by JM Guillen
In less than an instant, I knew everything the Facility knew about the deadly creatures. As if ingrained into my very bones, I understood their treacherous natures, knew their tendencies to enslave others for their amusement and pleasure.
I’d been close to a very messy death.
Shit.
I pushed myself a bit harder, wringing every scrap of grace from the Adept.
We’ll keep Asset Guthrie from bleeding out, Alpha. Stop him!
I didn’t respond to Rachel.
I just kept running.
4
The next room surpassed the first in luxurious sumptuousness. The moment we entered, clouds of jasmine and opium incense swirled around us.
Two other exits awaited.
This time, the braziers sat upon the floor, bronze containers carved with ornate animals. Between them, a sumptuous bed of pillows and soft cushions invited visitors to rest. Many pelts had been crafted into an elegant rug, checkered with different colors, and tapestries hung from the walls.
The Screi was nowhere to be seen.
Do you think it can use it’s abilities to be completely hidden? I swept one side of the room with my disruptor, my katana in the other hand.
Like I know more than you do. Delacruz stepped to the left, and I assumed she peered through the closest archway. I got the packet seconds before you.
Fucking terrifying. I shook my head. I prefer to understand the motives of my aberrant sorcerer-assassins.
I’d rather not have the intimate details of how they skin people alive, she responded.
Anya, can you track telemetry while we chase the Screi? Is there a distance issue?
I can, Michael. The moment it fled, I received brief readings of sub-Rationality, dipping to negative seven. That has faded now, however.
That might have been the thing fleeing. I bit my lip. It moved pretty fucking fast.
If distance becomes a concern, I’ll advise.
It might help, should he attempt some form of hoodoo, but the Screi remained a bit of an unknown. Facility records didn’t exactly understand why or how they did the things they did, only that they sliced through axiomatic obduracy with a surgeon’s skills. As a result, when they shifted Rationality, the changes came blindingly fast—often too rapidly for an Asset to respond properly.
The Screi deserved their classification as a level seven threat. Most of the time, when an Asset encountered one of their thuamaturges, only an incomplete record remained.
Because the Asset didn’t return.
I’m out of play for a moment, Alpha. Guthrie needs my full attention.
Understood.
In here. Delacruz took a step toward one of the archways. Do you hear that?
I did. A soft sobbing mewled somewhere in that room, a sound filled with despair.
The Screi can see past the Wraith, I informed Delacruz. It can smell our heat or some such.
Well, that’s lovely, she growled. Might as well turn the thing off. Save the fatigue. She faded into view.
Just thought you should know. I paused. I’m headed inside.
The smaller room lay shrouded in shadows, but I still had my optics toggled so I could make out the details of the small storeroom. Shelves lined all sides, filled with jars and boxes of all kinds. Most held some manner of powders and spices.
The sobbing came from the back of the room.
“We can hear you.” I spoke into the shadows. “If you come out, we don’t have to come in for you.”
The weeping grew louder, almost frantic.
“We won’t hurt you,” Delacruz called.
I think we’re going to have to move along, I linked. Screi are brilliant. If that one tells its friends we’re here…
“[Is the Master gone?]” A young, female voice whispered in French. “[Did he leave me here to die?]”
“We aren’t here to kill you,” Delacruz said. “Why don’t you come out?”
A small, round, human face peeked from behind one of the boxes. “[Where is Master R’tae?]”
“We don’t know who that is.” I crouched. “Do you want to leave? Are you being held against your will?”
“[He is the lord of this home.]” She squirmed back behind the boxes. “[How can you not know the Master? Who are you?]”
“We are people who got lost,” I answered, cautiously. We had no way to know what R’tae had done to this girl—for all we knew, she might tell him everything. “We’re going to leave, very soon. Do you want to leave with us?”
“[I know how to get out of the Dirge,]” she offered. “[But I could never leave. They would find me.]”
Delacruz inched closer to her. “Why don’t you come out here?”
“[Are you here to kill Master R’tae?]”
I’m checking that other room. I stood. We can’t let the Screi escape.
