Mirror Cycle

                            By:

                         Fox Cutter

    Chapter 15

It's really reassuring to know that no matter wherever I go,
and whatever I do, when I'm troubleshooting, trouble would
ALWAYS being shooting back. This was a good example of just
that.

"I'm not Cain," I told the mystery lady, sure that she
wouldn't believe it.

"Right," she responded, the one word dripping with enough
sarcasm to fill a novel. "I'll believe that when you are
dead."

I glanced at her from the corner of my eye. "Just take a
look at my face. I'm not Cain-- the bastard is my double."

Footsteps walked around to the front of me, the gun moved as
well, but never lost contact against my skin. I was able to
get a look at her, once I was able to look past the weapon.

She was human, standing just slightly taller than me. The
term buff seemed to be what came to mind first about her
build. She clearly had been working out, her body moved
easily, with a controlled grace. Her hair was dirty-blond,
and fell down her back, and I couldn't see her eyes. She
dressed all in black, from her shoes, to her pants, to the
shirt she wore, and the vest she wore over that, from under
which I could see another gun peeking.

From the look of the two other guns she wore around her
waist, not to mention the one over my left eye, she would
have no problems killing me in a second.

"My ID is in my front right pocket," I offered, not knowing
if she could read Prid Standard or not. Hopefully she could
gather enough to know that I wasn't Cain, as looking at my
face didn't seem to convince her.

"Pull it out slowly," she said, moving the gun back from my
head a few inches, "then toss it to me. Don't try anything
stupid."

I nodded, the gun was communicating that very clearly. It
was kind of strange. I had been around guns all my life. I
grew up with them in the house, and always knew how to treat
them with respect. But as I was digging out my wallet, and
tossing it at her feet, I couldn't help but notice how big
the end of the barrel was. Conceptually I knew the opening
was only a short width, not even half an inch, but here and
now, it looked more like a foot.

She bent down, picking up my wallet, never taking the gun
off me. Flipping it open she looked over the IDs I kept
inside. "I can't read this," she grumbled, flipping past my
Prid IDs, among others. A second later she seemed to freeze,
flipping back to one ID, and looking at it with some
intensity.

The gun vanished in a second, as she was suddenly down to my
level and in my face. "Where the hell did you get this?" she
growled, shoving my wallet under my nose.

She had my driver's license out. The Washington State one I
had gotten a few trips home ago. She also was clearly in
shock, her hand shaking slightly. That was also when I
realized she had asked me the question in English.

"Back home," I answered in kind, "back on Earth."

"Well that means you're not Cain," she said, her composure
snapping back like a mask over her face. She stood, throwing
back my wallet. "So Cain is your double, Mr. Fox Cutter."

I nodded, picking it up and returning it to my pocket, as I
lifted myself to my feet in the process. "Yes, another me
from another Earth."

She snorted, "Hardly from Earth. He doesn't know English,
Spanish or even French."

I nodded again, looking around where I had landed. It was
some kind of back alley, not dirty like I normally saw. The
pavement was laid bricks, the buildings had been keep free
of graffiti. The only light was coming from a fixture a few
feet behind the mystery lady; the sky behind her was dark
and overcast. It seemed more like the back alleys of The
Market on Prid than any street I knew.

"He has to be from Earth," I told her, "if he's my double,
he can't be from anywhere else."

She tilted her head. "Perhaps he's not your double?" she
suggested, walking over to me. "But he does have your face,
although with a few changes. The eyes are a dead giveaway
that you're not him."

"Well thanks for noticing that after you put the gun away,"
I muttered, scratching a slight itch on my arm. "I haven't
caught your name just yet."

"Why would you need it?" she snapped, crossing her arms over
her chest, putting another layer of defense between us.

I shrugged. "I don't know. Maybe because you obviously are
after Cain, and seem to have a much better start than I do.
How long have you been waiting for him at this fold?"

"Not long," she answered. "I just arrived in town today. I
knew Cain has some kind of base here, and this fold seems to
be the key to it."

