Gormer breathed a bit easier. He had been a different man then, and not a good one. He had betrayed people and tricked them into near-slavery. He had done it all because he wanted drugs…and because he could.
You did that. Own it! a voice in his head directed. If you want to atone for that, just stay calm. Keep up the act.
He had only one shot. The false information he had brought had been confirmed by some of the people trading metal, and they had sent out scouts to confirm the rest. His cover story still held, and Liesel obviously thought he was working a con for himself, not for the enemy.
That was his angle.
Shit, how much more complicated could this get?
When dessert was announced, Gormer turned to Gerolf. “It’s been a while since I’ve had such rich food. I simply can’t have dessert.”
“Oh, well, stay for the digestif, then. You always did enjoy the liqueur from the Wilfred estate.”
A quick glance at Liesel gave him the proper motivation. She had murder in her eyes.
“I’m afraid it’s a mite too late for a digestif.” He risked losing his disguise by creating the illusion of a gurgling stomach and a raunchy wet fart.
“Oh.” Gerolf waved his hand in front of his nose. “Old man…yes, please go relieve yourself.”
Gormer only wished he could spare some of that energy to let Liesel experience the gas he had based on the rearick he’d grown up with.
He headed to the door Liesel had pointed out, counting each step as if it might be his last. If he was to go out tonight, he wanted to enjoy even the simplest sensations.
As soon as he passed into the dimly-lit hallway the guards closed the door. Gormer dropped the disguise and poured all his energy into turning himself into a tentacled demon with red glowing fly-eyes and lobster pincers.
The guards shrieked like children, but that didn’t stop them from hitting him with a magitech stun device.
“Gods damn,” one of the guards said as they dragged Gormer away by his robes. “She told me he’d change, but that was so real.”
“Yeah,” the other guard replied. “I ain’t afraid to admit it—I almost ran away, but then I thought, ‘what if it isn’t real,’ like she said and I let him get away.”
“You saved both our lives, then,” the first guard replied. “Because I only hit him with the stun setting on my rifle when you did.”
Gormer tried to say something rude, but he couldn’t operate his mouth. His legs thumped against the hard, stone steps as if they were sacks of carrots. They brought him to a well-appointed suite of rooms and tied him to a chair after cuffing his hands behind his back.
Before his captors left, Gormer’s mouth started working again.
“Can I get that dessert now?”
That earned him a special return trip from one of the guards, who slapped him hard across the face.
Gormer laughed and spat at the guard as he walked away. “You hit like an anemic hooker too drunk to hide her disappointment at how small and crusty your cock is.”
Come on, Gormer thought. Give me something.
The guard doubled back and slapped him again. “Do you backhand your mother with that hand?”
Slap!
Get closer…come on. They walked away again. “I’ve never seen two walking douchebags before. They talk, too. What a strange world this—”
They both came back that time and beat him in the face, chest, and stomach until blood flowed freely from his nose and one of his eyes swelled closed.
He did manage to bite off one of their lapel pins while they were setting his chair upright and almost swallowed it. He was losing consciousness, and he only hoped he could keep it in his mouth while he was out.
Yeah, he thought. My face should be swollen enough to keep that in place. Just to make sure, he used his tongue to jam it between his cheek and gums by his lower molars.
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
Dream Walker
Gormer went to another place. He wasn’t asleep and he wasn’t awake; he was conscious. He had heard about this before from the mystics. They could go places—leave their bodies and travel.
It was scary at first to look down at his body. He thought he was dead.
But when the door opened and Liesel stepped into the room, she passed right through him and lifted his head. That was when Gormer noticed that his body was still breathing.
“Those fucking idiots,” Liesel exclaimed.
“What is it, dear?” Yarik came up behind her. “Ah, do you have something to tell me?”
“Do you remember that recruiter we used? The one who blackmailed our factory workers?”
“Never met the man, but I admired his work,” Yarik said. “Is this him? What’s he doing all the way out here?”
“Shit floats downstream, I guess,” Liesel replied. “He’s running some scam here. I want to know what it is. He might be useful.”
“Well, those dumb guards you have on your secret payroll might have killed him. Looks like he has a broken neck.”
“His face looks better, though,” Liesel slapped him on the back of the head.
“We’ll leave him here and collect him after the fight. It should be a short one,” Yarik said. “Let’s change into our work clothes. We have much to do before morning.”
“I think I like the cots in the workshop better than these beds up here,” Liesel replied.
They changed, then left. Gormer thought about following them down the hallway, then thought, Fuck that. If I’m a ghost, I’m gonna make the most of it.
He drifted through the wall and floated down to the ground. There was no sensation of weightlessness. There was a path he wanted to follow to get somewhere, and he just went along with it.
He even forgot about the ruined face that waited for him back in his body. He placed a hand on his ghost face and noticed for the first time that his hands didn’t look like ghost hands. They looked just like his real hands, only cleaner.
And his ghost face wasn’t all bruised and puffy.
Oh shit! He thought. If I can see me…A guard walked out of the warehouse and passed right through him. He laughed out loud and the guard whirled around. Gormer held his non-breath in his ghost lungs.
