Deathstalker

happy for a chance to bring down Wormboy Hell.'

Finlay looked at her steadily. I thought you said I was your life. 'You've lost someone to Silo Nine, haven't you? Someone close.'

'Yes. We all have. She was my friend, before I was a clone and after. She helped brief me on taking over as Evangeline. The only person I could ever really talk to. They came for her in the early hours of the morning, and I never saw her again. Daddy tried to find out what had happened to her, for fear she'd talk, but even he couldn't get answers about what happens to people inside Wormboy Hell.'

Evangeline fell silent, and Finlay couldn't think of anything to say. They looked across at Hood, who was talking persuasively again.

'I've managed to infiltrate some of my own people into the incoming security forces, and I've convinced some of the braver cyberats to run a jamming storm to coincide with our attack. They'll run interference while we get our people out and keep security from calling for outside help.'

'All right,' said the hog. 'We're convinced. Set things in motion. We'll spread word throughout the esper network. You organize the clone forces. We'll begin our attack on Silo Nine in one hour from now. Get moving.'

Hood nodded quickly with his empty cowl, turned away without acknowledging Evangeline and Finlay, and strode quickly out of the chamber. Finlay looked at Evangeline.

'This is all happening a bit fast for me. You're really going to launch an attack on a maximum security prison just on that man's word?'

'Of course. We trust Hood. We've been given good reason to in the past. And we've had plans for an attack for years, ready to take advantage of any opportunity that arose.

We've dreamed of this for a long time, Finlay. A lot of blood debts are going to be settled today.'

'But what if it all goes wrong?'

'Then it goes wrong! We can't miss out on a chance like this; it might not come again for decades. You can't conceive what it's like in that hellhole, Finlay. None of us can.'

'That's not strictly true,' said the abstract pattern in a cool, expressionless voice. Looking at it too closely made Finlay's head ache, so he looked at it sideways and concentrated on the voice as it continued. 'We have contact with one of our people in Silo Nine. She volunteered to be captured and sent there. We spent some time preparing her so that she would appear to break under their interrogation, but still keep the deepest part of herself free and separate. We can listen in, but we can't speak to her. She knew she was almost certainly going to her death, but she still volunteered, just on the chance that we might be able to make use of her. She was ready to wait for years, if need be. Have you ever cared about anything that strongly in your life, Finlay Campbell?'

'I put my life on the line every time I entered the Arena,' said Finlay. 'But that was just for me. I never cared about anyone except me, until I met Evangeline, and then I only cared about us. Maybe that's changing now. I don't know. I'm still coming to terms with… everything. I can't really understand what life has been like for you.'

Then let us show you, said the esper leaders, and their thoughts swept over Finlay's mind like an irresistible tide of blinding light. He was torn away in a rush of thoughts and images, and all he could do was go along with it. He could feel Evangeline's presence beside him in the churning maelstrom, and that comforted him. He stopped trying to fight it and allowed the esper leaders to take him where they would. He listened, and after a while, thoughts came to him that were not his own.

Jenny Psycho wasn't her real name, but she had to give that up when she went undercover. She lost a great deal more when the Empire threw her into Wormboy Hell, but she somehow held onto her real name and kept it safe, one last secret hidden deep inside her, where her torturers couldn't find it. Not even Wormboy himself. To them, she was still Jenny Psycho, captured terrorist. Just as the esper leaders had planned, though she'd forgotten that. She'd forgotten a lot of things. It was the only way to survive.

She lay curled in a ball, naked and shivering, on the bare concrete floor of her cell. There was no furniture, or any other luxury, just four bare stone walls surrounding a space maybe twice the size of an average coffin, with a ceiling so low she couldn't stand upright without stooping. They'd dropped her in, sealed the lid shut, laughed, and then left her alone in the darkness. They dropped food and water in through a sliding vent in the ceiling, but no one ever talked to her.

Except Wormboy.

She knew she'd never be allowed out again until it was time to kill her, but she didn't know when that would be. So every time the guards came, she was afraid they'd come for her, and scrabbled back to press into a corner, as though she could hide from them. But they only dropped the food and water and went away. Sometimes it was hot and sometimes it was cold in the cell, but there was never any light. She had no idea what she looked like now, but it was probably pretty bad. She hadn't been able to wash in all the time she'd been there, however long that was. She'd tried counting the meals, but she soon lost track. There was a grille in the floor in one corner that served as a toilet, but not very well. Sometimes she heard things moving underneath it. Live things. Living off her.

Like Wormboy.

She used to scream a lot, but all that got her was a sore throat, so she stopped. She used to talk to herself, but she ran out of things to say. She still sang occasionally, as a small sign of defiance, but she was starting not to like the way her voice sounded. She smelt bad. The stench in her cell rose and fell just enough to keep her from getting used to it. She suspected that was deliberate. It was the sort of thing Wormboy would do.

They caught her easily. It seemed to her there was a reason for that, but she'd forgotten it. As a low-level esper, it had been her job to mentally test and examine babies developing in the womb to discover whether they had any trace of esp in them. If they did, they were either aborted or taken away at birth to begin a lifetime of training and conditioning. Depending on whether it was a useful kind of esp, of course. It wasn't a foolproof method, but it caught quite a few. The mothers all looked at her with the same controlled desperation, and she gave them all the same brief meaningless smile. And for a long time she just did her job, doing as she was told, as she'd been trained, but constant exposure to so many bright, innocent unsullied minds was finally too much for her. She began using her talents to conceal the babies' esp. It wasn't difficult. The esper abilities would still appear in later life, but at least that way they had a chance at a safe, normal, free life. Security found out. She hadn't tried that hard to conceal it. Defiance, perhaps, or maybe some last trace of her own conditioning. Or something else that she'd forgotten. Either way, they caught her.

And now here she was, alone in the dark with a worm in her head, down in Wormboy Hell.

Light began seeping into her cell from somewhere. A sickly yellow light that made her think of disease and decay. In it, she could see the sores and scabs on her blotched skin. The smell was suddenly thick and choking, and her stomach heaved painfully though there was nothing in it. And there in the cell with her, crawling out of the shadows in splashes of bloody amniotic fluid, came the babies. Bald and pudgy, with barely formed arms and legs, they crawled over and around her, a living carpet of unforgiving flesh. Unfinished fetuses squirmed spasmodically on the concrete floor, trying to squeeze in between her and the floor, as though trying to crawl back into the wombs from which they'd been prematurely torn.

She wanted to love them all, poor blameless innocents, but she knew what was coming next. They came from Wormboy. Teeth appeared in all the babies' mouths, sharp, jagged teeth thrusting up through torn bloody gums, and slowly, deliberately, they began to eat her alive. Jenny always swore that this time she wouldn't scream, but she always did in the end. Teeth ripped at her flesh as she screamed and screamed, and blood ran down to pool thickly on the floor. As the pain and the horror mounted, pudgy fingers began to pry at her squeezed-shut eyelids to get at the eyes beneath, and even though she knew none of it was real. Jenny Psycho screamed and screamed until her throat was raw.

Wormboy did so like his little games. And mindgames were the best fun of all.

* * *

Fat and wide and greasy like a slug, genetically-engineered to never sleep or waver in his duty, Wormboy filled an entire auditorium from wall to wall; vast acres of pale, faintly luminescent flesh that rippled and folded in upon itself. His bulk covered all the floor, and his huge distorted head pressed against the ceiling. Long tubes entered his body here and there, providing nourishment and removing wastes. He could never have eaten enough to satisfy his enormous appetite. His body's needs were taken care of by the authorities so that his mind could roam free across the prison. Wormboy's parents had been normal enough humans, but he had been designed and