– 3 –
Lucy Souvante is a child prodigy. She is the first space princess assassin in centuries to achieve the coveted “630 before 13” assassination count.
She laughs it off.
“I’m just a natural at killing people,” she dismisses. “It’s not like winning at rock-paper-scissors! That’s hard!”
. . .
She goes to the evil academy of space. She studies with Fan Hoeng princes and princesses, awful space-beasts, and all manner of wicked things.
She climbs the ladder of rock-paper-scissors contenders.
She becomes a budding legend of the game.
Perfection eludes her, though. She loses one time in three. No matter how many people she kills, no matter how great her mastery of every subject, she cannot defeat the highest echelon of rock-paper-scissors contenders.
There is something in her that is incomplete.
That is her weakness. That is her flaw. The game that she loves best becomes her enemy. She pounds herself will, mind, and body against a barrier that she cannot seem to break.
. . .
Cyber-Merlin — a mirrored, evil Merlin with cybernetic attachments who lives backwards in time — ekes out a narrow victory, over and over again, against her skill.
. . .
She destroys the planet of the Rock God but even then she cannot defeat his ultimate and awful trick.
. . .
She becomes hollow-eyed and staggering. Her potential fades into weakness. She is dismissed by those who once praised her highly as a contender for the Fan Hoeng throne.
Her life tastes to her of ashes.
Her grades in other topics fall.
She hears of the death of her favorite sister. It shatters her. She remembers that she has never actually told Maria that sometimes not killing people is OK. She’s not even sure if she believes that, but she’d always wanted to say it to her older, cooler sis.
She stands at an airlock of the evil academy.
She opens a browser window. She browses contracts. She clicks and accepts a contract on her own life.
She resigns herself to eternity. She foots the airlock-opening button. Only —
. . .
She finds not a vacuum on the other side, but an invitation.
She finds a shadow, an evilness, a darkness, a film of black, and blue, and purple that swathes around her. It is cold and it is burning. It is the wicked god of space.
. . .
“Lucy,” it says.
Its voice thrills her. It resounds through her. It echoes in the chambers of her heart.
“I will raise you up,” it says. “I will exalt you. I will make you such a player as none of these pathetic fools can ever stand against again.”
And so it does.
. . .
In that moment she is exalted. In that moment she is lifted. She becomes invincible, undefeatable: an evil prophet of space.
. . .
She laughs, and she wins at rock-paper-scissors until the evil academy is broken; until it crumbles under the force of her victories, until it cannot hold her, until it splits to let inside it the empty awfulness of space.
. . .
She transfers her credit-hours to a magnet school in Brentwood. (Even space princess assassins ought to finish their education!) She unfolds her umbrella into a sail to sail the void.
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