I chuckled, "Some kind of base, yes. I captured it about
half a day ago. In fact I'm following Cain. He came this way
to escape, about half a day ago."

Her eyes went wide, a look of shock rolling over her face.
"You have to be kidding me." if anything her voice was
calmer then before. "I got here only an hour after he came
through? Shit! No wonder the fold was still warm." She shook
her head a bit, dropping her arms to her sides once more.
"Now you really have my attention. I know Cain has some kind
of safe house in this city, he'll be there, but not for
long. He'll be leaving as soon as he can."

"He's not expecting me to follow," I said, lifting my hand
slightly. "He used some kind of machine to rip open a fold
without even a ripple. Fortunately, I had the right people
who could reactivate it in a short time, which is why I'm
here now. Cain isn't expecting anyone to have followed him
through."

She smiled slightly. "Really. Now that is useful
information. If you're correct, we have a window of a few
days to track him down." As she spoke, I noticed what looked
like a tail sweeping behind her feet. It was black, but
didn't look like fur, the light was shining off it wrong.

"I have a friend who specializes in knowing such things," I
explained, digging my hand into my other pocket, pulling out
my portal controller. "So, where is that safe house of his?"

"I'll find out," she said, placing her hands on her hips.
"I'm Samantha St. Claire, since you asked so nicely."

I smiled, opening the controller. "I'm Fox Cutter, nice to
meet you, I hope," I said, turning back to face the fold,
and setting the controller to pull out the full number for
it.

"So, other than your ruining his good name, why are you
after Cain?" Samantha asked, stepping over to stand next to
me.

"Lets see. He tried to kidnap my wife, kill me, I think," I
answered, locking the fold number into the controller.
Closing it I pulled out a pad and pen from my jacket pocket.
"Threatened my life, the lives of my family, and my wife's
family, and one of his agents shot my wife."

She laughed. "I see. All the bastard did to me was try to
blow me up in one of his bombings."

I smirked, jotting down a quick note for Oriana, telling her
to follow me after a week. "Does he blow things up a lot?"

"He's a terrorist for hire," she commented. "Blowing things
up is part of his job."

"Lovely man," I mused, tearing the note off, folding it
twice, and closing it in my controller. Reaching out, I
opened the fold back to the house on Prid. With a quick flip
I threw my controller through before closing it again.

She looked at me, smiling again. "So you're a Natural as
well?"

"Cain's a Natural?" I asked, I had suspected as much from
the first time I understood he and I were the same person.

"No! Don't be silly. I'm a Natural." She demonstrated this
by opening the fold herself, to a different location. After
a moment she snapped it closed, leaving it cold.

I smiled, partly in relief, partly from the demonstration.
"You know a lot about Cain?"

She nodded. "I've spent time with the man, I know more about
him than probably even his God, and come to think of it, I
do belive he may have mentioned you before. But not as a
human, as a fox."

"There's a third me in the Multi-Verse," I explained,
thinking how it was because of Little Fox that I first
learned of my evil self. "He's a fox-morph now, no longer a
human. All three of us are from Earth, at least some version
of it. It still strikes me as odd that you say he doesn't
know English."

"With your eyes, I would say you're not the same person,"
she commented, digging into her vest for something.

I smiled. "Actually, my eyes are like this because of some
magical problems. Normally they are the same color as
Cain's."

"Right, I can see a bit of that now," she commented, pulling
out what I realized after a moment was a pack of cigarettes.
She pulled one out, putting it to her lips. With a snap of
her fingers, she summoned up a small flame on her fingertip,
which she used to light it.

"So you're a Natural, and a Mage," I said, tapping my chin.

"A Natural, a Mage, a Teak," she said her tail flipping
around to her front. With a good view I could easily see
that it was made of cloth of some sort. "And a Bitch, but
not in that order," she finished by exhaling a puff of
smoke, which twisted into a triangle shape. At the same time
she dropped her tail back behind herself; it moved as if it
was real, not fabric.

I chuckled, "I'm glad you're on my side."

