Chapter One
February 22nd, 2:00 AM
She was dreaming.
She was having a nightmare.
Again.
It happened a lot, these days. And it seemed like each bad dream was a little more elaborate than the last.
She was in costume. She was the Blue Lynx. She could look down and see her belt, and she could look out of the sides of her eyes and see the blue fabric of her mask. She was her superheroine self. But she couldn't move.
Her arms and legs were pinned down by brown, rusty looking tentacle things. Were they branches? If they were, they were pretty tough: she tried pulling at them and found that they wouldn't budge.
She had been fettered in a wide X shape to some kind of rough-hewn wooden board. The whole contraption had an ancient, earthy feel, like it had been pulled from the ground for the sole purpose of tormenting the Blue Lynx.
"Wake up," Erin thought. "Wake up."
She looked around. The room was dark, damp, and green. It looked like a basement after the apocalypse-- the sort of thing that happened in one of those books about mother nature taking her planet back. There were thick trees in the corners; they began in the dirty ground and stretched up until they hit the room's low ceiling, at which point they splayed outward, casting vines and branches along the walls. Scattered across the floor were leafy, colorful plants, all spilling over small clay pots, and long logs covered in moss.
The room smelled sweet and sour and bitter, all at once. It was like a greenhouse run by a mad scientist. An eerie green-ish light glowed on every surface of the room, but Erin couldn't find its source. She couldn't see anything that looked man-made: no furniture, no appliances, not a single sign of civilization. And yet this was obviously a person's room, and not the forest, as such.
"What the hell is this?" Erin thought.
She heard a creak, and then a slam, and then the sounds of footsteps. Footsteps trampling over branches, through the jungle, toward the Blue Lynx. Erin looked up toward the sounds and saw three figures enshrouded in shadows. A small old woman. An average height, younger woman. And a gigantic man, who seemed to be all shadow.
She knew the figures. The first was... Lora? That was her name, right? But how did she know?
Anyway, the second was easy. Bleached-blonde hair. Leather outfit. She was Hammerson's right-hand woman, Sunny.
And the third person was that ninja, Steve. The very one who'd broken her arm.
Shit.
The three figures stood together, just yards away from the Blue Lynx, watching her through the dense foliage, menacingly silent.
"Wake up," Erin thought. "Wake up."
One of the figures moved, and then, finally, spoke.
"This is one hell of a hideout, lady," Sunny said.
Lora nodded. "Do you like it? Do you like my garden?"
Sunny chuckled. "I really do. I especially love this centerpiece you got here." She pointed at the Blue Lynx. "Is that some kind of an overgrown garden gnome?"
"I prefer to think of it as a scarecrow," Lora replied.
Sunny shook her head, stepped over a log, and walked up to Erin. She could she her face now: the same attractive, evil face she had seen so many times before, only now cloaked in that mysterious green light.
"She's not very scary, is she?" Sunny said, giving Erin the once-over. "She looks kind of weak and pathetic, to me."
Erin growled at Sunny. Sunny laughed.
"You little garden toy makes sounds!" she said, moving her hand to Erin's bare thigh. "I wonder what happens if we press her buttons."
Sunny slid her fingers up Erin's leg until they rested on her crotch. Erin let out an involuntary, shocked gasp. Her face turned red as Sunny removed her hand.
"She can feel, too!" Sunny said. "This is a very interesting scarecrow, Lora."
Erin shivered.
She could feel that.
Like it was real.
"Wake up," she thought. "Wake up. Wake up. Wake the fuck up!"
But she didn't.
She looked out into the room, at the creepy miniature forest, with its tangling vines and thorns and spiked leaves, and at the three figures standing in front of her. Her enemies. Lora, Steve, and Sunny. Hammerson's goons. Holding her prisoner.
And then, in a flash, it all hit her.
She wasn't dreaming.
On to Chapter Two
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