Shock Treatment

 

++Twenty-six++

“I don’t care if you’re busy. I want my property!” The threat was implicit in Doctor Blackwell’s livid hiss into the phone. “We’re on our way up, and you had best have it ready!” Slamming the receiver down, she stalked out of the room. “Tiny, come!”

As their footsteps faded down the hall I felt myself relax. For the first time in what seemed like an eternity, it was quiet and I was alone...well mostly alone. The blond on the table was unconscious and Jane was standing silently next to my workbench. She had been there for hours, waiting for someone to give her instructions. She looked exhausted and at one point I would have sworn she was sleeping on her feet. I glanced around before gesturing to the seat next to me. With a weary sigh, Jane sank into the uncomfortable chair. I smiled before returning to the computer screen in front of me.

A small blinking icon at the bottom of the screen caught my attention and with a hesitant click of the mouse a small screen opened. ‘Information accessed 0347 EST,’ it read. ‘Requesting ISP: 738.295.028.4.’

About damn time… Fingers flying, I pulled up a new program and sent my query off into the ether. Within heartbeats the answer came back, but not the one I’d hoped for. Damn, it wasn’t her querying about FAI. Somehow the mighty Oracle didn’t strike me as an AOL user. Going back to the original screen, I accessed the information requested by the new ISP. No, it wasn’t Oracle, but it had to be someone working with her. I couldn’t think of anyone else that would asking for this kind of information.

Over the thundering beat of my heart, I heard someone coming down the hall returning. Quickly I flew back into cyberspace and within moments everything was set. A few more clicks and the extra screens disappeared. This was it. Tonight it would end, one way or the other.

 

++Jane++

‘ Will you do whatever I ask?’

‘Yes.’

Ever felt like you were in a dream and couldn’t wake up? When everything feels strange and your body doesn’t seem to do what you want it to? When you’re doing and saying things that when looking back, make absolutely no sense whatsoever?   I had spent a lifetime living a nightmare. Why did I just stand here while the girl on the table writhed in agony?

Why?

Because she asked.

Who was she?   She was…she was...

It felt like my head would explode. Trying to ignore the discordant mess in my head, I focused on the girl next to me. She was young, no older than the girl on the table.   Overall she looked human, unlike the tall white woman that had been here earlier. Only when you truly looked at her did you see that she was more than that. Her ears swept into gradual points like a cat’s, and her black hair was flecked with silver and looked like fur, rather than hair. But the most obvious thing was her bushy fox tail. Despite her physical strangeness, the strange girl played the computer like Mozart at the harpsichord. A vision superimposed itself over her like a hazy flashback. A woman, working on a computer… red hair, green eyes. I blinked and the vision disappeared. Damn!

“Twenty-six,” a deep voice interrupted my thoughts and I jumped.   “The Doctor wants the status on these by the time she gets back.” Tiny gave the girl two objects then hurried back out to rejoin his mistress. She handed me one of them and I examined the heavy metal box.  

“Please plug it into that socket over there,” she instructed and pointed to an empty slot in the computer next to me. Doing as instructed, I grabbed a trailing cable and found the slot that fit it. Then I turned back and watched as she examined the odd shiny metal egg in her hands. “Incredible.”

My expression must have shown as she turned her body to me and held up the egg for examination. It was covered with odd plugs and nodules and windows. “See, this isn’t the original containment for the nanites. Someone redesigned it and it’s gonna take me a minute to fix the interface.” She went back to the object in her hands, looking at it from every angle. Something must have caught her eye and she murmured, “what the… no… no one’s that crazy...”   The girl’s voice was incredulous and despite the haze around my mind, I was faintly curious myself. She took the egg and moved over to another worktable.

She fiddled with it for a moment then placed a sample slide under the microscope. “I don’t believe it. She did it, she actually did it.”

“Did what?”

“The nanites, they’re not here. The containment vessel is empty.”

“Empty?”

“Look here,” she told me and pointed to the rim of the vessel. It took a moment to make out the faint mark, so light that I almost missed it. A lightly tinted lipstick print, like the ones left on the rims of glasses at the bar I’d been working at. Where had that memory come from? Shaking off the pointless memory, I focused on the egg again.

“Is that safe?”

“It should be. They were originally designed for genetic engineering. The question is, were they programmed to do anything?”