She gave me a look. "Who said I'm on your side? I'm just
after Cain, same as you. 'Sides' are irrelevant at the
moment." She looked me over for a few seconds. "Do you even
know where you are?"

I shook my head. "Just got here, don't even know what
universe I'm in."

"Not mine," she snapped, taking in a long breath of her
cigarette. "Now, how do you expect to find Cain without even
knowing where you are?"

"I'm still working on that part of the plan."

She rolled her eyes, flicking some ash away. "Well I've
already taken care of that part of the plan. We need to find
his safe house. For that we need to ask the right people the
right questions. That's part of what I do, and I do it well.
I don't like working with others, but in this case, I think
there are enough reasons to warrant it."

"Well thanks," I commented, crossing my arms.

She laughed. "Come along, I have a hotel a few blocks away.
We can't do anything until the morning, so we might as well
rest." She turned as she said this, and started walking, her
cloth tail swishing behind her as she moved. I could see
from here that it was attached to her pants in the right
location to be a tail, but was clearly not a limb. Even the
shape was wrong.

I was slightly annoyed at her presumption, but she was
correct. She clearly knew what she was doing better than I
did for the moment, but there were other matters. "Why
should I trust you?" I asked her retreating back. "If you
remember, you had a gun in my face less than five minutes
ago!"

She glanced over her shoulder at me. "Because I want Cain,
although no where near as much as you seem to. I also have
my own reasons for helping you in this situation. For now,
I'm sorry for putting a gun to your head. Is that
acceptable?"

"For the moment, but that still doesn't allow me to trust
you. As far as I know, this could be some elaborate trap on
Cain's part. You could just be working for him.

With a startlingly fast move, she had her face right up
against mine. "I will never work for the bastard again, and
if it was a trap, I would have just killed you."

I shook my head. "Sorry, he wants me alive, most of the
time. Anyway, look at it from my point of view. Here you
are, with all the cards I need. I have nothing to offer you,
and I clearly need your help. So you simply offer it to me.
No offence, but why exactly are you that willing to help me?
You have nothing to gain from it."

She smiled, moving back from me slightly as she took a drag
from her cigarette. "I have my motives, and quite a bit to
gain. I will need your help after this is over. For now, my
interest is in dealing with Cain, and aiding you is the best
way I can think of at the moment."

"That's not very convincing," I told her, smiling back to
her in return. I found myself starting to like this lady,
even if I didn't trust her. A bad combination on my part.

"Look, if I was working for Cain, I could have killed or
captured you right now, and you couldn't do a thing to stop
me." She smiled as she said it, and took another long draw.
Confident she had made her point.

It was a challenge, one I was willing to accept, as I wanted
to give her an idea what I was able to do. In one swift move
I grabbed both her wrists, one was at her hip, the other
more to her side, holding her cigarette. She tried to react,
but by the time she knew what I was doing, I had both hands
held together in front of her, my claws pushing gently into
her skin.

"I'm faster than that," I told her with a smile, happy to
see the surprised look in her eyes.

The surprise lasted a few seconds, before melting into a
smile of her own. Leaning forward, she blew the smoke into
my face. To which I didn't react at all--- that seemed to
annoy her. "I see, very fast. Is that magical, or natural on
your part?"

"Natural, same with the claws." I let her hands go, taking a
step back. "And I can be just as mean as you if I want to
be."

She smiled wider, rubbing her wrists gently. "Now I'm
impressed. People can't usually move through my defenses
that easily. If you can shoot that fast, we might just be on
even ground, from a distance."

"So, why do you wish to help me?" I asked her, folding my
hands behind my back. I was pretty sure that this wasn't
some kind of trap, it would have been sprung already if it
was.

She nodded, taking a final puff from her cigarette before
flicking it away into the darkness, the butt glowing for a
few seconds before fading out. "I'm from Earth, as you
already know. However I have a problem that can be summed up
simply; I don't know how to get back. You suddenly seemed to
be my best chance to make it home."

"Very well, then give me a reason to trust you." I took a
step closer to her as I spoke, dropping my arms to my side.

