Corp.Se Commander: Tactics of Corporate Warfare

By Justin Mazzotta

Not long ago, Americas corporations existed only on paper. But now, corporations have begun to assume human form, wreaking havoc wherever they go. As the corporate awakening spreads across America and thousands of corporations become living psychopaths with terrifying powers, hospital psychiatrist Tonya Regan knows the only thing that can contain these masterminds is the United States border. As Tonya flees Tennessee, she knows her hold on peace is as fragile as a spiders thread.

Tonya is accompanied by Bruno, the police detective who saved her from her kidnapper, Revenge Corporation, and Mag, the bewitching corporate ally who is using her powers to help them escape. As Bruno battles guilt over knowing he could not prevent his citys anarchy, Tonya fights the growing feelings she has developed for him. Meanwhile, Tryk, an abrasive sorcerer obsessed with controlling their fate, leads their headlong rush across the country. Bruno is sure Tryk is an angel; Tonya does not trust him. As corporate titans gather their forces for war, Tonya is alarmed to see the groups desperation blurring their line between right and wrong.

In this action-packed fantasy tale, Tonya and her newfound friends must reach the border before they encounter something none of them can defeat.

• Language: English
• Publisher: iUniverse
• Release date: Aug 21, 2012
• ISBN: 9781475942781

Justin Mazzotta

Justin Mazzotta holds a degree in corporate finance from the University of Ottawa and is a devoted reader of fantasy, horror, and science fiction books. He lives in Canada with his wife and daughter. This is the second book in Psych Co. series.

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Copyright © 2012 by Justin Mazzotta.

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This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, names, incidents, organizations, and dialogue in this novel are either the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

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Cover photo by Angie Strotmann.

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ISBN: 978-1-4759-4277-4 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-4759-4279-8 (hc)

ISBN: 978-1-4759-4278-1 (ebk)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2012914323

iUniverse rev. date: 08/13/2012

Contents

Prologue

I

II

III

IV

V

VI

VII

VIII

IX

X

XI

XII

XIII

XIV

XV

XVI

XVII

XVIII

XIX

Epilogue

Prologue

Friday, February 15

The wind rustling through the bare branches of the trees lining the country road was the only sound as Jake stepped out of the guard post to get some air. At least, Jake liked to think of it as a guard post. In reality, it was a steel shack at the entrance to the E-Z Self Storage on the outskirts of Eureka, Missouri.

Jake introduced himself as a security guard to his wife Eileen’s friends, but the job description on his E-Z Storage hiring slip read ‘Gate Attendant’. His job was to man the motorized gate and admit patrons if the electronic reader did not accept their magnetized key cards. The job posting had listed physical strength as an asset, which is what had led Jake to believe it was a security position. The other half of his job was to help the patrons load and unload items from their cars to their lockers. The magnetic reader was very reliable, which meant Jake did more loading than security. He carried his personal .45 pistol with him on the job, even though it was against company policy and Eileen maintained that he was more likely to hurt himself with the old gun than do any good.

A muted chorus of cawing carried through the chill dusk air from the murder of crows settling in the field outside the barb-wire-crowned fence. Several of the birds still flew over the yet-untilled plot, turning and swooping as one, even in the near-darkness. E-Z Storage had bought this small corner of a farmer’s cornfield decades ago, laid down asphalt and built rows of steel-framed outdoor lockers as well as Jake’s ‘guard post’. Because it was in the middle of nowhere, customers seldom came after dark. Jake’s shift ended at ten o’clock when the electronic reader would stop admitting patrons until six o’clock the next morning. Jake stretched and opened the door to step back inside, preparing himself for another long, boring shift.

Jake’s attention tonight was taken up with concern about his twelve-year-old daughter Cynthia. Tonight was the night that Cynthia was going into St. Louis with a group of friends, which included a thirteen-year-old boy. Eileen had jokingly called the boy Cynthia’s ‘boyfriend’.

When Jake had expressed concern about letting their twelve-year-old go on an outing more than forty miles away, Eileen had glibly explained that it was the boy’s thirteenth birthday, that his very responsible mother was driving everyone and that several of Cynthia’s friends were going as well. Jake did not even remember the boy’s name, and to make matters worse, the party was at City Museum.