Copy that, Alpha. If the child won’t come along, I’ll join you in a moment.
I moved from the storage area into the next tapestry laden chamber.
A single door exited it, opposite from my archway. In the center of the new room, an irregularly-shaped pool held steaming water.
A bath? Possibly. Unlike so many pools within M’elphodor, I could actually see to the bottom of the clear water.
Weapons in hand, I prowled into the room. On the left, a small wooden rack held all manner of powders and salts, and I skirted these as I headed for the door.
Locked.
I gazed at the small throwbar that held it closed and blinked before I lifted the thing.
It’d been locked from the inside.
Michael! Anya’s frenzied link hit my Crown at the same moment I turned and sprinted back toward Delacruz.
Glass crashed.
Sofia cried out in sudden pain.
I rounded the corner at as the child leaped at Sofia who had knelt upon the floor.
Delacruz held her bleeding head in one hand and frantically wiped at her eyes with the other.
A shattered jar lay upon the ground along with a pile of spilled spice.
As the child leapt, she changed.
Spiking, Michael! The moment Anya linked, she inserted a small orange numeric in the upper corner of my visual.
It instantly flipped up to eight, then back to zero before I could react.
The Screi backhanded Delacruz, a fierce strike that hurled her backward more than two meters.
She cried out from it, and blood sprayed onto the floor.
“Tell me again you aren’t here as Amir’s assassins,” the serpentine figure jeered. “Please. Pretend Greatmaster R’tae is a fool.”
It spun and snatched up another of those jars. It hurled the thing at me with a throw like a professional pitcher.
The jar exploded on my chest and showered my face with a spicy, burning pepper. I wailed and staggered back from the fiery burn.
“Do you know what I did to the last puppets he sent to stop my work?” the Screi asked, conversationally. “I sent them back to him without their skins. I used my art so they would live through the agony and then sent them back to him as a lesson. I’m surprised he sent others.”
I whipped my disruptor forward, noting Delacruz’s token in my mind. My eyes might be closed, burning with pepper powder, but her token still shone clearly in my mind.
I fired four times, tight shots all around her. I listened, hoping I struck the Screi.
“Careful now,” R’tae crooned as he stepped behind Delacruz’s crouching marker. “I’m behind her. You’d hate to assassinate your own, I’m sure.”
Frantically I tried to wipe my weeping eyes on my shirt.
“We aren’t assassins.” I held the pistol on Delacruz’s token, hoping he’d remain still. “We don’t belong to Amir.”
“Don’t you?” R’tae sounded incredulous. “You aren’t the Assets he has in his pockets? The ones he used to kill the Wayward?”
“The…” My words trailed off. Had Amir wanted me to kill the rogue Designate? “What?”
Alpha, I
have an idea. Delacruz sent me a patch.
I began to wipe my eyes more frantically.
“Clever of him, I’ll admit. Probably the single most destructive thing he could do to the Rites.”
“How…?” I shook my head.
“The Wayward belonged to the Unfathomable, you know. He was the only current member of the Unseen Road sworn to the deeps.” The Screi sighed. “It matters little. We still have the Scion.”
“You’re a lunatic. I’ve been after Amir Cadavas for years.”
“Don’t think you fool me, Facility. You also slaughtered the Scion’s mother for him. Amir knew she was dead the moment he sent her.”
Isabella? I linked Delacruz. He’s talking about the cultist, the one who gave birth to Diego—the Variance.
“She was the only person besides Amir the Scion would heed.” R’tae clicked his serpentine tongue. “I wonder if Amir will use the mask to find her another body at all. I think not.”
“We aren’t his,” I spit. “We’re Facility Assets. I want his head.”
“Of course you do,” the creature sneered. “I suppose you’ve been trying to ineptly capture Amir this entire time.”
On your mark, Alpha, Delacruz linked. I have the Corona primed.
Fuck. I was really going to have to do this blind.
“Why would Amir want you to stop your work?” I pulled the second disruptor and held it slightly to the left, as if I wasn’t certain where Delacruz crouched.
