Kenny held his breath, watching the trembling form of Killjoy. The chaos of her altered reality was beginning to get out of control. Now, even when she slept, the ramifications were expanding across The Void and affecting reality.
    Kenny...
    The voice was but a whisper in his subconscious, but he closed his eyes obediantly and submitted to the call.
    Its getting dangerous, Kenny. The ripples she is causing in the dreamrealm are starting to become unmanagable. Our forces are finding it nearly impossible to control her backlash. You must wake The Queen soon, so we can harness her powers.
    Kenny found himself trying to restrain anger. But there is more to Rebecca than just her powers. She is in a very delicate state right now. We have never encountered a stronger Mindbender, Josie. We must tred softly with her.
    No, the voice replied curtly. There is no time for gentleness. You were assigned as Guardian to The Queen, but if we cannot wake her before the ripples hit zero barrier... Kenny, you will have to destroy her.
    No!
    Yes, Kenny... her power cannot be controlled inside the dreamrealm. Look at how her dreams have affected reality so far! If we cannot wake her soon, you will have to pull the plug on the operation. It would be a blow to us, to lose all that potential, but its a risk we cannot afford to take. You must understand that.
    God damn it Josie! You charged me to protect her! I have been stuck in The Void for all this time - longer than any agent before. I will not kill her!
    Abruptly, Kenny opened his eyes, severing the tenuous contact with his superior officer. Stroking her hair, Kenny gazed upon the sleeping form of The Queen. He, more than any other agent, had felt her power. He understood her, and what she was capable of doing. But Josie was right - for reasons even she didn't know. They must find a way to wake Rebecca from the ether-realm, the dreamrealm she was living in - not just because the ripples in the ether would soon spill over into their reality and quickly destroy their world, but because she was getting so entwined in the false-reality in which she was living that there would be no stopping her - not there and not here. She would become the Shark, she would become the predator.
    Kenny kissed her forehead softly, soothing the frusterated wrinkles. Nothing he had tried so far had worked, not even the 'corpseflare' powers that he had given her - allowing her to meet with various agents who would give her the answers in a way her distorted mind could understand. How...how can I reach her?
    Closing his eyes, he tried to resume contact across the vortex. Josie, I need some help.

    Rebecca stirred in her sleep, where she was chasing a shadow. Stalking something with desperate need. Something was just out of reach, an answer... a way to finally catch her prey.
    For a moment, eyes opened and focused on Kenny's worried face. His eyes were closed, his lips parted slightly and he was breathing shallowly. She reached for his face, stubbly from several days without a shave. Suddenly, her body arched in pain and blackness swallowed her entire being...

    "What?" She blinked rapidly.
    "Killjoy, what are you talking about? Who's Dee?"
    "Dee.... Deanna, she was-" Rebecca felt her heart sink. "Right here and..."
    Kenny bundled her into his arms, limp and unmoving. Tears filled her eyes, but refused to spill as if they too had frozen. Silently, he carried her across the morgue and placed her on a bare gurney. There was a look on her face he couldn't place - her brows were knit as if confused, but there was a vague smile...or was it a smirk... upon her lips. There was tension, concentration, but also- pain? Kenny frowned. "Killjoy...?

    You already know... the voice echoed in her mind. We are part of the cycle.
    But what if I don't want to be a meal for the shark? What if I don't like the cycle? Oh Deanna...what can I do?

    Kenny glanced around as his partner sat listlessly upon the gurney. He stroked her hair tenderly, trying to catch her eye - to assure himself that he was okay. That she would be okay... Suddenly, she twitched, and blinked again, her eyes focusing.
    "K-kenny?"
    "Yes, Killjoy, I'm here. I'm here..." He held her tightly. "What is it? What do you need?"
    Blue-green eyes met hazel and a single pent up tear escaped, trailing down her cheer"I don't want the shark to eat me." Then she promptly passed out.

    Another murder. But this one had no connection to Kenny. The young woman, a grocery store checker, lived in the apartment next to Rebecca's.
    "He's getting closer. Its getting closer."
    Kenny rolled over in his sleep, taking most of the comforter with him. Rebecca frowned. He had been hunting, circling like a vulture, getting ever closer to his goal. And though she had been investigating his murders, following him... had she been hunting him?
    No.
    The realization exploded in her brain. The predator can become the prey. she thought, with a passing wonder of where the idea had originated. And this prey, will become the predator...



