Starblood

nostrils were flared, his eyes wild. He cringed by the door, obviously frightened and entranced at the same time.
    And Timothy knew he could hold on to consciousness only a few moments longer. The pain of those blows in stomach and chest came like blocks of concrete tossed by a catapult.
    Baker was chanting something, a string of obscenities mouthed in faithful order like a religious chant…
    Ti now wished they had given him the PBT first, so that he would not have been aware of the pain. That thought jolted him awake again. Damn it, they had almost gotten to him so soon! When he began wishing for the drug, his will was snapped and they had won the battle. Furious with himself, he ordered the servos to grasp Baker's neck, to twist and crush the thickly muscled flesh until the man crumpled from a lack of blood to his brain. They locked hard fingers around his neck and applied heavy, though not maximum, pressure.
    Baker continued to swing, though he slowly became aware that he was slowing down and that there was pain—very bad pain. He dropped his fists, staggered back, grasped at the servos worrying his neck. He pulled, fear and desperation replacing the sadistic frenzy that had occupied his facial features. But hands of flesh were not a match for steel fingers. He dropped to his knees and pitched forward into blackness.
    Ti held the hands on him a moment more, then released them lest he kill the man. Without looking up, he directed the servos at the door where Margle had been waiting, hoping to catch the man off guard.
    "Nice try," Margle said from behind him, near the bed. "But you better settle down now and let me get on with this."
    Ti turned, discouraged, and saw the Brother holding the same ornate throwing knife he had used to cow the mutant days earlier. The moment of hope that had flowered in him now withered and died, rotted down in the depths of him. He turned and went back to the bed, with his servos floating to either side. He weighed the possibility of using the servos to strangle Margle while the Brother injected the PBT, but he saw that the man had used the time of the fight to fill the needle and that he could easily inject it with one hand while maintaining a deadly grip on the knife. He lay down on the bed, turned off the grav-plate system as directed, and accepted the dose of the drug with what dignity he could muster.
    Dignity, after all, was about all he had left And even that would be gone soon; he might as well make use of it while it was permitted him.
    "Much more reasonable," Margle said, putting the needle away.
    The icewater of the drug stung through his veins.
    "Enjoy yourself now."
    Margle went into the bathroom, returned with a glass of water, pushed Baker onto his face by using the toe of his boot, and poured the cold fluid over the lackey's face. Baker spluttered, opened his eyes, tried to close them again and recapture blackness when he felt the awful pain in his throat.
    "Come on, you great beast," Margle said, an amused expression on his face. "We've got things to do."
    Baker rose without protest, cast a glance at Timothy, then followed Margle to the door. The Brother unlocked the portal, let them out, and closed and barred it behind them.
    Ti was alone again, with only his dream…
    For a while. Then the Other was there.
    The drug delusions were still immensely pleasing. Indeed, the sensuality, the richness of color and texture seemed to grow with each dose that was administered to him, to gain depth and believability that sometimes seemed to surpass real experiences in a world of concrete objects. But a new element had intruded in the pattern that had become
so
familiar in such a short time. During both of the psychedelic experiences of the previous day, Ti's second day locked in the basement room of that house, the Other had appeared in the delusions, standing nearby, a ghost, a shadow, the only flimsiness in this vivid world. The Other looked exactly like Ti imagined himself in the dreams, handsome and with full body. He was like a mirror image of the Dream Timothy, a second Dream Timothy whose only purpose seemed to be to watch. There was nothing sinister about him, nothing to raise alarm. Indeed, his presence served only to calm Timothy, to make the delusions more pleasant.
    Both times, Dream Timothy had attempted to speak with the shadow image of himself. And both times the attempt had ended in failure. The ghost had faded, dissolved, evaporated on the warm breezes of that