By Simon Drax
August 25, 2009

(Be sure to check out The Simon Drax Blog for supplemental reading)

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

* * *

Billy Wolfgang—age 19, very good-looking but admittedly slow on the uptake, gifted with psionic abilities yet partner to a grand total of two lovers, a young man with his whole life ahead of him in a vivid and turbulent world—dearly, dearly wished for death.

Even so, through the haze of his discomfort and the short-circuit of his brain, Billy still registered surprise at the hand that choked the life out of him.

“Frost, let him go,” Billy heard Trista say from across the grand canyon. “This isn’t helping Mori.”

Saint Frost’s ornate metal face filled Billy’s vision, the gold plates sliding and whirring as the robot rang out the words, “YOU USELESS, FEEBLE, PATHETIC EXCUSE OF A SWEEPER’S SON—”

Billy tried to shove her away, but couldn’t. For a 200-year-old antique, Frost was in splendid operating condition. Billy growled, winced, then couldn’t hold it back any longer; his eyes flared, there was a VRAKKK! and the glancing crack of a collision off Frost’s head. A fist-sized hole was suddenly gouged in the building behind her, spewing a tiny shower of rock and dust.

“Oh, stop, stop, stop!” Trista said with weary finality, frowning under the falling mist of grey debris. “Frost, let the brat be. Gods.”

Trista pulled Frost off Billy. He staggered back, hand going immediately to his throat. Billy coughed and sputtered, wishing once more for the release of death… anything to save him from the guilty weight of having fucked-up once again.

“What happened, Billy? Where’s Mori?”

“What do you think?!” Billy said with a grimace. He wiped his mouth on the back of his hand, he shot a quick look up and down the gloomy dawn of the street.

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