Deathstalker 03 - Deathstalker War

name doesn't exactly inspire confidence.
    So, now you get to make your pitch. And it had better be very convincing."
    Jenny Psycho suddenly grinned at Topaz and Mary, and they both stirred
    uncertainly despite themselves. There was something in the room with them, a presence and a power that hadn't been there before. And then Jenny Psycho wrapped her destiny around her and dropped all her shields, blazing brightly like lightning trapped in a shot glass. Her presence was suddenly overpowering, filling the room and pushing against the walls, beating on the air like the heartbeat of something impossibly huge. Topaz and Mary fell back, and the Investigator's hand fell automatically to the sword at her hip. Jenny's esp lashed out and slammed into Topaz's and Mary's minds, slapping aside their shields with casual ease. They stood naked before her, all barriers down. Jenny could have made them say or do or believe anything, and they all knew it. But instead, Jenny opened up her mind, took her time and suffering in Wormboy Hell, and showed Topaz and Mary all of it in one compressed burst of living hell.
    They were all there as the worm ate into Jenny's brain, controlling her every thought and action. They were there as she lay curled and naked on the floor of her cell, shaking and shivering, surrounded by the stench of her own piss and shit and vomit. The cell was little more than an oversize coffin, with featureless steel walls and a ceiling too low to let her do more than crouch or crawl. There was rarely any light. There was just the darkness, and the worm burrowing in Jenny's mind, feeding her the endless nightmares of Wormboy's projected hallucinations and mind games. She lost most of her voice there in Silo Nine, screaming for help that never came, or just for an end to the pain and the horror.
    And then there was a miracle. Mater Mundi came to her, Mother of the World, Our Mother Of All Souls, exploding out of her mind like a butterfly from a cocoon, spreading out to gather up every esper in Wormboy Hell, and bind them into a single sword thrust into the heart of Wormboy himself. The gestalt couldn't
    maintain itself for long without burning out all the minds of those involved, but for that fleeting moment every one of them was greater than Humanity had ever been, and more powerful. And all of it focused through Jenny Psycho.
    Except that wasn't her name, really. She'd been someone else originally, an underground agent who'd volunteered to be sent into Silo Nine under a false persona, to gather information on ways into and out of Wormboy Hell. But now her original self and the false persona were both gone, swept aside by Jenny Psycho, who had been touched by greatness, her esp boosted beyond hope or reason. Jenny Psycho, representative of the Mater Mundi, who had once been someone else.
    Someone sane.
    Her projection collapsed as the various selves in her mind warred and screeched, fluttering in her head like moths battering a lamp, drawn beyond sense or reason to try and touch something that would only destroy them in the end. Jenny Psycho, who was so much more, and so much less, than she once was. She fell back into herself and kept falling, hugging herself fiercely to keep from flying apart. Tears burned in her eyes, but she kept them back by sheer force of will.
    Tears over the memory of something great and wonderful, that had touched and transformed her, and then abandoned her.
    Mary stepped forward and put an arm around Jenny's shaking shoulders. "It's all right. We understand. We'll speak to the union leaders. They need to hear you, even if they don't know it yet. You stay here. We'll get things moving."
    She gave Jenny a last comforting squeeze, and gestured with her head for Topaz to open the door. She did so, her face entirely impassive. Mary steered Jenny back into her chair, then she and Topaz left the study, leaving Jenny Psycho slumped in her chair like an exhausted child. They shut the door firmly behind
    them and moved off down the corridor.
    "Not too tightly wrapped, is she?" said Topaz.
    "Few of us are, these days," said Mary. "But she does seem to be an extreme case. If we don't handle this one with kid gloves, we could end up with a multiple personality on our hands. And a bloody powerful one, at that. Did you feel the energy coming off her? It was like staring into a searchlight. I've never encountered anything like it before. Whatever touched her in Silo Nine, it was a power far beyond my