To answer the question that people who don't see me a lot ask: No, it is most definitely not a Nanowrimo novel. I started this bloody thing about two years ago, suffered through a massive rewrite after I found a major flaw in the first hundred pages, and have been eating and breathing this novel. It is 206,282 words long. That's a lot more than those Nanowrimo punks get. To answer the question that everybody else asks, and I still don't entirely understand why: Which novel? Vicesteed. It's the only novel that I've been actually working for at least a year, and I was only doing revisions of Serenade of Blood & Silver for a while--that novel has a fork in it that says it's done unless an actual editor who will give me money says otherwise.

Yes, this is a BFD to me. If you see me any time in the next couple of weeks and ask me how I'm doing, I will probably answer, "I finished my novel!" There may also be glowing and squeeing and bouncing. If I see you several blocks away, I may run to catch up with you just to announce that I finished my novel. If you pick up the phone and all you can hear are high-pitched garbled words that sound like they're spoken by a ferret on crack, it may be me, calling to tell you that I finished my novel. Or it might be your ex-girlfriend.

After watching testing at the dojang yesterday (congrats, chesh), I came home and sat down to write. I destroyed all distractions and refused to do things like "eating" and "going to parties" until I finished the novel--5,200 words later. That's more productivity than I usually get in a day, especially a day without curry. Of course, usually I'm not allowed to write from about 3:00 to 9:30. The Muse does a wonderful impression of the "demonically possessed writer" when he describes the events of yesterday afternoon and evening. He's exaggerating when he says that my head spun 360 degrees, though.

So here's the thing: I'M LOOKING FOR PEOPLE TO READ AND CRITIQUE "VICESTEED." I've got discoflamingo, prof_vencire, gunn, and susanofstohelit--the binders will be assembled and ready to be handed over on Monday, except for you, prof_vencire--you get a ginormous .rtf file unless you want to meet in person to perform the exchange. Is anybody else interested? devilstears? guipago?

Vicesteed is a neo-Victorian science fiction novel that is equal proportions locked-room murder mystery, exploration of how society forms identity, and high-octane quest for vengeance. The style it is written in can be compared in parts to Stephenson's Diamond Age and Caroline Stevermer's A College of Magics (but with more ass-kicking).

Ok, maybe I'm still a little giddy....

To give you a feel for the novel, here's the first chapter:

Vicesteed

Chapter 1


Night mist swirled around Valinda's boots as she walked through the empty street. She heard a faint buzzing, barely audible, as the neon signs that lined the street flickered, died, and were reborn. The only other sounds were her boot heels striking the asphalt and an occasional splash when she stepped in one of the filthy puddles spawned by the predictable drizzle.

She couldn't remember the last time she'd seen the stars. At night, the sky only reflected back the pollution-tainted yellow light of the city, and during the day, the sun shone sullenly through gray clouds that never lifted.

She wished she could see the stars. She was on her way to an appointment that she did not want to keep, a rather unpleasant appointment. She had no choice but to go, but she thought that if she could see the stars it would help her to bear it. In her squat, she kept a few found treasures under the molding mattress she slept on. Among them were three plastic stars covered with silver glitter. It was not the same, but she sometimes held them up to the fogged sky and pretended that she could see the stars.

Valinda tilted her head up to the night sky as she walked, staring, hunting for any glimmer of light. She stumbled, swore, and vowed to keep her mind on the job.

Her stride was constrained by a tight red skirt cut so high she could whistle Dixie with two sets of lips if the wind blew right. Sometimes Valinda did whistle, loud and off-key or tentatively brave, for that special lonely feeling when her rider needed it. The echo always lingered plaintively in the pollution-fogged air, listened to by thirty-one different flavors of nastiness. Pick yer poison; genuine swamp-water guaranteed.

Her maquillage mask was tuned to “vulnerable.” Dark pigments absorbed the scattered light around her eyes, sinking them into darkness. Tears artificially altered by adding a minute amount of opiate dilated her pupils. Artifice, the root of all beauty. Induced, in earlier times, via the poisons belladonna, arsenic, and cinnabar. Her pupils falsely promised arousal, fear, fight-or-flight reflexes keyed high. A nano-army in her circulatory system suppressed flushed capillaries, leaving her skin wan. Red-stained titanium dioxide glistened on her lips.