“He fears the Unfathomable, obviously,” R’tae hissed. “Yet it matters little. Soon, M’elphodor will rise. Again, the Phothu-nacyi shall awaken, led by Those Who Coil in Shadows. We shall reclaim that which—”
Mark, Delacruz.
The instant I sent the link, she ignited the aperture beneath her and fell back to the balcony. I watched the token vanish from my mind and then fired blind. Horrific kinetic blasts tore through the room, pulses of slender ferocity that would shred everything they struck.
After twenty shots or so, I stopped. I kept the weapons pointed forward, prepared to fire.
I listened.
Nothing.
Alpha, we have Delacruz here, Rachel linked.
How’s Wyatt? I spent every scrap of willpower that I had and forced my eyes open. They burned, agonized, but I could just barely make out a black puddle on the floor.
Yet, no corpse.
No R’tae.
Your Artisan is amazing, Alpha, Wyatt linked. That fucker hit me in the neck with some kind of goo-poisoned bone knife. If it wasn’t for Gardener, I would have bled out like a stuck pig.
Alpha? Rachel’s link held her characteristic blend of frustration and worry. What’s in Delacruz’s eyes?
In mine too. I frantically wiped, tears and mucus streaming down my face. Spice. Come help.
Of course. I felt her frown. Of course you do.
It was the Screi! I bawled, eyes watering uncontrollably.
Oh, it’s always the Screi or mutant frogs or the Vyriim… I felt her sigh. I can’t take you people anywhere.
5
In the end, my Artisan did more for Delacruz and me than Rachel.
“If it’s just some atomic cousin of capsaicin, then we already got a fix.” He turned to the Caduceus. “Would you prefer the stuff be altered to salinized water or plain ol’ H2O?”
“That’s…” Rachel broke out in a grin. “Just water, please, Wyatt.”
He nodded and his fingers danced.
WHUF!
Moments later, my eyes and mucous membranes had been doused with cool water.
Delacruz gasped in relief.
“It ran.” I pointed at the dark blood on the floor as I blinked furiously. “I got it, but—”
“We need to haul,” Wyatt said.
We stepped into the bath room. The door stood open now, as if the Screi hadn’t bothered to throw it shut as he fled.
Delacruz, assemble and patch the cadre all the crazy shit R’tae said while he goaded us. We need to be on the same page.
Copy that, Alpha.
We strode through the door until we came to a balcony of dark stone with veins of greenish gold. A thick red carpet decorated the floor, while stairs spiraled up and down at each side.
In our Crowns, the Variance token burned deeper within the tower, above us.
Blood. Rachel knelt at a spot near the bare stone. “He went up.”
“Groak! Groooak!”
Shit, Wyatt linked. We didn’t even make it partway up before Froggy found is.
One of the Phothu-nacyi stood on the stairwell above us. It cocked its head slightly, as if deep in thought. Slowly, it crouched, prepared to spring.
Snick! Rachel stood defiant as she fired her stinger.
In an instant, the aberration began to twitch. The thing groooacked loudly, and began to stumble down the stairs. As it fell its young oozed out onto the floor in a quivering mass.
“Come on!” Rachel glanced at the rest of us, then began to trot up the wide spiral stairs.
We hadn’t gone ten meters before the next balcony came into view. R’tae stood and spoke to several of the Phothu-nacyi in a hissing, sibilant tongue.
“There!” The Screi gestured to us as we came into sight. “Slaughter them! Do your service to the Unfathomable!”
Fuck this guy. Delacruz brought the gatekeeper crossbow up.
Rationality spiking! Anya called, even as I watched it happen on my visual readout.
In one swift motion Sofia had cocked and fired a quarrel at the serpentine Screi, prepared to offensively port his ass.
The moment she’d shot at him, R’tae shifted.
Rationality shot up nine points, impossibly fast, and dropped back like a stone.
He moved as if made of wind. A shadow. The Screi appeared two and a half meters to his left, even as the Phothu-nacyi hopped toward us.