City Museum was not a museum at all; it was a funhouse built inside an old shoe factory in downtown St. Louis by an eccentric sculptor. There was no rhyme or reason to the attraction; it was a disorganized mish-mash of rooms where an arcade connected to an aquarium, or a jungle gym, or a series of man-made caves, or a restaurant, or a skateboard park. It was the best place in the city for a group of youths to lose themselves.

Jake was so preoccupied that he was caught by surprise when the telltale flash of headlights from the road signalled a vehicle turning into the driveway. Jake moved to the window to keep an eye on the approaching car.

The car outside had been stopped in front of the reader for a while, and the driver was waving a key card in front of it. The gate was not opening. Jake blinked and got to his feet. The reader had always worked before. He had not had to manually override the gate in his entire two years of working there. He quickly exited the shack and stepped up to the idling vehicle to help.

The vehicle was an old Volkswagen bus from the 1970’s, and its exhaust smelled like sulfur. The engine rattled as if everything was loose, and in the dim orange light of the streetlamp overhead Jake could see that rust had crept up the body on all sides.

Hello, sir. Jake greeted the shadowy driver, taking the card from him and waving it in front of the reader. The gate did not move, nor did the driver. I apologize, sir. This never happens; I’ll go open the gate for you. Jake handed the man back his card and hurried through the shack to the other side. The gate’s electric motor would not respond to the override switch; nothing Jake could do would coax the motor to life. He tried to remember if anything had happened to damage the device, but it had hauled the gate open and closed without a problem for the last patron not an hour before.

Not knowing what else to do and eyeing the vibrating Volkswagen on the other side belching more and more filthy exhaust into the country air, Jake unhooked the drive chain connecting the gate to the motor and put his shoulder to the frame. The gate was a long section of chain-link fence suspended on rollers; it should have slid easily aside. Yet when Jake pushed, the rollers screeched in protest and the gate would not budge. Jake threw his whole weight against the gate, and the rollers gave way all at once as if he had broken through a crust of corrosion. The barrier rumbled to the side with a distinct grinding feeling. The Volkswagen coughed into motion, driving past Jake’s panting form without acknowledgement.

After Jake had caught his breath, he realized that he had not checked the driver’s card to see if it was a valid E-Z Storage key card! He blinked again, wondering how he could have forgotten that part. Some security guard! He followed the red glow of the Volkswagen’s single working tail-light into one of the rows. Jake jogged up to the bus as it parked beside a locker and the driver stepped out.

Sir, I’m very sorry, but I’m going to need to see your card again . . . Jake called to the man, trailing off into silence as he saw the driver’s face.

Jake could tell he was very old. His hair was limp and grey and his skin was slack and yellowed. His clothes were new; he wore a relaxed blazer over a thin, fitted sweater and pleated pants. He moved with a halting gait, as if his bones were straining to hold him up. A gust of wind blew down the row and nearly knocked the man over.

All at once, Jake’s thoughts became confused, as if the gust of wind had blown them all off of his mind’s desk.

Sorry? The driver asked in a strong voice, putting a wrinkled hand to his ear. Jake struggled to remember what he had been about to ask the man.

Have you ever been to City Museum? Jake asked uncertainly, picking up the first thread of thought he could grasp. My daughter’s going there tonight with some boy.

Yes; there’s lots of chaos there. The man nodded, going to the trunk of the Volkswagen.

Eileen says that they’re just going to have fun. Jake explained to the man, still not completely convinced that this was the topic he had wanted to discuss. But I was a teenager too back when it opened. There are too many nooks and crannies where adults wouldn’t think to look. I took girls there to get them away from their parents. Hell, I took Eileen there! Cynthia’s only twelve! Jake protested.

The man extracted a pair of bolt cutters from the trunk of the bus and brought them to the steel locker door. The sound of the old lock’s rusted and bent bolt breaking at the clack of the cutters brought Jake back to his senses. His eyes widened and he laid his hand on the pistol hidden under his work shirt. The old man opened the locker’s latch and threw up the door.

