Posted by Shoot2Kill on June 19, 2004 at 09:41:19:
In Reply to: Question for Shoot2Kill posted by Glockoholicus on June 19, 2004 at 02:47:50:
Hi G.
No, not a personal question at all - and it's nice that my stories have lodged in a few memories. That's a real compliment in my book.
There were a number of reasons why I stopped, no real order to them, but just a combination of all. For a start, the community sense of the days when I used to write really disappeared after a few big Flame wars, and I'd always written for the elements of the community who had similar likes as me. Nowadays you get very little feedback, and I was shallow enough to want at least a little reaction! Since those days I've become e-mail correspondents with a couple of the writers I admire most, and we tend to exchange little pieces and what-not which give me a lot more satisfaction than massive stories which take days to write and then go unremarked. Like I said - it's shallow! But I've never been saintly enough to put in all that work and feel happy just dropping it into a hole afterwards. In the gold-tinged 'good old days', any posting tended to get reaction and I miss that.
I also found that in the forums I wrote for, they began to get dominated by a couple of characters who gave little, but took much in the way they made the places very unwelcoming, scaring off a lot of the new faces. This soured a couple of the sites for me. That's nothing particularly aimed at anyone still around - especially on this board, which I rarely frequent - but it depresses me when people don't play nice, when we're all really lucky to have found each other.
There's also the real-life stuff: I got a job that involved writing, and so I was in that position where your hobby becomes your work, and so you don't want to still do it as a hobby. I'd also settled down with a girlfriend, and you have to be giving with your time if you want it to work. A good story took me at least a weekend, and you can't always do that to someone!
And it's not entirely true to say I gave up. For a while I was writing the texts for some Necrobabes photostories, but that got increasingly difficult with - I felt - the very repetitive nature of the photoshoots. It's a real sadness to me now to see how poorly that once-great site compares to the far newer ones around.
I commissioned a couple of photoshoots through Club Dead, and absolutely loved the end results, but it's a pricy area to get into, and I don't earn like I used to! There was also a couple of brilliantly rendered CGI tales done for me by MikeA. Once you've seen your words turned into pictures, I found it difficult to then just stay with words. That's probably why I'm spending most of my web-time now at Annabelle's Fantasy site, which I think is the Great Hope for the entire scene. It's got a community spirit of the old days, the best models (in my opinion), and I've already scripted one of the MPEGs - an unbelievably great position to be in. I hope to do a lot more work for them, if they'll have me.
Anyway, hope that answers your question. If anyone wants to get in touch, the email is as it has always been - WinterZday@hotmail.com
The story below was written for Dr Don's site, the idea being to bring together as many of his video clips into one narrative as possible. See how many you can spot!
The Proteus Project
Lydia sat in the lobby of the Quartermain apartment building, marking time with an issue of Cosmo and thoughts of a new haircut. She brushed away a lock of brown hair that tickled across her eye. Definitely something shorter, bring out her cheekbones. She looked at her watch. Nine thirty. Donovan's time was up; he should have been out by now. Give him to the end of the article on highlights, then she'd go up and charge the scumbag another fifty for being late. No point in being prompt: that left you punctual but poor.
At the security desk, the cherubic face of Danny beamed at her again. She sighed inwardly, but gave him a cool wave with fluttering fingers. She hated that: just because the security guards knew what she did, but let her sit there anyway (well, for a twenty), it was like someone had declared her as easy game. She had hoped she'd escaped that kind of thinking when she'd stopped working herself, and employed girls of her own. Only two so far, but things were definitely improving.
Something stabbed into Lydia's mind; a long-familiar, creeping unease that made her breast heave against the neckline of the flowing scarlet silk dress she wore. It happened whenever her thoughts drifted into the past, bringing her to teeter on the very edge of a horrible blackness of memory.
No past. Nothing there, just a vacuum where school days, sunshine and suffering should be. She was an end result of something she didn't know, and only by concentrating furiously on the here and now did she ever manage to keep sane. She sometimes paid her girls, just to tell her stories of childhood, secretly borrowing them as her own.
Weird. When her operation was really up and running, she would sort this out, get paid help: therapy; that national prop that kept just about everybody upright these days. Spend some time on her back rummaging in her mind sorting things out, rather than just being rummaged. Lydia smiled to herself, longing for that moment, when some Germanic shrink (always German, when she imagined it) would begin with some delightful words like "Tell me zen, vott is your earliest memory?"
What would he make of waking up on a park bench, three years ago, with nothing but an expensive set of clothes and a cheque account containing $20,000? She just hoped that Herr Doctor had better luck working it out than she did, because she'd got no answers.
Okay, that was it. Time was up. Lydia stood, brushed her dress straight, and walked to the lift. She put an extra wiggle into her slinky movement, just for Danny's sake. She knew he liked to get some value for the twenty. And it stopped him asking for more, too. Maybe he'd even want to be a customer some time. It would save her twenty bucks; another hour with Herr Doctor, just for a fumbling fuck with Virgin Boy. Seemed about the right trade off.
In the elevator - which tormented her with a compilation Musak assault of Barry Manilow plays Guns 'N Roses - she hefted her bag on her shoulder. It was heavy, not just with the issue of Cosmo: for a girl in her position, protection came in a metal shape that held six bullets. For the right price she'd let herself be fucked. But for no price at all would she be fucked with. Two bodies in the Hudson had learnt that lesson.
Ninth floor. She emerged, and almost ran into her client.
'Ah, Mr. Donovan,' she smiled, as if discussing the weather. 'Everything satisfactory I trust?'
'Indeed, indeed, Miss Lydia,' the older man beamed, immaculate in a well-tailored corporate suit that most camping shops could have converted into a tent. Sweat still beaded his businessman forehead, and his stockbroker face flushed red. He rubbed his hands together, the pudgy shapes barely meeting over the broad expanse of industrial waist.
Lydia smiled again, but colder this time. 'I believe there's the matter of another half-hour's money?'