    "Oh god," Killjoy moaned, making her way into the morgue. "Deanna...."
    There was blood everywhere; still crimson, still dripping. The bastard hadn't been there that long ago. Though the shoulder length copper hair was dark with blood, the white lab coat torn to shreds, there was no doubt of the victim's identity. Rebecca had not vomited at the horrors of her job since her first day - but the sight of her friend, hacked and slashed to oblivion... Killjoy found herself slumped against a nearby wall, staring at a puddle of her own bile.
    "Killjoy," someone called. "Rebecca, are you alright?"
    She nodded vaguely, trying to stand upright. "Chief, what- why would he- He's never harmed an officer like this."
    Childs just shook her head and walked away. She had no more answers than anyone. Killjoy closed her eyes, taking deep breaths. He was getting closer. Yeah, but closer to what? she thought bitterly. Then she gasped, eyes popping open. Me. He's getting closer to me... But- what do I have that he wants? Why would he hurt all these people to get to me?
    There was a gentle tingling at the edge of perceptions; like a flickering light just past her periphrial field of vision. Suddenly, without a thought to the security of the crime scene, Killjoy lurched forward and flung Deanna's corpse onto its back. The grisly lips parted and Rebecca's eyes rolled back into her skull as the thin, glittery mist filled her open mouth.

    Deanna? Deanna?! Killjoy called, turning around in the foggy room. But there was nothing. Silence. A gentle wind began to blow, it tasted salty. Like the breeze might taste if she were standing on a lonely beach.
    And she was. Killjoy looked around frantically as the setting changed. Sand appeared beneath her feet, and waves crashed against rocks nearby. "Deanna!" She called, turning in a circle. "Deannnnnaaa!"
    "Hey Becca," a bubbly voice greeted her.
    When she turned, she saw her friend, smiling as if nothing had happened.
    "D-deanna," Rebecca felt her resolve waiver. "I- I need your help..."


    Killjoy looked at him critically the entire way home, for after she woke from her deep faint, they could find no reason to keep her and nothing they said about 'observation' could convince her to stay. There was something in the set of his jaw, the tense muscles at his temple - something was bothering him.
    "Kenny..." she began uncertainly. and he glanced at her from the driver's seat, beautiful hazel eyes dark with worry. "Nevermind... you can drop me off at home, I- I think I could use a good rest."

    Before she knew it, her head was resting on his bare chest, her nakedness pressed against his in the moonlit room. They had hardly spoken a word, but a mutal need for release overcame them. Sighing languidly, Killjoy trailed a finger down his arm. He had strong arms, and large, sensitive hands. There was power in them, strength and a gentleness as well.
    "Kenny..." she began again.
    "Hmm?" he raised his head slightly, half asleep.
    There was a long pause, and she tried to collect her thoughts. "I know you were watching over me, both times I traveled to- both times I fainted. I cannot say exactly how much that means to me..."
    "No problem Killjoy," he mumbled, rolling onto his side and wrapping his arms around her. "Good night."
    "Good night." She frowned, allowing herself to be pulled close. "I- I love you Kenny."

    A frantic voice on the phone, which had rung persistantly all morning, finally woke Rebecca. Blurry eyes found their way to the clock and she cursed to see that it was only 6:11.
    "What? What's wrong?"
    "For Christ's sake Killjoy, where the fuck have you been? I've been calling you all morning!"
    "All morning? Chief, its only six."
    "Killjoy," Childs began, trying to control her fury. "Find your partner and get over to the morgue, now."
    Rebecca sat up, pulling the sheet around her. "What- why?"
    "Deanna has been killed."
    She dropped the phone, reeling from the news and turned to wake her partner.
    "Kenny?" His side of the bed was cold. "Kenny?"


    There was shifting light in this place, as if the sun was moving across the sky in hyperspeed. It streamed through thin, satiny curtains. Rebecca glanced around, disoriented for a moment, her eyes taking in every detail.
    "Killjoy,"a voice said softly. She turned toward the sound, blinking. "I know, I'm hardly recognizeable."
    "No- Its just. The last time-"
    "Yes," the pretty blond woman nodded slowly. "I was a mess when last you saw me. Look, I don't have long left. So why did you- well, what you did, why did you do it?"
    "I need answers."
    Killjoy waited for a response from the woman, this woman whom she had last seen in a pool of her own blood, naked and mutilated. There was silence as the glittery air shifted around them. Killjoy frowned. She wanted to ask a million questions, she wanted to know everything this young woman could remember about the incident, about the man, about...
    "I don't know who he is. More correctly, I don't know what he is... I saw him several times, before th-the day... around. He must have been watching me. But- He knows you. He talked about you. Killjoy, he said, Killjoy will be my ultimate... He was like, obsessive about Killjoy."
    "Why me?" She said, more a rhetorical question than an actual query.
    The young woman pushed long blonde hair away from her face, beautiful in a classic sense. "I don't know. But perhaps this 'power' of yours, is why."
    "I didn't have it before- Madame Fields had it. Why didn't he want her then?"
    She shrugged. "I can't answer that. Maybe no one can..."
    "Then...why am I here?" Killjoy cried.

