This choice: Continue as Will Prescott • Go Back...Chapter #13Spoiler--2 by: Seuzz   The phone tweets, and a howling whirlwind erupts within your skull. You grab at the wall and sink to your knees at the reverberating chant: One moon, two minds, many faces. Our stars and your will. Your knees shake as you get back to your feet and take out the phone. "You're home," Joe chirps. "I saw the light—"
"And it didn't occur to you I might have company?"
"Oh. Do you have company?" he asks.
"Yeah, there's now two me sharing this brain. You should wait for my password, Joe. Now give me a moment." You take a deep breath. "Oh, fuck. As bad as the reintegrations are for me, I wonder how it's going to be for the Diana guys."
"Well, if we do this right, they'll never have to find out, will they? Steve says you were at a party. How was it? I bet they get up to some saucy orgies."
"Uh huh, I'll tell you about them when this is done. I think we can hit Chernov tonight. Make the call for me while I get myself over to the pad."
"Sure," he replies in a purring alto. "I don't get to flirt with guys often enough."
"That's your choice, Joe."
"Orientation's not a choice," he retorts.
"I didn't say it was. Following it is your choice. Anyway, give me thirty minutes to get over there," you continue before he come back with a clever retort, and hang up.
* * * * *
"I don't think Ms. Cooper's in town," the guard at the front desk says. "I haven't seen her in a week."
"She called me and said she was in."
"Hnh. Then I guess she got past me," he says, and indicates you can pass.
I bet Hannibal, his elephants, and most of the Alps could get past you, you think. You cross the lobby to the elevators and go up to the fifth floor.
The apartment your team rented under the name "Cindy Sonya Cooper" is clean, but you were careful to give it a "lived-in" look during your brief residency. You strip in the bedroom and put away your jeans and t-shirt and loafers, then shift from this male form—one of yours, not Kipper's—into that of Cindy Sonya Cooper, a waif-like twenty-five-year-old with short blonde hair chopped into spikes. The pseudonym notwithstanding, she doesn't much look like the "Cindy," the "Sonya" or the "Chelsea Cooper" girls you've known and panted after.
From the drawer you take out the night's disguise: a leather skirt, a white silk blouse, fishnet stockings, high heels, a wig made of long, thick, black hair, a leather jacket, and over-large sunglasses. The phone rings while you're prepping. "Boris say he is to meeting you at club across street," Joe tells you in a parody-Russian accent.
"He doesn't talk like that, Joe."
"Which is why he is to never catching moose and squirrel."
"If Frank's the moose, you're the squirrel."
"Just for that, I hope he Goldfingers you." The line goes dead. You finish dressing.
* * * * *
Chernov is big and pale and meaty, like a Great White shark that's been molded into human form. His blue eyes stare out from under a protuberant brow, and his blonde hair is shaved so close it looks like the fuzz on a peach. He wears heavy boots and dark jeans and a white muscle shirt under a leather jacket, and he stares at you hungrily from the pub doorway as you skip across the street toward him. His lips peel back, showing flat teeth as you pull up only a few feet from him. "When'd you get back?" he asks. "I missed you."
"I came back early," you say, then fall onto him as though yanked by a gravitational force. He crushes you in his arms. For a moment you pant at each other, letting your breath mix, then your mouth covers his and his mouth covers yours and you gnaw hungrily at each other. Your fingernails dig into the back of his neck as you devour him, and he grips your ass hard.
"Wanna drink?" he asks hoarsely.
"Yes, but at my— After—"
"After what?"
"I don't know, I can't think clearly." You clutch and knead at him with ardent fingers. "Just come back with me. We can talk afterward." You step back, pulling him. He follows, then hand in hand you're both running across the street to the apartment building. He holds you close, and you rub against him, in the corridor and in the elevator. He tries kissing the back of your neck—or gnawing at it, to be accurate—as you unlock the door, and when you get it open you turn, and with squeaks and groans kiss him hard while pulling him into the apartment. He kicks the door closed and picks you up; you wrap your legs about him and let him carry you into the bedroom, where he throws you onto the bed. With a low growl he looms over you.
"Just let me get out of this thing," you moan, fumbling at your skirt. "Let me up so—"
"No, I'll get it off. Or leave it on." He reaches under the hem.
You slap. "No, I can't mess it up." You squirm from under him, unzip the skirt, and slide it off. You clasp his face in your hands and kiss him and bring up a sigil on your tongue. He goes limp all over and sags onto the bed.
From the dresser drawer you draw two masks. While the first is inside him, you haul a golem out from under the bed, breaking a nail as you do so. After you've retrieved the first mask from Chernov's face you drop the second onto him. His form wavers, and resolves into the imago of the building's security guard. "Get changed," you tell him. "Uniform's in the second drawer down." He quietly complies.
Meanwhile, you place Chernov's mask on the golem, and point it toward Chernov's clothes. "Get up. Get dressed. Leave your feet bare, then follow me." While the golem preps, you step into the bathroom, where you turn on the sink and splash water over the tile floor; into the puddle you drop a sliver of soap. When the Chernov golem comes in, you carefully position him by the sink, tugging and turning him until you judge the angle right. He gives you a funny look as you put your hand over his face, but he relaxes at your command. With two swift motions, you kick his feet from under him while shoving his head backward. His neck snaps on the edge of the sink as he falls.
There's a gasp behind you from the security guard—the golem with Chernov hidden beneath. "Bring me my phone," you tell him as you bend over the dying faux-Chernov. You call Joe as you track the quick expiration of the dummy; he gives you his location, and you pass it along to the other golem. "Go meet him in the back alley. Mind you don't run into yourself on the way."
When the fake Chernov is safely dead, you stopper the sink and turn on the water, watching until it begins to flow onto the floor, then return to the bedroom, where you put your skirt back on. Into your purse you pack the jeans, t-shirt and loafers you'd earlier discarded, and after checking to make sure you have everything, you exit the apartment, leaving the door ajar. The front desk is abandoned, as the real guard is making his rounds.
In the alley behind the building you hide in a corner and disrobe, tossing the costume of Cindy Sonya Cooper into a dumpster. You pull on the other clothes, shift back into a male form, and grab a cab. It drops you off in front of Diana. That's when you call Hal. "I'm ready to go in."
He only chortles in reply, then a moment later tells you the security has been neutralized. You're able to walk in without a key and without setting off any alarms; Hal has also reconfigured the computers to automatically replace the blank footage from the security cameras with duplicate images drawn from memory. Diana is so confident of its automated security that there isn't even a guard to dodge; still, you take it carefully as you work your way up to the lounge, where you put a dart hole in the picture of "Scotty." "Figure that one out, you fuckers," you laugh softly to yourself.
Then it's back to Kipper's apartment, to change back into his form and his pajama bottoms before calling Joe: "You get Chernov okay?"
"Yes, and already into a travel mask. I'll put him on a plane tomorrow."
"Awesome. Okay, give me a countdown."
Continue as Terry Kipper: "Hangover"  | Members who added to this interactive story also contributed to these: |
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