my means. Now, look closely at Phoebe's errant soul with thy Wordsmithing."
A sense of worry seizes me as I realize what Raphael just did to me. Without my permission, the old man actually managed to manipulate not only my soul but Phoebe's as well, all while possessing a sliver of his former power.
It's dangerous, allowing Raphael inside my Mind Realm. I'll need to come up with countermeasures to protect myself from not only him, but others of his ilk.
I shift my focus onto Phoebe. "Examine."
Unsure of what to look for, I turn my attention toward my mind-wife's mana pathways, as well as her internal magic structure. As a non-Hero, she possesses a complete lack of mana, similar to any other human. However, thanks to my various Wordsmithing empowerments, she appears far more fit and full of vitality than other people.
I gaze at her with clinical dispassion, but even after five minutes, I don't see anything wrong.
"Sorry, Raphael. What am I supposed to see?"
"Look toward Phoebe's brain," Raphael replies. "Or, more specifically, the area of her soul which she visualizes as a brain."
I frown. "What do you mean?"
"Souls can take any form they wish," Raphael explains. "For example, if Phoebe wished, she could transform her soul into a giant arachnid, or a fearsome dragon. However, 'tis all but impossible for someone untrained in soul manipulation to morph their soul into anything beyond their self-image. Thy wife still remembers her physical appearance, so she materializes within thy Mind Realm as a facsimile of her physical body."
This time, it's Phoebe who responds. "Wait, are you saying I can change my appearance if I just imagine myself looking different?"
Raphael scoffs. "Nay! All beings possess an indelible image of themselves. To merely change thy appearance would require a tremendous amount of willpower and self-actualization, unlike any I've seen before. For example, if I were to imagine my soul possessing four arms instead of two, I might succeed two times out of ten, due to the image of myself I've implanted in my mind over the- what?!"
Raphael stops mid-sentence. He stares, wide-eyed, as Phoebe's hair color changes from white to crimson. Freckles appear on her face, and her height increases by half a foot.
"Wow! This isn't hard at all!" Phoebe marvels. Her skin becomes noticeably more youthful, and her eyes change from green to yellow and red, mimicking a demon's irises. "Amazing! I can feel all the changes happening in my soul every time I imagine them!"
Raphael's eyes nearly bug out of his head. "W-w-what?! Preposterous! How can an untrained mortal- gah! I wouldn't believe it if I didn't see it with my own eyes!"
Phoebe laughs, oblivious to Raphael's astonishment. Behind the old man, both of his brothers wear equally long faces.
"Impressive," Michael mutters. "The human wench is a damned natural at altering her self-image."
"Long has it been since I've seen Raphael in such a confused state," Gabriel adds. "The look on his face is more than a little amusing."
It doesn't take long before Phoebe changes her appearance to mimic Belial, then she changes into Daisy, Raphael, and even me. Each change makes her clap her hands and dance around excitedly. "Boo-yah! Haha, I'm the best! That's right; Queen Phoebe is here!"
I smirk, sending a smug look toward Raphael. "You were saying?"
Raphael tugs on his beard angrily. "No! Dammit, Jason! Look closely! Thy wife's situation is far from optimistic. Do as I said and gaze at her mental pathways."
I nod and follow Raphael's instruction. When I peer more closely at Phoebe's 'brain,' all of my smug satisfaction vanishes.
Inside my wife's head, along with the bright blips indicating her brain's activity, I notice several tiny, almost insignificant-looking 'smudges.' Resembling drops of ink spilled onto a piece of paper, each one appears far darker than the area surrounding it.
"Oh my god."
Raphael nods furiously. "Thy wife's actions are far from normal, young Wordsmith. Even her vocabulary has changed since I swapped thy souls. If she is capable of changing her appearance so easily, it can only mean she has lost her sense of self-image. This means her condition is quite dire. Use thy Wordsmithing and attempt to repair the blemishes staining her soul. If we are lucky, thou shalt return her to normal."
Phoebe continues changing her appearance. To my horror, I realize that each time she does, the blemishes on her soul increase in number, adding another spot or two.
"Phoebe. Please, stop," I say. "You can't keep changing your appearance. You're hurting yourself."
My mind-wife scoffs. "Psh! You're just jealous, hubby! I can do something you can't. Nyeh!"
Phoebe sticks her tongue out at me. Her pose makes me nauseous.
The Phoebe I know would never do such a thing. She's always been a stoic person, not someone who indulges in her emotions.
Without hesitation, I target Phoebe's soul.
"Repair. Repair. Repair."
One by one, I target each of the soul blemishes, erasing them bit by bit.
