The story so far.... Lux is an assassin from a war torn future who would engage in missions by uploading her consciousness into the bodies of cryogenically frozen corpses. The enemy infiltrated Lux's base of operations, and brutally murdered her original body. With the help of her friend Orlu, Lux was barely able to shift into a substandard body: a 17 year old who died of a drug overdose named Corey Smith. Lux was desperately shunted back in time to 2019, to save the future from this despotic but vague enemy. But, after arriving in our time she discovered that Corey Smith never actually died, and his consciousness still inhabited the body she was now in. Now, Corey and Lux have come to an uneasy agreement in which they are forced to share this body.

It was happening again. I was back in the lab as it all came crashing down around us. My body, my inherited body, was cold, and weak, and nerveless. Orlu dragging me to the E.R.A. as the sounds of savagery nipped at our heels.

And I looked back, just as I did before.



It was the blood erupting from my mouth that I remembered the most. All of that crimson ichor with nowhere to go, draining off from all the vessels and capillaries in my decapitated head and pooling down my throat and out past my lips. How unreal it looked, how utterly alien. Surely it couldn't be me. Couldn't be my body. Couldn't be my severed head head aloft like a piece of prized game struck dead in the hunt.

But it was. And I woke up screaming again.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~


A boy's face, Corey's face, looked back at me from the bathroom mirror reproachfully. Like he was blaming me for the dark circles under his eyes and haggard look. I thought I was keeping the nightmares at bay successfully, focusing on the matches and rising up the ladder in the XWF. But here was this tired visage to bear witness against me. Probably less than 3 complete hours of sleep in the last two days. The horror had returned with a vengeance, determined to not let me forget my own murder. No, not murder...butchery.

Corey stood behind me now, invoking a strange sense of double vision. Me, in his physical body, and the mental projection of his consciousness appearing to inhabit the same body. I was still trying to get used to that too.

Let me take over for a bit. I can sleep better than you.

I just stared numbly at Corey, weighing how much of a point he had. Of course he was probably right, but the cynic in me couldn't cast aside the notion he was just making a play for more time back in his own body.

Come on, Lux....really?

Damn. He caught that one. It could be a real bitch having our thoughts occasionally bleed into each other at random. Or maybe he's just better at reading microexpressions than I gave him credit for.

If I give you control, just sleep. Ok? Nothing else.

Corey nodded. Just sleep. Don't forget, you falling apart effects me too. He looked aside for a bit before glancing back at my reflection in the mirror. You still don't trust me, do you?

Corey....I'm sorry. It's going to take time. I paused, knowing I had to say something hopeful. I'm starting to though. You're a good kid. I wouldn't choose anyone else to be stuck sharing a body with. I forced myself to crack a smile, and kinda even meant it. Corey cracked one back. Give me back control around lunch time tomorrow though, ok? The tournament is coming up and I...we....need to prepare.

Got it. But I'm getting an Ice Capp in the morning.

That's basically candy. They're disgusting.

They're delicious. And I want one. Corey countered, with a mock seriousness that was annoyingly endearing.

Fine. I took a step back and turned to face Corey's image directly. Are you ready?

Naturally.

And with that, I ceded control of the body back to Corey, pulling back to the haven of my calm space inside our mutual consciousness so I could await the morning and our body could finally get the rest it needed.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~


Another city. Another gym. It never ceased to amaze how they all bore a similar smell. Naturally, this prompted me to smell my body, Corey's body, and realize that it may not have been entirely the gym. Corey had ceded back control, as agreed. He had been remarkably consistent at keeping his word, and it would appear as though his initial (and quite natural) animosity towards my presence had seemed to abate. In the quiet moments in between my relentless training, I sometimes suspected his adjustment had been too quick. I hated being suspicious of Corey. And I hated the fact that my suspicions made me feel guilty. I shouldn't feel guilty. Because when I allowed that cool, calculating rational side of me take the wheel, it was evident that what Corey wanted and felt should have paled in comparison to my purpose.

And yet...I cared. I cared how he felt. I cared about his rightful claim to this body. And when it came right down to it, I cared about getting him through this insane twist of fate in one piece.

And just what would “getting through” all of this mean for the two of us in the future anyway?

No, the present demanded my attention. I put my body to work, getting up off the bench and casting aside all of the recriminations in favor of the simple task of putting one foot in front of the other, opening the locker and beginning to disrobe. Simple things. Physical things, tethering me to the now. I took the towel from my gym bag and wrapped it around my waist on my way to the shower before removing it again to hang it on the rail just outside the showers. I was alone as I stepped in, turned the nozzle and waited for the hot water to cascade over my scalp and down my body. “My” body, I reminded myself.