“Gooooak.” One of them, a large creature with black spots on its snout, shuffled forward. Then it launched itself squarely at me with a speed I wouldn’t have guessed possible from such a massive beast.
“Nope.” Delacruz hit the abomination with a quarrel, even as it bowled me over.
I flipped backward, feet raised, prepared to kick the thing over me and down the stairs, when it simply vanished.
“Huh—oh. Nice!” I started to grin at Delacruz when they fell upon us.
These Phothu-nacyi moved more adroitly than we’d seen before, and I guessed it might have something to do with R’tae.
Regardless of the cause, two of them leapt at Wyatt almost before he realized what had happened.
Fuck!
WHUF! WHUF! WHUF! A silvery stasis field blossomed, a perfect sphere suspended in midair.
I didn’t think I’d ever seen Wyatt stick a shot on something in mid-leap.
“You should have left when you had the chance.”
I spun to see R’tae had slipped up next to me, unnoticed.
Before I could react, he backhanded me.
I tumbled backward more than two meters and smacked my head against the wall, hard. Starbursts of pain exploded in my head.
The echo of Anya’s automatic weapons boomed in the small room.
Bishop? Can’t lie down now, Rachel linked.
Less than a second later, I felt sunshine and adrenaline thunder through my veins, as if she’d teleported coffee and endorphins straight into my bloodstream. I pushed myself up. Disruptor in one hand, katana in the other, I turned back to R’tae, toggled the Adept, and pointed the Shogun directly at him.
“I admire a man who does not surrender,” the Screi said with a sibilant edge. “Typically just before I slaughter him.”
I leapt, the poetry and grace of the Adept bleeding into the deadly surety of the Shogun katana. I could see the swing before I began it, could imagine the art of its murderous certainty.
Rationality flickered again, jerking upward and then back down. Before it’d stopped, I fired my disruptor, again and again.
I shot, not
at R’tae, but at the places he wasn’t. I fired at the empty space between him and the rest of the Phothu-nacyi.
The Screi screeched with murderous outrage. I watched him spin as he flowed past, as if I’d clipped him and knocked him off balance.
Black blood splattered against the stone wall.
Shit!
I felt Wyatt’s abject terror pour through the link like a river of fire and thorns. I spun, only to see him stumble backward. Several of the Phothu-nacyi spawn swarmed around him. Many had already landed on his skin and he frantically windmilled his arms at them.
I got the hillbilly, Delacruz linked at the same moment she ignited an aperture beneath him.
He rolled out on the other side of the hallway, next to Rachel.
And I got the gross part. I stepped toward the storm of writhing larvae, and fired my disruptor. After the first narrow blast, I kicked the focus up to wide, and began to pummel the creatures with enough force to liquefy them.
“No. You. Fucking. Don’t!” Wyatt growled as he pulled the slimy things from his face.
To my left, one of the Phothu-nacyi roared with fury as it watched me slaughter their children. It leapt toward me and its jaws clamped shut on my arm.
Those disease laden teeth shredded the skin on my left arm.
“Fuck. Me!” I roared and spun the Shogun into the toad’s neck.
It gurgled and stumbled back from me.
WHUF! Wyatt’s spike caught the toad in the throat, and I felt the savage cold pour off of the metal as if I stood before an iceberg.
Got you, Alpha! Rachel turned toward me and tapped the dialogue on her wrist. With a snick, she fired a dart into the side of my neck.
“Grooooak. Groak.” The sound came from further up the stairs.
I spun toward it and saw a new pack of the Phothu-nacyi hopping and yeerping their way toward us. R’tae stood among them, his serpentine mouth gaped in a broad grin.
The Phothu-nacyi leapt upon us, and all devolved into chaos.
Though I’d learned to expect it, the moment we lost control never ceased to terrify me. Now that I’d been made Alpha of the Citadel, I found this sensation only grew worse.
Everywhere I looked, toad-men pressed me and my cadre back.
Anya had given up on maiming the creatures, and simply killed them while still several meters away. While this meant the ones she killed would soon emit swarms of larvae, it bought us a few moments when the adults didn’t bite and leap on us.