Deathstalker 05 - Deathstalker Destiny

heads, as two headless bodies came forward to drag the dead Hazel away, out of Hazel d'Ark's line of sight. Her hands had clenched into fists so tight her fingers ached, and there was nothing she could do, nothing at all. Scour's amplified command stabbed into her mind again, and Hazel screamed aloud as a second alternate materialized in the stone chamber. This time she was seven feet tall and almost inhumanly slender. She wore a black bodysuit that rose up past her neck to cover her face as well. Her long golden hair was thickly shot with gray. Metal studs covered the black suit in shining swirls and patterns, and winked from the black face mask. She held vicious throwing stars in both hands, and a gun on each hip, but she never got the chance to use any of them. Two of the headless bodies moved in and grabbed her from both sides the moment she materialized, pressing her arms to her sides. She struggled silently, but their grip was so fierce her fingers slowly opened against her will, releasing the throwing stars as her fingers went numb.
    Energy suddenly spat and sparkled on the air around her, and Scour fell back a step, taken by surprise. There was a sudden tension in the air, and then both the headless bodies were thrown away from the alternate, crashing lifeless to the floor. Scour gestured quickly, and shimmering energy fields snapped into
    place around the alternate. Scour gestured again, and the energy fields slammed together, crushing the alternate Hazel between them. Her bones cracked loudly, but she never made a sound, even as she collapsed into unconsciousness. The shining energy fields disappeared, and the black-clad alternate fell limply to the floor. Scour walked over to the body, and kicked it once.
    "Well, I won't make that mistake again. Any future alternates I choose to call will have to be those without energy-manipulating powers." He knelt down beside the body, and tugged experimentally at the black bodysuit. "Interesting. The metal studs attach the suit to the body, and the mask to the face; screwed right into the flesh and bone. Neither mask nor bodysuit were meant to come off. Ever.
    I wonder why."
    A long scalpel was suddenly in his hand, and he began cutting and sawing at the bodysuit with practiced skill. The suit's material resisted the blade, and Scour grunted as he put more energy into it. Blood ran down the exposed pale flesh, from where he'd cut too deeply, but Scour didn't care.
    Hazel lay still on her trolley, eyes squeezed shut so she wouldn't have to watch what he was doing, and dived deep into her own mind. Instead of wasting energy fighting the intravenous sedative, she allowed it to close down her outer conscious mind so that she could concentrate on the deeper levels. Now that Scour had forced her inner door open, she could find it easily. She could sense other Hazels clustering around her like potential ghosts, possible echoes of herself, scattered throughout spacetime. Bonnie Bedlam and Midnight Blue were there, vaguely aware of her pain and torment, and wondering why they hadn't already been brought through. Hazel called out to them, but they couldn't hear her. She couldn't warn them. Far away, Hazel could hear screaming from the stone cell, and realized her black-clad alternate had awakened to the caresses of
    Scour's scalpel. Hazel screamed inside her mind, and no one could hear her but herself.
    Owen Deathstalker fought his way through a sea of bodies, cutting and hacking a path through the headless things as they came at him in an endless tide. They knew he was here now, and had apparently put aside their differences to concentrate on stopping him. More headless bodies came running from every direction, and Owen didn't give a damn. He felt stronger and faster than he had in weeks, and he wasn't even boosting. Somewhere up ahead was a power source, the uncanny thing he'd sensed earlier that reminded him of the Madness Maze. And the closer he got to it, the more powerful he became. He felt alive again, felt like himself again. Blood ran in streams on the cold stone floor, and none of it was his.
    The bodies packed the corridor ahead now, compacted into an almost solid mass by their determination to get to him. For the moment, the narrowness of the corridor reduced the number of headless bodies that could come at him at once, but he was approaching an intersection, and that could mean facing attacks from three or four sides at once. Owen considered the matter as he swung