Mandelbrot Bound: Points to the Gamemaster

[x-dominion.livejournal.com]

Wanda spends more time with Stevens, and finally discovers exactly what she's dealing with and why.



"You see, Wanda, that this old place brightens up quite considerably with a woman present." Jeffery Stevens smiled, adjusting the lapels of his white dinner jacket. In front of the place where she hung from the web of wires, there was a trolley with a white table cloth laid on the top, and a silver service set before a covered platter. Candles created pools of light all around the room, running flickers of silver up and down the wires. "I haven't had the opportunity to practice my culinary skills with a guest recently, so you will have to be my little test subject. For the cooking only, of course. Your rather special friend is proving much more interesting than I had first expected."

Wanda's jaw clenched tightly at the mention of Garrison and she shivered, the strings attached to her echoing in response, covered in sweat from both fear and exhaustion. Try as she might to break the strings with either her powers or physically, it had been a losing battle. She smelled of fear and that knowledge stoked her anger and her will to not break. "I feel under dressed," she responded dryly, lifting her head to stare at the strange man. She cocooned herself in sarcasm, unwilling to admit to either of them that with every passing minute she felt more and more vulnerable. "What are you?"

"What am I? Other than dressed for dinner? Well, I shall tell you." Stevens sat primly on the chair opposite of her, and gaily picked up his glass of wine. "I am that little voice in the back of your head that tells you that the man across the hall has an interest in you. I'm the voice that tells you the rest of the office wants you to leave. I'm who says that your wife is cheating on you with Mister Dirty Mouth who runs the bar downstairs. That is who I am, Wanda Maximoff."

Mister Dirty Mouth? Stevens was so far removed from what Wanda's perceptions of normal human beings were – which was saying a lot considering the company she kept – that it was almost like he was alien. "I don't…" She stopped and thought about it. "You're a telepath?" Something deep, far down inside her clenched tightly. Up until then, she had no fear of telepaths. They were what they were but even for those on the opposite side of the line she had always trusted her powers to scramble them. Her powers kept them out of her head and with her unable to control them…

"Oh, nothing so common, Wanda." He took a delicate sip from the glass. "Telepaths only see through tiny little windows inside people's heads, like peeping toms into other lives. I live their lives, Wanda Maximoff. This is my domain. Every mind that comes into my little realm is mine, to play with, to follow their stories, to keep in harmony like my little threads all around you. That was, of course, until you came into my life, Wanda Maximoff."

Of all the things she thought he was going to say, the last one was as far removed as it could have been. Wanda frowned and retested the strings while she spoke, "I have no idea what you are talking about. I have never seen you before in my life." The strings still held as firm as they had originally and she sagged again, trying to save strength to try again later.

"No, you haven't." His smile turned ugly. "You never even thought about what your powers do to the world around you, do you? I had everything in order here, carefully balanced against each other when suddenly you walk through my world and turn it all topsy-turvy. Do you think I enjoy the killing, Wanda Maximoff? Tell me what gardener enjoys ripping up a healthy plant. But when everything is askew, you must prune ruthlessly to put it all back together. My games would have been ruined if I hadn't pruned, you know. You forced me to do that."

Shocked, she stared at him. "You cannot…I…" Wanda shook her head as much as she could. "I did not force your hand!" she snapped finally, realizing it foolish and futile to argue against him but it was beyond believe to think he was laying the blame of those poor people at her feet. "What games were you playing that whatever my influence had over you tipped you to kill?"

Maybe it was the exhaustion talking but there was a small voice in the back of Wanda's mind reminding her that her powers broke the natural order of things down, after all. She ignored it, refused to give Stevens the satisfaction of believing his rhetoric.

"Do you know what it is like to feel that chaos in your mind, Wanda Maximoff?" Stevens got up from his chair and scooped up an electric drill, holding it to her temple. "That sense of entropy like a drill borrowing through your skull. It isn't very nice. Not even my threads can be pulled fast enough to take away the pain that you caused me. So now I am going to show you that feeling."

Wanda swallowed and for a moment all the sound in the room came from just her harsh breathing. The freezing cold tip of the drill bit slightly into her clammy skin and she forced herself not to flinch, not sure if he would actually activate it. Once again, it all came crashing down that she was completely, utterly at his mercy and she nearly gagged. It left her feeling helpless and she hated herself for feeling that way. She blinked the sweat out of her eyes before sliding her gaze over to him, not moving her head even an inch.

"And where do we go from here?" she asked him, feeling rather morbidly curious and more than a bit leery. Better she know before he got started, though. "How do you plan on repaying me for the pain that I caused you?"

"First, you're going to watch your friend from the FBI die. I must say, his little specialness made things much more interesting in order to find the right way to prune him from my world. With him gone, you will be spending a lot of time with me. You see, Wanda Maximoff, we truly are drawn to each other, you know. Order and chaos; we naturally fit together." He took the drill away, holding it casually with one hand while with the other, he caressed her cheek. "Free, and you would destroy my world. But here, captured in my lines, you are perfect; a perfect showstopper. I shall have to keep you here in them."

