Underland Press

By Simon Drax
July 20, 2009

Get inside Drax's head! Check out The Simon Drax Blog to read about Simon's wovel-writing process.

And now, the fourth installment of Simon Drax's Exit Vector...

* * *

Mori Kim Marr thought, Careful, now.

Pretending to barely suppress a shudder—oh that was good, perfect—Mori put down her glass and said, "Please, explain it to me again. I was... dead?"

"Yes," said Saint Frost.

"Oh, no. No way," said Billy.

"Maybe," said Trista, bored with the question.

Mori looked at the three of them: the clockpunk lady robot, the handsome—clueless!—boy, and the weird chick from god knows where. They were seated around her at a small circular table cloaked by smoke and shadows in the recess of a new bar, another bar, blocks away from the carnage and horror of poor Brendan's club which had been reduced to little more than a crater with walls. Mori's unpaid tab was now the least of Brendan's worries. Ah well... good! Screw him!

"Yes? No? Maybe? Which is it?" Mori demanded of the three.

"You wanted answers," Trista said. "I never said you'd like them."

Mori wondered if that was the weird chick's way of saying Take it or leave it. If Mori stood from the table and made for the door, would they stop her?

Probably.

Hell, the way they had patched her up and hustled her out of Brendan's, steered her like a dizzy child through the surreal tangle of streets and sat her ass down in this dump—it was like something out of an old spy vid.

Wait, Mori told herself, watch and wait. And she reasoned, for the ten-millionth time, that this was all about the fucking drugs, man. Stupid Fritz's stupid Red Barons that she had stupidly swallowed. The drugs that had finally kicked in and assaulted Mori's head with... strange things, man. Strange shit.

But Mori Kim Marr was no stranger to strangeness, hell no. She'd had worse trips than this—

LIAR, she raged suddenly at herself...

—far, far freakier trips than this, so she would be cool, she would wait, and watch. And she would listen, because the weird chick from the astral fucking plain was talking again...