Running my hands over my face to clear my eyes, I looked down at myself. At Corey's nude body. Pressing a finger against my abdomen, I noted that some definition was starting to form. Corey was thin to start, but it was a lanky unworked thinness that had never seen the interior of a gym. Now, the body was starting to become tenser, leaner, stronger. Allowing my finger tips to tenderly trace the curvature of my forming abdominals, I was suddenly hit with a cloying feeling that I was woefully familiar with. A feeling that had, for reasons I had yet to be able to discern, come into sharper focus since arriving in 2019. Perhaps it was this body's lingering teenage hormones, or maybe it was my own solitary nature finally catching up with me....but like it or not, loneliness had crept into my emotional lexicon.

My hand lingered on my stomach. On Corey's stomach. An image of his face flashed in my mind. Him laughing. The sun catching his curls. Maybe it was one of his memory shadows. Or maybe it was a mental image I had invented.

When I came to I realized my hand had starting dipping below my stomach. I started, and turned on the cold water immediately. Chalk it up to another feeling that simply couldn't be allowed to happen.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~


Ah, the proverbial man of mystery. Not criticizing, of course. That would be a tad hypocritical of me, considering I've been using entire human bodies as disguises for years. But it is a trope, is it not? The dashing stranger, shrouded it ambiguity. Features hidden. But why? What do they have to hide? What secrets lurk beneath your depths?

Interesting thing about you is...heh, you don't know either, do you? Or at least, you claim not to know. I'm willing to take you at your word for now. You hiding your identity doesn't give you any particular power over me, so it's really no skin off my back.

But you being my first challenge in this tournament comes at an interesting time for me. At a time where I'm struggling with certain events from my past, I come to face a man who is unburdened by his own history. A mask, and an amnesiac to boot, no? A complete blank slate. Fascinating. And it's gotten me thinking if I would ever want to find myself in a situation such as yours. Or even to trade places with you. What if I could hide the great and mighty Oz back behind his curtain, purge the truth from my memory and lay down at night to sleep without the threat of horrific nightmares dogging me.

I'll show my hand a bit here, my friend. I'm struggling. I'm struggling with a particular trauma from my past that is so devastating, so unearthly that...well, I'm CERTAIN you couldn't sympathize. It's effecting my sleep. It's effecting my mood. It's a distraction. A weakness. There, you can have that one free of charge. And I've been asking myself, over and over, if I had the luxury of not remembering any of it, would I chose that for myself? Would I want to hide that brutality....that horror....from my own conscious memory?

Could I choose to anesthetize myself that way?

And you know what I realized? That for as much pain as these memories bring me, I would rather have them then not know how I arrived in my present circumstances. I realized that I want the cold, unvarnished truth about ALL things. In short, I need to know. I want it all: all the terror, all the love, all the tragedy, and all the fulfillment. I want it all because those things, bad or good, have made me what I am today. And to deny any of them is to deny a piece of myself.

So now we come to you El Principe. You, who seem to remember nothing of who you are. I'm sure you've spent many a sleepless night grasping at those particular straws. But have you ever considered if you even WANT to know? You have no idea what's there. What causes amnesia? Typically trauma. Who did that to you? Did you do it to yourself? Were you betrayed by someone close to you? Or were you the victim of random chance? The collateral damage of an indifferent universe?

How BADLY do you want to know? Stop now. Think about your answer to that question. No, REALLY think about it. Because how you answer that question says an awful lot about you.

You might think I'm playing mind games. Maybe I am. A tad. But I'm also warning you that you may not like what you find. You might find that you're the type of man who would rather have left the skeletons in the closet where they belonged.

I'm not asking these questions rhetorically either. I would truly appreciate some answers from you. I think our respective circumstances are unique enough that we can bypass the banal trash talking and have some honest to God insightful dialogue. Now wouldn't that be a change of pace?

Game on, man of mystery. I hope to hear from you soon.



The scene changes again, and we see the body of Corey Smith slipping into bed in yet another hotel room. Nearby, Lux's android assistant HELPER is about to power down, when he's interrupted.

Hey HELPER, before you shut down can I ask you a question?

Ah, certainly....erm, who are you now?

It's Corey.

Yes, Mr. Corey. What can I help you with?

Corey sits up in bed, casting a rather sheepish look at HELPER. Well, uh, you've known Lux for a while right?

Oh yes! 4 years, 2 months, 7 days.

Cool. So, do you, like, know what her love life has been like?

HELPER's ear sensors flap in the robot equivalent of confusion. Her....love life?

Yeah, you know, like boyfriends and stuff.

I suppose I don't know much about that. May I ask what prompted this inquiry?

Corey's mind flashed back to earlier today while Lux was in control, in the shower. He lays his head down on the pillow, allowing himself a bit of a smirk. Never mind, HELPER. Goodnight.