From: li@Data-IO.COM (Phyllis Rostykus)
Subject: Dark Angel part 2 of 4 (new)
Organization: Data I/O Corporation
Date: Mon, 4 Jan 1993 19:03:11 GMT

      Shit, another rainy day.  Christos... makes a girl want to move down 
to the California desert.  Feel the sunshine soak into my bones. No soggy 
dress, soggy leggings, soggy... momma, you up there?  I'm not complainin', 
momma. It's life. 

      I know... it ain't the Right thing, but Kitty's ribs are showin' and 
I ain't got much that's marketable UpTop. The shit Corps won't hire anyone 
that's got a rapsheet.  Bastards.  I just wanna LIVE, assholes. Like they 
gots a monopoly on livin'.  Pop a blue, El, it'll give you them eyes 'like 
mysterious pools.' giggle, too.  Giggles help. 

      Stumble out into the cold. The wind's blowin' up my ass. The rain 
finds its way into everything, as usual.  The heels are a bitch to wobble 
on, but they like that... helpless and ready.  Face painted O-bright and I 
can feel it caking a little.  No problem... makes it easier to fix. There's 
a little extra to work with.  Bac likes his Girls always bright.  Why do I 
wanna cry whenever I think that?  Goddamned wimp, that's what I am. 

      I'm doin' what I gotta do.  I know, I made shit outta my life.  Too 
much in love with that football player to think straight. Who cared about 
high school? No sheepskin and no college lined up and I ain't got the money 
to pay for it anyway.  Woulda killed my momma anyway, faster, anyway.  Oh, 
God, Kitty, I... 

      No, I ain't you, momma.  Just me.

      Just me against the world with nothin' else between Kitty and the 
world.  Shit... don't THINK like that El... can't think like that.  Gonna 
make a fistful tonight.  Twice.  Giggles... can't stop the giggles... 
That's O.K.  It's what the blue hex's supposed to do.  No prob.  Fist up 
the ass no problem, gets me what Kitty needs.  Then I can... 

      I hope I die.

      Christ, El, what you thinkin' of?  That's Sin, girl.  Look instead... 
look there. 

      Gods...  they're beautiful.  Maybe they're marks?  Please, oh please, 
let them be marks.  No, they're together. Look at how they're holdin' 
hands.  They're lookin' at me.  Smile at 'em El, smile at 'em. They're 
class... why am I frightened?   Her eyes... blind white.  She's not pretty, 
no.  Not like they tell me I am.  But there's something about her that 
makes my mouth dry out.  Dry out like when I looked at Nate, my ex-football 
player.  Weird to feel that way 'bout her.  And him... is that how you 
looked, Lord, after the torture, after the Cross?  Your body broken for me.  
Your body broken by all the pain of the world.  Your eyes... eyes as blue 
as blue can be.  They *are* looking at me.  Smile. 

      He's smiling at me.  

      Oh, Lord, he's smiling at me.  Go closer.  His head bends to look 
down at me.  His hand on my arm.  A hard hand, strong.  His arm is strong 
too.  Oh, Kitty, if He were your Dad... If... what? 

      What?

                        *       *       *

      She died with only a single word.  "What?" was all she said with a 
look of bewilderment on her painted face as Gabriel's silver hand punched 
the knife up into her heart. The nearly black pupiled brown eyes stared 
into his with a surprise that showed the whites. 

      Gabriel blinked first.  Her slender frame was so light, he could hold 
it up with one hand.  The Bacchian armband hung limp in the rain, almost as 
limply as her body did in his grasp.  The white hot anger he had felt at 
seeing that band felt like it had been doused as she had folded so quietly 
over his hand.  Crystal was pushing at him, and he allowed it as he had 
allowed it for the past five months of physical therapy.  He carried the 
girl's body with him, into the IDIE4U. 

      The hilt of the knife looked wrong to him, as the car pulled out, and 
he put a hand on it to pull it out. 

      "No."

      Gabriel blindly reached for the hilt with his meat hand, this time. A 
white gloved hand stopped his.  The silver hand streaked for the hilt, and 
a white hand moved a touch faster, deflecting it from its course. 

      "I said no." the tone cut through Gabriel's fog.  He turned blindly 
toward her. 

      "Why!?" He half cried it out as if the hilt was the most important 
thing to him in the world.  "Looks crazy-cat..." his voice died as he 
remembered why the wrongness was there. 