Shuffling footsteps from the shadows of the alley nearby made her turn quickly. She sank into a half-crouch, breathing deeply. Her weakness was discarded like the tallith from a dead man's shroud; her fingers curled into relaxed fists and her strong legs shifted to evenly balance her weight. She spared a moment to curse the painfully high heels of the boots she wore.

A vagrant stepped into the dim light, his arms dangling at his sides. His stench hit her while he still shambled forward. He moved like a marionette with only nine strings. His eyes were burning coals of envy that focused only on her. He completely ignored the festering wounds on his hands and body.

Valinda's nose twitched, offended by the rancid odor of sweat and rotting flesh, even as she struggled to ignore the new input. She thrust out her hand. "Hold!" she said firmly. She spoke with the confidence that only complete security provides, but she did not ease from her defensive stance. Although she knew her contract owner did not allow harm to come to its stable, there was always some risk.

The course Valinda was set on tonight would force her to lose control, whether she relinquished it willingly or not. This, though, was not the planned program.

"Damn snobs," the bum swore. He stared at Valinda, his eyes probing past her epidermis to the skein of wire tracing her bones, threading her veins.

"You couldn't afford this ride." She stood confidently, watching him. The soles of his sneakers flapped like hungry mouths as he shuffled a few steps closer. The cuffs of his corduroy pants hung in tatters around his ankles. Despite the only mild chill in the air, he wore an old army coat. His back was hunched like an old woman, vertebrae collapsing into each other from malnutrition and self-neglect. He was what she might become. He was broken to the saddle.

Valinda told herself that she would never sink that low, would never become someone fit for nothing but the lowest vicerides. There was a hierarchy of sorts, and vagrant rides were at the bottom. They were fit for nothing else. She promised herself that she would never sink that low, even though she knew she might not be able to keep the promise.

"A penny plain or twopence colored," the bum's chapped lips muttered. She felt his eyes follow her, the vidlenses in his eyes shiny like plague-glazed beads. She heard the scratching of broken nails on diseased flesh as he turned and collapsed back against the alley wall.

Epinephrine and norepinephrine chased each other through Valinda's veins, dilating her bronchioles and forcefully contracting her heart. She inhaled, the thick smoggy air flowing into her lungs

Valinda walked a few quick steps, avoiding the dark potholes scattered over the rough asphalt street. Then she paused, tossing her luxurious hair over an artistically bared shoulder and casting a frightened glance behind her. The street was empty of traffic, but she knew her audience was waiting.

Suddenly, the streetlights blinked off, leaving her in darkness. A small, sad-sounding whimper escaped her. The lamps shuddered back on, flickering in the muggy dark, and flared.

The bright halo of light blinded Valinda. She felt herself rising up out of the darkness, floating towards the end of the tunnel. A choir of angels sang around her. She felt their warm welcome. She sensed her family nearby. She felt their love for the first time in her life. She knew that this was the first time. She strained to see their faces through the glare of white light. If only she could see them; if only she could recall their names and faces. Her brain struggled to access damaged memories. It found only impersonal information from her wisdom implant, diagrams and flowcharts, fragments of text.

Murdock’s nuclear family hypothesis posits that the nuclear family...is the standard or idealized familial structure. Variations include the polygamous family and the extended family model.

She could almost discern their identifying features. She smelled lavender. Her mother’s scent, distilled at great expense from the biologically original flora. She felt an irritated twitch beneath the skin on her left index finger. It was the most influence the rider had over her. The sensory input was all one way, and it only imitated the twitches of her nerves, the odor molecules that tickled her nose, the chemicals that ran in her veins, the sights the vidlenses in her eyes recorded. When blood flooded her mouth, the rider would share the copper tang of blood and some of the pain.

The next day, Valinda would be the only one with a bruise across her jaw.

One major exception to this appears to be the Nayar society in India, which originally bonded socially through sambandham partners. ...this practice has died out except for certain tourism-based enactments thereof.

Valinda saw the distinctively-shaped purple blossoms, but lavender did not fit her existing memories. Other sensations intruded, trying to crowd it out: continuous dark and starless nights; the sour taste of vomit in the back of her throat; the sharp pain of a needle’s intrusion into her veins; the painful shattering of her fingers when she punched out glass windows, one after another.

