by M. S. Farzan
I saw a flash of movement to my right, and spun to intercept it, a fraction too late. The butt of a ceridium spear connected with my jaw, sending me sprawling over a small food table and past Tribe’s chair onto the floor. I heard a commotion, followed by Alina’s yell, cut short by the thud of metal on bone. With no small effort, I rolled painfully onto my back, but the room refused to come into focus.
Through my lenses’ augmented vision, I could see the Destroyer’s red and white form stalking towards me, his staff rippling with blue fire. I scrambled to rise to my feet but he planted his foot in my chest, setting the tip of the spear against my throat. Behind him, I saw Alina propping herself up feebly alongside the chair behind Tribe’s, its occupant clearly visible from my location. Madge slouched against her security clasps, her slim face streaked with blood and a VPen visor resting on her forehead.
A small, conscious place in my hazy mind screamed as it put the pieces together just as another tall figure entered the room, black and grey combat fatigues blending in with the walls under a black beret. I struggled feebly against the entromancer’s boot, feeling the spear prick my skin and blood trickle down my neck.
“Welcome back, Nightpath,” Karthax said from the doorway.
TEN
The VPen? It is absolutely safe. We have taken the utmost precaution to ensure that its detainees are treated with respect and care.
-William D. Karthax, NIGHT Inquisitor General
I forced myself to focus, taking as deep of breaths as the auric’s foot and spear would allow. A profound silence stretched in the room as time stood still, broken only by the sound of my shallow breaths and Tribe mumbling in a low voice. I blinked, seeing Vasshka on the deck of the NIGHT cruiser in Gloric’s vision, drawing her pistols with Buster in tow. I could vaguely hear the gnome yelling something in my ear.
Karthax stood in the doorway for a moment, a statue in the dim light. I allowed my eyes to settle on him, using his hard features as a lifeline to help reel in my vision. The Inquisitor General epitomized the image of the grizzled veteran, his craggy face clean-shaven and stonelike under thin grey eyebrows. He had broad shoulders and a thick frame that would have seemed stocky but for his soldier’s posture and bearing. His irises, silver even in the dark room, were mechanical, a hawk’s eyes surveying the field below.
He walked into the room, flicking casually with one hand, and the assassin removed the spear from my neck. With a surge of energy, I barreled through my daze and grabbed at the Destroyer’s boot, twisting it from my chest and reaching for my weapons.
The auric was faster than lightning. He shifted his hips and struck me in the side of the head with the flat of the spear’s blade. I fell painfully on my bruised ribs, sprawled at Karthax’s feet.
“Predictable,” he said disapprovingly, squatting down next to me. I reached out feebly against his high-laced boots, and received a kick in the stomach from the Destroyer for my efforts. I began coughing uncontrollably, feeling my ribs pulse in agony.
Karthax watched me sputter, then shook his head. “Finish it,” he said, getting up to leave.
The dark room was black with pain, and I felt myself slipping into the waiting embrace of unconsciousness. The tiniest, most remote part of my mind knew that if I passed out, my life was forfeit, as well as those of my friends and most of the city. I focused on the pain, holding onto it as though my very existence depended on it.
“Why,” I hacked at Karthax’s receding form.
Karthax stopped, turning back to face me. “What?”
I coughed several times, feeling strength returning to my voice through the pain. “Why are you doing this?”
The Inquisitor General stood watching me, towering in his fatigues. He walked over to me, crouching again.
“You were a good agent,” he said quietly, misunderstanding my question. “But war requires certain concessions. It’s nothing personal.”
“No,” I protested, tasting blood in my mouth. “Why does Thog’run get the city?”
Karthax paused, watching my face carefully. His cold eyes bored into me, searching. I could feel the Destroyer’s spear poised, hovering above me.
“Nonhumans never cease to amaze me,” the Inquisitor General said eventually. “Always focusing on the present moment, without looking at the bigger picture.”
He played with a ceridium ring on his right hand, rolling it around his finger. “It was child’s play to find you and your comrades, if they can be called that,” he continued. “You were too focused on what was in front of your nose, ignoring everything else around you.”
“You lured us here,” I reasoned, trying to push myself up on one arm. The entromancer jabbed me in the side with his spear as a warning.
