Utterly Mad

Catnip took her project and hid it in one of the cartons along with the stripped down parts and her improvised tools, and waited. She could finish it but in her secret mind, that place where all truth hides from our waking minds, she knew nothing she made would save her from the fate that lay ahead if she stayed in this place. In her head, Catnip went over the plan. The guards would come in, single file, and then line up. Chief Braison would come in last and he would have her remote. The plan was nothing if she couldn't get that little device. She'd take the remote by force as quickly as possible, hit them hard and fast and then flee. It's what she was made for. The sound of the keys in the door seemed to jingle and click at the lock for ages before one loud click, and the door swung open on stiff hinges.

The first part of her plan went off without much of a hitch. Once the detail sent to take her back to the main room was in the room, she hit King's chief of security in a rush that bowled him over. A difficult feat considering his weight and low center of gravity, compounded by his trying to grab her tail. The guards shouted at her, called her names, tried to seize her, but when Braison reached for the controller to her collar he came up with nothing. It was the second part of the plan that went sideways. By means of a simple mistake, perhaps brought on by panic, Catnip went left instead of right. Instead of hitting the stairs and fleeing through King's Court and into the streets beyond, she found herself diving into the deep dark of Pricetowns underground.

---

Elsewhere, above and in front of King's Court, Catnip's new friend Minx was performing her weekly meeting with cousin. She did this, meeting out front with the soothsayer, because King wouldn't be seen doing it himself. Secretly, he put great stock in the "horoscopes" cousin gave out in exchange for scraps, peyote, or "smash." It wasn't that cousin was as mad as a shit house rat. It also wasn't that things like horoscopes, fortune telling, and other such nonsense was for old women and fools. It wasn't even that cousin wasn't exactly human, in fact being as far as one can get from human. Cousin was after all, a coyote. It was that King could not risk seeing cousin in person for all those reasons and more, and king wasn't the only one. Minx was only one of the many proxies in town who brought offerings to the animal on behalf of their well to do employers.

"Whatsa doin today cousin?" Minx said in her slight rez accent. She willed the bionic in her face shift her features. Altering them until she took on the most pleasing visage to the old scavenger; that of a female coyote, and a right pretty one at that if cousin was to be believed. As her face settled, cousin emerged from his little tent panting at the late summer heat. The bionic was a rarity, and one that made her one of King's most popular girls.

"Minxy is here!" He said, then asked, "Minxy comes to smash with cousin?"

Minx smirked at that. She would no more lay with cousin than she would with a regular dog. Cousin knew it too, but asked anyway. Cousin thought himself a real charmer. "No cousin sei, I'm here for you know who. Maybe if what you tell me is favourable, he will let you sneak into the kennels again."

He gave her a knowing dog grin and said "Minxy always say no, but cousin knows. Cousin sees it in the moon and stars. What do you being for cousin? Water from rocks? Soda from fountains?" It was the start, and Minx was familiar with this part. He was beginning "the babble." The inane chatter before his mind could reach into that place where his horoscopes were kept. As always, Minx sat cross-legged before him and allowed her mind to wander in the direction of the events that led her to this.

"Lady of the thousand and one faces, You will make two decisions, one good and one bad. Watch for the plague rat. Daughter of none, sister to hunger. You will soon meet a dark lady. The dark lady wishes for the hand of the king. Watch for the coming of Samhain. Now is a time for friendship for there will be fire and smokes and songs from the whirlwind! The plague rat will defy a machine of her own making, and be remade, then she will make a great journey and there will be greenness and friendship forever more!"

Cousin yammered on and panted, his fortune told. When he'd settled in, Minx said, "You old fool, what about King? What did any of that have to do with King? Cousin, I came for Kings horoscope!"

Cousin shook his mug. "Cousin told minxy's horoscope instead." He said.

Minx was livid. "And why the hell did you do that? I don't believe in any of this, so why did you give me mine when I didn't want it?" She said, almost shouting at the scrawny creature. He was shaking his head again, well aware that "smash" was now out of the question.

"King has no horoscope." He stated. The finality of his statement put Minx off. She flung the scraps of kitchen left overs at his feet and the way she did it told cousin that peyote was also out of the cards, even though he believed he had delivered a favorable reading.

Minx allowed the facade to slip away, letting her CBM return to neutral. Cousin was disappointed to see her do this. The blank featureless slate was so much less appealing than many of her others. Leagues better than her natural face though. Cousin had not seen that one, and he was thankful for that. He liked minx, adored her in fact, but the sight of her true face would run him rabid, mad, or both and he knew this with the sense given by his strange empathy.

He watched her storm off, aware that she was now trying to formulate a new horoscope on the fly based on bits of what he's given her. He didn't mind. She didn't exactly believe in his visions either, but that was not his concern either. So long as what he said was relayed to the one who it was meant for.

"What?"

The grey fog pressed in, and the voice of memory spoke out. "I'm sorry Catnip!" Someone was shouting, "It's for your own good!" Her name was L, and she was force feeding her something white and powdery after she'd been dusted with...