Donovan wouldn't be thrown. He bowed his head respectfully - the corridor lighting gleaming off a spreading bald spot - and acknowledged her point. 'Already taken care of, my dear Lydia. I've given it to Jacklyn and Jill in there.' He laughed to himself. 'You know, that's very good: Jack and Jill: I've only just got it!'
She indulged his mirth, then waited for him to step into the lift. 'I'll see you the same time next week then?' he said, still chuckling.
'Of course.' The lift door closed, leaving Lydia in the gloomy corridor. Apartment 903 was just a few paces away. She wouldn't normally bother the girls, but she needed that fifty before the night was out. And anyway, both Jack and Jill had told her several times how both of them had lovers who cost them a lot, so she didn't want to put temptation their way.
Her key fitted into the door easily and silently, the door clicking open on well-oiled hinges. There was no sound at all, except-
A breathy sigh. The sound of wet lips. Did they have another man in there? Exploiting her usual post-trick absence with some moonlighting?
Something in Lydia's head snapped. She felt it almost physically, a jarring pain and then just rage. The woman who balanced on the edge of an abyss of darkness pitched over.
The revolver in her hand felt good; powerful and cool. She held it carefully as she paced with cat-like grace towards the bedroom. In the gloom of the hallway, the bedroom beyond shone with light. More sounds. A gentle, erotic coupling, sighs and moans. How DARE they moonlight? Didn't she realise how well she treated them?
And then standing there in the doorway she saw the truth. Jack and Jill were rolling down the hill together. She felt hatred replace the blood in her veins, pounding through her heart and mind as if something would explode. How DARE they? So these were the lovers bleeding her girls dry: each other! No wonder Jacklyn had almost laughed once, explaining how she needed another twenty because her lover had damaged the car. They'd been playing her off against each other, and neatly pocketing all the profits.
Maybe they hadn't even been lovers until now, maybe it was just something to screw Lydia good and long. Maybe this was celebrating getting that fifty out of Donovan. She'd show them.
Hands driven by the paranoia electric in her nerves lifted the heavy handgun. Jill's back was a perfect target, bare as she kissed and touched Jacklyn. Long brown and black hair tangled and entwined like the slender, tanned bodies on the bed. Lydia took a deep breath, tossed her hair out of her eyes, and then tightened her finger on the trigger-
BLAM! BLAM! BLAM!
The shots exploded through the coupled hookers, spitting gore out at the top of Jacklyn's back in ugly, ragged holes. The girls twitched together with each impact. Jill grunted, then Jacklyn, then both began a chorus of agonised sighs that sawed through their bodies. Jacklyn went still, only one arm feebly moving, like the final reflex action of some sea creature dying on the beach. Jill flopped down over her lover as if protecting her. Lydia marched over to them, grimly amused that it was far too late for that. The three small, precise holes in her tanned flesh had made sure of their fates, beyond any doubt.
Lydia's tight fingers grasped Jill by the shoulder and hauled her over, exposing Jacklyn, and the bloody holes in her chest that drew momentary scarlet threads between the girls. The movement surged pain through Jill, and she lay there wincing and clutching in vain at the burning flesh that had used to be her boobs.
The gun - barrel smoking with a mercury wisp stretching into the air - was aimed again. Lydia's finger tightened on the trigger, making the hammer haul back slowly... All she could think of was how she'd been betrayed, of how something was breaking inside her mind and how she had to kill.
'You ungrateful little bitch!' she snarled. The words awoke a recognition in Jill's face, and suddenly she knew who had shot her. She tried to sit up, tried to speak-
BLAM!
The shot drilled a hole into the right of Jill's left breast. A ribbon of gore sped from her back. Jill gave a child's sob. 'N-' she tried to say, then sagged back, breath heaving into her ruined chest, ever slower. She lay against Jacklyn's still form - the contact suddenly stirring the second girl - and writhed for a moment. Breath after breath became more infrequent, sucked from the air with futility. She died. Her head flopped back against Jacklyn and her eyes rolled open, staring blind across the room.
Jacklyn made an effort to look up, straining against the blunt pain chiselling through her ribs, and the weight of a dead girl sprawled over her side. A hand was spidering up her ribs, trying to find an end to the agony. A sticky red hole between her breasts had scraped her heart, and two further up had powdered her collar bone. Every movement brought more suffering. She lay, eyes closed, praying it would go away.
Some prayers get answered. The gun muzzle swung slightly around. 'And as for YOU, you little trollop!' Lydia spat.
BLAM!
The bullet hole opened in Jacklyn's forehead, and in the dark shroud of hair behind her head, sticky things gleamed wet and sharp. The tiny puff of blood that came from the entry point settled down as a streak of blood at the top of her nose and as a trail on the pillow. Jacklyn's head was slammed back into the bedclothes, a violent impact that sent a wave of motion across the mattress.
A last motion. For as it diminished, it left two arranged mannequins on the bed, nude, blood-spattered, warm flesh and hot holes. Lydia looked at them, and then gave a Cheshire Cat smile. She caressed her breasts with the hot gun barrel, savouring the metallic smells of gunsmoke and blood. She had to kill again. Had to. The message was clear in her brain. That was how she would feel better.
She turned and left the apartment, the door wide open behind her. As she walked towards the lift, its heavy metal doors began to roll away. Lydia just had time to hide the gun behind her back before Danny emerged, and looked at her in alarm.
'Shit Lydia! You okay? Someone reported hearing shots on this floor!'
'Shots? You're crazy, Danny. Shots in a high-class place like this?'
He looked uncertain. 'I guess...'
'I think it was a TV - you know, apartment twelve? They've always got something on too loud.' Lydia was thinking quickly, and when she saw the holstered gun at Danny's hip, she realised what she had to do.
'You could be right-'
'-I know I'm right.' She shifted, twisting her foot against the floor like a shy little girl. The dress shimmered against her trim, lithe thighs. 'Could you do something for me, Danny?'
