

GOD'S REVENGE

or

'dag av blod'

REEKFEEL

Continuing Stieg Larsson's Millennium Series.

This is a work of fanfiction, not for commercial use. It is for personal entertainment.

The storyline is Copyright to the Author.

The identified characters: 'Lisbeth Salander' and 'Mikael Blomkvist' and 'Miriam Wu' and 'Jan Bublanski' and 'Alexander Zalachenko' and 'Monica Figuerola' and 'Marcus Erlander' and 'Camilla Salander' are the intellectual property of the Estate of the late Stieg Larsson (all rights reserved)

TITLE PAGE

PROLOGUE

PART ONE

PART TWO

PART THREE

PART FOUR

EPILOGUE

BOOK FIVE

BOOK SIX

BOOKS BY REEKFEEL

PROLOGUE

Sunday 30.4.95

Two shadows encircling at the ready drawn.

Breathing hard and hearts screaming.

Sudden sharp darts pummelling deep.

Grips enticing: hands lost, clothes lost.

Reconnected sweeps lifting snap-downs.

Punch crack. Pillows sail.

Shrieks again they clash, meet and tear.

Reasserting flowing forms merge again in couplegrip entanglement.

Single leg trip into spin spiral ride.

Pointbursting backflesh spladdled for a cross body ride.

Locks seeked but wriggling butt-drags out.

A kicking foot contacts forcing separation.

Back again quickly, the blood up swearing.

Switch reswitch.

Underhooks groped, pins pry.

Double-leg drives, twisting deflections.

Grunts echoing.

Inside arm drag, elbow pulls forces again the position.

Hip-heist shrugs but quickly a wrapping of arms.

Head and arm levers, arm bars.

Tilt-loading.

They fall again into a Jacob's ride.

Elbows stabbing, fingers poking.

Then a vengeful guillotine.

And screams.

Spectacularly a lift and sweep. Smashing down.

Shredded fabric drift in the snow of feathers.

The two depart with split lips and black eyes amongst other soreness.

PART ONE

ARTIFICIAL SELECTION

Friday 16.6.6

\- the most impossible

\- practical fucking pig

\- vandals

CHAPTER ONE

There she was. Just woken. Just awoken from that nightmare. The same again. These past nights.

Lisbeth laid sprawled. The single damp sheet ruckled about her body. Face buried in cushions and legs up against the wall, ass up, thighs in midair. It had been a hot night and the breathing body to her side didn't help. She went to sleep sore but happy, tired out and shimmering sensitive. She felt it linger about her body.

But still that lasting image. That black beast animal, wolf bear panther, fixed in her mind. She was running away. _The shame_. Oh sure, to phone the police and ambulance. Her excuse. But she left them dying. Mauled by the deadly beast. Why did they start to attack it? It only entered out of curiosity. Her nearest and dearest. She fled fast. But even then she hardly made any progress as she soon tripped up; and on all fours scrambled deeper and deeper. Why? _I can't tell anyone this_. There is no good side to it.

Miriam Wu kicked during her sleep.

Still unravelling her head, Lisbeth slid her leg down and slinked to a cooler part of the cotton. A brief check of her eyes. The brightness of the blood on the white sheets. Wu looked at her. Gnashing claw marks down her face and neck. Lolling on her side of the bed.

Startled, she looked closer. It was that face. She had last seen peeping round her door with murderous intent. But more memorably ripped open from her axe. Zalachenko's face rolled into her. Breathless screaming he was laughing out. It's rancid breath spitting blood and bits onto her.

Lisbeth double-shot, raised, twisted and crawled on the bed. _Get away_. Her fiercest instincts snarled away. Shot-through, turning again, it was gone. Mimmi lay on the bed murmuring, waking to her. Lisbeth, in her hurry, had pulled the sheet right to. Nothing. No threat. Just Mimmi's plump flesh.

Too early, Mimmi groped, rubbing herself.

"Not again," she said.

From what she saw from her eyes she half expected the naked girl kneeling on the bed to jump her. She braced herself.

Lisbeth strove down behind her and sighed. Mimmi turned into the cuddle and kissed her.

"What's wrong?" she said.

"Oh nothing."

"Come on."

"It was nothing!" Lisbeth said giving that look Mimmi was used to.

"You're the most impossible person I know," Mimmi said turning away.

"I know you have sex with other people just to avoid conversation, but you're straight from Dottyville as regards real intimacy. I don't know why you don't get pregnant from all those easy men you sleep with. General paralysis of the insane."

Lisbeth listened in scornful silence as Mimmi reached to the bedside table and pulled the hand-mirror to. In a half circle she swept it into her face.

"Look at yourself."

Lisbeth bent forward and peered at the mirror held out at her. Features she knew too well, still screaming out at her. Angular wrong-sided pieces held about a perfect button-nose. _The only good thing about this Frankenstein face. Who chose this face for me?_

She looked away. She was tired of the ugliness of it. She didn't care. Her eyes drifted about the floating lights outside. Blinking out.

"You won't kneel down and do it. Why?" Mimmi enquired and answered, "because you have the cursed strain on you, only it's injected the wrong way."

Pulses were beating in Lisbeth's eyes, veiling their sight, and she felt the fever in her cheeks.

"You know I don't talk about that!" Lisbeth flashed at her.

"I know you've been treated unfairly but..."

"It seems history is to blame. What I am running away from," Lisbeth interrupted.

Mimmi put the mirror away and replaced it with a packet of Marlboro Lights. Passing one over to Lisbeth, they both slouched against the headboard as they lit up, looking ahead their nakedness reflected back against the night window.

Miriam Wu exhaled a cloud.

"I mean, you're not a believer, are you? In the narrow sense of the word. Creation from nothing and miracles and a personal god."

"There's only one sense of the word, it seems to me."

"Oh yes?"

"You behold in me," Lisbeth said with grim displeasure, "a horrible example of free thought."

Wu laughed.

"And there was me fearing like father like son... or daughter. A ghost of your father. The father was himself his own son."

"Enough!" Lisbeth interrupted, "There are three things not to be trusted: the horn of a bull, the hoof of a horse and the call of the wild."

"You'd have to be some sort of Uebermensch to get away from it."

"I'm no hero."

"Well maybe after a few," Mimmi joked.

"You may be free, but you're still drowning," she continued.

"Yeah, I have my masters now. Like everyone else. It's a sorry thing to be emboldened unto."

"They're bastards, those paparazzi."

Lisbeth looked down.

"Well you have hats," Mimmi finished.

Wu yawned.

"Well, I'm awake now... Hmm... a shower."

Mimmi slid to the edge. She knocked a clonking thing down which she picked up to examine.

"Yours I presume. Your Mjolnir!"

Wu rose and walked off, her buttocks rising and falling. She looked over her shoulder.

"Are you not coming in?"

Lisbeth finished her smoke, thinking, and stubbed it out violently. She slunk down and rolled and rolled the sheet around her. Her eyes glinting, then shut with a relief to the sounds of Mimmi singing though the rain and smoke.

Silently he comes to her after his death, his wasted body within its loose brown grave clothes giving off an odour of wax, his breath, that had bent upon her, with mute secret words, a faint odour of wetted ashes.

Her father's face half ripped off. The rest melted into itself. Howling eyes alive after her. A deep chuckle gurgles up. Blood coughing up but still it laughs. The bang floods the face molten red with gleams of white and twisted turns of black. But still it laughs, despite there being hardly anything left. But still it lives. Laughing, laughing and laughing at her. Echoing though her head, chattering her teeth. Alive. Alive in her.

Lisbeth's legs had gone. She couldn't feel them, nor anything else. _Why again?_

Another day. Re-awake from this existence. Flinging her mind about, settling upon different layers of mental reality. One as convincing as any other. Even the alien mindscapes to wander about. Her body had gone. To exist without a body or turned into something different. Something higher, or is it lower? The non-human life forms are the best; no pain or worry or threat there.

_Dark outside. What time is it? What day?_ Startled, Lisbeth looked about, confused. Her brain unsure. Doubts and what? The sound of the shower and singing. The smell of fags. The lights outside. Check. _I remember. Remember now._ But still trapped. Unable to move. _Shit what is happening to me. I am losing things. Misplacing parts of my body. This there and that. What is that?_

Her mind refocusing, remembering. Sucked back into place. With the rest of her. Gripping the sheet tight, she relaxed.

Wu returned back in, patting herself down with a towel.

"You OK?" she asked.

. . . .

CRASH. BANG!

FUCK OFF THEN!

OK!

. . . .

Wu reflected in the window in the bobbing lights. What had just happened?

. . . .

"Look, I've been thinking about this," Lisbeth said, "for me to tell you 'what's up', we need... we need, like, a binding contract. Something special. Like what if we were to... to get... married."

. . . .

Lisbeth stood watching the coffeemaker, tending a split-lip. Still dark outside, she noticed.

From her hideaway apartment in Fiskargatan, her mind wandered and reflected what had just happened. _Taken away. Denied_. The feeling of losing. _What went wrong? But I'm the one that said so. I'm the one that makes it._

. . . .

"Marry! Are you kidding!" Wu exclaimed.

"I have new masters now. Trying to do it their way."

"A civil marriage!"

_Cast me into a sticky darkness, forever. My eternal sin. Stop licking my soul in shame. I'm sorry Mimmi_.

"Well it would mean a lot to me. Settle me down," Lisbeth said.

"You're crazy! I told you trouble follows you about. Remember."

"Might be sad. Might be fun. Might be weird. Unfinished beginnings."

"You're too unpredictable. All or nothing. Like how sex for you is the same thing as death. Easy to kill. Easy to fuck. It's in your... genes."

"It's an extreme want to have sex with you and have you like me," Lisbeth said, "it is extremely warm and exciting when someone else climaxes comes near you in you, but mainly the warmth."

Wu just looked at her.

"What are you afraid of then?" Lisbeth asked "as a girl, I ain't scared of anything."

. . . .

Waiting for the water to boil, Lisbeth looked down and fixed on her tattoo on her inner forearm. _Remember these, my tokens of trust. This fish... for when...when...the...The Republic. Right_.

Looking further up. The torc? Lisbeth thought hard on this. The runes. She looked worried.

"I don't know, I really don't know. Even I don't know!"

Suddenly she doubled over, onto her knees, gripping her head. Electronic screams ripped through her brain. She scrunched her eyes to force the sounds down and out. A great will of effort left her gasping and the taste of metal shades of blue on her tongue. She was left a pile on the kitchen floor. Still twitching.

"My mind is dying. I am really tired."

_I wish I could lie down naked. But feel the heat. I wish I could have a drink of rum. But not have my mind go numb and ever more tired_.

"I've lost it. Can I still do it?"

. . . .

"What! No way," Wu protested.

"Come on."

"No way is that gonna happen"

. . . .

Lisbeth stared at the bubbling waters, steam rising. Focussing. What to do? What to think? Her mind drifted about these breakwaters, but could find nothing. Nothing to attach onto. She was slipping away. Something other was happening.

. . . .

"You..."

"... You will not sleep her tonight."

"What!" said Lisbeth astonished.

"Leave!"

CRASH. BANG!

FUCK OFF THEN!

OK!

. . . .

Wu reflected in the window, tending to a sore eye.

"Poor Sally."

. . . .

Shorten my life. Ran away. Barely alive. Hating everything.

water rises swallowing all

slowing rising you can feel it from below

little toes playfully submerging

up and up

legs don't stop where the skirt should cover up

and further up

along my jittery and sensorial, your fingertips tracks

circle around my neck

as if to clothe me

and strangle me

take my breath

CHAPTER TWO

Mikael Blomkvist sat at his desk, typing away on his keyboard, working on his latest investigation for the Millennium Magazine.

Still ongoing, but as he was investigating the Secret Service, Säpo as a possible Odin cult, Mikael had uncovered another one of its other secret cover-ups. This time a Royal sex scandal. King Carl Gustaf XVI was a member of an exclusive club called 'The Monday Clique' who visited a brothel called 'Club Power' in the 90's for sex with prostitutes. In the back rooms via special 'Golden Keys', the King indulged in drugs and kinky sex with others of the rich and powerful. The Säpo had explicitly threatened the women with violence to keep silent. They even searched the prostitutes' homes for any pictures taken. The King also spent a fortune with a sex worker while a VIP guest at the 1996 Olympics in Atlanta. Salander had hacked away to get the CCTV tapes from the owner of the club, a Serbian ex-boxer now porn-king called 'The Torpedo'.

Blomkvist laughed at the possibility of causing a revolution from this. But with his editor Erika Berger reminding him of Sweden's illegitimate royal origins*, some Marxist desires did seep into him.

*In 1810 Bernadotte, a French general of the revolutionary ilk who served under Napoleon, was installed as the successor of the childless Swedish king Carl XIII. Bernadotte became King Carl XIV Johann of Sweden and Norway in 1818.

The last six months had been hectic. His Zalachenko exposé was a bestseller and won him the Grand prize for journalism despite several court injunctions and attempts to ban it. His rollercoaster ride of celebrity was only punctuated by a nasty incident of salacious 'kiss and tell' in the tabloids. This greatly embarrassed Mikael, but he defused the situation by getting out of the country for a while. Such headlines are soon forgotten and replaced with other tat.

Monica Figuerola glided in and kissed Mikael on the back of the neck.

"Hi Nightowl."

"Up in the morning gets through the work," replied Mikael.

"What if we were to get married!" Monica sprung upon him.

Startled, Blomkvist accidentally pressed the delete button for far too long.

"What!"

"Well," Monica said, "it's the only way to keep tabs on you and your wandering eye. Look what mess it got you in, remember."

"Oh," Mikael laughed, "you'd like me on a lease."

"Well, what about it?"

"Oh, what the hell!"

"Ha! I'm off for a shower. I've got an early start today."

. . . .

Lisbeth trekked about Stockholm for the second time that night. She had to get out of her boiling apartment for some fresh air to think and clear her head.

She ended up at a familiar place and knocked on the door.

Mikael had just got back to typing when the doorbell went.

"What now! At this time of day!"

Lisbeth entered and instantly noted the sameness of the place despite her not having visited for ages. Stale smoking air hung in the study with the smell of drab abraded leather of its chairs. _As on the first day he bargained with me here. As it was in the beginning, is now._ She imagined he had had the same haircut since childhood. Always short as a brush. _Kalle Fucking Blomkvist._

"What brings you here?" he asked.

"Oh, I was just in the neighbourhood."

"Sit down, have a drink... Oh about my thing..."

"Enough of it. History," she said, "is a nightmare from which I am trying to awake."

"But it's very important. You have to make history. Make it yours. Subvert it, write it. All history moves towards one great goal. One story is good until another is told."

"I've had enough. Haven't you?"

"God no. It's fascinating."

"It's prurient. Can't you leave me alone. You've been riding on my back for long enough. Your pet project."

"You haven't got to do anything now. Let me handle it."

"I'm not a little girl. I'm not lost. I don't need help."

He looked at her with pity.

"No, enough. Even our little Canadian trip was a disaster," she told him.

"Look. I paid my way."

"I'm tired of your same old answers. Oh Lord, I didn't mean for you to talk. I meant shut up and kiss me."

She went forward to kiss him on the lips. But he backed away, looking somewhat repulsed. When he held her for a moment with his hands he felt her bones jutting out. It was something he was not used to after Monica's well-toned body. It put him on edge and he pushed her away.

Just then Monica came in with her bathrobe untied and open.

"Oh hello," she said wrapping it up.

Lisbeth blushed.

"Is this your daughter, Mikael?" Monica enquired.

"Oh no, that's Lisbeth, remember."

"Of course. How silly of me," laughed Monica.

But she still gave him a hard stare.

Lisbeth hated her more and more. Her perfect figure and pretty blonde face. And for having him.

Monica stared back at her, checking her out the way police do, as if studying her under a microscope. Lisbeth tried to ignore her, but found her presence hard to. She turned to Blomkvist.

"Geez I didn't mean for you to stop talking. It's not like I always listen anyway."

Then she turned back to Monica, a headache starting.

"So you're his latest plaything then. Or is he yours?"

"No, in fact we just got engaged," Monica quipped with a cruel smile.

Lisbeth was shocked. That turned her cold and knocked her for six.

"You're just a filthy whore!"

"Oh dear girl, I took you for underage when I first saw you, but now I see the mouth on you shows not so."

"Shut up cow!"

"Well ok potty mouth. I have to be off. Duty calls."

Monica left the room to get dressed.

Still pissed off from 'Madame', Lisbeth turned to Blomkvist, who had been laughing and smiling at the joy of two girls getting it on.

"You have to listen to the right bits, the ones that hurt the most," she said with a fire in her eyes.

Blomkvist just sat there calm and serene.

"Purity of conscience is the best promoter of peace of mind," he said.

"Damn you Kalle Fucking Blomkvist."

_Boy she can be ugly sometimes. Ugly and futile: lean neck and tangled hair and a stain of ink. Yet someone had loved her, borne her in her arms and in her heart_.

"It won't work. All will be chaos eventually. It is useless to try to mend. How long does it take to make a suit. How long to destroy," he said.

"Oh, infinite parallel universes, you shout at me," she said, "they are not to be thought away. Time has branded them and fettered they are lodged in the room of the infinite possibilities they have ousted. But... the idea of living out all of choices has always hunted my mind so much that I would be willing to sell some of my freedom to take away the choice."

"Mind that your seeds are not of weeds," Mikael said.

"You're tired and boring Mikael."

"Positive men are most in error," Mikael said.

"You're not my bloody dad. More like a trophy-husband, more like," Lisbeth steamed, "I told you about control. I thought of a lot of things I'd like to tell you, then I come here and don't. I mean I already told you in my head. I don't really need to any more after that."

"Man doubles his evils by brooding upon them," Mikael said.

She looked at him with contempt.

"Look I find Monica more attractive. More to hold onto, more passionate and sexy. What can I say. I mean what's up with your breasts. They have no drop in them."

He smiled with his hands and she pursed her lips in response.

"You've got stale," she said as she stormed out.

Lisbeth trudged home muttering to herself:

"Huh, a jester in the court of his master... Secrets, silent, stony sit in the dark palaces of both our hearts: secrets weary of their tyrants: tyrants willing to be dethroned. I am outside history. I feel like a cog. I was not meant to be. I feel wrong. I should be impossible. An impossibility ousted from possibility. I shall have to return to this... worm leech parasite vulture vampire passenger. Damn him Kalle Fucking Blomkvist. And Muscles Monica!"

Suddenly the force in her head rung, blaring.

Under the cover of a slow dawn a black-shaped figure slipped between the shadows before easy the door was opened. Right on cue the lights failed and the intruder shifted inside.

Voices inside talked to each other over the darkness.

Suddenly Monica saw the dark figure in the lounge.

Two shadows encircled at the ready drawn.

Breathing hard and hearts screaming.

Sudden sharp darts pummelling deep.

Grips enticing: hands lost, clothes lost.

Reconnected sweeps lifting snap-downs.

Punch crack.

Monica was amazed at the moves her opponent had. But she was more amazed that she was grappling a small girl.

Shrieks again they clashed, meet and tear.

Reasserting flowing forms merged again in couplegrip entanglement.

Single leg trip into spin spiral ride.

Pointbursting backflesh spladdled for a cross body ride.

Locks seeked but wriggling butt-drags out.

A kicking foot contacted forcing separation.

Back again quickly, the blood up swearing.

Switch reswitch.

Underhooks groped, pins pried.

Double-leg drives, twisting deflections.

Grunts echoing.

Where did she get that from? Monica thought.

Inside arm drag, elbow pulls forces again the position.

Hip-heist shrugged but quickly a wrapping of arms.

Head and arm levers, arm bars.

Tilt-loading.

Blomkvist was reeling from watching the two girls fight. Fantastic stuff, he thought. The smile was on his face.

"Lisbeth!" he muttered.

They fall again into a Jacob's ride.

Elbows stabbing, fingers poking.

Then a vengeful guillotine.

And screams.

Spectacularly a lift and sweep. Smashing down.

Suddenly there was a grip in Mikael's chest. Sharp pains and he keeled over, gasping.

The fight stopped. The intruder had gained that time after pulling Monica in a tight lock. The black figure rushed out quickly before she could disengage and faded into the night.

CHAPTER THREE

Lisbeth got back to her apartment with the sun breaking though the low clouds.

Outside: cold hard buildings.

Inside: warm soft teddy-bear.

Outside: cold hard walls.

Inside: warm soft sofa.

darkness sets

shadows vibrating along my naked body

immense hollow feeling

of infinite undergrowings.

my cells abort

what a lovely family dinner

let darkness overflow the landscape

Put yourself back together girl, I already decided. I need to slap some sense into my head. I'm ok with suffering. It's not that I like it. But I compartmentalize well. Geez this makes me look real unhappy. Geez this makes me look unstable. I'm good at running. I feel reality all the time. I just tend to ignore it. Hiding in a chrysalis.

I don't imagine your warmth

my eyes don't cry for you

I can't set my head to hear

don't try to make it listen

Lisbeth closed her eyes and flung herself on the settee face down in the cushions.

Leather straps on a steel frame.

Less less

Hands manacled.

Darkness, no a light.

Less less

Bad taste, footsteps.

Less

Vibrations, lumpy mattress.

Less

Rigid attorneys

Water rises swallows all

Yes

But PAIN throbbing, foggy, bursting, shooting electric.

A breathless weight.

Trapped, alive.

I need to dig, hide

Dive into nothing.

Lisbeth reopened her eyes. Eyes slowly refocusing.

She turned to her 'ibook' and continued surfing. Going where? Just surfing. Mindless. Nothing there. Just vulgarness shouting vandalism of the mind. Mopping up bits of her that got away from her. Erasing herself with a Vandal program.

_Ah, am I a work of fiction here_. Web stories. _No more_.

What was it. What was I doing? 'Honesty is strong stuff to lean on'. Urrgh!

Lisbeth got up and went to the bathroom. Popping the harsh light on she let her clothes slip off. She squinted as she looked in the mirror. She could see her whole body. She lowered her eyes, turning red all over. _Decay of insignificance_. Then she noticed bumps and bruises all over. _Where the hell did they come from?_

Her tokens. She examined each in turn, remembering. The ideogram on her hip. _Yes, Mimmi_. The rose on her calf. _Mother. I stumble through life, spending emotions_. She sighed. The love heart inside her left breast. _Mikael_.

Twisting, she could see a flaming devil on the small of her back. _My eyes commit suicide at such reverence from the dark side_. A star on her ass. _What was tha_ t?

Then closer. A teardrop hanging off her left eye. _Dreaming of tears_.

And the Dragon...??? _No!_

Oh no. I must be dying.

water rises swallowing all

slowing rising you can feel it from below

little toes playfully submerging

up and up

legs don't stop where the skirt should cover up

and further up

along my jittery and sensorial, your fingertips tracks

circle around my neck

as if to clothe me

and strangle me

take my breath

quite unable but fulfilling

the level keeps rising

until in enters my mouth and swills my nostrils

and is over and I close my eyes

and it covers me all

all is done

and completed

destiny caught me complete - embalmed in that moment of scream

you didn't pull me up

you jumped after me

under water

with me

to share that secret

at least one that would be truthful

regressing to primordial beings

our hobby now

together

once you give up

you don't need to breathe

air takes care

water in us

my sensorial forgiveness to you flowing

me

yours

sugar

melts

all

and the water is you

His lips lipped and mouthed fleshless lips of air. His mouth moulded issuing breath, unspeeched. Ooeeehah. Shhhh.

