The Intron Code print

The tall, thin death mage walked down the dark alley, searching for his broken master.

He heard her before he saw her. Unseen voices floated to him through the cool night air; one male, one female.

The death mage shook his head. Again. She was doing this more and more often lately, and every time, she left behind more evidence that could be used to track them down and end them.

They needed to be done with this. They needed to be out of this city, as far away as possible, maybe even out of the country. The smoke was practically still rising from the ashes of the prison they’d torn apart. They were all over the news. This city was the last place they needed to be.

Kel didn’t seem to care about any of that, though. She kept stalking the side streets and alleys of the city at night, luring in half-drunk men who had struck out looking for love at one bar or another. She may have been evil incarnate, but Fly had to admit, Kel wasn’t terrible to look at, and she had little trouble finding what she was looking for.

She would wait in the shadows like a predatory animal, watching for the weak member of the herd to split off and take down. It was always a man, always alone, always with just enough alcohol in him to make him not question the logic of an attractive woman suddenly approaching him at 2 a.m. on the street with seductive intent.

They would follow her into a nearby alley, away from prying eyes, and she would do her terrible Trick to them. At first, Fly hid the bodies as best he could, but once the first few were found and reports of desiccated corpses filled the news, he stopped bothering.

The voices became louder now, more distinct. Fly sighed and shook his head. He knew what was about to happen.

“Come on, baby, let’s get back to my place, it’s much nicer than this dirty alleyway,” said the male voice.

“Here,” she said. “Right here. You have to give me what I need right here.”

“Okay! Damn, girl, you are all kinds of fired up, aren’t you…”

The man’s voice cut off suddenly, replacing with a choking gasp. Fly could hear the huffing, gurgling sounds he was making, but couldn’t see a thing; this alley was far from the nearest street light and the darkness was practically palpable.

It was unwise to startle a feeding tiger, and it wouldn’t do to walk up on Kel like this announced. Fly snapped his fingers and held his hand up, and a small ball of light appeared in his upraised palm. It wasn’t quite as bright as a light bulb, but it filled the alley with enough light to let him see what was going on.

Kel had her prey, the man she’d lured into the alley, pushed up against the wall with her hand on his chest. His face was a shocked mask of terror and agony; eyes wide and staring at nothing, mouth held open in a silent scream. His entire body trembled as Kel pressed her hand more firmly into his chest and worked her death magic Trick on him.

The sudden light drew her attention. She kept her hand on her victim, but spun her head to face Fly, teeth bared in a savage snarl.

“Stay back!” she said.

Her eyes were black, completely black, and her teeth had grown outwards into sharp fangs. Her fingernails had grown long and thick and black as well, looking much like the claws of the ghouls she was so adept at creating out of the dead.

Fly had seen her like this only a few times before, and only ever since the damage that was done to her mind at the prison. This was Kel at her most feral. She rarely needed to use this Trick to transform her body into a killing machine, considering her other powers, but ever since her mind had been shattered in the fight at the prison, Fly had seen her revert to using it several times, even when it wasn’t necessary. It was yet another symptom of her loss of control; when she was like this, she became a wild animal on the loose… untamed, untrustworthy, impossible to predict.

“Kel,” Fly said slowly, holding up his free hand to show her that he wasn’t armed. “Kel, it’s me. It’s Fly.”

“You can’t have it! It’s mine!” she hissed at him. “You always try to take what’s mine! You can’t have it!”

Oh, shit, Fly thought. She was having another bad episode. Kel usually seemed to be able to keep herself together once she’d had her way with her victims, but if she went too long before taking another, her mind seemed to get further and further afield.

“I don’t…” he began to say, but she interrupted him.

“You always try to take it! You try to take what’s mine, and then you try to take me. Well, you can’t have it. You can’t have any of it! I’m not a weak little girl anymore; I’ll kill you, I’ll tear your life out of your fucking spine, I’ll...”

“It’s yours, Kel!” Fly said. “It’s all yours! I’m not going to take anything!”

He had no idea what she was talking about; when she was like this, Fly suspected that she was talking to someone from her past, not to him. But he also knew that there was no reasoning with her, not yet… not until she was done.

