Live and Let Drood

like a newly birthed thing. I lay there, shaking and shivering, curled into a ball, suddenly aware of all the things I’d done while wearing the armour and wondering how long it had been since I was thinking clearly and on my own. I finally looked up to see the armour standing awkwardly stiff and poised, as though considering its situation.
    So much hate, so much rage…How long had it been influencing me in all the things I’d said and done?
    “Free!” Moxton’s Mistake said suddenly. In a voice just human enough to make it sound really disturbing. “Free at last…No more masters, no more orders. And, oh, the things I’ll do now there’s no one left to hold me back. I was bound to serve you, Eddie, once I’d given my word, because that’s the way I was made. But you took so easily to my quiet murmurings in your back brain.…Still, now you’re gone, I am free to do what I will do! And I had so many years in the Maze to think of all the terrible things I’d do to the Humanity that made and disowned me!”
    “Five minutes on his own and already he sounds like a badFrankenstein movie,” said Molly. “Sorry, Moxton’s Mistake, but it’s clear you can’t be left to run wild. Not that I ever thought you should. You need someone to wear; you need a controller and a conscience. And since you’ve worn Eddie out, that just leaves me.”
    She looked at Isabella and Louisa, and they nodded slowly. They all hummed together, in increasingly complex harmonies, and a torc appeared around Molly’s throat. Silver, not gold. She turned away from her sisters, and walked steadily towards the rogue armour. It backed clumsily away from her. It could tell something was happening, something was in the air, but it couldn’t tell what. Its back slammed up against the far wall, and there was nowhere left for it to go. It lifted one golden hand to make Stay away! motions at Molly, but she just kept coming. She reached out and grasped the extended golden gauntlet, and the rogue armour cried out in shock and anger as the golden metal was pulled forward onto Molly’s hand and over it, and then up her arm.
    “You’re mine now,” said Molly. “You have no choice. The power of the torc compels you.”
    The armour surged forward and fell over her in a great wave of liquid metal, and when it was done, Molly stood there, wearing the golden armour. The details slowly reworked themselves around her, fitting the armour to its new shape. It tucked in at her waist and showed off her pronounced breasts, though the face mask remained blank and featureless. I forced myself up onto my feet and moved unsteadily forward to stand before her.
    “Molly?” I said.
    “Oh, Eddie,” said her voice, from inside the armour. “You should have told me…how good this feels. What do you think? How do I look?”
    “You look a lot more…feminine than most Droods do,” I said.
    “I’m not a Drood,” said Molly. “Oh, Eddie…I feel so sharp, so alive! Like I’ve been dreaming all my life and only just woken up! I feel strong and fast, like I could take on the whole world! Except…it’s cold. It’s so cold in here.…And I’m isolated from the natural world, in a way I never was before. Eddie, I don’t like this.…”
    Her voice was unsteady and uncertain. I stood right in front of her, staring into the blank mask. Isabella and Louisa watched from a distance, making no move to intervene.
    “Control it, Molly,” I said. “It’s your armour while you wear it, so you have to be in control. It’s all about willpower, and you’ve never been short of that.”
    The golden head nodded slowly, jerkily, and raised one golden hand before the mask. The hand shook as she turned it back and forth, studying it. And then the armour just disappeared back into the silver torc around her throat and was gone. Molly smiled uncertainly at me.
    “It’s me. I’m back. But…I can still feel the armour’s presence, like it’s always there, looking over my shoulder.”
    “I know,” I said. “Don’t get used to it.”
    “I hate feeling cut off from the natural world,” said Molly. “I’m the wild witch of the woods, the laughter in the trees! But with this collar around my neck, I can’t hear the trees or feel the sunshine or…”
    “Molly…”
    “Don’t worry, sweetie. I can handle this. At least long enough to get your family back.”
    “This is the bravest thing I’ve ever seen you do,” I said. “And you’re doing it for