The storage space was crammed with cardboard signs on long wooden sticks, musical instruments and beanbag chairs. A huge tie-dyed banner was draped over several mannequins, reading ‘NO NUKES’ in psychedelic bubble lettering. The interior of the locker was illuminated by a glowing lava lamp sitting among several open suitcases containing faded clothes on a table near the door.

Jake was confused and frightened by the eerily glowing lamp. He drew his pistol on the man.

Freeze! Jake shouted, his muscles going rigid. The man did not seem startled or afraid. The stranger eyed the gun with interest.

You’re going to trust that to fire properly? The stranger asked with a wolfish smile, revealing yellowed, rotten teeth. So many things have to be perfectly aligned. The barrel has to be absolutely straight and the bore has to be precisely rifled. The round has to be the exact size to sit properly in front of the hammer, and heaven help you if there’s the slightest impurity in the powder or the tiniest flaw in the firing chamber. It will misfire if there’s as much as a fraction of a millimetre’s mistake in the manufacturing of that bullet.

You are entering and breaking! Jake yelled through his foggy, tumbling thoughts. The confusion was getting worse. He could not see straight. It had to be the stranger’s doing. The lava lamp was glowing, even though the locker could not have been opened in many years.

So much could go wrong . . . The stranger sang with laughing eyes.

Jake sensed a malignant evil in this man and pulled the trigger. The cartridge exploded in the chamber and backfired, blowing fragments of the stock and hammer through Jake’s eyes and into his head. Before Jake’s body had hit the asphalt, the crows in the field beyond the fence launched themselves into the air in fear of the gunshot. Instead of flying away in unison they scattered in random directions, colliding with each other and dropping out of the sky.

I

Saturday, February 23

A large black sport utility vehicle sped through the countryside as the sun set behind the western hills over Tonya Regan’s shoulder. On the seat beside her, Bruno Polidori was retelling the story of how they had arrived in Tennessee. While corporations had existed for a very long time in America, they had always been considered legal constructs existing only on paper. At some point several weeks ago, the corporations in Florida had begun to assume human form. It had started with disturbed people suspected of horrible crimes being brought into her ward at the hospital, madly claiming that they were the corporations they owned.

Tonya had been a psychiatrist at the Florida Hospital in Orlando, working with the police department. Her speciality was criminal psychology, which meant she analyzed suspects for the police agency and served as confidential psychiatrist to the members of the force. Bruno had been the one who had brought most of the corporate patients to her before the discovery.

She had dismissed the claims as wild delusions until an overwhelming number of people in the city – and elsewhere in the country – both inside and out of the criminal justice system had made the same claim. It had not been long before it had become impossible to deny: an awakened corporation could now invade the body of a human and, with the person’s permission, control that body as if it were their own. Moreover, strong corporations—’commanders’—possessed the ability to invoke strange powers associated with their industry.

In the seat in front of Tonya and Bruno was Mag, and she was breathing proof of the awakening. She was a corporation named Magical Art Gems and Crystals Inc. Mag specialized in semiprecious stones for natural healing. On her neck were the black tattoo-like darts which signalled that a corporation inhabited the body. She had been one of the first corporations that Bruno had identified, and she had become Bruno’s friend and ally in navigating the changing landscape of the world they now shared.

Mag had helped Tonya to understand more about the corporate personality as well. Psychologically, corps were a new frontier; a new race with whom the medical establishment had never before come into contact. They had their own shared culture, history and, most disturbingly, a shared pathology. Every single corporation that had been encountered so far was, in human terms, a patent psychopath. They cared for nothing but profit and measured decisions in terms of profitability rather than right and wrong. Tonya had seen many examples of this corporate pathology.

In an effort to understand Mag’s mindset and value system, Tonya had tagged along one evening when Mag had helped Bruno’s partner Scott Monday investigate a lead on a sexual predator. They had gone to Club Lode, a trendy nightclub which was owned by another corporation who Bruno had arrested for arson. The proprietor corp had nearly brought the place down on both Bruno’s and his patrons’ heads in an attempt to escape.

