Wildcards

C.C. Ryder had tried and tried to convince Rosemary to become active, but Rosemary believed that helping a few people directly could do as much good as standing around shouting condemnations of the "Establishment." Probably a lot more good. Rosemary knew she came from a conservative family. Her roommate rarely let her forget it.

Rosemary took a deep breath and launched herself into the flood of people. All the late classes had evidently gotten out at the same time.

As Rosemary walked onto the platform, she moved around the rear of the crowd so she could end up at the far side of the waiting area. She didn't feel like being that close to people right now. Moments later she felt the flood of dank tu

I won't think about it. She thought about it. The image of C.C. lying comatose in the I.C. ward of St. Jude's glittered in her mind. She saw the shiny life-support machines. Because C.C. had had no relatives to notify, Rosemary had even been there when the nurses changed the dressings. She remembered the bruises, the black and poisonously blue patches that covered most of C.C.'s body. The doctors were unsure exactly how many times the young woman had been raped. Rosemary had wanted to empathize. She couldn't. She wasn't even sure how to begin. All she could do was to wait and hope. And then C.C. had vanished from the hospital.

The last car looked to be empty. As Rosemary started toward it, she glanced at the graffito. She stopped dead, her eyes tracking the words written on the dark side of the car:

Parsley, sage, Rosemary? Time.

Time is for others, not for rne.

"C. C.! What?" Disregarding the other people who had spotted the unoccupied car, she pushed her way to the doors. They were closed. Rosemary dropped her books and tried to claw the doors open. She felt a nail break. Failing, she beat on the doors until the train began to pull slowly out of the station.

"Not"

Rosemary's eyes filled with tears at the final sight of her name and another of C.C.'s lyrics:

You can't fight the end, But you can take revenge.

Rosemary said nothing else, only stared after the train. She looked down at her fists. The apparently steel door had been soft and yielding, warm. Had someone given her acid?

Was it a coincidence? Was C.C. living underground? Was C.C. alive at all?

It was a long time before the next train came.

He hunted in the near-darkness.

The hunger was upon him; the hunger that seemed never to be fully satisfied. And so he hunted.

Dimly, ever so faintly, he recalled a time and a place when it had been different. He had been someone-what was that?-something else.

He looked, but saw little. In this gloom and especially in the foul water choked with debris, his eyes served little use. More important were the tastes and smells, the tiny particles that told him both what lay in the distance meals to seek patiently-and of the immediate satisfactions that hovered, unsuspecting, just beyond the length of his snout.

He could hear the vibrations: the powerful, slow movements from side to side as his tail muscled through the water; the crushing, but distant waves beating down from the city above; the myriad tiny actions of food scurrying about in the darkness.

The filthy water broke around his wide, flat snout, the current streaming to either side of the raised nostrils. Occasionally the transparent membranes would slide down across the protruding eyes, then slip up again.

As large as he was-barely able to fit through some of the tu

It didn't matter. His legs worked well enough, and he could move almost as silently as before. He could still smell the prey waiting for him somewhere ahead. Nearer. Near. Very close. He could hear sounds: squeaks, squeals, the scurrying of feet, the brush of furry bodies against stone.

They wouldn't expect him; there were few predators in these tu

The agonized squeals peaked and subsided. The blood flowed deliciously. The meat and hair and bones lay satisfyingly in his stomach. A few among the prey still lived. They crawled away from the slaughter as best they could. The hunter started to follow, but his meal sat heavily. For now he was too sated to follow, or to care. He made it as far as the edge of the water and then stopped. Now he wanted to sleep.

First he would break the silence. It was allowed. This was his territory. It was all his territory. The great jaws opened and he issued a penetrating, rumbling roar that echoed for many seconds through the seemingly endless labyrinth of tu

When the echoes finally died, the predator slept. But he was the only one.

Rosemary said hello to Alfredo, who was on security duty tonight. He smiled at her as she signed in, and shook his head when he saw the stack of books she carried.

"I can get you help with that, Miss Maria."

"No thanks, Alfredo. I can manage just fine."

"I remember carrying your books for you when you were just a bambina, Miss Maria. You used to say you wanted to marry me when you grew up. No more, eh?"

"Sorry, Alfredo, I'm just fickle." Rosemary smiled and batted her eyes. It wasn't easy to joke or even be pleasant. She wanted this evening, this day, to end.

She was alone in the elevator and took the opportunity to rest her head against the side of the car for a moment. She indeed remembered Alfredo carrying her books to school. It had been during one of the wars in her childhood. What a family.

When the elevator doors opened, the two men in front of the entry to the penthouse came to attention. They relaxed as she approached, but each looked unusually solemn.

"Max. What's happened?" Rosemary looked questioningly at the taller of the two identically black-suited men.

Max shook his head and opened the door for her. Rosemary walked between the oppressive, dark oakpaneled walls toward the library. The ancient oil paintings did nothing to relieve the gloom.

At the door of the library, she started to knock, but the heavy, carved doors swung inward before she struck them. Her father stood in the doorway, his silhouette illuminated by the lamp on his desk.