It takes me nearly fifteen minutes to repair the damage. Eventually, I finish, allowing Phoebe to slump to the grass inside my Mind Realm. She rests her face in her hands. "I... I feel like shit."
Raphael places a hand on her shoulder, comforting her with his touch. "Were thou to continue for much longer, I fear thy memories might have degraded permanently."
"Maybe," I counter, "but I did heal all of her soul blemishes. Doesn't that mean I erased all of her soul manipulation's negative symptoms?"
"Perhaps, but I would not bet my life on it," Raphael cautions. "I have done my part to avert thy crisis. Now, moving forward, thou knoweth enough to avoid placing thy loved ones in precarious situations."
With a dismissive wave of his hands, Raphael turns his back on Phoebe and starts hobbling away.
"Continue with thy plans, Wordsmith. However, do not assume thy Wordsmithing is omnipotent. It has many points of failure, like any power. Rely on it at thy own risk."
"Oh," Raphael continues, "be certain to check thy soul for blemishes, too. If thy wife possesses them, thou surely do as well."
Raphael and his brothers fade away, leaving Phoebe and me alone.
"Are you okay?" I ask.
"I don't know," Phoebe replies. "But now I understand why I was so good at impersonating Sam. I doubt I could do it again, the way I am now."
"Maybe. Maybe not," I counter. "Inspect."
I turn my gaze inward, examining my soul with Wordsmithing.
However, after more than ten minutes of searching, I find nothing wrong with myself whatsoever.
My soul remains uninjured.
Why would Phoebe suffer wounds to her soul, but not me?
...Have I, perhaps, overlooked something?
.......................................
FOR RETURNING READERS FROM CLASSIC: Please use spoiler tags when commenting on anything that might ruin the story for new readers, especially if that information is based on your knowledge of Classic!
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>!This is what a spoiler looks like! Click it to reveal the text!!< 

So far, we have had an impromptu camping trip interrupted, our home has been invaded and our sleep disrupted, a friend at work has died, and our Fourth of July was ruined. I’m telling you I am about at my wit's end here.
​
After the 4th of July party, everyone at work was kind of skittish around me for a while. I can’t blame them of course even with the lie that Agent Oliver’s team convinced them of, which was scary enough, I can’t imagine what would have happened if they had kept the knowledge of what really took place that day?
​
After a few weeks, the atmosphere at work returned to normal. After all, no one could blame me for what happened, as they understood it a military project had crashed in our woods and caused all of us to hallucinate the same thing vividly. I still can’t believe the agency was able to convince them of this, I guess the mind will accept anything to not have to deal with the paranormal.
​
It has been a few weeks now and something has been nagging at me since the encounter at my old office building. What was that ship they had in the subbasement and how was it able to react to my thoughts? Were the beings who built that ship the ones who gave us the powers we now possess?
​
I also really wanted to know if it still existed or it did blow itself to kingdom come. As best as I could tell, they evacuated the building that same day and no one from our team or any of the other teams had been back. All our projects seem to have made it to the new building even our personal items pictures and other items, but all our computers and tools were brand new. It was like none of them survived while our projects, data, and nick-knacks did.
​
One afternoon I decided to visit the old building to see if anything survived, and what happened after we were teleported away. I parked my truck in an alley near the complex that was our offices and walked to the back parking lot. Once I got there, I saw far less destruction than I had imagined. To be honest, except for the west side of the building, which was a pile of bricks and debris, our offices looked like they always had.
​
The east maintenance door was hidden behind some of our larger HVAC units so I chose that to be my entrance as it would afford me a barrier from any prying eyes. I climbed the fence surrounding the back parking lot and proceeded to the maintenance door.
​
Once inside I took the emergency stairs to our floor to see if anything was still there. I walked into our old area and saw all our computers and tools still in place and powered up, but all the of the screens had strange symbols floating across them like some demented screensaver was being shared between them.“Bet IT would be pissed to find viruses on our machines!” I joke out loud.
​
A hum was coming from our fabrication room, so I walked over to the door and slowly opened it. Our fabrication system was some of the most cutting-edge metal 3d printing and CNC systems in the world. As I slowly entered to make sure I was alone in the room, I noticed the large format 3d metal printer was printing something. Considering no one was supposed to be here, this was beyond odd to me. I walked over to it and watched what it is creating.
​
After a few minutes a panel appeared that was like the one that covered the treads of the ship, I looked closer at it and saw strange symbols and marking covering the almost completed panel. I hear the door to the rear of the room open, and I scramble out the other way, barely making it out before someone I have never seen before walks into the fabrication room.