Karthax nodded, looking over at Tribe and Madge. “The coercion of Daypath Liu saddens me greatly, but it was necessary to bring you in. We cannot risk exposure, at this time or any. The thief will be useful, however.”
I furrowed my brow, confused, but tried a different tact. “You’re willing to sacrifice innocent lives for the sake of peace?”
The Inquisitor General continued to stare at me, unreadable. If I had touched any sort of emotion within him, it didn’t show. I could have gleaned more information from the concrete walls.
“The world doesn’t want peace,” he said dismissively. “It wants security. I am here to make certain that it gets it, nothing more.”
The human rose again to leave, nodding curtly at the assassin.
“Project Watershed!” I yelled at his back, desperately trying to keep his attention.
Karthax stopped, turning slowly. “That gnome of yours is quite the liability, with everything he has told you,” he said mechanically. “We’ll have him neutralized in no time.”
I took the briefest of moments to focus on Gloric’s vision in my lens display. He and the others seemed to be racing west towards the Embarcadero, engaged in a firefight with one or more water cruisers.
Something Karthax had said sparked a thought in my mind, and I decided to press it. “The bigger picture,” I said up to him, half reasoning, half bluffing. “You don’t intend to give Thog’run the city at all.”
The man’s eyes crinkled slightly in what could have been a smile. “Your logic befits the human part of you,” he said. “Or did the Sigil give that away?”
I shook my head vigorously. It hurt. “I know all about it,” I bluffed. “The auric king, the protected data drive, the innocents in the Oxidium dispensary…”
The Inquisitor General strode briskly towards me, kicking me in the face. I tried to roll away from him to ease the blow, but my nose and cheek exploded in pain.
“You know nothing,” Karthax hissed, his eyes glowing fiercely and silver fire coalescing at his fingertips. I had hit a nerve.
“The auric king-” I pressed.
“You’re all the same,” he spat. “There’s no such thing as an innocent addict. Thog’run is no different, and his people will pay the price of his insolence.”
I coughed again, blinking away blood. “Thog’run’s people,” I said dumbly, my hazy mind picking up the pieces he was putting down but unable to put them together. I kept pressing. “You’re going to let Thog’run take the city...”
“A temporary setback.”
“...because you’re going to kill his people.”
He nodded, regaining his composure somewhat. “With the very thing they depend upon.”
Oxidium. Karthax was going to concede the city to the revolutionaries, only to wipe them out with the drug. They had eluded the NIGHTs for so long, but once Karthax had them out in the open, the Inquisitor General could turn them all into ragers wholesale. Bigger picture, without a doubt.
I looked at the entromancer, who was ready to spear me like a wild boar. “And you, Agrid the Destroyer?” I was grasping at straws, and knew it. “You’re going to let this happen to your own?”
The auric snorted, his pale skin ghastly and burning eyes measured. A pink cres
cent ringing his temple was the only sign of injury from our previous altercation. “I chose my allegiances a long time ago, half-human. Do not think to sway me.”
I tried to remain calm. “They’ll figure it out,” I said weakly.
“Perhaps,” Karthax said coolly, “but the city will be once again under our control by then.”
I thought through the possible scenarios, my deductive reasoning working about as well as a train through sludge. Karthax’s plan to triple-cross the auric king depended on his ability to contaminate the revs and most all of the underraces in San Francisco with Oxidium. That meant a bomb or some other way of distributing the drug over the fifty or so square miles of the city. It eluded me.
I tried to keep him talking. “Other people know about the data drive. They’ll trace it back to you.”
For once, Karthax looked confused. “Data drive?”
I didn’t know how to respond, so I went with the truth. “The protected data drive, with details on Project Watershed. Secreted from the network.”
His eyes narrowed as he took my meaning, then he laughed, once. It was not pleasant.
“What need have I for a data drive?” Karthax guffawed. Even the Destroyer chuckled.
I stared at him blankly, and he pointed meaningfully at his head.
“You’re the data drive,” I breathed, understanding. I felt my head slip back towards the floor in defeat. Our threadbare plan was starting to unravel completely.
“The nonhuman failing, Nightpath, is the inability to imagine that others think differently than you do. Unlike your people, I plan for the long haul. I wouldn’t get very far if I left a data trail everywhere I went.”