Once inside the club, Mag and Scott had quickly discovered a corporation assaulting a young woman in the bathroom. Scott had hauled the male body outside where he quickly confessed to committing several other assaults. Mag had been puzzled as to why the corp would have wanted sex. Corporations did not have genders; only their human hosts did. Corps were essentially neuter creatures. Since corps did not feel sexual desire, Mag had been baffled that the corp had become a rapist.

It was only after they had questioned the corporation, whose name had been Harvey Laboratories Inc., about his line of business that Tonya had discovered a despicable truth. Harvey was a manufacturer of anti-retro-viral medications, which were used principally to treat HIV-positive patients. Mag had used a gemstone to confirm that Harvey’s body had been infected with HIV, and the pharmaceutical corporation used the body to transmit the virus to as many people as he could. Each time he infected a new person, Harvey had explained, he created a new customer, and new demand for his products. Harvey had commented that the sensation of intercourse had become almost as pleasurable as making a sale. Tonya had been revolted.

Interestingly, the rapist had noticed Tonya’s disgust and mistaken the cause. Harvey had thought that Tonya’s reaction had been to the unheard-of taboo of a corporation experiencing sexual pleasure. The rapist had attempted to negotiate a lighter treatment for himself by informing Scott of another pair of corporations who had sexualized themselves even more.

That night’s adventure had ended at a surgeon’s office in the western end of the city. Harvey’s body had been so diseased that it had required weekly visits to a plastic surgeon to keep it passable enough for him to get near his victims. Scott and Mag had gone into the Whitney Surgical Company’s 24/7 offices with the intention of including the surgeon in charge as an accomplice. They had not expected what had greeted them.

A pair of surgeons had received Scott, Mag and Tonya, thinking they were new customers. Kylie and Magnus Whitney had been twenty-eight-year-old twins who had been possessed by Whitney Male Adjustment Inc. and Whitney Female Adjustment Inc. respectively. They were both physically perfect in every aspect, having used each other for practice and advertisement of their skills. The female body was the specialist on male surgeries and vice versa. Whitney Female had greeted Scott and Mag, while Whitney Male had led Tonya into a private exam room for a sales pitch.

The corporation had stripped himself naked, to display the perfection of his body. Tonya had been impressed by his toned musculature and exquisite aesthetics, but she had been more interested in understanding the corporation’s motivations. It quickly became clear that the Whitney twins’ strategy had been to throw their perfect bodies at their clients, enticing them into sexual relationships. From there, the twin surgeon corporations used the emotional connection to recommend procedure after procedure to their clients, thus increasing their sales.

Tonya had been about to object to the corp’s approach when a broad bald man in his fifties had burst into the room, yelling at the corporation to clothe himself and become scarce. The huge bald man had collected Scott and Mag, chivvying the voluptuously nude Whitney Female out of the room. The twins had been completely cowed and had slunk timidly away to an antechamber. The livid man had turned out to be Whitney Surgical Company, who was the parent corporation of the twin subsidiaries. Mag had later explained that a corporation which owned another was referred to as the ‘parent’ company. The fact that Whitney had taken the physical body of Magnus and Kylie’s father had been pure coincidence.

Recognizing Scott as a police officer, Whitney had bombastically instructed Scott to leave before going into the antechamber to berate his children further. It had been by pure chance that Tonya had caught a glimpse of the twins as the father opened the antechamber door. The children had come to associate sex and surgery with profit for themselves, and were soothing each other’s stung dignities with a bizarre and repellent combination of the two. Scott had interjected, pointing out that incest alone was a third-degree felony. Compromised by his sex—and surgery-addicted children, Whitney had volunteered information on Harvey and his other corporate clients.

The one client of Whitney’s that Tonya would never forget as long as she lived had ordered the bones of an abnormally large body be removed and replaced with a skeleton made of steel, making the corporation almost impervious to physical harm. Tonya’s mind recoiled from the thought, blocking out the image from her mind.

We had come across this old corp named Company of Mortimer Phillips. Bruno explained, telling his story to the other passengers. "He was a pirate company from the sixteen hundreds. I mean, he could actually remember employing a band of pirates to run his ships. He agreed to take us from Tampa to Savannah in his yacht. I fell asleep in the cabin after we left."

