Week 28.3 – Ghost Dragon

Previously: Yi Fan lamented that, now that the ghost knew about the mask’s power, she would be cursed forever. And now…

“What do you mean?” Twain said. “Just put the mask on again.”

“He won’t let me,” Yi Fan said. “You can’t see him now, but he’s here. He sees. He knows. If I tried to put the mask on again, he would stop me.”

“You can’t hold him back?”

Yi Fan shook her head. “I can call him forth, sometimes, like I did to kill Biryukov, but I can’t prevent…”

She trailed off, looking at Biryokov’s body on the floor, his head twisted obscenely backward. She gasped and grabbed at Twain, pulling up his shirt and running her hands over his firm abs. “You were shot,” she said. “And wearing different clothes. And your hair was longer, your skin darker. Did you somehow turn time backwards on your own body, to a time before you were shot?”

Twain laughed and shook his head. “No, I just… What the mask did to you, I can do to myself without it.”

“And what did the mask do to me?” she asked.

“It switched your body with another you, from a different reality where you were never cursed,” Twain said. “When I flip, I’m wearing the clothes I was wearing the last time, and my body is in the same condition. If I was tired, I’m tired again. If I was dirty, I’m dirty again.”

“So if you were to switch now…”

“My skin would be dark, and my hair would be short, and I would be dying from a gunshot wound.”

[blockquote type=”blockquote_quotes” align=”right”]“I am possessed by an undead revenant who is 10 feet tall and thirsts for human death,” she said. “Sanity is not a luxury I can indulge…”[/blockquote]She shook her head wonderingly and touched his cheek, trailed her fingertips lightly down it. “There’s so much about you I don’t know, and yet, I feel as if I know the only thing that really matters.”

“Which is?”

“That you will love me, and that I will love you,” she said, and there was no doubt in her voice.

“You realize how crazy that sounds,” he said.

“I am possessed by an undead revenant who is 10 feet tall and thirsts for human death,” she said. “Sanity is not a luxury I can indulge.”

Twain could find no holes to poke in that argument. “So what should we do now?” he asked.

“We put the mask on the Czar and hope it changes him into an alternate version who never gained his powers,” Yi Fan said. “Once he is powerless, the Ghost Dragon can deal with him.”

“Who?”

“My spirit.”

“Okay, so step one: put the mask on the Czar,” Twain said. “How are we supposed to do that?”

“Biryukov and I head up his security forces,” Yi Fan said. “He trusts us to be alone with him.”

Twain looked down at the staring body on the floor. “But he’s dead.”

Yi Fan shook her head. “He’s a tall, bald white man that people are afraid to look in the eye. Shave your head and put on his clothes, and we can get a private audience with the Czar. No one will try to stop us until it’s too late.”

Can their crazy plan really work? Don’t miss tomorrow’s tension-filled episode!

To read from the beginning, click here…