by Sean Davies
By the time they reached the Mayor's study, Alice was so angry she could've waged war on the entire Gloom populace, but she forced her feelings down into the pit of her stomach, making it feel like she’d swallowed a bucket full of lava.
The butler Alt tapped lightly on the door before letting himself in. “Great and majestic Mayor, there is a messenger here on behalf of the Conclave and Justiciars.”
Outside the room, Alice huffed angrily at being referred to as a mere messenger, and looked forward to getting out of Gloomingdale for the foreseeable future.
“Well, take a bloody message,” the Mayor boomed in his eccentric tone. “We're very busy in here, very busy indeed!”
“It's regarding the Winston, sir—” the butler began.
“Why didn't you say so?! Bring them in immediately, chop-chop,” the Mayor shouted.
The butler Alternative left the study and held the door open for Alice. “The Mayor will see you now.”
“Yes, I heard,” Alice said sharply, before entering.
“The Winston always tips with sweets...” the butler muttered, before he closed the door behind her and returned to his duties.
The Mayor’s study was relatively well-furnished, and clean by the Gloom’s low standards. Like the corridors of the manor, it was lit by the murky glow of cloudy and cracked witchlight lamps, and extremely detailed framed paintings of the Mayor, his fiancé, and Winston hung perfectly level in between displays of broken vases and wilted Gloom flowers, showing them striking cool, dignified poses or standing valiantly on the corpses of countless masked Demons.
A big desk occupied most of the room, where a gorgeous woman with deathly white skin and chest-length wavy black hair with candyfloss highlights was perched, relaxing atop the messy paperwork whilst playfully swinging her long pale legs and deadly-looking stiletto heels. She was wearing a black and hot-pink striped corset and a tiny pleated miniskirt to match, and Alice instantly recognised her as the same Needle Maiden from the paintings around the manor.
Sitting behind the desk was the plump Alternative Mayor himself, dressed as always in his black and white striped suit and dusty top hat, with a broken monocle over one of his two shiny black eyes. He was busy filling his gold-toothed maw with chocolate covered strawberries, in-between slowly feeding them to his fiancé in an overly seductive way that made Alice want to vomit.
The Mayor’s stitched eyebrows rose when he saw Alice, and his eyes went wide with glee. “Adrian! Why didn’t you say it was you?! I’ll have that butler slapped silly for keeping that quiet, that I will!”
“It’s Alice,” the Lord Imperator replied sternly. “I need to talk to you—”
“This is my darling fiancé Arria,” the Mayor interrupted merrily. “Isn’t she just the most horrifically beautiful creature you’ve ever seen?”
Arria turned to look at Alice, showing her stunningly cute round face, dark gothic make-up, and big green doe-eyes that were blatantly real and had been snatched from a human corpse or unfortunate victim somewhere down the line.
“Lovely,” Alice replied, trying her best not to sneer.
The Needle Maiden glared at the Lord Imperator before turning slowly back towards the Mayor. “Honey bee, this is the nasty lady who killed mistress Mortissa. Can I make her go away, my precious sugar plum?” she asked in a sweet yet terrifying tone, as gleaming needles slid out from her silicon finger tips.
“Now, now, my darling decaying daffodil,” the Mayor chided, wagging a finger disapprovingly. “All’s fair in love and war, my dear, all’s fair indeed!”
Alice glared at the weird couple, and bit the inside of her lip as she waited to be heard.
“Fine…” Arria conceded in a stroppy tone, pouting as she retracted her needles and folded her arms across her small, corset-squeezed breasts. “Anything for you, hubby-to-be.”
“Now then, Abigail, what can I do for you?” the Mayor asked, lighting a big Tropican cigar with a witchfire flame from his thumb. “Something about Winston, the great gift-giver of all things glorious, you say?”
Alice groaned angrily; she could never tell if the overstuffed puppet was mocking her, or just completely witless. “What I’m about to tell you doesn’t leave this room.”
“Oh, I promise, I’m the master of discretion—that I am!” the Mayor declared.
