Plan of Attack

She could immobilize her prey like an eel

Previously: Astra & Crowley wake in the workshop, having exorcised the daemon that Alexei installed in them.

○ Opening Era: Spring, 2026, Brooklyn

Astra hefted a circular saw from the ground. She tossed a propane torch to Crowley.

The man’s old reflexes kicked back in to catch it. “What’s this for?“

“See those?” Astra pointed to the corners of the room.

Crowley squinted. “Cameras.”

“Alexei’s thugs will be here shortly.”

“They will have guns and we shall have…” Crowley glanced at the torch in his hands, “shop equipment.”

And my father’s training, Astra thought to him.

He got the gist of it. “Exactly, dear.” 

Then a gleam entered Crowley’s eye.

“Spell it out,” she said, catching it. “I can’t read it off you.” But then the mental image of a wriggling eel passed through Astra’s mind.

“Do you know how they hunt?” he asked.

Electric eels had, of course, been part of Astra’s studies for the design of their retrovirus. “Pulse, response, zap – if I remember correctly. They pulse out electricity to twitch the muscles of prey. Then they sense these muscle contractions, revealing the target’s location…” And then the eels immobilize their prey through an even more powerful electric zap, thought Astra through an image of an eel tasering a fish from afar.

“Test it.”

Astra cocked her head. “Eels have specialized cells that generate electrical pulses. We don’t.”

“Yes we do.”

Then she understood: “Neurons.” 

Astra couldn’t paralyze an opponent directly through an electrical pulse. The electromagnetic fields of neurons were far too weak for that. However…

Yes. Perhaps she could create the equivalent of a virus quarantined in her own nervous system. Then Psi would become the viral vector: when an enemy sensed her nervous system, the virus would be transmitted. As the enemy contracted the virus, it would cause his muscles to seize. She could immobilize her prey like an eel. Or like a witch casting a paralysis spell.

“Right,” said Crowley, sensing she’d gotten it. “Let’s give it a go.”

“We need to hurry.”

“Get on with it then. I’ll play the baddie.” Crowley crept toward her, holding the blowtorch like a pistol.

Astra closed her eyes and sent a small seizure through her own body. With any luck, Crowley would sense it through Psi and it would echo across his musculature. 

His body twitched. It was barely perceptible, but she felt it through Psi. But, with her eyes closed, she still couldn’t get a read on where his body was in the room.

“Move around me, swiftly yet quietly,” she said. She continued seizing her body and feeling the echo in Crowley’s, making guesses as to where in the room he was and then opening her eyes to check.

It was working. Most likely, the neurons linked to her magnetoreceptors were forming long-range connections with the visual parts of her brain, and the neural subnetworks which tracked objects in space.  

She pulsed again and again.

Now, with eyes closed, she could feel Crowley’s body behind her, roughly at her 8 o’clock. And more, she was beginning to sense the rough shape of it – as if a stobelight had revealed the mold of his torso, head, and limbs.

“Bravo,” said Crowley. “Now zap me in place.”

She seized again, more powerfully this time. 

“How was that,” she asked, keeping an eye on the door. She sensed several presences just beyond it. It was Alexei’s men, waiting for them to emerge.

“I felt a little something,” said Crowley, “but not entirely in my own body.”

“Not entirely?”

“It was how I imagine my old phantom limb patients at Berkeley might have felt. Sensing a limb that was not their own. But with an entire phantom body.” 

Phantom body. That was it.

She seized her body again, causing Crowley’s body to respond. Now she had a more complete mental representation of his tall and stringy form. She could feel into its muscles as if his body were an extension of hers. She imagined this phantom body clenching all of its muscles. Vividly.

Crowley went rigid and tipped over. Astra lunged to catch him before he hit the concrete floor. Then she released the phantom body. He recovered.

“How did you do it?”

“I imagine you paralyzed. Your body receives this image and seizes up.” She demonstrated the maneuver telepathically as she described it. “We’ve always relied on others for our own self-representations. Now even moreso. I created a new representation of your body, one with paralyzed limbs. Your nervous system took it as its own.”

“Clever.” Crowley glanced behind him, at the wall. He felt the thugs outside too. “Did you get a sense of how many?”

She pulsed her nervous system. The bodies outside responded. She felt the contours of several of them. She pulsed once more. All men, by the sense of their crotches. Three of them: one to the left, one to the right, and a faint outline of one crouching straight ahead, likely behind some cover. Their arms were outstretched, almost certainly with pistols aimed at the door. 

“Three men with guns,” said Astra, since discrete facts couldn’t be transmitted through Psi.

“Only three,” Crowley scoffed. “Is he trying to mock us?”

“There might be more out of range,” Astra noted. “Snipers even.”

“Hm…well, we can freeze the nearest ones, and…um…”

“Use them as body shields.”

He put his hand over his eyes. “I hate to think this way.”

“Would you rather be murdered?”

“Truthfully, I don’t know.”

Astra clapped him across the cheek.

“What are you––?”

“I need you alert. Save doubt for after,” Astra asserted. She nodded toward the men beyond the wall. “Their muscles are loose. They’re waiting for us. That gives us time to practice.”

“Well all right.”

It was stupid of Alexei to give them time, Astra reflected. She and Crowley practiced the immobilizing spell until they’d perfected it. They could now paralyze one another as easily as a blink.

“Ready?” she asked.

Crowley nodded mentally.

Nervous systems pulsing, they burst out the door.

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Next release: Deshawn is definitely not pursuing a quest.