'Sure Lydia. What?'
'Well... Gee, I get kinda embarrassed... Just, I get kinda horny after a long day...' She carefully measured her words, watching as the bulge in Danny's trousers became notable, and then significant as she went on: 'I mean, those girls of mine get all the fun. And all I can do is go home on my own... run a long hot bath... slide underneath the bubbles, and gently rub my tits... Gently touch my...' She angled her head. 'You know what I mean, Danny?'
'Uh... Ugh. Yeah.'
'When I touch myself, I think of a big strong man in uniform. Like you, Danny. Oooh. Makes me horny just thinking about it.'
The young man could barely speak. His face had gone bright red.
'I want you to kiss me Danny. Here. Now. Just do it.'
Danny shifted his shoulders uncomfortably, then moved forwards. Closer to her. Closer.
'Close your eyes,' Lydia breathed, giving a wiggle that was the result of six month's hard practice. His eyes, wide and fixed upon the impressive curve of her breast, became closed. He licked his lips. Lydia levelled the gun point blank over his heart. 'You can open them now.'
He did. Reacted for. A split. Second. BLAM!
The wall became decorated with Danny. His blue shirt rippled with the impact and the flaring, wet explosion both in front and behind him. Red flecks appeared on Lydia's cheeks. Danny gave a despairing sigh of pain and death: 'Lydia...' and then bounced against the wall to pitch at her feet.
She wasted no time, turning over his body, discarding her empty pistol and taking his; an automatic that was fully loaded. It was as she felt the new shape in her hands that a door near her opened. The bleached blonde woman who emerged - half-dressed in hold-up stockings, PVC mini skirt and pink Wonderbra, cigarette clutched in black-nailed fingers - lived for about ten seconds. She had time to start saying "What the hell's-" Then Lydia gave the smile of a kid at Christmas and shot her.
BLAM! BLAM!
A slender, stretched belly button suddenly changed into a rough-edged gap, tearing larger as its owner convulsed upwards. The full left cup of the bra became the framework of a deep, shining wet hole. The pink material turned black in a moment. The lazy river of blood running down from the navel and onto stockinged legs was nearly the same colour.
The blonde gave a cut-off shriek and bounced back onto the doorframe - sticky and red paintwork being smeared as she sighed and slid down into an open-legged sprawl. The head dropped to one side and blood drip-dripped down from the side of her half-open mouth. Lydia turned back to the lift, got inside, and pressed "Lobby".
She felt dizzy and exultant, colours and changes surging through her brain. This felt right; this was what she had to do. The gap in her head didn't matter anymore. This was a way of filling it. And it worked perfectly.
The lift door opened onto a lobby crowded with people. Lydia stepped out. Lifted the gun.
'Surprise!!!'
*-*-*-*
Paul Riory survived the lobby of the Quartermain apartments. The once pastel-yellow scheme had been inelegantly re-done in scarlet. Near the glass doors to the street, a shapely redhead in a little black dress lay sprawled uncomfortably over the bent shape of her umbrella. There were two exit-wounds in her back - black material and pink flesh opened in flimsy spikes - and the tiled floor around her was a broad circle that reflected the streetlights in crimson. The woman's hair was a flame-coloured mass to one side, trailing away from her staring, vacant face.
Seated against the security desk, a black girl in leather trousers and a white bustier top had bled to death from the shot to her guts. Riory steered around the red mirror that the girl sat on, and noted the expression on her face. Pain and disappointment. Seemed the prevailing mood around here today.
Outside, the surviving security guard was giving a statement to one of Riory's people. He was the one who'd brought it to an end. Thank God. How much further would this have gone if he hadn't shot the killer?
Lydia lay dead on her back, half in and half out of the elevator. The automated door kept trying to close, sliding forwards, detecting the obstruction and sliding back again. It looked as though it was trying to chew her up. In the exact centre of her breastbone, a bruised hole shone out in her skin. It looked deceptively small; only the basketball-sized blood-spray on that opening, closing door gave evidence to how much of a mess the killer's back would be. Riory knelt down and lifted Lydia's head by the hair, staring into her glazed eyes.
'She killed four people upstairs, too.'
Riory let the head drop - thud - onto the elevator floor - and then stood up to face the newcomer. 'Ah, Chris. You been fully briefed?'
'Not really. Someone back at the office just said to get here, something about Project Proteus problems. But it didn't take long to fill in the blanks. The Project's failed, hasn't it?'
'"Psychotic episodes",' Riory quoted, 'that's what Mennersen said we risked, with such accelerated growth. And all we did was release the girls into the world and washed our hands. Well, when I say "we", I mean my predecessors. I don't think I'd have been that dumb.'
'"Girls?" Plural?'
'That's your first job. Most of the records were destroyed in a very suspicious fire just after the Project was closed down. The only person who knows what happened to the others - even how many of them there were - is a Dayna Browne. She retired out West. There's an address on file. Find her, find how many more Proteus subjects there are, and where they can be found.'
'What about her?'
'They may not have yet told you in the office, but this is going to be the cause of some considerable embarrassment if it ever gets out. You know how the public gets about human genetic experimentation. What are we supposed to say: "it was a while ago, we didn't think anyone would mind"? My orders are that it all gets quietly buried.'
'And Dayna Browne?'
'Quietly buried too, I think.'
*-*-*-*
Dayna Browne was a happy-looking brunette with dark, Italian-looking eyes. Chris Chapter found her in the lobby of the Derwen Hotel; an expensive place where he had to concentrate very hard not to superimpose the luxurious surroundings with the sprawled, bullet-ridden shapes he'd left behind in New York. She was the administrative boss of a local research lab, and wore a well-tailored business suit of sharply-pressed jacket and skirt, a bright red blouse beneath it tightly buttoned across large breasts.
'Mr. Chapter?' she offered as he moved over to her. He knew he should have worn a suit or something, but the jeans and polo shirt seemed more appropriate to someone supposedly just out of college. They shook hands, and he found her looking him up and down with something like a hungry appraisal in her face. 'You're slightly older than I expected; you said you were a student?'