Tonya’s eyes roamed over Bruno’s face and body as her hand caressed his on the seat, trying to crystallize the sight and feel of him. Being near him made Tonya feel safe, which was something she wanted more than anything else at the moment. She felt like her hold on peace was as tenuous as a spider’s thread, and at any moment, she might lose him again. His dirty, salt-stained shirt and pants hung stiffly on his athletic frame. Though his short, dark hair had been through everything that his clothes had, the part in the center stubbornly refused to disappear. As Bruno spoke his square jaw moved under tanned skin with several days’ growth of beard, his brown eyes shone with excitement.

Bruno had awoken at sea when the pirate company’s yacht had turned sharply. He had gone up on deck to find Phillips steering them straight to shore while Mag threw everything she could overboard. Most of the dead weights had been valuables. Binger had wailed about how he had given them away to another privateer—the name Phillips gave to pirates—and that new corp was chasing them. Bruno had thought that the corp was a person on another ship, but he could not find any on the horizon. Binger then clarified that the new corporation had possessed a sea monster and that it would overtake them before they could get to shore.

They made it to the shore, but the yacht did not. They had to dive off of the craft as it was attacked by whatever creature the privateer company had coaxed up from the ocean floor. Bruno never saw what it looked like, but it was so close that he had been able to feel it moving in the water behind them.

Phillips was devastated. They all walked a few miles from the beach where they washed up to a diner outside Jacksonville without hearing a word out of him. They all ordered food; Phillips wanted booze. The alcohol was probably the worst thing that he could have had. He was already agonizing over losing his wealth overboard and stewing in memories of his glory days. As he drank more, he lost track of what was real and what was memory. Even before their food arrived, Phillips had convinced himself that he was in an eighteenth—century tavern from one of his memories. He started a fight; he killed three people with a steak knife before a civilian at the bar shot him down. Mag stole car keys from the body of one of the young men Phillips had killed. They had driven to Georgia in the young man’s car.

Bruno’s story had become a confession, and his face was lined with shame. Tonya stroked his arm reassuringly.

Bruno had been a police detective in Orlando a few days ago. Events had spun totally out of control, and Tonya could see that Bruno felt he had failed somehow. He had been responsible for maintaining order, but the city had been plunged into anarchy. There was nothing Bruno could have done to stop the awakening.

. . . We went into the crystal store and bought a crystal ball for Binger. Bruno was continuing with his story. At this point Mag, who had been listening, turned around in her seat to face Tonya. Tonya still started at the sight of Mag’s eyes; the left one was brilliant green and the right one was golden yellow.

I was so surprised to learn about the crystal ball’s ability! Mag exclaimed. It’s not mentioned in the old Vedic texts or in Hildegard von Bingen’s work, yet apparently every human knows about it! Mag paused, as if waiting for Tonya to respond.

Tonya was confused; she did not know to what Mag was referring to. Bruno touched Tonya’s hand to get her attention and gave her a meaningful look when their eyes met.

What does a crystal ball do? Bruno asked, smiling.

Based on the generality of the question, it predicts the future? Tonya supplied. It seemed to be the answer that Mag had been looking for. The corporation smiled happily and turned back around in her seat. Tonya looked questioningly at Bruno. Bruno shook his head silently, indicating he could or would not explain at the moment.

Tonya had mixed feelings about Mag. That night at Whitney Surgical Company, it had not been a mistake that Mag had been targeted by the female twin. Mag had originally been introduced to Tonya as Mac, Magical Art Crystals, because the corporation had first taken the body of its proprietor, who had been a squat, middle-aged man named Kevin. That night at Whitney’s, Mag had still been Mac.

The belief that semiprecious stones had healing powers was mostly confined to healers in the New Age movement and the Third World, yet Mac had believed solidly in every single stone’s purported healing abilities. He had shocked them all when he had been able to perform miraculous feats with them, such as healing cuts and bruises instantly and being able to affect the emotions of other people with the arsenal of small stones he had carried with him. Tonya had seen other corporations try to work for days on end without sleep and slip into comas as they exhausted their bodies’ energy. Mac had been awake and alert for weeks, which he had attributed to the powers of his gemstones.

