The figure steps out from the darkness.

At first I think I'm still high, but no, the effects of heroin wore off time ago.

There is really someone in my room. The trip... the agent looking for me... it was not a dream, so?

"Cicciotto, dress yourself, we have to go, if you love being alive..."

The voice... the voice is hoarse, but definitely feminine.

And it's a woman to come out from the shadow. Tall, sheathed into a black leather suit, dark skin and black eyes.

South-American, she seems. And there is a grace in her movement, and yet a hidden force, that I can't stop to think that she resembles a ...

"Lioness. That's my codename. But you can call me Lorena".

Then her eyes fall over the syringe. Her nostrils enlarge slightly, and a half smile appears on her lips.

“A speedster on heroin? You should call yourself Speedy the Smakhead!”

I don’t understand the joke, she’s speaking in English and I’m not really expert of the language. I did have to learn something when I was a champion, but it was many years ago…

I’m still on the bed. She becomes still for an instant, her head pointed toward the ceiling. Then she grab the first dress she finds, folded on a chair, then grabs me, and keeping me over her right shoulder jumps out of the window.

A short run to a black Ferrari parked out of the door of my restaurant, and she throws me over the back seat.

“Dress yourself!” she orders, while the engine begins to roar. The car takes speed, and while I enter into my runner vest, I see, from the rear window, beams of light from an electric torch coming from my apartment over the restaurant.

“One more minute and you would have been dead meat, mister” Loreana says.

“I don’t understand… who are you, who is the one in my home?”

“Who is he, I don’t know… but I know for certain that’s an Agent of the MCCA”.

“MCCA?”

“MCCA. Yankees struggling to find every metahuman on Earth useful for TriVex. ”

“I’m totally lost…”

“Someone will explain anything. Quick, get out of the car”.

The car brakes and stops in the middle of open country. A few meters away, in the middle of a field, a black helicopter shines under the full moon.

We get on, and the ’copter takes flight, heading east. The pilot is dressed in a leather outfit similar to Lorena’s own. The Lioness sits near him. They kiss passionately, then she turns to me.

“Cicciotto, this is Agent 57”. He, too, turns to me, and it’s impossible, he have my face!

Lorena continues: “He’s a master of disguise, you’ll never see him with the same face. Even I haven’t ever seen his true face.”

“But… why?” I ask.

“Precaution, if MCCA should intercept us. ”
But the voyage is not interrupted by anyone. The sunrise hit us when there is the sea under us. Then the ’copter is over a big city nested between mountains and a long, white beach, with tall skyscrapers and a Medieval stone town.

We land over the top of a tall building. Instead of usual H, the sign over which we have landed is M-X.

There is an old, bearded man awaiting for us.

He lend his hand, and says: “Welcome to Mandelovia, son. I’m doctor Henry Quantos, head of the research department of Malvan-X”

[ 09-24-2001: Message edited by: The Eurostar ]

[ 09-24-2001: Message edited by: The Eurostar ]