ERIC VINCENT

THE K VOLUME 2

The blond imp

THE BLOND IMP

Site : http://ericvincent.no-ip.org/

© Eric Vincent 2002. All rights reserved. Every resemblance with having existed, existing or coming situations or characters would be a pure coincidence.

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THE K, VOLUME 2

The flight AF232 joining New York in Paris arrived future. Inside of the Airbus A320, the passengers stamped of impatience, logical consequence of six hours of inactivity. In spite of the distribution of magazines, of meal, of cool and hot drinks, no artifice didn't conceal the narrowness of the cabin. Anticipated for hundred eighty people in configuration charter, the device had received two rows of less that the authorized maximum. The planning asked by the French company allowed a devolved space supplement long-legged of the growing populations. However, the jumpiness, the cramps and the various and varied tingles got little by little after an as long flight. The French capital was visible enough far, thanks to a required sunshine in this July 14 and thanks to an exceptional clarity due herself to a constant wind sweeping the mist of pollution. The passengers sat on the right in the middle carrier tempted by all means to distinguish the alpine summits far away, as in the beginning of the twentieth century where the White Mount was visible from the third floor of the Eiffel Tower. Lost pain! The concentration in ozone and in dioxide of carbon had not decreased sufficiently to permit such a miracle. Omar Braoud didn't care to these dunces screwed to the portholes starboard of the device. He despised them as he despised the set of their compatriots. These fools were wrong to belong to the nation that sustained the military power in place in his homeland. France, in the name of its size, in the name of its famous colonial past, could not stop "to cooperate" with the despots in place in republican parodies, active as far as placing its own advisers completely by ministers puppets and presidents junk, supportive of the administrations gangrened by the corruption, ogling on the rich basements. The population, mistreated, starved, forgotten, was the cadet of its worries. Left, right, ecologists, extreme, the French policies were all slurs in the same mould, golden to the fine gold. They promised some changes in the relations with Africa and betrayed their mandate once in pocket. According to Omar and his secret organization, the black Jihad, it was necessary to finish some with these scandalous practices, it was necessary to pierce the abscess once with the hexagon for all! For it, to his eyes and to those of his movement, there was a method only: to put the nose of France in terror, so that it feels well to pass the pain, so that it understands the people's daily suffering far that it operated by the intervention of governments enslaved with billions of euros. To arrive there, they had to hit a big stroke. He was not alone… The young man, brown to the dark eyes, afflicted of a gauntness that his large size underlined, addressed a sign to a stewardess holding to some steps of him. Clothed of a too narrow blue uniform, the charming blond with the green eyes betrayed the hold of some superfluous kilograms or a reduction of the credits affected to the renewal of the work clothes in the airline company. She headed toward the passenger, without forgetting a smile become rare at the seagoing staff. Arrived to his height, she bent forward, unveiling a neckline to make become pale a dab. She could not kneel, supporting pain visibly the constraint of the narrow skirt. - What I can do for you? She said in an impeccable French, what was not a pledge of her origins, multilingualism perfects being indispensable in an international span company. - To serve me… of human shield! Omar declaimed while applying a fire arm on her belly. 3

THE BLOND IMP

She had not seen the revolver. She shivered, closed the eyes, felt to falter. Then, she took the over, perfectly knowing that this type of situation could occur. She had been prepared, formed, aware during her long periods of training. Only, it was about her first time, her first hijacking. How didn't she have known how to detect this possibility? This young man seemed normal, or even nice, in spite of a distressing stain of wine blocking his forehead. Six years without the least boredom and has that all toppled. - I implore you! The airline stewardess beseeched. Don't commit a madness! I implore you! I’m waiting for… a baby! She didn't know if the smile of Omar came from joy generated by the news, a sort of compassion or if it was simply snide, the terrorist delighting himself to possess one as precious human shield. How did he have succeeded in passing this weapon through the detectors of metals? - Raise yourselves smoothly, he ordered while agitating the gun in his blouse. No abrupt movement if you are anxious to see the child's father again! She complied slowly, as hostage's taker required it. He rose at the same time as her, aiming her of his best possible. Six other men also straightened themselves, supervising in his direction, waiting that he gives the signal of the action. They threw themselves in the middle of the passageway, menacing the passengers with guns machine gunner took under their seats, presumably hidden by accomplices in the JFK airport, in New York. A wave of howling surged in the plane, not escaping the ears of the pilots. Since the attempts of September 11, 2001, on the American soil, the devices had been endowed with armored doors, actionable exclusively by the staffs installed in the cabin of piloting. They only had an order in that case: to lock and to land the device as soon as possible. Even though it split them the heart, even though the passengers, the stewardesses and the stewards had to be executed one after the other, the pilots had order not to yield to the blackmail. Whatever it costs to some! Two daring rushed on the terrorist the more close to their seats, knowing pertinently that the exit could be only fatal. The terrorists having hit the American soil had given some ideas to the revolutionaries and fundamentalists of all hairs; these last didn't ignore that the best security of the world included some holes systematically. No country was safe from the hell coming from the sky. Omar coped with his human load and proved to those that doubted some, that he had nerves of steel, stupendous reflexes and a determination made of concrete. He adjusted the passengers and made explode their brains while releasing two strokes. There was not any lost bullet. - That it serves you lesson! One of you so ever moves, not only I will knock him down, but I will also bring five other people owing his eyes down! Mohammed! - Yes, chief? 4

THE K, VOLUME 2

- Put back the bodies in place and attach them with their belts! The passageway must be free of all hindrance! - Yes chief! The henchman replied. Another terrorist, hardly higher than a child of twelve years, approached and threw to the person responsible of the air commando: - With the screams and the shots, I could not go in the cabin! - It doesn't have any importance, Aziz. I had foreseen it. - What do we do? Do we force the stewardess to make open them? This last became pale instantaneously; the pilots would stubbornly refuse, the pirates would lose temper, they would knock her without summons, just to make an example, down. To shout? To scream her condition of future mom, in order to sensitize the passengers and to force them to react in mass, to the risk to trigger a slaughter, while having a good luck to master hostage's takers, in clean under-number? How to know what was the good choice, the good attitude to adopt? She opted for the dialogue, maybe more constructive. - They won't open. The order, it is not to open, on no account. - I know! Omar answered while pushing his gun in the coasts of the young woman, a sprig irritated by the fact that she interfered in the conversation. He threw a dark look to the stewardess, meaning her that the women, at home, didn't have the right to the speech. Besides, they had no right, solely some duties. He sent back her toward a seat, without care. - Well! Hold you alone otherwise… he made as designating the inanimate bodies of the passengers having paid their boldness heavily. She obeyed, not believing to pull herself for the meantime to so good account. She girthed herself, by reflex, asking the sky to review hers, to live some long and happy years with Damien, her husband, fireman in Paris. - Look for my suitcase! Seat 15 E! - Yes, chief! The accomplice came back quickly with the claimed object. Omar seized some and came close to the door giving on the cabin. Tightly closed, armored, it assured the security for the pilots. The terrorist sat down on the floor and opened the suitcase. It was definitely little common with its integrated computer, its electric cables, its stethoscope, papers, pieces of metal, a heavy cylinder, batteries and an unaccustomed rigid bulge. To it an incredible bazaar was added, a necessary complete for office, intended to delude the observers of luggage in the airports.

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THE BLOND IMP

Omar took the cylinder and drove a wick made of tungsten. He screwed the all and attacked the soil of the plane, aiming a precise point, marked on a diagram retailed of the Airbus. Quickly, he cut a square of ten centimeters of side in the cabin, little thick to this place. H consulted a new time his diagram and put his cables in contact with wires precise current in a girdle. As soon as the branching was done, he saw the whole instrumentation appearing on the LCD screen of his laptop computer. All parameters of flight corresponded to those of the flight AF 232. He added some switches or rheostats then on other electric wires, presumably to control the thrust of the reactors, the system of landing gear, the positioning of the shutters. Finally, he fixed a banal joystick on the serial port of the microcomputer. Under the admiring eye of Aziz, supervising the stewards and the stewardesses of the other, he straightened himself, the first left from his finished mission. He disassembled the stethoscope, withdrawing the element customarily placed on the patient's skin. He fixed a blackened metallic mouthpiece and drove the "earphones" in two openings of the lid of the suitcase. The broadcast of a continuous hiss meant that the suspected bulge contained a sparkling mixture and that it escaped since the introduction of the earphones. Omar eradicated a Bic lighter from his pocket serving usually to light a cigarette. He made spring a flame in front of the tinkered stethoscope and a bluish throw formed itself immediately. So long as of his scratch blowtorch, he attacked the armored door without losing one second besides. He concentrated the flame in one unique point, knowing to what point gas was precious, as much as the time. - Then, chief? Aziz asked for. - I am there nearly! Omar answered. At the end of two minutes, he felt a brutal elongation of the flame, meaning that it had just crossed the partition. He immediately extinguished his utensil of safe drilling and applied a curious object provided with a plunger. He screwed, ascertaining a perfect tightness, and pressed a trigger, freeing another gas. He fixed his multifunction chronometer that never left his wrist. -… eight, nine, ten! He ended with a high voice. They died. I have the control of the plane. I verify the coordinates. We are only at… five minutes of the objective! Aziz abandoned him and showed five tense and slender fingers to his accomplices holding the passengers. Usually, facing the victory, they would have pulled some salvos in air, showing their joy noisily. They last to contain themselves and were content with an index and an adult surveys, forming the V of the victory. Omar seized the joystick and skimmed it of the tip of the fingers, in order to affirm his words. If the neurotoxin gas poisoning had failed, the pilots would feel the takeover of the device and would react immediately while passing solely on the emergency, pluggable system since the cabin of piloting. This system appeared on his diagram but it was with difficulty accessible. He would not have the time anymore, nor resources of the shunt. 6

THE K, VOLUME 2

He made pitch the device, repeatedly. No counterattack of the pilots. They had perished in atrocious but short sufferings. ** * Since a good half-hour, a parasitic phenomenon appeared to disrupt the session of formation delivered by Malika Cisse. Black and laughing eyes, hair inevitably frizzy die-hard courts, sensual mouth that one imagined crunchy of the exotic fruits, the sculptural Senegalese with the chocolate skin wriggled regularly on her seat, rose to revive the legs and suspended her speech, the eye nailed on her screen of computer, suddenly. Malika, the specialist of Brain Centre, the product at the forefront of the artificial intelligence, practiced her profession in "free throws", in premises put to her disposition by the owner of the Total tower, the monument of the district of the Defense. The session had started three days earlier, uniting seven trainees, all descended of scientific surroundings and barded of diplomas and professional experience. Wrapping the formation on the hats of wheel, the beautiful African had not become aware that her pupils sometimes decentralized themselves while ogling too much on her perfect plastic. Some questions followed without answer, the trainees looking stupidly at her when she pounded them of questioning. The present males during the session had liked that she tortures them otherwise. Particularly Tristan Brunet, a setting little dynamic of a specialist of the airplanes. This character carried his identity marvelously: from Tristan, it emanated an incredible sadness, letting suppose that he didn't feel any joy in life. Of Brunet, he pulled the color ebony of his hair and his eyes. He was not beautiful, nor ugly, according to the silent words of his setting. His large size was blemished by his flagrant lack of musculature, his common face was wasted by an aquiline nose of an excessive length, letting suppose that he achieved without pain the exploit to smoke under the shower! As for his hands, his real complex, they were extremely long and fine, as paws of chicken, finished by pointed fingers of which he yet rounded the nails. In spite of his conscience to be invisible to the eyes of the women, Tristan observed them with interest and desire. He walled up in the silence, in agreement to come solely out of his reserve when one forced him there. Since three days, he had his meals aside from the group, to the basement, to only some meters of the other. He always isolated himself, as a matter of principle. He considered himself like an asocial being, curling the delirium of persecution, feeling words of others as stupendous aggressions. In spite of all, he observed his similar, in silence, analyzing each of their facts and gestures. The humanity fascinated him and horrified him at the same time. Malika exercised on him a real hypnosis; her goddess's body, made for the love, her inimitable laughter, her just words, her jolly character, all delighted him in her. Only, he would ever dare to make her part of his desires, of his sexual impulses, of his furious desire to throw himself on her and to devour her gradually, while starting with his adorable free nape, auspicious to the kissing and to the caress. He was content with observing her without word to say, like a cat watching its prey with desire, uncertain to seize it. His eyes went for a walk on her long legs of gazelle, bare until 7

THE BLOND IMP

mid-thigh and on the generous neckline, put in value by her black dress. The rare gold jewelry that she raised, a chain at the left ankle, a fine chain at the end of which hung an Africa in golden metal and a flaming alliance, shone one thousand fires on a bottom chocolate, real case for gold. However, since quite a lot of minutes, Tristan discerned like a manifest wavering in the attitude of the young woman. Did she have noticed his solid merry-go-round to undress him of the look? Did she have discerned the desires putting him ill at ease? How to know? The other trainees, the two included women, stared themselves repeatedly, as if the word of order was: but what fly pricked her? Malika showed evidence of jumpiness that she would have started her nails so if they had not been covered with particularly toxic red varnish. Suddenly, she froze, the tight fists, the eyes captive. Then, she jumped contrary to all expectations, from joy while exclaiming: - Yes! Yes! Yes! In front of the interrogative looks, she should provide an explanation quickly: - Senegal leads 1 to 0 facing Brazil! - Do you follow the semifinal of soccer? Dennis Mallet, a member of Dassault Industries, colleague of Tristan, quizzed. - Yes! I have an encrustation video on a quarter of my portable. The network administrator of the society put it in activity since the beginning of the World Cup. - You support Senegal? A young trainee of a Start up asked for. - I am a Senegalese of heart and French of adoption! - Notice, the type of at Dassault said, it is worth to support Senegal better than France. This last is not even itself qualified for the World Cup! I had never seen that! All matches of qualification lost! Even against Crete, that the Germans crushed 12-0! - When Senegal plays, it is a little France that plays! Tristan dared. Far from evoking him a colonial past! In fact, he simply spoke of the naturalization of Zidane, Viera, Wiltord and Anelka, some excellent French players having chosen to emigrate to Dakar and to take the colors, this change of nationality being the unique insurance to participate at the World Cup. Henceforth without their Porsche and others Ferrari, appearing at the Senegalese television in advertisement spot praising the local products, paid with a catapult, they learned again slowly and surely the value of money. Besides, whereas they took pleasure in the laziness on the European lawns, burden by the millions of euros, they galloped henceforth as antelopes, the unforeseen but fantastic incursion of lions on the lands of dusty soccer pushing them to surpass themselves.