In all non-pathological human family structures... parental involvement is maintained even after children have reached functional maturity.

They were the only memories she had left. Valinda knew she should be happy that she hadn't suffered brain-stem death. Her past, her history, had died, minced into an unrecognizable jumble by an ax wielded by a Borden rider. Valinda's wisdom implant whispered to her that history was subjective and unreliable, selectively rewritten. It told her that she could see more clearly without the fog history caused, but she clung to her lavender revelation.

The reins pulsed. Her rider wasn't interested in the light at the end of the tunnel. Valinda imagined the overweight slug shifting petulantly within its veinjockey silks. The rider was not interested in near-death experiences; they had paid for something different, something less innocent. Happy, loving family members were definitely not what her rider wanted.

Valinda felt her lips start to twist into a wry smile and quickly suppressed the instinct. From the rider's perspective, she realized, she'd been standing in the middle of the street staring into space.

The heavenly light winked out. Valinda's eyes blurred for a second, from tears or from the aftereffects of the Tunnel-of-Light drug that she should have had purged from her system. She was overdue for a system flush; it wasn't the first time she'd felt trails from old rides. But the stable manager kept sending her out, because he knew she could take it.

She delayed purging as long as she could. She would go in to have the rider dismounted, but that was it.

The last time she'd had her veins purified, the Red Crucifix nightingale had said something strange. "It's for your own good. Now hush." The programmed-motherly tones were designed to reassure, like an old-fashioned mother laying the back of her hand on her child's forehead.

Valinda didn't want her system cleaned. The Tunnel-of-Light drug bleed she suffered from now might help her recover her long-lost memory. They might not be true memories; they might just be fashioned from the emergent norm of what a loving family should look like.

They were all she had.

They were all she could treasure to herself when lying alone in the ruined mansion she squatted in. The choking smell of mold and mildew surrounded her as thin strands of hyphae fruited and multiplied on her bed's dank cloth surface, and she tried to remember. Free of the constraints of her rider's dreams and nightmares, the vicesteed's memory was blank. When her veins were overloaded, false companions kept company with her. Phantoms of externally-imposed fantasies infested her scanty memories, inducing a bizarrely twisted form of what the wisdom chip called hypermnesia.

She chased away the smell of lavender. The night was not yet over, and she still had a job to do. The veinjockey's presumed irritation lodged in Valinda's heart. She shook off her daze and started walking again. She clasped her arms as if she were cold, though her circulation was strong enough to deal with anything up to a blizzard. It had to be, to support the constant cycle of drugs that flooded her system.

She glanced around as if she were lost. The dank alleys beckoned her, but her appointment was not with them. She took a few halting, half-running steps; then she stumbled. The high heels on her boots would have crippled an ordinary woman, or so she supposed. She didn't know any ordinary women. Maybe she had known a few before her memory fled, leaving her only a ridged scar that she let her hand stray to in the middle of the night, but now the only people she knew were other vicesteeds. They were only acquaintances. She had only one friend: Luke, the man waiting by her bedside when she woke with a blank mind, who had shown her the ropes all over again as she reoriented herself.

A low chuckle tickled her spine, making her wheel and stare into the darkness. She clasped her hands together and backed away. Conrad of Marpurg himself, blessing the red-hot iron of the inquisition, could not have seemed more prayerful than Valinda, but instead of contemplating salvation and damnation, Valinda was looking forward to sleep. She'd been woken up early that morning by another vicesteed screaming as his head was forced into a mirror.

He'd laughed when she talked with him later, joking that his new face would be much more handsome.

She might have fallen back asleep after that. Instead she'd decided that if she stayed awake, the fatigue settling into her bones would add a grace note to her performance tonight. Now, she wished she had taken what rest she could.

The chuckle deepened, and a burly man stepped out of the alley in front of her.

"Going somewhere, ladybird?" he asked.

Automatically, Valinda gasped, her hand coming up to cover her mouth as she shrank back against the wall. Light glimmered over the liquid crystal surface of her nails. Even as she began to plead with him to not harm her, she tried to figure out who the other vicesteed was. Richard, she remembered. He was a new steed; he'd only been on a couple of other runs. He squatted down the street from her place, and he'd complained bitterly about having to wait for two hours while a nightingale plucked tooth fragments out of his hands. She supposed she should be glad that the other vicesteed assigned to this little scenario was not someone she knew.