    Kenny had been watching as she stalked into the morgue again, and as she forced her way closer to the body of the previous victim. He was watching as she fell to the floor inconvulsions, but forced himself to stay back, to keep his distance.


    "You're here for things I cannot tell you. I don't even know if you know yet, what you seek. But I don't have it."
    Killjoy watched as the young woman dissipated, leaving her alone in the strange realm between life and death... alone...

    Kenny frowned, waiting impatiently for her to get up. He wanted to run to her, he wanted to get her, but...something held him back...
    "Killjoy,"he whispered to himself, "Where are you now?"

    She sighed.
    Rebecca Killjoy had been released from the hospital, and been granted - then forced to accept - two days of personal time to grieve for a friend and recover from her strange illness. She sat on a stool at the breakfast bar, plain white tiles surrounded by trendy pale-wash oak, which faced into a stark white kitchen. Plain white appliances, plain white walls, plain white tiles...
    It had never bothered her before. It had never even occured to her before. But every apartment she'd ever had, was identical in its emptiness. If she had turned then, she would have seen a generic brown couch next to an ordinary striped chair both facing a store-brand television. Nothing hung on the walls, except in the small bedroom where she kept a painting she had done in High School. It was expensively framed and beautifully abstract. Burning reds and oranges blazed as they intermingled with the cooler blues and greens. She had always thought it was her one moment of genius.
    Running fingers through her long brown hair, Rebecca sighed again. Feel him out...devil-killer... The words the old woman had told her in the dream echoed through her brain, not even half a bottle of vodka had killed the memories.
    She didn't understand this gift. But, she decided resolutely sliding from the stool, she would use it.
    Stumbling a bit, she grabbed her coat from the hook near the door and fumbled her way into it. Feel him out...shapeshifter...devil... The words spun lazy, crazy circles in her mind and she squinted to see in the depths of the night. How can I find him, if he is never the same man? And yet, all of these crimes are obviously connected...each of these women was killed, and maimed and- and...ritualistically mutilated in similar, though different ways. Even the expert forensic pathologists agreed on that.
    Forensic Pathologist... she thought for a moment.
    "Deanna!" She hiccupped, speaking the name aloud. She had few friends, but a strange bond had formed between the homicide detective and the coroner, Dr. Deanna Rafferty. Rebecca recalled meeting her, the bubbly, vivacious brunette with laughing eyes and wondered how in all hells she had ended up as a forensic pathologist, dissecting the dead for a living. But their strongest connection came in the passion for mystery and solving puzzles. The crucial difference was that Rebecca lived her work, let it consume her whereas Deanna had the unique ability to turn off, to separate herself.
    Deanna would have answers, she always had answers. Maybe seeking out Deanna wasn't feeling the killer, but it couldn't hurt...

    "You can't be here tonight Becca, and oh-" she waved a hand in front of her nose, crinkling her face in disgust. "You're loaded. Go home! How did you get here anyway? Jesus, you didn't drive like this did you? Last thing I wanna do is your autopsy!"
    She frowned. "Deanna, I'm not drunk. I was, couple hours of walking ago, but I'm sober now. I need to talk to you, about the murders."
    Deanna chuckled, shaking her head. "Leave it to you, offered a couple days of rest, and unable to relax. C'mon Killjoy, lemme call Kenny to pick you up. You can't be here tonight. Besides, we're having a busy night - three shootings from downtown and a nasty car accident. I've got four bodies left to take care of and the assistant they hired for me keeps losing her lunch. Either she's pregnant, bulemic, or she's just not cut-out for the coroner's office. Get it? Cut-out? Cut. " She giggled, reaching for the phone.
    "No, damn it. Deanna, I need to know-"
    There was a long, tense pause as sparkling brown eyes caught and held Rebecca's troubled blue eyes.
    "The things I know are in the report. But they are not going to help you. He has left no clues, nothing. Not a finger print, not a hair, not a single thing to connect himself to these murders. Killjoy," she whispered, a note of seriousness that was foriegn to her voice, "Please, I can't help you. This killer is... something I've never dealt with. Something I don't want to deal with..."
    "He is a devil," Rebecca nodded.
    Deanna blinked suddenly, shaking her head. The smile returned to her face. "Sorry, did you need something? I guess I'm a space case tonight."
    "Huh?" Killjoy frowned.
    "What? Did you need something? Its not like you to stop by the morgue for a chat." She grinned, then reached for a handful of thick, reinforced latex autopsy gloves.
    Rebecca hesistated. "No, nothing. Sorry to bother you Deanna. Looks like you've got a full house tonight."
    "Yup yup. A coroner's work is never done,"she pulled her second glove on with a snap and shrugged. "Good to see you though. You could use a couple days rest. See ya."