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- It is true! Malika suited. Name of God! She is added. Second goal of Senegal! It remains only ten minutes to play! We are the champions, we are the champions, we are, we are, we are the champions! She vocalized with a very loud voice. The magic of Africa had hit, in all senses of the term. Magic of the gold feet of kids playing naked feet, a short time before their engagement in the most prestigious of the competitions. Black magic, also, of African wizards, of marabous in struggle against their Brazilian counterparts, delivering some incantations for the devil, slaughtering some chickens, sheep and goats in the name of the shrewd, so that he delivers himself to a dance destined to undermine strengths and the talents of the Brazilian artists. Difficult to believe in this nonsense, to the eyes of the western. Only, the reality spoke of itself: since 2002, year of the meeting between the French team and Senegal, the team with the Gallic rooster emblem had not won only one match anymore. The judicious person had beautiful to deny the evidence, statistics spoke: France didn't recover the path of the goal anymore. ** * Omar had the eye nailed on the screen of his portable, concentrated like ever for this ultimate mission confided by Allah in person. He didn't need his eyes and natural reference marks to fly; he was driven to fly in blind, with the instruments of navigation. In less than one minute, the big organizer would come to open him the doors of the paradise in person. He raised the eyes a brief instant and threw to the terrorized airline stewardess: - He will never know his father… ** * The digression about soccer undertaken with Malika had loosened the minds. Iit was close to sixteen o’clock, the hour of the sacrosanct pause arrived. This typically French tradition invariably took place in an identical manner. The aid separated in perfectly distinct groups. On one hand, one recovered the unavoidable cigarette addicts, rushing in room smoker to grill two in a row dry when most experienced didn't pulverize the record while consuming three polluters. Then, there was the group of the caffeine addicts, distinctly irritating than the members of the first caste. Those required their dose of black beverage to make operate their neurons. After, one found the specialists of the occupation of the toilets; they recruited strongly among the drinkers of coffee, the absorption of liquid not being without consequence. Finally, it remained the maniacs of the portable, contacting their respective firms, believing that they were indispensable to the good working of their enterprise whereas everybody knows it, the cemeteries are filled of indispensable people.

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THE BLOND IMP

Tristan constituted a fully-fledged caste, including only one member: the hermits. He preferred to stay in place in the room of formation, only facing the machine, repeating the exercises, rereading the formulas of programming, analyzing the consequences of revelations, tracing his training to the model of his enterprise,. The skinny didn't have the charisma, nor the banters of Dennis Mallet, his colleague. His drab picture described him like an efficient professional but without future in the hierarchy. Specialist in his domain he was, specialist he would remain all his professional career. A deaf burr, mixed to a high-pitched hiss of turbo, had put a term to the session of skylarking and debate on the strategy of the tricolor footballers. In a perfectly synchronized collective movement, the seven trainees and their formative had turned their head in the same direction, toward the windows giving on the west of Paris, toward the prefecture of the Hauts-de-Seine, Nanterre and well beyond. The fright, the terror of September 11, 2001 reemerged or even in the mind of men and women, some hundreds, thousand at this advanced hour of the afternoon. In a fraction of second, the regular and occasional users of the Total tower became the brothers of blood of those who had perished in the Twin Towers, at Manhattan. A big plan headed right toward the tower, in full center, settled to reap it as the American towers. Petrified, the trainees were incapable to sketch the least gesture but their vocal cords vibrated horror to tear themselves. The memories jostling themselves, a last word for the beloved beings, in silence, to the bottom of the heart, taken away forever. The room, situated on the seventh twenty floor, constituted an ideal point of impact. Useless to throw themselves on the ground, useless to flee, the death would win. Tristan straightened himself and rushed toward the window, slippery like a surfer overlapping a surging. More that the hallucinating speed with which het moved, it was the movement that denoted. It betrayed a mysterious origin. Did he want to benefit of his last instants of life, to become the first to die, the first jagged by the explosion of the kerosene, the grinding of the concrete girders, the carving of the structures of the building by the fuselage and the wings of the device? Spellbound by the nightmarish vision of the imminence of his own death, Tristan didn't think only one second about protecting his face, symbolically. Amazed by her trainee's attitude, braving the death, deriding the big mower, Malika didn't consist of anything to anything when she saw him sketching three steps forward backward and tender the arms, the palms of the hands facing the pirated plane. The continuation, she would never be able to forget it. It passed the maddest voodoo legends than she had heard from her grandmother, in Senegal. A black night, sprinkled of lower-case letters sparkling stars, similar to holes of needle in a sheet illuminated by the rear, escaped of the hands of the man emaciated. The two palms released their continuous salvos with a perfect synchronization, crossing the glass smoked without causing it the least a pity. Outside, the diameter of the black throw enlarged as it moved away of its emitter. The throws merged soon partially, forming a face similar to the mathematical meeting of two circles or to the vision of the human eye in a pair of twins. The Airbus knocked the dark ray. To knock is not

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the suitable verb; the plane penetrated in the black light, as if a ship sank irreparably bodies and goods in the oceanic, driven immensity by the fund. The plane engulfed itself completely, as swallowed. Once the tail of the device swallowed the starry blackness, the deafening uproar of the reactors stopped suddenly. It was this instant that Tristan chose to quit his supernatural utterance. ** * The trainees having believed their last hour arrived, they didn't believe some their eyes. Alive! They were alive, contrary to all expectations! The reflex palpations were of use, just to verify that they had not lost the last sparks of life. The surprise passed, the faces turned instinctively toward Tristan, the hands exalted of one impenetrable night. Malika was the first to break the silence, the throat tied by a mixture of anguish and stupefaction: - Tristan… How did you do… that? The question had the effect of an icy shower on him. Unbeliever, the eyes nailed on his hands bathed of a black mist, he started trembling like a leaf and prostrated brutally, petrified by his discovery. To less that it is only the size of the gesture that dived him in such a state! The strange blackness decreased slowly, like a blown candle, releasing volutes of smoke, reddening less and less. He mumbled something in the style "Lord." New words of Malika, talking in the name of the group, brought back him to the reality. - Tristan… Who are you? He raised the eyes toward his interlocutor. The other trainees fixed him like a curious beast, discovering that he was not normal. Not normal. He had never been normal during his life. The other knew it, they felt it, they smelled it! He straightened himself slowly, laboriously, dejected and he finally had courage to sustain the look of his colleagues and colleagues of one day. He took his jacket. He filled his satchel with his pencils, support of course and book of exercises. He ridded the table of all traces of his passage. Then, he diverted himself and cleared the door giving on the room of formation. - But finally, Tristan! Dennis said. But answer! The man with the hands of shade suspended his exit. He turned around and made spring the black light to his colleague's feet. The poor type dove in hell or in a completely unknown place. Unless that he had been absorbed by a vortex makes antimatter! The looks crossed themselves and the first screams escaped from the throats, the witnesses sensing an identical fate. The throw moved one by one to a lightning speed, absorbing the humans. When he faced Malika, he hesitated. He couldn’t bear the other; they didn't represent anything that some disaster characters, some powerful people hating him to the highest point. They were only some formless worms! 11

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Not Malika… The young and brilliant formative estimated him for his intelligence, for his rare but applicable questions. She didn't want him a pain. She was different. Her African origins had probably brought her to coast paranormal phenomena. There was probably a marabou in her family, with a little luck! She would understand. She didn't understand! On the contrary, she rushed toward the bottom of the room, direction the door giving on another room of formation. Completely panicky, she only thought to only one thing: to put the more of distance between her and him. She crossed the supplementary room like a rocket, in spite of the narrowness of her skirt hindering her race. Springing of the piece, she bifurcated toward the tray of the elevators. She hit the button of call over and over again. "Too slow! " She thought. The monster would appear soon and would knock her without summons down. Except if he attacked the other employees of the seventh twenty floor and that he annihilated them all, without the shade of a hesitation! She had to live to testify, to denounce this incredible and destructive power. The backstairs! Even though its coming down was slower than with the elevator, she would be in security. She ran and turned on the right, at random. Twenty-seven floors to descend! By luck, it was about descending. Besides, she had been champion of race, a detail of importance! She engulfed herself in the enclosed and monotonous space. She sped along, jumping the steps four at a time, risking to break herself the neck in every floor. When she reached the eighteenth level, she stopped her race, deciding to sow her adversary. She penetrated in the offices of a society she didn’t know. A business man group was patient before the space bordering to the four elevators. She mingled with them, the heart beating, the breath out of breath, of the gullies of sweat forming on her temples. The senior executives, put a tie and dressed in spite of the heat, noted her trouble. They ignored that she was dived in the most complete fright, that only her instinct drove her toward the way of the survival. The doors opened up, the assembly penetrated in the cabin. Once locked, she dove in the emptiness. ** * Tristan was amazed by the extent of his grant. During his existence, over and over again, he had noted supernatural phenomena. He hated light, without understanding why. To the inverse, he delighted himself with the nocturnal outings, done in hermit. The night enveloped him of one coat securing, soothing. He was far from imagining that he possessed these grants! From where did he pull them? Who were his parents of which he even ignored the appearance, him, the son of the public aid? So many questions and an embryo of answer, facing terror, some minutes ago. His astonishment didn't succeed in concealing his disappointment. The attitude of Malika had knocked him. He had hoped that she would understand his situation, that she would 12

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show evidence of compassion. The blackness of her skin was there for many, unconsciously. The black women attracted him more, for genetic, organic or other questions. Her nature pushed him toward them. He was determined to save the formative, or even to take her at his sides. The Senegalese, mother of a small girl and bride to a diplomat, didn't certainly hear it of this ear. Henceforth, she embodied a bothersome witness, a source of problems. The friend had changed herself in enemy. - A pity for you, wild beauty! The man with the fists of shade declared. You didn't understand anything! Nothing at all! I didn't know what I could make… It was necessary that an idiot plays the remake of the infernal towers so that I discover my strength, my power. The shade… is my friend, my confidante since always! He closed the eyes and recalled himself the recent events. A detail immediately hit him. The shade cleared by each of the participants had a… flavor, a… odor… The shade characterized every human being. Including Malika! He discerned her instantaneously. - I know where she is! He exclaimed. His look carried itself toward the shade of the door, cut by the vivid sun of this month of July. He made some steps and dove in the blackness covering soil. ** * The blond settings as wheat, original of the Siberian deserts according to the nature and the debit of their language, had just left the cabin from elevator at the third floor. By fear to be alone a new time, Malika fit together their steps. She headed toward the welcome of the society and rushed suddenly toward the backstairs. Three floors! Only three floors to browse and she would reach the level zero. There, she would join the subway, to some strides of the Total tower. She would melt in the crowd, she would disappear. And then? How to practice her profession? How to pursue her existence without the shade of this madman pursuing her all life? To lodge a complaint by the polices? What for? They would not believe a word of her narration and this patient would curry them without difficulties! A protection worthy of this name was necessary. "The K! These mutants are in the good side! Unfortunately, they live far! I don't have the choice. These are the only ones capable to understand me and to protect me! " She accomplished her infernal race, jumping the steps four at a time. At the last level, she stopped suddenly. The lighting had just jumped, plunging the stairwell in a relative obscurity, hardly broken by the emergency night-lights. It needed a good ten seconds so that her eyes get used to the darkness. Tetanized by the fear, she felt the shade to enliven. A black mist emerged soil and rose little by little, taking human shape.

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Malika moved back and stumbled. Of Tristan, she first saw the back, then the face, when he agreed to cope her. - Who are you? She dropped, the voice badly insured. - If I only knew it! On the other hand, what I don't ignore, these are your intentions! You want to hawk your discovery, to speak of me to protect yourself. What a pity! I hoped to conquer you, to pamper you, to make of you my ally. You flee me as if I was only a monster! I am not that it… I have a heart, also! I can love! But no one worries about it… No one… You made the bad choice, Malika! He ended while raising his voice with strength and rage. He unleashed the hell on her, swallowing her in the black night, taking her without mercy, swallowing the staircase, the walls to the passage, incapable to stop his fury. It was only when he received some rubbles to his feet that he became aware of the size of the damages generated. The daylight penetrated in the hole dug by the throw of black light. He had pierced the tower from part to part, swallowed all materials, shattered everything that was in the ray of his palms. He disappeared in the shade projected by the intact flaps of wall, shaken by a demonic sneering laugh. ** * The police station of Poitiers took paces of fair to the beastly. The cops in holding, as the inspectors in civilian, gathered in mass around the office of Désirée Prosper, the nice Superintendent coming from Martinique. The boss of the places had had beautiful to lower the blinds of the glass globe, his colleagues plated their eyes against the glass, trying to discover the occupants through the skinny interstices of the aluminum blades. Why? The boss received two hosts of mark: Martin Lemur, alias Minus, the leader of the K, accompanied by Gwendoline, so-called Gipsy, his extra with so astonishing grants of clairvoyance. Although Martin was the brightness genius and the spiritual chief of the K, the birds of the barnyard didn't have any eyes that for the beautiful muse of the supers heroes. Gwendoline raised a ultra tight-fitting skirt, red fireman, short as the political program of the National Front, and a bustier of an entirely occupied virginal white by her generous chest, not hiding anything of her perfect and round belly. Perched on stiletto heels blacks, she didn't stop strolling in the office, airing with a fan-fold folded sheet of paper. From time to time, she landed on a seat in cloth, crossing and uncrossing the legs, supporting the heat badly. The males, in rut or no, adored the summer and the heat wave for this reason: the opportunity to admire a reincarnate goddess, descended on Earth. As soon as she moved, they followed her undulatory movements, her involuntarily suggestive dislocations of the hip (the mistake to the stiletto heels). They put themselves quite a lot of their chief's subjects, distinctly attractive than a beating of lash of the young beauty. Yet, Désirée Prosper was the whooping cough of the women, a treatment due to his natural elegance, his musculature looking like to Carl Lewis, his beautiful clothes and his Ford Mustang maintained with fussiness.

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THE K, VOLUME 2

Minus endured some Celsius degrees. Seating in an armchair, he sweat in spite of the economy of gestures and words. His numerous and cumbersome gadgets resulted him from the hot; an advantage in winter, an inconvenience in summer. He didn't have worked on a system of on-board air-conditioning but he wondered there firmly since his entry in the globe of Superintendent Prosper, without cool air. However, the hour was not right for the discussion about the very relative comfort of which the police benefited. Martin and Désirée debated first results of the cooperation system put in place between the supers heroes and the unified polices containing the national police, the constabulary and the state police. Since six months, the six associates took turns day and night, week and weekend, in order to shoulder the regular strengths thanks to their specific powers. However, they were only humans. Mutants, certainly, but some limited humans. The limits approached dangerously. In a first time, they had played a dissuasive effect, making move back the criminality in a spectacular manner. Then, little by little, the hooligans of all hairs had taken confidence and had unleashed themselves of more beautiful, risking a fatal confrontation with one of the heroes. The rhythm exhausted them; the failures of Helen and Hubert at their exams of the year end attested the addition of activity. Sebastian had passed in second year just barely, Gwendoline had not shone particularly. Viviane had managed it honorably. As for Martin, his natural genius had made the difference, the structural at the head of the pupils, all promotions confounded on decades. It was the exception confirming the rule. - The results are positive! The Superintendent was enthusiastic for an umpteenth time. Apart the strip of the show-offs, truly elusive, the collaboration is a real success. It is necessary to pursue! - I hear well but we are not numerous enough. The towers are on duty too repetitive, we don't have sufficiently of time to recover. Hubert, the real strength of the nature, will look soon like a dish-cloth. The measures of his strength show a constant and troubling reduction. Gwendoline suffers from numerous migraines, suffering at the highest point, even ruining her power. Without her power, she is also deprived as yourself. - Compensate with your gadgets! - I don't have the material time anymore to think, to invent, to create. We live on our acquirements, without progression. Sooner or later, the stagnation will be us fatal. The Superintendent took his head between the hands and collapsed on the desk blotter doodled of his office. He knocked it voluntarily, repeatedly, in sign of despair. Poitiers was about to become a city models concerning security, thanks to his heroes. That they crack, that they feel rejected or even only abandoned, discouraged, and they would release their additional job, returning the city of the Poitou to the rabble's hands. Besides, there was this elusive strip destroying the vehicles of all types, toasting thme with flame-throwers, with Molotov cocktails and defensive pomegranates (the worse, as their name doesn't indicate it). His men arrived systematically too late, the indicators didn't manage to harvest a crumb of information on these birds of prey founding on their objectives at the speed of the lightning. As for the K, they failed all similar. They were not more quick, in spite of the common acquirement of an old Renault Space of the second generation. Even motorized, their displacements didn't stay some less wheezy. Martin had palliated to the most hurried while 15