​
I peek the window that is built into the office side of the fabrication room and watch this unknown person pick up the metal panel and carry it back out the door he had come into previously. I quietly reenter the room and hurry over to the other door. I push it slowly open and look first one way down the hall than the other way, and there is the guy walking toward the elevator leading to the sub-basements. As he walks into the open elevator, I run and unlock the stairs which run parallel to the elevators.
​
I run down several flights of stairs to the sub-basement hangar guessing rightly that was where the person was taking the panel. I make it just before the elevator opens and duck into a nearby doorway that is unlit. Hiding in the shadows, I watched the gentleman carry the panel down the hall toward the same sub-basement hangar that housed the ship. The hall was dark like it was before, but my head wasn’t buzzing yet, so I felt somewhat safe in continuing to follow the stranger.
​
Staying back enough to be able to keep him in sight but also to have time to hide in doorways as he headed to the hangar, I followed him into the sub-basement. As I slide around the doorway trying to be careful not to let him see me, I stop dead. There is the ship looking just like before, except for some of the front is damaged like it had been in an explosion. The stranger puts the panel where a piece had been blown off the front landing strut.
​
I shake myself out of the wonder of seeing the ship still intact, and while the person is busy with trying to fit and attach the new panel, I survey the room. The floor is scorched like the concrete had been subjected to intense heat. Around the room, all the equipment and metal pieces like the roof girders were melted and sagging. At the back of the room, the material mover elevator was simply no longer there.
​
When Bruce and I came here before there had been wood crates and other assorted boxes scattered about the room, but now it was empty of any material not made of steel or concrete. The smell was of smoke and ash, and I was barely able to keep from coughing. With nowhere to hide in the hangar, I opted to stick to the doorway and watch what the stranger was doing to the ship.
​
Once he had the panel in place there was a vibration that I could feel in the floor and walls, he turns to me and I get a better look at the interloper into our office building. He looks to be in his mid-thirties African or African American descent, I still am not getting any of my alarms from him which might be why I wasn’t being as careful as I should have been. Once he was fully facing my direction, I realize he has seen me. With him fully facing me I realize that his face has a blank look like a college kid after an all-nighter.
​
Still looking straight at me, he speaks in a voice that sounds like something from a demon possession movie. “Hello Mister S. we finally meet, we hope you are well? We were worried when We teleported you and your mate away that we had not read the location from your mind correctly. Reading a being’s mind when they are under stress is always a difficult proposition, but we judge by your presence here it must have worked?"
​
“Who or what are you?” I say as I walk into the room no longer needing to hide. “And yes, we arrived at our home unconscious but safe.”
​
“We are the ship before you, and the mind of the man below it. We took over this one’s mind so that repairs could be done to the body of us, and we could escape from here.” The man turned back to the strut and continued his work.
​
I walk toward the ship. “And why does it look like you have been in an explosion?”
​
“When you were teleported away, the one you called Bruce became enraged and the warriors of the light the ones you call Sasquatches started attacking my outer shell! I was taking damage and feared that I would be compromised in function, so I defended myself with weapons I haven’t used in a millennium. I was a bit too energetic with my defense and destroyed everything here in this room and caused some more damage to myself from the explosions.”
​
“So, you just take people over when you see fit like the aliens that are hounding me?” My words are harsh even to my ears.
​
“We do not enjoy taking over this person’s mind, but it was a necessity and it prevented the others from coming to look for us again.” The stranger keeps working like some spaceship mechanic while talking to me but never actually looking at me.
​
“What do you mean by the others? The aliens that have attacked my wife and I repeatedly?”
​
“They are but one aspect of the others, the ones who call themselves the Lords of Light. Such hubris they have, to speak of the light when they cloak themselves in darkness.” The ship hums like it is starting up. “The beings who created us have fought them for millennia. The others destroyed our master’s home, but they did not destroy their will to survive.”
​
“You said you also kept them from coming back to find you?” I walk up to the strut the person is working on and put my hand on it. I feel something like channels opening in my mind and the words that the ship had been speaking through the possessed man now flowed directly into my brain.
​
“Ah thank you that is much easier. Yes, the man who I am in possession of was one of their drones and by taking him over I prevented him from reporting to them that I was still in one piece. But they will be here soon anyhow now that they no longer have a connection to him. I sense you have questions beyond this?”
​
“Did you do this to us? Make us have abilities?” I find talking to this entity helps the headache ease up until it almost isn’t even a headache anymore.
​
“NO!” There is a hint of sadness from the channel open between us. “I did not have anything to do with your current situation. I could never put a person in the situation that you now find yourselves in! But I do suspect my creators may have had a hand in your change.”
