“Does Jacko know we’re here, do you think?”
Holly finds an archway in the right-hand wall, and enters.
“You have to go out to go in again. This next junction should be a crossroads. A little light, please?” I egress and glow for a moment. A crossroads. Holly takes the left branch. I ingress and fade.
“Yeah. Those were Jacko’s last words to me. I stormed off to my boyfriend’s house, and never saw my little brother again. Ruth, my sister-in-law, she was into jewelry making, and turned his sketch into a sort of pendant, made of silver. When I left home I took it away with me. Probably every week of my life I’ve studied it. Left turn coming up.”
We take the left, and pain explodes in our head. Holly spins as she falls and tumbles. Fresh pain shoots through her ankles and knees, and our scorched retinas are dazzled by petals of temporary colors. Through these, as my host lifts her head, I glimpse Constantin, her chakra-eye glowing rose-red, standing over us. “Show me the exit,” the Second Anchorite says maternally, “or I’ll turn you into a screaming human torch to light my path.” Her palm-chakras are glowing red too, a psychobolt in each ready to make good her threat. Holly’s shaking and muttering, “Please don’t please don’t please don’t.” I don’t know what Constantin just heard, how much she knows, how much psychovoltage she’s retained after the battle. Enough to kill us both several times over, I think. I decide to draw her away from Holly, back to the Dusk, so Holly at least has a chance of getting out alive.
I egress, glowing.
Icy and scalding, Constantin demands, “Which one are you?”
“Marinus. It would be. Time’s short. Lead.”
“Then I’ll die happier, knowing who I killed in the last scene.”
Before I can think of a strategic reply, Constantin’s chakra-eye goes out, her head tilts back, and she slumps to the floor. “I
Holly vomits a fourth time.
I synthesize a drop of psychosedative in her pituitary gland.
“I killed someone.” Holly’s shaking. “I killed. It just … sort of … It’s like I wasn’t me. But I know it was.”
I tweak out a little dopamine.
“No. No. I’d rather not know.”
Holly drops the thing. “Rolling pin.”
“I nicked it from your kitchen at 119A. Put it in my bag.”
Holly stands up. I sedate her ankle and knees.
“You were all talking about the War, but I didn’t even have a Swiss Army knife. So—yeah, I