A sopping bag of corpsegas.

Shhhh.

Lisbeth slowly entered the shower. Soaping herself down. Waves of water. Ripples. Shhhh. Standing up, her ass against something, she touched her navel jewel. Playing.

_A wolf ripping my clothes. Black stockings torn, see my breasts through, clearly visible_.

Racketing herself, pebbles of thought rushed through her mind. Fro, to: to, fro. Fidgeting. Breathless shaking. Now her legs shaking. The queer intensity of needing a pee. Fingers running. The hectic need to do it quickly.

"Who watches me here."

Defences thrown.

A ball of light hits

insides about to be sacrificed... torched

avert eyes, too much, too much!... [never]

Rays of pleasure

through body

arching body back

Eyes water up in preparation

restless

move leg up and down a bit

Ticklish not

that warm tingling

enjoy it a lot

lick lips

no way back

Flex legs... move my toes

Press stomach

hold breath

body takes to rhythm

ass back and forth

Cheeks burning

Waves of little shivers

Open and close eyes into light

The top of head there, halo

again

it tingles ever so nicely

lips prickle

tongue restless

Shut eyes now

everything begins to circle

hands more and more

thoughts more and more

Leave my body

darkness

just before...

Difficult to breath now

Tensed body

extremely

think will break

flex like crazy head back, eyes tight

an infinite moment of calm

That darkness

being born

from womb I travel

crawling through dark tunnel's gore

to come out in my mind

Fingers nub and all somehow tickles

afterwaves surprise

feel that pumping everywhere

Burning blood, flowing back

a welcoming feeling

from mouth

heat of that fire emanating and

finally breath in and out in and out

smile

laugh good hearted

lay there too tired to get up

too heavy everything

hug something firm really

to my breasts, all i dare touch

"No one will ever know. I sure won't tell.

Sell your soul for that"

But still the need.

I'm peeing now.

Running down her legs, washed away.

Again?

After Doctor Teleborian, her abusive childhood psychiatrist, was safely locked away for a long time, Lisbeth finally felt she could relax. Although she wanted to exact her own special type of revenge on him. _All in good time. Let him suffer_. She was satisfied for the moment that he had got knifed up badly in prison by those who detest paedophiles. _My kind of people_. But another problem reared up. Her notoriety from it all. The court case and Blomkvist's publications.

This time she had to lie to everyone who didn't know. Oh an uncle a judge and an uncle a general in the army. _Houses of decay, mine, his and all. He now may not will me away or ever_.

Even Blomkvist was feeling the stress of it for a while. Even he found it overwhelming. The media darling. They decided to get as far away as possible, for a while. Somewhere remote, small and cut-off. _Like the other side of the world._

Canada. Seventy-five miles north of Sachs Harbour, Bank Island. Population 134. Whose only contact with the world is a postal plane twice a week when the weather permits. Forty-eight thousand musk-ox and eighty different types of wild flowers that bloom during two weeks in early July. An estimated one and a half thousand polar bears.

It was also a place of mystery as a recent death was presumed to have been due to a rampaging polar bear. But they discovered otherwise...

After she had dried herself off, Lisbeth went back to her computer, to see what else.

<YOU HAVE NEW MAIL>

_But not many people have this address_.

She scanned it. It was clean, even the attachment which when she opened it, out burst dizzingly around a round of spirallating colours. Shifting bands. Was she being attacked?

No, they soon settled down, and formed the familiar DNA pattern. Lisbeth was fascinated by the beauty and mystery. _Who? What? Why?_

This is it. New ideas. Puzzles. In me emotions are blinking like crazy.

Change is coming. Change is starting. Silence, cunning and exile was again.

_This is what life is. Excitement at last_.

PART TWO

GENOMICS

Friday 16.6.6

\- extra rare

\- it's a bowler, to be sure

\- excuse me sir Panos, your hat is a little crushed

\- pharming

CHAPTER FOUR

Mr Vartel Brinbrace ate with relish the inner organs of beasts foul. He liked thick giblet soup, nutty gizzards, a stuffed roast heart, liver slices fried with crust crumbs. Most of all he liked grilled kidneys which gave to his palate a fine tang of faintly scented urine.

He linked his hands together and rolled his head on the table, savouring the tastes still there. The kidney was a little burnt, but he could live with that. He only wanted to lightly fried his meat, extra rare, but the cat got in the way and distracted with all that stroking.

Then he took to cleaning the plates, pans, cutlery, cups, hands and feet.

He was careful not to wake the rest of the household, washing his teeth and other things beside. It may not be school holidays yet, _but so what_ , it's such a sunny day, he deserved a day off. Especially after his revelation yesterday. And it is with such energy that Vartel responds to new exciting ideas.

In the bathroom Vartel started his ritual upon cleaning his teeth. A deathly important task, he believed. Across the tops, down right, up, across, down left. Then the back of the teeth up and down. The fronts up and down, then across for luck. Finally a brush of the tongue, spit swill and spit. Towel. He smacked his lips minty.

. . . .

Acillam Khan and his gang of street-Arabs rallied at 'Shish-Kebabs'. Feasting on early morning snacks out the back, dumped from the kitchens.

"Ac, look what I found!" one of them said.

He held up a tennis ball. Brand new except for some scuff marks.

"That's a beauty. Allah has blessed us this glorious day," Acillam replied.

"I see a bit of a Jihad coming on," he continued.

"Jihad! Jihad! Jihad!" the others praised.

They rolled the ball along the pavement, through people, then seeing it explode, they cheered as the infidels fell spectacularly wounded. Like rats they rushed about collecting the ball and describing to each other the glorious results inflicted. Groaning screams with skin flayed and bones awry.

"Allah Akbar!" they chanted.

. . . .

Now, attempting to placate his bowels, Vartel studied the hole in the wallpaper near him, to one side. Underneath, times past.

"Sweet Manitoba!" he said as his hole opened and released.

The wallpaper had a regular pattern theme. Vertical lines of tiny flowers like the stars dazing his fug. He tore a little away to see more underneath. Peeling and dry, bubbled and flaky. The old wallpaper, the one previous, had a different design. Some cityscape. But even that was loose.

Vartel repositioned himself as a new column extruded from him. Hanging there, hanging. Yielding but resisting. Don't splash, he pleaded.

In the clutch of its slow progress, Vartel studied the new wall. He poked a fingernail and ripped through the city. The next layer was a red flame design, blotchy like a tornado at sea. Or was it the back of the wallpaper red? No. Both.

_Should I cut this one off? Close the sphincter and lose the rest of it, back inside me_.

His fingernails worked again. Scratch scratch scratch. Irresistible. The city soon reduced to rubble. A white layer, some crumbling plaster, then bare brick.

He wriggled his bum, trying to dislodge the hanging lump.

"Come on, blast you!"

Suddenly he felt a cold sweaty slab adhere to his arse cheek. The damn poo had slapped and stuck there. _Just brilliant, one major clean-up operation now_.

He carefully manoeuvred himself, careful for it not to drop on the floor. Taking masses of paper it was a disaster zone. Shit everywhere. _How can it? So much_.

Eye to eye, nose to nose with the rendered patch, Vartel could now see slits of daylight through the brick-join. The mortar slipped. Outside, the world and freedom.

It was only just yesterday that Vartel hit upon the answer to all his problems. Indeed the solution to all the questions in the world quite possibly.

It came to him in the night, and he had rushed to write it down before he forgot. Beside his bed were scribbles writ large and small. The small indecipherable, overlapping and swiggerly as it was dark that night. So he resorted to large daubs on the wall, on the pillow, on the window. Something to greet him when he awakes.

'CHANCE'

It seemed to him the only way to live his life after a series of recent catastrophes. The type that eat on your brain.

Things in life too uncanny not to be impressed by. It's as good a way as any other. Why not, he thought, how can things in this world be truly connected unless by some devotional magic. It was all a big fool, he knew, but so is religion. So why not. Things, coincidences, repeats, patterns, struck him as too important to ignore. Or was it the peculiar sensation he felt when something happened by fate. As if it was meant to be. A sign, for him, for him only. But, nevertheless, how cautious he was, he decided to conduct the experiment. Give it a try. Just for one day at least. What could go wrong. It's not as if anyone would die or anything.

. . . .

The kids stopped at a corner as fat Mohammed beckoned them. He caught up with them and lugged his guts out with copious green phlegm.

Acillam was bouncing the ball high against the brick of the houses. High and higher he urged the ball daringly. Each time the ball fell back further away. So eventually Acillam ended up on the far side of the street. From here he could really give it some. The ball flew in massive arcs and dull thuds echoed. Each received with a cheer. Dodging the windows he got three storeys high. Fro, to: to, fro.

"One more. Shit, I reckon I could chuck the ball right over," he exclaimed.

SMASH

That's it. The ball shattered a pane and fell through. The kids laughed, hooting.

A reddish boy appeared and peeped out of the window. Shaking the ball he called down.

"Nice shot!"

Then he withdrew.

The kids waited around for a bit and then shrugged and went on.

. . . .

Checking his face in the bathroom mirror Vartel required the tweezers to extricate some false hairs between his eyebrows. _Still no beard yet._

SMASH

Suddenly and with great gust the window imploded inwards. A tennis ball drop-landed and bounced about the bathroom. Vartel got to it and looked out of the window at some shouting kids looking up. He shook the ball.

"Ha ha. Nice shot!" he called out.

Vartel examined the tennis ball. The felt torn in places. He found a slight hole. He picked at it thinking. A ball that is a missile and a cavity hole. Projecting inwards and outwards. A phallus and womb in one. Nice.

He then went back to his bedroom to dress. A cloud gave way. Quick warm sunlight came running swiftly in slim sandals, along the brightening. _Runs, she runs to meet me, a girl with gold hair on the wind._

It is the sun and me, he thought, nature and me. All slowed down, it seems, while the rest go on. There is the street below. They walk at normal speed, but I am slower. Me and the world. It is the temperature that did it. The heat. Things displaced.

See those great iron hooks clamped to the wall to stretch a net across. See how the sun is caught. Retarded stopped. _So is me_.

_I see you there, lady with the legs_. Moving hams. Pleasant to see first thing in the morning. People are very small there. Until they come up close. The distance always looks further than it is.

He surveyed the street as he put his pants on. Anyone looking up now, get an eyeful.

A cloud began to cover the sun wholly slowly wholly. Grey. Far.

No, not like that. A barren land, bare waste. My skin demands to be fed. Dead: the grey sunken cunt of the world. Heat warm. Now. Coals to the furnace. To feed the solar fire. The source of all vital force. A constant demand of slaughtered blood. Bleeding hearts in vigour.

Vartel checked the hallfloor. Any post today? No, too early.

. . . .

The gang worked their way through undergrowth to an opening in the wasteground they knew about. Only they knew about, they were pretty sure.

Here they kept their swords, AKs and RPGs. Now was time to kill some dumb GIs. Headshots, they called for.

They imagined the dust scuffed up. The sun and the brown dryness. It was real enough. Training school.

Tracking and running through the ravines they finally came to a vista of rows of death. In their dreams they could do so much.

The skin inverted and flopping about, juices running down. Slinking snakes of intestine sausages covered in flecks of dirt and leaf. Insects chewing. A rat leapt disturbed, its mouth with a foul rag of meat. The blood-splatter checked upon neighbouring stones. Some pattern radius. The long red muscles skewered by gristled bone splinters. Ribs had leapt apart like springs recoiling, studded in the ground awry. Copious fluids staining the ground ashine. Fats smeared on the headstone. Stringy sinews and body wires entangled like an old ruined kite or a puppet in the attic. All the organs had slid out from its popped casing like an abortion afterbirth. The pincer jaws of the two meeting stones had reduced the man depth to nothing. Bulging muscles under pressure almost carved up. Clean sliced through almost. Just dangling useless legs. You could snip them off with the least of dainty finger-scissors at the thigh point.

Then there was the face. A bloated hideous pop-eyed screaming hole. Everything in his face seemed to have exploded, the glassy dull eyes excavated. Tongue extruding, gagging still, gasping for breath. Blood bursts and spittle beyond reason. Brutal dashed bruises and caved-in regions. The neck crooked all wrong.

Fingers severed by viciously sharp newly cracked stone wedges that had collapsed down. A kneecap was busted off and had fallen down the backskin of the shin and calf. A great spray of blood had cascaded up and fountained down from a torn artery. Faeces and piss all mixed up and drained away. Impacted and thrown out.

But the main thing was the disgusting sight of the fat ribbles under the skin exposed yellow white in the sun. And the stink.

Then Acillam saw a policewoman coming.

CHAPTER FIVE

Mr Mallaci O'Brogue ate with relish the inner organs of beasts and fowls. He liked thick giblet soup, nutty gizzards, a stuffed roast heart, liver slices fried with crust crumbs. Most of all he liked grilled kidneys which gave to his palate a fine tang of faintly scented urine.

He licked his fingers and put on his hat to go out.

O'Brogue was an immigrant to the country, so perfect for the reorganisation that had gone on in the department. The old was corrupt to the core, so parliament decided to do away with the whole thing and start afresh. O'Brogue's credentials were spotless, having worked in Northern Ireland previously. A useful employee for Her Majesty, so it turned out the same for His Majesty.

He sniffed the air and decided to avoid the park route. His hay fever was playing up. One of the reasons he moved to Sweden, he figured.

From his doorway he took in the vista, checking details. Looking. He reached for his umbrella, just in case, and danced down the steps and took off in an westerly direction.

. . . .

Vartel lifted the latch off the gate and was immediately attacked from behind.

"Hello, Vartel. Where are you off to?"

_Mrs Joyi. Get rid of her quickly. Take me out of my way. Hate company when you_.

"Hello. Nowhere in particular."

"How's the body?"

Vartel gazed across the road at the car drawn up. She stood still, waiting. Haughty creature. Legs gleaming.

"Fine. How are you?"

"Just keeping alive," Joyi said.

Move out the way. I wanna see her. Not you. You ugly hunchback old dwarf in your terrible wig that smells rotten. Nosey neighbour.

He moved a little to the side of Joyi's talking head.

Lost it. Curse your noisy pugnose. Feels locked out of it. Always happens like that. The very moment. Girl in street hallway. Monday was settling her garter. Her friend covering the display. Well, what are you gaping at?

"Just off shopping down Drottninggatan."

"Bye then," he said after a dull sigh.

Moving to get off, on his way, in the street and all its life.

They came to him in waves, flooding from all angles. Fro, to: to, fro. The background alive with them. Bizarre apparitions. Merging from building facades, detaching, passing so close to him it hurts and away and back and lost and gone again. The alive background. _I like that._

Can I see them. Can I see them. No, not really, he thought. If only the contents of people's minds were expressed exposed outwardly. Some cloud of thought following them about. Dissipating and doing other things. Auras they call them. But really, to see the other things then so to see such auras pumping brainsmoke in all sizes and extent. Like smells but better. They could even mix in an interpersonal way. Like a spliced photo of intertwined limbs fused in love. Different textures to represent and so on. The power of thinking indeed.

The thought came and went in Vartel's mind. Dissipating. It made him happy for a while.

. . . .

Waiting at the bus stop for the Number 800, Mallaci O'Brogue espied a curious looking youth in sneakers with loose laces, army shorts and a light brown t-shirt with a red slogan saying 'BRUTAL SMASHING HATEJOY'. He was staring at the advertisement poster on the side.

The next thing O'Brogue knew he had inadvertedly clipped his heel.

"Oh sorry."

"Very warm morning," the youth said.

"Heavenly weather really," O'Brogue responded.

"If life was always like that."

"Did you see that programme on TV last night?" O'Brogue was asked.

O'Brogue looked at him, _what's he talking about?_

"In the olden days," he started, "the king of the land had this, like, jubilee they called it. And a big old do for like a week twelve days. Guns firing night and day. And at the end these four guys who wanted to, tried their luck at fighting their way through the king's army in order to the king, kill him and take the crown and..."

Strange boy. Very strange. Positively weird.

"Just imagine: The plain alive with troops. Thousands of them, defending the king... temple to the king's chair... a glittering arch... the king waved... decked in flowers and ash."

The youth's arms were shooting all over the place. O'Brogue had to step back. He could only understand snatches of it in the youth's excitement. He shifted, his shoes creaking uncomfortably. _Why is he telling me this?_

"They come down this lane... the blades fastening... no bones in them... haha... one after the other..."

The youth fell to the floor clutching his chest and dying.

"... content to die, not for the crown... preferring honour to life. So fricking cool."

Shit, is he gonna attack me next.

"Wouldn't that be great!" the youth exclaimed.

O'Brogue eyed his too broad smile.

"They had a great way to get rid of their leaders. They said they tied the king up before all the people, and some sharp knives, and cuts himself up... snipping his fingers off..."

O'Brogue dodged the flying spittle of the fired wide-eyes.

Bells rang in O'Brogue's head. _A radical anarchist or a misguided republican?_

"... blood drenching out... and whoever catches it gets to be the next king. Until it all happens again!"

The youth had a demented smile. Grinning throughout. A nutcase.

"Wouldn't that be great! Well I think so."

"What's you name again?" O'Brogue asked.

"Oh, Vartel Brinbrace."

He took a mental note: _I'll check on you later._

The bus arriving stopped his flow.

"Ah ha!" Vartel said as he boarded.

Leaving O'Brogue quite where to go.

. . . .

Vartel Brinbrace stood at the corner. He looked down. _Hello, were those flies open all the time. Women enjoy it._

He looked at the posters of girls on a beach selling insurance. Keyes. _That's nice_. Sex will sell anything. He looked closer at her face. _That's odd. There's something wrong with her face. Quite off-putting._ He remembered seeing a programme about airbrushing. How they can take any girl and make her better. Stretch her legs etc. Why not just use a cheap ugly old model and airbrush away to a young girl. Or just no need for a model at all. Computers. _I guess just less work for the CAD guy_.

_Imagine bodies of odd shaped bits. Distorted. Someone with a small T-Rex arm and the other an exaggerated long monkey arm. But the rest all same and others. Something wrong, but the rest all right. Puzzling for a second. Oh those face all blown up. Not so good_.

Vartel strolled down the street at leisure.

It was an atrocious day this time last week for Vartel. He wanted to buy a new phone. But which one? He examined the pros and cons of each one. He drew a grid of the features. Which was best? All had pluses and negatives. Where's the ideal one without any bad things. Oh, it's a compromise, he thought. Compromise which, what? He dreamed of a really good one. He really wanted to buy one. Itching to. But in the end it all fell apart. He couldn't decide and choose. He just gave up, depressed. There were too many of them. He got swamped. How can you compare contract deals if you have no idea of the relative cost of calls, emails and texts? It's all a con. Trying to grab as much of your money as possible. Hoodwink you. Fuck them, he thought. I won't even bother then. Serves them right.

Vartel strolled down the road. He checked his watch and sped up.

Ingmar Bergman's 'Det sjunde inseglet'. Dramatiska Institutet. Tonight.

We must be able to lift off the earthground, surely, don't you think.

Flowers. Ah, there he is.

Vartel stopped at the bus stop.

As he turned he clipped a shoe.

"Oh sorry."

"Very warm morning," the man in pinstripes and pink tie said.

"Heavenly weather really," Vartel responded.

"If life was always like that."

"Did you see that programme on TV last night?" Vartel asked.

"In the olden days," he started, "the king of the land had this, like, jubilee they called it. And a big old do for like a week twelve days. Guns firing night and day. Bang bang bang. Like fireworks. And at the end these four guys who wanted to, tried their luck at fighting their way through the king's army in order to the king, kill him and take the crown and everything.

"Just imagine... alive, crawling alive like ants. Thousands of them. Then the king waved his sword. And like, oh no I forgot this road thing. There was this road, this road, way clear, like clean right to the middle the king... and each side was a long hedge of spears. Spears and spears and spears of them. The blades meeting in the middle like a glittering arch.

"They come down this lane of spears, hewing and stabbing right and left, winding and tearing and whirling and twirling and writhing. Fight fight smash bang bang among... like they got no bones in them... haha. But... fall. Some nearer king, some far off... valour and bravery and swordship to the world... so fricking cool."

"Wouldn't that be great!" Vartel continued. "They had a great way to get rid of their leaders. They said they tied the king up before all the people, and some sharp knives, and cuts himself up. Cuts off his nose and ears, lips, cheeks and eyebrows and chin and neck, toes and skin lumps off. Hacking into himself, slashing flesh off his arms, ripping the scalp right off and... and chucking it all into the crowd."*

*The festival was known as the 'Great Sacrifice'. It fell every twelfth year, when the planet Jupiter was in retrograde motion in the sign of the Crab. So Jupiter's period of revolution around the sun corresponded the period of the king's reign on earth - the king's star. Aun or On, king of Sweden, is said to have sacrificed to Odin, in the holy groves in Upsala, that he would live so long as he sacrificed one of his sons every ninth year.

"And the last thing he does while he can, you know, not much left of him left and is his head off hacking. Well as much as he can. And the crowd in a big frenzy, going crazy. And then someone finishes the job off and chops his head off and throws it into the people who fight to catch, like a rugby game... Wouldn't that be great! Well I think so."

"What's the time again?"

"Oh, almost nine," Vartel said looking at his watch.

The bus arriving stopped his flow.

. . . .

At the county police headquarters Mallaci O'Brogue entered and handed himself over to the police.

"Crazy Irish man. Every day now," muttered the duty officer and let him through the door.

O'Brogue went upstairs and asked the secretary if the boss was in. He was directed in. Oak-panelled walls. A roaring fire. Plush leather armchairs. An oaked slab of a desk silently veined, nicely planed.

"Ah, Mallaci," his boss greeted, "busy day today. We got the ok. It's going through."

"Today?"

"Yes."

"What time?"

"Two or thereabouts."

"Okay, good."

"They want it somewhere busy. Out in the open."

"Okay."

They sat down.

"Do the others need to know about this?" O'Brogue asked.

"No. Let's keep them out of this."

"It's against policy."

"You know... too many cooks."

"I don't know, what about Bubble?"

"Nah."

O'Brogue leaned forward.

"You have it?" he asked.

"Yes. Here."

His boss pulled a case from behind his desk. He unclipped it and opened it. Inside were stuffed wads of banknotes.

"One million?"

"Yes."

"Good. That should do it."

O'Brogue settled back in his chair as his boss went over it again.

CHAPTER SIX

Criminal Inspector Jan Bublanski ate with relish the inner organs of beasts and fowls. He liked thick giblet soup, nutty gizzards, a stuffed roast heart, liver slices fried with crust crumbs. Most of all he liked grilled kidneys which gave to his palate a fine tang of faintly scented urine.

His wife opposite was equally enthusiastic.

"Big day today," said Agnes finally.

"Last day today," he replied.

Today was Bublanski's last day at his job before retirement. Thirty-three years, so an early retirement, but that was forced on him by his boss after certain black marks.

He continued stuffing his face while reading the paper.

Oh, he exclaimed as his stomach cramped up. He felt the place, poking his podgy gut. He pushed his glasses up.

"You've gone red again, dear," Agnes warned him, patting his bald pate.

"It's that damn ulcer. Where's my pills?"