Not all of her fear was acting. Her heart began to race as she stumbled backwards down the street. There was a large chunk of concrete she'd noticed a few moments ago, perfect to trip over. When she fell, she let out a whimper and scrabbled away from Richard on her hands and knees. A part of her mind noted that she'd need to apply skin patches before she went to sleep tonight, but most of it was busy cataloging her body's fear reactions. The phobia drugs they'd pumped into her were doing their work. Her skin felt like it was trying to crawl off of her, and the filaments of hair on the back of her neck stood straight up.

"Do you need some help?" Richard asked.

He offered a helping hand, but at the same time, he kicked her leg, making her fall all the way to the broken sidewalk.

That was neither necessary nor professional. The riders had not asked for excess violence; at least, they had not asked for violence beyond what was inherent in the ride. Valinda scowled but quickly shaped her mouth back into an expression of horror and terror, as she'd been taught.

After her head injury, she'd had to go through vicesteed training all over again. Between her wisdom chip droning about Stanislavsky and the trainer berating her to never let her face show what she truly felt, she shouldn't have let her expression slip. She turned her head to look at the other vicesteed, her cheekbone grating against the rough concrete, and quickly twitched her eye muscle, hearing the wisdom chip classify it as the orbicularis oculi, to dilate her pupils even wider with drops of opiate.

She gathered her skills and forced abject horror into her eyes. "Please," she begged, wincing as her scraped cheek pained her, "please don't hurt me. I've got money." Her hand fumbled towards the purse that lay a few feet away.

"I'm not interested in money." The other vicesteed leered and kicked her hand back. "Not when I've got you, luv."

Valinda bit her lip, hoping it looked like she was frightened instead of trying to fight down anger. She heard the beat of her heart speeding and felt new energy flooding her veins. She wondered if she should try to run away. There was no script for this play. She eyed Richard. No, she'd better not. He wasn't as strong or as augmented as she was, and it would ruin her rider's illusion if she had to slow down to let him catch her. She didn't particularly want to have to trip again. Her palms and knees burned, and when she moved she felt the grit of silica inside the abrasions.

Valinda thought she saw a flicker of uncertainty in Richard's eyes. She was crawling away from him on the ground, and he was looming over her. Maybe he hadn't quite decided how to get to the ground beside her. It was an inevitable prelude to the final act. She didn't particularly want to make it easy for him, not after the unnecessary force he'd used, but the sooner it was over with, the better. She'd never go through this again.

"Never break a bone twice" was the motto of the vicestable, and so far they'd held true to their word. She would never have to star in this scenario again.

'Twere best done quickly, her wisdom chip murmured to her. Valinda shrugged off the words, annoyed that she'd wasted enough time in contemplation to trigger the classical quotes program. It was one thing to have a poem about the sunrise quoted to her when she watched it for long enough, but she didn't want to spend any time in contemplation of this scenario. Though, come to think of it, she didn't remember the last time she'd seen the sun. The ever-present fog only pulled back during the day, never completely being vanquished.

She shook her mind back to business.

"Please don't hurt me!" she pleaded again, throwing her arms around his knees.

He bent to push her away from him, and she fell spraddle-legged to the ground, her skirt riding up until the virginal white of her panties glowed against the darkness. If the idiot couldn't take a plain hint....

Richard smiled, his lips twisting almost into a snarl. A glint in his eyes warned Valinda that his pleasure was not feigned. She wondered if he had volunteered to be a vicesteed simply because he liked it. She had done it for the money, she thought. Even though she had no money, even through the drugs that made her instincts lies, she knew she had not done it for the sensation.

She whimpered, trying to crawl away. She was careful to ensure that her exertions only made the skirt she wore ride up around her waist. She felt the cold, damp air through the thin fabric of her panties.

"And where do you think you're going?" Richard growled. She closed her eyes against the floating sparks of light teeming into her vision. Her brow furrowed as she tried to hold the drug bleedthrough at bay. This was not a good time.

"Closing your eyes isn't going to make me go away, luv," Richard said.

Valinda smelled lavender. She had to open her eyes.

The other vicesteed was ringed in a halo of heavenly light. The scent of lavender teased her nostrils, until she had to hold her breath for a moment to keep from sneezing. Light danced across the dank pavement, leaving molecules of shining fairy dust behind it. The light almost blinded Valinda. There was nothing she could do to halt this. She only hoped it would end soon.