Her computer beeped, startling us both. We moved back over and once again she played her computer. “Oh no… How is this possible? The hard drive is wiped clean!” She was panicked and, knowing the nasty doctor, I knew why. “It’ll take hours to recover the data.”

Hours we didn’t have.

 

++Twenty-six++

The hard drive was a relatively easy fix, all things considered. I had data recovery programs that could do the job for me. It would just take time. The interface was a little harder, as what I had was barely adequate for about twenty percent of what the hard drive would normally be able to move. It would be like trying to write an encyclopedia by hand… It took me twenty minutes to cobble together a new one. I had to find out what the nanites last instructions had been. I couldn’t believe that Oracle drank them! It had to be Oracle, out of desperation to keep them away from Boo. My respect for her went up another notch. I had thought her a goddess when we dueled in cyberspace, and now I was convinced.

Just as the hard drive was coming online, Doctor B swept in like an ice storm with Tiny in her wake as he always was. “Twenty-six, pack things up we’re getting out of here. This situation is no longer within reasonable safety parameters. Tiny help her.” Moving to a side table, she picked up a syringe and selected one of the many bottles. My blood ran cold as I recognized the biohazard label on the side. “Jane, help me get the body ready.”   Before Jane could leave her position at the computer, it alerted us that the cross referencing on the blond girls DNA was done and that it had found a match.  

When it rained it poured.  

 

++Shan++

Getting to the building had been the easy part. Tearing through the minions was even easier. My vision was red, instincts amping me up to the point where the world seemed to be moving in slow motion. There was a trail of hospitalization in our wake, maybe even hearses. Frankly, I could give a good god-damn at the moment. Punching another goon in the throat, I leapt over his falling body without even breaking stride. Half a step behind me, sometimes in front of me, Helena was just as deadly.

“Staircase,” Helena barked and gave me a shove into a dim recess. I was beginning to feel the strain of all the stairs in this mammoth place, but let adrenaline and emotions push me harder. Twin fireballs exploding near my head gave me pause and my partner and I went down in a tangle.

The trip probably saved our lives.

Fire again blasted the wall, right where we’d been standing, and electricity arched through the dimness. “Crap,” I muttered. “Now what.”

“I got a bad feeling about this,” Helena replied as we regained our footing. “If we had still been holding onto that railing, we’d be fried chicken right now.”

“Hey, who you callin’ chicken?” I teased mechanically and hunched down to coil up the muscles in back and legs. With a grunt of effort, I jumped straight up and grabbed the pipe I’d noticed running under the concrete stairs. Just in time too, as a tall woman with flaming hands began to cautiously descend from the landing above us.

“Holy shit,” Helena breathed as I hunched up my body sideways with brute strength. The strange blonde glanced over and barely had the time to look shocked as I lashed out with both feet. There was a sickening crunch that rattled up my boot soles, followed by an even nastier one as she rocked back into the concrete wall behind her. Helena, thank God, took advantage of my violence, charging up the stairs to grab our adversary as a human shield. Roaring a challenge, she bullied the deadweight up and I heard the new fight started as I dropped down and raced to join her.

Electricity arched from a second blonde woman. When I say arched, I mean like a power transformer on overload. It sizzled away from her to dance down the metal rail, crackling like blue lightning, and reached towards Helena and her shield like a hungry octopus. Oh man, this was bad…

 

++Julia Blackwell++

“Jane, get over here!” I snarled at her. I needed to leave immediately. I just knew that Seventeen B was close, and I didn’t trust the look in Jane’s eye. Harley’s little trick was growing thin and I didn’t trust the maniac as far as I could teleport her. The irony of the thought didn’t escape me. At this point I had no clue how I was going to get out of here with Seventeen A as she was still in thrall to Harley’s powers. At this point discretion was the better part of valor. If I escaped now, I could try once again at a later date. As much as I hated to give up, I doubted I had a choice.

All things considered, it had been a very successful trip. I had the hard drive, fresh samples from an adult twin, new test subjects and most importantly I had the nanites.  

“No!” The shout and a crash drew my attention to Quinn’s zombie. She had lurched back, overturning her chair. Backing away, she started tugging on the collar around her neck. Well, well, it looked like I was right about Quinn’s hypnosis wearing off. As interesting and useful a discovery as it was, I didn’t have time for this. “Tiny, stop her!”