Mac had been injured trying to help Bruno prevent a bank robbery and Mac’s eyes had been torn to shreds. They had all visited him in the hospital, thinking he was damned to a life without sight. He had grumped about the incompetence of the surgeons at the hospital and had wrapped a green emerald and a golden beryl against his ruined eyes. The next day, Mac had appeared at the police station completely healed with an emerald green left eye and a golden right eye. Tonya had been moved to tears when she had seen Mac whole and healthy again. Mac had been indifferent to the miracle which had happened to him and had been bluntly unimpressed. His reaction had hit Tonya hard and had underlined the very real differences between human and corporate nature.

Mac had continued to offer his stalwart support to Bruno and the police department. According to what Bruno had relayed to Tonya in the last hour, Mac had helped apprehend a powerful and dangerous corporation named Nightmare Incorporated. Tonya had been chagrined to hear that the confrontation had resulted in the death of Mac’s male body and of Scott Monday.

Bruno had lamented the loss of both of them. Then Mac had reappeared the next morning, having left Kevin’s body upon his death and inhabited the body of Kevin’s young ex-wife, who had become the corporation’s owner by Kevin’s will. Now Mag asked to be referred to as female, having a slim and attractive female body in its late twenties.

Bruno and Mag had continued the friendly relationship, which had begun in Mac’s male body, and Bruno had told Tonya that he still regarded Mag as the short, balding man that he had first met. Tonya wanted to believe Bruno, but Mag was uncommonly winsome, especially with the emerald-and-gold eyes which her corporate spirit had somehow brought with it when it had changed bodies.

Tonya did not trust Mag or any other corporation. Tonya had been overjoyed to hear that Bruno had taken Nightmare out of commission. The ghoulish corp had been part of a criminal organization that Bruno and the Orlando Police Department had been working hard to dismantle. Nightmare’s particular skill had been to project dreams into the sleeping minds of his enemies. Tonya had experienced the corporation’s horrible visions firsthand when Nightmare had turned his talent on herself, Bruno and Scott to disrupt their investigation. Their efforts had faltered as they had slowly become sleep-deprived and paranoid.

The night of Nightmare’s capture, Tonya had been working late in her office at the hospital. Close to midnight, she had fallen asleep at her desk.

Nightmare Inc. had appeared in a dream, walking into her office and sitting down on one of her green couches. After all the fearsome images in which the corporation had portrayed himself previously, Tonya had been surprised to see that Nightmare’s actual body was that of a thin, pale young man with very nondescript features. Over the collar of his black suit, two black darts had been visible on Nightmare’s neck, denoting the rank of corporal. Tonya had been afraid, but she remembered everything that Nightmare had said to her.

Congratulations. One of your men has managed to take me alive. The other two are dead. Was it worth their lives to bring me in?

Tonya could remember holding back tears and praying that Bruno had been the survivor. Nightmare had seemed to read her thoughts.

Your man Bruno was very brave; I respect that. He is alive, passed out at your house in College Park. He’s badly injured.

Tonya’s dream-self had flown into action, grabbing her coat and running to the door of the office. It had been locked, and she had tried to wrench it open while Nightmare continued calmly behind her.

You may not want to save him, though. He’s damaged. I can see it in his dreams. You might want to let him bleed out on your floor and save yourself a very bad relationship.

Tonya had cursed at Nightmare and put her shoulder to the dream-door, attempting to break it down.

He is terrified of chaos. It represents everything he cannot trust. Did you know, that in his greatest nightmare, he sees chaos as a living, breathing monster hunting him down in the night? It’s his devil in the corner. In his head, he treats it as if it has a mind of its own. He acts bravely because he needs to . . . he’s petrified that if he lets chaos discover he’s afraid of it, it will consume him whole.

When she had failed to react to Nightmare’s chiding and continued to attack the dream-door, the sadistic corp had released the dream and Tonya had jolted awake at her desk. She had ran out of the office and sprinted to her car in the parking lot.

