The Empty World | The Empty World Sequence [complete | rewriting]

Chapters 8.5 - 9.5 (was old chapter 7 of draft 2.5)

It became evident which stores were owned by Humans who had taken the side of the hunters, they would not sell certain albums anymore, especially Robert's Pill albums. Certain restaurants discriminated, or flat out refused to serve anyone who was too beautiful to be normal.

Humans became outraged. First the misfit children of the streets and broken homes, and then others, took to dying their hair strange colors or painting their faces in protest. It did not go unnoticed that these cruelty free, inexpensive, and beautiful new cosmetics were marketed by a company owned by Steven Jewel.

Humans forgot about differences of race or gender and took to outing inhumans, either to be malicious, or to gain the support of those who were well off. Both sides were gathering evidence that could be used against others.

And yet evening news, nationally read newspapers, and the largest of the computer networks would not report these events, it was covered up so that Humans living in the middle of the country could only concluded the great number of missing persons had been abducted by aliens.

Aliens were being hunted too. And as most of the alien races got along with the Angels they tended to side with the Halfangels rather than the Humans, but there were still some who found it profitable to sell out others.

This was a world Joy could not take. The Vampyres she had believed she had been waiting a lifetime for had been stolen by these Humans. People called her house with threats, her records didn't sell, she looked at windows across the street to find binoculars staring back, and boys were afraid of her. It wasn't even fun anymore to wear the false fangs. It wasn't fun to pretend you were dead when you couldn't go into department stores because of it.

Joy was wasting away. It seemed all joy was fading from the world.

It didn't matter anymore if Morpheus was seen or not. He would show up at the small clubs loyal to his mother's music, talk to the fans. And Joy would be stretched across a table top completely strung out.

When Joy gave up on playing her bass, Opium broke up Robert's Pill. She let Elle go, told her dear friend she would be better off moving back to France. Elle would be safer away from New York. Sometimes, Mother still performed. There was a young man who was secretly a member of Steven's elite anti-angelhunter team, a misfit like all the team. He and Opium would write songs together, and he would be booked as a solo act calling himself Toni Toy and Opium would just show up to play with him.

Nightclubs became havens, sometimes bars, or cyber-cafes, depending who owned them. It was hard to track the Halfangels or even the Quatangels by any sort of psychic energy or biofuntion, with all the electronic interference. Opium refused offers from Steven to join him, but if Halfangels came to the clubs, she would give them a number to call that would put them in contact with John.

Sometimes ,they would come into the clubs nervously asking for the group by the name it was known: "Can you help me find the Abdals?"

There were several such numbers well circulated among anti-hunters and people would call to report the hunters' movements.

Within a certain group who frequented one particularly loyal club, it was pretty much known who the Abdals were. John was their leader. A young man called Monday managed their computers; his cousin, Seraph, was a psychic of some small talent and useful in predicting enemy moves and talking to nervous Angels. Pam, was their frequent getaway driver, and his boyfriend, Cary, a young painter who's skin had turned scaly and green after being infected with a genetic virus, did a lot of their physical fieldwork. Mandy, an otherwise strange and cruel individual, was their liaison to the criminal world, their acquisitions man and surveillance expert.