      Quietly Crystal replied, "Because it will get blood all over the 
car." As she spoke, she patted the emaciated body of the woman, and pulled 
out a credstick that she slotted into a panel built into the central island 
of the back compartment.  Words scrolled onto the screen. Gabriel wondered 
wildly if Crystal was even human.  How could she react like this?  So calm 
and cool and collected, as if this were an everyday...  he tried to stop 
thinking.  It didn't work. 

      "She's 19 years old.  Name of Ellie Keys Cortez.  Lives a block away 
!from here.  Negative credit balance to 500 nuyen.  She has a daughter..." 

      "She aced me." his voice cracked. Gabriel closed his eyes and rubbed 
them with the heels of his hands, as if to rub away the knowledge.  In a 
whisper to the floor of the car, "No ken this shit.  Mom a gang-bang 
killer?  How..." 

      "... she was divorced two years ago due to a domestic violence 
conviction against her husband." Crystal stopped the recital, and turned to 
look at Gabriel and the corpse.  "She had no high school degree, no 
technical degree, no training, and a conviction list as long as my arm, 
almost all for prostitution.  There wasn't anything else she could do, by 
this listing of credentials, other than hook.  You did say that Bacchus was 
the biggest pimp in the Capitol Hill district, yes?" 

      "Hai."  Gabriel rocked over the slender body of the hooker.  

      "So almost anyone that hooks is one of his, yes?"

      He didn't answer.  He traced the high, foundation caked cheekbones, 
the bird slender throat, the high breasts, and then he started to cry. 
Outrage filled him, frustration, anger, confusion.  He started to pound on 
the still body; but two white hands stopped him, took the girl away, and 
held him as he cried. 

      He was startled by the melodious voice of the car, "Where to, ma'am?" 

      "Fred Hutchinson Center.  We've got another 'experimental' for them 
with the usual fee." 

      Wild hope filled Gabriel, "Boomerrang possible?"  He looked at her, 
hating Crystal for her calmness, her cool regard as she turned to look at 
him. 

      "I don't know.  We'll see." 

                        *       *       *

      Gabriel jittered like a bad tri-vid as he waited.  Crystal had sat in 
the one comfortable chair in the room, with Michael a cross-legged mountain 
on the floor before her.  The troll's sea green muscle shirt showing off 
all the scars, bone plating, and rock-like musculature. Michael's white 
haired head was level with Crystal's   Her small, white gloved hands were 
on Michael's board shoulders, massaging them around the plates of bone. 

      Saraquael, slender, tiny, half emanciated Saraquael looked more dead 
then the girl that was being worked over by the emergency team of the 
Hutchinson Center.  Sara's black hair and ruby bodysuit made her blood 
blanched skin look even paler. Gabriel half wished she would open her 
mismatched eyes just so that he would know that she was alive.  She lay on 
one of the beds in a private room; and they had a vid-feed into the room 
from the main operating theater. 

      One of the gowned figures left the screen.  

      It appeared at their door a moment later.  The bland pale green of 
it's gown masked all distinguishing features.  It padded over to 
Saraquael's body, ignored the bow that Michael offered, and gently touched 
her on the wrist.  It shook its head.  The figure then pulled out something 
that shone even in the curtained dusk of the sickroom.  Gabriel frowned.  
It was the knife he had used on the girl. 

      "Condition's stable." the figure abruptly said.  The voice was that 
of a woman or a very young man.  Gabriel still couldn't quite figure it 
out. "Macro systems are on line, life support is functional. 
Microsystematic shock is still in evidence, though."  Grey eyes as cloudy 
as the sky outside looked up.  "Basically, we've got her hooked up to life 
support, and her blood pressure and everything is up.  She took a 
borderline amount of braindamage from the ceasing of her macrosystems; and 
she's in an uncertain coma.  You got her in within the Golden Hour; but we 
don't know if she's going to come out of it or not."  The words came out 
clipped short. 

      The pale green figure gently placed the shining knife between 
Saraquael's death white hands.  It looked down at her for a moment, head 
bowed.  Then the doctor shook a surgically covered head, turned on a flat-
soled heel, and walked briskly away. 

      For a moment, Gabriel stood before Saraquael's bed.  Then he turned 
his head to look at Crystal.  "Now what?" 

      Blind white eyes looked back at him. "We wait."

      As soft as the sound of the air conditioning, "I _hate_ waiting..."

                        *       *       *

      Silence and boredom and the even dimmed light of a ward room.  
Gabriel finally exhausted his nervousness and sprawled, mostly on his neck, 
in the chair next to Saraquael's bed.  Crystal had curled up into a ball in 
her chair and she slept with Michael's khaki coat covering her as 
thoroughly as any blanket.  Michael still sat in exactly the same position, 
quietly watching everything with his baby blue eyes. 

