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PLAYING GOD

Part 1: Sharp Thinking

"Sarah? Oh Christ... Sarah...Wake up, for God's sake! Pl...Please! "

Her head ached.

"Oh no . . . No, no, no... This can't be happening! Sarah!"

It was a sharp pain, brutal and almost glassy, that plucked her from the shores of unconsciousness with uncaring efficiency and threw her straight into total awareness: one moment she'd been utterly dead to the world-

"Sarah!"

-the next, she opened her eyes , wincing at the sudden brightness. She was... she was...

"...Where the hell am I?!

"Oh thank Christ..." Finn slumped back, his strong shoulders heaving with relief. "Sarah... oh god, Sarah... I thought... I thought you were..."

His voice trailed off into silence as she looked around, her eyes widening. The room was expansive and uncluttered, wall, ceiling and floor all painted a pristine, gleaming white. No windows. Harsh strip lighting shot everything into bright, almost sterile relief. They sat right in the centre, in two stout wooden chairs, facing each other. The silence was terrifying.

"Oh no... Are you okay?" He sat - no, she realised: he was strapped

(oh my god. what is this?)

_ _

to the chair, horribly solid-looking leather bands across his silver fur, his warm amber eyes large and fearful. Finn was a grey wolf, tall, athletic, with a dancer's build: lithe and sinuous. Normally, he was smiling, a cheerful, cocky smile that you couldn't help warming to.

But now he wasn't smiling. Now he looked terrified.

"Finn..." Her voice sounded dry and cracked after his tones of liquid velvet. "Finn... what is this?" Sarah felt her tail twitching, trying to curl around her legs. Long even for a lynx like her, ringed with bands of pale tan and soft brown, it was frankly the only feature of her body she liked. She was short and thin - not slim, but gangly and awkward, and even including her mismatched ears (even after twenty one years of life, she wasn't certain whether one was larger than the other), she was an unimpressive 5'4". Her eyes were a vibrant green - "pools of deepest emerald" her father had once jokingly termed them, but she thought they looked more like muddy ponds. She was unremarkable; she knew that.

What she didn't know was:

"What the bloody hell is going on?"

Finn swallowed. "Look.... Sarah... I don't you to freak out. But I... I think... " his voice broke off as a low keening whimper escaped from his throat. The wolf looked like he might start crying.

"What? What do you think_?_ " She sounded high, desperate. "What the hell is this? I don't-"

"LOOK AT THE TABLES, SARAH!" Finn roared, his voice half a sob. "LOOK AT THE DAMN TABLES!"

She looked. A series of unadorned metal tables, arrayed around the edges of the room. She saw what was on them. And she knew.

And she screamed.

Displayed on every single table, like a macabre jumble sale, were row upon row of blades. There were carving knives, vicious stilettos, strange, exotically curved daggers, glinting scalpels...

So many knives.

Mr Knives.

The only thought her horror-struck brain could think of, sending it spinning through her head, over and over. Mr Knives. Oh, the papers had been having a two-year field day with him.

Mr Knives. The most notorious serial killer the city had ever seen. He had evaded capture so many times that his other tabloid nickname had become "The One That Got Away". Mr Knives. He - if it was a he - didn't care about species. He didn't care about gender. And he killed people. Mr Knives. That's all that an entire department within the police forces had been able to find out, after twenty eight months of murders.

No. He didn't just kill them. Not for a long time. She felt news headlines flash behind her eyes: "Knives' 13th", "Mr Knives Strikes Again", "Mr Knives declared Public Enemy No. 1 by the Authority, after 21st murdered". He She remembered the description an officer had given when he found one of Knives' victims, how he had broken down ("he begins to cry, his hands shaking") three times during the interview. She remembered the full colour, front page picture the red-top Daily Moon had run of "Knives Twenty Five", and how the flat, dead muzzle and face of the poor boy (the body of Astrophysics student Jeremy Glassman (Lion, 17), was found by a hiker on the south bank of the river Maye) had somehow managed to show the agony his ravaged body must have suffered.

Finn was watching her intently, still trembling slightly. He waited until she looked at him again before he spoke, his voice shaking. "L-Look. Sarah, Mr Kn... whoever it was, I think they drugged us. Can you remember anything... anything at all about what happened?"

"I don't... I don't know." She didn't trust herself to speak above a whisper. "I'll try."

He nodded weakly. "Don't worry, Sarah. I'm here-"

-tuesday afternoon. Work finished, and the tall wolf had offered to walk home with her. She'd accepted, trying to hide her delight: fit, handsome, charming and incredibly charismatic, Finn would normally be way out of her league. A gangly lynx like her, from the poor north districts of Desora, without enough money to even afford lunch most days? No chance.

_ _

They'd left the office, he'd said something about their co-workers- some joke, witty and hilarious, and she'd laughed, and as she'd done it he'd pulled out a fashionable silver-plated cigarette lighter, flicking it on with an elegant flip of his long fingers.

_ _

"Do you smoke?"

_ _

"No." he'd murmured simply, staring at the dancing flame. Just for a second, his amber eyes flickered, the cocky cheerfulness vanishing and seeming to be replaced by something... else. She stuttered a question, but Finn silenced her with a wave of his hand, his warm eyes never leaving the fire.