The job had taken everything out of him. No kids, but he was lucky to have Agnes stand by him in his bad times. Often when cases spiralled out of control he took to the bottle to relieve himself. Other times he spent days at the slot machines, relaxing, trying to blot his mind of it all.

"It's such a sunny day today," Agnes said looking out of the window, "are you walking?"

"Huh, no. The car."

"Oh shame."

"Well I got my desk to empty."

"Ok, you can drop me off then."

. . . .

Vartel seated himself behind the smell of flowers. He rubbed the side of his arm after bumping into a man in a mackintosh who alighted the bus. He studied his nape. _Funny place that_. Concentrating, meditating, thinking about it.

All waited. Nothing was said.

I am sitting on something hard. Ah, that ball in my hip pocket. Better shift it out of that. Wait for an opportunity. Wonder where we're going?

Off we go.

Backseat drivers. An old man being driven by his daughter, with her kids in the back. She looks left and right desperately. Which way! Which way is it? Left or right she asks the old man. He, at map, replies My first is in money, but not in bank. And my last sees the hat off the old lady. Oh no, she screams desperately Not now! The man, smiling in cryptic joviality, The wanted road is without it in prime time, seeing green sleeves baring. Which way? Quick! Missed it.

The bus carriage halted short.

"What's wrong?" a passenger said.

"We're stopped," another stated.

"Where are we?"

Mr Brinbrace put his head out of the window. Östermalm. Chic shops.

A raindrop spat on his head. He drew back and saw an instant shower spray dot.

"The weather is changing," he said quietly.

"It's uncertain as a child's bottom."

"We're off again."

They passed the dome of the Observatorielunden.

Ingmar Bergman's 'Det sjunde inseglet'. Dramatiska Institutet. Tonight.

He saw that same advert again. Keyes Insurance. And a sign saying 'THIS WAY'. _Funny_.

Someone pointed.

"That's where Olof Palme was murdered," he said.

"So it is."

"A gruesome case."

"The crown had no evidence."

"Only circumstantial. That's the maxim of the law. Better for ninety-nine guilty to escape than for one innocent person to be wrongly condemned."

They looked. Murderer's ground. It passed darkly. The murderer's image in the eye of the murdered.

Over Strömbron bridge. Into Södermalm.

The carriage stopped.

"What's wrong now?"

Some cars had pranged. A Volvo estate and a Saab. Caused a snare up. A red faced bald man at the wheel with wife. _Stupid old Volvo. Time for the knackers' yard_. Slaughterhouses of metal by-products.

The carriage moved on.

Brinbrace at gaze saw a lithe young girl, clad in black. _This weather! Who's that? Who's that, out like that in this weather!_

He saw a short girl leather-jacketed in skirt and tights peering into an envelope. She took out something. _Can't quite see._ Different she looks. Won't miss her twice. _Hair, is that? Now who is she I'd like to know._

Over Skanstullsbron bridge the carriage rattled swiftly along.

"We are going the pace, I think," a passenger said.

"God grant he doesn't upset us on the road."

"I hope not."

The carriage climbed more slowly the hill of Nynasvägen.

Gloomy houses then went by. Life's journey. The high railings of Sandsborg cemetery rippled past their gaze.

Stopped. _Change that ball now_.

Brinbrace's hand unbuttoned his hip pocket swiftly and transferred the dented tennis ball to his inner handkerchief pocket, pleasingly popping it right in the process.

Vartel's life hit the rocks a month ago. All his hard work he had put in over the years had produced nothing. His big idea, the grand plan had failed. He couldn't face life for a while after. Blemished. What had he done wrong? Or rather why not? He was far better that anyone else, but still couldn't start it. He felt let down by. As if other people didn't care. Just for themselves, stinking corrupt. _Damn teachers. See what they missing. It's a joke._ But he was a nobody, just a one of persons. He just gave up, feeling like he was just hammering nails in to a lock, futile, making the situation worse. _My bones broke. The lights went out._

. . . .

Bublanski parked his Volvo in the underground car park at Kungsholmen Police Headquarters. He inspected a dent it acquired on the way, brushing the snow away.

"Oh well, that's another one to your collection, old friend."

He went upstairs to his office, passing several people who wished him well, and plumped down behind his desk musing on the grime there. He checked his drawers, reminiscing. His last case really showed how out of touch he was, especially with computers. He had shunned them, preferring his big old filing cabinets and trusty typewriter. It was an indulgence granted by his superiors. But no more. The Salander case really did him in. Even he saw his end coming in it. The mass of tidying up and reports that ensued tied him up no end.

Then it was his involvement in the re-organisation of Säpo, the SIS Security Service, with the Irish chap. It became more accountable after an inquiry; and one of its remits in the future was better liaison with His Majesty's Constabulary. A lot of the old guard were 'retired' and a new clean brood recruited, often from overseas friendly countries to deny the charges of institutional corruption laid at its feet by the media. It was felt no-one could be trusted after the outrage. They even had to change their name from 'Säpo' to 'Sämpo' to try to disconnect from it all. The secretive unofficial intelligence agency 'Section' was disbanded and those officers arrested, Nystrom, Sandberg, Wadensjöö, co-operated in exchange for immunity from prosecution. Most of the buck fell Fredik Clinton, the acting chief of the Section, despite his illness. But he said he was only following orders of some parliamentary sub-committee. Which was denied.

Nevertheless there was some resentment about the whole rebranding still laden in those considering themselves as the senior service.

Inspector Erlander shot his head round the door.

"Bubble! Congrats on your special day."

"Thanks Marcus."

Bublanski got up to greet him. A policewoman stood behind Erlander, carrying his stuff.

"Oh, this is Callima Dreza. She's new here. First day. I'm just showing her around."

"Hello Callima," Bublanski greeted.

"Inspector," she beamed, "a great honour."

She was freshly turned out, in a crisp clean uniform, blonde hair tied back, wide-eyed with enthusiasm. Bublanski saw in her face a new freshness, but also a touch of desperation in pleasing too much. But she had a kind face, he could see. That's the best quality of any human.

Face-reading was a useful tool Bublanski had developed during his years as a police officer. It's a little uncanny in practise but led to several correct hunches for Bublanski. Maybe he acquired it during his poker addiction years ago, before he had counselling. The debts he rang up put Bublanski on a slippery slide to barbiturates and drink. Several times almost killing himself.

"An outstanding career in law enforcement," Erlander read as he examined the glass plaque.

He looked at Bublanski.

"Cheer up. What's wrong?" he asked.

"Well, it's true. I've done a good job here. But there's still one case that I failed in. And it's always bothered me greatly the killer got away."

"What is it?"

"The Bergshamra Case."

"Ah, the Bergshamra Botchup. You don't want to get involved in a drug case like that," Erlander told Callima, "a murdered man's home was a warren of evidence trails that it was impossible to follow them all up. Or make any sense of them."

"But the killer must have been in there. Something he left. Something I missed."

"Oh right," Callima exclaimed, "maybe the killer is the only one of his acquaintances who left nothing in the house to mark him."

"How do you mean?" Bublanski asked.

"Well," Callima mused, "maybe you've been looking in the wrong places. Focusing on what's there, and not on what's not there."

"Say again!"

"Well, these drug people killed at home are always by acquaintances. You surely must know all the low lives. And then see if there's any discrepancies."

"Ah, I see."

Bublanski looked hopeful and was lost in thought, his mind whirring. He hardly noticed the pair leave.

Bublanski pulled out the only file in the 'unsolved' drawer. He sifted through until he found what he was after.

He snapped out of his thinking and got on the phone.

"Hey, I need to see you."

"What. Oh sorry."

"About Bergshamra."

"Hey, I know."

"Come on."

"You owe me."

. . . .

Vartel walked past two facing chapels enwreathed in poplars slowly.

Flowers still ahead.

He checked his pocket. _Still there_.

Vartel walked unheeded by saddened angels, crosses, broken pillars, family vaults, stone hopes praying with upcast eyes.

Feel the lightness in my shoes. Time to take off, I think. It's so easy. At times. These times. None other.

_Never have statues copulating. Ghost sex. Have you ever seen a ghost? Well, I have. I'll show you. Dangle that before her. It might thrill her first. Courting death. Love among the tombstones. Spice of pleasure. In the midst of death we are in life. Both ends meet_.

Broken slabs. Shifted tectonics. Chasm rips to hell. Sulphur streaming incense. Cockeyed headstone, veering, teetering on edge.

Others have crashed during some evil night. _Just imagine. Death by death._

Vartel stopped at a new grave. Fresh soil embanked. No time for grass yet. Flowers.

Still blood in them. It's the blood sinking in the earth gives new life. The soil would be quite fat with corpse manure, bones, flesh, nails. Turning green and pink, decomposing. Rot quick in the heat. And the flies and the maggots. Flies are maggots.

Zombies rising. Their body falling apart. What use are they. Couldn't catch a fly. A cold. Get up! Last day! You don't want to miss it. Going to paradise. _My arse_.

Like dumping bodies down drains. Drains to...

Vartel loitered as flowers were placed.

The next grave was very overgrown.

"Hello," he said as he encircled it.

A part of it had collapsed, leaving a dark void. To where?

He bent down to peer. Nothing. He looked down intently. Nothing.

Better check. Almost forgot. Still flowers there.

. . . .

Bublanski parked his Volvo up against the high railings of Sandsborg cemetery and entered. It was a place he always avoided. He had seen too much death and destruction. It depressed him to the edge.

He grimly strapped himself to the wheel. Anything to take all those depressing memories away. It would be a long day, he thought as he trod the gravel between two facing chapels enwreathed in poplars slowly.

White shapes thronged amid the trees, streaming by mutely, sustaining vain gestures on the air. _Who is that supposed to be? Which angel?_

Pray for the repose of the soul. White as ghosts. I will appear to you. My ghost will haunt you. There is another world after death, and it is hell.

Bublanski stopped at a new grave. Fresh soil embanked. No time for grass yet. Could bore a hole in the coffin, to let out the bad gas and burn it. Out it rushes blue. One whiff of that and you're a goner.

Come forth, Lazarus! And he came fifth and lost the job. Bublanski chuckled.

The next grave was very overgrown.

"Hello," he said as he encircled it.

A part of it had collapsed, leaving a dark void. To where?

He bent down to peer. Nothing. He looked down intently. Suddenly a rat darted out. A fat greasy rat. Bublanski took a step back.

"Damn thing. You'll be the death of me."

The obese grey rat toddled along the side, moving the pebbles, and back wriggled itself under.

"Good hiding place for treasure."

. . . .

_Still flowers there_.

A fat face unattached to the skull, floating on a wall of fat. Lifted off. Unconnected to the inside mind. It speaks:

Confusio mentis feu intelectus

elementorum in suprema regione

Aflatus concupiscentia

Ignearum exhalationum noxia vis

Say again.

Libido lingua virulenta

Ardor martius omnia

Opera mala

Vis noxia omnes mundi partes persuadens

Who speaks now?

Celeruas ventotum Typhonicorum

**It is of little insignificance in the grand scheme of things. I am just nothing, oui. Little Typoonus is only a minor demon. Not exactly the Devil. Just a little bit of fun. Not hardly any evil really. Have you seen the Devil's eye? Yes**.

Spring flowers closer. Spring.

Die, get back into the earth, you escapee. The stink of your enfeeblement pollutes man.

Hypocritis

Perturbatio aeris per nitioris ventorum qualitates

Inuidiae rabies per serpentes

Corruptio aeris ex pernitiosis ventorum flatibus

Come, let the blade take the blame. It was not you. Pass the buck. Go on.

A sacrifice. The midsummer. Grind the corn. Jump. Jump. Put under the blades of the plough. You corn-spirit unheaded.

Ire & furor animi

Fulminis bronto & fulgaris eius

Inconstantia & lubricitas mentis

Montibus & mari maxime dominantus venti

Flowers.

They wasted over a scorching flame

The marrow of his bones

But a miller used him worst of all

For he crushed him between two stones.

Don't worry. You will come again.

I am metal. See me, and die.

**Now's my time. Now's the time**.

Ball engaged.

The death struggle. A delirium like none other. Living hid before. His sleep is not natural. Press his lower eyelid. Watching is his nose pointed is his jaw sinking are the soles of his feet yellow. Pull the pillow away, he's doomed. See your whole life in a flash.

_I inform thee that I intend to eat thee. Mayest thou always help me to ascend_.

Flower bending. Unseen now. Stones coming. Jump jump.

Flower bending.

Flower wilting.

Flower pressed now.

Gone. Yes.

Ball dropped, rolls away. Forgotten. No use now.

. . . .

Bublanski looked up to a noise ahead. Hopping down the lane was a tall gangly teen, gibbering and jabbering to himself.

Drugs, Bublanski thought. Shooting up behind the stones for a trip.

The teen stopped in front of him, jumping up and down and gesticulating some mystic sign language. His fingers curled to show horns on his head, blowing red-faced. He flapped some wings and clapped his feet gilly-up style like a cloven-hoof animal.

Seems Kabala, Bublanski thought. Maybe. The Lord of Hosts.

"Panos, Panos!" he uttered.

The teen jerked his head around suddenly and back again and back again. He cried and squeaked until spit emitted. Wide-eyed he looked through Bublanksi and continued on.

"It would be a good place to kill someone here don't you think. Haha," the teen muttered, passing by, "a great setting for a murder. What do you think Mr Panpan. Urrgh!"

Harmless enough, Bublanski deduced. He's not committed a crime in his life. Innocence destroyed, the power of virility, Bublanski feared.

Bublanski pondered this as he continued. Much to learn from this spirit. And a very fitting place.

He finally stopped at the grave, an urn ensconced. Here is what he came for. This was the mother of the murdered victim. Deceased. Deceased. Bublanski uttered a Jewish prayer for the Dead, and in his heart pleaded for atonement.

He had promised her that he would find her son's killer. He gave his word. It always weighed down on him that she went to her grave denied. Now he had one last chance to redeem himself. On his very last day.

He turned away to walk back and kicked something. He saw a tennis ball shoot out under him. When he got to it he picked it up. Wet.

Stupid old bald thing, he thought. Old and tattered and knackered.

He got his pen out and drew some glasses on it.

"Huh! Bubble," he said.

. . . .

Vartel was ecstatic. Thoughts streaming. Integrity hurting. He looked about, seeing nothing. So relieved. It is done. Finished. Finally.

He was popping with energy, smiling all over. In rapture. He looked up to the sky. Shaking his fists in the air.

"Take that you bastard!"

. . . .

Inspector Bublanski met Allamic Stryx at Vasastaden.

He parked his big boxy Volvo round the corner and sneaked in through the back.

Allamic was a snitch. A stool-pigeon. An informer to the police. A good snout to the ground. He kept out of trouble mostly. Well not like his early days at least. Roughly the same age as Bublanski, he had a retired attitude to the criminal game.

"Thanks for seeing me on such short notice," Bublanski told him.

They sat in Allamic's back room in his dingy filthy home.

"Nice bull," Bublanski pointed to the corner.

"Ghastly isn't it," Allamic joked.

"A bit big."

"A stupid present from my mother-in-law back home. I don't know what to do with it."

"So The Berghamra Case, eh?" Allamic said, picking at his scabs.

"Yeah, that old stickler."

"What do you want to know?"

"Well, I've focussed on one individual, at last. Name of Trobeen Froj"

"Well, he won't be called that anymore."

"Yeah, I know."

Bublanski felt repulsed by the state of his skin. Diseased. VD probably. And more. But he carried on.

"Do you think you could dig about your sources. See what he goes under now."

"Mmm. Sure. One last hurrah."

Bublanski got up, unaware that the tennis ball had slipped from his pocket and fallen to the floor.

Bublanski left with a shudder down his back. He hated everything about Allamic. Such a bad feeling. But he was useful to the police.

He fired up his Volvo for his next appointment.

CHAPTER SEVEN

Lisbeth Salander opened her 'ibook' and clicked onto a fake advert for Insurance, hitting the spot on the crossed keys. She then started the login protocols to Hacker Republic.

She clicked onto the chatroom, 'Watercooler':

<shall we paralyse the network> Buck-Rogers had written.

<stack the trolleys> Proff had written.

<first my riddle> eflomas-molg wrote. <r u ready>

Lisbeth started typing.

<good day> Wasp wrote.

<come in come in> Jabba wrote. <how r u>

<the ghost walks> Proff wrote.

<well> Wasp replied.

<ur looking extra> eflomas-molg wrote.

<u give me heartburn on my arse> Buck-Rogers wrote.

<hey my riddle> eflomas-molg wrote. <ready>

<anyone know anything major abot genetics> Wasp wrote.

<sp??> eflomas-molg wrote.

<sllt> Proff wrote.

<??> eflomas-molg wrote.

<single line losing thread> Proff wrote.

<lol> eflomas-molg wrote.

<@wasp I do> milesandmiles wrote.

<we can all supply pabulum> Buck-Rogers wrote.

<u jolter head> Jabba wrote.

<catchfart> Buck-Rogers wrote.

<flaybottom> Jabba wrote.

Lisbeth left them flaming each other and opened a private window to ping milesandmiles.

<could u look at this data> Wasp asked.

<ok> milesandmiles wrote.

<thx - sending>

Lisbeth emailed the DNA files.

<got it - give me a while>

Lisbeth took a cigarette from the open packet, lit it and blew her puff violently towards the ceiling. Her smoke ascended in frail stalks that flowered at the ceiling.

<twiddle poop> Jabba wrote.

<addle-plot> Buck-Rogers wrote.

<hey wheres the archbishops letter> eflomas-molg wrote.

<all his brains are in the nape of his neck> Buck-Rogers wrote. <fat folds of neck>

<fat neck fat neck> Buck-Rogers fired off.

<haha> Jabba wrote.

<the pensive bosom & the overarsing leafage> eflomas-molg wrote.

<changing his drink> Buck-Rogers wrote.

<bladderbags> Jabba wrote.

<our saviour> Wasp wrote.

<beardframed oval talking to dusky mary martha> Buck-Rogers wrote.

<that will do. I don't want to hear any more of that stuff> Proff wrote.

<pardon monsieur> Buck-Rogers wrote.

<lif is too short> Proff wrote.

<<<88&))>> Pikachu wrote.

<hey pikachus back> Jabba wrote.

Lisbeth gave a lop-sided smile.

Thank you for pikachu. So cute gets me, giving him a hug like to a kid to take care of the monsters under bed made them go away for me! Oh pikachu!!! You are such a fuzzy cute lil' thing. Me wants to press you hard against my body and leave traces of red lipstick on your nicely shaped and well colour coordinated yellow body. But he is soo cute he is. Make me think of a red coloured tshirt i had a long time back with bright yellow pikachu print on front. Hugging my breast seriously tight. Me mum didn't like, me loved so much. Was great. Showed to everyone asked if they liked it. Awwww memories.

Lisbeth ran her fingers through her hair, combing the knotted and tangled.

I can't bear your touch

my skin has gone

abandoned me forever

every little breath of air

makes me bleed for you and shivver

drop by drop

I flow to you

through the cracks of my existence

<((LL(/;;PP>))=> Pikachu wrote. <snsn>

<the rose of castille> eflomas-molg wrote. <see the wheeze. Rows of cast steel. Gettit>

<poke> Wasp wrote.

<£$:..O>>?=> Pikachu wrote.

<they went forth to battle but they always fell> Proff wrote.

<boohoo> eflomas-molg wrote.

<haha> Buck-Rogers wrote.

<I feel a strong weakness> Jabba wrote. <fan me fan me>

Lisbeth took a reel of dental floss from her pocket and, breaking off a piece, twanged it smartly between two and two of her resonant unwashed teeth.

Milesandmiles popped up in her window.

<still there?>

<y> Lisbeth wrote flinging her cigarette aside.

She took another cigarette and held it, poised to hear.

<1 - sample 1 is female XX>

<2 - sample 2 is male XY with high mutation rate of 1 in 20,000. Compare 1 in 100,000 is normal>

<3 - they are v similar - related?>

<4 - there are high number of mutations in mtDNA. 28 of 379 nucleotide base pairs. Usually expect only 8 max. so odd.>

<5 - they are labelled 'I' which indicates first generation.>

<interesting> Wasp wrote.

<theres a lot a data here. Quite comprehensive. Ill see what else I can find. Keep you posted.>

<thxxx iou jilf>

Lisbeth closed the private window.

<fartleberries> Jabba wrote.

<begone. The world is before you> milesandmiles wrote.

<show! Where!> Buck-Rogers wrote.

<oh oh. He gonna make one of his speeches> Proff wrote.

<muchibus thankibus> Buck-Rogers wrote.

<divine afflatus> Jabba wrote.

<that stony effigy in frozen music...> milesandmiles wrote.

<you pray to a local obscure idol> Jabba wrote.

<... horned and terrible...> milesandmiles wrote.

<get drunk> Buck-Rogers wrote.

<wise virgins> Proff wrote.

<onehanded adulterer> eflomas-molg wrote.

<**88^DD)))@->> Pikachu wrote.

Lisbeth flung her cigarette aside and terminated the connection. Her eyes keen with interest, she pulled her copy of 'Snustad & Simmon's Principle of Genetics' from her bookcase. She skimmed the detailed contents. She loved poring over classifications of nature. All ordered out in lists: 'Chromosome Mapping', 'Mutation', 'Viruses', 'Phage Infection', 'The Molecular Biology of Genes', 'The Regulation of Gene Expression' etc.

She flicked through pages of interest: DNA FINGERPRINTS : The banding pattern on a Southern blot procedure of an individual's genomic DNA that has been cleaved with restrictive enzymes and hybridized to an appropriate nucleic acid probe.

A spot pattern produced by electrophoresis (melting) of the polypeptide fragments obtained through denaturation of a particular protein with a proteolytic enzyme.

An autoradiographic banding pattern produced when DNA is digested with a restrictive enzyme that cuts outside a family of VNTRs and a Southern Blot of the electrophoretic gel is probed with a VNTR-specific probe.

VNTR - Variable Number Tandem repeats of various lengths at several chromosomal locations.

Denaturing - to unfold the native configuration of the macromolecule.

Southern Blot \- a probe that will bind to a fragment of interest.

SEQUENCING: 1 \- Maxam & Gilbert procedure - use four different reactions to cleave DNA at A/G/C/C&T. 2 - Sanger - use radioactive nucleotides or fluorescent dyes to generate four populations of A/G/C/T.

Hmm. I'm gonna need a lab.

Lisbeth went back to the package she received earlier from her P.O. box. This one labelled 'II'. Second Generation. It consisted of a lock of hair. Light auburn in colour.

Something suddenly clicked inside Lisbeth's head. She rushed to an old keepsake box and rummaged about until she pulled out an old locket. Opening it she carefully picked out a lock of hair of the same colour. _Mummy. Is this the same hair? Even mine? Or other? I need to get this tested. No root bulb follicles. Damn. I must go back to natural. Mummy_.

She carefully checked the other sample. Careful not to mix the two up. As she put it back in the envelope, she noticed some writing on the inside. 'Drottninggatan 2pm' _Ah, must be the next clue. This should be interesting._

She opened her 'ibook' again and Googled 'Stockholm science laboratory'. Results soon popped up:

\- Proffice Life Science -

\- Arna Cedebergs Stiftelse Medicinsk Furskning -

\- Mettler-Toledo AB -

\- Wenner-Gren Centre -

\- National Laboratory for Forensic Science Stockholm Depart. -

Lisbeth clicked on the last and flicked through the website:

1 - Biological Unit.

