Free IGMS Issue 17 by IGMS Page A

Capers shouted from somewhere inside the vehicle. "I know how to hotwire cars! It's essential detective knowledge!"
    The image of Capers' tampering with the Stallion's precious circuitry alarmed Jasmine. She took her eyes off the approaching ninjas and turned towards the door, realizing even as she did so that she'd made a mistake.
    The last thing she saw before the ninja's foot struck was the toy spider pressed against the glass, waving its legs in warning, its googly eyes jiggling in alarm.

    Canticle 4: Actus Spei
    Jasmine woke. Her face was pressed into a cold surface. Every part of her body ached.
    She twitched, about to roll over, then thought better of it. She listened instead.
    The sound of her own breathing. Distant shouts and rumbles. The grate of stone on stone, and ringing clangs of metal.
    "We know you're awake," a voice said. The accent sounded vaguely Irish, but not like Sister Brigid's Dublin accent; the words were weirdly shaped, and the voice rose and fell in the wrong places.
    Jasmine rolled over. Her face smarted as the blood rushed to it. She was lying on the floor of some kind of small cave. A torch in the corner cast flickering light through the grid of bars that separated her from the humans standing on the other side.
    There were three of them. A tall grim-faced man with a beard and wearing a type of battered leather armor aimed a gun at her. There was a bulge at the hip of the thin, frail-looking man on the far right, covered by the fabric of a gray overshirt. The mid-sized white man at the center had a knife in his belt, but no other visible weapon. His arms were folded on his chest. He carried himself with a kind of nervous authority.
    Jasmine clambered to her feet. She tried to move slowly, and keep her muscles relaxed. The metal bars across the front of her prison were obviously scavenged, probably from the melted remains of skyscrapers. They'd been crudely forged together to provide a grid-like barrier; the gaps between the bars were uneven, and some sections lacked horizontal bars. She hoped that when she examined the door hinge that the work there would prove equally shoddy.
    "Who are you?" Her voice was rough, and her mouth tasted of old blood. She needed water.
    "I am the Daimyo of the Wasteland," the central figure said, in his strange not-Irish accent. He looked less nervous when he spoke, but something about his posture still suggested discomfort.
    Not a born leader,
Jasmine thought. The man's face twitched.
    "I heard that," he said angrily. "We removed your medal. All your thoughts are open to me. I know all about you, Jasmine Brown."
    Jasmine stifled the thought she might have had in response. She focused on receiving information: noticing the hot, humid air drifting in from the tunnel, the relative youth of the Daimyo, the fact that there didn't seem to be anything remotely Asian about him.
Goddamn anime fans
, a distant part of her brain whispered before she could snuff it out.
    "But you know nothing about
me
," the man continued. His Adam's apple bobbed in his neck. "While you and your Order have been hoarding human knowledge in the wasteland, I've been bringing order back to the world. I alone can communicate with the cellular-psychotics; I alone formed the army that took over Mukwongo, and Elk Grove, and New Tokyo. My army grows at every stop. Once we have finished forging our weapons from the remains of Old Chicago, there will be nothing that can stop us! I already rule part of the wasteland, Ms. Brown. Soon I will rule it all."
    The grim-faced man did not look particularly happy during the Daimyo's monologue. He darted a look at Jasmine, but she kept her face -- and her mind -- as blank as possible.
    When the Daimyo seemed to have run out of steam, she prompted him with a question. "So what do you want with me?"
    "Your mind," the young man said. He looked vaguely uncomfortable. Apparently the threatening kind of histrionic boasting came less easily to him. "To complete the