Rated R for general adult themes & language, violence, nudity, some m/f sex (eventually), and a whole lotta angst.
SUMMARY: Earth has broken with the U.P., the Legion has been harassed and disbanded, and Dirk Morgna has formed a devil’s alliance with an increasingly reactionary and totalitarian Earthgov. Now an old friend has come to him with a story of horror he doesn't want to believe, and a plea for help he can't ignore.
*****
PART ONE: Sanctuary
*****
She didn't know how long she' been wandering the streets. Two, maybe three days, she thought, but it was only a guess. Her memory came and went, leaving just enough sense intact for her to manage to keep a low profile amongst the crowds. Although she had only a vague notion of what she looked like, she knew enough to realize that she blended in well with the rest of the people on the street--a single, thin figure in an overlarge coat, threading her way unsteadily through the city. She probably looked like another one of the newly homeless and unemployed, drunk on Silverale or some more sinister substance, lost in the bitterly cold winter with the rest of the poor.
Memories seeped back into her over those days. Somehow, the cold and the ache of hunger made her mind sharper, forced it to try and make sense of things, to piece together some coherent picture of where she’d come from and where she was going. By the third day--or the fourth, was it?--she realized with sudden clarity that she was going somewhere. She had been all along, following a path with the instinct of a migrating heron, a path that ended abruptly one morning when she stood squinting in the sunlight that spilled over familiar white-gold towers.
As she stared over the ugly, barbed cordon which blocked the complex from the rest of Weisinger Plaza, the final floodgate in her mind burst open. She sagged onto a curbstone across from the building, shaking, as her memories began to fall into place, strand by ragged strand.
*****
"You can't be serious!"
Dirk ignored the woman as he anxiously eyed the workmen who maneuvered his new furniture dangerously close to the large glass cube that dominated the center of the living room. "Hey! Watch it! Those are fragile!" he yelled, motioning them toward the back of the house.
The men cast dark glances at him and gently glided the sofa on its floating casters toward the back bedroom, making an exaggerated effort to keep well away from the aquarium. Dirk frowned and inspected his new school of Venturan spicefish critically to assure himself they hadn't been distressed by the near impact. "Sheez...I'd have gotten better work done if I'd hired straight off the streets."
The woman flicked the exhausted butt of a cigarette onto his floor, narrowly missing the hand-woven Talokian carpet. She lit a second without breaking rhythm, rolling it between forefinger and thumb nervously. "You actually walked right in there, without clearance, and carted them off?"
"Yes, I walked in there without clearance and carted them off," he said patiently, rounding the tank and ignoring her scowl. "Don't have kittens, Circe. It's not a big deal."
She stepped between him and the aquarium, her voice slapping him like an icy palm. "It sure as hell does matter! I vouched for you, goddammit, and the last thing Wellington needs to see is you waltzing back into your old clubhouse for a few souvenirs. What the hell were you thinking?!"
He met Circe’s eyes briefly. "I was thinking that there was no way I was going to watch those statues auctioned off to the highest bidder in some damn government auction." Dirk slid past her, more interested in watching the spicefish dance through their tiny seaweed bed. "Besides, I didn't take them for souvenirs. They're already en-route to Winath and I'd think Earthgov will be happy to have one less embarrassing Legion reminder around."
Circe flushed a deep shade of red and let out a sharp curse in an obscure Terran dialect. Dirk turned and put his hands on her shoulders. "Look, I didn't do it to get you in trouble--or me either, for that matter. I've never been told not to go back there, and I am on the president's staff, and as the only ex-Legionnaire on Earth who's not in jail or on the lam, I have at least some legal claim to custody, don't I? Hell, Circe, I did think about these things."
She relaxed a little, still glaring at him. "You know what I mean, Dirk. You know how important appearances are right now. Especially for Wellington's staff.”
He twitched his mouth in a cynical smile. "Right. I wouldn't want to make things difficult for Wellington's-s s-s-staff," he hissed.
Her mouth dropped open and for a moment she actually went speechless. Then she brought her face close to his and her voice was so tight he could have reached into the air and snapped each word in two. "Don't." Circe whispered fiercely. "Don't ever say that again!"
She turned on her heel and stalked out, both of them oblivious to the workmen eavesdropping from the back rooms. It wasn't until much later that Dirk would realize she had not given him a threat that day, but a warning.