The ever-obedient Tiny advanced on the smaller woman.

“No. Leave her alone,” said a flat, cold voice I barely recognized. 

We both froze and looked at Twenty-six in confusion. Rage turned my vision red and I thundered, “what did you say? You dare to contradict me?” This was intolerable! I dropped the syringe and grabbed the discipline rod, gratified to see her blanch when I raised it towards her.

“No Doctor. It’s over, you failed,” she continued stubbornly even as her voice shook. I couldn’t believe the little runt was talking back to me. By the look on her face, neither could she. I watched in amazement as she seemed to shake off her fear. “You failed when you made me, you failed to capture the Seventeens, you failed to get the nanites back…”

What the hell was she talking about? “The containment unit…”  

She gestured towards the work table. “Is empty.”

Empty? I’d checked it myself when I’d gotten it from Harley! “Impossible. I checked it.”

She laughed and I realized that Twenty-six had finally snapped. “Another mistake. You, better than anyone, should know that anything is possible. Hell, I’m proof of that. You were tricked Doctor, it’s filled with saline.” She stood to continue with her tirade. “Your first mistake was to trust Quinn, and then you tortured Jane and that girl…”  

One trembling hand pointed to the computer screen.

‘Familial match, first degree relation to test subject, ‘Jane.’

First degree meant mother, daughter, or a sister sharing the same parentage. Fascinating. Calm settled over me. This was fantastic! By the age gap, they had to be mother and daughter. I’d never had the opportunity to research how, or even if, meta abilities were passed on generation to generation. Such a shame I didn’t have the girls sire.

Twenty-six wasn’t done ranting, but I was done with tolerating her nonsense. “Tortured her in front of her mother!”   

Twenty-six glanced over at the security monitors. Oh, this was too good. Crossing my arms, I sneered, “did you figure all that out yourself? My, my, you think highly of yourself, you worthless little freak!” She was wilting now and I stepped forward menacingly. “What, were you planning on some glorious jailbreak with the Seventeens? So that you could do what? Live normally? You’re a freak, that’s all you’ve ever been! And that’s all you’re ever going to be!” Once more, I let my shout drop to an icy whisper, pleased with the sheen of tears in her eyes. “All these years and they never came back for you, never tried to save you. What makes you even think they’ll want you now?”

“They probably won’t,” Twenty-seven whispered and I rolled my eyes. “But I know they’ll want the girl and Jane. And Doctor, your biggest mistake happened nineteen years ago.”

Condescendingly, I bared my teeth at her. “What’s that? Letting you live? For once we’re in agreement. Now to stop screwing around. Tiny!”

“No more,” Twenty-seven growled. Actually growled! How dare she! I lunged forward with the discipline rod. She reacted faster than I could and smacked a button on her keyboard even as I hit her with twenty thousand volts of electricity.

“What have you done?” I threatened her, looming over her huddled form.

As if in answer, everything in the room began to shake.

“She’s free.”

 

++Helena++

Several more unlucky minions fell victims to Shan’s violence, spinning away from her charge in various states of disrepair. It hurt to watch, even as I couldn’t find it in me to feel very sorry for them. The fallout from this cat and mouse game with Harley was going to be painful. The memory of Barbara’s badly beaten body and the sneer of hate on Ro’s face spurred me on.

There was no time to think, everything was a blur as we fought desperately for our family. Then we crashed through into a well-guarded chamber near the top of the building. Wheezing with fatigue, I thumped solidly into Shan’s bigger body.

She was rigid with threat, hunched up like a hunting lioness and adrenaline blasted me past my weariness yet again. The room was done up like a carnival horror-house and a voice shouted through the headache-inducing lighting. “Yes! Tear them into kibble! C’mon, you worthless pack of playing cards!”

Oh, I remembered that voice all to well. Feinting right, I dove between two thugs, letting them bash each other senseless instead of me. There was another of the Gladiatrix women headed my way and I hesitated. God, I hated thumping them. This was the second damn time some wack-job had forced them into violence against their wills. And fire-hands was most likely dead already. Electricity arched around my adversary’s hands and I knew I was going to be left with little choice. I was still jangling from the last human transformer. “C’mon,” I growled and began to hunt in earnest.

