TYLER STERRITT Player: Nicki Jett CHR Name: Tyler Sterritt Age: 25 Height: 5'5" Weight: 110# Hair: dark brown Complexion: fair Eyes: sea green Born: Celina, Texas The Holiday Inn lobby was a crowded crush of milling people and clashing voices when she crawled out of the cab behind the hotel shuttle. She was slightly pretty, lean and long- legged, a hard-edged brunette who looked a little older than her middle twenties; she had angular, high-cheekboned features, deepset sea- green eyes, a wide, thin-lipped mouth, and a permanently wary expression. She was wiry, narrow-hipped, small-breasted and possessed of a boyish loose-limbed gait and a slight degree of bowleggedness. She wore fitted Wranglers, an expensive Amarillo Slim western shirt in black satin with a Navajo yoke, and blackrimmed Serengheti drivers. Her thick mid-back-length spiral-permed hair sprawled in carefully crafted Texas big-hair disarray. She had a heavily tooled black leather belt with gold lace and a silver and gold trophy buckle the size of Lake Superior, and wore black lizard handmade Charlie Dunn's with gold tips and heel caps and the jeans tucked in. She had a small overnighter, a hat bag and a leather wardrobe bag with the letters "T S" emblazoned on the side, and when you watched her closely, she had a faint, almost unnoticeable limp. "May I take your bags, ma'am?" She eyed the porter suspiciously. "Yeah, I guess. Ummm... thanks." "You have reservations, ma'am?" She puffed out her breath slightly. "Yeah. Umm, Tyler Sterritt." She fished a crushed pack of Winstons from her pocket, lipped one out and snapped it aflame with professional smoothness, ignoring the porter's belated offer of a light. He smiled in delight, his professional obsequiousness thinning noticeably. "Tyler Sterritt? Rodeo?" He grinned foolishly. "Calgary Stampede! The barrel racer, right?" She was disarmed. This wasn't Oklahoma or even PRCA-richCalgary; she'd expected more anonymity. "umm...yeah." He looked worried. "I saw...um, I mean, I heard about the accident." She exhaled a cloud of smoke, looked away. "Yeah." "You...ah, you look a lot better, Miss Sterritt. Better'n..." She nodded, not really listening. A stress fracture in her pony's foreleg had caused it to roll on her, breaking one of her legs, both arms and a handful of ribs on live CTV and ESPN at last year's Stampede. Like Joe Theismann's leg, it had earned torrents of video replay for morbidly fascinated fans. She'd gotten out of stage two rehab, and decided she needed a vacation. Maybe a city, though why there was this fascination with Cheyenne, she had yet to figure out. Probably since it was the first American city south of Calgary on the route she'd chosen. Tyler'd suffered incomprehensible nightmares during the first stages of rehab, when she'd become addicted to the painkillers she carried everywhere. Then, when she'd arrived in Cheyenne, she'd started hanging around with Fallon, singing backup at his dance hall gigs more from boredom than any real need to work. She'd done it as a kid back in Dallas and Denton, and Fallon's drummer, an ex-Texan, had met her back then and remembered; but it had been a while. She liked the atmosphere, and she loved country music 'cause it reminded her of home; but Fallon was an asshole and a letch, and she'd slapped him more than once when he'd had a few too many. And finally moved out...hence the Holiday Inn. But why didn't she leave Cheyenne? "Damn good question," she muttered. Something had focused her here; something beyond the gigs. But she'd be damned if she could figure what it was. Wyoming was all right, but Tyler missed Texas. Miles of nothing but farmland and oil rigs, friendly people in small towns, playdays and the Mesquite Indoor on Fridays. High school football. Cruising the strip; the Sonic and the Dairy Queens in Denton. She looked around the lobby of the Holiday Inn, and swallowed hard. It was already too big, and it was just a damn' building. <><><><><> [GM] You are sleeping, in a large hotel in a strange city. Why are you here? It's not like you have anywhere better to be, not while you're off the rodeo circuit. At least for the time being. You finally got rid of the annoyingly starstruck porter, who clearly wanted to do a little hero- worshipping. Get a life, you thought to yourself, it's not like I'm the biggest celebrity around, even in this cowtown. OK, it was a little flattering, but you can read people well enough to know he was appreciating more than just your barrel-racing skills. Not a bad looking kid, and nice enough, but after getting away from that jerk Fallon, you can do without male companionship for a while. But now the nightmares are back. You toss and turn in your bed, hating it. How many times do you have to relieve this, the embarassment of tumbling off your horse, the discomfort of hitting the ground with a thud....then the terror as you rolled over to see several hundreds pounds of horse coming down on you? You'd never realized how LOUD a bone can sound when it snaps, but your leg sounded like a