2 - Drug Analysis.

3 - Chemical and Tech

4 - Document Unit.

_Good. A State Institution. They so dumb. Where they at?_ 'Tehniska Museet.' _Oh I know that._

She then started her hack on the lab: Lisbeth's first action was a 'port scan', looking for a 'backdoor' of a port 'held open'. She couldn't find one so she deliberately set off an alert and her line when dead. She was ready for this. She was using a proxy IP address on a computer on another continent. She switched to another proxy and resumed the attack. She sent an email purportedly from an IT person within the lab alerting others to the attack. When it was opened software was installed that allowed Lisbeth to see their desktop. She was in.

Having gained access and with her de-encryption program churning away, Lisbeth went to the employees files and scanned for an identity she could appropriate.

Lisbeth sniffed her T-shirt. It stank. She had sweated a good deal today so far. So she trotted across her extensive apartment to the laundry room and stripped off to chuck her clothes in the machine. Loaded it up and pressed the button. Nothing happened. She pressed again, checked the door. Nothing. So she quickly changed the fuse, but still it would not budge. _Flip. Must be the damn heat._ Electronics don't like it. Even her laptop was burning a hole in the table. Its fans humming through the walls. _Machines. Smash a man to atoms if they get him caught_.

Humming.

She stared at the cursor beeping incessantly. Almost human the way it sllt to call attention. Doing its level best to speak. Everything speaks in its own way. Sllt. She stared at the cursor. Hypnotic. Unable to avert her gaze. Numb.

rigid attorneys

taste of metal shades of blue

Then a shaking began in her body. Pain shooting. A ball of light hit her internally. Torching her insides. She adverts her eyes and goes inside.

warmth

but lost grip

Huge cramps strike.

don't think

Sticky darkness.

water rises swallowing all

slowing rising you can feel it from below

Her tensed body extremely will break. Flexing like crazy. Eyes tight.

Earthquake outside. Grumbling screaming inside. Possessed. Her head heavy, burning blood, torched.

up and up

legs don't stop where the skirt should cover up

and further up

Zalachenko's face lolled into her. Breathless screaming he was laughing, spitting blood.

burst capillaries in red cones

eyes sooo white

rough touching lips

real sensitive

circle around my neck

as if to clothe me

and strangle me

take my breath

darkness

timeless

melts all

body gone

calm inside

rays of pleasure

head halo

air

PART THREE

THE GENETIC CONTROL OF BEHAVIOUR

Friday 16.6.6

\- Stockholm syndrome

\- the Southern blot

\- taking your eye off the ball

\- play it by ear

\- am I mad or drunk

\- in the bag

\- hold my scissors

\- knickers in a twist

CHAPTER EIGHT

Lamacil Spoonz sat in the Lotus position in the middle of the park. Or almost Lotus, that is. Relazing the stress away. Her eyes flickering, leisurely about. The park was busy on such a sunny day. Kids playing football. A kite aloft. Dogs chasing. Couples at picnic: Perfumed bodies, warm, full. All kissed, yielded: in deep summer fields, tangled pressed grass.

Lamacil had just shot up her fix of heroin. Every day now since she was twelve. Ever since she was out on the streets most of the day homeless.

She was soon targeted by men who, friendly at first, took advantage of her. She fell in love with these her first boyfriends; so kind to her with gifts and money and then drugs. The only kindness she knew. She told them everything. And they listened, looking after her, a roof over her head. But there was never any privacy for her. Men always watching her. And then she was only fed if they felt like it. But by then she was trapped and willing. In love. To do anything to please him.

. . . .

Lifting the latch off the gate Vartel was attacked from behind by a whiff of soup.

Brinbrace stood at the corner. He looked down. _Hello, were those flies open all the time. Women enjoy it._

Vartel strolled in the sungaze. A sombre young man, watchful among the sweet fumes, placed something in a hand of Brinbrace. Vartel took the card. UP : u.p.

Up what? Vartel looked up. All he could see was the TV tower of Kaknästornet at Mörka Kroken. _Someone's taking the rise out of me. Where's he gone?_ Gone.

He folded the card away.

A girl in a street hallway was settling her garter. Her friend covering the display.

"Well, what are you gaping at?" she told Vartel.

Hot mockturtle vapour and steam of new baked jampuffs roly-poly poured out from Arrena's Breaded Biscuits Associates.

That's ABBA that is.

And directly in front of Vartel passed the beard of Benny Andersson _. Now that's a coincidence. Course hundreds of times you think of a person and don't meet him_.

Through the window of a restaurant Vartel saw foodheated faces wolfing gobfuls of slopping food. Their eyes bulging, wiping wetted moustaches. A man spitting back on his plate: half masticated gristle. Chump chop from the grill. Bolting it get it over. Sad booser's eyes. Bitten off more than he can chew.

_My shadow is gone. Where. Must be._ He looked up and searched on the buildings. Near enough on the dot. _Let's go. Yum yum_.

Vartel strolled east and arrived at the greenery of Ladugärdsgärdet park. Rhododendrons, trees, statues. Lovely forms of women sculped. Immortal lovely.

The heavy noonreek tickled the top of Vartel's gullet.

Gulls. They wheeled, flapping. Someone feeding them cake fragments. The gulls swooped silently two, then all, from their heights, pouncing on prey. Gone. Every morsel. They wheeled, flapping weakly.

Vartel entered the gate on Valhallavägan _hey my road_ and scanned the park. _Where best place to sit? Not in middle like that coloured lady motionless. Kids and kites. Dogs. Over there, past her, in the sun._

He moved across the field.

_She looks like a shadow of a person_. Haunting face. Woebegone _. Careful. Not disturb her_. Eyes closed. _Eaten a bad egg perhaps_. Poached eyes. Chinese eating eggs fifty years old. Dinner of thirty courses. Each dish harmless might mix inside. _Idea of a poison mystery._

. . . .

Lamacil watched a couple not far off. Pillowed on his coat she had her hair. Hand under her nape. Her hand touching, caressing. Eyes upturned. Her full lips open he kissed. Seedcake warm and chewed was passed. She laughed warmfolded. Wildly he lay on her and was kissed. All yielding she tossed her hair.

Her boss, her other boss that is, thought it was all an act. Very good method acting, he would say.

Earlier today she had had an update meeting. Oak-panelled walls. A roaring fire. Plush leather armchairs. An oaked slab of a desk silently veined, nicely planed.

She stood there, skin haggard, as ill as could be; while he prattled along the floorboards. Fro, to: to, fro. He never looked at her. She denied and hid her true problems. The beatings, the gang rapes and sexual abuse she endured, all in the name of.

The beatings she was used to, and she knew how to dodge most of them. The gang rapes had stopped now. They were mainly used as an initiation rite to prove her loyalty. Quite brutal, but they were over quick.

The worst was the sexual abuse which continued relentlessly. A set diary of clients. Just because she was black, they found a great desire to 'play' master and slave. Her boss gained huge favours from those men, ensuring his position. It was surprising the number of men she serviced this way after the news got out. It started as a joke with her boss, but slowly developed more and more intricately. More ingenious scenarios they came up with. A captured slave tied up. A lazy slave whipped. A runaway slave punished. A haremed slave locked up. With all the paraphernalia. Whips, stocks, chains etc. Ending with the master asserting his ownership in the most forceful terms.

And there she stood before him, alone and forgotton.

. . . .

Vartel's smile faded as he walked, a heavy cloud hiding the sun slowly, shadowing. _This is the very worst hour of the day. Vitality. Dull, gloomy: hate this hour. Feel as if I had been eaten and spewed_.

The things I did. No more. If no-one you know is famous, then it's up to you. Failed.

The sun freed itself slowly and lit glints of light _. Remember. Remember. I remember_.

He took out of his pack his hamper. Opening a Tupperware tub he breathed. A warm human plumpness settled down on his brain. His brain yielded. Perfume of embraces all him assailed. With hungered flesh obscurely, mutely he craved to adore. _Must eat. Feel better then._

He laid out his victuals, still tinfoiledwarm. Thigh steak with garlic and Muscal wine. Brussel sprouts and deep-fried potato balls. Arms oven-dried and hung like the air-dried hams of Parma. Breaded young man's liver with lemon and rice. Not too salty. Rump, fillet, ham and bacon. A South African Cabernet. Mighty cheese. Is it a meat? Is it a vegetable?

Vartel ate his strips of sandwich, fresh clean bread, with relish.

A warm shock of air heat of mustard hunched on Vartel's heart. He pressed his hand to his breastbone and hiccupped _. Water._ He took some hair-infused tea from his thermos to help it settle and continued his communion.

_I wonder if he was a clever fellow. Swift of foot. Sagacious. The eyes of an owl. All the good for me_. Lifeforce. Quickening. A liver for valour. Ears for intelligence. Forehead for perseverance. Palms to steady the hand. Eyebrows for the power to look steadfastly at a foe.

He unscrewed another thermos and poured himself a rich cup of hot fresh blood. They prescibe for decline. Blood always needed. Insidious, smoking hot, thick sugary. In his mouth a bloodhue flood. Lustrous blood. Don't spill on the ground. Royal blood. Precious. He licked it up fast off the floor. Sucking it up. Deepest of reds. Nectar. Drinking electricity. It will enter you. _Ah my soul._ Sheer poetry. Must be in a certain mood. It's thick smell. It's all coming back. _It feels grreat!_ He shuddered in memory. His head swelled.

The things I did. The greatest things ever. Ultimate perfection. Energy driven potential produced. Younger then. A year. Is long. All the ideas in the world. I have. Had. Weaving. Ideas upon ideas. Prime structures of game and cunning. I could still do again. Easy. And the fame, for sure.

Dribbling a quiet message from his bladder came to go. A fellow and ready he drained his glass to the lees and walked.

. . . .

Lamacil was distracted from her thoughts by a fellow picnicking to one side suddenly jutting about in spasms. As if there was something wrong. Possessed by something. Or something in his drink. He cried and foamed and mangled his body with wild gestures speaking to himself. _A madman. Like those who always walk outside the lamps._

She checked her watch. Just over an hour. It was a simple job this time.

His phone call had woken her up today.

"Hey!"

"You need to see me?"

"About what?"

"Oh that."

"Do I have to?"

"I suppose."

One of these days I'll get him back. I vow. Is why I do this for the police.

. . . .

Vartel stood and walked off. He could feel his meal already circulating in his pipework with all the squirting and juices slapping about. He slid his hand down his trousertop and felt.

Walking off he checked the land. A ravenous terrier choked up a sick knuckly cud on the cobble stones and lapped it with new zest. Straw-hat in sunlight. Tan shoes. Turned up trousers. _It is. It is._ His heart quipped softly. _To the right_. Museum. He swerved to the right.

Didn't see me perhaps. Light in his eyes.

The flutter of his breath came forth in short sighs.

My heart.

_Quick. Look for something I_.

His hasty hand went quick into a pocket, took out, read unfolded UP: u.p. Vartel looked up. All he could see was the tower of Kaknästornet at Mörka Kroken. _Now that's really a coincidence: secondtime._ Coming events cast their shadows before.

Busy looking for.

He thrust back quickly UP up.

I am looking for that. Yes, that. Try all pockets. Handker. Paper. Where did I? Ah, yes. Trousers. Purse. Where did I?

_Hurry. Walk quietly. Moment more. My heart_.

His hand looking for the _where did I put_. In hip pocket ball bald old ball tennis.

Oh ball not there. No. Gone.

Unsafe.

. . . .

Lacimal returned to meditating, but was soon awoken by a violent hit on her back. She turned and saw a football bouncing away. Those kids laughing at her. The fellow had returned from out of the trees and was packing up. He had seen. He got up and approached her.

No, don't come over here. Near me. Shoo madman. I am ok. I am not like you. Urrgh!

As he got closer she saw he was younger than she thought _. Innocence of youth._

"Are you alright?"

"Fine."

"Would you like some?" he offered leftovers from his tub.

CHAPTER NINE

Lisbeth had tied her boots on tight and stepped a sinkapace forward, creaking and a step backward a sinkapace on the floor.

She had just slipped through a 'NO ENTRY' door at the Tekniska Museet. She had entered as a tourist. Under the hanggliders, balloons, biplanes and jetplanes of 'The Machine Hall' past the classic cars and talking robots. Weaving through the crowds at the 4D cinema, which shook and rattled and stank, looking for an access point.

Creaking to go, albeit lingering, she descended into the solemn gloom, looking for the laboratory. Noiseless she set open the door. Someone was there, coming her way. She would be spotted until she tucked herself in. A ghost fading into impalpability.

The danger passed.

She came forward and entered swiftly behind, the door not yet closed. Through a storage room she stalked, her senses feeling around the high corners, past stacked shelves of odds and ends of equipment. Mostly massive chunks of ancient machine parts.

A thorough methodical search delivered her to a locked door adorned with a 'Chemical Hazard' sign.

She picked the lock and just hoped that lunchtime was quiet-time here. She slipped into the brightly lit sterile environment of a laboratory. She peered round the glass window. Someone was still working here. _Damn_.

Lisbeth watched for a moment, setting her eyes ablaze at her. _Anna Bloody Stroberg_. The scientist turned suddenly, forcing Lisbeth to duck and retreat. She came toward her. Lisbeth dashed quickly and hid in a closet. The closet opened and she hooked her white lab coat up. The scientist left unpinning her blonde hair with her.

Moments later Anna Stroberg left the closet and started her earnest work. Fixing her new hair in a mirror and buttoning up the lab coat, Lisbeth took a quick tour, locating what she needed.

She lugged her big book of Genetics out of her pack onto the desk. Then carefully she placed her samples of hair. _Mother's deathbed. Candle. The sheeted mirror. Who brought me into this world lies there, bronzelidded, under few cheap flowers. I wept alone._

She soon extracted the mitochondrion DNA. It was the best she could do as the hairs were devoid of any follicle cells. Encouraged by the beautiful double circled diagram on page 469, which seemed almost mystical, Lisbeth went on to amplify it by a Polymerase Chain Reaction.

First she denatured the samples by placing the mtDNA in the oven at 95-97 degrees for 15-30 seconds. Then she incubated it at 55-65 degrees for 30 seconds with an excess of synthetic oligonucleotide primers. Lastly she used DNA polymerase enzyme to replicate the mtDNA segment.

As we, or mother Earth, weave and unweave our bodies, from day to day, their molecules shuttered to and fro, so does the image weave and unweave.

In the intense instant of imagination, when the mind is a fading coal, that which I was is that which I am and that which in possibility I may come to be. So in the future, the sister of the past, I may see myself as I sit here now but by reflection from that which then I shall be.

We walk through ourselves, meeting robbers, ghosts, giants, old women, young women, husbands, widows, sisters-in-love. But always meeting ourselves.

the earth listens

feeling me fall

cozy sticky warm

pressing pressure rising gone releasing hope

exploding now

the antique sun reopens all

stabs to nervous system

end

ran away

left me here

barely alive

half-closed eyes

not asleep

thinking of you

and hating everything

The basement workshop felt like a furnace. It didn't help Lisbeth as she was on constant lookout guard.

She set up the equipment for the Southern blot procedure. An FEC 650: 6000V, 350mA, 200W. With applications for Submarine DNA/RNA, DNA electrophoresis, Pulsed-field electrophoresis, Continuous SDS-PAGE, Discontinuous PAGE, Tank blotting, Isoelectric focusing with carrier ampholytes and Isoelectric focusing in immobilised pH gradients.

She dissolved each DNA sample in ethidium bromide and prepared two pipettes. Then she created strips of wells in the semisolid agarose gel in the cell by dragging the comb through. Once it had solidified, she placed the cell in the electrophoresis chamber gently floating on the denser buffer solution. And then she loaded the DNA solutions in the wells at the top of the gel.

She switched on the Power Supply Unit connected to the submerged electrodes and stared with timestopped bated breath as unseen before her eyes the different DNA molecules migrated across the table according to their sizes.

Truly an act of magic. _Pure alchemy._ She stared in wonderment. At last she hoped it had worked. There was only one way to find out. She fished out her camera.

The art of being a grandfather. He has hidden his own name. What's in a name? That is what we ask ourselves in childhood when we write the name that we told is ours. A star, a daystar, a firedrake rose at birth. It shone by day in the heavens alone, brighter than Venus at night.

and I felt I must be dying

flash

of life

with you

forever

beautiful

appeared

a yearning to give myself

to you

no reservations

no return policy

body and mind

all of me yours

paingasm

wakes me up

kiss me deep

you know i want you

on and .. on

you kiss me and protect from nasty monsters

at night and during day

a cool sexy stallion

to me

i love you .. you said softly

God i will melt here and now

so much i feel for you

but I ain't telling

Just as Lisbeth was setting up her camera with ultraviolet lamps a man entered the lab. _Damn. Not now_. Luckily Lisbeth had her back to the corridor.

"Hi Anna," he called.

Lisbeth raised her hand in acknowledgement. _Good._ The man left _. Almost done now_. She had started to sweat now and longed to get out. She had ridden out her luck.

Click. Click. Click. The photos done. A quick check. _Good_. All there.

The substance of his shadow, the daughter consubstantial with the father.

how?

HOW much?

how much do i love him?

sometimes i wonder

do i?

i can't help but want to be near

i want him to love me

everytime he is not around i

i don't feel lost

i don't sit down in tears

reassurance

of his warmth

i can imagine

stolen strength from the universe

of unreal dreams

i can't find reasons

no meanings

no secret shadows

full of explanations

just chaos

hurricane of thoughts and feelings

no logic

no logic

NO

no use

what if i screamed?

Instantaneous Infinity

End.

As Lisbeth dismantled the equipment she saw a figure bowing and greeting through the upper windows looking down. _Halted above me, a quizzer looks at me. Halt. I did see his eyes. But soft. I don't know how to say it other than softness. Is the feeling I get with very few people. Take an x-ray photograph, I would see his shadow of softness_. The bowing dark figure outside.

Lisbeth checked her watch. _Quick_. Not much time now. With a quick last look around, she departed using the emergency fire-exit backdoor.

She had done it. She had fought through the sweat and heat. Now outside and free in the fresh. She found a quiet place in the tree shade. She had to see.

After downloading the jpegs to her laptop she was able to examine them. DNA bands shown up in the fluorescent dye. The gel had sieved out the larger molecules with the lighter and lighter ones spreading out.

And there it was. The results. She checked the molecular gene markers.

What a remarkable thing. Had she made a mistake? They were identical. Both mitochondrial DNA exact.

Lisbeth eagerquietly lifted her book to say that's very interesting. She checked and rechecked. She springhalted near. _I should like to know which_. She looked back to Sample 1. _Hell, that had the same mtDNA as well. What's going on here?_

Her brain raced through the possible scenarios. The same sample? Two or all three? _Oh no. Oh then..._

She caught herself in the act. _But perhaps I am anticipating. We want to hear more. They are related_. Daughters and sisters.

CHAPTER TEN

Inspector Bublanski waited. The set-up was ready. Everything was in place. Now he just had to wait for the signal. Hidden, he could see the target location with Callima Dreza on point duty with radio at hand. This was her first major operation. Bublanksi saw her move along a groups of kids. Lagging behind was a fat one with a football tucked under his arm. She chatted briefly with them. The kids only moved along a bit with the fat kid dropping the football against a wall and sitting on it. The sharp shrill of a lady's laugh pierced the air.

Drottninggaten was delightfully busy on this summer afternoon. Crowded about were crammed in all types of food stalls. Masses of chairs and tables were decked out for the public to relax into their fare.

Bublanski kept watching. A short bewigged elderly lady with her shopping bag inspected wares. Moments later Bublanski's eyes pricked at the sound of a large man's burp. Callima's hand was shaking, Bublanski saw. She passed the radio to the other.

Great drifts of smoke rose from the tables near him.

Bublanski's phone rang with Abba's 'Gimme Gimme Gimme...'

"Yes hello."

"Oh hello dear. I'm a bit busy."

While on the phone to his wife, Bublanski kept watching. The elderly lady approached the nearby tables. Her hand went into her shopping bag.

. . . .

Licalam Vortres and her crew were enjoying a mostly liquid lunch. They had various nibbles from the food stalls spread about their table on Drottninggatan. Her TV crew had just finished filming the Christmas special show for TV4. Flakes of artificial snowflakes still flecked their clothes. They were having a good laugh about it. _At this time of year!_

Licalam was a top talent on TV4. Her South American brassy beauty certainly made her stand out. A very curvaceous full figure she readily flaunted her ample cleavage, especially on such a sunny day like this. It had got her a long way in showbusiness.

The crew were looking forward to the crime reconstruction later. Their next job. Promising a fill of explosions.

Licalam called out to a passing young man, enquiring about his peculiar sunburn. He only turned even more redder.

"As red as your hair!" Licalam squealed with a sharp shrill laugh.

Licalam looked about, bathed in adoration from her crew. Her eyes glanced at a parcel on the floor, to her side, at the next door table, where a man, pinstripe attired with a pink tie, ate away. Suddenly the bearded man burped loudly in her direction. He apologised.

Licalam looked back to see the waiter in front of her. The waiter's hand was shaking. The drinks rattled against each other on his tray rather too much for Licalam's liking.

. . . .

Allamic Stryx stood behind a trellis fence, hidden, expectant, clutching a tennis ball to his breast. _This was perfect. All worked out. Stupid Officer Bubble, sitting there, will do my dirty work for me. Perfect. Just like planets spinning around. Newtonian laws, just like this ball. With his pretty cop staked out there, one of his moons._

He gently squeezed the raggered ball as he looked around. To his other side he could see a fat kid sitting on a football against a wall, moving up and down slightly.

Then he saw a young man come his way. They made eye contact. The young man raised an eyebrow. _No, don't come over here. Near me_.

"Do you know what the time is?" he asked Allamic.

Bloody idiot.

"Almost two." _Now go away_.

A loud burp echoed about.

"Time is like three dogs. A sleeping puppy, a fawning dog and an oblivious wolf..." the young man told him.

Allamic squeezed the ball tighter in his fist. _Why are you telling this this? You're in my way_.

"... Past. Present. Future..."

Allamic gave him an evil look but the young man was too wrapped up. He took it out on the tennis ball. Squeezing. Pumping his fist over it.

"...But all three dogs are squeezed real tight in the coilings of a serpent, with only their heads exposed. The snake's head watching over them like a man's hand patting them. You see, you see? All their tails, near the snake's tail, they are so squeezed as to be one. Like a vortex, whirlpool, or a black hole..."

Look at your sunburn. I am ok. I am not like you. Urrgh!

. . . .

Muhammed Muhammed placed the football from under his arm against the wall. It was just too hot. He slumped down the wall and perched his fat arse on the ball while the others did a bit of shoplifting from the food stalls for lunch on Drottninggatan. He heard the sharp shrill of a lady's laugh pierce the air.

As he sat there he looked about the ground for any dropped change. He saw a pair of boots. Looking up he saw a skinny short girl trying to perk up her punk red hair. She sat at a table and placed a parcel on the floor. Then the man next to her burped loudly.

Muhammed started bouncing his weight on the football. He watched Acillam come over to him.

"Ha ha, you keep doing that, you'll burst it with your fat big end."

"Look who it is," Muhammed pointed.

"Ha ha, good one."