      Saraquael sat up.

      Gabriel found himself trying to see through Michael.  He heard Sara's 
warm voice speaking hard and urgent, but she wasn't making any sense.  
"Padre, oh God, get a Padre.  Father, father, Pater, Don... Getta Father to 
her, NOW."  She was chanting it like a mantra, and the people in the room 
looked at each other wildly, wondering what the heck she meant. 

      Michael whipped out into the hallway, and there was a scream and a 
clatter.  

      "No socket." Gabriel muttered, shaking his head, and followed. He 
picked up the nurse that was on the floor, and hugged her until she stopped 
shaking and muttering into his shoulder about how the monsters should be 
shot.  "Which way?" he asked when she finally calmed down.  She pointed.  
Gabriel quirked a grin at her and said softly, "'Pologies for my giant 
friend, he's sometimes a little impetuous..." a slight bow in the face of 
her confusion, and he trotted off and did his best to calm the path of 
devastation that Michael left behind him even as he followed it. 

                        *       *       *

      A man in the white collar and black of a priest was running from a 
troll.  Or so it looked as Father Christopher ran for the Number 3 
operating theater with Michael behind him.  People scattered from their 
path.  Gabriel stood against a wall and watched them go by.  He followed 
more slowly. 

      The rake thin girl lay in a bed smoother and whiter than her skin.  
The table was splashed with blood.  Her blood.  She was talking intently to 
the black clad man.  Her voice was a soft melody of Spanish, something out 
of Gabriel's past.  He couldn't understand a word, but he remembered the 
tone.  The earnestness of what she said.  He lost himself in the song of it 
until he heard her gasp.  

      Her eyes met his.  

      There was a murmer of sound from the priest.  She smiled. It was not 
a brilliant smile, filled with beauty in contrast to her thin paleness.  It 
was only a small smile, a very weak smile.  She spoke to the priest, and he 
touched her gently on her forehead.  She bowed her head.  The priest left.  
She reached one hand towards Gabriel. 

      He took it.

      He leaned forward at the look in her eye.

      She said, "Thank you.  Please take my Kitten and keep her safe."  Her 
hand closed on his, once, and then her eyes closed.

      Her breathing stopped.

      An alarm and Gabriel started screaming at the same time. 

                        *       *       *
      
      Saraquael frowned at the blade between her fingertips, and then tried 
to twirl it between them.  She dropped it, her hand shaking.  Her voice was 
shaking too when she said in a very faint voice, "There is a story they 
tell of the Devil."  She swallowed, coughed.  Michael handed her a glass of
water and his huge, gnarled hand held her tiny hand around the glass as
she drank.  She went on in a slightly stronger voice. "They say that he
loved the snake, and wanted human kind to take it into its heart; but he
also knew that they loathed it.  He took a human, once, and asked her why
she hated the snake.  The human told him, 'It's got no legs.  It's creepy
with no legs.  There aren't proper ears on that thing; and it's smooth and
slimy with scales instead of proper fur.'

      "So the Devil took a snake and made it four sturdy legs, gave it 
beautiful, cupped ears, and covered it in fine fur.  He made a cat."  Sara 
stopped for a moment, breathing deeply.  "Ellie said, 'You know that the 
snake is still in there, because of the long, whippy tail.  If you held 
back the ears of a cat, you can still see the snake's sharp head; and when 
a cat's frightened, it hisses like a snake and you can see the needle sharp 
fangs.'"  Saraquael chuckled a dry chuckle that turned into a coughing
bout.  Michael stroked her back, gently.  Eventually the bout stopped and
she continued. "Ellie wasn't about to go anywhere with a snake, good
Christian that she was."  Gabriel couldn't tell if Saraquael meant it or
not. "So she said no."

      "Why the Father Alarm?" Michael rumbled.

      "You wanted me to leave her to hell?"

      "You mean..."

      Sara just nodded, tiredly.  "They believe that without last rites, 
they can't go to heaven or something like that.  I think they get stuck in 
something that's nothing."  She shivered and then speared Gabriel with a 
steady look from her mismatched eyes.  "And since we were the ones to kill 
her, I felt we owed her at least that much for the Balance." 

      Gabriel turned away.

-- 
Phyllis Rostykus    | "... and how you feel can make it real  | - _US_
aka Liralen Li      | Real as anything you've seen            |   Peter
li@Data-IO.com      | Get a life with this dreamer's dream."  |   Gabriel
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