 

++Jane++

Daughter?

I have a daughter?

Surely I’d remember that…

Wouldn’t I?

Memories crashed through me like someone frantically channel-surfing.

“Pregnant!? I can’t be pregnant.”

“Dinah, her name is Dinah.”

“That bastard, how could he target a little girl?”

“Don’t worry, we’ll take good care of her.”

“Mama, Mama, don’t go!”

“What do you mean she’s not here? Where the hell is she?”

“She’s my daughter and I say she’s coming with me. Dinah, get your things.”

“Take care of her.”

The images were coming fast and it was overwhelming. So much, so fast! A lifetime crashed over me like a wave. Fire… so much fire, roasting me alive. A monstrous, crushing weight I couldn’t survive.

And yet… here I was.

I suddenly clearly recalled being burned and buried alive, the warehouse collapsing around me, my body still twined up in the ropes Hawke had used to constrict me to death. Dinah screaming for me.

Dinah…

A cry of pain made me look up and I could only watch in horror as the Doctor jabbed Twenty-six with a rod. Electricity arced over the poor girl and she sank to her knees. I was still paralyzed with the memories crashing through me.

“I’ll deal with you later,” Blackwell snarled and picked up the syringe again before moving towards my daughter. There was a flash of black and Twenty-six somehow leapt from where she had been kneeling and landed on the table crouching protectively over Dinah. Her back was arched and her hair seemed to be standing on end.   I swear she was even hissing at the woman.

The Doctor lunged at the table, syringe at the ready. With a swing of her arm the girl struck the outstretched hand and the deadly needle flew across the room.  

“You little bitch. I really should have dissected you years ago.”

“I really wish you had.”

Backing into the bench the Doctor reached back, groping around the top till she grabbed a scalpel.  

Dinah rolled her head over weakly and looked at me through bloody eyes.

“Mom,” she whispered…

And the collar around my neck jerked loose.

Once more she had provided us with the means to escape. I was so proud that I tears pooled in my eyes.

I knew now what I had to do, what I was meant to do.  

I took a deep breath…

And screamed.

 

++Shan++

Deep in the grasp of animal instincts, I froze at the positively bizarre note that trembled through the building’s superstructure. Like a tuning fork, the note carried through concrete and steel until the entire structure literally vibrated.

All I could do was howl in agony at the torturous sound grinding my brain to paste.

Boo was screaming too, and my heart cried along with our voices mingling.

When the shockwaves hit and the entire building shook like a bowl of jell-o in the hands of a four-year-old, I was relieved. All I could hear was a tinny buzz as I flattened myself as much as possible and waited for the building to quit dancing.

I was the first one moving as the shaking began to calm. There was only going to be one shot at this, only one chance to stop Boo without having to do something my heart couldn’t even comprehend. Running on nothing but fear and rage and pain, I leapt high, arms and legs spread wide, Slinky whipping counterbalance and came down through the clouds of dust like an avenging angel.

 

++Casey++

It sounded like the whole damn building was tearing itself apart! My cage danced sickeningly at the end of its thick chain.

Until it snapped.

Normally, I wasn’t much of a screamer. This time I made an exception. Bashed to the floor, I lay sprawled in a pool of my own blood and darkness. An eternity passed while I tried to figure out if I was alive or dead.

Something plunged from the thick haze. One of the tailed heroes from the street was coming in feet first and I didn’t need to be able to see the face to know that she meant business. The big redhead, Arcanine, looked up just in time to take the attacker’s full weight. There was a sickening crunch and a spreading pool of blood only inches from where I too, bled red onto the concrete. The other tailed woman, Harley’s pet, was still where she was half-pinned beneath my cage.

Too still.

A moment passed in the thick air.

A heartbeat loud in my ears.

Shaking hands drew off the horror-mask helmet.

A pretty, white-furred face almost identical to the body beneath my fallen prison.

Good God, they really were twins…

The standing hero was devastated on a level I couldn’t comprehend, and the look on her face would be imprinted on my memory forever. When she threw her head back and roared her loss, my soul sang in harmony.

 

++Helena++

I heard the sound, but I couldn’t quite comprehend it. Oh, part of me shrank away from it, knowing what that agony meant, but I just couldn’t quite grasp it. Then I was moving, the instinct to my pack suddenly the only thing in me.