Muhammed watched Acillam sneak up on the man he had just pointed out. Whom they had seen earlier. He bounced more excitedly on the ball as he watched Acillam flex his fingers, sneaking closer, smiling back, winking.

Then an Abba ringtone rang out 'Gimme Gimme Gimme...'

. . . .

Illamic Gilzarlar stood between two trellis fences watching. He heard a man burp loudly. _There she is_. He watched carefully as a coloured woman sat on the seat nearest him. He had been following her ever since he saw her three hours ago at Vasastaden. He saw the gangster who everyone knew as 'The Gator' give her a parcel. The Gator was a man Illamic was totally scared of. Once, years ago when Illamic was just starting in petty crime, this crime boss demanded his cut; and although Illamic was willing to pay dividends, The Gator forced his point by raping him with a rusty wedge spike.

It still pains Illamic to sit down. He prefers to stand. So when he saw The Gator involved he knew with a sinking heart the parcel contained something important. But what?

Now that parcel sat at black woman's feet.

He watched as the skinny punk girl sitting next to her bummed a smoke off her. They both lit up and pumped the air with smoke.

Illamic's darting eyes caught sight of those kids he had seen earlier. _Bloody street Arabs. Watch your purses._ A fat kid sitting on a football and another talking.

Illamic checked back on his target. He heard an Abba ringtone ring out 'Gimme Gimme Gimme...'

. . . .

Vartel Brinbrace was talking to someone who looked out of place. He wasn't even sure if he was even there.

"Past. Present. Future..."

Vartel tends to look down when he thinks and talks. Thinking and talking is very hard. He saw the short foreignlooking man squeeze a ball tightly in his hand.

"... But all three dogs are squeezed real tight in the coilings of a serpent, with only their heads exposed. The snake's head watching over them like a man's hand patting them. You see, you see? All their tails, near the snake's tail, they are so squeezed as to be one. Like a vortex, whirlpool, or a black hole..."

He couldn't take his eyes off the tennis being squashed to extinction. Suddenly he realised.

"...You are the author of time!" he told him.

Vartel saw the ball drop suddenly.

. . . .

Illamic Gilzarlar suddenly heard a bouncing noise behind him. Then he saw a tennis ball bouncing alongside him. Hang on. He looked puzzled. _That's my tennis ball. I'm sure. The writing. Where did that come from?_

He looked up in the sky. It couldn't have, he mused, just landed now. The joke puzzled him.

He watched the ball continue bouncing, now passing the black woman. He was still struck in wonderment as it passed the skinny punk girl.

. . . .

Vartel Brinbrace, still next to this Serapis, saw between the trellis latticework a child's hand dip into the outer pocket of a macintosh. It withdrew with its treasure. Vartel moved off to get a better look, just as Serapis moved away opposite. Vartel saw a fat kid bouncing up and down manically on a football, laughing.

. . . .

Allamic Stryx was astonished to hear himself called 'The author of time.' _Quite fitting._ He stared ahead and saw through the trellis latticework the man in front of him look up high in the sky. At that same moment Allamic noticed one of those kids ruffle the man's coat and then dash away.

_That damn idiot is still here._ Allamic tried to get away. He heard a scuffle and turning saw the annoying young man trip over and fly flat. Allamic chuckled to himself satisfied.

. . . .

Lamacil Spoonz, seated at a table on Drottninggatan, waited.

She was interrupted by the girl next to her.

"Do you have a smoke I could have? I'm parched."

Lamacil looked at her. _How old was she? White as white. Eyes of all colours. A teardrop tattoo._ She gave her one and took one herself. The girl's hand was shaking.

Then an Abba ringtone rang out 'Gimme Gimme Gimme...'

The waiter came with her coffee.

"Careful," she said.

"Sorry."

Lamacil noticed a tennis ball bouncing past her. _That's odd._

She continued watching it.

. . . .

Acillam Khan, having gotten away, smiled as he saw Muhammed bouncing like a space hopper at his success. He checked back and saw a tennis ball bouncing. He stared, trying the remember where, what. _Oh yeah_. He smiled as he imagined the carnage that grenade would produce.

. . . .

Lisbeth Salander, sucking on a cigarette, seated and waiting, watched a tennis ball bounce past her. _That's odd. Is that ball going uphill?_

She smoked, watching it.

. . . .

Mallaci O'Brogue, happily eating lunch, suddenly stopped when he saw a tennis ball bounce past him.

He munched, watching it.

. . . .

Inspector Bublanski saw a tennis ball bounce toward him.

Old ball, old tired, old bald. _Hello friend._

. . . .

Licalam Vortres sipping from her tallglass saw a tennis ball bounce past her.

. . . .

Callima Dreza, an ear cocked, suddenly saw a tennis ball bouncing toward her.

. . . .

Vartel Brinbrace, rubbed his knee and straightened his T-shirt, as he got up. Mrs Joyi pushed past him.

"Silly boy."

A mighty BANG shook the air.

Vartel looked to its source. He saw a fat kid floundering on the ground. His legs shot straight out, with a shocked look on his face.

. . . .

Acillam Khan heard a mighty BANG from behind him.

He turned and saw Muhammed sprawled on the floor, with scraps of the football fluttering about.

. . . .

Licalam Vortres heard a mighty BANG explode the air.

Then she felt a wetness drench her. She cried out and saw the shocked waiter with his tray tumbled. The drinks had gone all over her.

. . . .

Allamic Stryx turned back to watch Bublanski still chatting on the phone.

He heard a mighty BANG fly through the air.

His eyes winched. But still watching he saw the female cop shout into her radio excitedly.

. . . .

Illamic Gilzarlar heard a mighty BANG echo through the air.

Then he heard a lady cry out. He saw, from afar, a comely Latino lady screech her chair back explosively. Her hanging cleavage wobbling up and down. As she got up, he saw her kick with her heel a parcel on the floor next to her. It rolled away and was lost.

. . . .

Inspector Bublanski suddenly heard Callima shout "GO GO GO!" into her walkie-talkie.

The next thing Bublanski saw was a host of black figures fast-roping down the side of the building and a swathe of police come running in shouting and barging their way through.

. . . .

Allamic Stryx saw a host of black figures fast-roping down the side of the building. He watched in glee as a swathe of police came running in shouting and barging their way through as they raided the shop he was watching _. Ha ha. Fantastic._

. . . .

Illamic Gilzarlar saw the black woman, startled, grab a parcel from the floor and hurry away. He saw the skinny girl do the same. And also a smart dressed man with a beard next to the punk girl got up in a hurry after grabbing blindly a parcel from the floor.

Illamic stealthily followed the black woman as she desperately avoided all the police on Drottninggatan.

CHAPTER ELEVEN

Lamacil Spoonz was kaking herself. It all went wrong. What will he think. What will become of her. These thoughts worried Lamacil as she travelled to Vasastaden. _Bloody dirty laundry. That's all I got for it. What the hell were all those police doing there?_

. . . .

Lisbeth Salander had sneaked back into the lab. It was the last hour of opening at the Tekniska Museet and she figured the lab would be quiet being a Friday, when everybody knocks off early.

Things had gone wrong earlier. _What the hell were all those police doing there?_ And she ended up with a mysterious object of absolutely no use to her. _Some damn device._ But it must do something, this 'X-object'. _And where did my laundry go? My dirty bras and knickers? Where was my third clue? III. The Third Generation. My generation. I need more DNA to figure this out._

What the hell went wrong?

When Lisbeth got back to the safety of her flat on Fiskargatan, she booted up her computer and interrogated the terminal at Police HQ to get a handle on the situation.

Most of the relevant reports were about the recent operation which was of no interest to Lisbeth, as she only scanned the pages for certain keywords associated with DNA and the like.

There she found it, an adjunct report of agents finding a parcel containing a box marked with 'III'. _That was it._

Inside, according to the report, were eight blood stains arranged in the style of a bloody handprint. The report just mentioned that it was sent for further analysis. There was nothing else.

As Lisbeth pondered it struck her that 'further analysis' must have meant laboratory work. So she logged onto the 'National Forensics Laboratory' using her stolen ID: Anna Stroberg.

She soon found what she was after after rapid scanning of multiple files, clicking her way through the system. And what a joy to behold. Eight complete DNA workouts. All gloriously compiled. _Yaaaay everybody cheer_. All the hard work done. They must have been busy, or rather nothing else doing.

She clicked through them trying to understand them. Only preliminary results analysis had been posted so far.

Here it was, the third generation. Masses of information. Eight more samples. Eight people. _Who were they?_

Lisbeth began to form a picture at last, out of the mystery. A mystery directly involving herself. She reasoned that she needed to get herself tested, as a baseline wild type control, to fill in several holes in her theory.

This was all terribly exciting and totally drove her to solve this and nail it down. She hated loose ends.

In the excitement, she had hardly stopped to reflect on what exactly she was letting herself in for, dragging up the past, with the bogeyman Zalachenko lurking large. Nor had she began to speculate who was sending all these clues to her. So focussed was she, she wanted to wrap this up as her mind could not rest until. A puzzle can send you mad with sleepless nights and the brain continually probing round the question. At times like these Lisbeth just couldn't switch off. She was running on adrenaline, edgy and fizzing _. It feels grreat!_

And now she was preparing one last experiment in the laboratory, quiet at day's end.

. . . .

Vartel Brinbrace was searching for that building where he had her again before. _It must be where she works._

It was her, he was sure. Lithe young girl. Only this time it was her negative self he saw. All in white. He would not have spotted her otherwise in that basement on this day.

There she was. Isidis. Great Mother of Gods. Shown in her glory. Haloed in infinity. Isis, Minerva, Venus, Juno, Persephone, Ceres, Diana, Rhea, Bellona, Hecate, Luna. Divinity of the Earth and celestial spheres, the winding path and power of the moon. Corn, wheat, cotton. Dominion over all vegetation. All sat upon her head. And upon her left foot rose victory and divination. Clinging to her hem the invention of medicine. And carrying upon her hand the fertility of irrigation _. I bow before you._

Was it the Ethnographic Museum or the National Maritime Museum. No, it was the big building, Vartel remembered, despite not being able to find the exact spot before.

Vartel wandered through 'The Machine Hall', under the hanggliders, balloons, biplanes and jet planes, past the classic cars and talking robots. Weaving through the crowds at the 4D cinema, which shook and rattled and stank. _Where was she? Oh downstairs somewhere._

Then he saw a door marked 'NO ENTRY'. He sidled over to it and waited and then opened it. He poked his head in and was about to enter when a hand clapped his shoulder. He turned to an enquiring face of a member of staff.

"Toilets?" Vartel said in a foreign accent.

"No," the attendant answered with a pointing finger.

Vartel thanked him and went off there.

He continued to the other side of the building, suspecting he was being followed all the way, always looking. He soon lost himself in the noisy crowds until he found another door. This time marked 'STAFF ONLY'.

He sneaked into this one ok, and the sounds of the tourists suddenly hushed to a gentle babble. But which way to go? He avoided some people and took an authoritative-pissed-off attitude as he wandered about whenever a member of staff passed. They were too busy. Too tired. He was still on the ground floor, noticeably revisiting repeating his steps back and forth. He didn't fancy trying any closed doors. How to explain himself if occupied. He figured the main corridors would connect everywhere anyway.

He continued on until at last he found some stairs down. He must have walked all the way round. _This is fun._

As he descended a palpable difference in the atmosphere took hold. Different smells, sounds and feelings. Dark and dusty. Now in the bowels there was a constant electric hum. Deep sounding. A call, pure, long and throbbing. Chords dark. Lugugugubrious. Low. In a cave of the dark middle earth. Embedded ore. Lumpmusic.

He opened the only door down there. But wait! A huskyfife note blew. Entering into a storage room, looking and listening. Always listening. He passed stacked shelves of odds and ends of equipment. Mostly massive chunks of ancient machine parts.

At last he came to another door. This one adorned with a 'Chemical Hazard' sign. He tried it. Unlocked. _Fantastic._

He slowly opened it. Bright light flooded out and smells alluring. A suction wave pulled him in. But wait! But hear! A trilling chirruped. Brain-tipped, cheek touched with flame, he listened feeling that flow endearing flow over skin limbs human heart soul spine. Vartel sighed to set ajar the door.

He entered, acutely aware, slightly lost in his mind. _Oh what the hell_. He would die soon anyway.

Vartel was taken back ten years. _Mamma! Mamma! I don't want to_. Hid behind the tree. Babes in the wood. Frightening them with masks too. Throwing up in the air to catch them. I'll murder you.

Vartel passed silently, carefully, inch by inch. Someone was around the corner. He wiped his sweaty palms on his shorts _. Shit, I hardly look the part._ He looked around and tried a door he thought was a closet. Great. He grabbed a lab coat.

He peered round the glass window. Peep! Who's in the corner?

There she was. For sure. Lithe young girl. In negative. All white. Can't see face yet. _Doesn't half know I'm_. Seeing anyone looking. Mirror there. Is that best side of her face! They always know.

She was humming to herself, deep absorbed. An Abba tune. Ah, lure! Alluring. Listen: 'Gimme Gimme Gimme...'

_Ok, act cool._ Vartel picked up some equipment and walked in full view along the corridor. _Don't look. Don't look_. Don't give it away.

He stopped at the other end, hidden again. Dropping the stuff he thought a bit. _Walk back just like someone working here._ This time he looked. A long hard look.

Girlgold she read and did not glance. Her gaze upon a page.

Ah fox met ah stork. Said thee fox too thee stork: Will you put your bill down inn my troath and pull upp ah bone?

She rose and closed her reading.

Did she fall or was she pushed?

She answered, slighting: Ask no questions and you'll hear no lies.

Like lady, ladylike.

"Good morning. I've not seen you here before."

"I only work here on weekends."

"Ah, I see, said the blind man to his deaf daughter."

"Cup of tea?"

No answer.

. . . .

When The Gator saw inside the parcel he was outraged.

"Where's the money? You bitch. Are you crossing me. Don't cross me!"

Lamacil was terrified.

"Undies. Girl's undies! Where is it?" he raged at her. "You have it!"

He struck her.

"See, you make me do this..."

He struck her again. This time he made a fist. She fell to the ground, winded.

"... just like you make me fuck you!"

He pushed her down and got on top of her. His hands gathered around her neck, squashing her down.

"Where is it? Where is it?"

He ripped his hands at her, clawing her clothes up, screaming.

"If even I cannot control you!"

He reached for his whip, hidden under a cupboard. She laid on the floor, trying to get her breath back, vomiting, while he raged about the room, ripping it up in his anger. He came back and took a swinging running kick at her.

"Nigger bitch!"

And he was only gearing himself up. It was just beginning. He looked to the corner of the room. The Bull. He took his shirt off.

. . . .

Lisbeth soon found the box marked 'III', wrapped in plastic, in a cupboard. She inspected it and its contents. She could not deduce anything more, afterall blood is blood. But when she came face to face with the photographed bandings numbered one to eight she whistled between her teeth:

"Hello brothers and sisters."

She was just setting up the equipment for another blot when someone entered the lab. She quickly turned her back and pretended to be busy reading her text book. He passed the corridor.

Bronze by gold heard the hoofirons steelyrining Imperthnthn thnthnthn.

He came back again. She saw him this time. A look hard look. His softness shimmering. He said something.

I stroked him behind the ears. He purred. I looked up and said What is you name. Your smiling eyes burn through my skin at that.

He kept coming in. Fro, to: to, fro. A baton cool protruding. From the boxes he pulled more and more glassware for his table. Construction site. Tubes, flasks, condensers, jars. More and more. A vast network supported by myriad clamps.

Show you something on the map getting way too near your arm with my breasts.

What was it he was building. _Can't quite see_. It doesn't look right. Yet it was beautiful.

Ours not pressed but so near almost touching just brushed against each other as on purpose the flirting unknowns almost feeling all the warm vibration all all but passing.

Tschink. Tschunk.

O rocks! Real angry and break glasses and pottery and there would be blood and then I'd put my hands sitting like against the table and you'd come up to me we just brush against each other as we meet sooo excited I need to have you there and then or I'll faint and this sharp like lightning go through my body. Y. You'd tear my knickers and all off and and I can feel you fill me up hard.

The words he said to me. Different, weird funny, absurd jokes. Stand out. And the marks on his skin. The dense spots, the bruised pigments, all against his red sunburn. What was it I read about... can't remember.

It was all your 'Plan': Ignore, Reward, Secret, Test, Escalate, Destroy. You ignore me sometimes. Don't answer me for some time or wonder off. Then you reward me with a I don't know poem for example. Then you ask me to participate in a secret group. You test me if I can keep the secret or do something you suggest against others or something. You thus isolate me. You ask something hmm i dunno even more of me. After that in theory you could do what you want. You have destroyed me.

. . . .

Naked, Lamacil recovered somewhat in the room to find herself being brutally pushed through a hole just too small. Into a dark cold chamber. She tried to kick out, but strong pumping hands fed her in.

"Here you go bitch!"

She was locked in.

Blackness with no room to move. She screamed in panic, banging to be let out. Metal thuds rang out. Coughing in the stifling blackness she felt around. Encased in steel. Darkness, no a light. Above her rasps she heard a match struck and fires starting up.

She screamed to be let out.

"Where did you put the money?" came the reply.

"I didn't. I didn't," she pleaded.

"Don't joke me. Undies!" the walls banged.

. . . .

Voices. Other. _Will we get caught_. Passing.

"Have you heard the?"

"Really and truly."

But she did not believe. Other gentleman told her that was so. She asked him was that so. And second told her so. That that was so.

"Those things only bring out a rash," she replied, "I asked that old fogey in the chemists for something for my skin."

"O, don't remind me of him for mercy's sake!"

"But wait till I tell you."

"No, don't."

"I won't listen."

"Don't let me think of him or I'll expire. The hideous old wretch!"

"Here he was. Hufa! Hufa!"

Shrill shriek of laughter sprang.

"O! Will you ever forget his goggle eye?"

In a giggling peal young voices blended. They threw young heads back to let freefly their laughter, screaming, high piercing notes. Gave full vent to a splendid yell, a full yell of full woman, delight, joy, indignation.

. . . .

Lamacil started to cry as she knelt on all fours. Slowly, slowly she felt the bottom of the container get warmer. _What's going on?_

The metal was heating up for sure. In her breath and sweat she was already hot, but this started to get uncomfortable.

Gradually the heat increased.

She shifted her feet, knees and hands about to avoid the hot spots.

The heat spread. She did her best to suspend herself, jamming herself higher. But soon the heat spread up the walls.

"Help! Get me out. Pleasee!"

"Where is it?" he shouted back.

"Pleasseee!"

. . . .

Vartel hushed the passing group, authoritatively. He was getting good at that.

But look.

By bronze, by gold, in oceangreen of shadow. She counted her ore, digesting, deciphering, dissecting information, secluded deaf. Twining a loose hair behind an ear. She twisted twined a hair. Sadly she twined in sauntering gold hair behind a curving ear. A jumping rose on satiny breasts of satin.

Here she walked, so do I. Here she reached, so do I. Here she touched, so do I. Wait while you wait. Hee hee.

Her voice warbled high. It soared, a bird, it held its flight, a swift pure cry, soar silver orb it leaped serene, speeding, sustained, to come, don't spin it out too long long breath she breath long life, soaring high, high resplendent, aflame, crowned, high in the effulgence symbolistic, high, of the ethereal bosom, high, of the high vast irradiation everywhere all soaring all around about the all, the endlessnessnessness...

And into a glass she did spit. And mixed and diluted and added and swirled. All flushed. Gold pinnacled hair.

She reached high to take a flask, stretching her satin arm, her bust, that all but burst, so high.

O! O! O!

Full-busted satin, satiny bosom. Her pinnacles of hair slowmoving. And gold flushed more. Full tup. Full throb.

. . . .

In her sweat Lamacil slipped and fell down to the bottom. She screamed as incredible heat burnt her anywhere she touched. In a panic she scrambled, screaming, twisting, up and down minijumps, hands searching. But there was no escape. No safe place. Every part of the metal steamed with heat.

When she rolled vast stretches of her skin made contact. Searing heat pains. Hideous shrieking echoed.

Skin melted to the sides and ripped off her. Choking pungy fumes engulfed as the temperature of this oven rose.

Screaming. Screaming. She was being cooked, roasted.

And the metal was turning red hot.

. . . .

O! O! O!

A liquid of womb of woman eyeball gazed under a fence of lashes, calmly, hearing. See real beauty of the eye when she not speaks. At each slow satiny heaving bosom's wave red rose rose slowly, sank red rose. Heartbeats her breath: breath that is life. And all the tiny tiny fernfoils trembled of maidenhair.

On the smooth jutting tube laid she hand lightly, plumply, _leave it to my hands._ All lost in pity. Jingle jingle jaunted jingling. Fro, to: to, fro: over the polished rim (she knows his eyes, _my eyes_ , her eyes) her thumb and finger passed in pity: passed, repassed and, gently touching, then slid so smoothly, slowly down.

Quick, hurry up my mind is going funny. Pwee! A wee little wind piped eeee. Ours not pressed but so near! Your arm with my breasts. O rocks! Defences thrown. Don't want him to see my reaction. Get shot of it. Freer in air. I just have to masturbate here and now.

Tiny, her tremulous fern foils of maidenhair. Fff. _Oo_.

And flushed yet more _(you horrid!)_ , more goldenly. _Naughty Henry. Hee hee_.

Yes bronze from anear, by gold from afar. In her little wee. His gouty fingers nakkering.

That ohhh almost pushed me over. This might take time or suddenly crash big time.

Flood of warm jimjam lickitup secretness flowed to flow in music out, in desire, dark to lick flow, invading. Tipping her tepping her tapping her topping her. Tup. Pores to dilate dilating. Tup. The joy the feel the warm the. Tup. To pour over sluices gushes. Flood, gush, flow, joygush, tupthrob. Now! Language of love.

I can't control my body anymore.

Prrprr.

Boomed crashing cords. When love absorbs. War! War! Full tup. Full throb.

Pprrpffrrppfff.

Consumed.

Done.

Begin.

. . . .

Lamacil was barely alive when she was dragged out.

Hands slipped around her ankles, yanking her out, but also pulling away her cooked loose flesh. Chunks of her rolled and tore off. The hands ended up grasping right down to her leg bone.

The total pain she had been through had numbed her. It was the jerk in her legs that awoke her to new planes of pain.

Out of there, in brightness, she turned her smoking eyes to a kind bald red face, and died.

CHAPTER TWELVE

The skin inverted and flopping about, juices running down. Slinking snakes of intestine sausages covered in flecks of dirt and leaf. Insects chewing. A rat leapt disturbed, its mouth with a foul rag of meat. The blood-splatter checked upon neighbouring stones. Some pattern radius. The long red muscles skewered by gristled bone splinters. Ribs had leapt apart like springs recoiling, studded in the ground awry. Copious fluids staining the ground ashine. Fats smeared on the headstone. Stringy sinews and body wires entangled like an old ruined kite or a puppet in the attic. All the organs had slid out from its popped casing like an abortion afterbirth. The pincer jaws of the two meeting stones had reduced the man depth to nothing. Bulging muscles under pressure almost carved up. Clean sliced through almost. Just dangling useless legs. You could snip them off with the least of dainty finger-scissors at the thigh point.