THE BLOND IMP

endowing the group of a vehicle. In spite of all, it limited their radius of action. And that, the hooligans knew it: Châtellerault, Ruffec, Montmorillon, the biggest cities neighboring of the prefecture endured some attacks without name, chatty a flight of the population. Even smallest villages were not at the shelter; if on top of it there are a post office, a bank or a station service on the place of the borough, it underwent typematic holdups. - Superintendent… I don't contest the efficiency of our common action on Poitiers but the surroundings are inaccessible. Do your statistics demonstrate it, this is not? The police's boss expressed an opinion of the chief, in sign of approval. - It is necessary to change our way to work, Gwendoline suggested, strangely silent, until now. Her sensual and hot voice plunged the Désirée in a relative torpor where he imagined stretched out on a beach of white sand, sipping a refreshing cocktail, admiring behind his sunglasses the superb naiad emerging the wave in a charming two pieces not hiding anything of her anatomy. - Do you listen me? The young woman said while making higher the tone. - Hey? Yes? What did you say? - Ah these men! They don't stop thinking that the women speak not to say anything! - No, no! Far from me this idea! I thought… he lied half. - Gwendoline is right entirely, Martin talked. It is necessary to change our manner to act. To pursue in this way will lead us nowhere. It is necessary to build, to use a reflexive and tried method, solidly. We tinkered a collaboration in a hurry, dissatisfactory for all. I cannot solve myself to break our collaboration but a receding is indispensable to find solutions of long length. At the same time, I have difficulty imagining to garage our grants to the cupboard. - Especially not! The Superintendent protested. You enjoy a magic aura that it would be discriminating to preserve. While withdrawing you, the feeling of abandonment would seize the population and the criminals would judge your withdrawal like a supreme victory. Of another side, you know the ridiculous means affected to the police. We cannot fight with thieves equipped with Mercedes or BMW. Our pale Peugeot diesel declares forfeit before even to fight. We don't have a cent to spin you to sponsor you… The hopeless match pointed on the horizon. Hubert's presence, Helen, Viviane and Sebastian would not have changed much to the content of the conversation. Their struggle became each more routine day, more foreseeable, more sterile and therefore, more dangerous. The dreaded accident had not occurred, thanks to a regular practice. The practice didn't make all… ** *

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THE K, VOLUME 2

The mysterious and defiant Gwendoline had interrupted the discussion while asking, in a way, a suspension of session. She wished to converse in particular with Désirée Prosper and out of the libidinous view of his colleagues, if possible. Flattered, the Martinican asked for the confirmation on two occasions, daring to believe hardly that he, adored of the feminine race, was going to isolate himself with a sumptuous creature. He dreamed of a newborn idyll with the gypsy. He threw his claim on the piece reserved for the cross-examinations, a minuscule reduced deprived of windows, of window without silvering as in the American movies and accessible by an unique, seriously reinforced door, protected by a five points lock. She threw a wink of eye to Martin. To the dazed mine of which he made proof, this last felt all pains of the world to understand what game played his accomplice. He stayed prostrate in the Superintendent's office, stunned by the heat, the dangling arms. "Gwendoline has an idea in head. But what? " He wondered silently. Hardly the door of the gray and drab piece was closed, the lock locked itself instantaneously. - Hey! What is this bazaar? Désirée exclaimed. - Nothing troubling. A lock can jam. - What? How can you… Do you want to say that you just used your power of change possible of the future? - Precisely! The young woman answered, displaying a vivid smile of whiteness, underlined by a carmine lipstick. - Oh! The superintendent said. You are going to make jealous some score of women, hundreds of admirers! He continued without bragging. - Indeed? Gwendoline simpered while forcing him to sit down on the unique present chair in the piece. She maintained him in place while putting a finger on his forehead. Then, she made it slip on the superintendent's cheek, turning around him like a cat around a mouse, letting the index spin on the nape, titillating the libido of the Martinican. He was at hundred miles to imagine the content of her merry-go-round. He simply ignored that the heart of the young woman was taken, since some times and that she said nothing about her love, by modesty, by fear of the dismissal, paradoxically little sure of herself. However, Gwendoline had been spoiled by lady nature, it reinforced her mystical power. - I am of a natural very jealous, Désirée. Do you know? - You could have me for you all alone! - Oh! Roguish kid! We could make big things, all two. We could create one future where you would give us true means to fight the crime, where you would be an important, essential character, even! Imperceptibly, she used her power of modification of the future. If Désirée Prosper possessed hidden financings, some slush funds for the hard strokes, some powerful and rapid 17

THE BLOND IMP

vehicles for a maximal efficiency of interventions, she would know it. He was nearly in state of hypnosis. By her questions, Gwendoline had the power to make confess him whatever. - Watch me in the eyes, beautiful guy, she murmured with sweetness, using her sweet voice. Tell me that you can help me! - Alas, Gwendoline! He exclaimed the tears very close to. I would like to be able all to give you, all! I row to make survive our police. The men pay for themselves their uniforms, the bulletproof jackets, their courses of data processing. I agree with the policemen to touch fuel to better price, I negotiate all, like a merchant of carpet, systematically. Your help is… providential! Don't abandon us, please! What would we become without you? His look evoked panic more that the lie. He said the truth and it upset her. Becoming aware of the state in which she had dived the man suddenly, she noted that he had slipped of his chair and had knelt, imploring the hands joined, as if she was a goddess. She was one of it! - Désirée… Raise yourselves! She dropped more dryly, breaking the bewitchment. He awakened little by little, as if he came out of a long coma. His return to the reality was precipitate by an inspector's knock on the reinforced door. - Superintendent! Leave quickly! There is a highjacking in the employment agency! Désirée rushed on the handful of door, the instinct bound to the action taking the over. He expected to fight with the mechanism but the jaws of steel loosened themselves, for his big surprise. He threw a look mingled of astonishment and smile to Gwendoline. The young woman fit together her stride. Hostage's hold, a type overexcited to calm, her capacity to hypnotize was welcome. ** * Désirée charged down in his office, follow-up closely by the sexiest of the K. Martin noted immediately that the cop sweat abundantly. What was the origin of this perspiration excess? A contingent event? The cross-examination done lead by Gwendoline? The vision of Gwendoline? This last possibility kept all his attention. The young woman was incontestably appealing but he didn't make himself illusions. The brown angel with black eyes, with a skin gilt to point, flew in untouchable heaven for a being of his condition. Conscious of his physics, he estimated to be vowed to the celibacy, ad vitam aeternam. In the strip, a being had his preference but the love was impossible between them two, for life. The gaunt and diaphanous face of Viviane imposed itself in his thoughts, raising a sigh of pleasure. He would have given his life to hold her merely the hand, to feel the contact of her skin fired; exactly, he would have given his life if he had yielded to this madness, succumbing to a virus, a bacterium or a poison involuntarily freed by the young woman.

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THE K, VOLUME 2

The promise of action to come forced him to abandon his romantic dreams. The responsibility being incumbent upon the group that he had created, required that he comes back to the reality of emergency. He verified his usual paraphernalia: telescopic boots capable to heighten him but allowing him to do surprising springing, electrified gloves perfect to amplify the strength of the strokes, a bag containing several cutting and exploding projectiles as well as a detector of sounds and heat integrated in a bracelet, particularly useful to discover some survivors in debris. - Everybody on the bridge! Désirée shouted while disembarking in the main room of the police, nicknamed "the hen house". The hit-on-the-fly invective triggered an uniform movement stretching toward the door of exit. The used tone contrasted radically with mister Prosper's style, so class and so smart. The action overexcited him, galvanized him, pushed his neurons and his reflexes in their last stopping. Cops in civilian and in uniform rushed toward the swing doors as if the discovery of a layer of gold came had been announced. The superintendent was as expeditious to throw himself in the Laguna of service, poor vehicle displaying hundred seventy thousand kilometers at its meter. He put his key in the Neimann, gave a quarter of tower and tortured the gear box and the accelerator as soon as gas arrived in the injection pump. The tires polished and smoked. Behind, it was the race to the shallot to kick the boss's rear shield. Distinctly quieter than their police's allies, the two eminent members of the K cleared the doorstep of police after the passage of the big of the troops. Before integrating their own vehicle, they attended a distressing stage to the involuntary comedy: one Peugeot embossed a Citroën while trying to pass both where there was only place for one car. The four doors with the double rafter emblem were changed in an Argentinean bandoneon, the pleasant tonality replaced by an awful offended sheet metal grinding. Its next death didn't make the shade of a doubt. The Peugeot pulled itself with a destroyed bumper that the four occupants tied in a hurry. Once the summary repair resolved, the adepts of the trademark with a Lion pushed the wreckage of their colleagues on the side in order to clear the passage. The poor wretches last to return to the home after two minutes of action. The other would do without their presence. Martin perched on his personal heightening system, directly imported of a store specialized for children. Gwendoline girthed herself at his sides and advanced her seat, this last being in depth remote by its precedent occupant, Hubert. The foundation was collapsed fairly, unavoidable consequence of the quintals of the giant of the Vosges. Gwendoline penetrated contrary to all expectations of several centimeters, dominated by Martin. Besides, when his look crossed the one of his partner, he had an amused smile. - This is not common, as vision! He annotated while connecting. - Yes! I discover you under a new angle! She had fun. - And let's go! He said finally while entering into the streets of Poitiers.

19

THE BLOND IMP

Gipsy clung to the control panel. Martin, without being a super pilot, rather managed well it at the wheel and pulled the quintessence of their setting at the end of race. Concentrated on the conduct, he didn't notice the mine suddenly collapsed of Gwendoline, in full session of clairvoyance, victim of negative visions. ** * The obscurity of the room without window was broken suddenly by the flicker of a wall of pictures. With a light bad synchronization, due to the length of variable warming-up of a cathodic tube to another, hundred monitors delivered some views townswomen. Aligned by twenty, the televisions relieved the shots of Poitiers. The prefecture was grided, spied on, supervised until in its least paved alley, its least dead end. To track the incoming stranger in the city by the door of Paris, to follow his steps in the city and to abandon him at the equestrian center, after the academic campus, without losing his trace ever, was child's game with the mobile cameras piloted from this center. A shape slipped itself in the piece and got settled in a comfortable, entirely articulate armchair. The desk allowed it to achieve the most fantastic combinations. It possessed a great tool to deliver itself to its favorite game: the spying. The room was not the official surveillance center. It only existed for this mysterious character. Tapping on a keyboard, it got other shots, completely unpublished. These one, the township crazy of security delirium had liked to admire them, to exploit them. Some aerial views! He selected one precisely among them and zoomed in on the district of the police station. After regulating and refinement, the white ants with blinking blue head changed by very real vehicles of police. The procession moved away of the anthill. - Perfect! The shade exclaimed. How much does it remain individuals in the cave of the justice defenders? The bundle of pictures slipped toward the court of the police. It remained only two light vehicles of which an unable to harm to his Machiavellian projects. The deduction of the cars done,he toppled the vision in infrared. A half-a-dozen of human beings moved inside the police. The character seized a walkie-talkie and whispered to the attention of his henchmen: - Green light for the Toduco operation. At the same instant, about ten 4X4 blacks with smoked windows emerged from a closed factory situated in an industrial zone in way of abandonment. The fast pace led by the drivers and the grindings of tires told some long on the determination of the musclemen. Behind his gigantic console, the big organizer of the macabre ceremony rubbed himself the hands: this operation, prepared with cares, track at a fast pace, would allow him to mark

20

THE K, VOLUME 2

decisive points in the struggle for the control of the region. He took the control of the diurnal vision in order to follow the progression of his troops. ** * The employment agency of Poitiers had taken the pace of a besieged fortress. The police and the state police had accumulated all elements available for this day in front of the window spangled of odd announcements (Kind: look for Bachelor + 5 with ten years of experience, maximum 28 years! Don't laugh: your favorite author already answered such an announcement!). The small narrow street turned to the black and the navy blue; it was not necessary less of them to hold the unavoidable idlers from afar. When the two members of the K arrived to destination, they last to turn for a long time in the district in order to unearth a parking space. This useless loss of time had the troublesome consequence to irritate Minus. - What loss of time, Gwendoline! It is absolutely necessary that I take the time to think about a fast, collective or individual transportation means. - What sort? She asked for while redoing her makeup in the mirror of courtesy of the old monospace. - A jet-propelled back bag, a magnetic lift system or all other kind of light and autonomous device. - A consecrated work! - Yes… What do you do? Minus wondered, intrigued by the behavior of the young woman. - I make again a beauty! - Is this really necessary? - Of course! The attractive gipsy declaimed. I am not perfected. - No… I wanted to say: is this indeed the appropriate moment? - Quite! Make me confidence! - Oh… Martin made, sensing that her extra had used the clairvoyance to adopt such an attitude. They reached quickly the place of the action. Mister Prosper had a row with a captain of state police and a commander of republican company of security, all two favorable to a fast, sinewy and bloody intervention for hostage's taker. - You are going to make a slaughter, good blood! Be reasonable! Let me tempt something before acting! - You are going to excite him and it is going to end in bloodbath. Let make the professionals! - OK! I don't discuss with you, the boys! Désirée dropped while turning them the back. He sped along like only one man toward his friends the K and declared to them straight off: - These idiots want to give the assault! Gipsy, what does it inspire you? 21

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The concerned person closed the eyes and was shaken by the violence of the explosion tearing her clairvoyance. - He is going to make explode a bomb. - Whorehouse! How do you make? I didn't confess you whatever it is about hostage's hold and you seem to know as much as I. - Superintendent… considering the configuration of the places, I don't see what I could make too much, Martin cut. My gadgets won't be of a big utility in the case of hostage's hold. - Do you have an idea, Désirée? Gwendoline felt. - Yes but it is necessary to make quickly! Before the remaining others don't play the remake of Fort Apache attack! Good… would have about thirty people in the agency, personal and disconcerted job-seekers. Hostage's taker has a bomb, some pomegranates, a rifle-machine gunner and the shippers. He is linked to a hostage that he uses like shield. He is going to be necessary to play tight. - What does he want? - A job. - What? Does he act of the sort for work?! The leader of the K revolted. But why don't they give it him? - It is not so simple. - Explain it to him! Martin said. He will listen you. You are an international class barker! - Do you say it in relation to our small discussion in the police? Désirée smiled. - Precisely! - Ah! Good… all to confess you, it is not necessary that I lead the negotiations because I reserve for another role! Hey! Tremblier! The superintendent screamed to catch the attention of a youngster cop in skirt and in jacket of leather. The concerned person came back to hear the explanations that the superintendent simmered. All made themselves all hearing because they had all their role to play. No far from there, the troops of RSC (Republican Security Company) and the policemen bustled nervously. Some among them took position in the first floor of the building facing the employment agency, armed of bespectacled rifles. Others got settled in the neighboring streets in order to shoot the terrorist if he had the misfortune to pass between the stitches of the net. The assault was imminent. ** * The forty-years-old man with the dungaree stained of traces of grease bawled like a skunk. His face to the comely didn't betray the least ounce of reason in these instants of extreme tension. This mechanic, father of four children of which the last hardly worked, had been dismissed fifteen days earlier for compressive reason of staff, the all after twenty years of good and faithful services at an agent of the surroundings. Ulcerated by the check of indemnification of an amount derisory of four one thousand and some euros, yet perfectly 22

