Modus Vivendi

001 the wound opens wide

FIVE DAYS AGO.

LONDON-922

✷

Two hours past midnight, the street behind the Crowne Plaza was dark, filled with a static stagnance.

Out of nothing, came the light.

In a single stroke, the tip of a glowing blade slashed through the thin veil between worlds as if slicing through flesh, scoring a glowing wound into the dark.

Out of nothing, emerged the woman, clad in black, sword in hand, some avenging archangel and her infernal weapon. Granted, Sabine was no religious icon, rather, a secular traveller just passing through London-922 on a godless job for a godless purpose, stepping through the rip in mid-air right over a horde of skittering rats, their dense bodies rustling around in bloated garbage bags. Beneath her combat boot, the crunch of tiny bones and a dissonant squeak tore a sharp curse from Sabine's chest. She shook the crushed rat off the bottom of her shoe, its flattened body peeling off the rubber sole with a sickening squelch, and surveyed her surroundings.

In her hand, her sword pulsed with a barely contained energy, a familiar warmth searing into her palm. Each time she used it, whether it was for slaughter or to travel between universes, she felt its inexplicable power surging through her bloodstream, as if the blade were an extension of herself. The luminous glow faded in a second, darkness bleeding back into the street, swallowing Sabine whole, black stealth suit and all. In the after-burn of the moment she saw herself at twenty-one, diving headfirst through the gilded doorway in the snow, light swallowed by the blizzard, could feel herself pulling apart, the strange pulling sensation washing over her once more, dissolving her into bits and pieces. Pieces and particles. Particles pulling further and further apart. Particles into nothing. When she blinked, the image disintegrated, as if someone had stuck a finger in the surface of the water and waved away the mirage.

Across the street, Sabine found the red-eyed glare of the surveillance camera mounted atop a coffee shop. Could hear the almost imperceptible hum of its lens whirring, zeroing in on her silhouette in the dark. There was no doubt in mind that he was watching—wherever he was, in this universe or some other, sitting behind his glowing screen watching for her—which meant that her time was limited. From a pocket in her jacket, Sabine procured a pistol and a suppressor. Slanting the camera a lackadaisical grin, all menace and teeth, she tapped two fingers to her temple in a mock salute, and shot out the lens. Not that that would stop him, considering the Crowne Plaza in London wasn't short of security surveillance, but it was more about the message it sent, something Sabine found herself in the habit of recently. A series of love notes littered across different universes.

Which was exactly what Sabine imagined each time she passed a surveillance camera in the lift lobby and the corridors. Even much later, slipping a dagger back beneath the black armband wrapped around her forearm as she stalked through the hotel suite, following the snail trail of blood smeared across the crimson carpet by the target scrambling across the darkened floor. She flicked the main lights off, leaving only the high wattage heat lamp illuminating the bathroom, bathing the suite in a faint red glow.

Still, the change in lighting did nothing to conceal the macabre tableau of twisted bodies—the naked women and armed bodyguards—draped over the bed and the arm chairs, their jaws slackened in sudden death. As she passed, she collected her weapons. Each time she yanked a knife out of their skulls, the sickening squelch suctioning blood and bits of brain matter out from the wound drew a series of pathetic whimpers from the man army-crawling toward the bathroom, his limp legs dragging behind him, a deadweight.