"It's a strange misling." whispered the voice, "Richie would never send their kind. Richie says he doesn't like them. Shush you, shush." The grey fog grew so thick that Catnip now only had the dim impression of the glint she'd caught before, and of something thin and emaciated stalking just beyond her sight.

"Who-"

"Shush you, shush, and listen." It told Catnip, not that she could have resisted. Something like incorporeal fingers was working it's way into her head, pushing her buttons and telling her what to do. Making her do what she didn't want to do. "Pricetown burns little misling, Pricetown burns and I wait. Wait for my love, wait for my Richie. He said he loved me, he told me to wait here, he told me..."

---

"We need money." Is what he told her. Rita Ortiz has been told by her lover, that he has a plan to escape Pricetown together but that they will need money for travel. Rita is a naive girl, and spoiled to a fault, but her father is outstandingly rich. Was outstandingly rich. He has fallen to the mycus, leaving the water barons fortune unguarded. Rita is infected already, but her love has a plan for that as well. "We can get medicine." He told her, but she must get the money first. She must get it and then wait for him in a certain laboratory in the lab beneath Pricetown. She will be safe there. The singing of the little tower in the room is unpleasant, but she can't really bring herself to approach it. It is a model of the howling tower outside town. The large one above hasn't run since the cataclysm, not since the power source was stolen. Rita doesn't know why they don't just replace it, if it can keep Pricetown safe from the mycus.

She is still waiting, late into the night, when she falls asleep. For a time, Rita dozes and walks in simple dreams in which she sits at the banquet table of her fathers stately house, and all she can smell is mold and blood and smoke while the food tastes of not but rot and decay. It is a dream she does not wake from until the mycus has consumed everything of her. The fungal growth has found it's way through her, dusting every inch of her in spores and mycelia, and bursting rudely from the wound between her breasts. It was not the mycus that did this. She is awake, but not alive. Her fortune is gone. What blade was it that did her to her grave? Rita knows not, but she will wait. She has no choice anyway. The model tower is too abhorrent to approach, and it is between her and her egress. If she does leave, the searing spear will find her and burn her, and she cannot have that until she and her love have escaped. There is medicine, there are ways. She is awake, if not alive, and she will see him again. So, she waits. The years roll by, and she waits. Then...

---

"Then you came." The voice of Rita speaks into Catnips mind. Catnip can feel the grip on her will weakening, something about the story is drawing the creatures attention away from her, or maybe it's intentional. In a moment, Catnip will be free and she will run. She will gird her will against further intrusion and she will run for all she's worth. She's pretty sure she knows the way back. "But ah, I am starving." Rita says suddenly, and Catnip gets the impression of that hunger. The monster approaches close, materializing fully out of the fog and showing not just an emaciated body, but something that looks as though it has lain out under the sun for an age, it's gender lost to time and mummification. Skin stretched over bone, fungal growth blooming across it's skin and filling it out in some places. Despite it's appearance, there was something powerful about it. It hurt her eyes to look at. If Catnip was going to escape, it had to be now.

One hand fell on Catnips shoulder and with a shriek of primal fear, she tore herself away and fled. In her head, the fingers leapt forward. Rita's will tried to assert itself over her, and failed. Catnip locked down, stopped thinking, allowed her mind to blank. She imagined the mass of pinkish grey in her skull suddenly petrifying, becoming solid and impenetrable. It was on this, that Rita lost her hold entirely.

Catnip lay on the floor of the centers large decontamination room, covered in a blanket of white powder that worked it's way into her fur and tingled lightly on her skin. The guards had been waiting for her at the place where the brick wall had been, having knocked the obstruction open in order to pursue. She'd returned before they had a chance to muster their courage (and retrieve any weapons) and before she knew it, they'd clonked her on the head and hauled her here. When she came to, they made her take a double dose of some bitter pill and covered her in the powder.

"She was covered in it sir," Said Braison to King, "Never seen someone so thoroughly coated in-"

"How far did she get? Have the men that collared her been treated, and where the hell is her remote?" Kind snapped, "This is a lot of trouble Braison, I hope she's worth it."

"Pretty deep, but not any deeper than the sub surface floor I think, they have been, and uh... lost."

"Lost?" King glared at him, withering the short man.

"Lost. She uh... Took it from one of the guards, but she doesn't have it now!" He added quickly. Somewhere in the depths, Catnip had lost the controller for her collar. It made punishing her without harming her difficult, but she would later come to regret losing it.

King peered in through the porthole that was one of three of the decontamination chambers windows at the pile of rat and antifungal powder, deep in thought.

"King?"

"Shave her and powder her down again, I've got some plans for the end of october I'd like your input on, but first I want you to make sure this bitch isn't infested with anything. Don't give me that look either, I don't give a shit. Even if it was her only redeeming quality, I'd still tell you to shave her."

He took one last look through the port hole and shook his head. "Damned if I know why I wasted the marks."