He’d heard something.
“Must be tired,” the guard muttered to himself.
Gormer did what passed for breathing again, then tried to push open the door. His hand went through, so he just kept pushing until he was inside the factory.
He found Liesel and Yarik working on the rolling death machine they called “the Porcupine.” Liesel was on the ground lifting some heavy object up into some bewildering mechanism. She connected it to a long shaft, then bolted it in place.
“Porcupine 2 is almost ready,” Liesel declared. “We should be good to go for the attack tomorrow. When we see the fortress wards again they will belong to us.”
Gormer tried to kick her in the head but his foot passed right through.
Disgusted by these two, he turned back to the line. He didn’t need to read minds to feel the misery of the men and women who slaved at the machines. They didn’t seem to all be making rifles. Some of the parts coming out of the devices were clearly not for weapons—unless weapons had gears and mushroom-shaped things with threaded shafts on either end and copper wire wound around weird little lobes on the mushroom thing.
Vinnie really needs to have a look at this, Gormer thought.
The man next to him raised his head and started. His hand had almost wandered into the gnashing gears of the machine.
“Watch it!” Gormer said sharply.
The man jumped back from his station.
“We got another injury!” a guard shouted.
The startled man held up both hands. “No! I can work! I can work!” he shouted in a panic. “No blood!”
“Good for you!” the guard shouted back. “You’re keeping your kids from taking your place. Good man. Good worker!”
The guards had a laugh over that.
“I must be going crazy,” the man lamented. “Gods, please help me.”
“You’re not going crazy,” Gormer whispered in his ear. He mimicked the man’s voice to reduce the shock.
“I’m going crazy,” he mumbled. “Sounds like my voice, but not in my head. Hold it together, Oscar. Just five more hours.”
“I’m sorry,” Gormer said. “This is real. You’re not going crazy. You are strong.” The man’s hands began to tremble. “I’m a mystic of sorts…” He paused and the man’s hands became steadier. “I’m going to prove to you I’m real. I’m going to help you and the others get out of here, but you need to help me.”
“No. They’ll kill us all,” the man whispered. “If you are real, just go and get help.”
“Buddy, I am the help,” Gormer replied. “Sorry, but you’re stuck with me. I’m tied up in a chair, but not for long.”
“This is unbelievable,” the man said. “I can’t lose my mind. I can’t.”
“Oscar, you must believe me. Please, I need you. The protectorate needs you. Astrid needs you.”
“Astrid?” Oscar said a little too loudly.
“What did you say?” a passing guard on the platform shouted.
“Ah, shit!” Oscar said.
“Get back to work, toad!” the guard yelled.
“I’ll kill that guy for you, don’t worry,” Gormer assured him.
“Look, I have a plan. Five hours. That’s around dawn, when your shift ends, right? Be ready. I’ll come to you disguised as a guard, and I’ll take you to where the weapons are. I’ll give you one, then we start shooting.”
“That’s insane!”
“Don’t you want out of here?”
“I do, but how?”
“Ever ride a porcupine?”
“Sounds painful.” Oscar finally smiled.
“Only if you’re on the outside.”
“Please be real,” Oscar begged. “Please.”
“I’m real, Oscar. Just hang on. Tell the others.”
And just like that, Gormer snapped back into his body. He gasped and his head jerked up, sending fire through his neck. His entire head throbbed with the deepest ache he’d ever known.
But he managed to control his breathing. He thought back to Astrid’s words. He called to mind visions of the Well, deep, pure, and cool. After an hour the pain was still there, but he didn’t care about it. All he had to do was keep breathing until dawn.
When I feel the sun begin to rise I will stir, he told himself.
And he did. The colors weren’t even on the horizon yet, but he felt the sun. Pins and needles assaulted his arms as he got them moving again, then he rocked back and forth until the chair tipped over with him in it. He managed to tuck in his chin before impact, so he avoided banging his head.
But the stolen pin was a problem. The dried blood had cemented it into his mouth. It took him an agonizingly long time to work up enough saliva to get it free.
He lost count of how many times he stabbed himself with the pin while bending it with his teeth and lips. When he thought it was the right shape he spat it on the ground. He somehow managed to worm, jerk, and squirm around until his hands found the pin.
Taking a breath to calm himself after so much painful exertion, he willed his hands to stay steady. He had to stick the bent pin into his thumb to keep from losing it while he examined the cuffs with his other fingers.
With a smile, he realized the lock was old and poorly built. He was out of them in seconds.
“You fuckers done goofed,” Gormer muttered as he worked to free one hand. “You left me my blades.” They hadn’t even checked.
With one arm free, he drew the knife from under his robe in a flash and the ropes were gone a second later. The rush of triumph canceled any pain.
“Let’s just see,” he growled. “Time for the slaughter.”
He backtraced his path down the hallway that he’d been dragged down. He’d been hoping that the guards were still around but he found no one, not even servants. The hall was lit at regular intervals by a few sputtering candles in sconces.
He ducked into a room he sensed was empty. With eyes white and glowing, he searched for minds until he found them. He saw what they saw. Pipe smoke. Muddy ground. The wall of the warehouse.