​
“Can you change any of the things done to us? Like, take the headache away?”
​
“Again, I am sorry, but I am afraid that is beyond my function level, the powers you are now using seem to be something genetic.”
​
Helixes swirl in my mind as the ship tries to show me how we have been changed but genetics aren’t anything I have ever really cared about so it was all just images and I couldn’t figure any of them out.
​
“Genetics isn’t my thing, so how about you explain it to me in words that I can understand?”
​
The images disappear and I feel the ship hum for a second. “Your DNA has been elevated to a state your race probably would not have achieved in five hundred years. This has enabled your mind and body to achieve levels of abilities that humans have never seen before.”
​
“So, they made us not human?” I sit on the edge of the caterpillar tread housing while still holding the strut, my world starting to spin.
​
“No, do not despair!” I realize the ship can read my emotions as well as my mind! “You are still a human, but a human this world would not have seen for another five centuries at least.” I feel the vibrations of the ship grow stronger, and the possessed gentleman starts walking out of the hanger.
​
“What is wrong? Has the guy over there finished?” I stand again and remove my hand as I do the ship talks through the man again.
​
“We are able to leave now. Enough damage has been repaired to enable me to safely proceed with departure. We doubt we will meet again Scott, We have enjoyed talking to you." I can feel the ship increase the humming vibrations that I felt earlier. "We haven’t had a being to communicate with in way too long. We ask that you take care of yourselves! Your world may well depend on you to stop the others. Please leave this area now, my departure is going to destroy what is left of this part of the building. You have 5 minutes to leave.”
​
Hearing this I hurry to the elevator and notice the other person had already gone up to street level and was probably hurriedly exiting the building. I ponder as I wait for the elevator what the ship said about his impromptu handyman, he had been a drone of the aliens, but the ship had taken him over easily, at least it seemed that way so why didn’t he do that to Bruce? Maybe it was that the aliens had the Sasquatches in there to act as amplifiers of their control?
​
I still had so many questions to be answered, but the ship seemed eager to leave its confinement. I get in the elevator which along with the rest of the building has started to hum like the ship was doing. The elevator finally reaches the street level exits and I disembark right into the arms of one of the alien’s pets! He grabs me and tosses me down the hall like a rag doll and I realize two things at once, the landing is going to hurt, and I didn’t get a warning like has been normal when they are around.
​
I hit hard on the concrete floor and nearly pass out when my head makes like a basketball on the floor while simultaneously sliding like I am trying to steal home. As I slide to a stop the hall has duplicated and dimmed as my consciousness threatens to leave me. I manage to shake myself back to somewhat of a coherent state, and my headache returns to migraine levels along with the buzzing sound in my head like is normal with an encounter with these assholes.
​
At the time I wasn’t sure if it was my head’s impression of an NBA player’s favorite toy, or the aliens being here was causing the migraine and buzzing to return. I did know I needed to get out of the building, but I was on the wrong side of the hall thanks to big and ugly, who was now standing in my way of exiting before the ship brought the building down on us.
​
My ragdoll impression was making it hard to achieve a level of concentration that would allow me to fight back against this monster. In the open, like we have been in other encounters with these monsters the smell, size and sheer heart stopping evilness of these things were easy to overlook especially when you have my abilities. But here in the hall of an office building the smell alone was enough to make you want to surrender just so you could stop the torture of your nose after it murdered you.
​
I was panicking, sliding and scurrying back down the hallway to keep the bastard from getting a hand on me again. Its relentless advance had me terrified and for a few moments, all I could think of was escape. Finally, my back hits the wall and it jars some sense back into my addled mind!
​
I realize I must get up and I must kill this thing so I can get out before the ship destroys the building. I know that the building itself falling in might kill the Sasquatch and would definitely kill me, but big and nasty took up the whole hall and there was no way to get by it.
​
“Alright UGLY let’s dance!” I scream in defiance and unleash the steel shot that I always carry with me for just such encounters as this. It impacts the head of the creature and drives him back a few feet just as he takes a swing at me. I am disappointed because I realize they have reinforced the head again so I will have to exert more force to destroy this thing with my steel shot.
​
I reach into my pocket for more and realize the bag is gone! Looking around quickly, I see it on the other side of the creature just as he lunges for me again. I stop its forward momentum with a psychic push, and he lands right on top of the bag of shot, damn my luck.
​
As the smelly bastard gets up slowly and yet way too fast for something with its bulk, the building quakes and all the lights in the building go out with emergency lights coming on instantly but not every emergency light powers up. I prepare to grab the shot, but I don’t see it once the beast is standing again. Great hide-and-seek steel shot just what I don’t need right now.