'Call me Chris,' he nodded. He remembered his cover story and just hoped she wouldn't get too involved in the technicalities. 'Well, I only finished the genetics course last year. Mature student. The Project is recruiting straight from universities, these days.'
'Makes a change from my day,' Dayna commented with a raised eyebrow. 'You wouldn't believe how much security I had to go through before joining Project Proteus. And now they're recruiting college boys... Gee, I guess that's progress.'
Chris laughed at her joke, nervous in case it sparked reminiscences that he simply hadn't been briefed for. She saw the unease in his face, and blushed.
'Sorry, I shouldn't have mentioned it by name, should I?'
'Um... No, not really. Listen, I hope you won't think me too forward, but... I've hired a room upstairs. I'd prefer we talked there: no one's going to overhear us.'
'Mr. Chapter!' Dayna reacted with something like mock-indignation. 'Go to a hotel room with a stranger? What kind of girl do you think I am?'
'I-'
'Relax honey,' she said, putting a hand on his shoulder. 'I was only kidding!' But her hand stayed on his shoulder for a moment too long and the eye contact between them was charged with something that sent a thrill up Chris's spine.
She picked up a heavy attaché case, bundling it up under her arms, and followed him to the elevator. Again, as they waited and looked at the broad steel doors, Chris felt stabs of memory from New York: a bloodstain and a chewing door.
Only inside the close space did she speak again. 'So they've started up Proteus again, have they? They never seem to learn. What do you think of it?'
New York memory: 'I can see there are dangers.'
'Too right. I really thought it was gone after the fire. They lost all the Creation equipment; they weren't going to easily start again. How did they build a new one? I mean, that was close to a billion bucks, right?'
'Ah, that's progress: costs have come right down since then.'
'Progress...' Dayna mused. She shrugged. 'You can keep it, far as I'm concerned. Nothing but trouble. It's been all this time, and only now can I bear to think about it. Those poor girls. No future, no past. You know they released them? Set them out into the world like lab rats into the wilderness? Chances of survival, low, right?'
'Girls? How many were there?'
'Three of course. Why - how many are you set up to Create?'
'Oh. Er. I shouldn't really talk about that,' Chris managed. Dayna watched him carefully, and then released the tension with a nod.
'You're right. It's not security for me though, I'm just sick of it. Here.' She pushed the case into his arms, and Chris had to work not to reveal his delight at the ease of the mission.
'This is all the stuff you mentioned?' Inside he saw thick files, computer disks, even a video tape. He wanted to look Dayna in the eye, but if he did, he knew he'd laugh at how stupid and trusting she'd been. But then the ID that Riory had made for him would probably have got him into the White House, so maybe he shouldn't blame her too much.
'The whole lot. I just wanted shot of it, but always felt it would be... kind of illegal... to just throw it. And who could I give it to? I thought the project was over. And apart from Phillipa, no one's still alive following the fire.'
'Phillipa?'
'Hennington. She's in the files. Head of project. You mean she's not involved in this? I couldn't see anyone resurrecting Proteus without her help.'
'No, no. Phillipa. Sure.' Chris found Dayna looking at him, and realised he was frantically trying to avoid the plunge into mistake. 'I'm sorry. I find you... Rather distracting, if I have to be honest.'
Dayna gave a delighted smile. He'd said the right thing, okay. 'Well...' she said, in a sound of delighted revelation. 'Well. In that case, let's go and put that room of yours to its proper use!'
*-*-*-*
They didn't so much enter the hotel room as explode into it. Even as Chris was closing and "do not disturb"ing the door, her fingers were hauling the jacket from his back. It clunked heavily onto the floor, and he looked carefully at her, glad that she didn't think to ask about it.
He opened her skirt, and tugged it down her thighs. She stepped out of it, and gyrated for a moment in the high-cut black satin panties that peeked out from under the trailing ends of the blouse. Shoes were kicked halfway across the room, with a joyful laugh. He stripped naked in the time it took Dayna to undo her blouse, watching him after every button she opened in a tease exposure. Beneath it her full breasts bulged against a black, front-fastening bra. She was trembling as he unhooked the bra and swept it off her shoulders. Her nipples were dark pink, and already standing proud. They felt hard against his fingers as he brushed over them.
'Oh Gooood,' she breathed, kissing him hard on the mouth, and grinding her hips against his. Her breasts flattened against his chest. 'I don't believe how horny I feel. I don't... Don't normally do this...'
Chapter's hand slid inside the panties, finding the warm patch of tangled hair, and then the slick, delicate flesh beneath. Dayna's eyes flared open. 'Oh! You know just how to touch me. Oooh that feels good...'
Her hands had clasped his prick, and under their tender, insistent caress, it had grown hard beneath her fingers. Jesus Christ, if he wasn't careful he was going to shoot off then and there. 'Easy...' he apologised. He turned her around, pressing into her back, her buttocks against his thighs, one arm snaking inside her panties and tracing around her clitoris, the other a band across her breasts that stroked and gently kneaded at the soft curves. His kisses touched at her nape of her neck, his deep breaths ruffling her curly brown hair.
Sighs and moans came from Dayna, as she gently writhed a dance against him. Feeling his prick against the back of her legs, she opened her thighs, let it find the gap, and then closed around the round tip. A gently rocking motion with her hips - against the hand whose fingers worked expertly inside her - made him harder than ever before. 'I'm so excited,' she hurried suddenly, as if it were all one word. 'I'm sorry, I'm going to come... Trying to hold on, but... Oh fuck me, fuck me now!'
Chris half carried, half threw her onto the bed. Dayna gave a deep laugh that resonated with the pleasure churning inside her, then she knelt on all fours, pushing her rear into the air. 'Come on, I'm your little doggie... Give your doggie a bone!'