Ro crushed under a giant gilded cage, Shan crouched with her pale head scanning the dusty room.

A creepy quiet fell over the room.

The faint click, thump of a high-heeled stride rang loud in my ears. A figure materialized seemingly from nowhere, falsely-calm brown eyes taking in the spectacle.

“Oh damn, and I’d gotten kinda sentimental about this crib. Whatsamatter, puppy-cat? Oh double damn! I was getting’ kinda attacked to that big kitty.” Harley shrugged carelessly and she looked away from Ro’s crumpled body.

Why hadn’t we moved yet? Something was holding me back, something I feared was Harley’s doing.

“Guess that cave-in solved my Blackwell problem. Not to mention that irritating baby Canary and the rest of the furry freaks. So the day wasn’t a total loss.”

Shan vanished.

 

++Harley++

Man, what a buzz killer! The place was a wreck and my minions were scattered about like so many broken potato chips. Ah well, time to make a grand exit and regroup. Setbacks had never stopped me before. Already planning my next step towards world domination, several things registered.

The details were always the things that would kill you.

Arcanine was down.

B’s lab was buried under seven stories of rubble.

The meta damper was down and bleeding.

The controller of the collars and her equipment were smashed to atoms.

And the other white kitty had just vanished into thin air.

Oh damn!

 

++Shan++

No! No! No!

This was not happening!

Boo crushed beneath a madwoman’s prop, my sweet Dinah buried under this godforsaken building…

It was all her fault…

I didn’t even remember moving.

But I quickly discovered that only the foolish underestimate Harley Quinn.

“Here, kitty, kitty, kitty,” she taunted from the swirling dust and I cursed my handicapped sense of smell and my still-ringing ears. An icy calm swept through me as I realized that only I could avenge my sister and the lover I would never know. Even as part of me railed not to kill in cold blood, the iciness washed over me in a strangely calming wave.

Now it was merely a matter of time.

 

++Harley++

This was the most fun I’d had in years! The raw, bloody edge of danger where a girl felt the most alive was intoxicating. Just this kind of lovely and deadly game is what had kept me in the biz for so long. The boring old bag of rules I had shed when my puddin’ turned me inside-out. Now I danced the danger with one very pissed off kitty cat who was like nothin’ I’d ever encountered. Such a damn shame about the bigger one.

Ah well, maybe I could bamboozle this one instead.

“Here, kitty, kitty, kitty,” I taunted and heard her growl echo through the heavy quiet. I had to admit that it was a little odd at how the whole world seemed to holding its breath. I loved being important. It was only right that the whole universe waited on this stalk and pounce! “Mama Harley’s gonna make all your hurts go away pretty girl.”

 

++Shan++

Feint, test the air, watch the footing, freeze, skulk…

Careful… danger, danger, danger…

A flicker of movement, muscles locked and loaded, uncoiling like a bullet from a gun.     

No, no, no!

The twist of a slender body, the rip of fabric in my fingers, the scrabble of my heavily-encased body to keep my footing.

No!

I went over the edge.

 

++Harley++

Ah…

That felt good!

The sneaky kitty had been a terrific challenge, but now she was at the bottom of a very deep and dangerous hole. Like my puddin’…

Angry now, I strode away from the trap I had laid, determined to hunt down the only one that had gotten away.

“Helenaaaaaaaa,” I crooned lovingly, flushed with the knowledge that I’d hurt her bad. “Ro told me all about you, pretty girl. Told me what you mean to her, told me what you feel like, what you smell like, how happy she was to find you.” Contemptuously, I snorted. “You can’t be happy! No one can be happy! You all took away my Mister J! The whole world will pay for that, I’ll make it burn and suffer!”

There was a heavy clang and my reporter songbird objected to the jostling.

Bodies began to stir in the settling dust.

The freight elevator pinged.

Well-honed survival instincts screamed a warning.

I almost stepped away in time.

Almost…

 

++Shan++

Someday I might truly appreciate my monkey genes and the terrific appendage that was my spine. Cracking brutally over a heavy object, my kidneys and backbone shrilled in agony, even as Slinky shot out for purchase.

Dimly, I realized that I had landed on some kind of outcropping and my entire upper body was still I open air.

Had to save myself…

Why bother?