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legal, he had farted a lead after five stranded interviews. At every time, the argument of age had been implied without have been pronounced clearly. He refused to admit that at fortytwo years, the bosses estimated that he was flipping, too old, unfit to follow the technical evolutions of vehicles more complex every day. According to him, the deep reason of this dismissal came solely from the propensity of the leaders to consider the youngsters as the malleable and workable matter while they didn't maneuver old and experimented workers like they wanted. Chained to a terrorized brown-hair girl, the chest barded of sticks of dynamite joined to a detonator, he pointed his weapon on the director of the agency while summoning him to contact all automotive concessions of the region at the risk of watering everything that was within reach of shooting of his fire arm. - I want the job! Do get along, idiot? You call all these bastards of boss and you tell them that they must make me sign a contract made of concrete, for life, non voidable, for some reason that it is if they don't want to be responsible for the death of thirty people! And you hurry the ass because I don't have the day! The brown kid with the Mediterranean style squalled. - Don't you want that we warn your wife? The fellow with the cheeks turned rosy by the fear, heightened by glasses encircled of gold, suggested. - Let my wife in peace! If you warn her that I have been turned like a smutty, the first prune is for your muzzle! Swarm you! - Do I also call the repairers of truck? The director of the agency asked for. For all answer, the mechanic released a salvo of projectiles in the false ceiling of the building, exploding to the passage a half-a-dozen of neon tubes. - Idiot question, idiot answer! You have two seconds to stop winning some time and to phone boss's bastard! One… Two… - Okay, okay! The other supplicated while kneeling, believing his last hour coming. He opened a yellow telephone directory of the Vienna and stopped at the category: garages, automotive concessions. Febrilely, he drove the keys of the telephone and carried the compound to his face. - You have interest to be persuasive! If the interview is not to my taste, you will be sent back! Owing God! The furious mad mechanic sneered while entertaining the rudimentary, artisan aspect switch but of which no one wished to verify the authenticity. With the look, the young brunette woman taken in hostage by the mental patient, at random, implored the director to manage to convince an interlocutor. A telephone rang. - You! The mechanic ordered. Pick up this thing and take the communication! It is maybe work for me. 23

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- It is the police, the employee whispered, fearing to trigger their jailer's irreparable thunderbolts. - What do they want? - To know what you want. - I already told in a little while to them! They make fun of my muzzle! I want the job until my retirement! He adjusted a shooting that made fly the telephone, the office and the screen of computer into pieces. Miraculously, the employee didn't receive the least projectile but the fusillade made him faint as if it had been hit full on. That the salaried unfortunate person had been reached fatally or no, didn't move the man with the dungaree. He continued to harangue the director of the agency, until he gets an agreement of the contacted garage. ** * The inspector didn't have any difficulty getting round strengths in presence and to commit on the sidewalk leading to the unique entry of the employment agency. Even if she passed in front of the façade made of glass, causing the abrupt interest of the taker of hostages and his victims, a woman was precipitated against the window by an individual of black color, dressed among the best dressmakers. The maniac plated an enormous caliber, worthy of the best movies of Clint Eastwood, under the poor wretch's throat but passing volunteer. Désirée Prosper made a crashing entry while projecting himself inside, him and his female companion. He immediately screamed with his voice of bass like Barry White: - It is a hostage taking! If you are held calm, there won't be any deaths, not of injured! Call me the director of the agency! I want a job and immediately! And not whatever! He ignored the presence of the taker of hostages, hidden in a recess, voluntarily somewhat safe from the sights of the markspersons of the polices. The space of a pair of seconds, he knew how to face this contingent event only. - It is my hostage taking! He finally exclaimed, breaking the silence in first. Block you of there, buffoon! - What? Who are you? The cop inquired. - Félicien Hardy, mechanic. I have been turned by my boss, with a check of four thousand euros, after twenty years of hard labor in his fraud garage. I collapsed all my life and today, I've got my revenge! You won't prevent me from doing it! - Your muzzle, idiot! Me also, I have been turned! Two hours ago, get along! With not a coin! Nothing! He threaded me dry, this rotted! - And then? Did see you your clothes of Mafiosi? You wear costumes and shoes of rich men, you are not in pain!

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The dialogue took a surrealist tone, the protagonists inveighing copiously himself, the hostages attending the oratorical joust as to one match of tennis, constantly turning the head from one to the other, following the evolutions of the situation. - It is you that say it, poor apple! Do you know how much I drop money to repay the credit of my shack, hey? Don't even have you idea! Two thousand five hundred euros! Nothing that for the shack! - I have anything of it to do! Have you that to sell your car to pay, dunce! - My car? Ah yeah, it is a brilliant idea! To whom am I going to unload it, my Ferrari, in this region of broke and of peasants? Hey? There will be no one to buy it, my case! And then not question that I sell it, I hold there too much! Good! Where is he, the director of the agency? Désirée protested while putting himself quite a lot of the other. - He works for me! You are going to clear and to go back up in your coconut tree if you don't want that I explode you the walnut, the mechanic laughed at, playing the French of basis, with the sufficiently low intelligence quotient to adhere to a party of extreme right, ignoring that Martinique was part of France for the same reason as the Vienna or the other departments. - It is going to change! Because with the enormous bills that I must adjust every month, I am important! The cop replied, inventing all. If I remain on the tile, I put the score of people in the shit. I make live many people, me! If one finds me a job at fifteen thousand euros per month, as before, I will give you some tickets every month! Will have you of what to retire! - I don't want your smelly money, Mafiosi! The mechanic got excited. I want to work and to earn my bread honestly! "Shit!" Désirée thought. "This idiot doesn't want money, he wants a job! He wants to slave away hard!" Very fortunately, the policeman had thought of this turning around. In his haversack of the perfect intervening party in the most critical situations, he had incorporated a plane B. The plane B appeared suddenly while entering in the agency. - But what is…? The mechanic muttered before suspending his sentence. A creature rolled like a bottle of Coca-Cola (the bottle of glass, not the duckling made of aluminum), raising the red and white colors of the famous trademark under the shape of a scarlet skirt and a jagged and virginal bustier, made her entry extremely noticed in the supermarket of the job bad paid. - Name of God! Désiré exclaimed, not slowing down in anything his most secret desires, forgetting to keep the inspector Tremblier under the threat of his gun. The mechanic didn't have any words to add and remained dumbstruck, following Gwendoline with the eyes. The young woman, loaded to make diversion while penetrating in the building and while drawing the attention on her, succeeded her mission beyond her 25

THE BLOND IMP

hopes. She penetrated until the counters of receipt without the taker of hostages the even of the eyes and doesn't summon him the order to stop. Captivated by the incontestable beauty of the gypsy, he didn't discern the new irruption, programmed near to the second by the policeman in person. Minus, clothed of his hero's costume, slipped himself in soft and seasoned Félicien Hardy with a composition of his invention, by the slant of a dart propelled by his gauntlet. The sting, hardly more detectable than the one of a mosquito, acted at a lightning speed. The product tetanized the target, blocking his nervous system. Minus and Désirée sped along like only one man on the human bomb and immobilized him cleanly, in the event he would have had a start of energy and by force sufficient to engage the infernal mechanism. In the same lapse of time, inspector Tremblier exhibited her tricolor card by the window of the agency, indicating to the strengths in presence that they had the hand-held situation. Quickly, the RSC and the policemen invested the place. Two pyrotechnists were put in charge of neutralizing the bomb before the man would be incarcerated in a jail car. They benefited from this to free the chained hostage, the young woman curling hysteria, having believed over and over again, her last hour arrived. She ran to take refuge in her lover's arms, arrived at the scene in the meantime of the drama. There, tire, she could cry all tears of her body. Under the intrigued eye of Martin, Gwendoline approached of the couple and whispered something in the ear of the two turtledoves. The message seemed to revive them and even triggered an unexpected joy. "But how does she?" The leader of the K thought, constantly astonished by the nature of the powers of her extra. He followed her with the eyes. She crossed the superintendent who thanked her for her angelica intervention. The policeman addressed a sign far to Martin. This last answered to him heartily. Gwendoline took holidays. Martin wanted to know more while inviting her to leave the places. - I believe that we can leave the theater of the operations. - Indeed! It was a success! - It is what you believe! - How? I don't understand. - We will speak to of it tonight. Extraordinary meeting of all K. Tell me… What did you do to comfort the hostage and her buddy? - That they waited for a happy event! - Indeed? How? Ah! It will always astonish me! Go! We go back to the general district! Gwendoline had an amused smile. To see the future was an act as natural that the breathing at the normal persons. She could not always stop from confessing her discoveries, good or bad. Sometimes, the irrepressible desire to reveal made itself too strong. Then? Why was she unable to unveil some feelings concerning her? Why was this so easy with the other and 26

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insurmountable with her own case? Why was her power struck of an implacable blindness when she interrogated it on her personal future? As soon as she would have the time of it, she would return in her family and would interrogate her grandmother, the most gifted of the fortune-tellers, without equaling her grandmother's talent however. While penetrating in the monospace, she had the impression to sit down in cotton. Her grandmother was there, procuring a beneficial, protective, enveloping sensation. ** * Charles, Hubert and Gaston, respectively plumber, vendor and postman, had a common point: they were pillars of bar. Every evening, they drowned their distress, their hate of life in endless tours, redoing the world in their way, that is to say while eliminating the bosses, the unions, the strangers, the women, the youngsters, the neighbors, brief everything that didn't resemble to them. Their speeches without tail nor head, the mistake to the alcohol, were worthy of the brief of counter. It happened to them to change place of drinking session, being in gentleness with some landholders of café, the mistake to a few slim deteriorations due to the drunkenness, clumsiness and the gait swayed. They were not very mean, they were content with being delirious together three in front of the inexpensive wine or the frothy dishwater without other bitterness that the one of the three accomplices soured by life. Tonight, as many other evenings, Charles asked his two friends in his boss's pickup. Full like a stock, hardly more conscious of his gestures that his two partners, he put close to twenty seconds to thread the key in the Neimann. The reason would have liked that they bring all on foot in, without committing blunder, without risking something else that a very benign trash can reversing. But no… The two necessary kilometers to join their domiciles, all situated in the Couronneries, the dullest district of Poitiers, would be browsed by pickup. Charles knew the path by heart; like all alcoholics of the world, he was persuaded to control his vehicle, he was convinced to respect the limitations of speed, he was assured to stop in time in case of emergency. When he entered in Cathedral Street, narrow, to unique sense, edged of parked vehicles of the two sides, he drove the right-hand pedal, mastering the dosage of the acceleration badly, suddenly. He failed to emboss several vehicles, the cape complicated to keep too much. Suddenly, a man crossing the street emerged in the light. Charles took too much time to react; the shock was unavoidable. Three long howling followed during two seconds before stopping. The pickup had evaporated in a wall of black light. The obstacle had emerged instantaneously, nearly by pure reflex, of an unknown's hand. Panting, the face browsed by spasms of fright, this last raised the head and admired the result of his gesture. He was ready to all. ** *

27

THE BLOND IMP

The general district was merely the apartment of Martin Lemur. Among the six accomplices, he was the most beloved, the more spoiled by his parents, including the assignment of a student life space. The meeting took place the most often in these walls but they sometimes took the path of the library of the academic campus, or even the address of the academic restaurant. Their identities didn't have anything secret; however, they hid the existence of their respective family carefully (when they had some) with the exception of Hubert of which all members of the Tannenbaum clan were famous in France and beyond the borders for their legendary strength and their excessive appetite. But what silly dressed could have had the absurd idea to tackle this massive and armed family of fists capable to stun a beef? The mines were rather gray, the bodies were without strength and the state of mind was decreasing. In the day, the K had learned that the police station had been the subject of a massive attack of a real commando. The six present policemen had undergone a fed shooting at the scene and had to have beaten a retreat. Driven back to the basement, held in respect by the individuals ambushed in the staircase, they could not have hindered the depredation of the weaponry, the flight of bulletproof jackets and the fire provoked to cover the flight. According to the speech of Désirée Prosper, the superintendent, the ankylosed voice of emotion and rage, the damages were considerable, in spite of the fast intervention of the firemen. The stroke against the polices was important and carried the signature of the "showoffs", a small group with the dark objectives, acting to the speed of the lightning, flaming some cars with strength. Until there, these "show-offs" had limited their illegal actions to the fire of vehicles, especially during night. Now, they passed at the superior speed. They flew, of day, an impressive arsenal (fist weapons, machine gunner guns, pump rifles pump); there is no doubt that they projected a spectacular stroke in the days to come. Viviane was lengthened on Martin's bed, in prey to a new extremely powerful virus, a mutant variant of Ebola. The poor girl, paler than ever, fought all her skinny strengths "to digest" her new acquirement. Helen, foundation aside, had rested her chin on the file of her chair, visibly affected by a latent fatigue. The whisky bottle set to her disposition by Martin for the evening was intact. She lost the appetite, unable to assure her guards, the fights, the revisions and the exams punishing a first school year irregular. While losing the appetite, she deprived her body of the unavoidable dose of alcohol necessary to her survival. As for Hubert, alias Hamburger, if his appetite was unaltered, considering his pleasure to plunge the hand in a salad bowl filled of crisps, his state of mind got settled insidiously at the level of the daisies. His education, like the one of Halloween, the woman with the burning breath, curled the catastrophe. The increase had hit without mercy; it was the ransom of a repeated absenteeism and a personal work lack. The faculty had a reputation of easiness in relation to the private schools, type schools of engineers, but it needed nevertheless for a personal investment worthy of the set number applied in the public domain. It was necessary to work to remain in the third party of pupils allowed to reach the superior degree. However, Hubert, as Helen, was not a gifted as Martin. Besides, this last, even though he stayed regimental adjutant of his promotion, didn't reach his goal with the whole plume that one was in right to wait for him. 28

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Finally, Sebastian, Gwendoline and Viviane came some out of a honorable way, not more. No one would have blamed the situation Martin, yet responsible of the foundation of their confraternity. They remembered all that he had not forced the hand to anyone, that he had not put them a gun on the temple to force them to sign. They were there of their full will and they heard to pursue their actions of justice. But not at any price… - Martin… We cannot continue like that! Hubert began. We are not God. Even God, besides, is not able to do everything! He has some staff under hiss orders to shoulder him. Angels, saints, angelfishes and chilblains! The giant, adept of the pun and the good word in all circumstances, added. He derided Gwendoline, yet dived in other thoughts. The most famous of the giant of the Vosges pursued: - At the end of the evening, a holdup occurred in a bank. As the conveyors of moeny came to give fresh supplies to two distributors placed in an agency of the bank, four armed men emerged of a powerful car and put them in cheek. They pricked three millions. - Were you there? - No. We patrol toward Saint-Benoît. The time to arrive at the bank, all was finished. It is not with the old Space that we are going to run with a BMW M5. - Evidently… Martin conceded. - We waste the time to patrol, we arrive after the scenes of the crime and we are late to our lessons, Helen completed. I am not able to some anymore. I slept six hours in three nights. It would be necessary to be more numerous so that the towers come back less often. To reason of one day dedicated to the K per week, by team of two, we should count fourteen members. - I know… Martin admitted while lowering the head. The mutants are not so numerous and some toppled the bad side of the justice. All noted the allusion concerning Thierry, alias Terror, the man with the suggestion power so real that he frightened his enemies to the point to paralyze them, or even to kill them. The young man to the peremptory, disdainful tone, purged a prison sentence for manslaughter and complicity with Saphira Malice. He was the living proof that all mutants didn't have the pure soul and the devotion skin-deep. A broken glass noise broke the contemplation. It came from Sebastian. Solitary, to spunk as the other, tetanized himself when he was antagonized. The muscles, skin, the blood vessels, all particles of his body became then as hard as diamond. The mustard glass filled of orange juice had not resisted the treatment that he inflicted to it a long time. The pieces cutting and some drops of fruit juice scattered themselves on the tiling. - Sorry… he whispered while rising to take what to erase the traces of his irritation. I… I… I don't arrive to… to stick these flipping "show-offs"… Two times that we arrive too late with Virus. - It is my mistake, The concerned person confessed. - Why? Martin questioned. 29