_ _

Then he smiled, and said:

_ _

"But this afternoon, I've left a wastepaper basket under the window. Full of petrol-soaked paper. All ready to burn."

_ _

She'd stared at him, uncomprehending (probably looking like a real airhead, you idiot)and he'd smiled and threw, casually but with incredible precision, right over his shoulder. The arc it transcribed seemed to glitter in the pale spring sun.

_ _

And it went through the window of the hall with a sound of breaking glass and there was one second, one horrific second of stillness. Finn was watching her, still smiling his eternal cocky smile.

_ _

Then WHUMPH.

_ _

Even as the fireball tore through the old building like a paper bag, singeing the fluffy tufts of her ears, the wolf whirled suddenly with a terrifying speed, stabbing something into her shoulder. She gasped in pain and shock - breaking the spell, realising what was happening-

_ _

-but too late. Cold numbness shot through her, blurring her vision, and she slumped against him. Finn caught her easily, holding her short frame against him, his amber eyes still grinning at her. He chuckled lightly as she fell into blackness.

_ _

"Well then, Sarah..."

_ _

Sarah opened her eyes and looked at Finn. For a moment, he looked back, his features wild and terrified. And then - he wasn't. The fear, the frantic desperation in his amber eyes had simply vanished, as if the grey wolf had just flicked a switch and turned it off.

"...Surprise." Finn spoke the word aloud: playfully and lazily. Sarah stared at him. He was smiling now, and it was the same cocky grin she'd fallen in love with.

Never taking his eyes of amber from her, he stood up. The straps hadn't been tied, and they fell off him like water. The wolf kept watching her as he rolled his shoulders and stretched, every move infused with a sinuous grace that had once seemed beautiful. Now it looked unnatural. Unnerving. Her tongue felt unresponsive, shocked into silence. The words creaked from her lips, blinking and bemused as they broke the silence.

"No... Finn..."

"Oh yes." He leaped back onto the chair, perching on the edge like some grotesque bird of prey, grinning at her. "Mr Knives indeed... You've got to give the papers credit, haven't you? What a name. I admit, I was delighted with it."

"No..." She couldn't believe it. He'd been so friendly, so likeable, so full of cheerful energy- and he still was. Finn's eyes were still those warm amber orbs, sparkling with a "naughty-schoolboy" delight as he contemplated her, his elegant fingers tapping out a staccato rhythm on the arms of the chair. He hadn't changed. H e was still the cocky, charming wolf she'd found herself falling in love with.

And he was a killer.

And she was his prey.

And with that thought came the terror.

"Oh my god. Not - not you. You can't be... Finn... you can't be..."

"Oh, really?" He sprang off the chair, energetic and exhilarated. "Poor little lynx... so shy and gawky and nervous. And then along came the big bad wolf.... Along came Mr Knives... and he loved her. Oh yes, my dear." he added at her stuttered exclamation. "Please don't think that wasn't real. You're a beautiful person, Sarah. You've got so much potential... I can see it. Your life would have been exquisite."

"W...would have been...?" She knew. Of course she knew. And Finn knew that she knew. But she couldn't believe it. She just couldn't.

"You've seen the articles, little one." Finn murmured softly, his liquid voice weaving a tapestry of her terror. "You've seen the photos. And now..." he got up again, and began padding towards one of the tables, gesturing at the menagerie of sharpened metal upon them, "...you've seen my collection. Magnificent, isn't it? Knives are just so... beautiful." He selected a curved and bejewelled dagger; the weapon looked vaguely eastern in origin. It's blade of polished bronze glinted evilly as he held it up to the bright lights, examining it with the loving care of a mother to her child. "Purity, intent and purpose. Hundreds of years of craftsmanship bent towards one single, focussed point of action." The wolf whirled round to face her, tossing the blade in the air, over his shoulder. "And that action is..." he caught the dagger behind his back without taking his eyes off Sarah, "...to maim. To hurt. To kill."

"Oh no... " She flinched away as he began to saunter towards her. But the straps on her chair were fastened, alright. She was trapped, helpless to do anything but watch as death came for her. "Please... Finn... you don't have to do this... "The first tear welled up from her eyes, trickling down her face. His amber eyes followed it greedily, and a slow smile spread across his silver muzzle.

"Correct!" he sang, almost prancing now with a terrible glee. " That's the delightful part. I don't have to. But my dear little Sarah... I'm going to."

"Please!" she yelped with fear as the wolf pounced on the chair, strong, streamlined muscles rippling under his fur. "I don't want ... I don't want to d-d..."

But that fatally important last word wouldn't come. It choked her throat, over and over, until she broke and a raw, hopeless sob shuddered through her.

"Shhh... "Finn pressed a long, silver-furred finger to her lips, his velvety voice still so innocent and friendly. _"_Of course, the walls are soundproofed." He rested the flat of his blade on Sarah's cheek. It was cold and hard against her fur, the caress of an alien creature from a dead planet. "Feel free to keep pleading. Feel free to scream. Now then, Sarah..."

" ...let's have some fun, shall we?"

He raised the knife, and the screaming rose up in a roiling howling storm of pain and terror, and it took her.