During the entire drive to her house, Tonya had contemplated the phrase that Nightmare had used. The devil in the corner. It was a phrase that Tonya used with her psychiatric patients to represent irrational fears. Tonya was convinced that everyone, usually in childhood, had seen a scary movie or been told a frightening story before bed, and had seen a devil in the corner. It was a common occurrence. She had found a consensus among her patients and peers that each one of them had been put to bed as a child after some scary experience, and had thought they had seen something in a dark corner of their bedroom. Tonya remembered having the impression multiple times as a child just before falling asleep that there was something standing in a dark corner of her room, when in reality it was shadows and furniture. Tonya had dubbed the fear-fuelled illusion ‘the devil in the corner’.

Tonya had been greatly concerned when Nightmare had used the phrase, since it was not a widely known euphemism. It suggested that the corporation could not only introduce information into the sleeper’s mind, but take information out as well.

She had shrugged the concern aside as she had pulled into her driveway and launched herself out of the car. She had run up her front steps and burst into her front entrance hall. She had heard the sound of floorboards creaking upstairs and something being knocked over. Picturing Bruno laying in a pool of his own blood, Tonya had rushed upstairs and into her bedroom, scanning it quickly.

There had been a large hump under the covers of her bed. Without turning the lights on, Tonya had steeled herself for the worst and thrown the covers off.

The hump had been a pile of pillows arranged into the rough shape of a body. Tonya had frozen. As the adrenaline ebbed, a vision came back to her that had prickled the back of her neck. When she had scanned the bedroom, had there been a devil in the corner? She had been tired and paranoid, but she thought she had seen something. She turned around, ready to dismiss it as a trick of the light.

Standing in the corner by the door had been a seven foot shadow, which had resolved into the huge and grotesque body of a man. The man’s skin had been covered in ghastly scars, and in some places, torn completely open. Steel bones had glinted from those wounds in the wan light coming from the window. It had been Whitney’s surgical client and Nightmare Inc.’s commander, Revenge Corporation.

Revenge had kidnapped Tonya and fled the city with her. He had crossed the Georgia state line and brought her to Atlanta. Tonya had endured two days in the appalling corporation’s clutches. Tonya now tried very hard to forget those two days. She knew it was not the healthy way to deal with her feelings, but her motivations had retreated down to security needs and she could not bring herself to face the memory.

Miraculously, Bruno had come to save her. They had been reunited inside the compound of The Weather Channel Inc., who had hired Revenge to steal a powerful artefact from CNN. As Revenge’s prisoner, Tonya had been left in the compound under guard. When Revenge had returned, Bruno and Mag had followed him to Weather Channel’s headquarters. They had been captured shortly after their arrival, and all the prisoners had been kept together. Tonya had not believed her eyes.

Possible campsite five hundred meters ahead on the right hand side. Dismount and reconnoitre. The SUV’s driver said loudly into the wired receiver of the two-way radio in the truck’s dashboard. No objections to stopping here for the night? The driver asked over his shoulder before he replaced the microphone in the cradle. Tonya looked out the window just as the truck passed a sign reading: ‘Welcome to Loudon, Tennessee.’

The setting sun’s glare reflected Tonya’s face back at her in the bulletproof glass. Her long, blond hair framed her soft face and her blue eyes seemed black in the orange light.

We’re not going to keep going? I can drive if you’re getting tired. Bruno offered. Tonya smiled at Bruno. She was glad that she was not the only one who wanted to get as far away from Georgia as possible.

We’re closing in on Knoxville. The driver said. I’d rather camp out here in the sticks than in a big city where there’s corporations everywhere. The driver turned into a gravel parking lot off the highway that bordered a football field and baseball diamond. The six identical SUVs following behind theirs turned as well and parked on the grass in a circle formation. The men filling the other trucks poured out as the vehicles stopped, and began unloading gear from the trunks. Tonya saw two figures emerge from the second SUV in line.

One was a nondescript man in his mid-thirties with black hair and a black goatee. The other was a tall, elegant man with green eyes. The second man’s age was impossible to tell; his face was ageless, his body was fit, and his messy hair was pure white. Seeing him brought back Tonya’s memories of the awful confrontation with Weather Channel.