Arria batted her doll-like eyelashes at the Lord Imperator. “Cross my heart and hope you die,” she purred dangerously, tracing a diagonal cross over her tightly bound chest.
The Lord Imperator snarled, before spilling the news she’d been sent to deliver. “Winston is ill. We think some part of Archmage Omniosis is trying to take control of his mind, but—”
“What?!” the Mayor roared madly, completely incinerating his cigar in a quick flash of witchfire. “Details, Anette, I need details, now!” he demanded, thumping the desk angrily.
Alice explained every aspect of Winston’s condition in excruciating detail, due to the Mayor’s constant demand for more information on his beloved friend, while Arria continued to feed herself chocolate-covered strawberries without a care in the world.
“This won’t do, this won’t do at all! My wonderful Winston is due to be the best man at my wedding ceremony—that he is!” the Mayor boomed, pacing up and down the room, before coming to an abrupt halt and raising a finger in the air as though he had been struck with a bolt of pure genius. “I know! I’ll come back to Central Isle with you and assist with Winston’s recovery—that I will!” he smiled maniacally.
“Oh, it will be like an early honeymoon, my large lusty lover,” Arria gushed.
“No and no,” Alice said flatly.
“Lending a helping hand to my dearest friend, a holiday, and a honeymoon? My, what a splendid time we’ll have, a splendid time indeed!” the Alt Mayor continued on, brushing over Alice’s refusal completely.
“You’re not coming—” the Lord Imperator began, before being cut off.
“Jives! Jives! Get your scrawny cloth butt in here!” the Mayor yelled.
The butler Alternative, Jives, popped his head around the door a second later. “Yes, sir?”
“Get Olex the Spidercar and the carriage loaded up with our travelling gear,” the Mayor beamed cheerfully. “We’re off on vacation—that we are! Oh, and drag DVAM out of the workshop and tell him he’s in charge. And make sure he doesn’t blow anything up, for heaven’s sake, for heaven’s sake indeed!”
“Very good, sir,” the butler replied with a courteous nod.
“Make sure you pack me something cute, something slutty, and something fancy,” Arria instructed him charmingly, before tossing the butler a handful of strawberries.
Jives’ mouth split open into a frighteningly large maw, making Alice flinch, as he caught and devoured the fruit in one savage bite.
“Yes, ma’am, thank you, ma’am,” the butler said as though nothing out of the ordinary had transpired.
“Oh, you do spoil him so, that you do,” the Mayor sighed fondly, shaking his head.
“You’re not coming. I’m leaving now,” Alice announced robotically. Her patience with the Alternatives had well and truly expired.
“Don’t be like that, Alice, honey,” Arria said sweetly. “Just think; it will be a great opportunity to get to know each other better.” The Needle Maiden batted her eyelashes again whilst smiling creepily.
“I’ll pass on your sentiments to Winston and his other close friends,” the Lord Imperator said as though she were reading from an autocue. “Goodbye.”
The Mayor appeared in front of the door before Alice could blink, and stood deliberately in her way. “Alex, Alex, Alex…” the Alt began, patting the Lord Imperator on her shoulder armour repeatedly. “I’m going to see my Winston, one way or the other,” he whispered in a calm yet threating tone. “I suppose if we don’t go with you then we’ll have to arrange transport by another means, that we will, which would mean telling a lot more people, a lot more people indeed…” He trailed off, stroking
his round fabric chin musingly.
“There is a brain in there, after all,” Alice said bitterly, knowing the overstuffed Alternative had her over a barrel.
“No, my dear, just padding,” the Mayor corrected with a smile. “Although I do think brains are quite delicious, quite delicious indeed!”
“Especially dripping with chocolate sauce and syrup,” Arria hummed, licking her cherry pink lips. “This is a really nice hammer, by the way. Shame you killed my mistress with it…”
The Lord Imperator turned sharply and saw that the Needle Maiden had pinched her Spell-forged steel hammer without making the slightest sound, and was swinging and spinning it as though it were as light as a feather.