She paused for a moment of thought, her tail flicking behind
her much the way I would expect Oriana's to in the same
situation. "Perhaps, because I know the local language, and
I suspect you do not. I know how to find Cain, also which
you do not. I need your help, which I can not get if you're
dead, and then, there is also this." She fished into her
pocket, pulling out a small card. She started to hand it to
me, then paused, pulling her hand back for a moment, before
extending it once more.

Taking it from her hand, I looked it over. It was a student
ID card for a high school in California. It gave her name,
her ID number, the fact that she was a senior in the '94,
'95 school year, the school's name, and part of its address.
From what I saw, the girl in the picture was no where near
as hard as the lady who stood before me.

The card itself was battered pretty badly; it had been bent,
folded in a few places, the plastic creased over the center
enough that it was almost in two pieces. One corner was
seared and melted slightly, and another had a piece ripped
away.

"I got that three weeks before I found out about the multi-
verse," she explained. "I had no idea of what I could do at
the time, I couldn't dream of it. Ironic that what I am now
were some of the things that gave her nightmares."

I nodded, handing the ID back to her. She took it gently
from my fingers, returning it to her pocket. It was the last
shred of a life she lost so long ago, and something that she
would die before ever truly giving up. It was her hope of
returning home, returning back to who she once was. I
suspected that I was one of the very few people to whom she
had ever shown it.

"So, how do we start looking for Cain?" I asked, smiling
slightly to her.

She smiled in return. "It's become too late to do such
things. We'll return to my hotel room. Compare our notes on
Cain, then get some rest. We'll need it in the morning."

I nodded to her, motioning her to lead the way. I decided to
hold my tongue that it was still mid afternoon by my
internal clock.

We moved out of the alley, and towards a black convertible
that was parked in front of what looked like a closed
restaurant. The car was pretty much what I expected from any
land car. Four wheels, side mirrors, doors. There was a
serial number stenciled along the side of the front end.
Samantha walked to the driver's side, jumping in without
bothering to open the door. I entered the passenger's side
the more conventional way.

A few moments were spent fumbling around to find the
seatbelt. As I strapped myself in, my new friend was working
under the dashboard, the result of which was the engine
firing up with a soft hum.

"All this, and you can hot wire a car to boot," I muttered,
relaxing into the seat. It seemed to soften now that the car
was powered."

She laughed, strapping herself in. "You have no idea of all
my talents," she shot me a slight smile, as she turned on a
few well placed switches in the center console of the car. A
soft hum filled the air around my head as she moved the car
onto the road. I shifted a bit, placing my hand outside of
the car. I felt significantly less wind than I would have
expected at our apparent speed.

"Environmental shields on the car?" I asked her.

She nodded. "And other systems. Relax, this is perfectly
safe."

I nodded, folding my hands in my lap, watching the direction
we took from the fold. "So, tell me about Cain."

Frowning, she glanced at me out of the corner of her eye,
keeping the majority of her focus on the road ahead. "He's a
terrorist for hire. If you need something blown to bits,
people killed indiscriminately, or a target taken out, along
with everything around them, he's the man you call."

That agreed with the information Elena had gotten from the
man we had captured. "How do you know him?"

"I've worked with him before," she commented, passing
another car who was moving at a much slower rate than ours.
"He's an interesting man, smart, single minded, and treats
his killing as a religion. He makes each one an offering to
his God. Nasty business, it came as no surprise to me when
he attempted to take my life."

I gave her a sidelong glance. "Are you one of the good guys,
or one of the bad guys?" The question was honest, and to the
point. The fact that she had worked with Cain threw me a
bit, now I wanted to know exactly where she stood with me. I
didn't want to give her too much trust.

She laughed, taking another turn into a parking lot, pulling
the car into a slot. "Neither. I don't think of myself in
either term. I do what I need to survive, and I work for
those who pay me. As I said before, sides are irrelevant."

I hummed, lifting myself out of my seat. "I suggest that if
you want my help getting back home, you stay good. Deal?"