It was so corny. If this had been some normal coupling, Chris would probably have lost the huge erection then and there. But something was keeping him hard: the knowledge that in minutes, this woman would be dead and that he would have killed her. It was the ultimate power over someone, and he loved it. He slipped on a condom in a long-practised movement that took just a moment.
Chris tore the panties from Dayna, down from her buttocks, to her knees, then off her ankles. Stitches broke as he pulled. She laughed. 'Come on, gimme, gimme!' She began to bark and laugh. 'Oh Christ, do it soon! I'm going to- Oh, I'm going to-'
He plunged inside her, feeling her wet vagina expand around him and hold tight. He pushed deeper and she gave a bulging exclamation of 'Ooooh, you're huge!' before getting religious again: 'Ugh ugh, God! Oh God! Oh Jesus Christ!'
Even as he began to thrust, he felt the control taken from him by a bucking electricity in the base of his spine, jerking his thighs forwards and backwards. It seemed to conduct into her - she began to shudder and thrash too. When Dayna came, it was as if she was being attacked by a cloud of bees; her head shook and swivelled, her hair flying away from her skull, her breasts swinging beneath her until Chris's hands cupped them and massaged them. He felt himself spurt inside her, a white-hot joy that drew sweat from his skin and increased her screeching climax.
'Oh fuuuuuuucccckkkkk!' she shouted so loudly that it seemed to bounce back from the balcony doors. Chris had a moment of blinding panic, envisaging a visit from the manager, and sudden exposure of his mission. But all that happened was that Dayna arched her back and clawed the bed's sheets into tight knots.
The release washed through them both as they sagged onto the bed. Dayna's naked breasts rose and fell as she tried to get her breath back. Chris made gestures towards the condom and then the bathroom, and he moved away as Dayna nodded slightly.
Inside the bathroom, he carefully put the condom into a container to take with him, washed himself three times, and then dried himself off with a towel that would leave with him too. Back in the bedroom, he found Dayna half-asleep. She gave a blissed-out smile when his shadow fell across her.
Her afterglow lasted for long enough for him to get fully dressed and push the towel into the case she'd given him. As he clicked the catches back into place, she stirred on the bed, and pulled her blouse over her shoulders as a kind of wrap.
'What're you doing?' she asked, waking quickly. 'You're not leaving?'
Chris turned away, fumbling the pistol and silencer from his jacket. 'Er yeah, I gotta go.'
Dayna wasn't finished with him. As she struggled to sit up and speak, there was a deliberation to her voice. She wanted rewards, either financial or physical. 'I think you OWE me for this.'
Her legs were wide open, breasts flattened against her chest as she half lay, half sat. She shifted her hips, pushing herself up with her arms into a position that deepened the curves of her proud boobs. This was the offer.
'I have it for you, right here.' The silencer finally screwed in tight, and Chris turned towards her.
Her face only slowly changed, as if she couldn't quite recognise what he held in his hand as he aimed the gun at her. Only then did she begin to push herself backwards on the bed, face widening in disbelief. 'What are you doing?'
As realisation sank in, her next word was an appeal: 'Don't!' Her left hand made the beginnings of a movement towards the telephone on the bedside table next to her. The silencer seemed huge, looming into her vision as a deadly shape half the size of Chris' head. And then he shot her.
TEWP!
Dayna grunted desperately as a hole exploded in her right breast, just beside the pink nipple, the impact throwing her brutally back into the rumpled sheets. She bounced twice before coming to rest. Her arms were half-out in surrender, arms covered in the blouse that had slipped from her shoulders.
She gave a tiny cry as her body fought for breath, her breasts lifting up and down in frantic efforts. Dimly she watched Chris shift his position, moving a pace closer, aiming at a new target.
TEWP!
The shot struck her in the chest, dead centre, and Dayna's back arched as if he'd plugged current into her. She gave a guttural cry, and then slumped back into the bed. The mattress felt wet and hot beneath her shoulder blades, through the spreading numbness that was taking over her body. She tried to seek out his eyes, make a mute question of "why?"
TEWP!
As if to be symmetrical, Chris snapped off a shot into her left breast. It jolted through her, issuing a tiny trail as she gave another coughing exclamation and undulated on the soft mattress with the impact.
TEWP! TEWP!
Two shots to her guts drove animalistic, sexual grunts from her lips. The holes opened beside and under her belly button hardly bled, her ruptured heart no longer capable of pushing blood anywhere except through the gaping hole between her shoulder blades.
He saw her die then, the light fading in her eyes. Just for an instant she was still; that organic point when life leaves and just before gravity takes over. Then her head rolled to the right and stayed there. A loud, slightly-gurgling breath escaped from her open mouth. It was almost of satisfaction, as if glad it was all over.
Chris quickly checked around the room for anything that might betray him. A line of blood had emerged from, and curled around, Dayna's right breast, as if enhancing it, reminding him of what he'd done. Chris just shrugged. He'd done dozens of hits like this. Bit late to be worrying about it now!
*-*-*-*
The three woman stood facing one another, naked and in a room of steel and chrome. Two of them looked exactly alike, the other a little taller and thinner. Their skin gleamed wetly, mottled like the flesh of a newborn child.
Pause.
The image froze, and Riory sat back in his chair. He looked at the other two occupants in his office, then pointed out the figures on the screen.
'Well, you should have both read the information that Chris got from the late Dayna Browne by now, and you know where we stand. The taller woman was called Lydia, and you both know what happened to her. The other two - Laura and Lena - were created as twins, and from our appraisal, these two are also time bombs waiting to go off. Needless to say, that just cannot be allowed.'
'So you're just going to kill them? Jesus Christ! I don't believe this!' Doctor Finch reacted in outrage. She stood up, Chris Chapter seated beside her looking up curiously.
'My dear Sonya,' Riory soothed. 'I wish that there were any other way, I really do.' He looked down at the stack of recovered papers and records on his desk. 'But there isn't.'
'Bullshit, Paul! You could leave those girls alone!'