He knew where they were. He drew two knives and kept them loosely in his hands as he stepped back out into the hallway, eyes still glowing as he searched for more people. He caught random thoughts.
The lieutenants had already left to meet their army. The servants remembered them leaving with relief. Porcupine 2 still wasn’t ready; they were behind schedule. Yarik and Liesel had worked all night, but they still couldn’t get it done.
The lieutenants were angry with them, and they took that out on the servants. So much so that piecing together random experiences gave Gormer the entire picture. He even caught flashes of a random factory worker who had been pressed into service to test the driving controls of the Porcupine.
A maid surprised him in the main dining room as he came down the stairs. She was mopping the floors. As she turned toward him, all Gormer could think to do was create the illusion of a butler he had seen.
“Oh, Rommy!” the young girl exclaimed. “You’re still up.”
Gormer shrugged and hurried away. Strange, the girl thought as he walked away, but she was too busy trying to get her work done to think any more of it.
He made his way to the kitchen that he saw through someone else’s eyes. It was in the basement, and there was a door that opened to a stairwell near the warehouse. That was where his friends were.
Gormer hunkered down in the stairwell until a guard on patrol walked by. He impersonated the young girl he had seen in the ballroom.
“Oh,” Gormer said in coquettish tones, “I didn’t mean to startle you.” He batted his eyes—or her eyes, depending on perspective.
“Not at all,” the guard said, licking his lips.
Gormer giggled and the man looked her up and down as he stepped forward.
“I’m only fifteen, you goat-jacking jizz-licker!”
The guard drew back his hand and Gormer drove his knife under his chin at an angle. The blade hit some crucial part of the brain and down he went.
He threw the animal down the stairwell and took on his face, though it made him sick to impersonate a creepy fucker like that.
He followed the smell of bad pipe tobacco to his special buddies.
“Hey,” Gormer said.
“You’re out of bounds,” the guard who’d hit him first said. “They catch you off your patrol route and—”
He couldn’t take it anymore; he let the illusion drop. One of the guards pissed himself just before Gormer gave him a second smile that bisected his Adam's apple. He stabbed the remaining guard through the heart twice, and once more for good measure.
He took both their rifles and left them where they lay. They had conveniently secreted themselves in a secluded spot at the back of the warehouse.
Having satisfied his urge for revenge, Gormer focused again. There were hardly any guards around. He turned his glowing white eyes to the warehouse door, taking an extra few seconds to sense anyone who might be around.
There were only three guards, that bitch Liesel, and that wrinkled old bleached turd Yarik.
Nobody noticed when another guard strolled through the factory. Gormer ambled up to Oscar and gave him a menacing look. When Oscar dared to glance at him, Gormer gave a wink.
“It’s me,” he said. “From last night. I’m here to rescue you.” When Oscar began to shake this time it was from pure joy. “Do you know how to fire this thing?”
“I dream about firing them every day as I build them,” Oscar confirmed.
Before Gormer could tell him what he had in mind, Oscar snatched the spare rifle and screamed at the top of his lungs. “Die, you sadistic bags of festering shit!”
The first shot took the head off a catwalk guard in a cloud of blood and bone.
The dead man fell to the factory floor, where a worker wasted no time grabbing his rifle.
“Shit!” Gormer exclaimed.
One of the guards rushed up to get a clear sight line and aimed for Oscar. “Shoot him, you fucking idiot!” the guard shouted. It took Gormer a second to realize he was the target of the shout.
Gormer killed him with a shot at point-blank range.
A blue bolt of magical energy missed him by a fraction of an inch. He was still in disguise and one of the factory workers had a gun! He changed back quickly.
“Wh-what?” the woman stammered.
“Duck!” Gormer screamed, then took out a guard who was about to shoot them both.
The woman was too stunned to duck, but luckily both Gormer and the guard missed her.
Now all the guards were dead, and Liesel was busy trying to get her father out of danger. She had her arm around the old man’s hunched shoulders and fired random shots with her much more powerful rifle as she ran.
One of the energy bolts turned a worker into a red stain that completely drenched three workers and a machine. The machine started throwing sparks and flames as the man’s flesh clogged it.
Gormer yelled at two shrieking women who were covered in the blood and matter of their coworker. “Come with me if you want to live!”
Oscar was busy collecting weapons and handing them out. He knew where the finished rifles were…and the location of the charged amphoralds. He had used one of the captured weapons to blow the lock off the amphorald case.
“Get in the fucking Porcupine!” Gormer shouted, a phrase he had never thought could, would, or should exist.
“No!” Oscar replied. His face was covered in blood. “I’m driving.”
“The fuck you are!” Gormer shouted back. “This is all me!”
They raced toward the Porcupine cackling like lunatics. Gormer beat him to the driver cabin and hauled Oscar up.
“Damn it!” Oscar shouted as Gormer got behind the controls.
“Just close the damn doors!” Gormer commanded with a sinister grin.
Oscar pulled a lever and the driver’s cabin doors hissed shut. He shouted into the back compartment, where all the factory workers were jammed. “Is everyone in?”
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