THE BLOND IMP

- I was so sick during the last intervention that we didn't come in time, the young bedridden woman answered. - It is not your mistake! Sebastian exclaimed, forcing his auditory protection to reduce the volume maximally. His exclamation had failed to turn into scream of rage. However, when one knew the extent of Solitary power, notably the capacity of destruction that his scream included, one could fear for the life of all members of the K present in the assembly. Gwendoline rose and stood behind him whereas he looked for a sponge and a shovel in the kitchen. She put her hands on the student's shoulders and discerned to what point he was stretched. He was like a bomb ready to explode. His skin looked like the concrete, hard like the material. - Sebastian… the hot and soft voice whispered while the fine hands sped up to loosen the muscles. Calm down… We are all under pressure and no one is responsible for our failure. Nor you, nor me, nor Viviane, nor no other person. The being flirting with the autism turned around and addressed his humble apologies to Viviane, ignoring the disturbing presence of Gwendoline. - I didn't want… that… that… you believe that… Sebastian mumbled. Excuse me… - It is not important, Viviane blew, visibly very affected by her new virus. - The problem number two, apart our weak number, Helen carried on, it is the means of locomotion. Our poor transport means transform us in puppets, some babacools bound for Katmandou! Even though we arrived at the scene of a crime in time and hour, our powers would be insufficient to counter a fast flight. Only Gwendoline could possibly change the future, if it is plausible. As for Sebastian, while making use of his scream, he would risk to water too large. We don't fly in airs, that devil! - Exactly! Martin replied. I wonder of it. - Without fooling around? Hubert exclaimed, dazed that a personal contraption can take his heavy carcass in airs. Are you crafty enough to send me in air without catapult? - It is necessary that I work there but I miss of time. It is impossible to pass my tower to think about our organization, to our means of defense. I miss of time. - We miss all of time, Viviane replied while sketching a friendly gesture toward Martin. She suspended her movement, achieving that she was naked hand. A simple caress would have brought the leader of the K. Rightly a caress down. A mistake due to the lack of concentration, to fatigue. Martin read terror in his friend's eyes. In spite of all, he answered by a large smile sympathizing, erasing trouble generated by the situation. He expressed the idea that he had in head then. He wanted to increase the powers of the K, artificially. Their notorious fights showed their strengths but revealed their weaknesses also. Sooner or later, a badly intentional being would raise their hiatuses and would exploit them to floor the team.

30

THE K, VOLUME 2

While Martin got involved in the exhibition of the most absurd ideas crossing him the brains, them doodling to the passage on a sheet of paper, Sebastian moved away and took refuge in the kitchen. He glued his nose in the window and observed the unceasing broom of the vehicles, down below, silently. Martin possessed a big creative strength, he would find the moment well to study and to achieve some gadgets destined to compensate their weaknesses to all. "While waiting,", he thought, "I am maybe the most powerful of the K. My power would represent the ultimate rampart, the last luck if we were confronted to a stronger enemy. It is an immense responsibility. We are not like the X-Men, our favorite comic strip heroes. We don't train together, we use our strengths in an individual manner. We should work the combinations of powers. Me and Helen, for example. The scream and fire. It would be well. Viviane and Hubert would not be pain, either. He would thrash the enemy while Viviane would emerge by surprise and would contaminate the adversary. How can I explain it to Martin? I don't dare to contradict him while telling him that to run after the pillagers of bank, it is not our main work but the one of the police. He values his leader's role too much because he is the most brilliant inventor. It is not sufficient. The tactics and the practice are necessary. It is necessary to dedicate itself at our domain, not to the one of the cops. How to tell it?" He discerned a curling behind him. Someone approached. Without turning around, he knew that it was Gwendoline. Her light toilet water mingled with sound bewitching personal perfume. This girl felt the hot sand, an odor coming of her golden skin. He didn't dare to turn around, by fear to cross her black and magnetic look, by fear to lose the head. On her turn, she affixed her head against the window and stayed silent. Her eyes went and came between the foot of the building and the emaciated face of Sebastian. His hard features contrasted so much with his unobtrusive, shy personality, or even timorous. They approached more on his closed side, replicate on himself, autistic. Gwendoline, considering her particularly sexy appeals, attracted all men and didn't feel any pain to bring them into a conversation. As a rule, she had to even raise numerous gates so that they don't appear too enterprising. With Sebastian, she was also paralyzed as a kid facing the Santa Claus for the first time of his life. Her associate of the K embodied a labyrinth of which she didn't possess the plan. How to decode it? Why did her power stay nearly inefficient with him? Certainly, she was unable to pacify him while lavishing some words. She also saw the future of the young man but solely the part emerged of the iceberg, the hero's life in the action. Sebastian's dark thoughts constantly escaped her, to her big prejudice. It was essential that she knows her frame of mind. - It is strange, the life of a city, the night… she started without knowing where the conversation would lead her.

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THE BLOND IMP

Sebastian stayed silent. His eyes turned, betraying a behavior of concern, of anxiety, what didn't have anything astonishing for this boy. He lost his skinny means facing this living goddess. - Are you sick? She requested while noting that he persisted in muteness. - No, he whispered while crossing her look, tension lowered of a spunk. Why? - You seem worried, as gnawed by a devouring problem. - No… No… he sputtered, visibly uneasy to be aside with Gwendoline. He got ready to beat in retreat while joining the other when she got across his path. They nearly met nose to nose. - Humph… Well… Excuse me… I… Ah… It is… silly to make… a same gesture… to the same moment! He dropped, crossed by the hindrance and the emotion. - Not always… Gwendoline corrected, depriving him of all flight. - Ah? - Yes! When two people want to kiss themselves in the same time, it is rather well, no? She admitted in manner of enlightenment. - Ah… that… Yes… he whispered the voice imprinted of sadness. Me… I… won't know… ever… - Why? Gwendoline revolted while slipping away on the side and while inviting Sebastian to regain the position close to the window. - Me… It is impossible… - You are not capable to have some feelings? - Oh yes! He said noisily, betraying a powerful confession. - And well then? Where is the problem? - Well… But… Don't you see? - No. - But… No girl… Finally… You know what kind of picture I give… The one of a mad… - You are not mad! The gypsy replied. You are all except that! - It is the boy's picture with a… helmet of motorcycle… retractable in the amphitheater… that the other keep of me. - Not your friends. Not Martin, nor Viviane, nor Helen and nor Hubert. And especially not me. I don't have this picture in head, you see! - Ah? To what… do I make you think? - To a soft being, dreamer, generous, volunteer, helpful, intelligent, reflexive, fragile. - Oh… - Everything that I like… Gwendoline finished. In the fire of the action, she had confessed her feelings. Gipsy, so sure of her in all circumstances, threw her fishing line far away without knowing if fish would taste the decoy. For the first time of her life, she trembled while waiting for an answer.

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"No… It is impossible!" Sebastian thought. "Do I represent all what she likes? It is… unthinkable. I am not anything next to her! Nothing!" - Me… It is not possible… I don't believe you… It is cruel… Sebastian panicked. He let her in the kitchen, joining the other members of the group and listened to Helen's exposition religiously on the manner to stick the strip of the "show-offs." This point interested him particularly because this devilish strip of youngsters, the bodies and to the faces concealed by their combinations, had escaped to him repeatedly. Helen proposed to compile all their displacements in order to foresee where they would hit the next time. There not holding anymore, Sebastian dared to speak: - Maybe that… Finally… - Yes? Martin carried on. Go there! He added in manner of encouragement. - Someone warns them… maybe… - Before our arrivals? Hubert exclaimed. You laugh! - No… It is possible! Martin confirmed. It is true! After all, we are spied on maybe! Sebastian's supposition was welcomed with interest, since he had Martin's downstream. He followed an endless debate on the reasons that would push a mysterious character to spy on them. - To control us better, of course! Hubert had concluded. ** * The pictures of students trooped around a plastered copier of dough arrived on the screens of control. All other views had been abandoned to the profit of these pictures of the K. A hand advanced toward the desk and drove a key. A set of shots, gone up to the manner of a report or a sum-up, appeared on the biggest flat looking screen of the room. Minus appeared in photograph. All his gadgets, notably those included in his gloves, were counted. - His strengths: intelligence, agility, suppleness, strong enough for his stoutness, transforms any projectile in weapon. His weaknesses: his size that he compensates by rigged shoes with powerful springs, his respiratory capacity, he doesn't know how to swim. The commentary came from the man viewing the sequence. Martin was shown on all sewing, notably at the time of public interventions. He was analyzed, dissected, put to naked. The other elements of the K underwent the same fate by turns. The mysterious character noticed to what point Hamburger possessed a Herculean strength, a resistance to the strokes and to the bullets cleanly miraculous but as how much he was awkward, few tactician, too sure of him, slow, inefficient. Halloween possessed an insolent luck, clean to the alcoholics, a smarting power but to the range and to the autonomy very limited. Without alcoholic fuel, 33

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Halloween weakened. Virus was described like an extremely dangerous creature but whose radius of action was even weaker than the one of Halloween. Besides, a simple stroke was sufficient to send her to the carpet. Again it was necessary to use the stroke with gloves and to avoid her poisoned breath, carrier of billions of germs all more virulent the some that the other. As for Gwendoline, it was necessary to resist her magnetic beauty, her sorcerer voice and to surprise her while foiling her power of clairvoyance. It was necessary to resort to many subterfuges to warn the plausible changes that she would undertake on the environment. For her, it was sufficient to place her in a sterile environment, the desert of Sahara, for example. Her power of action would cut down then as skin of grief. - The most interesting and most powerful! The voyeur of stolen pictures annotated. Behind him, a cloud of men in plated holding advanced. The "show-offs"… - Mistrust yourselves of him as the pestilence! Solitary… He runs the hundred meters in ten seconds seventy, it is capable to break whatever when he is angry. His scream is deadly unless twenty meters and wounds you until hundred meters. Besides, he possesses a grant of imitation and communication with the animals. However, he is hypersensitive of the ears. While destroying the gadgets assuring his auditory protection, he is reduced to nothing, prostrate, tetanized. Be careful! Tetanize means that he is hard like the concrete, insensible to the strokes, to the viruses, to gases! He is then very dangerous. It is necessary to seize the instant where he is going to relax slightly to anesthetize him. Something is necessary powerful and radical because it is capable all to block in a fraction of second. Therefore, that one, avoid him as the pestilence! Did you well understand? - Yes, boss! The henchmen replied. - Then, go at work! Clean out the city! The "show-offs" didn't make themselves pray more to recover their paraphernalia and fuel in order to deliver the prefecture to the flames of the hell. ** * The piece hardly measured more any eight square meters and contained two beds superimposed as well as a mattress on the floor. Eight square meters for three people, a portable radio, a corner toilets hardly concealed by a high low wall of one meter. No shower, not of tub, an old metallic cabinet for all ranging. Thierry, stretched out against the wall, a eye on the city of which he discerned some roofs passing the surrounding wall of the jail, ridiculed his two cotenants bewilderedly. Last arrived, he had had the right on the floor in the mattress, least comfortable. A dealer of heroine and a bank-breaker, convicted respectively to four years and eight years of prison, had welcomed him freshly, being already fairly worn out to share eight square meters of gray concrete and bars of steel. Jamel and Tony had put him quickly to perfume: if he wanted to 34

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take advantage of a likely liberty, one day, he had to conform to their orders, to accept all their desires, their caprices and do all domestic works. Besides, he had obligation to share all consignments that would be made to him and to give the money fully. - OK for the mattress! Thierry had answered. For the rest, I fuck you! The two crooks had not taken the thing lightly. They had conferred of the look and had decided to beat him of strokes. He had not let them the time of it; taking the appearance of a tiger of Bengal, the most powerful and most impressive of the felines, he had terrorized them until they urinate in their togses. Then, he had forced them to pass the dishcloth to erase the traces of their silliness. Finally, he had promised them to change appearance and to devour them during their sleep if they were not on the alert. He reminded to them that he adored hunting during the night. Taken by panic, the two apprentices terrors had implored the guardians to transfer them in another cell, ready to live with ten persons in the same vital space that previously. The penitentiary administration had not yielded to their supplications; they were asked to compose with the newcomer. Since ten months, Thierry had not had to make use of his terrifying power. Against the concrete heated by the heats of the summer, Thierry got lost in his thoughts of regret and liberty. Regret to have been manipulated by Saphira Malice, spellbound by her poisonous charm. Liberty that waited outside for him, there, close at hand. It was so… easy! It was sufficient to terrorize his co-tenants. Their screams would attract the attention of the guards. They would open and all would link together very quickly. He would use his power of terror, would get the keys and would paralyze the guards. Besides, it was not hardly necessary to probe their souls to discover their biggest frights: the guards of jail would die all of fear to the idea to meet behind the bars with their former prisoners. Not need to have made Saint-Cyr school for it. Then, he would leave the city, he would flee. "Always…" he wondered with bitterness. "For the eternity… I will be tracked like a beast but I will be free. I will be able to defend myself. Yeah… It will be the self-defense!" But the few of morals that he had regained as helping the K to defeat Saphira Malice forbade him to clear the step. If he fled, he would aggravate his case, definitely. If he remained, it was sure to lose the head. He had taken three years of cabin for murder and complicity. A pain attenuated thanks to the brio of his lawyer, this last having made the demonstration that Thierry had been manipulated by Saphira Malice. Besides, he had landed in the jail of La Pierre Levée, in Poitiers, a decrepit prison establishment, out norms but moreover, a traditional penitentiary. He didn't ignore that the one where his mistress, become his adversary, had inherited a preferential treatment little enviable. He had come with her until her last home, the one where she would die in fifty or sixty year: a cube of reinforced and hermetic steel of two meters of side, so long as of a double baffle, of two adjoining pitfalls for the passage of the linen and food. Impossible to open the two openings at the same time! The renewal of the oxygen was assured by a bellows of aerodynamics unleashing a draft 35

