**************************************************
                  Broken.
             *******************
                  N.A.Sinclair.
  
 



She couldn't move.

 That was the first thing she noticed.

 The second was she couldn't feel anything. ANYTHING.

  "I'm dead."  She thought as she replayed her last memories. 
 "I'm crushed and I'm dead."

 She wondered if this was the afterlife. No sensation. Nothing but her
memories for all eternity.  She hoped it wouldn't last long.
 If she had a throat to giggle with a mad giggle would have been building
in it. 
 Maybe she was in some sort of celetial "holding pattern." 

 An itch?

 An itch in her foot. Her right foot.
 Right where those damned heels always rubbed.

 Maybe she had imagined it.

 No. There it was again.

 She could feel her foot. feel it but not move it.
  
 She had read of the reports of people who had lost limbs feeling them 
when they had lost them. Maybe she would have "phantom body" pains.

 Time passed and she fought to stave off the madness.

 She could feel other things now, or at least thought she could.

 She felt the weight and heavyness of her body. She felt it resting on
some sort of almost-wet.
 Slowly she felt the pins and needles sensations in her feet and thwen in
her hands.
 They seemed to be floating islets of the continent of her body with no
limbs to anchor them.

 She felt movement. Breathing.

 "Kami-sama please let me be alive." She prayed. She had not prayed for a
long long time. Not to God anyway.
 Perhaps she was in a coma.
 Perhaps her spine ws shatterd.
 She rode in and out of whaterver was now considered conciousness like a
boat riding soft swells. One moment blended into the next and she hoped,
yes she hoped.
 Maybe it was all tricks of her mind but even the illusion of sensation
was a least better than the nothing of pure thought.

 After a time had passed the sensations in her body grew promentories and
joined her hands and feet back to her again.

 She felt her heartbeat.

 More time passed.

 She was able to hear again. Well, she could hear herself.
 -the sounds of blood moving in suges.
 -the tiny crinkle of cartilage and "fizzy" carbon in her muscles.

 She remembered when she was little and she had been out in the sun to
long.  -sunstroke- her mother had called it and had put her in a tepid
bath and put a cloth over her eyes. She remebered the stickyness of the
air and the sweetness of the lemonade her mother had given her.

 This was a million times worse but still felt the same.


 When she heard her first sound she had simply thought it was part of
hereself. She had gotten so used to hearing nothing but her own body.
 The began to seep in like messages heard on a half-tuned radio.
 The disortion made them incomprehensible and she feared that this was
finally madness. 

 Eventually they became clearer and more recognizable. She heard the
constant sound of beeping machinery which kept time with her own rythmic 
cycles. And voices.

 She head the voices of other talking about things she could noty
underestand and like a child trapped in the bottom of a well she strove to 
let them know where she was.
 "I'm here!" she wanted to cry but she still had no voice, no feeling in
her face at all except frop a change in pressure when *something* moved
her body.

 She called the times of the voices "day" and the times when they were
gone "night."
     
 
 One "Day" she heard THE VOICE.

 "Leave us." IT said.


 There was a murrmring and then silence.

 "Katherine."  IT said.

 Her heart lept. she could hear it beating with excitement, *feel* the
increase in blood-flow. The beeping thing (a moniter -she thought in a
flash of extreme clarity.) began to increas in pace as well.

 She longed to scream - to sing.
   

 "I will only say this once." THE VOICE said. and she knew it was HIM.

 "I will only say this once an if I ever hear it whispered I will be
angry."

 Although the voice was reasonable she knew that for it to be angry was a
bad thing indeed.

 "I am old and I am powerful and I can ruind countries or I can create
them but this is not power." IT, he said.

 "If I had true power then I would have no weakness and I do have
weakness."
 She knew he lied. HE was power.

 "Once there was a man who sold cars." The voice continued in an odd
reciting way, as if telling a story to a child. "He was honestly not good
at his job but he worked hard for his employer and perhaps the man pitied
him.
 One day he had scrimped and saved and he bought the woman he loved a car
for herself. They were not poor but the car that he had purchased was from
a new company and was quite expensive.
 The new car had all of the things that a person could ever want.
 It was luxury itself and was a gift of love.
 Unfortunately there was one thing the car did not have -Safety."
 
 The voice continued on almost infletionless.

 "The man came home from work one day with his heart full of
happyness....he had gotten a raise and he was going to celabrate with his
wondewrful wife and his perfect little girl.

 He didn't.

 You see his beautiful wife and his darling girl had been killed. They
were crushed by angry metal and when it came time to do so the man wept
for he could not even recgnize them.

 Not only the car broke that day. It seems that perhaps something within
the man did as well.
  Many men would have fallen to pieces upon being broken. This man was
different. The things that broke inside him prevented even that.
 Within a year the man had, through various means risen in the company and
ousted the owner.
 Within 7 years he had bought and crushed the Makers of that car.

 The things that broke inside of him would not let him stop.

 He HAD to keep going."

 The story ended and his voice continued.
  
 "You have always served me well." He said.

 "It seemed somehow *wasteful* to let your life leak out into the void."

 "I will not lose you again."
 
  There was a click. ("an intercom" a streak of lucidity came form the
malestrom of her mind.)

 "Come in now." He said.

  There were more sounds as *something* or *someone* entered *wherever*
this was.

 "How much longer?" He asked.

  "Another two, maybe three days." A voice replied.


  "Good." He said. "See to it. Make sure she has no problems."


 There was the sound of a door opening and closeing.


  Madly she wished they would activate her eyes  so she could cry.




                            *FIN*




Afterwards and notes.....


 Well hell, that didn't go wher eI wanted to at all.
 I am a little freaked out by this as I wanted lavender-haired Kate to
either recover from her attack by good ole Largo and have Quincy get a
bit mooshy with "the daughter he never had" or sometihng like that.
 Or, have her realize she was ALWAYS a boomer.
 I think I went all wonky.   
 The little story in the middle is from an un-written idea about a
pre-GENOM Quincy called (yup, not written bu t IDID have a title) 
 "the man who sold cars."
 I may actually write this in a million years or so.

 Neil
  Seraphim@sentex.net
 Robyn, Duke of Amber, Occasional wandewr in Shadow.

 

     __________________________________________________________________
                             _____________
            Seraphim, the Restless Angel with a (borrowed) sword.
                               ________

         Nene, Ami,
       Girls with glasses. girls with computers. Pink hair. blue hair       
                       _______________________
                 Robyn, Duke of Amber. Agent of Chaos.  
 ***************************************************************************