Bruno and Mag had brought a third person with them to rescue Tonya. He had been a nineteen-year-old boy named Binger, whose name was pronounced Bin-jer. The boy had introduced himself to Tonya as a clairvoyant. Tonya had assumed the boy had been deluded. But that had been precisely how they had found Tonya; through Binger’s mental abilities.

When Weather Channel had appeared to look over the prisoners, Binger had goaded the broadcasting corporation into a jealous rage by prophesizing that Weather Channel would never outshine his rival CNN. Weather Channel had taken them all up to the roof of his building in a mad fury, where he had summoned a thunderstorm to demonstrate his powers, augmented as they had been by the item Revenge had stolen for him. Binger’s life had been tied to Revenge’s, and in the rooftop battle, Binger had sacrificed himself to eliminate Revenge Corporation.

A tactical strike force had approached the building through the gale. Weather Channel had thought that the men had been sent by CNN to retrieve the stolen artefact, and he had launched a freezing cyclone at the strike team. It had seemed to Tonya that there could be no one stronger than Weather Channel, who had convinced himself that his forecasts caused the weather instead of the weather causing his forecasts. His rank as a commander corporation had transformed his belief into reality.

Then Tryk had appeared. Tryk was not a corporation. Bruno was convinced that Tryk was an angel. Tryk had saved them. He could appear and disappear at will; Mag explained it as ‘becoming unnoticeable’ but effectively he could make himself invisible. Tryk had appeared on the roof out of nowhere, wielding a shining sword that had cut through the wind and ice and rain that Weather Channel had thrown at him. Tryk had chopped off Weather Channel’s head and scooped up the artefact Weather Channel had been holding. The thunderstorm had ended.

With the heavily-armed strike team having recovered and infiltrated the building, Bruno and Tonya had begged Tryk to shield them from notice. Tryk had obliged, hiding them from the force.

Tryk’s spell had been horrible; it had made Tonya feel dead and inert. The aura affected her as surely as it did the assault team; Tonya had wanted to check her pulse to verify that she was still alive and present. The commandos who had emerged onto the roof had not belonged to CNN at all, but were commanded by a Canadian mercenary corporation named Steelgrave Paramilitary Inc. They had been tasked with disabling media communications in the Atlanta area.

As soon as Tryk had noticed that the soldiers were not from CNN he had revealed himself. The minute-long concealment had felt like an eternity, and Tonya had felt as if she had stepped out of a tomb when the veil had lifted. The Steelgrave sergeant’s name was Robert McKinley, and he had been very grateful to Tryk for killing Weather Channel and saving his unit from perishing in the corporation’s storm. Tryk had asked McKinley to take him, Bruno, Tonya and Mag back to Canada with him in return. The sergeant had agreed.

As the unit set up camp in Loudon, the white-haired and graceful Tryk was bent solicitously over the goateed man, asking him questions with an air of mild frustration. The goateed man smiled and refused to respond.

After McKinley had agreed to be Tryk’s escort on Weather Channel’s roof, one of the sergeant’s men had brought the goateed man forward, explaining that he had been snooping around the building after the employees had fled. The man had introduced himself as Binger Incorporated. According to the corporation, Binger had known he would have had to sacrifice himself to give his friends the chance to get out of Weather Channel’s clutches alive. The young prophet had accosted a disused dummy corporation as he had been passing through Atlanta, and instructed the corporation to become his surrogate after his death.

While being held prisoner, Binger had written all the prophecies that his surrogate would need to help Tryk reach his goals in a small notebook and left it in the holding room. Binger Inc. had entered the building, found the book and memorized every word of it as only a corporation could. He humbly presented himself as their companion and servant. Tryk had originally scoffed and simply asked for the book of prophecies. Binger’s corporate double had scrupulously informed them that Binger’s first instruction had been for him to destroy the physical volume so that the only copy existed in Binger Inc.’s head, allowing the dead prophet to control the timing of the knowledge’s dissemination.

Tryk had been irritated, to say the least, and had cloistered himself in an SUV with Binger Inc. and had been trying to pry information from the corporation