*****
She remembered this much: The day she resigned it had been raining. Raining like she'd never seen it before on this world. The clouds had gathered with unprecedented force, tearing apart the heavens and forcing torrents of water into the streets of the city. People were saying it was the fault of the failure of the planetary climate control systems, that the Earth was releasing decades of frustrated energy after the ill-conceived attempts of its inhabitants to micromanage its ecosystem.
Not that she had cared at the time. Drake was dead. The writing, as they said, was on the wall. The Legion was heading into hard times, and she did not have the strength to join them. She couldn't stay on Earth. And as blasphemous as it sounded, she couldn't bring herself to return to Starhaven, to face her family and her Clan with no mate and no livelihood. So she'd left her resignation with Sun Boy and dutifully reported to the Presidential Offices' Oversight Committee to officially register her departure from the Legion and from Earth. And then...
Blessed Mother! If only she'd known what would happen then, she would've taken to the skies and streaked straight back home, to hell with the consequences. But nothing could have prepared her for what happened next.
"Excuse me, Ma'am. Do you have any business here?"
The voice cut through her thoughts like a knife. She scrambled up, eyeing the figure beside her warily. It was an SP officer--or an SPE, she corrected herself. His visor was up, examining her politely but with slight suspicion. She reflexively clutched her coat tight, stammering. "Uh...I was just...resting..."
"Well, I'm sorry ma'am, but this is a public place. No loitering allowed. You'll need to move along." He was scrutinizing her more carefully now, eyes drifting past her to the old Headquarters building. She tried not to panic.
"I-I'm sorry," she blurted out. "I'm sorry, I'm leaving now." She turned and walked away as quickly as she could without breaking into a mad dash. She could feel him staring at her until, mercifully, she was out of the Plaza.
She went everywhere she could think of, but nothing was the same, and nothing was safe. Brande's old conglomerate had been turned into an Earthgov customs office. The SPs--or SPEs, or whatever they called themselves now--were out of the question. Even if Shvaughn or Gigi or one of the other people she knew was still around, she wasn't about to go near any police officer again. They were the ones who'd razed her only shelter and forced her onto the street in the first place.
The day was short and the sunlight soon began fading yet again. She found a secluded overhang beneath an abandoned office complex and sank to the ground, pulled her knees up to her chest and braced her back against the ice-cold wall. The thought of spending yet another night on the street made her fragile resolve crumple as surely as the fragments of her tracking sense had faded when she'd seen the deserted Headquarters that morning.
She rested her chin on her knees and peered out through the dim light at the skyline, wondering where she was. She grinned suddenly at the realization. She was lost! The galaxy's finest tracker, navigatrix unparalleled, was lost in the middle of downtown Metropolis, not ten kilometers from where she'd lived and worked for over five years! She started to giggle out loud--a little crazily, but what the hell? It was the first truly funny thing she'd heard since before this whole nightmare had begun.
When she got control of herself, she inched up slowly, closing her eyes and letting her mind drift into the night. At the back of her brain, some twinge of recognition, a trace of someone or something she knew, was still there, active, like a blazing star in this black urban void. Her eyes snapped open and she was scanning the skyline, the nearby buildings, and then suddenly something clicked. An old, if not exactly comfortable sense of familiarity shot through her like one of Garth's lightning bolts, and she straightened up with a jerk, focusing on a nearby tier of rooftops.
Of course! Why hadn't she thought of him before. She'd seen his face somewhere this past week, maybe on an ad or something. She couldn't be certain he still lived nearby, but it was the only thing her muddled brain could think of for the moment, so she lurched unsteadily away from the building, catching herself before she fell forward. Damn! She wondered if she'd ever be able to walk straight. That was almost the worst part of being crippled. She kept trying to counterbalance for the phantom weight of muscles long gone, and she could still feel the familiar warmth of feathers cupping her body from shoulder to calf.
Fortunately, the walk to his old neighborhood was short, and the tier of apartments easy to find. The large common area at the back of the complex, littered with trash and only three private vehicles, said that very few still lived in this once popular neighborhood. She was glad for that, figuring that security would be light and no one would see her--but then again, who'd be following another sick vagrant?
To both her trepidation and relief, she saw a light shining on the ground floor at the southeast corner of the building. She reached the small gated garden at the rear of the apartment and stopped for a moment, trying to get a better idea of what she was walking into. He was there, and alone. But though his sense was familiar, it was also strangely foreboding, and for a moment she almost faltered.