The thought that she would rather die flitted through her head right as Wanda, using the bit of slack the strings gave her on her head and neck, turned and tried to bite the hand that was touching her. "I swear to God," she snarled, "that if you kill or hurt Garrison with your twisted little game, I will end your pitiful little existence, Jeffrey Stevens." Red light reflected off the strings as her powers surged only to skitter across the endless possibilities and fade out. She panted heavily and felt guilt drop over her like a heavy blanket. He could have left Garrison behind when he took her and, ultimately, he was the twisted one in the room – but she couldn't help but feel that if Garrison were hurt, or worse, during this that it really was her fault.

He was a good man and he didn't deserve this.

"Pitiful? I know that you're quite the pepperpot, Wanda Maximoff, but do you think that insulting me is the best way to keep yourself out of harm's way?" He pulled his chair around to seat by her, and flipped on a television that was tied into his secret cameras. "Oh look, the FBI man has fallen into my special trap. Oh dear, I do believe that he might have made his last mistake. Shall we place a small wager on it, Wanda Maximoff? Let's say that if he survives this trap, you get dessert. If he doesn't, we can start our special little dance a bit early tonight."

Wanda turned her head away from the screen for a moment and blinked back hot tears before regaining her composure. She didn’t respond to Stevens, not directly, just started to murmur to herself in Rom. To anyone listening, the tone would have indicated that it was a prayer – but it was an apology as she forced herself to watch Garrison struggle to stay alive.

Kane runs through the Gamemaster's traps, and finds one a little more than he expected.



Kane ignored the plink plink of his blood dripping on the concrete. He was covered in small cuts and gashes from the sequence of traps he'd already defeated. It had been hours in this twisted maze, which was full of devices only a truly deranged mind could have come up with. Only Garrison's enhanced strength, speed and reactions had kept him from being maimed up until now, but even that had not saved him from the series of near misses which had opened up multiple wounds.

First, there had been the furnace, which had the only pathway through it, and belched fire on a regular sequence. Only by memorizing it had he been able to get halfway through, and kill the flames on the other side. It was ingenious though, because the halfway point with the kill switch had been constructed as an optical illusion, looking much closer than it actually was. Even with his speed, it had been a desperate last second lunge that kept him from being set on fire. His hands bore red welts from the searing hot floor.

After that, a strange jungle gym of razor wire was waiting, each one attached to a frame which caused the entire room to shift when one of them was touched. Garrison had been slashed numerous times with each accidental jostling of the wires, and the rapid movement of the razor wires around him. Only luck had kept him from getting block and diced by the machine. He just barely made it through the exit which only appeared occasionally during the movements.

The last had been particular evil, a series of locks which had to be switched to shift open massive steel baulks in front of him. Each lock required him to put his hands in and switch them open, but was attached to a device which activated a punch machine, which would drive steel bolts right through the forearm of the person doing it. By the time they got to the last plate, they'd be maimed too badly in both arms to have the strength to shift the locks. Again, Kane's speed had saved him serious harm.

Now he was in a room constructed of heavy mason bricks, with a strange rusty steel cage built around it. On the far wall was a heavy iron door, circular, like the lock inside a ship or an industrial tunnel. The web of steel attached to the door, with four sections held out on greased steel pinions. In the centre of the room, a metal X was erected, with four emplacements for both hands and feet. Running from it were steel cables, silvery in the dim light, and led to each of the sections. Obviously, by pulling the four sections taut, the metalworks would snap back into the door and allow it to turn open. Kane assumed there was more to the trap, but he couldn't work out what. Look the other traps, it seemed like the only solution was to try it the way the Gamemaster had set it up, and hope that he could get out of harm's way ahead of him.

Kane slipped his hands and feet into each of the placements and gave an experimental pull. The cables shuddered and moved a bit. Encouraged by that, he gave a lot more strength behind it, starting to move the cables. There was a click and the pressure on his hands and feet suddenly increased. Garrison tried to pull his hands free, but to no avail. When he started to use his strength to pull back, the pressure grew alarmingly fast.

"You seem to be in some trouble, Mister FBI." The Gamemaster's cloying voice said over the speakers. "I think you've gotten yourself stuck in my quarterer. Can you guess why it's called that?"

"You had a quarter of your sanity when you built it?"

"Oh, how droll. My sides are absolutely splitting, I must tell you. No, I call it the quarterer because that's what it does. You're now suspended between four deadweights which are linked into the cuffs themselves. Without the limiters which your first pull removed, the full weight of those four metal locks are pulling against a locking swivel. As long as you pull the weights in towards you, the swivel won't activate. But, each time you need to rest and let the weight pull against you, the swivel will constrict further, until it eventually crushes your hands and feet." The self-satisfied tone in his voice was almost solid to touch. "I assure you that my other rooms are much more difficult to escape without those appendages."

"When I get out of this, I am going to pull both of your arms off and make you eat them." Kane snarled, with the sinking feeling that the Gamemaster was telling the truth.

"I'm sure that you must want to do so, but I'm afraid your rancour will have to go unfulfilled. In a few hours, you'll be dead and I'll be free to finish my business with Wanda. I assure you, she will find it to be a unique experience, you know. Just between us, I think that she's been waiting for a man like me to truly feel satisfied. You can understand, of course."

"You just keep telling yourself that, you weird little fuck. When I get my hands on you--"

"I don't think you'll have hands much longer, Mister FBI. Can you feel the pressure yet? I bet you can."

Kane gritted his teeth and tried to tune him out while working on the trap, but he couldn't work out a way out of this trap. It looked more and more like the Gamemaster was right, and in his sick little contest, Garrison Kane had just lost.