COME COME, SEE THE FINE BARGAIN. ONE FLESH MACHINE, FEMALE, FRESH FROM THE USED BODY SHOP.
She hid from the Probe and dreamed another life for herself, leaving it for THEM to find.
Yes, you creeps, you’ve got the body, but that’s all you’ll get. Break me, will you? You can try, then you watch your asses, they’re mine.
She set the wake-trigger, (KIKUN: See Kikun and Know Again) then she closed the last gap in the wall of THE PLACE and slept.
Chase: Autumn Rose And Kikun Break Free And Start The Long Trek After The Fiends Who’ve Taken Their Friends
1
A faint sting. Then PAIN!
Autumn Rose came swimming out of fog into a prickly awareness that she was in deep shit and there wasn’t much she could do about it.
A hand dropped on her mouth.
Her eyes cleared and she saw Kikun’s face, shining orange eyes ringed with white. He was in a panic, but controlling it.
He brought his head down near hers, whispered, “Can you walk?” Despite his caution the whisper hit the walls and the vaulted ceiling and came back to her as muted clicks and hollow oos, melding uncomfortably with the scrape of his boots, the clatter of something against metal.
Her face went hot and tight. She’d stunned her own foot trying to get a guard, it was such a stupid thing… She didn’t bother answering him, just concentrated on seeing if she could move her toes; her boots knocked against the hard floor covering, her pants leg brushed heavily over the thick black cloth of the robe she wore, the sounds multiplied by that goertafl’cht echo chamber, startling her, giving her an adrenal jolt that helped clear some of the fug from her head.
Right foot, fine. Left leg below the knee might as well be a block of wood. She bent her left knee, sighed with relief. As long as she had the knee, the rest didn’t matter. She pushed his hand off her mouth. “Can’t run races,” she muttered at him, “but I can get it going. What…”