THE BLOND IMP

sweeping the cube to more of hundred kilometers per hour. She could not escape therefore by ventilation, too powerful, even and especially while turning into fine particles of flour. Thierry remembered the noise of the bellows that was engaged itself shortly after he loosened his terror on the young woman. Since ten months, she endured an infernal uproar, enough to lose her mind, probably. He preferred his conditions of life, even though they were reduced. He didn't have the right to escape, not the right to use his powers. After all, he would be twenty-two years old for his exit and all would not be lost to restart a new student life. He would have a little delay, only. It was possible as much more that he had succeeded in taking his exams of foreign languages in jail, thanks to a derogation and at the cost of a fierce work. He had a luck not to dive again. It was necessary to cope. ** * Gwendoline sounded at the immense door of entry of the jail. She trembled, browsed by the stage fright. To return visit in Thierry Mizar was her idea, her initiative. It was useless to submit it to the approval of the other K. She would have wiped a massive disapproval. Yesterday, she had felt the distress of the young man only, his hesitation to lean on one hand or the other of the balance. The doubts gnawed him. The liberty, at his range, tempted him. She should discover the secret. She produced her papers of identity under the nose of the vigils at the entry and asked to speak to Thierry. One of the men in uniform maneuvered a normal size door included in the gigantic reinforced portal giving on the Boulevard Of Faubourg du Pont-Neuf. He came with her until the entry of the penitentiary. Along the way, the young woman couldn't stop from thinking of the events of the eve, at Martin's home. She had opened a door on her heart in presence of Sebastian, he had believed in a mockery. This supersensitive being had trustworthy so little in him that he even questioned the existence of feelings. For him, the other felt either of the neglect, either of the contempt. Anything else. For the first time of her life, Gwendoline had undergone a failure. She kept a taste of deep bitterness, sincere sadness and uneasiness generalized of it. How to explain to Sebastian that she didn't feel the mercy, that she didn't want to ridicule him but that she wished to live a beautiful history merely with him, without end if possible? The walls of the jail, marrying the neighboring streets marvelously, recalled him Sebastian. Impassable, thick, surrounding him, without exit, concealing the reality and the future. Indestructible stone, this same stone whose young man could acquire the powers of toughness. The whole evening, she had tempted to approach him, to isolate themselves in his company to renew the dialogue but he had fled, he had avoided her conscientiously. He was afraid. His confession had walled up him in the silence and this behavior also spread to the other members of the group. She thought to embody a remedy to his shyness; she was worse than the pain… ** 36

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* The heavy armored door unlocked itself suddenly, partially pulling the three men out of their lethargy due to the heat. Ten hours in the morning and the thermometer already curled the twenty-six degrees. The day promised to be intolerable. The guardian barked: - Mizar! To the parlor! - To the parlor? Does someone want to see me? The concerned person wondered. Since his entry in prison, he had not put the feet in the parlor. The K ignored him superbly: it was a little normal, according to him. His class friends usually envied him, they had to be delighted with his situation. On the other hand, his own family refused to see him and there, he was angry. His parents had rejected him like a smutty, in spite of his turning around of last minute. In fact, they took advantage of the situation to show their true feelings finally against the mutant that he embodied. He was rejected. Who came to see him? His lawyer? Possible! After all, he behaved correctly in jail. A reduction of sentence for good conduct was not excluded. His lawyer, committed of office, had proven to be a real ace of the bar. He would take a rabbit of the hat maybe. - Hurry you the ass, we don't have the morning! Meunier screamed, systematically slaughtering mood clean like the finished idiots can be and like all those that hate their job. - I come! Thierry said. He followed the jailer submissively in the maze made of successive pieces and stairs. A true labyrinth, this jail! To escape, he was better to flee directly by the outsides! - Do you know who wants to see me? Thierry ask for. - No idea! Meunier replied. Hold! It is there! You enter and you have five minutes, hand-held stopwatch. - Thank you! Thierry answered, holding to the courtesy fronting whereas he clearly thought that the guard Meunier was a cow-hide delivering himself to the black market to round his ends of month. The heart of Thierry made a stupendous jump and started beating violently over hundred sixty throbbing per minute. Gwendoline. He had frozen, unable to sit down on the seat arranged behind the window separating him of the divine creature. She had not changed. Or rather, yes! She was even more pretty to his eyes that in his last memories. - Hello Thierry, she made a voice that immediately bewitched her merely. Sit you! He immediately complied and fell in stop in front of her, like an Irish setter owing a hen of water. He swallowed and swallowed his saliva. Suddenly, his side swanker redid an apparition. He started in whirlwind: 37

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- Gwendoline… You are always as sexy! - Thank you. - I knew that you could not do without me! It was necessary that it is you that come to see me! - You didn't change. You are always as presumptuous! - Ah! I know that I please you, doll! I will have you one day! - Even not in dream! Decidedly, you are incorrigible. Ten months of jail didn't change you. - It is what you believe… The man changed, the feelings remained. So much that you remain free as air, I have my odds. Gwendoline hesitated one second to confess him that her feelings went to another than him but she feared that it knocks his state of mind down. After all, the hope of a history after his exit maintained him the head maybe out of water, stopped him from committing some stupidities. - You seem in shape! She remarked. - I converse. - How do you do? - Like a guy deprived of liberty since ten months! - Of course… I wanted to say: are not you mistreated? - No. I terrorized my two co-tenants at my arrival. The news made the tour of the jail in five minutes. Since, I don't have need to make demonstration of strength. I have some peace and I am held alone. It is not the desire that misses of… - To unleash you and to flee? - Yes. - It is… comprehensible! Gwendoline admitted while biting the lips, what made it even cracking to the eyes of Thierry, slightly. The prisoner nodded the head repeatedly, as if he hunted the ideas of flight, the furious sexual desire of the sublime creature, perfectly clothed yet of an infamous large trousers and a tee-shirt befitting XXXL recommended in the prison environment with the exacerbated libido. - And the other? How are they? Do the K always exist? - The K always exist. We are overflowed with work, we collaborate with the polices, we patrol in the city and we are exhausted. Helen and Hubert failed their exams. The other passed of exactness, except Martin who finished regimental adjutant of his promotion. - I had my first year, me also, Thierry retorted. - What? Here? - Yes. - Great! You impress me! It is frankly brilliant! I congratulate you, indeed! - Thank you… Well… The others know that you wanted to come? - They are not informed. 38

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This confession flattered the excessive ego of Thierry but he said nothing about it, for once. Not to charge to the manner of the hussars had no impact on Gwendoline. His method of dragnet was to reconsider entirely with the marvelous gipsy. - Ah? He wondered temperately. Will you speak them of your visit? - Not sure. - Remark… At your place, I would not brag about to return visit to a jailer! I understand… - You are not there at all! Let's say that they are less understanding than I… - Ah… The guard Meunier came in the room without warning. The interview immediately ended. - I must go… Will you come back? Thierry asked for. - I promise you it! Gwendoline replied. - See you soon, beauty! The prisoner couldn't stop from concluding, faithful of his style. He disappeared behind the door, letting the young woman alone with her questions. "He is close to the despair, I feel it. He always flirted with the desire to penetrate, missing paradoxically trustworthy in him with his similar, definitely. He concealed his internal weaknesses, his pains while using his power of terror. He can crack. He is going to crack…" ** * Thierry returned to his cell, the heart heavy. How to remain between these miserable gray walls when the beauty unreal of Gwendoline incited him to leave the prison? The desire to flee made itself more pressing than ever. All of a sudden, whereas he had just lain down on his disposed layer on soil, thinking of the face of dream of the one that he would have liked to lie down in the hay, a clamor went up in the penitentiary. Some shots slapped. - Prostitute! There is trouble! Tony exclaimed. - Yeah! Some fight! Jamel increased. Let's go, boys! Fart them the muzzle to these fuckers! Without making sure to their mate of cell, the two crooks sped along right to the window, tempting to verify if some convicts had succeeded in leaving some jails and reaching the roofing. - Where are they? - I don't know! - Open us! Tony squalled, ready to run away. Hey! Johnny! He started to the attention of a cell neighbor. 39

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This last passed the hand by the window, indicating that he received the message five on five. Johnny was informed of all, in the establishment. They nicknamed him "radio jail". This guy had a memory of elephant, lent money to everybody and made himself repay the sums increased of comfortable interests with strengths, thanks to some henchmen rather strong. - Johnny! What happens? Tony recovered. - About twenty guys in walk refused to return into the cages and seized the weapons of guardians. The other guardians assembled to dislodge them but the guys had made the powder spoken. They win the land. It is necessary that they make quickly before the cops don't arrive. If they shrivel them their muzzles, we will be the masters of the jail. The cops will always try to dislodge us, we will shoot them as rabbits as soon as they enter! - Shit! Who are these guys? - Some guys of Basile, the marabou. - They have sacred testicles, the blacks! - Yeah! It is swollen! Johnny screamed, admiring. - Hold us informed, radio jail! - If they succeed, you will know it quickly, my pal! Your door will open up as by enchantment! The characteristic noise of the opening of the cells appeared a first time. The mutinous had succeeded therefore in reaching the checking station and to trigger the mechanism. More numerous, they took the advantage. Thierry estimated that the mutiny took place at the level of the ground floor, either the strategic place to achieve an operation of this type. The types didn't look for the immediate escape; they wanted to make clean place before imagining a means to flee. This movement was not prepared; on the contrary, it was completely spontaneous. A true escape was not played instantaneously with about twenty guys: too complicated to organize, too risky in terms of flight of information. Suddenly, he straightened himself and sped along the door. He drummed while screaming repeatedly: - Guard! Guard! At the end of some instants, the pitfall opened up. The noises of the fury, of screams, of shootings of light calibers became cleaner, what had the effect of exciting his two mates of cell. Meunier appeared in the framing, the face blushed by a wild race. - What do you want, whorehouse? The guard asked for. - To help you! Thierry replied, contrary to all expectations. - What? Meunier wondered. - To help you! Let me leave! I give you a helping hand! - To leave? You are sick! We are shot like rabbits and you would like that I free the floor so that we are taken in pincers? You take myself for an idiot! 40

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- Please! I swear you that I want to help you! You have my speech! - Do you know this that that is worth, the speech of a jailer? A criminal's speech! Go! Make me not to crap, Mizar! Facing the guard's comprehensible attitude, Thierry didn't have the choice. He fixed Meunier's eyes and projected him mentally a convict's presence menacing him with a weapon pointed on his nape. The imaginary convict summoned the order to open the cell by hand, with the pass. The guard Meunier, persuaded that his life was in danger, didn't try to make diversion. He immediately complied. The door opened up and all went very quickly. Thierry erased the psychic mirage. Meunier, becoming aware that he had been betrayed like a beginner, carried the hand to the case containing his weapon. The door opened, Tony and Jamel benefited from this to tempt to force the passage. Thierry calmed them quickly while taking the appearance of a menacing and screaming royal cobra. The two crooks immobilized themselves instantaneously, conscious that the least gesture could be fatal. It was enough so that Thierry closes again the door. Now, Meunier threatened him with his service weapon. He trembled visibly, panicky by the situation. - Name of God! Don't move or I weight you! - Go, Meunier. Make me confidence! Take me on the field of battle and I guarantee you that I settle your problem! - You won't go nowhere, rabble! - Good blood! Are you going to wait a long time for, like that? Are you plugged or what? Your pals make themselves to shoot, Meunier! React! Think well but quickly! I am the only luck to reverse the situation. If you let make, your colleagues are going to die, one after the other. The guys in the face don't have anything to lose. They already lost quite. Do you understand? To kill won't stop them. After, the jail will be delivered to their hands. The cops won't enter. Me, yes. I have the power to stop them. You know it, Meunier. That you are afraid of me, it is normal. Everybody is afraid of me because it is my power that is like that. I even frightened my friends… He released the tears to the sides of the eyes. Slowly, Meunier became aware that he didn't have another choice. He had to trust this harmful, horrifying being, with the awful grants. He sheathed his weapon, with regrets. His instinct yet pushed him to eliminate this abomination of the nature but his brain ordered him to act otherwise. Thierry discerned these unrests, these powerful antagonisms upsetting Meunier. He understood them, without admitting them. - Go! Thierry decided. Take me over the battle field! - Pass, Meunier retorted, little reassured by the idea that this individual kicks him. ** *

41

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The news had made the tour of the jail at full speed. By precaution, the director had placed Thierry in an isolated cell, without mate. He was not anxious to recover their savior the body larded of knife strokes, of glass pieces or plenty of strokes while respecting the use and the traditions. Thierry was a balance; his head was wanted. The reason was sensible. Because of him, according to the other prisoners, the tentative of mutiny of the team of Basile had failed. He was the only person responsible of this failure. It was perfectly disloyal because he had used his powers to help the guards. Hardly arrived in the place where the guards and the mutinous faced themselves, Thierry had freed his impulses. They had materialized the shape of millions of humming bugs, of hairy and galloping spiders, of snakes and other gluey insects. Terrorized, the mutinous had moved back and had dispersed themselves. Thierry, alias Terror, had pursued each of them then, medicated the cases one by one, terrorizing them until they lose conscience. The heart attacks had been avoided of exactness, the young man containing himself and being content with frightening them, without imagining some chimeras capable to kill them. The criminals yet hardened, protesting that nothing frightened them, had all their shortcomings. The one that had failed to become a K before sinking of the bad side of the law, had tracked them without mercy. He had humiliated them, restored to the rank of human ants. The balance was unbelievably light for an event of this size because the guards only counted a light injured having received bursts of glass while the prisoners had wiped three shootings. The injuries inflicted by the projectiles limited themselves to the arms; the mutinous would get off with a short stay in the hospital under good surveillance. Thierry was a balance, a traitor and a rot. His reason was sensible and a contract had been decided by Basile. Besides, this last didn't hide to protest high and strong that he would give ten thousand euros to the first guy who would get rid of the rebel. To say truly, the candidates didn't jostle themselves too much. Money was a thing; Terror was another one. Finally, Thierry had harvested a régime of isolation and preferential treatment, taken into consideration his action. Lone in the soul, he was satisfied aside with this stake, broken regularly by the guards who testified him an eternal recognition. Henceforth, his pain seemed more tolerable. ** * The bus of the line number was nearly full. He had just left hardly the place of marshal Leclerc, loaded of students lodging in center city. He headed slowly toward the academic campus, taken in the early stream of the circulation. Occupying the benches of the bottom, the K was united unusually to undertake their preenrollments of the next return. The happy administrative formalities of the higher education of the public domain… The ambiance was rather heavy since in the previous evening because Gwendoline had revealed her schedule of the day: the visit in the jail. She explained that he was calmed, more reflexive, claimant of news but she had had the right to a flight of green wood on behalf of 42

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Martin. The others K had always welcomed the news with freshness, except Sebastian, always fleeing and dived in muteness. He didn't certainly think less of them, since Thierry had especially ridiculed him. Martin took a leaf of cabbage gathering the national and local information, freshly acquired in a newspapers kiosk. The other didn't have any particular occupations, unable to dedicate their energy to other activities that their heroic action. While unfolding, the chief of the K discovered a title that immediately attracted his attention: "Mutiny in the jail of Poitiers." He read the article as quickly as possible, of transverse manner, keeping the essential. He rested the newspaper on the bench, stunned by the news. - Did you see? He started at random. - What? Hubert asked for. - This banner headline! He answered while unfolding the first page owing everybody. In front of the dazed faces of his friends, he guessed that they thought all about a certain prisoner, Thierry, that would have been one of them if he had not toppled the bad side of the gate. - Thin! Helen said. - Incredible… Viviane blew. - I don't believe some my eyes! Hubert roared. Tell us that Thierry is not responsible. - No, Martin released, breaking suspense. Gwendoline… he made while applying to the young woman while fixing her right in the eyes. Didn't you have foreseen this kind of events? - Why? - It happens to you to have some enough general visions concerning topics that are not directly linked to our activity. You went at the jail yesterday. The mutiny occurred shortly after your departure. It is surprising that you didn't detect any negative waves in these walls, waves letting hear that the event was going to occur. - It is true. However, the places are charged extremely in negative waves. Besides, a mutiny can always occur. - In your mouth, this potentiality takes another significance. - What do you want to say? - If a mutiny can occur, you helped it maybe… Martin suggested, very shrewd. Gwendoline had a grin of confession. Martin was stupendously intelligent. He had understood that she always had a beforehand time, that she projected herself in the future to look after the destiny of the K. If she had acted of the sort, she very certainly had a good reason. He wanted to hear her. He stretched the perch. - I have… triggered the mutiny. The faces marked the questioning, the incomprehension. - Why? Martin continued. 43