    She sat on the bench outside, pulling her knees upto her chest for warmth, waiting on her partner and unable to figure out what had just happened. Though the alchohol had clouded her judgement hours ago, when she walked the five or so miles from her apartment to the building which housed the city morgue, she had been in complete control of her senses when she approached Dr. Rafferty.
    Feel him out came the voice in her head again, Seek him out...with your partner... With Kenny? She thought abruptly. Kenny? Kenny knew these women... somehow he had met them, but none of them were ever close. None of them were anything more important to him than a one night stand or a casual date... What does Kenny have to do with this? Oh Madame Fields, why did you have to die? And what did you do to me?

    Tears were slipping silently down her cheeks, glistening in the harsh glare of the street lamps when he pulled up. He restrained himself from leaping from the car and throwing his arms around her. He wanted to shield her from the world and its cruelties... He wanted to protect her from everything...from herself...
    "Killjoy,"he called as the passenger window lowered at the touch of a button. "Killjoy, get in, its freakin' cold out there."
    She glanced up and for a moment it was as if she didn't recognize him. Then she stood, surrepticiously wiping the tears from her face and approached the car.
    "Kenny..."


    She sat, unmoving for a moment, a cold finger tracing her spine and causing unexplicable shivers. Kenny was already out of the car, waiting impatiently on the sidewalk. Still, she did not rise. Closing her eyes, she focused the way the old woman had taught her. You may not have the gift of sight, or curse, as some who have it feel... but you Rebecca, have faith. And its so strong, I believe you have a different connection...not sight perhaps, but that sixth sense. You'll know things, you'll feel them. And if you focus, you may even see them. The seer had lowered her eyes then, and spoken softly. But your own sight will never be in time to change what you see...
    She had not understood, exactly, what Madame Fields had meant then. But the feeling that had so powerfully kept her spellbound, in the seat, was no longer so strong and she climbed out of the car.
    "Let's get this over with,"Kenny said. "I don't know why in the hell you keep dragging me out here. She hasn't solved a single murder. She doesn't know who has killed all these women. She's useless."
    "No Kenny," Rebecca reached for the door knocker, a delicate silver rose dangling from a golden stem. "She knows, she has to... I felt it."
    He rolled his eyes.
    Killjoy lifted the heavy rose and her eyes widened as the door creaked open. It had never been open, in all the times she had visited Madame Fields. The heavy, black cloud descended upon her again, and she nearly bolted.
    "Great, she's expecting us," he chortled, pushing her aside and moving through the doorway.
    Rebecca could not move, though she lifted a foot to cross the threshold. "Kenny..."
    "Oh my God!" She heard him cry, then the familiar beep of him activating his cell and his voice shaking as he alerted the police. "We've got a situation out here. Killjoy and I are-"
    She closed her eyes, squeezing the lids tightly, and entered the fortune teller's house. It was a treasure trove of beautiful and exotic antiques, she was gypsy and her home reflected that. Killjoy had loved the contrast of this homey, comfortable clutter to her own stark, half-empty apartment. She had loved coming here. She had loved-
    "Oh god," she whispered, dropping to her knees beside the prostrate figure. "Oh god..."
    The corpse was unrecognizable as Madame Fields, though Killjoy immediately recognized the long black hair, streaked through with silvery veins that resembled stars in a night sky. But of the proud, once beautiful but now heavily marked by time and trauma, features, there was no trace.
    "Killjoy, get up. Don't fuck up the crime scene," her partner ordered roughly grabbing her shoulder. "You can't save her, she's dead. She's dead for crissake!"
    Rebecca turned on him, "She's dead because of me! Don't you understand, Kenny? If I hadn't been seeing her, coming to her for advice and information, he never would have come here! He wouldn't have-" Her voice nearly broke as grief and guilt threatened to overwhelm her.
    His voice was more tender now, it had shaken him to see her so distraught. "Killjoy, you can't blame yourself. This- this madman...how can you know he wouldn't have chosen her anyway?"
    "I just know..."
    Killjoy turned back to her advisor, her confidante, her friend. She laid a cool hand across the old woman's untouched brow - still warm - and felt hot tears spilling down her cheeks.
    "You knew," she whispered. "You knew what he wanted when he came through your door. Oh god, I am so sorry...."
    Suddenly the body lurched, her back arching, her eyes opened. A bloody hand contracted around Rebecca's and lips, slashed beyond recognition, opened.
    Kenny was watching, but he did not see the thin, glittering mist that left the corpse. He did not see it seep into Rebecca's own gaping mouth. He did not notice the smile that crossed Madame Fields' face as she exhaled her final breath and died.
    But when Rebecca fell backwards, eyes rolling up into her head, unconscious, Kenny was there to catch her.