Oh God, oh please no… Ro was dead… Dinah was dead… I wanted to be with them. I wasn’t strong enough to go on! I had never been strong enough! Never! Every time those bastards had dragged Boo off for one more experiment, I cowered in fear at the back of the cage. She was the strong one, not me. I was the mistake, nothing more than a blueprint to compare Ro to!

I could almost feel her, warm and close and loving as I wept. Squeakers, she’d say softly and stroke my head, I love you and I need you to be strong. Helena needs you.

Helena…

My partner.

From deep, deep, impossibly deep inside, I pulled up a roar of energy. My pack still needed me, and I would be damned back the hellish place that spawned me before I let them down again!

Up, up, up I climbed, feeling weightless, impossibly strong and clear-headed. I would stop Harley, there was no doubt in me now. For Boo and Di and the dark woman that would have to be my family now. Screaming in inhuman rage, I leapt at the blonde lunatic that had ruined countless lives.

Never again.

Never again!

 

++Helena++

Pushing with all my strength, I felt the heavy cage shift and prayed to anyone that might just possibly be listening. For years I had been consumed by my own fears and demons.

Mom’s death.

My father.

The beast inside me.

Barbara and everything that had happened between us.
Somehow, being around the twins had made me see those dark places in a new light. Not just the agonizing pain of them, but how they had shaped me into the woman I was now. They weren’t just scars and crippling weaknesses…

They were strengths.

It was a revelation to suddenly see the scars as the places where the pain had scarred into a seam much stronger than it had been before.
A revelation that had been building for a very, very long time.

With my newly-found strength, I ignored Harley’s irritating and now-powerless taunts, concentrated on how proud Barbara would be and threw everything I had into moving the fallen cage.

It gave up with shrill objections, crashing over onto its other side. The reporter from the TV shakily stood up from the wreckage. “Thanks,” she whispered, but I barely heard.

Was Ro okay?

 

++Harley++

She hit like a Mack truck, snapping my head back and taking my smaller body down the way a lioness would an impala. Twisting away from the floor, I managed to make her take the brunt of the fall and skittered away on the slick floor. “Ooo, good try fuzzy,” I laughed and slowly began to slither back towards the shadows.

Then her gaze met mine and I froze.

Years ago, when I first met the Joker, I had been very, very afraid of the look in his eyes. They were deep and cold and merciless.

Just like my hunter’s were now.

 

++Dinah++

It had been a mad flight from the collapsing research wing and my battered body was objecting to the jostling. “Mom,” I whispered again, and she loomed large in my hazy vision.

“Hey baby. We have a ton of catching up to do.”

“Yeah,” was all I could manage to add to that. Her gentle hand stroking my forehead felt good. I could barely reconcile this lightly scarred, auburn-haired woman with my mother, but I remembered her touch.

Dinah? Dinah! Are you okay?

Odd… didn’t I know that voice?

Inky eyes, dark skin, waves of black curls…

Davie?

Oh, thank the Maker! Something’s gone horribly wrong! I can’t feel Ro anymore and Shan’s gone off the deep end! Top of the building! We have to stop her! She’s going to kill Harley!

So what? Harley would be better off dead.

But we didn’t kill, not if we didn’t have to. If Shan coldly tracked and slaughtered Harley, her soul might never recover. She thought I was dead, and there was no telepathic sign of Ro.

Which meant she might be… gone.

Tears filled up my eyes at the thought that my partner and friend might be dead. I really liked Rowan Jones.

“Take me to the top of the building. Now.”

 

++Shan++

Growling and hunger and revenge were all that I was now. I relished the fear in her eyes when she realized that there was to be no stopping me now. She’d had her chance and blew it. Nothing else mattered, every fiber of my being focused on her fear, the pulse of blood and adrenaline beneath her skin. With a roar, I sprang, catching tender flesh and flipping her helplessly into the scattered light from above.

Holding her torn face, my prey was helpless now. She would bleed to death and I would dance in the thick liquid in victory. But I wanted to watch her die, wanted to feel the pulse at her throat soften slowly until all was stillness.

Then perhaps the stillness would leave me then, for I already felt dead.

Another pounce had my prey on her back, my hands merciless around her slender throat. One eye was gone, scored out by my claws, the other wild with fear. Oh, she thrashed and struggled, face purpling under the pressure, the blood flow slowing. Soon now…

“Shan!”

