. . .
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.
. . .
After a while Linus becomes worried. He becomes concerned for his brother. He sends out his black dog. The black dog disappears. The black dog reappears. The black dog pants.
The black dog takes Linus’ sleeve in its grutty teeth.
It pulls him down paths that, if you are not the antichrist, you should not walk. You would get your shoes all muddy. You would get dog-slobber on your sleeve. You should not walk them. Those paths are bad.
The dog and Linus arrive by Tom.
Linus sits down next to Tom. Tom is in an empty office building hallway. He has fallen, then pulled himself painfully upright against a wall. He is sweating hard and his eyes have a thousand-yard stare. There aren’t actually a thousand yards between Linus and Tom, so this is awful unsettling for both boys.
“What happened?” says Linus. “What happened? Who did this?”
Tom looks at him.
“It was the cleaning man,” Tom mumbles.
“What?”
“It. Was. The. Cleaning. Man.”
Linus bites his lip. “Damn it, Tom,” he says. “I told you the undertones of your science adventuring were too classist!”
Tom laughs. He can’t help it. It wracks him. “That was my error.”
“Still,” says Linus.
“He swiffed me,” says Tom, swiffedly. “He had a swiffer. He swiffed — oh, God, Linus. He swiffed the parasitic ophidian DNA right out of my genetic code. I’m not inhuman any more! I can’t blink! I can’t smell anything! I keep trying and all that happens is my eyelids close!”
“Calm down, Tom.”
“What am I?” Tom says. He makes a whining noise, deep in his throat. “Oh, God, if I were a girl I would be bearing live young right now.”
“Not right now,” says Linus, hopefully.
“Look at this blood!” says Tom. He shakes his pinkish arm at Linus. “I’m not Tom. What is with this hot blood, Linus? What am I?”
“You’re my brother,” Linus says.
“Ha,” laughs Tom. “Ha ha. Your brother. The antichrist’s brother.”
He lets the tears flow from his eyes.
“I’m human, Linus. Look at me. I can’t even science.”
“You know you’re going to destroy the human plague and warm the earth and bring about a revived civilization of serpent-people,” says Linus, in distress. “Come on now.”
“That future was erased,” says Tom. “Swiffed right out of me. There’s just a hole —”
He laughs again. Then he gives Linus this aching smile.
“Guess I’m off the team, huh?” he says.
And more tears flow.
. . .
“I mean, that’s good, isn’t it?” Tom says, now that he’s human. “Humanity can be my most . . . fabulous . . . adventure . . .”
Linus, who isn’t, straightens. Then he looks around.
Tom clutches at his sleeve.
“You can’t fight him, Linus,” Tom says. “He’ll devour you. He’ll destroy you. You don’t understand. You’re not good enou — evil enou — you’re not good enough. He’d win.”
Linus sets his jaw.
Then an uneasy memory fills him. He looks at the walls around him. He looks at the floor. He remembers a childhood fear.
He rests his hand for a moment on a pristine wall.
“I know you, monster,” he says. He is distracted. He is ignoring Tom. He is walking on an ethereal, exalted mental plane that only an antichrist, thinking about the cleaning man, can walk. (You shouldn’t walk on this plane, by the way. It’s poorly balanced. You might fall off!)
“I know you,” he repeats. “I remember.”
He looks around. His eyes burn.
“You don’t get to do this to him and just walk away, Mr. — Mr. —”
Linus has no idea what his enemy’s name is.
He spits out: “Mr. Clean.”
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