Then there was the face. A bloated hideous pop-eyed screaming hole. Everything in his face seemed to have exploded, the glassy dull eyes excavated. Tongue extruding, gagging still, gasping for breath. Blood bursts and spittle beyond reason. Brutal dashed bruises and caved-in regions. The neck crooked all wrong.

Fingers severed by viciously sharp newly cracked stone wedges that had collapsed down. A kneecap was busted off and had fallen down the backskin of the shin and calf. A great spray of blood had cascaded up and fountained down from a torn artery. Faeces and piss all mixed up and drained away. Impacted and thrown out.

But the main thing was the disgusting sight of the fat ribbles under the skin exposed yellow white in the sun. And the stink was how Callima Dreza's day started.

Fresh out of cadet school, she enjoyed her routine tour of Police HQ. But she was soon back to duties. Beat patrols.

Only to arrive back at HQ for lunch and find a memo from Criminal Inspector Bublanski requesting her services.

She had heard all about Bublanski, not only through the ranks, but in the newspapers as well. Although he had a conservative appearance, in some eyes he was seen as rebellious in nature. Callima liked him very much.

. . . .

Vartel Brinbrace looked at Lisbeth Salander just as Lisbeth Salander looked at Vartel Brinbrace. Only she spoke:

"I was walking around with the gates of my heart open

For ventilation purposes only, mind!

And you somehow walked right in, unannounced

It has happened once before already

I won't make it work

It won't hold."

Vartel saw meters: thermometers, balances, scales, ammeters, voltmeters, multimeters, colorimeters, pyknometers, hydrometers, photometers, flowmeters, dilometers, refractometers, polarimeters, pH meters, Geiger counters, luxmeters, barometers, manometers, gauges, gas meters, electrometers, soil penetrometers, spectrophotometers, fluorimeters, tachometers, rheometers, turbidimeters, rotational and oscillatory viscometers knocked to eleven. Off the scale.

My spasms of glory when I look at your kind face. You look directly into my soul and I can feel you breathing inside me. Your kind low voice soothing my troubled soul as I dine out in style on your features. Succulent envoy of Aphrodite, nature's design drips off your every angle.

Vartel gave a lop-sided smile.

. . . .

Callima Dreza was on duty near Ladugrädsgärdet for a TV company that was filming a docu-drama based on the events of 24th April 1975 when the West German embassy was hijacked and its staff held hostage. She was in charge of security for the pyrotechnic lorry when her attention was caught by a rush of police cars screeching east along Djurgärdsbrunnsvägen. All chasing a battered old Volvo.

. . . .

"My head says this is stupid

my heart throws punches in (desp)air

my head says no

my heart screams back he's already here with me so what d'you got?

I'm gonna fight it

don't you think! I've got my ways

my head says you will leave soon, why go through the suffering?

my heart points out you already suffer too much

too much because you fight it

so stop being stupid

and I ask what magic did you use to bewitch my heart?

is it hormonal confusion or does it touch any deeper?

ephemeral substance is my fear

my body feels like after a bare knuckle fight

everything is at war with me

right now

everything is at war with me

inside

everything is at war with me

all the time."

Our kisses so fervent upon each other's lips I feel shocked and slow fainting falls over me. We fall back together never letting go as hopes designs and perfect reality sweep my high fever to that day when all the world's troubles will be extinguished in our boundless divinity. My mind so expanded by that future that I can see over horizons and I feel my soul outleaping and flying to heaven. My mind engulfs whole acreage of prime real estate as I perambulate upon your beauty and know we are destined to be together again.

. . . .

Callima, caught up in the excitement, followed the police action and intercepted Inspector Bublanski.

. . . .

"My mind won't let my heart feel pain

My mind won't let it happen.

You can't win this game

So you might as well keep playing

Postponing your death

Postponing your extinction in my head

Pushing forward your expiration date

Keep playing for my sake."

. . . .

Callima and Bublanski screeched to a skidding halt outside the target building.

. . . .

Vartel saw that the delegation, present in full force, consisted of Commendatore Bacibaci Beninobenone (the semiparalysed doyen of the party who had to be assisted to his seat by the aid of a powerful steam crane), Monsieur Pierrepaul Petitépatant, the Grandjoker Vladinmire Pokethankertscheff, the Archjoker Leopold Rudolph von Schwanzenbad-Hodenthaler, Countess Marha Virága Kisászony Putrápesthi, Hiram Y. Bomboost, Count Athanatos Karamelopulos, Ali Baba Backsheesh Rahat Lokum Effendi, Senor Hidalgo Caballero Don Pecadillo y Palabras y Paternoster de la Malora de la Malaria, Hokopoko Harakiri, Hi Hung Chang, Olaf Kobberkeddelsen, Mynheer Trik van Trumps, Pan Poleaxe Paddyrisky, Goosepond Prhklstr Kratchinabritchisitch, Borus Hupinkoff, Herr Hurhausdirektorpresident Hans Chuechli-Steuerli, Nationalgymnasiummuseumsanatoriumandsuspensoriumsordinaryprivatdocentgeneral-historyspecialprofessordoctor Kriegfried Ueberallgemein. All the delegates without exception expressed themselves in the strongest possible heterogeneous terms concerning the nameless barbarity which they had been called upon to witness. An animated altercation (in which all took part) ensued among the guests. In the course of the argument cannonballs, scimitars, boomerangs, blunderbusses, stinkpots, meatchoppers, umbrellas, catapults, knuckledusters, sandbags, lumps of pig iron were resorted to and blows were freely exchanged, leading to several bleeding profusely.

"I'd fall right into you

It would take me some time start hating you properly.

I'm falling for you

And that would break your heart."

I fear the world would end in our embrace. Whole galaxies swallowed in our divine love. Unstoppable the love between us, the world cannot contain our love. Nuclear explosions detonate within our kisses as the whole world of humanity unravels in my mind. I am so gripped by your force we cannot part the embrace that would put the world to shame.

. . . .

At the Tekniska Museet a host of black figures fast-roped down the side of the building and a swathe of police came running in shouting and barging their way through.

Callima and Bublanski wandered through 'The Machine Hall', under the hanggliders, balloons, biplanes and jet planes, past the classic cars and talking robots. Weaving through the crowds at the 4D cinema, which shook and rattled and stank.

Then she saw a door marked 'NO ENTRY'. She sidled over to it and waited and then opened it.

. . . .

"Me is a what that you don't know

you should be scared you know

not of emotions

but me... tearing yours

pulling you in

out and out

till the last drop of you is mine

it will possess you eat and taste

it will hurt sting and break

because all you really are alone

is a man

wanting something not yours to own

frustrating pauses

wrong way round

into numbness slips

your mind

that is the punishment

for not letting me talk

for asking too much

reaching a wall

out of your hands

wanting a change

where me is, you stop!

you stop being first

don't open a phase where war is on

where winner is needed me right in front."

. . . .

Callima descended into the solemn gloom, looking. She opened the only door down there and entered into a storage room, hurrying through. She passed stacked shelves of odds and ends of equipment. Mostly massive chunks of ancient machine parts. Soon she came to another door. This one adorned with a 'Chemical Hazard' sign. She tried it. Locked. She broke it down and slowly opened it.

. . . .

"I'm the victim.

Sometimes it feels like I'm the murderer."

Now a picture of a butting match. Cracking their bloody skulls. One going for the other with her head down like a bull at the gate.

"I can't bear the thought of you anymore

It's just too much

I have to let go."

She threw calibration weights, slotted masses, mass hangers, buckets, tanks, pressure tanks, evaporating basins, humidity chambers, climatic chambers, corrosion chambers, tissue culture chambers, incubators, sample dividers, rotary evaporators, dryers, modular fermenters, ion analysers, oscilloscopes, signal generators, power controllers, vacuum pumps, suction pumps, immersion heaters, thermal cyclers, ultrasonic disintegrators, vacuum regulators, gas regulators, gas cylinders, furnaces, stools, desk lamps, cabinets, refrigerators, trolleys, fume cupboards, benches at him.

. . . .

Callima saw debris strewn and wind-blown everywhere in the laboratory. Stands, racks, clocks, angle glass bends, porous pots, still-heads, anti-bumping granules, broken porcelain, oil baths, boats, blow pipes, glass wool, ceramic wool, filters, filter papers, filter sheets, filter holders, filter membranes, filter discs, tripods, gauze, taps, stoppers, bungs, crucibles, water bottles, splints, universal indicator papers, leads, crocodile clips, batteries, power packs, nozzles, bulbs, tubing, pans, boxes, circulators, recirculates, cryostats, cryovials, immersion coolers, insulating spheres, covers, lids, caps, probes, cables, plugs, containers, trays, sensors, thermoregulators, flow coolers, jerricans, carboys, wash bottles, brushes, cable ties, calculators, water jackets, microscopes, centrifuges, atomisers, wipers, swabs, tissues, colony counters, cotton wool, extraction tubes, adaptors, data loggers, disiccators, guards, diluters, dispensors, plungers, valves, cups, Petri dishes, microscope slides, membranes, sockets, terminals, connectors, switches, shunts, multipliers, wires, relays, air baths, extraction thimbles, syringe filters, magnifiers, paper tissues, towels, latex gloves, cotton gloves, nylon gloves, vinyl gloves, rubber gloves, leather gloves, asbestos mitts, washers, rinsers, respirators, combustion spoons, glove boxes, cover slips, cold traps, absortion traps, connectors, fire blankets, waste containers, absorbant pads, absorbant granules, health and safety signs, safety signs, permanent markers, ear muffs, ear plugs, eye shields, spectacles, goggles, faceshields, bases, bossheads, closed rings, holders, scaffolding, feet, magnetic followers, storages boxes, storage bins, syringe valves, tape, test-tube holders, test-tube peg racks, thermocouples, porcelain tiles, timers, triangles, tripod stands, shelves, baskets, snapper clips, flow cups, bottle rinsers, waste bins, deionisers, water stills, samplers, dip nets.

. . . .

"I have to put a stop to this

this is getting unreasonable

beyond reason beyond lust

soreness at heart

cramps in my muscles

sleep is a mere recollection of childish fun."

She pushed him onto the dissecting board, autoclave, bellows, blower, blender, pestle and mortar, wires, clamps, Bunsen burner, water taps, gas cocks, needle valves, gas lighters, hotplate, electrodes, first aid kit, spatulas, bench vice, thumbscrew clips.

Life's impassioned plea flows through us. We spark in close contact and enflame the world in our love. We upset the carefully laid laws of physics with the ferocity of our orgasms. We commit the most heinous of crimes when we rampage about our bed. We dive into the heart of our sun's heat and don't shy back for want of denial, the colours of our love fly from the topmost mast blazing in glory the true intent that love lays upon man. We strewn the wasteland of man's evil with glorious flowers of hope. We serve flakes of lust upon each other's body as we hungrily devour the sensations of pleasure. We bite deeply into love's apple caring not if we bite our lips. We scream the agony of coming as if the world were ending this very minute. We trespass upon emotions unforeseen. We sink our fangs in the delight of wickedness and contemplate a world with such love. We laugh at the pitiless denizens of the world not knowing what we know. We melt the chains of work without desire for each other. We dive with the desire of a thousand points of sparkling sequins. We sink fireboats waging for our destruction. We climb substantial facets of... We we we...

. . . .

Callima trod through shattered glass everywhere. Shards and splinters and glass from vapour tubes, recrystallization tubes, gradtubes, melting-point tubes, test-tubes, capillary tubes, specimen tubes, absorption tubes, hard-glass ignition tubes, drying tubes, conical flasks, graduated flasks, round-bottomed flasks, pear-shaped flasks, volumetric flasks, separating funnels, thistle funnels, cylindrical funnels, dropping funnels, titration funnels, distillation funnels, filter funnels, measuring cylinders, measuring jugs, bottles, reagent bottles, density bottles, aspirator bottles, reservoir bottles, reaction vials, ampoules, fractionating columns, distillation columns, chromatography columns, pipettes, teat pipettes, dropping pipettes, beakers, tall-form beakers, jars, bell jars, vacuum jars, cuvettes, chambers, draining syphons, stopcocks, watch glasses, troughs, reaction vessels, culture vessels, collecting vessels, immersion oil vessels, water baths, condensers, flask lids, tips.

. . . .

"I am not your future

I won't choose you I know it

You have to find a different way

You have to find a different solution."

She came at him with pins, awls, forceps, scalpels, tweezers, scissors, tongs, fire-extinguishers, syringes, syringe needles, palette knives, filling knives, soldering irons, snips, wire strippers.

I wish to die with you and enter our own sacred world of trusts and ideals. See how we turn all nature into overdrive as our love outlasts the last twinkling of the stars. We shall overshadow the great cosmos of the nightsky. We shall overpower every human desire and see fit to rebuild the great cities in our image of love. We shall die together forever and die at peace in our one arms.

. . . .

"My eyes are stinging," complained Callima.

"Yeah, it gets you right in the eye," Bublanski said.

Chemicals punched the air: Carbolic acid, acetone, ammonia, acetaldehyde, benzene, picric acid, xylene, hydrazine, diethylamine, soda-lime, ether, detergents, lime-water, iodine, bromine, cyclohexane, silver nitrate, starch, sulphuric acid.

Liquid lakes of alkali oils. Noxious steaming vapours of brown purple gases smelling of vinegar and bad-eggs. Toxic radiation biohazards leaking and oozing through the surrounding aerosol mists. Acrid fumes of corrosive solvents irritating. Crackling spitting pops of decrepitation rose from uncertain foam. Reactions taking place still, effervescing, oxidising, precipitating coloured salts. Crystals sublimating. Multicoloured flames blue green yellow lilac red orange from the open gas valves streaming and hissing. Melting acids damaging worktops with saponification of fats larding a high-tide mark on the skirting board. Explosive scorching marks. And dust.

. . . .

"No

Simple as that."

It was a historic and a hefty battle when Lisbeth and Vartel were scheduled to don the gloves for the purse of fifty sovereigns. Handicapped as she was by lack of poundage, Stockholm's pet lamb made up for it by superlative skill in ringcraft. The final bout of fireworks was a gruelling for both champions. The welterweight sergeantmajor had tapped some lively claret in the previous mixup during which Salander had been receivergeneral of rights and lefts, the artilleryman putting in some neat work on the pet's nose, and Salander came on looking groggy. The soldier got to business, leading off with a powerful left jab to which the Swedish gladiator retaliated by shooting out a stiff one flush to the point of Brinbrace's jaw. The redcoat ducked but the Stockholmer lifted him with a left hook, the body punch being a fine one. They came to handigrips. Salander quickly became busy and got her man under, the bout ending with the bulkier on the ropes, Salander punishing him. The Englishman, whose right eye was nearly closed, took his corner where he was liberally drenched with water and when the bell went came on gamey and brimful of pluck, confident of knocking out the fistic Scand in jigtime. It was a fight to a finish and the best man for it. The two fought like tigers and excitement ran fever high. The referee twice cautioned Vucking Vartel for holding but the pet was tricky and her footwork a treat to watch. Lisbeth dusted the floor with him. Handed him the father and mother of a beating. See the little kipper not up to his navel and the big fellow swiping. God, she gave him one last puck in the wind, Queensberry rules and all, made him puke what he never ate. After a brisk exchange of courtesies during which a smart upper cut of the military man brought blood freely from his opponent's mouth the lamb suddenly waded in all over her man and landed a terrific left to Battling Brinbrace's stomach, flooring him flat. It was a knockout clean and clever. Amid tense expectation the Portobello bruiser was being counted out when Brinbrace's second Ole Pfotts Wettstein threw in the towel and the Södermalm gal was declared victor to the frenzied cheers of the public who broke through the ringropes and fairly mobbed her with delight.

"Burned down houses

I can see your insides

your sufferings

simple pleasures

broken hopes

stupid secrets

shining through

through smoke and ashes

everyday happiness

treasure above all

I claim you in my dreams

my house still standing

you keep escaping

my heart too cold

you abandoned me

and I blame all

all that you know to be me."

That's a picture for you. Mark for a soft-nosed bullet. Old lardyface standing up to the business end of a gun.

. . . .

Callima Dreza was returning home after her long first hard day when she passed someone she thought she recognised. The man clutched a bandage about his neck.

She tapped him.

"Hello."

He turned the man wearing sneakers with loose laces, army shorts and a grey t-shirt with the purple slogan 'EVERYTHNG EXPLODES'.

"Oh sorry, wrong person."

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

scratch my eyes

put 'em some place safe for thenight

i cannot look

dark

dark

dark

putrefied souls climbing up the stairs

to catch fresh air

find paradise

lost

lost with me

lost in me

because of you

you

you

you

only to find

deserted confusion

maps to foolishness

die

die

die

inside of me

turning light to burning death

I implore you .. I forget .. I give up

=

I hate your touch

like the vacancy sign

in my eyes

when you forget to smile

at my bleeding hands

tonight

shake me back to life

kill me off

rip my sides

steal my tongue

paralyze my emotions

you are mine

you're my new owner now

now

punish my deepest sighs

now

one more time

make me feel

alive again

alive with you

instead of you

I step on you

tonight

...

. . . .

Licalam Vortres was getting ready for filming. She was to present a docu-drama based on the events of 24th April 1975 when the West German embassy was hijacked and its staff held hostage.

The crew had prepared the site very realistically.

A loud hailer inside the building shouted out:

"The Holger Meins Commando is holding members of the embassy staff in order to free prisoners in West Germany. If the Police move in, we shall blow the building up with 15 kilos of TNT."

The 'Police' waited, crouched outside.

. . . .

She finally shut up and stopped hitting him. She seemed delayed in time. Swaying, twitching, eyes closed but flicking behind their lids.

Vartel was ready. For the last hour he had stealthily taken the measure of her. Six stone. Five foot up, folding to half that. One foot across at a pinch. Skinny enough. He was worried a bit about her breasts, how squeezable are they? Only one way to find out.

Now he pulled out his 'Northface' rucksack. It should fit her exactly.

It was just a matter of bending and squeezing. _A nice puzzle_. Folding, tucking in, wrapping her up. _This goes here. That goes there_. Pushing down and zipping up. Drawstrings pulled, covers covering. Tight. _As snug as a bug in a rug_. Wrapped and rolled just like a carpet. Trussed and twisted. It fitted none but her. Only she could fit.

And then off he went.

In the blackness Lisbeth used this quiet time to reflect.

What do I know? What do I know? Think.

The first: male, polydactyl, syndactyly. Imagine, claws. High likelihood of cancer. The second: female, synophrys monobrow, excess testosterone. The third: male, low testosterone. Red hair.

You're an incognita, too many unknowns; but that is also good. A nice canvass for a girl to paint over.

you give

you take away

and I die a little every time

only to resuscitate back to life

nearer than ever

completely undeserved

you

i open my eyes i see huge precipice

endless

bottomless? no

too real the hurt

i cringe

feel hollow

and

feel like crying

i don't

i don't anymore

too vacant my soul

reprimand myself just

why did you look?

stop looking

close your eyes again

who cares? everyone suffers

nothing is true

nothing is perfect

shut down

stand by

waiting for death

but...

something is missing in my heart

nothing seems to fit

i keep putting stuff inside

but everytime

anew the emptiness just expands

rough edges bleeding

. . . .

Licalam Vortres winced as shots rang out from submachine guns. One of the hostages had been murdered inside. Moments later a man was seen at the window of the building with a gun held to his head by a terrorist. He swiftly killed him with three bullets to the head.

"Do as we say or we'll kill one every hour," he shouted out.

. . . .

Out of the middle of the park Vartel saw a Knight come over the hilltop, quickly followed by his Squire. Back from the Crusades.

The mournful Knight stopped before Vartel.

"I want to confess but my heart is empty. I, Antious Block, play chess with Death."

"Eat this. It will dull the pain," he told Vartel passing him some jerky.

"We are powerless bystanders," added the Squire.

No-eyed, encrusted, dust-filled, cobwebby corpses lumbered past. A caged cart pushed by Soldiers approached. Inside was a wretched Witch, exhausted and defeated.

"Look into my eyes. What do you see? Do you see him?" the Witch asked.

Vartel, curious, peered into her eyes.

"Isn't he behind you?" she uttered.

Vartel, spooked, looked behind.

The cart passed on to be replaced by a shifty-looking man.

"I am Doctor Mirabilis. Caelestis et Diabilis."

"Yes I know," Vartel replied.

He led a troupe of entertainers in Harlequin costumes and disguises, playing flutes and drums.

"Unfortunately I can't eat grass. Can you teach me?" the Fool asked Vartel.

The Fool grunted and pranced off like a bear.

"Be careful of your visions or people will think you're mad," the Actress warned Vartel.

"People don't like those with too many ideas," she added offering Vartel fresh strawberries and milk.

"Your thread of life is easily caught, your day is short," the Actor proclaimed.

"What a performance. I'm a brilliant actor."

Idiots danced past Vartel.

"This is the end. The last day is ending," a Merchant informed Vartel.

"We feel that something will happen, but don't know what," he added.

Two children raced past after a runaway ball. They were closely followed by a solemn religious procession crossing the park. Cowled priests wafted great clouds of incense from swung censors. Moaning and lamentation as a giant wooden cross was carried. Then men painfully self-flagellating their sins away. Others carried fire brands.

They all stopped and knelt in prayer. A mad monk faced Vartel.

"Do you know this may be your last hour. Death is standing at your back. You are condemned, do you hear. Take pity on us."

The parade rose and carried on; behind, others carried skulls aloft for Judgement Day.

A hideous plague victim stumbled forward shrieking, his arms swinging like two ropes. He furiously ripped at his neck swellings and bit at his hands.

"I've got the plague. I'm afraid to die. Can't you have mercy. Help me! Have you no mercy at all!"

He sunk convulsed twitched and died at Vartel's feet.

Vartel next saw a big bulky Blacksmith with a heavy hammer on his shoulders.

"Come little brother," he pleaded for Vartel to join them.

"And when the Lamb had opened the seventh seal, there was silence in heaven," said a women.

"The time has come!" told another.

Lastly Vartel was visited by a vision of Death himself. His black robes flowing in the wind and his scythe arching over his head like a halo.

"I am Death! Nobody escapes me."

"Have you come for me?" Vartel asked.

"I have long walked beside you."

"I know."

"You know nothing. I am unknowing."

"Aren't we all," Vartel replied.

"Are you prepared?"

"Wait a moment," Vartel pleaded.

Death looked at him grimly with his moon-face and smiled. He walked on after the others.

Vartel rushed on, sweating, bewildered, bearing his burden. He looked back to see them all dancing, arms interlocked, Death leading the way.

Lisbeth was being tossed about. Fro, to: to, fro. And upsidedown to boot. The tough double-stitched material of the rucksack made it hard for her breath. Faintly her brain was losing oxygen...

The fourth: female, XO, monosomy X. Turner's syndrome: short height, webbed neck, drooping eyelids, broad flat chest, dry eyes, dry vagina, elbows turned inwards, cubitus valgus, infertile with no ovaries. Gene locus Xp22.33.

Lisbeth recovered somewhat in the room to find herself being brutally pushed through a hole just too small. Into a dark cold chamber. She tried to kick out, but strong pumping hands fed her in.

The fifth: male, trisomy of XYY, supernumery Y. Klinefelters' syndrome: tall, thin, breasts, mildly retarded, hypospadias, small testes, infertile.

