Meanwhile, deep inside Justine's mind, something small and malevolent was chuckling silently. She had no way of knowing what it was, or even that it was there, but there's no reason for us not to know...
It was Sawyer! Backstage in The 70-Plus Club that tiny piece of JigSaw had gotten a brainstorm. Why escape and waste endless time building up power for eventual return and vengeance? Why not subvert his enemies from within? There had been enough Authors present to absorb some of their power directly, and enough going on to do so undetectably. When he had gained enough strength to protect himself against being absorbed, he had stealthily made his way back to JigSaw and Dabbler where they danced, waiting his opportunity to hop aboard...
What had happened next was a bit tangled, because the thread chose that moment to Option. In one option he had successfully hopped aboard JigSaw and let himself be absorbed physically into her body. In another she had stepped on him -- that had been unpleasant! But Sawyer had gained enough power by this time that the result had been the same. He was alive, present in JigSaw's brain as an unsuspected, undetected virus, ready and eager to influence her thinking whenever she went inattentive in small but disastrous ways. How delicious, he had thought, now I can get my vengeance against them both...
His first move had been to subtly increase the sex-drive JigSaw had previously damped down, so that she wouldn't be too quick to finish her teasing game with Dabbler. He wanted them together for this... Then he put the idea of continuing the date in the Jungle of Confusion into her mind. The more confusion, he figured, the better...
Then something had happened. Something he didn't understand. Somehow, his victims had started to lose awareness of their own identities. At first he had thought this a previously unsuspected effect of the Jungle of Confusion, and welcomed it, because it weakened JigSaw's natural resistance to his influence. That was the point at which he had "suggested" her adoption of his name as her surname. He had been beside himself with glee when she had done so. Had Dabbler been in his right mind just then, what a warning flag that would have raised! But no, Dabbler, or "Daniel," as he was now, was too far gone for that! Now, Sawyer thought, I'll lead them into complete disaster!
It hadn't gone that way. About that same time the perils of the Jungle had begun to diminish, as if it too were losing its power. When "Daniel" and "Justine's" AddVenturing garb morphed into ordinary hiking clothes, and the rainforest into a high, cold woodland of thick conifers, he knew something was wrong. Somehow, they had all passed out of the Jungle and the Backstage Ring into the AddVenture itself.
The worry hadn't lasted long. If anything, the current situation was better. Justine was completely incapable of resisting his influence now, as was Daniel. It had proven absurdly simple to extend his control over both of them, to torture them in their dreams...
Then Dolly had gotten through to them somehow, alarming and enraging him until he saw that his control was unbroken. Already he was thinking up with ways to use her contact to tease and torture them further...
Then, suddenly, Sawyer started feeling ill and dizzy. What? he thought. What's wrong? What's happening to--
He never finished the thought. What was happening was that the protective shell he had erected around his identity with the stolen power of other Authors was breaking down. The normalizing influences of the AddVenture could not long be resisted by a floating Avatar whose original was no longer writing him. Sawyer was going the way of JigSaw and Dabbler. It had simply taken a little longer, that was all...
A few moments more, and all that remained of Sawyer's mind and malevolence had disolved and been absorbed into Justine's mind. It made her a bit more assertive, a bit more tempermental, but otherwise had little effect on her. He had been such a small piece of her, after all...
Now then, when we left Justine and Daniel, she had just found something that wasn't his pager, while Dolly was still trying to get through to them.
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Mon Jun 11 12:28:08 2001
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