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- Thierry could topple in delinquency, definitely. It was necessary that I force him to react, to hope that the future didn't die. I succeeded since he helped the guards to subdue the rebellion. - But what a price! A guard injured, three handled convicts and also injured. There could have been some deaths on all sides. Martin disapproved the method. Gwendoline had used her power without thinking about the consequences. After all, the destiny of Thierry was maybe to topple in banditry, in criminality. The nature of his power proved it. - I know… Gwendoline conceded while lowering the head. - You did from a good feeling, Martin noticed. But you cannot change all the future, you cannot save the whole planet and it is well all our problem. We will run after all hares, including those of the traditional polices. I think that it is a mistake and I think that it will act you as lesson. It will act us as lesson to all. We cannot force the destiny, Gwendoline. It is sometimes necessary… to be patient… for a long time… and sometimes without succeeding ever. While reading in Martin's eyes, the young gypsy nearly had the intuition that most famous dwarf of France knew that she had exposed her heart to Sebastian and that she had wiped a smarting failure. Their chief's pupils slipped circa a brief second Solitary, aside from the rest of the group. He knew. But how? Gwendoline stayed persuaded that Martin didn't have grant of clairvoyance or telepathic faculty. How could he know? Sebastian's confidence? Nearly impossible. Sebastian was too much… autistic. A confidence by another member of the K? Hubert? Helen? No. Viviane? The girl, with a teenager's pace having forgotten to grow and to ripen, possessed a soft voice that Sebastian appreciated. Besides, he was the unique character not fearing the powers of Viviane since he could freeze to the point of kill all viruses or microbes in his body. Maybe… Gwendoline rose and surrendered in the front of the bus. She drove the button of call, mechanically. She descended at the following stop, at the level of the new bridge, two kilometers far from the academic campus. She felt a quick need to walk, to think, to empty his mind of his black thoughts parasitizing the good working of his brain. Two tears escaped involuntarily and descended in recall on her delightfully round cheeks. Too much pressure in a so short time. ** * Minus and Virus had met once besides in the academic library. The "show-offs" had reduced numerous cars in ashes, taking advantage of the disorganization of the polices and the absence of the K, too much exhausted, inefficient. Martin and Viviane having supposed that they were probably the subject of a regular surveillance, that the police and the neighboring state police were also the object of particular attentions, the two heroes had gone to the town 44

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hall of Poitiers. They had gotten a particular interview with the first character of the city. This last had offered them the possibility to visit the center of surveillance of the city. The network of cameras, far from being negligible, was insufficient to cover all districts. It was especially concentrated on the historic downtown, on the public parking lots and on the neuralgic centers as the town hall, the prefecture, the main treasury of the taxes. Come back sputter, according to them, they were solved to abandon their theory of generalized surveillance. - We are the subject of a customized surveillance maybe, Martin suggested. - That is to say? - Of the criminals assigned to track us. - Students? - Fatally! Only some students can follow and can behave as students. They go to the library, to the academic restaurant, to the movies, in the bookstores. - Who can it be? Some friends in every promotion? Viviane murmured. - Why not! - We can eliminate the present students during the year and leaving the academic city during the summer. - Yes. But there is another possibility. - Which? - A spy… in intern. - One of us? Viviane exclaimed with as many strengths as she was able to do it. - It is possible. - No… - You don't believe there, it is natural. But the option must be considered. - But who? - I don't know. No… It is silly. - Did you think about Gwendoline? Viviane implied. This is not? - To say truly… yes! She is disrupted. I feel it. In fact, she is very fragile. I grew to discover tensions between her and Sebastian. Since our evening "dough", he flees her like a plaguestriken. I don't know what she did. She should have approached him, she tempted to pierce his shell in strength and she failed. Since, Sebastian stands back. He avoids her and don't participate in the group. I am afraid that we lost him. Because of Gwendoline. - It is nearly an announced dissolution of the K! Viviane revolted. - No… Remember our favorite comic strip heroes, the X-Men! Their group evolves with the progression of the departures and arrivals. The K is not finished but… they are going to change maybe. - And if was Sebastian himself? He is so unforeseeable! - And then why not Helen or Hubert! No. We swim in full delirium. The group wipes a lapse of energy and we come to suspect us. It is necessary to reconsider the whole problem, Martin released in manner of conclusion.

45

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Alone together, Viviane and Martin took all data of the problem of the "show-offs." How, when and where did they intervene? How much beforehand did they have on them and on the polices? Did they act with a particular logic? Absorbed by their reflection, they didn't care to Sebastian's arrival. Solitary he was, lone he remained, even in his investigating. - And if the system of surveillance came from the sky? Sebastian intended without babbling, without punctuating his sentence of hesitations. He made them jump at the same time, what was without consequence for Martin but could be fatal for Viviane, considering her weak constitution. - Sorry to have frightened you! He apologized. - It is not anything, Viviane reassured. I am well. What did you say the previous instant? - Hey… Well… he hesitated again, as if the natural shy and anguished came back after an unimaginable effort agreed to express himself correctly. Well… Us and the police are maybe… supervised since the… sky. - Go there! Pursue your reasoning! Viviane intended. - Automatic drones. - Drones? Martin suspected. Of it would need a lot! A sacred packet, even! - Yes… Sebastian made while lowering the head, convinced that Martin would not believe it. - I ignore all of the drones, Viviane threw back. Explain me what it is! - It is… a small plane spy without pilot… It is difficult to mark because it is… very small. It can fly a long time and can be equipped with a powerful camera. - And the noise? Did you think about the noise? Martin litigated. - Some silent motors exist… even without being electric. If the motor compartment is isolated well, we don't hear much, especially if the contraption flies to more of two thousand meters. - Yeah… Martin conceded. Only, it is nevertheless visible, a contraption of two meters in full sky. It is sufficient that the sun reflects itself in its painting to be seen by the eye. - It only flies during the night, Sebastian retorted, holding head, sure of his theory. - During the night? But some exactions took place of day! Viviane attended the oratorical joust as in a match of tennis between an old professional and a young unknown descended of the qualifications. The most important was to know if the boss on the land would be again the most experienced. She felt that a new phenomenon occurred. Sebastian didn't stutter anymore. Why? Did he simulate in plain time? Did he change? What did it occur? - It is true. Rarer attacks but feasible thanks to the cameras of the city. - How do you know it? Viviane completed. - I met the mayor of the city two days ago. I cut up the whole network with the diurnal attacks. On the other hand, all actions of our enemies the "show-offs" are impracticable with the contest of the municipal cameras. During the night, infrared vision of the cameras is 46

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necessary. During the night, drones are invisible. They can take off a distant land, to win their altitude of cruise and to spy on the streets. - I come back to my outgoing reflection: a lot of drones is necessary to cover the field of vision. It is necessary to control the air-traffic and not to strike the planes that cannot mark them. - It is true. What do you deduct of it? Sebastian asked for. He provoked Martin, frankly. Viviane was persuaded that their mate, usually strangely mute and aside, already knew well more of them than them. He proved to be brilliant. - I don't know! - Ah… Sebastian made. Me, I would be going to see the side of the airport of Biard. - Why? - It is an airfield equipped with a radar. Imagine that the "show-offs" are hidden over there, they can connect on the radar of Biard and they have the opportunity then to superimpose these data with those of their own radar. - Oh! Shine supposition! Martin laughed at. You have a name to give us, I suppose? - Well… Sebastian mumbled again, as if he had just been dried by rugby player's veneer. Hey well… Yes… - Ah? The two other interlocutors wondered. - Well… Well… I have… taken the liberty to visit there, during the last night. - Alone? It is imprudent! Martin lectured, playing his chief's role in depth. Sheepish, Sebastian lowered the head. And then, as if deep inside, he convinced himself that it was time to resist Martin and his one-sided decisions, he raised the chin and declared a feature: - Not so imprudent! I hid all night long and my sensitive ears perfectly detected the minute noise of humming contraptions. I didn't see them but I heard them. They exist. On the other hand, they are perfectly camouflaged. I didn't see them taking off but I heard them! - Very well! And who is at the origin of all this, according to you? Viviane discerned the irritation in Martin's voice. He didn't appreciate that Solitary played in solo and meant him sharply. He was going to provoke the student's fold in acoustics, or even an irretrievable departure if he pursued in the acidic retort. - A new society got settled there six months ago in the zone industrial close to the airport. It is the Misansen society. It is about a factory manufacturing maintenance parts destined to planes, especially electronics. I verified its by-laws. They are legal but the society works indeed very well for a young society. Maybe too well. It is directed by a certain Marcus Ethylen, a man of Finnish origin. Finland is producer of high precision electronic elements manufactured. - And would these drones come of this society? Viviane cut. - It is possible. It is a track. 47

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- Very well, Sebastian! Martin exclaimed. Let's take appointment with the director of this society and let's verify if nothing suspicious doesn't hide in his factory! - It is not a good idea, Sebastian contradicted. - And why? - Who knows what we are going to meet? - You are right! We will go all! All six, without exception! Thus, we will be capable to cope! - We don't know much of this man. It is dangerous. - Go! Good blood! The time is urgent! Do you want to stop these show-offs, yes or no? - Of course. - Then, let's take appointment and we will see well! I am sure that we make false road, of all manners. Thus, Martin didn't believe a word of Sebastian's history. Vexed, Solitary must arrange himself to their chief's decision. However, he trembled of rage and anger. Of anger because Martin had disregarded his opinion. Of rage because they risked their lives so ever he was right. However, his instinct blew him that there was a big danger that watched them over there. Who would listen him? Viviane? No. She arranged herself systematically behind Martin, the brilliant Martin. The genius didn't make all. Helen? Hubert? Bof… They would also follow. Gwendoline? Gwendoline… He was paralyzed to the idea to speak to her. Her beaming beauty was such that he lost his means facing her. And then… There was this incredible history where she had ridiculed him. It was rigorously impossible that she feels whatever it is to his consideration. Impossible. Impossible… And yet… No… Impossible… No solution. Unless that… Yes. But yes! He had only to wait. If the irreparable occurred, he would not have the choice. It hurt him to the heart but he would not have the choice. He would betray them. ** * The old monospace stopped about fifty meters far of the unique entry of the Misansen society. The brand new factory seemed of a normal factory. Some white buildings achieved with the concrete, the cement, the roofs made of corrugated iron, three large brick chimneys as those of France (or of the Norway, for those that are not nostalgic of the past), the quite surrounded by large spaces of parking lot, of the loading platform of the finished goods and landing of the supplies and other raw materials. Formed some keys of greenery of trees, lawns and massifs livened the whole to the greatly industrial print. On the other hand, considering the sensitive nature of the facilities produced in the factory, the places were surrounded by electrified surrounding walls, the access were submitted to a tight filtering and a network of detectors and cameras secured the society. It was not necessary less of them to impress the K. - It is Fort Knox, here! Martin remarked. - Fort what? Hubert wondered. - Fort Knox. It is the strong place where the United States store their gold reserves. 48

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- The only strong that I know, Hubert said to loosen the atmosphere, it is me! It triggered some smiles at the K. In spite of the efforts of Hamburger, king of the pun, the ambiance stayed icy. The mistake to the maximal tension of the last days and to Martin's relative impotence to deliver some measures to straighten the situation. The mistake also to Sebastian and in Gwendoline, always as little in phase since the famous evening "dough." Henceforth, it was necessary to be silly or blind not to perceive that grains of sand seized the machine of the K. While advancing, Sebastian stayed prudent. Something worried him, shocked him in these places, without being able to determine what. In spite of all, he fit together the step of his friends. The guard at the entry contacted the standard and got the confirmation that the big boss had appointment well with the K. The close date indicated that the mysterious Marcus Ethylen was hurried to meet the characters becoming little by little some legends. After having presented their papers of identity as the internal regulations of the factory wanted it, the K last to submit to an excavation in rule. Martin was asked to let his most exploding gadgets in the local and Helen, for obvious anti-fire norms, was forced to abandon the burner coupled to her helmet. Badges of visitors were prepared to their attention in return for their identification cards. It was only after the achievement of these indispensable formalities that they were allowed to penetrate in the surrounding wall, under housemaid keeps. "I don't like that! " Sebastian thought while noting the spreading of strengths. "I have the impression to throw me in the muzzle of the wolf. I know good that planes, especially military, are a sensitive domain but… It is curious, as sensation! " The two armed guards invited them to borrow an elevator as soon as the cleared welcome. In front of the astonishment of the K, one of them must provide an explanation: - The production is situated in surface but research is buried, for questions of security. Mr. Ethylen being before a whole famous inventor, his office is placed to the closer to the offices of survey. - Ah… Martin made, being content with this logical answer. "Non sense! " Sebastian remarked, always as suspicious, agitated by gestural tics worthy of a Gilles de la Tourette syndrome. "Everybody knows that an enterprise operates thanks to the sales. I am not studying in economy but I know that the direction is never far from the commercial service. And Martin swallows all without moving! Wake up, Martin! Lord! Who has got a little influence on him? No one… And then, this factory has a vague something bizarre. The chimneys… Are they some reason to have chimneys? There is not a foundry… " The elevator penetrated in the soil of a floor. The doors opened up on offices of survey crammed of computer materials at the forefront of the progress, of flat looking giant screens, 49

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of staffs in white blouse and a relative quietude. An atmosphere of seriousness and cleared itself in a good mood of the place, cutting with the overflow and the intensity of the production glimpsed higher. On the left, they discovered a pleiad of offices enough standard, except one, more vast and more customized. They were introduced quickly and took contact with Marcus Ethylen with a certain stupefaction. - Gentlemen, ladies! I am delighted to meet you! It is not every day that I receive some heroes! I introduce myself: Marcus Ethylen. I am the president of the Misansen society. Marcus Ethylen, blond as corn, a detail in direct report with his Finnish origins, culminated to hundred twenty centimeters to the big maximum. He was dwarf, as Martin. This perspective delighted the leader of the K who hastened to pursue the presentations. - I am Minus. And here are Hamburger, Helen, Virus, Gipsy and Solitary. The concerned persons addressed some handshakes to the boss without frowning except Solitary who was content with a head nod. The last person to shake the chubby hand of the Finn was Gwendoline. She was agitated by a light start that didn't escape nor in Marcus Ethylen, nor to Sebastian. Her smile froze the space of some seconds. It came back a short time on her face after but it donned an artificial, uptight aspect. She didn't know where to watch. His look crossed the one of Sebastian. She was panicked. The lone boy came closer of her, imperceptibly. - What I can do for you? Marcus Ethylen asked for. Except to hire some among you! He dropped the most seriously of the world. - Forgiveness? Martin got, suddenly flattered. - To hire you! I don't ignore your scientific qualities, notably yours, Minus and those of Solitary in the acoustic domain. These are rare expertises, nowadays! - We would be delighted to give continuation but the goal of our visit is not the research of an employment. Not yet. - Ah! - We inquire into the "show-offs." - Ah? Marcus said while inviting the K to use seats arranged to their attention. - We arrived to the conclusion that they had information on our displacements, on those of the police. - Oh… Interesting. - Our friend, Solitary, here present, could mark the drones stealing the night thanks to his hypersensitive hearing. This machinery spies on the city and detects all interesting movements. We ignore of where come these drones but, as specialist of the planes, you will know to tell us who is susceptible to construct some maybe, what is their radius of action, their maximal altitude, since what airfield they can take off. - Ah! I see! The Misansen society doesn't manufacture this type of device but I know their features. I warn you: as much to look for a needle in a boot of hay! 50