She was being pitched about like snuff at a wake when the stormy winds do blow. Filthy trip. Shaking up her livers. Puking overboard. Nausea. Fear in the funk. Tide up. Air gone.

. . . .

A massive explosion when off as the TNT detonated.

Everyone inside got severely burnt.

And they all looked was it sheet lightning but Licalam Vortres saw it too over the trees beside the embassy, blue and then green and purple.

And she saw a long Roman candle going up over the trees, up, up, and, in the tense hush, they were all breathless with excitement as it went higher and higher.

Then the Roman candle burst and it was like a sigh of O! and everyone cried O! O! in raptures and it gushed out of it a stream of rain gold hair threads and they shed and ah! they were all greeny dewy stars falling with golden, O so lovely, O, soft, sweet, soft!

A monkey puzzle rocket burst, spluttering in darting crackles. Zrads and zrads, zrads, zrads.

A last lonely candle wandered up the sky and broke, drooping, and shed a cluster of violet but one white stars. They floated, fell: they faded.

. . . .

And there it was. Vartel saw it finally, fully. What he had been following.

The Kaknästornet TV Tower. 160 metres tall. 170 with antenna included.

Boy it was ugly, looking as though it was built by a toddler from sand-coloured Lego bricks. Neobrutalist. But it was tall. Tall enough for Vartel's purpose.

And was it sheet lightning but Vartel saw it too over the trees, blue and then green and purple.

And he saw a long Roman candle going up over the trees, up, up, and, in the tense hush, they were all breathless with excitement as it went higher and higher.

Then the Roman candle burst and it was like a sigh of O! and everyone cried O! O! in raptures and it gushed out of it a stream of rain gold hair threads and they shed and ah! they were all greeny dewy stars falling with golden, O so lovely, O, soft, sweet, soft!

A monkey puzzle rocket burst, spluttering in darting crackles. Zrads and zrads, zrads, zrads

A last lonely candle wandered up the sky and broke, drooping, and shed a cluster of violet but one white stars. They floated, fell: they faded.

water rises swallowing all

slowing rising you can feel it from below

Her tensed body extremely will break. Flexing like crazy. Eyes tight.

Earthquake outside. Grumbling screaming inside. Possessed. Her head heavy, burning blood, torched.

up and up

legs don't stop where the skirt should cover up

and further up

a breathless weight

trapped, alive

dive into nothing

circle around my neck

as if to clothe me

and strangle me

take my breath

darkness

timeless

melts all

body gone

calm inside

rays of pleasure

head halo

air

And she heard a long Roman candle going up over the trees, up, up, and, in the tense hush, they were all breathless with excitement as it went higher and higher.

The sixth: female, Fragile X, Xq 27.3, idiot, facial and behavioural abnormalities, hyperactive; Down syndrome, trisomy of chromosome 21q, 22.1-2, epicanthic folds, flattened nasal bridge, cockleshell ears, hypoglossia, hypotonic lower lip, receding chin, small hands, short, unusual fingerprints.

Your stupid blue blue eyes how am I supposed to get lost in them thinking potentially.

She stared at the eyes. Hypnotic. Unable to avert her gaze. Numb.

rigid attorneys

taste of metal shades of blue

Then a shaking began in her body. Pain shooting. A ball of light hit her internally. Torching her insides. She adverts her eyes and goes inside.

Warmth

but lost grip

Huge cramps strike.

don't think

Sticky darkness.

The eyes that were fastened upon her set her pulses tingling. She looked at him a moment, meeting his glance, and a light broke in upon her. Whitehot passion was in that face, passion silent as the grave, and it had made her his. At last they were left alone without the others to pry and pass remarks and she knew he could be trusted to the death, steadfast, a sterling man, a man of inflexible honour to his fingertips.

And while she gazed her heart went pitapat. Yes, it was her he was looking at, and there was meaning in his look. His eyes burned into her as though they would search her through and through, read her very soul. Wonderful eyes they were, superbly expressive, but could you trust them?

She drew herself up to her full height. Their souls met in a last lingering glance and the eyes that reached her heart, full of a strange shining, hung enraptured on her sweet flowerlike face. She half smiled at him wanly, a sweet forgiving smile, a smile that verged on tears, and then they parted.

Then the Roman candle burst and it was like a sigh of O! and everyone cried O! O! in raptures and it gushed out of it a stream of rain gold hair threads and they shed and ah! they were all greeny dewy stars falling with golden, O so lovely, O, soft, sweet, soft!

The seventh: male, albino, colourblind, excess of testosterone. <Ronald Niedermann>

And she seemed to hear the panting of his heart, his hoarse breathing, She would fain have cried to him chokingly, held out her snowy slender arms to him to come, to feel his lips laid on her white brow, the cry of a young girl's love, a little strangled cry, wrung from her, that cry that has rung through the ages.

It was he who mattered and there was joy on her face because she wanted him because she felt instinctively that he was like no-one else. The very heart of the girlwoman went out to him, her dreamhusband, because she knew on the instant it was him. If he had suffered, more sinned against than sinning, or even, even, if he had been himself a sinner, a wicked man, she cared not.

She had loved him better than he knew. Lighthearted deceiver and fickle like all his sex he would never understand what he had meant to her and for an instant there was in the amber eyes a quick stinging of tears.

A monkey puzzle rocket burst, spluttering in darting crackles. Zrads and zrads, zrads, zrads

The last: male, skin hyperpigmentation of coffee coloured café-au-lait. Mongolian spots due to loss of melanophores. Red hair. <???>

... _and who would understand, take me in his sheltering arms, strain me to him in all the strength of his deep passionate nature and comfort me with a long long kiss. It would be like heaven._

She felt the warm flush, a danger signal always with Lisbeth Salander, surging and flaming into her cheeks.

She could almost see the swift answering flash of admiration in his eyes that set her tingling in every nerve. Her woman's instinct told her that she had raised the devil in him and at the thought a burning scarlet swept from throat to brow till the lovely colour of her face became a glorious rose.

A last lonely candle wandered up the sky and broke, drooping, and shed a cluster of violet but one white stars. They floated, fell: they faded.

BANG.

Lisbeth was barely alive when she was dragged out.

Hands slipped around her ankles, yanking her out. The hands grasping right down to her leg bone.

The total pain she had been through had numbed she. It was the jerk in her legs that awoke her to new planes of pain.

Out of there, in brightness, she turned her smoking eyes.

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

In the bowels of Police HQ on Kungsholmen, Inspector Bublanski for hours had sweated the suspect formerly called Trobeen Froj.

"Were you the killer seven years ago in Bergshamra?

Were you? Were you? Were you?"

Blazing face: redhot. Too much John Barleycorn. Cure for a red nose. Drink it like the Devil till it turns adelite. A lot of money spent colouring it.

He tried every tactic to expose him, but really in his face he knew he was innocent, despite having form. Bublanski could only but conclude that he had been sold up the river.

_That was it._ He was furious now.

. . . .

"Cumun artoo varrish varrooke. Leprovik flek vark balcalus. Yangama papperon. Pogeta largol. Nasturn dumpa folbury. Magertonus. Hic.

Send us, bright one, light one, Horhorn, quickening and wombfruit.

Send us, bright one, light one, Horhorn, quickening and wombfruit.

Send us, bright one, light one, Horhorn, quickening and wombfruit.

Be gracious to me, O Providence & Psyche.

I invoke Typhonis Typhonis Typhonis.

WHAT DO YOU WANT?

YOU HAVE WOKEN ME!

I request immortality so that i alone may ascend into heaven as an inquirer and behold the universe.

WHAT DO YOU GIVE ME?

YOUR LIFEBLOOD

First, origin of my origin.

First beginning of my beginning, spirit of my spirit, fire of my fire, water of my water, earth of my earth.

WEEERRRRHHHAHHHHHSJJSJJSJJSSS!

AAOOOU, IAAEEUOIO, I EE OO IAI...

WHY YOU?

I, born mortal from mortal womb, but transformed by tremendous power and an incorruptible right hand...

SILENCE SILENCE SILENCE

Guard me

SILENCE

Pledge your words to me.

You are light-maker, the supreme, the Pole-Lords of Heaven..."

Vartel knelt atop of the Kaknäs TV tower. He had found a spare empty room where you could see the whole city as far as the archipelago, in a sweeping panorama of islands and water.

Lisbeth laid sprawled on the floor, gasping for breath.

Women's woe with wonder pondering.

" **When the disk is open, you will see the fireless circle. Open your eyes and you will see the doors. Open and the world of the gods which is within, so that from the pleasure and joy of the sight your spirit runs ahead and ascends.**

The rays will turn towards you.

Look at the centre of them.

For when you have done this, look in the air and you will see lightning bolts going down and lights flashing and the earth shaking and you will see a youthful god descending. A god immensely great of bright appearance, of fiery crown.

Then you will see lightning bolts leaping from his eyes and stars from his body. And at once produce a long bellowing sound, straining your belly, that you may excite the five senses.

Kiss your amulets saying "MOKRIMO PHERIMOPHERERI. Life of me i give!"

Respond.

O Lord, while being born again, i am passing away; while growing and having grown, i am dying; while being born from a life-generating birth, i am passing on, released to death - as you have founded, as you have decreed, and have established the mystery. I am PHEROYRA MIOYRI."

Vartel spoke to himself with increasing conviction. He waved a pair of scissors about, preparing the sacrifice.

Getting back her mind, Lisbeth swore and chode all she could:

"A murrain seize the dolt, what a devil he would be at, thou chuff, thou puny, thou got in peasestraw, thou losel, thou chitterling, thou spawn of a rebel, thou dykedropt, thou abortion thou, to shut up his drunken drool out of that like a curse of God ape."

" **Initiate, so that she alone may hear with you the things spoken, let her remain pure together with you. And even if you are alone, and you understand the things communicated by the god you speak as through prophesying in ecstasy. And if you also wish to show her, treat her just as if in her place you were being judged in the matter of immortalization.**

I have consecrated you, that your essence may be useful to me.

For i am PHORA PHOS PHOTIZAAS

Ready?

YES!"

He raised Lisbeth up and prepared to strike.

"Be thou our offscouring. I am death incarnate. I want to strike out into the heart of the world and cut out its core."

She struggled on his lap.

"What are you doing?" she asked.

"There will be a death tonight, I have been told. I was ready and willing, believing; but now I see other things, other ways, Zoganes."

"Look, you have no idea what intricate possibilities my brain is capable of creating. I have something important to tell you."

He listened.

"Sometimes I think too ohmygod everyone is so boring. It never lasts. It's God that made them this way. So I should be able to change them, after all they are all dying. And me with them.

"I wanted to destroy you and then I realised you were inside me. I want it. Of course I do. Yes. Y. Oh man I don't know why I said no.

"It is the highest bliss for one to yield oneself up to the embraces of those beings in whom the divine nature mysteriously coexists with the form and even the appetites of true humanity.

"All messiahs need a girl that: is in love with them, a believer and has organizational skills or else doomed to fail. We're both exiles."

Blushing piquantly and whispering in his ear though there was none to snap her words but giddy butterflies; feigning a womanish simper and with immodest squirmings of her body, how you do tease a body!

"Yes, I want it every possible way," he said with fire in his eyes.

. . . .

As Inspector Bublanski arrived late back at the office he noticed his answer machine blinking. He always tended to ignore it. But he played it back this time.

There were numerous messages from the coroner's office and from Inspector Figuerola. The coroner had the sorrowful task to inform him that Mikael Blomkvist was deceased.

Bublanski was devastated. _Oh no. Not this, pleease!_

He rang Figuerola up disbelieving.

Monica told him all about the fight earlier today. She was sure it was Lisbeth as they had had an argument a tad earlier and she had seen her Dragon tattoo during the fight.

Bubble burst. _Not again_.

He pushed his glasses up his face. His face in his hands.

Bublanski reached into the bottom drawer for his bottle of vodka.

. . . .

He fell in with a certain whore of an eyepleasing exterior whose name, she said, was Bird-in-the-Hand and she beguiled him wrongways from the true path by her flatteries that she said to him as, Ho, you pretty man, turn aside hither and I will show you a brave place, and she lay at him so flatteringly that she had him in her grot which is named Two-in-the-Bush or, by some learned, Carnal Concupiscence.

He would strain the last but he would make at her and know her.

the background goes blanck

and I haven't even closed my eyes yet

not sad anymore just empty

I want to hide in my body

make a shell of my surrounding

I cashed my emotions forgetting

I got drive of awesomeness with a back-cover printing

an expiration date

I don't feel anything

too much

unknown

my brain cries into my motoric center and I dive

dive into nothingness

panic mannequins

laugh me out

running up and down my burning spine

aching legs

shrilling smiles

my vacant heart is pumping hard

on empty sand

pushing hard

coronaries rupture

blaask

...

crawling towards me horrid smell

releasing dark magma of putrid flesh

coming out of my nose

not red

but malignant

my eyes commit suicide

at such

Reverence

from the

Dark

Side

bullets shoot through my hands

stigmata wounds bleeed on my head

you want me dead my love

better then without you I guess.

_Bless me, I'm all of a wibblywobbly. Vibrating. This stuff burns like the devil. The present burns, speedburning. Pretty hot damn diddly good. What mark and merit defines a time a place. The spawn of truth. A big tray of answers. Dead pulses pluralling_.

Strike me silly. A low fellow who was fuddled by a monstrous fine bit of cowflesh!

And she might multiply the inlets of happiness, sacrificing the inestimable jewel of their sex when a hundred pretty fellows were at hand to caress.

Penetrating, you are not. Your knife. No.

Instead, lose yourself in a hole. My hole.

A mouth, a hole into you.

Part of you but want to fill it with external objects.

So really it's me with the power.

Just remember, retain a sample. Capture my spermatheca. Will check later. The last one.

The internal sound of muscles flexing.

A jitterybug, he loosed himself in her.

O, he did. Into her. She did. Done. _Ah!_

A black crack of noise in the street here, alack, bawled back. Loud on left Thor thundered: in anger awful the hammerhurler. Came now the storm that hist her heart.

There are sins or (let us call them as the world calls them) evil memories which are hidden away by man in the darkest places of the heart but they abide there and wait. She may suffer their memory to grow dim, let them be as though they had not been and all but persuade herself that they were not or at least were otherwise. Yet a chance word will call them forth suddenly and they will rise up to confront her in the most various circumstances, a vision or a dream, or while the wind blows _I love it when it's sooooo warm just right that you can stay just calm perfect_ soothe her senses or amid the cool silver tranquility of the evening or at the feast, at midnight, when she is now filled with wine. Not to insult over her will the vision come as over one that lies under her wrath, not for vengeance to cut her off from the living but shrouded in the piteous vesture of the past, silent, remote, reproachful.

The fruit of their unlawful embraces.

She nauseated the wretch that seemed to her a cropeared creature of a misshapen gibbosity, born out of wedlock and thrust like a crookback toothed and feet first into the world, which the dint of the surgeon's pliers in his skull lent indeed a colour to, so as to put her in thought of that missing link of creation's chain desiderated by the late ingenious Mr Darwin.

But was young Boasthard's fear vanquished by Calmer's words? No, for she had in her bosom a spike named Bitterness which could not by words be done away.

Heard they then in that clap the voice of the god Bringforth or, what Calmer said, a hubbub of Phenomenon? Heard? Why, they could not but hear unless they had plugged them up the tube Understanding (which they had not done). For through that tube they saw that they were in the land of Phenomenon where they must for a certain one day die as they were like the rest too a passing show. And would they not accept to die like the rest and pass away?

Mad romp that it is, she had pulled her fill as they reclined and realised together.

Astounding! In her lay a Godframed Godgiven preformed possibility which thou hast fructified with thy modicum of man's work. Cleave to her! Serve! Toil on, labour like a very bandog and let scholarment and all Malthusiasts go hang. Thou art all their daddies, Theo adore.

But she was not done. She woke up. It was her turn now:

"Stop drinking my blood [so slowly]

stop licking my soul in shame

stop hiding your shell

my torch flashed your whiteness

you have been caught

in your own gleaming damnation."

She glowered, and it grieved him plaguily.

"I want you to feel like a lost little boy I want to be... I want to hit you with sexual energy I want your fluids all of them or nothing I want to take your souls and kiss it I want you to forget all and lose your mind in my body I want to feel you everywhere I am willing I want to feel the pressure I want you to taste my..."

. . . .

The next thing Bublanski saw was a host of black figures fast-roping down the side of the building at Fiskaragatan and a swathe of police come running in shouting and barging their way through.

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

In a closed-off room on the top floor of the Kaknäs TV tower an almighty battle was taking place, out of sight, no one saw them. Not the people outside down below. Not the people in the restaurant along the way watching the people outside down below. Not the staff servicing the people in the restaurant along the way watching the people outside down below. Not the police. The army. The War Cabinet. The United Nations. Not anyone.

Lisbeth turned on Vartel.

"This I must tell you. I lied. To you and to myself. I am your sister! You are my brother!"

"What?" said Vartel stunned.

"It's true. Believe me."

"But what of CHANCE?"

"There is none here."

"No, it can't be!"

Lisbeth pushed him away and jumped on him. He cried, trying to wriggle out but she had him. She slapped, spank and bit his ass, getting excited in the deep grab. Her face gleamed with a mischievous beam. Scratching a little his back she screamed. Electric shocks blushing her body, moaning, thinking it _crazzy_ but unable to stop. Shiver really. Lips torched. She pistoned and pumped on his lap aggressively. She bite kisses, licking his ear and neck. Up and down motions, she bit her arm, bit her thumb nibbling, grabbing her ass, smack and hold. Shocks running through her body. Her breasts pop out from pulling of the dress. _fff my nipples feel tender now._

Vartel was devastated, crying inconsolably, shrieking.

She put hands next to his head for support and bent forward with the movement is like half circle of her ass, like on a swing. Breasts up close, unavoidable in his face. She rubs more on her clitoris.

Completely dark. Breathless and shaking. Complete body craziness. She arched her back too much. Can't help it. Huge cramps. Losing the ability to grip. She did not stop until she was satisfied in violent orgasm. She flooded his loins and belly. Stickingess everywhere shining through hair. Extreme amount of juices flowing out. _But it all mine yes._ And she was only gearing herself up.

. . . .

Illamac Gilzarlar was spotted outside at Vasastaden. A policeman stopped him and called over his superior.

A short man in bra and knickers was being led away in cuffs. He ranted and raved:

"I'll get off this! I got friends in high places. I got immunity! Protection!"

From the commotion a red faced bald man soon came up.

"What are you doing here?" he asked Illamac, "who are you?"

That was tricky. Illamac had just seen a murder take place and he did nothing. Just stood there and watched.

"Who are you? Where's your ID?"

Illamac searched his pockets for his wallet. _Where did I?_

He came up empty handed.

"I think you had better come with us," the bald man ordered.

. . . .

Capillaries bursts red and white in her eyes soooo white. Lips touching real sensitive. Afterwaves swimming in wet sweat.

She kicked him back. Where it hurt. Where it stays. Where it stains for all to see:

"You are your own now. You're with me.

You are mine.

My perfect victim

insatiable

that fire in your eyes

i can eat the lust off your body

dripping, flowing, flooding away on me

you can scream as much as you like [now]

i have you so tight in me you won't even try

paralysed

I felt like torturing you with

Spread the pain it won't feel better

Department of Decadent Services.

Why don't you hate me?

don't you hate me yet? Are you sure?

I mean, I keep killing us off like

a sexual sadistic psychopath

all the time

indecent proposals

I think I would end up hating you, for making me go through this.

And I can't bear anyone hating you not even me so.

I hate you back.

I will eat you up as a spider.

You are the crazy one, and I'm cruel."

"Down!" she tapped his shoulder. "Incline feet forward! Slide left foot one pace back. You will fall. You are falling. On the hands down!"

With a piercing cry he sunk on all fours, bowed upon the ground. She placed her heel on his neck and ground it in.

"Footstool! Feel my entire weight. Bow, bondslave, before the throne of your despot's glorious heels so glistening in their proud erectness."

"I promise never to disobey. Exuberant female. Enormously I desiderate your domination."

She spanks his bare bot right well.

"It overpowers me. The warm impress of your warm form. Even to sit where a woman has sat, especially with divaricated thighs, as though to grant the last favours, most especially with previously well uplifted white sateen coatpans. So womanly, full. It fills me full."

"I will soil upon you in an unspeakable manner, chastise you as you richly deserve, bestride and ride you and give you a most vicious horsewhipping. Your nipples I treat real mean."

"Yes, I want it every possible way," he said with fire in his eyes.

. . . .

Illamac Gilzarlar decided to miss breakfast today. He decided not to eat with relish the inner organs of beasts and fowls. Nor thick giblet soup, nutty gizzards, a stuffed roast heart, liver slices fried with crust crumbs. Nor grilled kidneys which gave to his palate a fine tang of faintly scented urine.

Instead he fancied an early game of tennis before work. It was such a sunny day, only tempered by the loss of his favourite tennis ball from one of his wayward shots flying sky high and never to be seen again.

Illamac had been working for Milton security for a year now. He worked in the personal investigation department, P.-In. A freelancer. He was really dug into his latest case. One of tracking cases of identity theft. Forged documents, stolen documents, fake ID.

. . . .

Lisbeth paused in her activity.

Yes, that is the answer. These are my brothers and sisters. The same father. The two mothers sisters. He fucked them both. Many times it seems.

But this is the nub. The Y line. It's all the same. The same Y chromosome in Generation III as Generation I. It could be grandfather and grandsons. But where is the father? I have not been given. It should have been in Generation II, among the hair. Unless... unless sample 2 is grandfather AND father. Incest! Fucking Zalachenko. Fucking fucking Zalachenko! My mother is his daughter. And the other one too!

I gotta do something about it. Always me to clear up the mess.

. . . .

Illamac Gilzarlar trained his eyes. He was in the blackmarket area of Stockholm, tracking the going-ons of one of the criminal rings.

He saw a transaction take place that interested him. There she was. He followed.

He followed her to Ladugärd park where she promptly sat in the middle of the field in the Lotus position. Or as near as she could, he observed.

There were several other people using the park on such a sunny day. Couples loving each other, dogs chasing, a fellow having a lunchtime picnic. Kids playing football.

Not wanting to hang around looking a right charlie, Illamac purchased a kite from a stall nearby. He considered himself a master of disguise and this was a useful trick he often used in one form or other. All to do with deception or diverting attention. People looking will always look at the kite and not at the person flying it. Or rather it is the kite that holds attention, away from the flyer.

In this was Illamac was able to stay close to his target without getting in the way. Reeling his kite out, he just let the wind hold it up while he watched. It would seem to anybody that he was busy controlling the kite, but he was far from it.

He noticed the kids get a little closer. They seemed to be replaying action from the World Cup currently happening in Germany. They were Tunisia victorious against Sweden.

Suddenly the ball shot towards Illamac. He stopped it and kicked it back. But unfortunately, as his mind and concentration was on his target, he belted the ball straight to her, hitting her in the back.

Illamac swore to himself and quickly ran off to the trees.

. . . .

Lisbeth pushed him back down. She looked at him in her lap one last time and grabbed the scissors there:

"Now it is your time.

why?

i can see you wounds

your weakness

i imagine horrific details

i ..

Fear or regret?

I crash your skull

the bright whiteness of the wall

again and again

more bright then ever

the white turns red

and I laugh

I go away and wash my hands

I sit down and cry

I'll kill you!