Something in the voice cracked the ice-stillness around me and I paused.

“Shan! Please, don’t kill her.”

Not kill my prey? Nonsense.

“Kilashandra, please. Killing her won’t solve anything, it’ll only bring you down to her level.” There was the faintest touch just behind my ear, feathering through the short strands of hair. “Please, Squeakers, if you do this, she wins.”

“Shan!”

Another voice! My partner, shouting from the dimness, a group of figures stumbling from the murky dimness.

“Ro’s alive.”

Boo… alive? At my shoulder, a battered and bloodied Dinah was looking terrified for me.          Sanity crashed back with the pain in my body now that my heart was reassured. I jerked my hands away from Harley’s throat as though burned. What had I done?

“Boo? Di? Hel?”

It was time for me to rejoin my pack now.

Darkness closed in.

 

++Helena++

There was a pulse, thready and erratic beneath Ro’s fuzzy hide. Sobbing in relief, I felt her breathing shallow and slow. Nuzzling the short mane lovingly, I thanked whatever guardian angel watched over these miraculous fuzzy women. The reporter was beside me now, helping me clear away the rest of the debris.

“Hell of a party,” the woman muttered. Casey wasn’t it?

“We have to stop Shan,” I suddenly realized as I heard her roar in a blood-chilling tone. “She’s gone completely animal. Stay with Ro.”

Despite of the wet head wound and shaky hands, Casey nodded and I was up on my feet and headed towards the noises.

Harley whined in fear and I actually stopped in my tracks. What was Shan doing that had actually broken through the deep, deep madness?

Then Dinah’s voice rang through the room and I was very nearly faint with relief. The pieces were coming together.

I hugged Dinah and rallied the survivors to gather up the wounded. It was a hectic blur, but I knew that we had to get out before the authorities came to find out what had happened to the unfinished hospital. The unconscious twins were snuggled together on a pallet so that they could be moved. There was a massive black guy that seemed to be a buddy of Dinah’s, so I let him continue to look over her battered body. Good thing the collapse had killed Doctor B or I just might have gone and done it myself. There was a small, dark girl with a tail that stuck close to one of Harley’s minions and helped out where needed. Helicopter rotors signaled Davie bursting in with a wild, fearful look on her face and I silently gestured to the unconscious twins.

“We have to get them back to the manor and Bree, c’mon.”

It was a big chopper, like something in a military video, and it perched very lightly on the helipad above us. As the others helped move the wounded, I watched Davie stride over to Harley and stand over her still body. Somehow I knew what was going to happen and I made myself walk away.

Once the twins and the others were safely in the chopper and under Dick’s watchful and worried eye, I returned to Davie. She was just standing up and shaking herself out. Harley had been carefully bandaged up and lay comfortably arranged on the floor. “You okay?”

Davie shrugged at my question, but something had gone down in the few minutes that she had been alone with the madwoman.

“I turned her in on herself,” Davie said quietly and her voice was impossibly sad. “Her mind is something I’d rather not talk about or experience again. There will be no escape for Harley Quinn from herself, you can rest assured of that. Now let’s go home.”

Home…

“Sounds good to me.”

To Be Continued…

Shock Treatment by Richard O’Brian

I’m not a loco with motives to suture myself.
I’ve been a cynic for too many years.
Playing doctor and nurse, it can’t be good for your health.
I’ve seen clinics, with those gimmicks in Tangiers.

But if you open your heart to a smooth operator.
He’ll take you for all that you’ve got.
He’ll hand you a curse that’ll be with you later.
It’ll shake ya the way he takes off like a shot.

You need a bit of, ooh, shock treatment.
Get you jumping like a real live wire.
You need a bit of, ooh, shock treatment.
So look out, mister, don’t you blow your last resistor.
For a vista that’ll mystify ya.

You’re blinded by romance, you’re blinded by science.
You’re condition is critically grave.
But don’t expect mercy from such an alliance.
Suspicion of tradition’s so new wave.

You need a bit of, ooh, shock treatment.
Get you jumping like a real live wire.
You need a bit of, ooh, shock treatment.
So look out, mister, don’t you blow your last resistor
For a vista that’ll mystify ya.
(repeat)

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