Editing TANoTerrans:Tales

"Ida!"

Ida was squatting in a field of tall brown grass. She did not know the kind. The sun beat down overhead, making the field the only cover from the sun for an acre on either side.

"Ida!”

On the ground in front of her was a small field mouse. It was dead. She had been playing with the cat outside when it had found the mouse and killed it. Now they just sat there looking at it.

"Idaaaa! Come in! It's time to go!"

Vaguely, Ida was aware of her mother calling her from the distance, but her focus was the mouse. What does it do now that it can't do anything? What is the existence of a mouse that isn't? A little bit of blood marred the neck, and its mouth hung open as if it had fallen asleep and lazily forgotten to close it. She stroked the mouse. It felt soft, and fragile, and warm, like it might still be alive, having only the external appearance of being dead.

--"Ida." The voice was in her ear, in her head. She spun around, no longer a five year old girl in a meadow, now the seventeen year old lying near death in a basement. The owner of the voice sat in front of her on a velvet couch, legs crossed and one arm propped up on the arm of the couch, resting her chin.

"...Ida." She said again.

"Is this a dream?" Fear edged in her voice, and her breath caught in her throat.

"Of sorts. You were dreaming of a moment from your childhood, yes?"

"It was during the summer, when we went to our aunt's house in the country. I was five. The cat killed a mouse--"

"--Oh, so that's what brought me here..." The woman shifted pensively, staring off into the black walls at something only she could see.

Ida suddenly remembered where she was. She was prone, staring up at the woman from the cold tile covered in her blood, the bullet holes in the wall behind her.

"I'm dead, aren't I?" She phrased it as a statement of fact.

"Not yet, Ida." The woman leaned closer and looked down from the seat. "I'm here because I have something to give you before you are no more."

Ida strained to listen. It was taking all her effort just to keep her eyes open. The tile beneath her was slipping away, its cold hardness seeming as soft as air.

"Not yet, Ida!" The woman was inches from her face, holding her arm with the strength to pull the dead from the afterlife. "I haven't made my pitch, yet." She smiled, showing a row of small, sharp teeth.

"What are you?" Fear and helplessness trailed the words. Fear of things worse than death.

"My name is Freyja, and I can save your life, even return you to health, and give you the power to avenge yourself.."

"I'm not dead." She said, defiant, and cool.

"Not yet, but you will be, soon enough." The creature named Freyja grinned again, and Ida suddenly recognized the face. It was hers, but twisted and uncanny. She startled into sudden, hazy sobriety, and tried to sit up, choking and collapsing.

"No, no, no, no... I can't have you dying yet." She cupped Ida's head in a clawed hand, and put the other on her back, feeding her life, forcing the blood to flow. "You and ''I'' both know you have more to lose than your life. You know how this ends, or must I show you?"

An image flashed across Ida's vision of her friends and team-members, fighting their last battle, the last-ditch nuke in Haddock's hand, of the thousands milling about in the undercity, unaware of how close they were to total annihilation.

Her vision flashed back, Freyja's -- ''her'' face inches away, her breath sweet and comely. Ida wished she could go. She ''wanted'' to go with this creature who stole her face and promised ultimate power. She knew it was worse than death, in her gut. Worse than failure of the mission, a worse fate than dying alone, on the cold, unsympathetic tile, with a million others to follow. Still, she wished, lusted for the power to rise again and do the impossible.

Freyja stood up, her eyes cold, and betraying a deeper loathing, an irrisistable desire. "You have made your decision. Come with me."

Ida felt heavy on the cold floor. She mustered just enough strength to croak, "I can't."

"Walk, Ida!"

Her voice was firm and compelling, and Ida began to move. With legs that should not work, and blood that should not flow, she walked off the tile floor, out of the dark lab room, out of the building, out of the world, compelled by an unseen force that pumped into her legs and moved them for her. She followed Freyja into a light, where she found herself in a completely featureless black space, standing on nothing. Freyja turned around and came close to her, their heads side-by-side, Freyja almost out of her vision.

She whispered in her ear, her voice heavy with lust, almost sexual, definitely with cruelty, "This will hurt a bit, but it will be worth it in the end."

Ida turned as Freyja, or what had been Freyja, now a thick whisp of curling black smoke, lept into her body, entering through the eyes, ears, mouth, seeping through the skin. Freyja burned, Ida's skin crawled, and her mind ruptured. Her skin cracked and split as the creature forced its way in, displacing Ida's body and soul with its own. A shred of Ida's perception, trapped at the back of her -- ''their'' -- mind watched as Freyja took control, examining her new body -- a brutal demonization of Ida's old one. Freyja turned, now back on the laboratory floor, and looked at her reflection in a small surgical mirror. Inside, Ida screamed, her face was pitted and black, her mouth filled by several rows of sharp, sawblade teeth which ran up and back into her skull, and filled her mouth like a needle casket. Her eyes glowed white, pupils shifting and twisting into evil, strange symbols. On burnt black skin, the same symbols repeated, twisting and shifting like a living tattoo. All features seemed withered and emaciated, skin stretched tight over hard bones and sinewed muscle. Horns of several forms sprouted from her skull, piercing the skin and causing incapacitating pain. She wished she could fall unconscious, escape this prison inside her own head. Had she been alone in her body, she would have.

'':No more wishes will be granted today, Ida, not for you.:''