Instead of making the scenario more unreal, the bleedthrough heightened the truth that surrounded her: the rough grit of concrete beneath her palms; the cold air prickling her skin into goosebumps; the malice in the other vicesteed's smile; the damp kiss of the thick night fog against her face; the friction of her twisted skirt against her waist; and the fear that she knew was no longer drug-induced.

Richard unbuckled his pants and the glare of light from the belt buckle blinded Valinda. She raised her hand in front of her eyes, not feigning her reactions at all anymore. She felt a wild urge to scream, "Time out!" but she knew it would be given as much regard as a whore claiming to be a nun.

She used the remnant of her self-control to not get up and run away as if wolverines were clawing at her heels. She could outrun Richard, she knew, and perhaps her trainer would believe her when she blamed it on the drugs that had not been purged.

She had no guarantee that she wouldn't have to go through this again, though. Only if she finished this ride was she protected from a repeat. Next time it might be with a vicesteed stronger than she was. Here and now, she could fool herself into believing that she had a choice in the matter. A surge of hate flooded her when she felt the nervous twitching of her rider's reins.

The concrete scraped against her palms as Valinda pushed herself into a half-sitting position. She looked up at the other vicesteed and carefully let fear ease onto her face. She was in control, she told herself. She was choosing what emotions she would show. She was choosing how she would act.

She was wrong.

The glare of a streetlamp dazzled Valinda's eyes. Her opium-widened pupils were helpless to protect her from the spears of light that assaulted her from all directions. The smell of lavender strengthened until the aroma nauseated Valinda, the notes of the fragrance clashing against each other until she struggled for breath. Her head was light as she watched Richard throw his belt to the street beside her. He swaggered closer, unfastening his fly and bending down over her. The other vicesteed's face was cast into darkness. Terror slid into Valinda's heart, terror that she could not explain. She did not want to see his face. She knew something horrible would happen if she saw his face.

She turned her head and squinched her eyes closed.

She was terrified.

The rasping touch of Richard's knuckles startled her into opening her eyes. He brushed her neck with cold fingers; then he tightened his hand and yanked open the shirt she wore. Buttons popped from their restraints and rolled across the ground in delight. Annoyance cut through Valinda's fear. She had hoped to keep that shirt after tonight's playlet was finished; the fire opals the buttons were shaped from glowed with iridescence.

A halo ringed the other vicesteed's head. Valinda floated towards the brilliance above her. She felt warm and safe, accepted. The white light welcomed her. The drugs running through her veins battled each other, and the anxiety inducers won.

The heavenly light faded until she could see the grimy street she lay on.

The harsh rasp of a knife cutting open her vinyl skirt made Valinda turn her head to the side. Flickering neon signs mocked her as they presided over empty storefronts. There was no help for her there. Her skirt was ripped away, and she was left with only her undergarments to protect her from the cold, dank street. Richard moved above her, sliding the cold blade of the knife under the fabric of her panties. He held it there for a moment, angling it so the edge pressed against the skin of her belly, and then yanked it back, leaving forlorn scraps of white clinging to her crotch.

She tried to overcome the surges of adrenaline with sheer logic. This was scripted, this was expected, this was what she'd been told would happen.

Valinda heard herself whimper. She looked directly at the other vicesteed. He leaned back on his heels to survey his work. His body no longer blocked the streetlamps, and their brilliant white glare shone straight into her eyes. The light formed a glowing nimbus around everything she could see. She smelled lavender as Richard shifted to kneel between her spread thighs.

He braced his right hand against her breast and began fumbling to undo the fastening of his pants with his other hand. She felt his eyes on her body even though she could not see him against the bright light that surrounded her. Her skin tried to crawl away from his stare.

Valinda was grateful for the drug bleedthrough. She hoped it would help blunt what was about to happen. She would not have volunteered for this ride, given the choice, but there was no choice. By signing her contract with the stable, she had signed away her ability to say no. When she was recovering from her head trauma, they had showed her the contract. She didn't even recognize her own handwriting. She wondered why she had signed it.