“Give me that,” Alice snapped, snatching her weapon back. “Fine, you win. You can come with me, but we’re leaving right now. I’ve had enough of this damned place.”
Arria hopped on the spot with happiness, and the Mayor grinned as he grabbed a blood-stained silver cane with a skull handle from a basket beside the door.
“Winston and vacation, here we come!” the Mayor cheered.
“Goddesses give me strength,” Alice sighed dejectedly.
✽ ✽ ✽
Inside Winston's divided mind, Veronica looked down at her armoured body through the visor of her helmet, trying to walk as naturally as possible as she approached the World GOVT building alongside the mental image of her husband.
“How does anyone cope in these effing suits of power armour?” Veronica complained.
“I suppose you’re used to dresses,” Winston replied, “which, I've got to say, are much sexier than that ensemble.”
Veronica risked performing a quick sexy pose, which looked hilarious in her hulking white and gold armour. “Are you saying you wouldn't take me right now if you could? I bet you can't take your eyes off these sexy... metal plates...”
Winston laughed, but immediately shut his mouth as a group of black and red troopers exited the building and headed towards them. The Reynoldses held their breath and carried on casually, and luckily the troops just saluted and marched past them.
Veronica let out a relieved sigh. “If this plan actually works, I'll eat my helmet.”
“Wouldn't you rather eat mine?” Winston quipped.
“Oh, I've missed your filthy ways, Winston Reynolds,” Veronica said light-heartedly with a naughty wink, before realising her husband couldn't see it through her small black visor.
Winston chuckled. “The plan's definitely going to work, though,” he said confidently, “We're using this place's chilling realism to our advantage, just like dream-Lucius said. We’ve manifested ourselves officer’s armour, so they’re bound to let us in.”
“Not that I'm complaining, but you seem really cheerful,” Veronica observed.
He nodded. “Hearing that I'm winning this battle, even if it's at the back of my mind, has got me feeling way better.”
They approached the World GOVT building’s guarded metal blast doors and stopped their chattering, straightening their shoulders and saluting the troopers on duty. Just as Winston had hoped, the troopers let them past without any qualms, and the couple marched inside.
The ground floor of the building resembled a grand church, with long tapestries hanging from the high ceiling in place of stained glass windows. It boasted even more religious paraphernalia than the Cathedral of the Twin Goddesses on the real-world Central Isle, and whereas the Hotel Noir had emitted a strange ghostly hue, everything within the psychological version of the Government building radiated a warm golden glow as though each item had been placed there by the deities themselves.
The Reynoldses walked up a spotless blue and gold carpet running from the entrance to a reception desk like the aisle of a church, only without the pews either side. Their goal was either one of the two small staircases beside the desk, as they could see rows of elevators that would lead them to the top floor—this was where they hoped Winston's book would be.
A blonde-haired man in white robes sat behind the reception desk, writing in a big ledger with a quill, but he didn't seem to notice the disguised Reynoldses. They tried to walk by him without a word, but as soon as they reached the left-hand set of stairs he coughed loudly, making them jump.
“Where do you think you're going?” the receptionist asked abruptly.
Winston and Veronica reluctantly turned and approached the desk.
“We need to head up to the top floor,” Winston said in a gruff voice.
Veronica had to stop herself from giggling at her husband’s fake, ultra-macho tone. “It's a matter of urgency, on the orders of the Holy Autocrat.”
“Really?” the man replied in a patronising voice, as he flicked back to a previous page in his archaic ledger. “Because I don't see anything about it in here.”
“Erm...” Winston hesitated, caught off-guard.
Veronica was quick with her blood magic, and shot a flutter of red wisps into the man's forehead. “No, look, we are in there,” she said, pointing at some random writing with her finger.
“Oh yes, so you are,” the receptionist amended, staring down at the page with a confused expression. “My apologies, officers—go right ahead.”
“Thank the Goddesses for blood magic,” Winston whispered, as they made their way to the closest elevator.
“Amen,” Veronica replied coyly.