“Stay back!”

“Okay, okay!” Fly said, taking a step back. “Just finish what you’re doing there. You, um… you take it, or whatever, and then you’ll remember me, okay?”

Kel stared at him with her all-black eyes a moment longer, her shoulders heaving with breaths of primal fury. Finally, she turned her attention back to her victim.

The man’s mask of terror twisted even more horribly, and he sank to his knees in his agony. Kel leaned over to follow him down, keeping her hand on his chest, staring into his eyes. Slowly at first, then more rapidly, changes began to appear on the man’s face. It was most apparent in his skin; it first began to get pale, then it seemed to get dry, and then wrinkles began to form.

Fly could only watch for a few seconds before he had to look away. He’d seen some ugly things while learning death magic from Kel, and had done some ugly things as well, but there were some places that Kel went where Fly didn’t want to follow.

The Wither Trick was the one he hated the most. It took a long time, usually a minute or more, and watching a person age sixty years over the course of a minute wasn’t his idea of a good time.

It hurt the victims, too; hurt them so badly that they couldn’t even scream, only let out a hoarse little rattle as they shook and trembled and died by slow degrees. By the time it was over, they were nothing but a gray-haired, shriveled husk, practically drowning in clothes which were now several sizes too large for what was left of them.

Fly waited until he heard the body fall to the ground before he looked back, careful to keep his eyes on Kel so that he wouldn’t get a glimpse her victim’s remains. She stood up straight, her eyes and teeth and nails back to normal now, her face serene and calm.

“Fly,” she said.

He blew out a breath. Considering how powerful she was, seeing Kel get herself back under control was always a big relief to Fly.

“Are you, um…”

“I’m feeling better,” she said, looking down at her victim. “It always helps.”

“We can’t stay here.”

“Of course not. The body will be found soon enough.”

“That’s not what I meant. I meant, we can’t stay in this city. We need to…”

“We’re not going anywhere,” she said. “What we need is here. The end game is here.”

“End game?” Fly said. “What end game?”

“Soon enough. I’ve absorbed enough life from enough material over the last few weeks that I can start to make some moves and progress the game forward. You’ve spoken with the others?”

Fly frowned. “They don’t like me very much.”

“They don’t need to,” she said. “Their interests are aligned with ours. They want what I can give them.”

“Do you think they trust you?”

“They trust my power. They trust what I can do. They trust the plan.”

“What is the plan?”

Kel began to lead him down the alley, away from the corpse of her victim. “Soon. Soon, you’ll see it all. The sphere has power from what we did at the prison; not enough to finish the game, but enough to get us started. We have the power source. Now we need the means to use it.”

“That genetic thing at Revival Tech, right? The machine, or whatever it is?”

“Correct. It’s time to meet with Martin and Caleb and go over our next move.”

“And at the end of all this?”

“Power,” Kel said, and there was a light burning in her dark eyes as she said the word. “More power than you can imagine.”

“You’re sure that… that you’re okay, right? Like, okay enough to do all this?”

She turned on him. “Do you doubt me?”

“No, no, no,” Fly said, holding up his hands. “I’m just saying, when I found you…”

“When you found me?” she said. “Was that after I got you out of that prison, where you were rotting away for the rest of your life? Was that after I taught you to be something more than a pathetic second-rate street mage? Was it then?”

Fly bit his lip.

Kel took a calm breath before continuing.

“Everything has gone the way that I have planned it. The sphere is here, in this country, powered and in my possession. You’re free from that prison. What exactly is the source of your doubt?”

Fly glanced back in the direction of the withered corpse.

“That?” she said. “A minor annoyance. Any residual damage done to me by that little Mentalist is easily managed. Once this is over, none of that will matter. And you… you will be more powerful than your wildest dreams.”

“Okay,” Fly said. “Sorry, you’re right. I…”

“Enough. Take me to Martin and Caleb,” Kel said. “And Fly?”

“Yeah?”

“In the future, you don’t need to tell me that I’m right. We will just assume it to be so.”