I take my customary chair, stub out the butt, and take out another cigarette. The streetlights throw shadows across the bookcases. Only a small lamp on the desk is lit so Flint’s eyes glow red in the gray stone face.
“God damn it! Must you be this effective on behalf of our enemies?”
Oh, damn, I had hoped to report about my actions in Dubai before Flint heard of it. No such luck. It seems I will not be basking in the sunshine of my chief’s approval today.
“I take it the UAE has raised their prices.”
“You know bloody well they have. You cut off the man’s hand! He’s a friend of the prime’s.”
“I must occasionally succeed, sir, or Siraj is going to wonder if his ace bodyguard/assassin is a complete cock-up.”
“Can’t you exert any influence over Siraj?”
“Bahir is viewed as a blunt instrument. I think Siraj would be just the tiniest bit suspicious if the Caliph’s assassin suddenly started displaying political acumen.”
Flint grunts, and gives a grudging nod. Gestures from my boss are disconcerting. It’s like watching a statue come to life. He surprises me when he snaps his fingers together and produces a flame. I realize it’s for the forgotten cigarette hanging between my fingers.
My, my, this is rare condescension. I guess I’m forgiven for my unauthorized bloodletting. Leaning forward, I light my cigarette. The harsh Turkish tobacco is like claws raking across the inside of my lungs, but the hit to the nicotine pleasure centers outweighs the discomfort and the theoretical lung cancer.
“Where are you off to now?”
“I’ve got a date.” I preen and Flint makes a grinding sound like frozen gears trying to engage. “Believe me, you don’t hate it as much as I. Babysitting is not my style.”
I pause in the bathroom before testing my bladder control against the cold darkness of the Between. As the urine splashes against the porcelain my better nature wars with my real nature. What I really want is to call Lohengrin and cancel our date so I can go home to Dad and sleep in my old bedroom. If I go to New York I’ll be eating an overly rich and heavy meal very late, and then indulging in vigorous and inept sex between sweaty sheets with the big German ace. What he lacks in finesse Lohengrin more than makes up for in stamina. I dread tomorrow. Even when I’m back in my normal body I will have an uncomfortable ache in my nether parts.
For an instant I find myself looking with loathing at my short and strangely shaped penis. Would my life have been better, easier, if Mum had let the surgeons cut it away, and make me . . .
My thoughts slam up against the reality. No amount of surgery would have made me a “real girl.” I tuck myself away and zip up, and then move to the sink to wash my hands. I’m still holding the rough paper towel when I allow the transformation to twist my flesh. Breasts soon press against the front of my shirt, and my pants fit uncomfortably over female hips. Long fingernails pierce the paper towel.
The image in the mirror isn’t all I could hope. The heart-shaped face looks drawn and there’s the hint of a shadow beneath the silver eyes. It’s rather a shock to realize that fatigue of the real body translates to the avatars. Checking my watch I calculate the time difference between London and New York. If I stop at my digs in Manhattan and repair my face and change out of pants and boots I’ll be late meeting Lohengrin for dinner. But he’s got a rather traditional view of women. He’ll think that’s typical.
I picture the flat in the Village. As my body twists into that cold, strange place I decide on the little black dress. Keep the focus on the legs. . . .
Coulda
Caroline Spector
IT’S DARK. SUFFOCATING. I can hear the sounds of the helicopters overhead. I’ve got to do something. But I can hear screams now. Oh, God, the way they scream as the flesh is seared off their bodies. I need to bubble. I need to get away from the smell of burnt skin and muscle. Screaming. I need to make the screams go away.
I try to blast my way through the darkness. For a moment, I can’t bubble. It’s as if there’s a wall between me and my power—then a stream of bubbles flows from my hands. Dust and rubble fill my mouth and rain off my body.
There’s light. The light is so clean and pure. I bubble more until I chase the darkness away and blow the weight of the debris from me.
“Stop that!”
I look around. I’m not in Egypt. There are no helicopters. No falling bodies. No fiery flesh. Just the clean, antiseptic testing room at BICC. Biological Isolation and Containment Center—who thinks these names up, anyway?
God, I hate government facilities. Why on earth would anyone build anything in an abandoned salt mine? And in the middle of Nowhere, New Mexico, to boot . . .
“The purpose of the test is to see how much force you can absorb, Miss Pond.” The disembodied voice belonged to Dr. Pendergast. His voice was normally silky smooth, so it was hard to tell when he was really pissed. But there was a hint of anger and I knew I’d been bad.
But, really, how many more times could they pound the living crap out of me? I was beginning to feel like Wile E. Coyote. Drop me down into that canyon one more time, boss. Or shoot me with a death ray. Your choice.
I wasn’t even certain what they were testing me for anymore. At first, it was the usuaclass="underline" some joker with a face that could stop a clock and biceps the size of watermelons. He gave me a left hook that I kinda felt. I tried not to laugh at the look of disappointment on his unfortunate face.
Then they started with the cannonballs, bullets, walls on springs. Honestly, who the hell has walls on springs, just, you know, lying around? I mean, did none of these guys watch American Hero? You’d’ve thought they’d never heard of the Amazing Bubbles.
But the superweird thing was that they didn’t want me to bubble. In fact, Dr. Pendergast made it very clear that he didn’t want any bubbling. I tried to explain to him that when I got hit with as much raw energy as they were throwing at me, I had to bubble. It hurt not to.
But Dr. Pendergast didn’t care about that. He was only interested in how much power I could absorb. They’d already found out my max size would just about fill an eight-by-eight room. But I was no Bloat. They told me that when I stopped growing in size I started getting denser. Heavier, but no larger. I kinda got the feeling this was very interesting to them.
The problem was, after they got me as fat as I could get, and they kept throwing more and more force at me, I was finding it more difficult to bubble it off after the tests. The denser I got, the more powerful I became, but the harder it was to access my power. Hell, I could barely lift one of my pudgy fingers.
And it didn’t help that every time I got hit, it brought back memories. Memories that I didn’t want to face. So I did what I usually do—I thought about something else. Thought about anything that would distract me from what was rattling around my head like a bad Rob Zombie movie.
Thinking about Ink naked usually did the trick.
“Okay, Miss Pond, we’ll go again.”
“Yeah? I don’t think so,” I replied. I flung my hands out and released an enormous stream of bubbles, and I could feel my clothes getting looser. I grabbed a handful of waistband with my left hand to keep my pants from falling off.
The bubbles bounced around the room, but I kept bubbling with my right hand. As I filled the room, the bubbles just sort of vibrated against one another. I’d made them soft and rubbery so they wouldn’t hurt anyone. But it would take a while for them to dissipate. The room would be useless for any more games of Kick the Bubbles. At least for a while.