They rode the elevator all the way up to the top floor, which had angelic hymns playing in lieu of the standard cheesy music, and it felt as though they were ascending to the heavens themselves.
“We should be armed,” Winston suggested. “Especially if cyber-Alice is up here.”
“Good thinking, sweetie,” Veronica replied, creating a multipurpose rifle out of thin air.
Winston focused his thoughts, and manifested a pair of silver pistols with glowing blue capacitors studded along their sides.
“What are those, something from a sci-fi movie?” Veronica asked.
“Electro-pistols,” Winston told her proudly. “Just something I doodled back in school.”
“I thought you'd have been too busy checking out the hot chicks to draw,” Veronica teased.
“Well, yeah, I did that in-between...” Winston admitted cheekily.
They left the elevator, prepared to encounter guards, but found the top floor surprisingly empty. There was a series of doors, most of which were completely sealed slabs of metal, leaving only two open.
“Winston, check this out,” Veronica whispered, waving him over to one of the rooms. “It's that Bernard dude from the documentary.”
Winston turned away from what he assumed was the main chamber, and crept towards his wife as quietly as he could in a suit of power armour. “It looks like a throne room in there,” he whispered, gesturing behind him.
“This one’s the set of the news show we saw earlier,” Veronica said. “Well, sort of.”
Winston peeked inside and looked around what appeared to be a small unmanned television studio, spotting the antique leather sofa Bernard and Alice had sat on during their propaganda broadcast. Directly in front of the sofa, multiple cameras, lights, and glowing display panels were mounted to long mechanical arms hanging from above, arranged around a strange object plugged into the ceiling. The rest of the studio was disturbingly dark, as if it didn’t exist at all.
“I don’t see Mason anywhere,” Winston said quietly, as he quickly scanned the room for people.
“He’s right there, near the sofa,” Veronica murmured, pointing him out.
Winston looked at the couch again, and his eyes went wide when he realised that the object wired into the ceiling was actually Bernard Mason himself. The news presenter’s face, limbs and chest were split in half and opened slightly, showing that his humanity was only skin deep, and the multiple leads and cables hanging from above were plugged directly into his shiny robotic innards.
“I knew Alice couldn’t be sociable, not even in your weird alternate-universe dreams,” Veronica joked
under her breath.
“Let’s go before it wakes up… or turns on,” Winston said, hoping that he wouldn’t be forced to search the eerie room.
They entered into the wide main chamber which resembled a science fiction temple crossed with a monarch’s throne room, lined with tinted floor-to-ceiling windows and evenly spaced black and gold Holy Autocracy banners. A strip of gold carpet had been laid upon the near-reflective black tiled floor, leading from the chamber’s entrance all the way up to a foreboding golden throne with a crescent moon mural carved into the tall backrest. Running up either side of the carpet were glass display cases set atop short rectangular pillars, displaying grisly trophies of blood-stained weapons, preserved body parts, skulls, and faces, each one marked with a little plaque denouncing the previous owner simply as ‘heretic’.
Winston peered into every grim case that he walked by, hoping that his book would be inside of one. “Do you see it anywhere?” he asked Veronica.
Veronica shook her head. “No, and there’s not exactly a lot of places to look—unless it’s behind the throne.”
“Could be.” Winston checked the last case, which contained a small mound of Vampire ashes.
“Oh, you won’t find it here,” a robotic voice chuckled from behind the throne, “or anywhere else in this world-sized prison of mine.”
Winston raised his pistols. “Omniosis!”
“Time to die again, you masked motherfucker,” Veronica snarled as she readied her rifle.
“I’m not Omniosis. I’m Autocrat Alice Eve, in all of my cybernetic splendour,” the voice said, before stepping out into the open.
Alice was completely naked, although there was hardly enough of her dark, injured skin remaining to notice; the full extent of her physical injuries and modifications were plain for them to see. The Autocrat was almost as mechanical as the robotic news reporter in the World GOVT building’s automated TV studio. Alice swept one side of her bob cut behind a square metal earpiece to reveal that most of her head had also been replaced.