Valinda lay still on the concrete, hearing her own whimpers as if they came from another world, and clung to the traces of the tunnel-of-light drug. In her mind, she pushed away the rough touch of the other vicesteed's hands and the cold that bit through her skin. She closed her ears to the sound of his harsh breathing, to the obscenities he whispered under his breath. All she smelled was lavender; all she saw was the blinding white light.

The other vicesteed's breath sped up as he leaned over her. His head blocked the streetlights, and the light vanished. Valinda began to struggle. She was not trying to escape, she told herself. She was just trying to get an angle so that she could trigger the drug bleedthrough. She wanted to be floating in the warmth of the drug, but she felt it fade as her pupils widened.

Richard leaned over her, his face tightened in anticipation as he watched her struggle. She wondered why he was waiting. If only he would get it over with, she would be fine. She would never have to go through this again. He was enjoying this far too much. She would complain to her handler. She twisted her head to the side, and a dazzle of light bounced from a dank puddle beside her. She smelled lavender.

She glanced up at the other vicesteed and her struggles froze. He smiled tenderly at her. She knew he loved her. Phantoms of other faces shone behind him. She could not make out their features. She could barely discern the face of the man above her. If only she could see it more clearly. She squinted her eyes against the glare but gained nothing.

"And now I'll give you what you really want," he said, but his voice was wrong.

"No!" Valinda screamed.

She bucked her body against his furiously. She was trapped in a nightmare of blinding light. The drugs flooding her veins filled her with love, happiness, comfort--and sheer terror. This was not how it was supposed to go. Half her mind tried to convince her that this was only a side effect of the drugs; the other half gibbered in panic. Her wisdom chip was silent.

The man who wore her father's face brushed aside the shreds of her panties. This was not right. Valinda knew her father would never, ever do this. She knew nothing else of him, but she was sure of this. She yanked her right leg out of his grasp, jammed her knee between their bodies, and forced him away from her.

"So that's how you want to play it, eh?" the man said. His voice was amused. She heard Richard's voice, but she saw her father.

She scrambled to her feet and turned to run. She would be able to outrun him easily.

The glare of the streetlights blinded her as she turned her head from side to side, trying to decide where she could run. There was no sanctuary for her on this street. Her shirt flapped loosely against her sides. It and her boots were all that protected her from the night's chill; the rest of her costume lay in a tattered heap a few feet away.

Her right arm was wrenched behind her.

"Running won't do you any good," the other vicesteed murmured in her ear, his breath warm against her skin.

Valinda didn't move. She was still blind, and she was trapped by the lock her arm was held in. Panic skittered over her. Her right arm was immobilized; she couldn't turn, and she couldn't escape. Her arm was pulled so tight that her shoulder ached.

Even without added pressure, the joint pained her sometimes. After it had been dislocated, the nightingale had merely pushed it back into alignment, not even reinforcing the joint.

Dislocated, Valinda thought. The man pressed his body against hers, holding her arm in a rough grip with one hand and running the other over her breasts and waist. She shrank from his touch, trying to think of anything else. The floating feeling had fled, migrating like seedeaters following a rain cloud across a desert.

She was left behind. She tried to concentrate on the migration patterns her wisdom chip fed her in response to the thought, but all she could focus on was the pain of her dislocated shoulder.

She groaned, unforced tears coming to her eyes.

"Ah, you like that," the man behind her said, as if he were offering her an ice cream.

He pinched her nipple and pushed her elbow up, forcing her arm into a more agonizing angle. All she could think of was the pain; no distraction could touch her. Images cascaded through her mind: a horse throwing a rider; a patient in traction, grinning at the camera; a diagram of the shoulder that muttered Latin incantations in her ear, Deltoideus, subscapularis, supraspinata, infraspinata; a short man with intense eyes standing on a scaffold, wearing a straightjacket.

Valinda tried desperately to focus on the information her wisdom chip was feeding her. Houdini smiled and took a bow. A chain was hooked to his legs and he was drawn into the air. He was the hanged man, and still he smiled. He writhed in midair, his body undergoing fantastic contortions, and then he was free. His grin looked forced. A gray haze clouded Valinda's vision, but she thought she saw a reflection of herself, nearly naked and immobilized. Smoke and mirrors. Magic. Scarves slid up sleeves and coins flipped across fingers and deftly palmed. Lock picks and amazing muscle control. Straightjackets and dislocated shoulders.