​
I see a pipe in an exposed part of the wall, and I reach out mentally and rip it out of the wall. I batter the beast with the pipe using it like a baseball bat. The Sasquatch takes the hits easily, but I can at least keep it moving back down the hall. Suddenly the monster grabs the pipe, I try to pull the pipe out of its hand but that just ends up pulling the creature toward me. It lumbers toward me and I am out of options!
​
I can’t keep pushing it back repeatedly, this will eventually wear me out and my powers will fail. Just as I am about to push the creature down the hall again to try to gain some time, I see two things at once! The bag of shot against the elevator door and a way to stop the creature from using the pipe on me. I bend the pipe in its hand and jam it into the elevator door this turns the beast into the elevator doors and stumbles the creature finally and causes it to let loose of the pipe.
​
I pull the steel shot and the pipe to me and I jam the pipe into the monster’s back and out its front and through the elevator pining it to the steel doors and then I push the shot as hard as I mentally can straight through the head of the thing and the head explodes and catches on fire. I pull the pipe back out and with my last dregs of mental strength, I open the doors and push it through the elevator doors and down the shaft.
​
“Take that you alien scum!” The building quakes again and I nearly join it down the shaft!
​
Realizing my time was almost up I start running to the maintenance tunnels on the way I see the body of the possessed man, but he now has no head, it was a horrible sight! There were brain and bone all over the wall and blood had slicked the floor.
​
I go over and bend down to rummage his body hoping to find his wallet and there it is in his back pocket. I am glad I didn’t have to mess with the body too much! As I get up the black form of the alien appears out of the shadows of the dimly lit corridor to stand in front of me.
​
“I knew this wouldn’t be an easy getaway!” I prepare to run but slip in the blood and drop the wallet again.
​
“Human I have not met one like you in a very long time. There was a race many centuries ago who possessed abilities like yours, but they were not as powerful as you, and we eventually destroyed them. I would not want that to happen to you, you have been a worthy opponent. Join us as an elite and you and your mate will not suffer the fate of people like the dead thing at your feet.”
​
I have little power left; my brain is on fire and I doubt I will be able to kill this one, but I have never been one to surrender to anything.
​
“Go to hell you slimy gray son of a bitch! I am not going to betray my planet for some possible alien luxuries if we don’t manage to kick your ass off our rock. Better dead than some alien whore!” I know this thing from the blackness of space has probably no idea what I mean, but I am sure he got the gist because he points one of those devices that fry your brain at me.
​
I feel a tingling and fire begins licking at my mind. I scream and fall to my knees in agony from the device’s power and with my own abilities dwindling it is hard to fight the flames trying to engulf my mind.
​
“I’LL KILL YOU!” I yell futilely as I slowly slide into unconsciousness.
​
Just before I pass out there is a rumbling in the very bones of the building and a metal girder falls from the ceiling and pins the alien to the floor and releases me from the pain of the device. I have no doubt now that I have had time to go over the whole scenario that the Ship did something to cause that girder to kill the alien for me.
​
I stand up and bend over to grab the fallen wallet. I take the wallet and run out of the building using the door I came in originally. Just as I get to the fence, I had climbed earlier, the west side of the building disappears. It is not like it had collapsed inward, it just wasn’t there anymore and the ship is rising from the hole that was left.
​
It turns toward me, and I get the sensation that it is looking at me one last time. With a boom that knocks me back, it blasts into the sky and in seconds I can no longer see it. Leaving the alley carefully to be sure no one sees me, I head to a store that sells pay by minute phones and using cash, I buy a burner phone and head down an old road that no one uses anymore.
​
I search the internet for the man’s name and call his home, no one answers, so I looked some more in his wallet and found a government ID. I call his work and using a fake voice, I tell them that I saw him being killed at the address of the office complex and hang up and breaking the phone I fling the pieces out the window and drive away.
​
This isn’t enough after all the man wasn’t evil, he was just forced to do things for the aliens and didn’t deserve his final fate, just as Bruce didn’t deserve to die, but it was the best I could do in the circumstances. But life can be cruel, and these aliens don’t care about the ants they see us as. I get home and tell Elaine about the ship and all that happened.
​
She was livid that I went in there without her as backup and gave me a good talking to, then when I finally got to the death of the man, she was sad as I was. The day has left me exhausted and mentally drained literally. The headache, of course, has gone back to its usually low throbbing.
​
The aliens are down another Sasquatch, but my headache lingers! Will we ever get rid of these headaches or are they here until we find all the answers to what we are and what we need to do.