'You know what we risk,' Riory said calmly. 'I suggest you think about this.'
'I have thought about this, and let me tell you, if those girls are harmed, I'm going to the press with all of this.'
Riory was silent for a while. 'Now I don't think that would be very wise,' he said eventually. 'Do you, Sonya? You're not thinking about this: we know that the three Proteus clones have an inherent instability that presents a likelihood of psychotic episodes. I mean, one of them has already killed six people - you want more of that on your conscience?'
'No, but-'
'The powers that be at the time released all girls into the world, gave them some spending money, and expected them to survive. In LA? In Detroit? Well, all I can say is that they must have known something about human nature that I don't. Both girls were damaged goods, terrified, easily exploited. So they're working girls within a matter of months. And that is not exactly a stress free occupation. Another massacre is only a matter of time, Sonya!'
'So they have to die! That's barbaric.'
Chris spoke at last. 'Even the process of trying to capture them might be enough to set them off. It cannot happen.'
Sonya rounded on him. 'I knew you'd both be in on this together! You bastards, you think I'm going to let you get away with this?' She stood up. 'Well I'm not!'
Riory watched her with a raised eyebrow. She pointed a finger at him. 'I know where those girls are as well as you, pal, and if you harm a hair on their head - or MINE, because I know you, Paul, you bastard - then the press will get the contents of a safe deposit box, and learn all about the whole Proteus project.'
'Then I bow to your opinion, and merely hope that you are correct,' Riory shrugged. Sonya looked furiously at him, and then stormed out, leaving a "just you remember", hanging in the air.
Chris exchanged a look with Riory. 'Did you get it?' his superior asked.
In reply, Chris Chapter placed a safety deposit box on the desk. Riory looked inside it for a moment, and then across to his colleague. 'Kill her.'
*-*-*-*
Sonya Finch had had a bad day. She left work early, spent an hour watching the sunset on the pier, and then reached home. Even a home delivery pizza didn't change anything. Those bastards. Just working with them made her feel dirty. She needed a shower.
After she'd stripped naked, and began running the water from sub-Arctic to hot, she decided a bath would be better. A long soak, a glass of wine. That would hit the spot. She turned off the shower, then began the bath, sprinkling lavender oil into the churning waters. Now for that wine.
It was in the hall that she met him, a man with a lockpick in one hand, and in the other:
'Chris?'
The gun in his hand was unmistakable. 'Oh Christ! Oh God, no! Don't shoot me! Please! I won't say anything!' she sobbed. 'Please, I'll be a good girl!'
'Too late, bitch,' Chris smirked, sliding the pick into his blue jeans, then stretching out his gun arm. 'Your days are numbered. At zero.'
TEWP!
The bullet caught her in the stomach, just above the slight paunch that too many bad day pizzas had started to give her. Blood spritzed out from the red-hot wound, front and back, as her legs lifted slightly with the impact and dumped her against a wall. She opened her mouth to appeal again-
TEWP!
Chris had felt annoyed at his poor marksmanship with the Browne woman - missing her belly button from close up - and this time he soothed the aggravation. The bullet sped straight through Sonya's navel, a brief stream of blood flaring out into the air and then dribbling into the dark hair between her thighs. Sonya caught at her bedroom's door frame as she started a second backwards flight, and it wheeled her around and away from Chris's sight, leaving two rosettes on the white wall, for first-class marksmanship. He congratulated himself, and only then did he pursue the injured woman.
She lay at the foot of an unmade bed, one hand clasped on the brass railings of the bedstead, panting like some wounded animal, looking up in dread at the doorway, expecting him. He levelled the gun at her right breast, and saw her forming a pathetic appeal of "no!"
He shot her before the word could come:
TEWP!
'Ugh!' she gasped, flipping up into the air and then down hard onto the carpet. Her shaking breasts shook and came to a halt, blood treacling down one of them. Sonya's grasping hand opened and flopped from the bed to beside her. Somehow it seemed a final admission of defeat.
Chris moved and stood over her, sliding the silencer up, choosing his target; vagina, no; stomach, no; lungs, no; heart... Ah yes.
TEWP!
'UUUGHGH!' Sonya spat out, animalistic, sexual, as again her body shook with the impact of a silenced bullet. Her back left the floor as she pitched up into the air for an instant. She hit the ground with a final gasp and died. Her head turned, looking towards the bathroom, where the tub was just beginning to overflow.
Too bad, Chris reflected, as he turned and left his ex-workmate.
*-*-*-*
Back in the office, Riory wore a black band for a week after the sad death of Sonya Finch. At the funeral, he took Chris Chapter aside, and whispered just a few words. That night, Chris left for Detriot.
*-*-*-*
Lena was picked up at seven thirty by a cab which took her to the customer's hotel room. She played games with her cab driver, adjusting her bikini top to give him a flash of her boobs just as he was approaching the Intersection. They almost crashed. Lena laughed. The driver said she was mad. She just shrugged. 'Maybe.'
When she got out of the cab, she paid the driver with a sheaf of bills she pulled out of the front of her satin hotpants. He watched them come out, and watched them go in again, and he licked his lips when she caught his eye.
'You wanna piece of me?' she smiled, and her expression was suddenly dangerous, like a shark's grin. 'You couldn't afford it, bucko! Now take a hike!'
She adjusted her short black denim top, hitched up the knee-length boot on her right leg, and then moved towards the hotel lobby. Almost immediately, a snooty doorman blocked her way.
'I'm afraid we don't allow your... type... in here.'
Lena looked at him, with a crazy eye. 'Want me to break your fingers, fly-boy, one by one? 'Cos I could do it, and I'd smile while I was doing it, too.'
'You're not coming in.'
'Well now. Which one first?'
Suddenly there was a faltering, nervous presence. Lena looked up unblinkingly at the hotel manager. The doorman saluted as his boss spoke.
'Let her in George. I'm sure she means no harm. Just wants a drink, right?'
Lena frowned, looked between the two men. 'Nah. I'm going to go and be fucked by someone.'