But if she stayed on the streets much longer she'd be recognized and caught and returned, and she'd quite literally be damned if that happened to her a second time. She entered the gate, watched a silhouette move behind the glass doors, wondering if the man inside here was the man she'd known before. And then she inhaled deeply, steeled herself and stepped toward the light.
*****
Dirk went to the French doors when he heard a rapping at the glass. He wondered who it was, and why they weren't using the intercom. It couldn't have been Circe, because though he'd deliberately not given her a key to the place, he knew it would only take her seconds to bypass the lock and walk in unannounced.
"Hello?" he said into the com. He drew the blinds and peered out. The overhead light had come on automatically but didn't reveal anyone. Dirk opened the doors, stepped onto the patio. "Hello? Anybody there?"
There was a rustling near the gate, a shadow moving. Dirk tweaked his power, a little rusty from disuse, and flooded the small garden with a dim white glow. Someone fell back against the wall, gasping, as the light startled him or her.
Her, he realized, and stared, mouth dropping open. At first he was sure he was mistaken. The person was familiar, yes, but not that familiar. She was too gaunt and gray, and there was the awkward way she was standing, hunched over, like she was about to fall forward at any moment. But he was sure it must be her.
"Dawnstar?" he said, in pure disbelief.
"I...I didn't know where else to go," she said. "When I saw the Legion had been shut down, and everyone gone..." Dirk didn't move, just kept staring. Something was wrong, something in the way she hunkered down next to the wall, pulling the coat tight over her shoulders.
"Dawn..." He didn't know what to say. She moved forward unsteadily, as if she were drunk, stumbling into full view in the light spilling through the glass doors. She fell straight into him and he caught her, holding her clumsily out at arm's length.
And then it hit him. He couldn't believe how long it had taken it to register. The plain brown serge coat was pulled tight, flat over her back. He stared at it stupidly, resisting the urge to run his hand over her spine, afraid of what he would--or, more precisely, would not--feel.
"What...happened?" he said, his throat tight, unable to pull his eyes away from where her shoulder blades poked through the thin fabric. She turned her face away and pulled back from him, as if she were trying to decide whether or not to bolt.
With his head whirring like a turbine, Dirk took her arm and led her gently into the house. He guided her to the couch and turned to the kitchen, mind still darting and clicking foolishly. "Do you want something to drink?" he said, aware of how ridiculous that sounded, as if it were the old times and she were an early arrival to a party. She sat rigid as a board, still hugging herself tightly, eyes shooting around the room, searching for hidden dangers. When she seemed satisfied that there were none, she slowly let herself fall back and relax.
"I...I think I'm hungry." She unbuttoned the coat to reveal a threadbare jumper. Looking down at herself, the corners of her mouth actually twitched in something resembling a smile. "Yes, I definitely need to eat something." She slid the coat off and Dirk tried unsuccessfully not to stare. "I look that bad?"
He shook his head. "No. No, it's just..." She closed her eyes, and sank further into the couch. "You're a terrible liar." She sighed deeply, her breath rattling her lungs like an asthmatic's. "And you were always so good with flattery. I must look worse than I feel if even you can't come up with anything."
Dirk fixed two mugs of coffee and found some prepackaged sandwiches in a cabinet. He sat down across from her in a round, hovering chair, put the food between them on a low table. "I'm sorry, I just didn't expect...God, you look like you've been through hell."
"Yeah, well, that's about right." He didn't respond, only watched her as she ate the sandwich in small bites, swallowing slowly, as if she were testing each bit of it. She took the coffee the same way, but seemed to gain some natural color as the food and caffeine entered her system.
Dirk waited until she was finished, poured them both a second cup. "Dawn, please...what's happened to you?"
Her sunken eyes snapped to his and just as quickly slid back to her coffee cup. She didn't say anything, but suddenly the meter and a half between them swelled to a black chasm, and he heard a voice echoing from within.
(Don't you know? Can't you guess? You DO know you sonofabitch, don't you? The stories, the rumors, too many, too detailed to be untrue. Why the hell do you think so many of us are underground or gone missing?)
But he could not, he would not, think about that.
"I saw you on a public vid," she said, as if she'd never heard his question. "Some kind of government announcement. You work for them now?"