gunshot in your ears as it broke. Then your arms, tendons tearing and bones cracking as the horse kept rolling over you. The somewhat more muted sound of your ribs breaking, like boots crunching in hard packed snow. Thank God you were able to tuck your head and cover it with your now-broken arms; spending months in traction was bad, but spending the rest of your life in a wheelchair, someone spooning food into your mouth, would have been far worse. Even as you relive the terror and pain of that awful six seconds that lasted forever, you realize your nightmare has suddenly taken an abrupt left turn. You aren't back in Calgary anymore, lying in the dirt with your leg folded under you and your arm bending at an angle arms aren't supposed to bend. You are someplace dark and gloomy, and you are freezing and burning at the same time. There is no light, but you are blinded. Something is here with you. An enormous presence that you can't begin to perceive with your conscious mind, with any of your senses, but it is vast and powerful, and you are nothing before it. Yet it takes notice of you. *** smallmindirreinsignificareachtouchselfpatternunplaneinsertionpointser vekeyglimmerpotentobeyfree *** It reaches (?) towards you. And every instinct, every cell in your body, screams; GET. AWAY. NOW!!!!! A tendril- no, that's not right, you're not sure it's even anything physical. But something wraps around you. Not only around your body, but your mind. You scream and gibber, and you pray desperately for something to sever it, something to free yourself. Suddenly there is a knife in your hand, and you swing with all your strength. It parts. But more, larger extensions of this terrible being reach towards you. *** resisthowunexpectneutraliminisculeeliminatretemporalconfigurpunishs ervequieten *** GET! AWAY! NOW!!!! You leap through a portal (what portal where did it come from you don't care!) and are gone. You leap from your bed, chilled to the bone though you had the heat turned all the way up. Sweat soaks you, mats your hair against your head. You would rather have every bone in your body broken than face that again. The most terrible nightmare you have ever had. Someone told you once that most people, at least once in their life, have a truly terrible, teeth-chattering, sweat-soaking nightmare where their psyche dredges up the worst fears and imaginings from the twisted underside of their subconscious. What dark, psychotic recess of your brain produced imagery like that? Maybe a shrink could tell you, but you don't really want to analyze it. You just want to be glad it was a nightmare. Just a nightmare. Then something disturbing, tugging at the back of your mind, causes you to look down. There is a knife in your hand. <><><><><> "Oh, Christ..." Tyler dropped the knife with a clatter, wiping her hand on the bottom of the oversized Cowboys jersey she preferred for sleeping. She backed away, her hands shaking, her skin feeling cold and clammy like it did when a fever broke and you woke up. She found her smokes on the nightstand, managed to get one out without dumping the whole pack, and touched the flame of her lighter to its tip. A few deep drags, and the shakes ironed out like ripples in a small puddle, slowly dopplering away into insignificance. She went back to the knife, and after a few hesitant half-reaches, finally bent and retrieved it. It wasn't hers; she had a small Cold Steel folder that never got used for much besides cutting rope, opening letters, and carving initials in out-of-the-way restroom walls. But what made her shiver again was the thought that...if the knife was real...what if the *thing* she'd used it on was, too? She looked for residue, anything that might make it more real. Brighter light, that's what she needed. She checked all the locks, then started into the bathroom. An idea caught her fancy; she stopped, went back to the phone and dialed room service. "Coffee, please," she ordered. "Black. And Winstons, in the soft pack. Right. That's right, Sterritt, 502. Thanks." She went into the bathroom, turned on the brighter lights, and studied the knife again, trying to remember what the damned thing had said. The words seemed to be fading, like a bad dream exposed to reality, but... ...she was convinced that some, if not all of the dream, had been real. -Tyler- <><><><><> [GM] Taking the knife into the bathroom, you inspect it closely. It looks to be much like an ordinary butcher's knife. Stainless steel screws rivet the two wooden sections of the handle to either side of the tang. The blade is large for a butcher's knife; almost a foot long. And very sharp. You find no residue of any kind on the blade or the handle. In fact, the knife is so shiny and new-looking, it could have just come from the factory. Which brings another point to mind, and a second thorough inspection uncovers another curious fact; there are NO markings on the knife, anywhere. No brand name, no serial number, no initials, absolutely nothing. Of course it could be a hand-made job and the bladesmith