The doorman began to speak, and the manager interrupted. 'Just... let her go, George.'
Lena's fingers pushed folded money into the manager's waistcoat. 'Thanks, cuddles. See you next Tuesday, yeah?'
She left them behind her, sweeping into the hotel as if she owned it. Lift to the third floor, eighth room to the left, knock on the door.
'Er, yeah?'
'Room service,' Lena called quietly. She was in the customer's hearing now, and the game changed. Slowly the door opened a crack. 'I'm Lena,' she said, appealing to the eye and half a nose that appeared and swiftly sped up her thighs, naked belly, bulging cleavage then face. 'Oh. Maybe I've got the wrong room.'
As she turned to go, the door opened. A man stood there, in a backwards baseball cap, black T-shirt, blue jeans. He looked embarrassed, and Lena felt immediately comfortable. This she could handle.
'No, er... Sorry. It's just that this is my first time.'
'That's okay,' she soothed. 'Can I come in?'
'Sure.'
The room looked like any one of a thousand others. Been here before... she told herself.
'What do you want me to do?' she asked, trying to put on that little-girl-lost virgin voice that always enabled her to add on another twenty bucks. She threw her black jacket onto the bed nearest the door, and then did her pouty-swimsuit-model face.
'Undress,' he said quickly. 'Get into bed?'
'Sure thing, honey.'
She felt his eyes on her as she bent down - showing off the peach-like curves of a perfect butt - and unzipped the boots. Lena stepped out of them, and then deliberately twitched her left breast out of the bikini top. 'Ooh, silly me!' she stammered. She looked over to see if the man was looking.
He was fiddling with some sex aid, a big black thing. Lena wished she had her glasses with her to make out what model it was, and where she was supposed to put it. Still, sounding new to the game always worked, and ignorance in this case would be easy! And anyway, the glasses would just ruin her career anyway.
'Keep going,' he said sheepishly.
Lena hauled off the hotpants, and danced around in the black string bikini left. Her naked breast jiggled with the movement. What a sucker, she was thinking, as he continue to play with his toy. Probably just bought it, still trying to work out where the batteries went!
The top went to the floor next, a tangle of threads and triangles. Finally, she stepped out of the briefs and turned to him. A flash of irritation went through her, as he was still messing around with his aid. Some men!
'Do you like what you see?' she asked. He nodded, realised he hadn't really looked, so had a glance before nodding again.
In an increasing temper, Lena got into bed, covering herself completely with the cold sheets. One last attempt at patience, then she was really gonna lose it:
'Put that thing away,' she said with a tolerant voice that took a lot of work. She opened the sheets, and then her legs in unmistakable invitation. How dumb could this guy be? 'Come join me.' She even managed a fond smile, folding her arms behind her head, looking up at him as if she wanted him.
Then he swung the toy up into his hands, and she suddenly realised what it was!
Lena sat up in horror. As her client's finger closed around the trigger, and the explosive, strobe-like flashes flared from the machine gun's silenced muzzle, Lena felt time slow around her. She could see tiny, individual details like never before. The spent cartridges, spinning from the gun. The determined expression on the killer's face. The way even his strong arms fought against the kicking recoil of the gun.
And then her flesh was spitting open. It began underneath her belly button, a button-sized hole suddenly there, spitting out blood with anger. Then there was a second, just above it, then another, then another, then...
She tried to scream, but all that came was a fuzzy "NNNnnnnnn!" of agony which didn't even sound like her.
Lena could feel each sizzling penetration of her stomach and chest, of bullets shattering bones and tearing her insides apart. She flailed backwards and upwards, a single, powerful convulsion from which she was thrown bonelessly down onto the bed as if from a great height. The mattress shook under her, trying to pitch her back up. Gravity and the impacts fought against each other in a brief battle that shook her breasts and the pillows beneath her head.
*-*-*-*
Chris Chapter looked down at his handiwork - a naked woman, with a slightly off-centre row of nine raw buttons up her birthday suit. Only after he'd retrieved the bullet casings did the blood really begin to show, a dark stain blossoming out across the sheets beneath the executed hooker in a gigantic, girl-sized bloom.
He laughed to himself. Room service would really take some work to get THAT straight.
*-*-*-*
The Los Angeles hotel room looked the same as the Detroit one. Ironic, because when the call girl knocked on the door, she looked the same as the Detroit one too.
'Hi....!' the girl drawled. 'I'm Laura.' She wore a cream-coloured silk wrap, beneath which the lines and discolouring of jet black lingerie could be seen. Chris Chapter nodded, then gestured her in.
'I've just got in,' he explained, as she slid the wrap from her shoulders and dropped it like a liquid onto the corner of the bed. Underneath, she looked wonderful, curves in all the right places, and a cleavage which a Wonderbra had turned into a deep valley of bulging flesh. It was a slight disappointment when she unhooked the garment to discover that she was smaller breasted than had appeared. But then, her clone-twin had been this size, so he shouldn't have been surprised.
'I'll just finish shaving.' He moved into the tiny bathroom, and closed the door after him. Plugged into the socket was an electric razor. And beside it, the gleaming black shape of his silenced pistol.
*-*-*-*
Laura looked idly around the room. She sat on the bed as the whine of a shaver started up, and her eyes settled on the bulging shape of this guy's travel bag. She crouched over it, unzipping and searching through.
No travellers cheques, no credit cards, nor even any dough. Jeez. She found some papers and drew them out.
It was a photograph of herself, though it called her Lena. There was another, slightly different angle, but they'd got the name right this time. What the hell? At the top of the page was a single word.
'Proteus...?'
The shaver had stopped. She realised it too late. The man was standing in the doorway, and the shape he held was unmistakably a silenced pistol. Laura dropped the papers to the floor, and backed away, towards the bed. Maybe she could still entice him...
'I just um...' Her hands gestured out wildly, nervously. 'Put the gun down? Please?' She tried to give her words some confidence by placing her hands on her hips. It didn't convince.