He cleared his throat. "I work for Earthgov," he said casually. "I signed on last year--PR, public liaison, that sort of thing. It's a good job, and I really think it's the best place for me to be right now." Even as he heard the words tumble out, he realized how foolish they sounded--a rationalization, an explanation. But why? Why was he trying to explain himself to her?
A realization was creeping up on him, something he did not want to face but that he could not ignore. He began slowly. "I thought...I thought you'd left Earth after you quit--uh, resigned. What happened?"
She downed the second cup of coffee, set it on the table between them with a decisive clink. Her mouth trembled, and she seemed to be trying to say something and then deciding against it. Instead, she turned her head away, twisting to one side and shoving the jumper down to expose her left clavicle. Nested in the hollow of her shoulder was a small red tattoo beneath a freshly healing circular wound, the place where the recently-adopted SPE prisoner tracking chip would have been implanted.
Shit! His first vague ideas--of her being another homeless straggler, searching out an old friend for a place to stay--they were ridiculous and he knew it. Why the hell would she be here, in this condition, with her skills and her old career calling for her, unless she'd been imprisoned, kidnapped, stolen... His mind began whirring again. Circe, Wellington, the thin robed figures in Wellington’s office with their goddam disks and lisping synthesized voices, the contract--
(Any action by employee that grants comfort, aid, or support to opponents of this government will be considered a breach and grounds for termination.)
He dropped his coffee in his lap and would've been burned if he hadn't been immune to such things.
"Oh God, you were in prison?!" She sat bolt upright on the couch and her face drained of the little color it had regained. "Prison? Is that what they're calling it now?! My god, Dirk--I was in a...a...damned tank...in a...oh god...I don't even know...I don't even know how long..." She gasped, slid heavily to the floor and broke into deep, ragged sobs, grabbing the discarded coat from the couch and clutching it around her body like a shield.
He didn't want to touch her, as if somehow this whole nightmare would dissolve into so many loose atoms if he didn't lay a hand on her and make it real. But before he knew it he was stroking her back, trying to comfort her, when he realized in horror that his hand was running over ridges of what could only be scar tissue. He pulled away abruptly.
"C'mon," he said. "You need to get cleaned up and get some sleep right now. Let's worry about the rest later."
She didn't speak, but stopped crying as he led her toward the bathroom. "You'll be OK?" he said to the hollow eyes. "I'll get you some clean clothes and I'll be right outside if you need anything."
Nodding silently, she turned away toward the shower, shedding her worn, ill-fitting jumper as if he weren't even there. He winced and quickly shut the bathroom door, dropped into a chair outside, trying to forget what he'd just seen.
Dawnstar had been a stunning woman. Though a somewhat skinny, slightly gawky adolescent when she'd first come to the Legion, within a year she'd grown into a gorgeous, long-legged creature with sleek ebony hair and cheekbones that even Nura had envied. The notorious aloofness, snobbery really, only enhanced her appeal, but she was one woman Dirk had always held his tongue around. He'd told himself it was so he wouldn't piss off Wildfire, but it was mostly because he was uncertain of how his usual charms would register within those controlled gray eyes.
But now...Oh, dear God! Dirk slumped down further in the chair, clenching his eyes tightly shut, trying to force the picture from his mind. She had no muscle tone, no body fat, was almost literally nothing but skin and bones. A series of lesions ran up her arms, legs and spine, and ugly white scars covered her back from waist to shoulder blades. He felt sick, and the implications of it pounded at the edge of his awareness like a mob trying to storm a fortress.
(prison? is that what they're calling it now?!)
No, that's not what they were calling it. They weren't calling it anything at all, because as far as they were concerned, it didn't exist. It never had. There was no series of laboratories hidden in the bowels of this city, staffed by Dominion scientists whose unwilling subjects had their bodies torn apart, flesh from bone, gene by gene. And definitely, and without a shadow of a doubt, there were no tanks full of viscous liquid in which living beings were immersed, awake, in terror, pinioned to organic machines which vivisected them slowly in body and mind.
"Dirk?"
He looked up suddenly and realized that the bathroom door had opened. She was standing there, wrapped in a towel, water dripping from her short cropped hair.