Tendrils of agony raced across Valinda's nerves when she tried to move her imprisoned arm. She smelled lavender, pipe smoke, and the tang of iron; she realized she had bitten her tongue and not even felt the added pain.

"Here..." the man began to say.

Here, child, Father brought you a new toy back from his journey. Valinda threw her body to the side, pushing her captured shoulder hard against the man's chest.

The instant her shoulder became dislocated was trapped in time. It didn't hurt. Nothing hurt. She heard a popping sound and felt the grate of bone on bone as her shoulder left the socket. She turned to her right, floating queasily on endorphins. The man looked shocked. She struck at him with her left fist and felt the cartilage of his trachea give way. He let go of her arm and fell to the ground, clutching his throat with both hands as he writhed on the dank cement.

The streetlamps were behind Valinda. Her vision cleared. The other vicesteed looked nothing like her father now. Her father would never die in such an undignified manner, she thought and then wondered where the thought had come from. Richard's hair was light brown, but she thought it had been darker and sprinkled with gray. His nose was undistinguished and his jaw was weak. His eyes were blue. His features looked strange to her.

He was not the man she had been fighting off, but he was the man who was dying on the street in front of her.

Valinda's detachment vanished. The pain from her shoulder swamped her. She fell to her knees next to the choking vicesteed, holding her shoulder with her left hand. Richard's eyes were locked on hers as his face slowly turned red. She forced herself to stand. She looked around. The street was empty of anyone save herself and the man at her feet.

She pulled her torn shirt together and began to run.


Chapter 2

Rosemary removed the sensorium mask from her face and set it aside. She pulled off the shining white gloves and laid them beside the blank mask. She stood up from the fainting couch and tried to unhook her corset, her fingers fumbling with the fastenings in her urgency to be out of the cursed thing. The physician had not said that the sensoria illusion would be so violent. She wondered if he had deliberately misled her.

She wondered if it mattered. She wondered if she would have preferred the treatment he had told her she would be undergoing. It had felt so real, even though she knew it to be false, a vivid dream composed in the bowels of the sensorium device.

Her fingers slipped on the fastenings of the corset, and she swore under her breath, focusing on the frustration, trying to force the dream from her mind.

She did not understand why the confounded apparatus had been designed with its hooks on the back, where they were clearly impossible for the wearer to disengage. Perhaps that had been the point, but given the history of their original use, she rather doubted it. Not, she thought, that the corset was retained for its original purpose. She rather doubted that reproductive organ-damaging radiation was still a concern on Buckingham. No, it had been kept because gentlemen found it convenient for their lady wives to be constrained in their actions.
[end excerpt]

And now for something completely different:
Writing Log
Words yesterday: 5,200
Total words--EVER: 206,282 words
Reason for length: I was possessed by demons that would not release me until I finished writing the novel.
Overused word: ripped
Gratuitous word: vagaries
Type of scene: Climax and wrapping-up scenes.
Challenge(s): Making the concluding scenes mirror the opening scenes for each character.
Which splatterfest is it anyways?

At first, her mind tried to focus on the comprehensible: overturned tables; physicians' instruments scattered across the floor; a cot that had snapped in half as if something had been thrown onto it with impossible force; cabinets knocked over and their contents spilled; broken glass vials in puddles of syrups and solutions; and pills and powders spread across the room as though they had been used as confetti at some mad party.

She idiotically wondered why any physician would use a salve that looked so much like...blood. It was smeared across the floor. Her eyes followed the trail. It ended in the outstretched hand of a female lying on the floor. Her clothing was indecent, Rosemary thought automatically. Then she processed the rips in the clothing and the blood that ran in little rivulets away from the woman's body. Blood matted her blonde hair. Rosemary saw that the knuckles of the outstretched hand were smashed as if they had been stomped on. Bile burned its way up Rosemary's throat and she had to press her hand over her mouth to keep from vomiting.

Sudden movement frightened away any inclination towards illness. It was a man, his back to her. She hadn't seen him because of his utter stillness. Now he turned, and she gasped in horror. His face had been smashed until she couldn't tell what he might have looked like before. One arm hung loose from its socket, and he could only limp toward the body of the woman on the floor. A scalpel stuck out of his leg. Incredibly, he was still alive.

Notes: Also? Android zombies!!!!