Catnip worked diligently and methodically, understanding on some level that what she was now doing was a form of prayer. Or at least, she hoped it was. She had never received any response as a result of what she was now doing but she felt that it must please her strange god somehow. As of late though, she wasn't particularly pleased with that one herself. It had taken her away. Taken her away from everything she loved and dropped her in this dry, unlovely, hot, and unpleasant place where the people didn't seem to care much for anything but themselves. Sort of. She assumed it had been her gods will anyway. She knew that whatever had happened had been the doing of the man in the blue robes. "Where is he now?" She asked herself aloud, not expecting an answer and unaware that the bishop who'd brought her here was no more than shredded blue fabric scattered across the desert floor now.

"Where's who now?" Said Minx from the door, startling Catnip into bumping her little improvised altar and scattering the parts to and fro. Catnip didn't answer, she only gathered her parts up and began what she'd been doing again. Minx crossed the room circuitously, taking a long look at the poster given to Catnip by one of the girls who'd had a hand in shaving the rat girl. It was a classic poster. One everybody but Catnip had seen hundreds of times. The image depicted was of a cat hanging from a branch and under that was the legend "Hang in there!"

Minx snorted then turned back to Catnip. The rats bald head was cringe worthy to look at. They'd even shaved her long ears and it had made them look like the chew toys sometimes brought as offerings to cousin. She couldn't fault the girls work though, they had snipped every little hair and hadn't cut Catnip once.

"What are you doing?" She asked, looking at the thing Catnip was working on. It looked like a glove or gauntlet of some kind, but made from bits and bobs and what had obviously been pieces of bionic sex toys.

"I'm praying..." Catnip said simply, letting a little irritation slip into her voice. She liked Minx, but wasn't in the mood for the face shifter's conversation at the moment.

"Over what? That loveglove?"

Catnip sighed and put her tools down heavily. "What do you want Minx?"

"Just... wanted to see how you were doing. They said you met some Mycus downstairs."

"I guess."

"Want to talk about it?"

"... Sure."

And so, they talked long into the afternoon. Minx shared her story, several of her stories in fact, and Catnip listened. When it was her turn, Catnip talked about home. Home, and the people she thought of as family.

Despite the mood, preparation for the fall cotillion went ahead steadily. Everything had to be absolutely tip top for clients, not to mention slave traders. King became obsessed with the prophecy Minx had given him, seeing the predicted "dark lady" as not just a unique asset to be acquired, but as a vital part of his business. Those closest to him worried for his health and sanity, and the Court's physicians began to worry about the health and sanity of his staff.

The dreams were getting worse, and health was failing en masse. The physicians claimed it was mycus, that the searing spear should be called to investigate. King again refused and mere days before the ball, pinky came down with a case of late stage infestation. The doctors who treated her informed King that she could be saved, but it would take surgery and a lot of anti fungus but she would not be allowed to return to Kings Court. Such an advanced case would cause an atavism, an allergy, and the next time she contracted the mycus would not simply infect her, it would kill her outright.

It was fortunate for Catnip and Minx, that King's new disregard for common sense and safety reared its ugly head on the morning of the fall cotillion.

"But doc."

"No buts, I'm holding both of you. I cannot imagine what the hell has gotten into King's mind to risk everyone in his establishment like this. Hasn't the fool called on the searing spear to investigate?" Asked Efram Marsh, a Misling doctor of some standing. Like most of his kind he was tall, grey furred, and clearly a victim of some vast blanket mutation experiment. Unlike most of his kind, Efram Marsh had been gainfully employed at the time of his forced mutation. In fact, Marsh had been in charge of it. A hiccup, a simple disaster really, was all it took for the computer AI running the lab where the Mislings had started life to begin using more than just the standard stock of homeless people or convicts. The computer began taking in staff as well, and sending out robots to abduct survivors. In the two years after his change, Doctor Marsh had time to reflect and repent. Now, serving a greater good as a general doctor he found himself stuck with a hard choice. Turn these two away and call the searing spear to bring hellfire on the house of the King, or take them in and treat them. Of course, the second choice also included the bit about hellfire. King had been told that any exposure to Mycus at this time would kill his best girl, but lo and behold the fool had sent two infected girls to collect her. Well, no sir. That would not stand.

"I am holding both of you for treatment and quarantine." He repeated. Minx slapped the book of watermarks against her palm in irritation, but it wasn't irritation with Efram. It was irritation with her master. King knew sending them out would end this way, but he'd sent them out anyway. She supposed she was glad though, as was Catnip. King's Court had become a dark place. The halls lay empty as most of the staff secluded themselves to their rooms, hardly anyone taking on clients or even moving about. In some places, it almost seemed like a ghost house. Catnip took the pills offered her and nudged Minx to do the same.

"An shaving a Misling! How humiliating. I am truly sorry dear, you can be sure the delegation will hear about this!" Efram went on indignantly. Minx shuddered a little, suddenly filled with the strangest feeling that perhaps the delegation was now the least of King's worries.