Laz' Journal

Suddenly, my miracle happens. The little ball comes alive and zips over to intercept the hat, which lands neatly on the intruder's head. The ball swoops upwards, and doesn't bother to stop, and both free prongs dig deep into the mans' eye-sockets. There's a short scream of pain and suprise, and he collapses beneath a pile of leather and felt.

I begin to wonder how such short prongs could *kill* the grunt; he's obviously dead, because even peole who're unconscious tend to breathe now and again. I guess that it's not such a leap of logic to figure out that the prongs, well, grew *longer* to... well, that's a kind of graphic thought, even for this journal. But I'm sure as hell not going to pull it out to see if I'm right. Whatever the case, it *did* make a pretty damn good weapon.

I'm already pretty damn jumpy, so when I hear a silent but distinct "whirrrr-CLICK!" behind me, I'm already behind my desk again. Halfway there, I realize that a small security camera hangs from the ceiling in a corner of my office. A knock on the door accompanied by the announcement "Security here, Mr. Smith" answers my unthought question.

I let them in... three *huge* guys wearing typical uniforms, but carrying *far* from typical weapons... and they immediately set about examining Mr. Faceless. "Saw it all on the monitor," says the man who is obviously in charge... Chief grey is his name, according to his badge. "Fortunately, you installed that camera, else we'd be forced to suspect you for murder as much as we would him" (pointing to the body) "for attacking you. Nifty stunt with that float-rack, though."

"The rack didn't kill him," announces one of the subordinates as he pulls the offending object from the gore. "He tried poisoning himself before it hit. The stuff should've vapourised his entire body as well as the clothing he was wearing, but we got lucky... it's working very slowly. We can ID the meat before it's gone."

The slant's different, but I get the gist. They're going to run a check to see just who my friend here is, something that would've been impossible if his corpse had disintegrated. Or worse, had he succeeded and wasted me. Ouch.

The other rent-a-cop takes what looks like a syringe, and proceeds to clean up *all* of the blood-pools. Fascinating... and I thought that my coat was a goner. Grey hands me a small electronic pad and a pencil, and says "I need your signature for this to be terminated." What... Oh, I see. I sign on the line, Grey studies it for a second and nods, and just as subordinate number one is about to remove the face-mask, the body disappears with a *FOOSH*, and is gone, leaving behind an acrid odour worse than any cancer-stick could produce. Gods, that stuff must've finally taken effect...

"We still have the sample," Grey says, taking the syringe and putting it in a satchel. "So long as it doesn't make contact with the air, it'll survive, and we can tag it in storage."

"When you find out who he is -- was -- lemme know," I say, punching the Wyse into action.

"I'll do that, Mr. Smith," says Grey, as he does a quick scan of the rest of the room to see if it's hiding any other goodies. "Also, we'll let the police in on it... you don't need to call'em."

"Thanks." As the guards leave, I kick back into a classic pose, feet on the desk, and drift off into the first sleep I've had since before I looked up and saw Ms. Dangerous Curves in Party Central...