CONPEDIS

The COMPOSER

The subject was chained down and screaming. The Composer didn't really know why. The subject hadn't even been really tortured yet, but she was already weeping and begging for her life. Seriously, the Composer was almost glad that there wouldn't be a chance to torture her. Took all the fun out of it.

“Please, just let me go, I just want to go home...”

It was ever so tempting to flay her alive—only a little bit, she'd live—but the Composer resisted. Because of willpower. That was the secret to success, really. Prioritize what you needed over what you wanted.

Instead, the Composer whispered a song in the girl's ear. Her weeping slowed, then ceased, as she was caught up in the beauty of the music. After a moment, the Composer stopped singing, but the girl didn't start crying again. The Composer unlocked the chains with a wave of a hand.

The Composer snapped fingers in front of the subject's face and she followed the sound, though she didn't come out of the trance. The Composer carefully waved fingers in front of her face, back and forth, in a simple pattern.

“None of this happened,” the Composer said to her in a gentle voice. “You woke up and decided to go for a walk.”

“I woke up and decided to go for a walk.”

“That's right. Now leave this place and forget it ever existed.”

The narrative has been illicitly obtained; should you discover it on Amazon, report the violation.

The new conductor did as she was ordered, leaving the little lair without so much as a word.

The Composer sighed, this time with pleasure. The chorus were the most obvious of the “zombies,” but far from the real threat. Butler and his little gang would chase them around, while the conductors kept everything under control. Until the time was right for the good guys to win, of course. And the Composer had pieces already in play for just that occasion.

Five directors running around, ready to stop a zombie apocalypse. Well, four directors and that idiot Adam. He'd die soon and get replaced by the fifth director. What was she doing? The others had to have contacted her by now. There couldn't have been a mistake...

Bah. It would be easier to just kill them all and start over with a fresh batch, but the Composer had already invested too much effort in these. If only the goal was easier, all this frustrating planning would be unnecessary.

What the Composer needed was to kill something. Run off into the night like a chorus, screaming like a banshee, and just rip through a cafe or something. But that would skew all the results. The directors would hear the screaming, they'd come investigate, so on and so forth. The Composer couldn't risk playing a hand so early in the game. So annoying.

But, such was the curse of responsibility. Greater good and all that.

Heh. Greater good. That wasn't the Composer's goal. Killing things was enough. But, it had been pointed out more than once that killing everything would eventually result in running out of things to kill. So it was better to wait, bide time.

The Composer glanced at the clock. It was five in the morning. The Composer grinned. It was a little ahead of schedule, but why not give those fools a nice wake-up call?

With a fingersnap, another conductor that had been created a few days earlier lost all conscious control of her body and began to sing. There weren't that many people around her, but there were a few, and they stopped to listen to the hauntingly beautiful music.

And then, one by one, the song wormed its way into their minds. It became a part of them, carrying with it power and some extra commands. They became chorus, and they began to scream, an endless, emotionless cry that shook the soul.

Five people sleeping soundly in their beds woke up with a jolt.

The Composer grinned.

“And... here... we... go.”