THE FUCHSIA IS COMING

While her body lay broken amongst the detritus of the paint factory, her mind was teetering on the edge of the hypothetical precipice that exists between life and death. She was dimly aware of her thready pulse and her one seeing eye watched fascinated as her blood mixed with the purple from an overturned vat. A choice was to be made. They had come for her in the night like a plague and had taken everything that had been who she was. Broken her body and destroyed her mind. No, they'd tried. Her mind was still her own. Ironically enough, they had inadvertently given her a great gift. She could feel it inside. A darkness, an emptiness, a void that didn't need definition but that needed to be fed. It spread through her body, reawakening the parts she'd thought dead. For the sake of this gift, she'd find them. She would show them how grateful she was. They'd left her with a debt. And as she found the strength to get up on her knees she knew she'd go to the ends of the earth to pay it all back. She sat back on her haunches and surveyed what she had to work with. Her helmet lay just out of arm's reach, battered but usable. She crawled for it and dragged it through the puddle where her blood and paint had combined. It left a vivid slash of colour across the faceplate. She looked at for a moment before dipping her palm into the mixture and running it downward to form an inverted symbol of crucifixion. She had somehow survived hers. If history was any indication, there was only one thing that came next - resurrection. She slipped the helmet on and uneasily got to her feet. The pain would have been unbearable had the void not been there to fuel her rage. She staggered to where they'd left the hearse they'd used to snatch her away. She pulled open the rear door. Her jacket, which had been discarded beside the weapon they had beaten her with felt like a relic from another eon. Behind her mask a rictus grin formed as her fingers stroked the bloodied grip of the baseball bat, it's barrel studded with a tangle of barbed wire. The nothingness inside almost quivered in anticipation. She pulled on her jacket, zipped it closed and then hefted the bat.

Somewhere in the factory a door slammed shut. Footsteps. Time to move. She slipped easily into the shadows. A few sets of boots heading towards her. Their number hard to discern from the echo. The air around her changed abruptly. It thickened, pregnant in prescience. "Have you seen the sky bleed?" The voice came from her throat but it wasn't hers. There were four of them. Black-clad figures each as nondescript as the other. They turned towards her almost in unison. Her vision clouded. The world now seen through a burning magenta haze. Her limbs seemed to move independently and all she was aware of were a series of sensations. The satisfying crunch of bone shattering under immense sudden pressure. The sickly thunk of the bat tearing at muscle and sinew. Cartilage popping and ripping away from bone, and finally the heavy clunk of a knee joint torn asunder. As suddenly as it began it was over. Her vision cleared as she stood over the only one still conscious. "Why?" She used the tip of the bat to pull away at his mask. His face was bathed in sweat. His eyes struggled to focus. "Ber-Ber... Berlin... Berlin '84."