"Deal," she answered, slipping out of the car herself.
Resuming her position in the lead, she led me into the
complex we had parked next to. It was a long, low cluster of
buildings, pretty much what I've seen in most Hotels.

Her tail swayed behind her as she walked, moving in a long,
slow arc along her legs. I didn't think the control of the
tail was conscious on her part; it was too fluid, too
natural to be directly controlled.

"What's with the tail?" I asked her as we continued down the
hallway, rooms passing around us.

She flicked it back in my direction in a sort of a wave. "It
was part of my training to use my Telekinesis. After a while
it became such a part of me, it's as if it's a real limb."

I hummed, watching it closely as we walked. The now bright
light in the hallway showed it to be some sort of silk
fabric, reflecting the light as it moved. It was clearly
part of her clothing, and upon closer observation there
seemed to actually be a normal tail hole in the pants, with
the tail attached though it.

For the moment that was interesting, but what got me was
simply how well she moved it. It moved as a normal tail
would to keep her balance as she walked. I thought back to
the time I had spent in Oriana's body. The tail movement was
always clumsy with me; I didn't have the instinct. That was
no longer true in my female form. She had the instinct to
move the tail, it wasn't simply learned.

"How about your claws?" she asked in return as she fished a
card key out of her pocket, "How did you end up with them?"

I shrugged. "The honest truth is that I'm not human." That
felt strange to say, but it was the truth. I really wasn't
human anymore. "I mean, I was once, but I'm not anymore.
It's hard to explain to be honest."

She laughed, fumbling with the door lock for a moment,
before succeeding in getting it open. "I see! You'll have to
tell me more!"

"Sometime," I answered, following her as she led me into the
room. Flipping the lights on, I was unsurprised at what I
saw. A pair of beds, a small deck, some dresses, a
television, and a bathroom off to the side.

I closed the door as Samantha walked across the floor,
pulling off her vest and throwing it onto the far bed. In a
practiced motion she removed the guns from her shoulder
holsters. Setting them on the desk, she followed them with
the two from her belt. Lastly she removed another one from
an ankle holster.

"My, you're well armed," I commented, turning on the TV. I
flipping through what channels it could receive, and finally
settled on what looked like a news program.

"It's necessary in my line of work," she commented, removing
the various holsters from her body, along with a small pouch
from her belt, and setting them all by the weapons ."And
what are you doing? It's after local midnight, it's a bit
late for television."

I smiled, taking a seat on the bed she wasn't using. "I need
to get the local language in my translator. Watching a few
hours of TV will do the trick."

"It takes a few days for my translator to learn a language,
a few hours is a marked improvement," she mentioned, pulling
off her belt, and hanging it over the back of the chair,
then kicking her shoes off, then her socks.

I chuckled. "They've been working on the type I have for a
few centuries, there's been time to perfect it."

"Impressive," she commented, pulling her shirt off and
dropping it to the floor. "I'll have to look into getting
one." She shot me a smile for a second, removing her pants
as well, leaving her in just her underwear.

Of course I looked away, giving her some measure of privacy
as she threw back her sheets. I did catch, out of the corner
of my eye, when she picked up one of the guns, and put it
under her pillow.

"Don't try anything funny. I want a good night's sleep, and
if you even breath the wrong way, I'll be awake. So don't
try to sneak out, and don't try to hurt me. Got it?"

I gave her a quick glance once she was settled down, she had
kicked off most of the heavy covers, leaving her with just a
light top sheet that she pulled closer to her body. If I
didn't have Oriana I would have been very tempted to hit on
her, that is, if I trusted her.

"Scout's Honor," I responded, turning back to watch the
images play out on the television screen.

"It only counts if you were a Scout," she answered.
"Tomorrow, we'll track down Cain. I know just where to start
looking." She then closed her eyes, and almost immediately
fell into a light sleep.

I shook my head slowly. "Famous last words," I muttered to
myself.

   To Be Continued...

-----

This story is copyright 2000 by Fox Cutter, hardcopy
reprints limited to one per person, all other rights
reserved. This story may not be distributed for a fee except
by permission of the author, and this copyright notice may
not be removed.