"Oh, god, I'm sorry," he said, scrambling up. "I forgot to get you something to wear." He almost sprinted into the bedroom--anything to get away from the sight of her--and he rummaged through an moving crate half-full of new clothing. All he could find was a long-sleeved tunic. It would be huge on her, but at least it was clean and fairly warm.
When he came back out she was standing naked in the middle of the living room, staring into the heart of his aquarium at the spicefish as they darted through their synthetic habitat.
(i was in a damned tank)
He looked at the floor when he handed her the tunic. "Dawn," he began, broken-voiced, broken-hearted. "I didn't--I mean--"
She dressed in silence, facing him, perhaps defying him to say anything more. Dirk sagged back onto the couch, mouth dry, mind whirring in overdrive, trying to come up with reasons, excuses, mitigating factors, anything--
"I..." Dirk finally worked some spit into his mouth so he could speak. "I swear to God, I didn't know. But I...heard stories. Rumors."
Her voice was so quiet that he could barely hear her. "But you didn't believe them." "No." His vision blurred slightly. And then, complete honesty: "I didn't want to."
He waited for the railing, the screaming, the reproach. But when only silence followed he looked up at her, and was stunned to see Dawnstar nodding slowly. Her eyes met his without a hint of accusation. "Yes," she said softly. "I wouldn't have wanted to either."
He stared at the reflection of the aquarium on the far wall. The fuzzy gray forms of spicefish passed one another like wraiths in shimmering watery shadows--strange shapes, almost monstrous. He blinked, and found that his eyes were dryer than his mouth had been. It was as if something was sucking all the moisture from his body, leaving him dehydrated and crumbling like a husk.
"Sun Boy?" She knelt by him, touched him on the arm. He jumped and looked back at her, blinking several times to see clearly again. Dawnstar clasped her hands on her knees, staring at him with the raw earnest eyes of a child. "I know this is awkward. I don't want to put you in a dangerous situation, but I don't know where else to go."
Below the wraith-shadows of the fish and the water sat a carved mahogany table, and on the table was the com unit, the new one with all the most recent upgrades and whistles and bells. And with the direct line to Wellington's office and SPE central and Circe's private quarters.
His mind was whirring again, desperate for a solution that would solve everything. Maybe he could talk to Wellington. Maybe she didn't know about this. Maybe they were only supposed to use cadavers and nonsentients for this research and some Dominion scientist had gone nuts and overstepped his bounds and this was all a horrible, shameful mistake that those damn diskheads would crawl over themselves to apologize for. Maybe he could tell them he'd be fully responsible for her and she could be released into his custody, all nice and legal and above-board until he could get her safely expedited back to Starhaven. Maybe--
(maybe you're a goddam coward, dirk, and maybe you've gotten in over your pretty red head and maybe, just maybe, you should remember what made you save those damn statues in the first place)
He let out a sigh so deep that it hurt. He hadn't realized he'd been holding his breath. Dawnstar was still kneeling there, waiting. He leaned forward and gingerly put his hand over hers, squeezed them with fresh resolve.
"It'll be OK, Dawn. You can stay here until I find someplace safe for you. I don't know where, but I'll figure out something." He forced his eyes to meet hers. "I promise."
Meta:
Sun Boy: Dirk Morgna from Earth. Has solar powers to reflect light and heat. Classically, a noble and heroic Legionnaire, though prone to overachievement. Very much a ladies' man. Later written as more of a tragic self-serving character who collaborated with a Dominion-controlled Earthgov in the TMK stories.
Dawnstar, from Starhaven. A descendant of American Indian colonists of Starhaven, a word in the galactic core. Had wings & could fly unaided at super-speed and track & navigate with preternatural skill. In the TMK stories, Dawn had lost her wings as a result of possession by a predatory entity called "Bounty," which transformed her into a bloodthirsty gun-for-hire. The origin of this possession was never fully explained.
Circe. A creation of the TMK Legion. A corrupt Science-Police, Earth officer who slept with Dirk and convinced him to join Earthgov. A willing collaborator with the Dominion until almost the end of her life.
Some Backstory: The "statues" incident references the fact that the Ranzzes had the Legion memorial statues moved from Earth to their plantation on Winath. Drake "Wildfire" Burroughs (Dawnstar's human-as-energy-being lover) died in the Black Dawn crisis about a year and a half before this story commences. If you go by the timeline in the Gap-Era Mayfair Sourcebook, this story takes place in the winter of 2992-93.