The man lunged forwards, levelling the gun and sighting up on her heart, then swinging the gun downwards. What the-
TEWP!
Blood blurted out of the large hole at the top of her right buttock, as a bullet opened up a wound in her belly and sped straight through her. She gave a grunt of annoyance and pain, thrown off-balance and backwards, staggering a little closer to the bed. Somehow she stayed on her feet, looking down at the wound in disbelief. There was anger building inside her. She turned to the man-
TEWP!
The second wound found her in the centre of her stomach, just above her briefs. Again, she felt it sizzle through her, and this time the grunt of pain was louder and more urgent. She was thrown backwards onto the bed, where she just about managed to struggle upright on one arm.
Laura's breath came as angry, deep inhalations, like a mother in a hospital. She gave birth to a curse, spitting over clenched teeth.
'You... prick...'
She could feel the sheer fury inside her, fighting away with nothing to connect to, an engine over-revving in neutral, unable to move. She wanted to speak again, to at least show some resistance, but-
TEWP!
The bullet tore into her right breast, and threw her back against the bed cover as if slapped there. She gave a cry of pain, but the fight was seeping out of her through the three holes behind her. Laura lay there, feebly trying to move, floating on a stormy sea of pain and dizzying images. Somewhere there, amongst the churning waves, she could see someone who looked just like her, and some other woman, all three of them standing in something like a lab on TV. Where was that? Was that her?
Every breath was the fortunate, precious result of a last gasp. She turned her head, seeing the man coming over to her. She wanted to rage at him. She wanted to snap his fucking neck! But she couldn't even move her hands, raised above her head like she was surrendering!
The silencer was positioned with a business-like movement, right over her heart. All she could do was watch her death approaching in a whitening knuckle.
TEWP!
'Uggggh!' The pain exploded as something dazzlingly white and searingly hot. She quaked once, and then Laura couldn't move, couldn't do anything except go limp. Through the blinds of the window, she could see the lights of the airport. And then the blinds closed.
Too much: no light. No-
-Ugh.
*-*-*-*
Chris Chapter left as soon as his work was done. He phoned through to Riory's private number, and waited for an answer.
'Riory.'
'It's done. I've just popped the last one now.'
'Excellent work, Chris. Only you've not quite finished.'
'Oh?'
'I've got an address for Phillipa Hennington. The original head of Project Proteus? Deal with her, okay. Then we're done.'
*-*-*-*
Phillipa stirred. A noise had awoken her. She sat up in bed, the sheets sliding away from her naked form, and ran a hand through her short brown hair. The sun was bright for this time... Jesus, it was nearly eleven! She couldn't believe she'd slept this long. And they had doubted at work that she needed a holiday?
She got up, walked to the kitchen and turned the kettle on. The mountains above the cabin gleamed white and blue in the sunlight. Down below her, the trees and bushes merged into one. From up here they looked like some thick fur.
Then she heard the noise again. Something from the deck at the front of the cabin. She looked outside, and relaxed, dropping back the wrap that she'd been about to put on.
'You don't mind nudity, do you?' Phillipa laughed quietly, to the shape of the deer that had found its way onto the platform. The beautiful creature looked up at her.
'Ah no,' she told it, 'the Bambi thing just won't work with me. You get your food in the woods, like you're supposed to. Go on. Shoo!'
At her flapping hands, the deer took off, and she felt a twinge of shame at having scared it so much. Something gleamed down in the woods below the platform. She turned to look.
And the silenced rifle, which had its crosshairs focused on her belly, fired twice upon discovery.
TEWP! TEWP!
Two holes took Phillipa Hennington in the bottom of the stomach. She was snatched backwards and dashed against the wall of her cabin, giving a grunting groan of complete incomprehension: someone was shooting her? What? Why?
She looked down at the feebly pumping holes, and then at the white garden table in front of her. There were two glossy patches of blood on there. The realisation that it was her blood suddenly made the connection in her brain: someone WAS trying to kill her! She tried to call out, but it was as if they'd put something in her throat, some obstruction through which her voice could do nothing more than gasp and cry.
She began to move a hand towards the holes, both bleeding into her pubic hair with an increasing flow. It hurt, as if she'd been sliced open and burnt at the same time.
TEWP!
Her right breast violently twitched and Phillipa felt herself thrown back against the wall again, with breath punched out of her throat in a cry of pain. Another bullet hole had opened in her skin, this time in her right boob. She could feel the hole it had opened in her back, raw and cold in the mountain air.
She stayed against the wall, using it to keep her upright, a dizzy panicking brain trying to work out what to do, why this was being done to her-
It gave enough time for the gunman to alter his position, aim again, and draw the crosshairs exactly over her heart. It became a shot even a child could have done.
TEWP!
Phillipa's Halloween groaning paused for an agonised "hup!" of impact, and then began again as she felt herself slide towards the dusty cabin deck, leaving a broad red trail on the white-washed wall behind her. She struck the floor and died, just as blood - and a word, "Proteus" - bubbled up on her lips.
*-*-*-*
The laboratory of industrial giant RevCo stood empty, apart from the shape of four upright metal coffins linked together, which occupied a raised platform in the centre.
Evadne Wordsworth peered up at the shapes, itching at her shoulder under the labcoat. The door opened, and she smiled sadly at the newcomer.
'I'm afraid it's true, Geoffrey,' she told him. 'Phillipa was found dead this morning. They can't say who did it, just that it seemed to be a hit, or something.'
The man joined her, looking at the coffin-shapes too.
'Frankly, she was becoming a liability,' he spat. 'She'd done her work. All that fussing about accelerated growth side-effects... Pah!' He pressed a single button on the platform's control panel. The coffins swung open.
Inside, the four revealed figures were all the same, naked but for ID bracelets on their wrists. The tags named them with code words, so that identities were irrelevant.
But they looked exactly like two hookers, found shot dead the week before in their hotel rooms.