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- Ah good? - They can fly during hours, on many kilometers, they climb until five thousand meters, they take off on hundred meters. A simple straight line can be sufficient to make fly them. - Ouch! Martin said. Except tracking them with a radar, does it have anything else there to do? - No! Their signature is minute and the coatings applied on their cabins are identical to those used for the famous American sneaky bombardier. - We have only to handle with Solitary's hearing, Martin finished. - It is in fact the only solution! Sorry not to have been able in to make more, Marcus Ethylen declared, estimating that the pursuit of the interview was useless. - But no! Martin replied. You helped us to see clearer there. Thank you for your welcome! - The time come, think to my proposition! - It is very agreeable of your part! On the boss's sign, the two guards invested the office. - Take back these gentlemen and these damsels! Make visit them the secret facilities if they wish it! - Thank you! the K replied simultaneously, Solitary and Gipsy distinguishing themselves of the other by their frantic muteness. They took the path of the elevator without turning around. They would have had to. They would have discovered that Marcus Ethylen had just disappeared in a perfectly hidden personal elevator behind a baffle made of precious wood of his office. Just before, he had tapped some orders on his keyboard of computer. ** * The two guards had abandoned them in the elevator while that they would be relieved by other staffs in the ground floor. The doors had closed again themselves and Sebastian had exclaimed: - It is a trap! He lies! - What? Hubert and Helen had retorted. - It is true! Gwendoline confirmed. I saw the evil in him! He is the head of the spying network. He shoots some personalities and makes them sing. He throws the drones the night. - But how… Martin mumbled. - By the chimneys! Sebastian exclaimed. - What happens? Helen worried. What is this circus? The cabin penetrated more deeply in soil instead of driving them to the surface. An explosion sounds inside. 51

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- Gas! Plug yourselves the nose and the eyes! Martin screamed. The fall of the elevator stopped brutally. When the doors opened up, the K distinguished with pain a human shape floating in front of them. The eyes irritated by tear gas, the mucous membranes fairly put to pain, they felt the worse difficulties to take the over. - Sorry! I could not let leave you like that! Sooner or later, you would have discovered the truth! A voice coming from the shape protested. Especially miss Gipsy who seems to have a premonition concerning me! - Who are you? Martin quizzed between two fits of coughing. - The Imp! Marcus Ethylen warned. The last volutes of gas dispersed themselves. They could discover a dwarf disguised in Santa Claus, perched on a jet-propelled sleigh generating an infernal noise. Behind him, a vast room, big as the Stadium of France. Under ground! They didn't believe some their eyes. The gigantic place possessed an ovoid, metallic shape, of gray, impersonal color. Gipsy shivered. She discerned an omnipresent danger. - It looks like… Virus began. - The room of the dangers of your favorite heroes, the X-Men! The Imp continued. I created it! Defend yourselves! He came with his words of a launching of balls of Christmas that exploded no far from Halloween. The poor woman, destitute of her burner, could hardly retort. However, her gait swayed allowed her to avoid danger honorably. Hubert infuriated of not to be able to use his legendary strength, this damned floating Imp to five or six meters of soil, out of attack. There was not anything that can act as projectile in this gigantic perfectly empty room. Gipsy could not use her power of modification of the safe future on the jet-propelled sleigh. She supposed that it could fall in breakdown, what immediately occurred. As soon as the Imp was on the ground, Hamburger and Minus rushed on him. The boots of the false Santa Claus were faked. He triggered a jump that put him out of attack. With these boots, he could bound like a flea. He was shoed of the legendary boots of seven miles. Gwendoline thought that they could also fall in breakdown but she received an electric discharge coming from the gloves of the Imp. The lightning knocked her down without she could avoid it. She fainted. - Hey yes! My hat permits to read in your thoughts! It is worth a grant of clairvoyance well! Now, there is not a right anymore so that my sleigh doesn't function anymore! The sleigh took the altitude and the Imp jumped suddenly to his side. He plunged the hand in his mischief bag and swung a stream of bombs on Halloween. He had deprived this last of her indispensable burner maybe but he had not deprived her of intelligence. She took advantage of flames cleared by the successive explosions to blow her breath with a strong 52

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content of alcohol. She improvised a real flame-thrower that passed at the level of the beard of the Imp. He retorted while watering her copiously of tear gas and knocked her with his sleigh. She fell heavily. With the help of his red hat to white pompom, he ordered by telepathy the starting point of strong ties ejected of soil. Halloween and Gwendoline were tied up like sausages. - Bring you, the runt! Hubert supplicated, ready to crush him like a mosquito after what the Finn had made to the member of the K that he preferred. - As it will please you! The Imp replied. He sped along right on the enormous mass of the most famous of the Tannenbaum family with the clear intention to make put him on the ground knees. He noted the immediate proximity of Virus. She had discovered her hands, lend to make use of her contamination power. "Perfect! " The Imp thought. He deviated his race suddenly and struck the girl. He hurled down her on Hamburger. Contact was unavoidable, Hubert Tannenbaum not being known for his speed of displacement. She communicated him a Tetanus more petrifying that nature. Hubert collapsed, completely overcome, stiff like a piece of wood. The Imp freed hiss burden to some meters of soil, overwhelming Virus, of too weak constitution to resist such a fall. It remained only Minus and Solitary in the race. To say truly, it remained only Minus. Solitary was prostrate ready of the entry of the room, tetanized completely at the sight of the disaster, incapable to use his crying power without wounding his friends, incapable to use his muscles hard as the diamond against an enemy out of his range. Minus fell quickly after the explosion of balls of Christmas which powers were similar to those of the offensive pomegranates (less dangerous than the defensives, they provoke the noise and the breath). - It remains only you, Solitary! The last! The most powerful, also! With you, not question of bombs or gases! Your molecular structure protects you. Not letting the time to the Imp to elaborate an attack, Solitary triggered his scream in his direction. His friends being on the ground, they didn't risk to enter in the line of sight of the destructive scream. The hat reader of thoughts of the Finn warns him in time of Solitary's intentions. The jet-propelled sleigh dragged him far away in the room, sufficiently so that the inefficiency of the howling is total. The attitude was the one that Solitary hoped secretly. He had not betrayed this thought, just the one that it was necessary. The Imp was to good distance. Solitary rebelled internally and acquired the toughness of the diamond. He straightened himself and sent a great punch in the door of the elevator. The armor flew into pieces. Gwendoline took conscience mildly. In the dancing fog in front of her eyes, logical consequence of her previous electrocution, she saw Sebastian abandoning them. He fled, 53

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demolishing the roof of the cabin of the elevator and escaping while climbing to the cable. She vanished again, remaining on the picture of the unique even standing K, preferring the flight to the fight. - No! The Imp squalled. Devilish Solitary! Craven! He communicated with the guards to stop the runaway, at the surface. However, he hardly made himself some illusions. His commandos armed with guns would not weigh heavy facing Solitary's powers. He escaped. It thwarted somewhat his plans. But imported little! Private of their natural chief, the K was reduced to nothing. He could finally pursue hiss objectives without being hindered by their action. To know: to enslave the city, the region, France and why not, the whole Earth. ** * The first to take knowledge was Hubert. His strong constitution conferred him this advantage. An advantage… Not sure! What he discovered all around was far from provoking a raving joy. His friends, except Sebastian, were united by him, all as prisoners that him. The tiny places didn't tell him anything that is worth. They were spangled of electric cables, of girdles, of metallic tubes, of cases under seal. To say truly, they were cluttered seriously, as one elated container on board of a boat. It was too small to be the locker of a plane, although he never traveled in the stomach of a jumbo jet. Feeling his hands hindered, his first reflex was to bandage the muscles to pull his ties. Bad idea! An intense pain came with the gesture. The ties die-hard resists penetrated in his flesh and a deep tetany paralyzed his muscles. He remembered the circumstances of his defeat: Virus had contaminated him. He was tied to his friends, what prohibited all displacement from dragging them as burdens. Of all ways, he didn't have some anymore for a long time. The lightning cocktails of Viviane would put of the time to bring a man of his steeping down but they would defeat. - Hey! Wake up! Wake up! He yelled with his baritone's powerful voice. His neighbors of misfortune, Martin and Helen, emerged first. Helen had been gagged with care with a muzzle worthy of Lecter Hannibal, the cannibal maniac of "The silence of the lambs". The perfect tightness stopped her from blowing the least steam of alcohol. Martin and Viviane were hindered seriously. As for Gwendoline, a special helmet concealed her adorable face. - Hubert… Martin made. Good blood! Where are we? - I know anything of it, my pal! Faith of Tannenbaum, all it doesn't augur anything good! - Can you break our ties? Martin asked for. - Impossible! I am tetanized. A gift of Viviane. - Sorry, Hubert! The concerned person apologized. 54

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- It could have been worse, Hubert admitted. - If we don't drive you as soon as possible at the hospital, Hubert, you are going to die, Martin understood. - Helen and Gwendoline had the right to a special treatment, apparently, Viviane noticed. - This curious helmet must block her faculties to change the future. On the other hand, I don't understand why our captor is anxious to stop Halloween from giving out steams of alcohol! Without her burner, she cannot inflame whatever it is! Where is Sebastian? Martin wondered. - He could flee, Gwendoline said, completely blinded. Where are we? I don't see anything. - From what we see, in a sort of locker or container, Hubert answered. Are you well? - Yes. - Did Sebastian flee? Are you sure? - Yes. He succeeded in escaping by the elevator. I saw him climbing and to pass by the roof of the cabin. - He has been killed, maybe, Hubert supposed. - If he was terrorized, I doubt that a bullet could cross his skin. He demolished the door of steel as I would open a box of sardines. I am sure that he managed it. - Why didn't he fight? Helen said. - It is true, Viviane confirmed. He staid in a corner, observing the battle without taking part in it. - I believe that he betrayed us, Martin declared. - No! Gwendoline exclaimed. No! Not him! - Sorry, Gwendoline, but it is the most fragile among us. He cracked. He betrayed us while taking the flight. - Stops, Martin! It is sufficient! You took the big head while taking the head of the K. You are not maybe the most qualified for this station. You dragged us in this trap, in spite of Sebastian's warning. Don't forget it! And if he possesses the capacity to communicate with the animals, he is apparently gifted of an instinct similar to some among them. Besides, the fact that you only listen to yourself, is very expensive for us. I think that Sebastian is stuffed of good ideas. We have all of good ideas. It is necessary to be open and to listen to the other. - Gwendoline… I want to take the responsibility of the trap and the defeat that followed. But concerning your recent attitude, notably with Thierry Mizar, I doubt that you are always right. - That you know some? Do you see the future? No. - It seems that you didn't see much on this stroke! - Stop to dispute you! Viviane exclaimed, with a surprising strength for her weakness. Good blood! You look like some ragmen. We have other emergencies. My internal temperature climbs mildly, I have difficulty breathing. The oxygen rarefies. Then, calm yourselves! - The oxygen? Hubert worried. - We are in isolation. It is closed. I hear the faraway purrs, some electric sizzling. - And? - A locker of plane or a container of boat, it is not insulated. We are in the coif of a rocket. Watch around yourselves! All these elements serve to bring up a spatial station, Viviane remarked. 55

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- What? A voice reasoned in a loudspeaker. They were listened. - Bravo, Virus! You are very shrewd! - Who are you? Martin aske for. - Did you already forget me? The Imp! Remember, I undid you! I have you all undone! - Not Solitary! Gwendoline replied. - But yes, Gipsy! My mercenaries had his skin before he leaves the factory! He died in a bloodbath. - No, she implored. No… She tempted to view the stage, using her grants of clairvoyance. Nothing happened. Her coif blocked it completely. - No luck for him, isn't it? Undeceive yourselves! He died quickly, without suffering. It won't be your case, alas! As five cadavers would have cluttered me seriously, I chose to send you in the space. You took place in a new pitcher transporting the material destined to construct a spatial station. No one will be going to look up there for your spoils. I am safe from police's investigations, notably those of this Désirée Prosper that you appreciate. Henceforth, I will have the hands free. In some minutes, you will be deprived of oxygen, you will wander in the space, abandoned in orbit, frozen by the emptiness. Unless you would die before! This rocket is a prototype. Hey yes! I put the material in a prototype. I miss a little money, this last time. Your actions hindered my progression. Yet, with my network of drones, I achieved some attempts on order, I photographed some personalities in compromising situations and I made them sing, I provoked some diversions so that my team of "show-offs" stirs up illfeeling and makes you to run, you and the cops. Finally! I won't miss yourselves, especially as you were not really to the height of your reputation. Six easy individualities to surround, unfit to work in team. Miserable! Finally, the shrewdest, it is even Solitary! At least, he understood that to beat a retreat was the best solution… Finally! It was before perishing under the bullets! A pity… I would have liked to defeat him. He was the only one to mistrust, the only one to suspect me before your arrival. I am sure that he had understood that I pirated the systems of video-surveillance of the city of Poitiers as well as the radar of the airport of Biard. Shining! He would have embodied a recruit of choice! Well… My dear enemies, I don't tell you goodbye but farewell. It is time for you to take a new and last departure in life. Farewell! The K couldn't protest. The Imp had interrupted the communication. The purrs made themselves louder. The launching was going to take place shortly. The rocket hid presumably in the artificial chimneys of the factory. - It is not true! It can finish like this! Hubert moaned. - Yes… Gwendoline began. While shaking the hand of Marcus Ethylen, I have… felt the suffocation… the absolute obscurity… The death… 56

THE K, VOLUME 2

- I choke… Hubert said, incapable to nourish his enormous rib cage, more and more tetanized. - The oxygen… Viviane blew before fainting. Little by little, the heads nodded and collapsed on the shoulders. The vibrations invaded the capsule where they were detained. The building started. ** * - Zero! The director of shooting ended. On the screens of control, the cameras broadcasted the elevation of the rocket in the atmosphere. The propulsion didn't take place anymore with the propellant, nor with powder rockets but with the help of a continuous throw of strong light concentrated. The ascension was extremely fast until the altitude of five hundred meters about. There, suddenly, the contraption disappeared of the control screens. - Disappearance of the Marcus 1! The director of flight warned. - What? The Imp exclaimed. Verifications! Radar! - Nothing on the radar, gentleman! The employee to the radar said. - Telemetry! The Imp squalled. - I don't have any data anymore, released the man devoted to the compilation of the flight information. - We don't have the rocket, gentleman, anymore. - It is impossible! Send two teams of commandos in the sector of Gençay to search until they discover the remnants of the rocket! Ethylen prescribed, mad of rage. I want the bodies of my enemies! And that the other teams search Poitiers thoroughly! I need Solitary! He was sure of his genius, sure of his teams of engineers. Even a prototype should have functioned. This disappearance hid a big mystery. The men immediately executed themselves but they questioned all that the commandos recover the least trace of the rocket. It had not exploded; it had vanished under their eyes. ** *

To be continued…

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