I will

do you see this knife?

it's very sharp, you know I .. I ..

you won't be able to escape

once, twice

NO

no one can escape their knife."

She stabbed him in the breast. Half-heartedly, testing, probing. They were not that sharp.

"This is for me

you can't change anything

is all me

sorry

anyway

I think I died a little too

You can blame me

But you are an accessory to our death

You were there with me."

Again she stabbed him and a small hole.

"Is it a sacrifice?

a murder or suicide?

who's blood where?

you tremble so scared

i want to kiss you

comforting words

you never win

and I embrace death

I want pain on my hands

I want real pain again

one that makes sense

I torture myself

why can't you leave me?

I say all over again

One of us will die in the end."

And again she stabbed him. Blood welling.

"They are all dying, and me with them.

Eyes filled with violence

I can see your retina destroyed

in such a lovely detail

I can hardly believe it never happened

a paper cut hurts more

a silly intervention

stopping you from breathing

a painful reminder

of your imminent [quickly]

lack of death

don't change

unless you want to

change your mind all the time

who else can do that for you?

change or die

death is a change too."

She stabbed him again. Now many times she pistoned and pumped the blade in and out aggressively. She did not stop until she was satisfied in violent orgasm. She flooded his chest and belly. And she was only gearing herself up.

. . . .

Illamac had followed her all through the day. Now she was back where she started, Vasastaden.

Illamac went round the back of the building to get a better look.

Sneaking with his miniature monocular, he could see them in the dingy back room. She seemed to be lying on the floor among a scatter of clothes. A short man over her with a whip in hand. The man whom Illamac recognised as 'The Gator' had his shirt off and was ripping her clothes off. He then dragged her to the corner of the room.

Illamac had to shift along to get a good look.

He saw The Gator shove her headfirst through a lidded hole into blackness. He couldn't see what exactly was going on, until intense light suffused around. The Gator had lit several blowtorches and had positioned then firing upwards under this 'thing'. _Can't quite see_.

As Illamac shifted about trying to get a better look he heard cries and screams and the man's voice shouting back. The screams increased and were absolutely terrifying. They sounded like there was a wild animal in there bellowing and snorting in pain.

The Gator was now dancing about in the room dressed only in bras and knickers. Her shrieks echoed and seemed painfully other-worldly, amplified.

Illamac cringed as he bore witness to one of The Gator's torture techniques. He was paralysed in fear, his memory jolted in his terror. He clinched his arse in pain.

The next thing Illamac saw was a host of black figures fast-roping down the side of the building and a swathe of police come running in shouting and barging their way through. The police entered the room just as The Gator swung round with one of his blowtorches. He caught one of the policemen in the eyes with it. He went down and screamed in pain. Soon he was subdued by other police officers, and in entered a red faced bald man who opened up the chamber.

. . . .

Finally Lisbeth departed from his bloody breast. Soaked in red she couldn't see. So she changed her attention to his neck. Biting at his lips.

She carefully dug out his carotid artery. Dug around it from both sides and lifted it out. Now it was hooked under her blade.

"Don't move an inch of muscle!

goodbye deformed angel

beautiful darkness

it wasn't perfect

but is was exactly what I wanted

what I needed

I will struggle

to realise I gave you up

I lost you through my own doing

through fate or fire

I burned it all down

I am death incarnate. I want to strike out into the heart of the world and cut out its core."

She took delicate precision as the twin blades scissored around the flooded blood vessel. He looked up at her in rapture:

"Yes I see it. It is here. He is here. It is me! I am the One! The Solution!

"Zero fraction fewness multitude repetition fractal infinity. The expanded universe. Let me redeem. Let me redeem. Feed the ground, my blood. One final push.

"Oh the glory!"

Suddenly the lights at the top of the Kaknäs TV tower smashed shut.

"Is this it?" Vartel called out.

In the backlight from the door Lisbeth saw a short lithe figure there.

A child? Theirs?

Who is it?

And in entered Camilla Salander, looking like the Holy Ghost itself.

PART FOUR

THE GENETICS OF THE EVOLUTIONARY PROCESS

[Unfinished]

Friday 16.6.6

\- Camilla

\- Two Dragons

\- Sleep

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

In which having stopped the killing, Camilla explains that she has saved Lisbeth from committing murder. Lisbeth is angry and hateful of Camilla with a string of invective. But Camilla shocks Lisbeth by producing a copy of the evening newspaper with the headline 'BLOMKVIST DEAD'.

Lisbeth is in horror as she reads that Mikael is dead and that she is wanted by the police (again!). As Lisbeth reels, Camilla tells her story:

Camilla has a Histrionic Personality Disorder (to Lisbeth's Antisocial and Vartel's Schizotypal). Camilla comes across as a bit of a bore. Vain, stylish, shallow, hysterical. The climax of these two meeting is a let down. Both are tired.

Meanwhile Vartel, weak on the slanted floor, watches the twins mirrored. He describes one of his visions he's having along the lines of Good and Evil. But who is who? He is losing blood to the floor.

Lisbeth tries to remember, but she has no memory of the fight with Figuerola described in the newspaper report. Camilla explains that that could be due to her brain injury. Damage to her hippocampus which is involved with creating new memories.

"My photographic memory has been playing up recently. I always kinda hated it because I could always recall in vivid detail everything from my past. Instant clear recall. And most of my past has been in pain. I've had to repress them deep. So that trauma has been continually with me, never fading. Until recently!"

"I'm surprised you haven't got neuroma," says Camilla, "peripheral nerve lesions, leading to sensory loss and motor paralysis, pain spontaneous or triggered by some innocuous stimulus, much like epilepsy."

Lisbeth, tired, cries at Mikael's death:

i ..

i knew

i saw

i felt your pain

you said you said

but

i didn't believe you

just a passing moment

you wouldn't cross

i should have stopped you long ago

i should have been different

i should not have existed

i am

i was to blame

for not seeing your pain beyond mine

your wild nightmares

after we argued and you said you're sorry

and yet

clearly

i was to blame

your blood follows me through the streets

never tired

full of pain

the brightest red

the red of my lips

my lips on your neck

in loving agony

i scratch the kitchen sink

and pray

pray

with no desire

i admit guilt

but refuse

God's judgment

i long not

for absolution

released

i want back in prison

away from the false noise of promises bursting

forever

my ears are tired

don't believe anything

i die as i was born

unclaimed pure and lost

But Lisbeth catches herself and rounds on Camilla. She digs at Camilla by telling her about her DNA discoveries. But at each shocking revelation Camilla calmly replies with "I know."

"Incestual offspring. Is me! Is us!!" Lisbeth asserts.

"I know."

"How do you know? Did you send the DNA clues?"

"No."

"Who did?"

"Most probably Granny Nu."

"Where is she?" Lisbeth threatens Camilla.

There is a spectacular sunset panorama view through the window from the top of the Kaknäs TV tower. And a defeated passive Vartel with blood loss watches the two dominant females square up for a fight.

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

In which the twins fight:

Two shadows encircled at the ready drawn.

Breathing hard and hearts screaming.

Sudden sharp darts pummelling deep.

Grips enticing: hands lost, clothes lost.

Reconnected sweeps lifting snap-downs.

Punch crack.

Shrieks again they clashed, meet and tear.

Reasserting flowing forms merged again in couplegrip entanglement.

Single leg trip into spin spiral ride.

Pointbursting backflesh spladdled for a cross body ride.

Locks seeked but wriggling butt-drags out.

A kicking foot contacted forcing separation.

Back again quickly, the blood up swearing.

Switch reswitch.

Underhooks groped, pins pried.

Double-leg drives, twisting deflections.

Grunts echoing.

Inside arm drag, elbow pulls forces again the position.

Hip-heist shrugged but quickly a wrapping of arms.

Head and arm levers, arm bars.

Tilt-loading.

Vartel was reeling from watching the two girls fight. Fantastic stuff, he thought. The smile was on his face.

"Lisbeth!" he muttered.

They fall again into a Jacob's ride.

Elbows stabbing, fingers poking.

Then a vengeful guillotine.

And screams.

Spectacularly a lift and sweep. Smashing down.

The room is like a sauna on such a sunny day and as clothes are being ripped off Vartel sees on both of their left shoulder blades a Dragon tattoo. Or is it a birthmark?

At the last moment in the fight Camilla injects Lisbeth in the back with some kind of drug causing Lisbeth to become groggy:

stew my brain

cut my brain

steal my thoughts

eat my heart

burn it all

blood drowns itself

She feels expelled from her own mind.

Vartel with the loss of blood starts shaking in a death trance. He looks very old. He has aged greatly in one day. Lisbeth considered him to be of her age, twenty-eight, when they first met; then during sex he appeared to be middle-aged like Blomkvist. Death must be soon. He vomits.

But the fight continues as Camilla goes in for the kill, giving a good injury to Lisbeth.

Meanwhile the noise from the fight has attracted attention from the people nearby. Power had been restored and the door opened up.

Lisbeth and Camilla take their fight out through the restaurant. Camilla screams at the people there who are alarmed in panic distress as the two red-heads try to kill each other across the restaurant with chairs and tables flying. Lisbeth becomes hampered by the drug.

Camilla throws Lisbeth into the lift and as they go down she gives her sister a bit of her mind demanding "Listen to me!" Camilla becomes histrionic at her, shouting at her as Lisbeth lies groggy.

Camilla throws Lisbeth out of the lift as the police arrive.

Vartel dies a kind of death.

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

In which it is near midnight on this long summer day.

Callima Dreza is about to tap a man she thinks she knows on the shoulder.

Allamic Stryx is preparing his escape from custody. Any minute now.

Mallaci O'Brogue is at home ironing his shirt for tomorrow.

Illamac Gilzarlar is still being interviewed by officers at Kungsholmen Police HQ.

Licalam Vortres is lying on a slab in the mortuary having died in the explosion.

Lamacil Spoonz is lying on a slab in the mortuary.

Acillam Khan is dreaming of going to Pakistan when he's older to train to be a suicide bomber.

Inspector Jan Bublanski is waiting at Fiskaragaten quietly sipping from a bottle of vodka. _I can't take this_.

Mikael Blomkvist is lying on a slab in the mortuary.

Vartel Brinbrace is walking home as best he can. Feeling better, younger again, having reverted to the immature stage.

Camilla Salander has faded into the night at the sight of the police.

Lisbeth Salander is groping her way home. Her mind full of the Collective Unconscious of her genetic family tree:

Monozygotic twins reared apart.

Genetic defects.

Consanguineous mating.

Common ancestors.

Inbreeding loops.

Coefficients of relationships.

Isogenic stock.

Genetic counselling.

Genetic load.

Probability of heritability.

Oncogenic cancer.

Transgenic mutation.

Darwinian fitness.

Natural selection.

Eugenics.

Speciation.

Gene pool.

Fuck 'em!

EPILOGUE

THE NEXT DAY

Saturday 17.6.6

Excerpt from the next book: Gotta Kill 'em All

BOOK FIVE

GOTTA KILL 'EM ALL

[Outline]

PROLOGUE

Lisbeth's baby memories.

PART ONE

Lisbeth is in hiding, wanted by the police again.

Lisbeth wakes with a great sickness in her stomach. She vomits a morning sickness.

She finds out that Camilla has stolen all her money by impersonating her to her accountant Jeremy Stuart MacMillian who has quit as he's made his money.

Lisbeth receives an invitation to dinner from Granny Nu.

PART TWO

Lisbeth has to wear a fancy dress and stilettos at the formal dinner and she is forced together at the table with Camilla and Vartel.

Lisbeth imagines stabbing Camilla as she stabs her food with evil looks.

At an opportune moment away from the table, Vartel becomes imprisoned by a wire-trap Lisbeth had set up. Lisbeth puts him in cement shoes and drops him off an bridge. Vartel dies in decompression.

Granny Nu enters formal and solemn. She is short, hunchbacked with a blue-rinse wig, aged 81. She enquires about Vartel. The girls don't know. She eats silently but her face gives it away.

After main course, Granny Nu starts her proposal:

She tells them of the reason behind the incest and sex trafficking. But warns that there will be no return after you hear the truth. Do you want to hear?

Alexander Zalachenko wanted to create a clone of himself. (His rampant ego.) Now this was way before 'Dolly' and scientific cloning so Zalachenko tried to clone himself by continuous interbreeding with his daughters and granddaughters etc like the way they try to recreate the Mammoth through elephant interbreeding with frozen genes.

The closer you get the Interbreeding coefficient F to 1, the closer you are to having 'identical by descent', identical genes. When F = 1 then heterozygosity = 0. But there were a lot of errors of nature, to be expected.

"Alexander's two daughters, our two daughters, Natasha and Agneta were part of the breeding program. The sex trafficking was just a cover for this operation.

Natasha fruited lots of babies, but your mother only produced two, due to her metafemale genes tending towards infertility with irregular periods. Alexander took his anger out on her due to this and also due to all the genetic defects of his other children and all the miscarriages."

"What a bastard!"

Granny Nu tells of the mutations in Zalachenko from when he was experimented on in the Soviet army to make him a supersoldier and when he was at Chernobyl when it blew up.

"You sent all the DNA to me. Why?"

"You deserve to know because you are different."

"Different how?"

"Don't you feel it. Different from the rest?"

"Yes. How come?"

"All your brothers and sisters are different. You have eidetic memory and you have gymnastic balance skills to a high degree. The others have other such skills. Maybe you have felt them in yourself to a lesser degree."

"Like what?"

"Oh like Ronald's analgesia and Vartel's immortality."

"Why are you helping us? What of Natasha?"

"She died in childbirth giving birth to twin monsters."

PART THREE

Granny Nu then leaves them and Camilla follows and kills her.

Lisbeth decides to eradicate all traces of Zalachenko. She turns on Camilla but she escapes gymnastically.

Lisbeth goes to Tallinn in search of her brothers and sisters. She tracks them down to the K.A.B. warehouse there by hacking their computer.

Lisbeth approaches at night and checks it out with night-vision goggles. Nothing. But when she switches to infrared mode there is someone there. A figure on guard outside. But switching back it is invisible to normal eyes.

So Lisbeth uses a smoke grenade to cover herself and using a makeshift aerosol flamethrower she finally pins the invisible guard down.

This was the person of Sample 6. She had 'Dependant' Personality Disorder with problems of Fugue.

Lisbeth pushes the burning body against the front door and it soon burns down letting her gain access.

Inside the warehouse Lisbeth searches among the crates. She finds lots of bottles of medication pills. Suddenly there's a gust of wind and Lisbeth finds herself hit by rapid fists. The assailant had hit and ran. But comes back again in another sudden gust of wind.

Lisbeth uses a shotgun spread to try to hit the superfast person. She wings it.

Then a monster of a dog appears. Or is it three dogs? It's hard to tell in the dark. Whatever it is, it is a supernatural monster running at her.

Lisbeth gets inside a forklift truck and drives it at the attacking monster. She drives straight through it. It disappears but Lisbeth careers the truck through a wall by accident.

When stopped, she finds that each of the two prongs of the forklift truck have impaled a woman to death.

These are Samples 4 and 2.

The former having 'Avoidant' Personality Disorder on medication.

The latter having 'Paranoia' Personality Disorder with problems of depression.

Now inside the offices, Lisbeth searches and she passes several disturbing tanks or specimen jars containing grotesquely deformed foetuses. Elephantiasis growths, clumps of matted hair etc. This must be the miscarriages, three in all.

These disturb Lisbeth and she starts to lose her mind. She is being attacked by a telepath who is implanting horrible thoughts in her mind. Lisbeth finds herself in a featureless plane of existence. But she fights back as she's used to mental pain. Her assailant cries in dementia and dies.

This was Sample 5 of 'Borderline' Personality Disorder.

But Lisbeth awakes to find herself having been tied up with hooks anchored to the wall. She meets the eldest brother, Sample 1.

He chats to her and explains stuff. He is a Narcissist.

But then he becomes gloomy and he explains that he can see the future and has seen his own death. Moments later he dies of a heart attack and Lisbeth is released.

But now Lisbeth is attacked by flying objects - harpoons, flails, discs, even massive objects.

Lisbeth dodges these missiles being telekinetically thrown at her by the boss of the Tallinn arm. He of Sample 3. He has Obsessive Compulsive Disorder and a conjoined twin - double the brainpower but with the handicap of amnesia. So when he throws a boomerang at Lisbeth he forgets that it will return, and he is killed by it.

Lisbeth sets fire to the whole damn building and she emerges out of the flames victorious but knackered and injured.

PART FOUR

Job done. But no, there's still Camilla. There is still revenge inside Lisbeth. Still!

She goes looking for her, but Camilla finds her.

She explains that she has been helping her, an ally. But Lisbeth disbelieves her and they fight using rapier swords that were mounted on the wall.

But Camilla has poisoned her tip, so when she slashes Lisbeth's skin Lisbeth becomes poisoned.

But Lisbeth fights on using her fists - drunken boxing.

In a lapse in the fight as the poison works, Camilla delivers the final blow and shows Lisbeth her baby boy, and explains that the father was Zalachenko, and that this is the final success of his as the child is a clone of his according to his incest program.

And when Lisbeth sees that the baby has Zalachenko's eyes she is stunned and defeated. She cannot kill a baby.

Zalachenko has won.

It was all a trick to trap Lisbeth. Her revenge went too far and now she is repenting. An epic fail.

BOOK SIX

HEROIC REMATCH

[Outline]

PART ONE

Lisbeth is trapped. _What a fuck up._

She has been stuffed in a bag in a locker and throw down a well. She is running out of air. No one can survive that.

But Lisbeth manages to escape somehow and climbs up the rope. She climbs out of the well and goes to the nearest house for help.

It is a Mental Institute she has stumbled upon and her ravings get herself committed there. These are all the runts from the incest project and it's a freakout in a loony house for her.

She meets one old patient there who has an interesting story to tell, but it hard to differentiate what is truth and fiction in his words.

PART TWO

He tells of Tunguska, the Yeti and Chernobyl.

This is what he has to say:

"That the Tunguska explosion in Siberia on 30th June 1908 was due to an alien device landing there. The Device landed through a wormhole used for intergalactic travel. The atmospheric shockwave it produced levelled hundreds of square kilometres of the forest. It ionized the air with flash burning and seismic effects but produced no crater.

"The alien Device was a form of colonisation project by the aliens across the vast stretches of the universe. The Device was loaded with alien DNA and it recombines with native DNA to produce hybrids and eventually by selective breeding full alien beings.

"Even the undamaged trees at the epicentre there had accelerated growth due to the genetic mutation

"Now the first creature to be in contact with the Device was the Yeti or rather a lost tribe of Neanderthals hidden in the vastness of Siberia and the Himalayas. It took the Russians almost twenty years to get to the site so it laid there for some time. Time enough. Neanderthals naturally had to interbreed in their small group and are a separate species to humans. They are red-headed and monobrowed and have mitochondrial DNA that differs from modern man in 28 of 379 nucleotide base pairs."*

*See Krings and Stone, 1997.

"Your Granny Nu is of Yeti and is actually Zalachenko's mother."

"How do you know all this?"

"I used to work at Chernobyl with your father."

"What happened at Chernobyl?"

He explains that the 'event' at Chernobyl on 26th April 1986 was a failed attempt by Zalachenko to open up a wormhole back to the alien's home planet. The aliens need a stable opening portal wormhole activated on Earth to connect to their end in order for them to physically cross over and invade Earth.

Zalachenko failed because KGB hitmen were after him and shot him down and also old Soviet reactors were unstable with no containment field.

"So the Zalachenko clan are not human, a new different species, unable to breed with humans. Which is why you never got pregnant. You have your own way of reproduction where there is no need for puberty. None of you have reached puberty. Zalachenko himself was an intersex gynandromorph sex mosaic. An hermaphrodite. But he could not asexually reproduce because of all his mutations and also when you burnt him up."

"Where is the Device now?"

"I don't know."

"I do."

"Every thirty years the aliens try to make contact. The first attempt to reply was in 1957 at Kyshtm in Mayak Russia, a military nuclear reprocessing site, with Sputnik guiding. Then it was Chernobyl. It is the thirtieth anniversary this year."

"But where?"

"Another nuclear reactor somewhere."

"It is all explained in your Dragon diagram. It is a map."

Then in comes Camilla as the boss of the establishment. She had been listening in on the whole story, as the patient had always been silent before. Camilla demands to know where the Device is. Lisbeth tells her where to go.

So Camilla orders the orderlies to tie Lisbeth up to the 'The Machine'.

"Tell me where!" she threatens Lisbeth.

She switches the machine on and an agony beam shoots out. Lisbeth is in pain but she refuses to scream.

Camilla explains that it is a vibroelectric weapon. It can give instant gratification or instant torture. She flips the switches and Lisbeth is in differing minds - pain and pleasure. Camilla tortures her to get the info, but still Lisbeth is silent to her. Camilla wants the Device to speed up her evolution.

So Camilla sets the beam up pointing at her pre-frontal lobes warning her that this will give her a lobotomy; and that she is surprised she hadn't been given one earlier under Dr Teleborian, after all it is legal in Sweden.

Camilla leaves as the machine builds up power.

Lisbeth panics as she looks at the glowing end of the probe in her face.

The agony beam fires full beam.

PART THREE

But Lisbeth had managed to wriggle out of the straps as she was skinny enough. Then Lisbeth manages to escape out of the Mental Asylum and gets back home to retrieve the Device she had obtained by accident.

But Camilla had followed her here and now attacks her in her flat.

They have a massive fight.

Camilla has bioaugmented her body with Nanomachines in order to cure her Breast Cancer she had due to her excess of Oestrogen. Now she cannot be injured as she is instantly cured.

Desperately Lisbeth uses anything at hand in the flat to fight her.

Eventually, luckily, Lisbeth manages to hit Camilla's Achilles' Heel - her secret stab wound pressure point with the most mundane of household goods.

Camilla finally dies.

PART FOUR - Tuesday 25.7.6

Lisbeth sets off to the Forsmark Nuclear Reactor using her Dragon tattoo as a compass.

When she gets there, the reactor core is humming with swirly energy. She sees the new Zalachenko all grown up now superquick due to the transformative rays he has exposed himself to.

He ignores Lisbeth and continues working to create a wormhole. The radiation is freaking his body out, but he doesn't care.

There is a great danger that he may fail again and create a vast nuclear explosion or even create a blackhole that would destroy the Earth.

What can Lisbeth do, as Zalachenko is an enormous bulk impervious to her attacks and blocking her way.

Eventually he summons a comms link and opens the mystic gateway. The massive entrance to the wormhole spirals above and the aliens start to appear. The invasion force is about to arrive.

So Lisbeth, out of sheer desperation, throws the Device into the heart of the wormhole and destroys the portal and the aliens in transit.

Zalachenko's body-morphing has gone too far and he explodes and dies. But in exploding he has asexually reproduced and myriads of Zalachenkos appear out of his pregnant vastness.

Lisbeth is now faced with an even bigger challenge that ever before.

And then her waters break and she feels her baby about to be born...

EPILOGUE

TO BE CONTINUED...

BOOKS BY REEKFEEL

Blogging Your Heart Out

Trimurti One - Vishnu the Preserver

In Dreams

Mr Skrimshaw's Puzzlebook

The Devil's Picturebook

Einstein a Go-Go

Starfall