didn't bother to sign it or anything...but it is so perfectly constructed, without the slightest flaw anywhere, it's hard to believe it wasn't precision machine-crafted. There's something else odd about the knife. You can't figure out what it is, but something just strikes you as ODD about it. Like a feeling in the back of your head. Not threatening, just....strange. A knock on your door almost makes you jump out of your skin. Chiding yourself for letting a nightmare- even such a bizarre one- turn you into such a bundle of nerves, you realize it's just room service with your coffee and cigarettes. <><><><><> She'll do her coffee and smokes (putting the knife in her suitcase) and eventually fall asleep despite them, to wake up the next morning. -Tyler- <><><><> [GM] Nothing happens the rest of that night. The next morning, you go around town, finding nothing there that explains what drew you here. You can't shake the disturbing feeling from last night's "nightmare". You hear on the news something about a flying man seen in San Francisco. Weird. You're sitting in a coffee shop having some lunch, when you hear this voice. //another one// Startled, you almost drop your sandwich. This voice was male sounding, and normal...except no one is nearby. It seemed to waft out of thin air. //Hey, babe, you really set off the alarms last night. Usually I couldn't track someone this far away, so fast// You look around in a panic. An elderly couple is sitting two booths down. They smile at you when you look over. No one else seems to hear the voice. //find help, babe, before Legion gets you. We're going to New York now, but then he's coming after you. Crap, gotta g-// <><><><><> "Y'all hear that? Y'all hear that man?" She lit the cigarette; they were looking sympathetically at each other, like they'd stumbled on a loonie, and hoped she wasn't dangerous. "I *ain't* crazy," she insisted. "I heard him, plain as a pig's face. I guess y'all didn't." She got up and dropped enough cash on the table for the meal and an unreasonably small tip, then fished a quarter back. Girl had to watch her budget. **They're jus' old,** she reasoned to herself. "Pro'ly deaf as a post, anyway." Once outside, she walked briskly back to the hotel and buttonholed the concierge in the lobby. "I want my bags brung down; I'm gon' check out. Sterritt, five oh two. Then I want y'all to call the airport and fix me up a flight." She turned her back for a moment, feeling particularly vulnerable. "New York." -Tyler- <><><><><> [GM] The flight to New York is uneventful, except for the news coming into the NYC airport. Apparently at a hotel where a bunch of celebrities were having a party, there is a female terrorist holding them hostage. Supposedly she FLEW through the roof, and tore a wall apart with her bare hands. Police have surrounded the building, and it is believed that several people have already been killed inside. <><><><><> Tyler felt a little lost in New York; no familiar wide open spaces, not much country...and even worse, now that she was here...well...now what? The people weren't exactly friendly,everybody was going somewhere in an impressive hurry, and worse, their accent was abhorrent. She decided to give it a couple of days, and if nothing happened, maybe she'd just head on back to Texas and visit the family. See the ranch one time. Pop had a pair of new barrel racers 'bout ready to run; maybe she'd see how they looked, drop on over to the Star and dance a little, maybe cruise the DQ. She sighed, lit herself a cigarette and laughed. She was so small town it hurt. She shouldered her bags and headed for the hotel shuttles. At least she had enough innate self- preservation to avoid the cabbies. -Tyler- <><><><><><> [GM] As you emerge from the terminal, heading towards the gates and New York City beyond, a teenage boy approaches you. Great, you think, not here ten minutes and already I'm being approached by some hustler. This kid is REALLY good looking, though. Long blonde hair, stylish clothes...well, what passes for stylish with big city kids. Nice features...actually, he's gorgeous. Probably a scout for a chickenhawk, or something else nasty. "Hi, uh..." he hesitates a moment. "I received a kind of odd message to meet someone here. Someone just in from Cheyenne. I don't really know what is going on; but the past twenty four hours have been jam- packed with _really_ unusual surprises for me." He looks at you hopefully, obviously expecting some kind of reaction. <><><><><> "No s***," Tyler said, with heartfelt sincerity. "Ah don't even know what the hell ah'm doin' here. But...ah'magine it could be worse..." She grinned sardonically, then lit herself a cigarette and offered the boy the pack. "Tyler Sterritt, kid. Most recently, from Cheyenne an' points north. Don't rightly know if ah'm the one y'all are s'posed to meet, but there can't be *too* many Wyoming folks wanderin' loose in this town. How y'all doin'." She stuck out one slim hand; her grip was surprisingly firm, her palm and fingers oddly calloused. <<<<>>>>