The girl who wore her skin was dressed in tattered cutoffs. The shirt was the one Tachyon had been wearing at the time of the kidnapping-billowing sleeves, drawstring at the throat. It was open now, revealing a good deal of the chest with its whorls of copper hair. The bones of the clavicle were like stony ropes beneath the white skin, the legs stick thin. Stubble littered the pointed chin and the sunken cheeks.

The sound they both made was surprisingly similar. A tiny whimper of misery, divided by two octaves. Tachyon recovered first. Stretched out imploring hands.

"He raped me." The words were jarring in that husky baritone.

"No, he raped me." Furious, Tach gripped the jumper by the shoulders. "Return me. Put us back! I can handle him."

"I can't." "Won't:"

"Can't! I'm not a jumper. Can't ever be one now" Before that bit of miserable knowledge could fully penetrate, the guard let out a choking sound and fell to the floor like a broken puppet. For Tachyon, medical instinct took over. Jerking her eyes from her body, she knelt awkwardly beside the boy and checked his pulse.

Eyes shifting with lightning speed from the prone boy to Tachyon and back again, the body asked, "What's wrong with him? What did I do?"

"A mind-control can be a silken web or a steel trap. Yours was of the latter variety"

"Will he be okay?"

Tachyon looked up at her eerie doppelganger. "No. His mind has been shredded. Death is only a matter of time." The body gasped, a sharp little hiss of fear. " I had to see you. You've got to help me."

Tach gave a short bark of laughter. "Me? Help you? Isn't that rather presumptuous of you?"

"You've got me pregnant," said the body in a blinding non sequitur.

"Well, no. It's not something I managed all by myself… any more than I managed to get your body raped all by myself."

The body was staring in fascination at the curve of her belly. He advanced a few steps, and his eyes jerked up to meet Tach's.

"My head's making me crazy. I can't turn it off. I think things, and they happen."

Tears welled up in the lavender eyes. Tachyon writhed inwardly. How painful to watch yourself weep. And for a brief instant she acknowledged that there was more than one victim in this hellish scenario.

"What are you called, child?" she asked gently, feeling unimaginably old.

"Kelly."

Plans began to explode in Tachyon's mind. "Kelly, listen to me. Blaise is no match for my body. I can teach you how to control the power. You can mind-control him. Force him to return us."

She was pursuing Kelly around the room as he retreated before her, desperately shaking his head. With panic shortening his breath, Kelly said, "I can't. I can't. He hurts me="

The door slammed into the wall. They both cried out and whirled to face Blaise. And both fell back, for they knew the maddened rage that glittered in those dark eyes.

Blaise seized Kelly by the arm and threw him across the room. " I told you… you couldn't see him. Don't ever… disobey me again."

Kelly's teeth were chattering so hard, he couldn't speak. He shook his head frantically, the long red hair flying about his face.

Blaise turned with almost balletic grace to face his grandfather. Tachyon's heart was jumping in her throat. Blaise stepped inclose, cupped her cheek in the palm of his hand. Suddenly his teeth clamped down on his lower lip, and hauling off, he backhanded her across the face. She was flung into the wall, pain exploding in her shoulder and head. With a moan, she slid down the wall. Black spots danced before her eyes. She could hear Blaise approaching. Ponderous footsteps.

A lighter, quicker step. The sounds of a struggle. "Stop it! Stop it!" the Tachyon voice shouting shrilly. Tach opened her eyes. Kelly was clinging to Blaise's shoulder, clawing at his face. All the gestures were oddly feminine, jarring to Tachyon. Blaise snarled, and gathering up Kelly's shirtfront, he proceeded to beat the crap out of the smaller man. Kelly's screams filled the room. He subsided into muffled sobbing, curled like a ball on the floor.

Blaise resumed his threatening advance. Tach watched the boy's foot draw back. She knew what was coming, and she managed to get her arms across her stomach before it happened. Her wrist took most of the kick, but even the residual force was enough to set her retching. Illyana's thoughts, pain, and fear were like the beating of wings in the confines of Tachyon's skull.

Blaise backed off, reached down, and hauled Kelly to his feet. They exited, leaving Tachyon with the dying guard. "I swear to you, by all that I am and ever shall be." The musical Takisian syllables rippled through the room and mingled hideously with the dying boy's moans. "By Blood and Line. You shall die. And by my hand."

Then and only then did Tachyon allow herself to faint.

The garret room had metamorphosed into a tower cell. Lancet windows, gray stone walls, a private prie-dieu-ironic considering she wasn't Christian-a curtained canopy bed… a romantic's vision of the Middle Ages.

And it irritated the shit out of her. This wasn't fantasy; this was deadly reality. And Tach was sick of the games. Her head seemed to be throbbing in time to her pulse, an outside pressure trying to warp and force the dream to fit his standards. Grimly, Tachyon fought back. What was achieved was a strange hermaphroditic compromise. Tachyon was male again, but pregnant.

Alien man gives birth to human child!

The ultimate tabloid headline, Tach thought, but then, we live in a tabloid nightmare. The wild card virus saw to that. We took order, peace, security… and gave them chaos.

Tachyon was braiding his-her hair. But it really was his-her hair. Metallic copper curls sliding between his-her fingers. Frowning, tip of the tongue peeking from between his-her lips, he-she concentrated, struggled. Suddenly other hands took over the chore. The deft pull, right over left over right, the tug to the scalp was heaven. Tachyon sighed and dropped his-her hands into his-her lap, cradling the curve of their pregnancy.

"You sent for me," said the Outcast. "Yes."

Tach shifted around to face him. The wide brim of his hat shadowed his eyes but could not match the darkness within those eyes. Tachyon took the Outcast's hand and laid the palm against his-her belly. "Feel her." And Tachyon gathered up his-her child's thought and thrust them into the mind of his-her courtly lover.

The Outcast reacted like a slaughterhouse steer seeing the fall of the hammer.

"She's going to die. I'm going to die… if you don't help us."

The man pulled his hand away as if the contact pained him. "I've tried… tried to help."

"Here?" Tach gestured. "Well, it's not enough. The time for dreams is over."

"It's difficult. He's very dangerous."

"I know…" Long pause, then Tach added with poisonous softness, "I'd wager… better than you."

The flush rode up in the Outcast's cheeks like a spill of blood. "How do you even know I can do anything?" There was a childish complaining note in the deep voice.

"I don't… and you'd probably like me to assume you're merely a symptom of incipient madness. That would let you off the hook. But you sent Peanut. He speaks of you with reverence. No, you exist. And now you have to find the courage to act."

The Outcast turned away. "There are so many… so many of them needing me-"

"And now there's one more," Tach interrupted. He-She touched her belly. "Her name is Illyana. I sing, and she thinks music back to me. She's a trickster because she knows there's one particular place where she kicks and I have to urinate. She knows it makes me mad, and it makes her giggle."

Tachyon could see the tension in her reluctant hero's back. The muscles in his neck formed corded rejection. "That's Illyana," Tachyon continued quietly. "And Blaise kicked me in the stomach. To him, she's just a parasite. A means to torture me. But I know better… she is my daughter… and I love her."