“No, but you left me,” I said wearily. “And now you’re tying up loose ends, so you can let the revs have their run of the city, and what? Set off an Oxidium bomb over San Francisco? Make everyone take the drug with their coffee?”
“Put it in their water,” Alina’s voice echoed from the nearby chairs. She had risen from the ground and was pointing her pistol at the Destroyer. “That’s how I would do it.”
She stood protectively near Tribe, unwavering even as blood streaked down her face. “Put down the spear,” she said quietly, her voice low and dangerous.
“Kill him,” Karthax ordered.
Several things happened at once. Two shots rang out as beside me, Karthax clapped his hands together, smashing the ceridium ring in between them. A bolt of silver fire escaped his clasped fingers, flashing across the room and flinging Alina against the opposing wall. She hit the concrete like a ragdoll and fell to the floor.
The Inquisitor General’s spell wasn’t quick enough to spoil her shot, however. Agrid the Destroyer had just enough time to twist away from the ceridium bullet, bending his body backwards and to the side.
The movement saved his life. A second bullet, aimed for his heart, hit him in the shoulder from the room’s entrance. The auric faltered for a moment, clutching his arm and stumbling into a small table.
I looked up towards the doorway, relief pouring through my body as I saw the familiar face.
“Striker,” I breathed.
“Hands where I can see them, both of you,” the human said, holding his pistol expertly in front of him. His crew cut blond hair stood on end, and his normally flush face was tomato red from exertion. He looked like he had been running.
Karthax stood staring at the newcomer, unflinching. “Put the weapon down, Agent Johnson.”
“No can do, boss,” Striker said, his weapon still trained on the Destroyer. “Hands up or I finish the job.”
“Put the weapon down,” Karthax’s voice was cool, unyielding. “I will not ask you again.”
“No can do,” Striker repeated. A single bead of sweat slid down his temple.
“Agent Johnson-” Karthax took a step towards him, perceptibly raising his voice.
Calmly, Striker shifted his aim towards the Inquisitor General and pulled the trigger. The bullet ripped through the human’s fatigues, eating through whatever conventional armor he had on underneath and burning through his upper torso. Karthax stopped in his tracks, swaying on his feet and smashing into the wall adjacent to him.
The movement was all that Agrid the Destroyer needed. He made three quick motions with his uninjured hand, blowing air out of his nose and sucking in his tongue in succession. Striker turned to reorient his aim just as a pair of rhinoceros horns erupted from his chest. The human fell to his knees, dropping the pistol and clawing at the air. Blood bubbled from his mouth and his eyes widened in surprise.
The entromancer retracted his spear, stashing it in his maroon overcoat and pinning his injured arm to his chest. He strode over to Karthax, who was slowly sliding down the wall, leaving a crimson streak in his wake. I pushed myself up to my knees, painfully sluggish, and fumbled inside my coat for my pistol. I grabbed it, releasing it from its holster and pointing it at the Destroyer, but was far too slow. The auric spoke a word of power and he and Karthax disappeared, my bullet taking a chunk out of the concrete wall.
I sat on my knees for a minute, fighting down waves of pain and wiping blood away from my face. Slowly, I stumbled to my feet and staggered over to Striker, who was sitting ignominiously in the doorway, the magically-produced horns protruding from his chest. He was still breathing, faintly.
“You made it,” I said, squatting next to him.
“Got your message,” he said with a weak smile. His ruddy face had turned an ashen grey.
“Just hold on, buddy,” I reassured him. “Alina is a healer-”
“No,” he said with finality. “I don’t want some knife-ears broad touching me in my privates.”
“Racist,” I offered.
He shook his head feebly. “Karthax is bad, man. Genocide and world domination. That’s racist.”
I nodded, saying nothing.
The human lifted a hand to grab my shirt, surprisingly strong.
“I did a bad thing, Nightpath,” he said fervently.
“Make out with a dwarf?” I asked gently.
He shook his head again. “Worse,” he replied laboriously, a little blood trickling from the corner of his mouth. “I didn’t know what room your friend was in, so I kind of...opened all of them.”
I shrugged. Even if the cell doors were deactivated, the VPen inhabitants would still be locked into their virtual simulations.
“Ragers, a lot of them,” he explained, seeing my indifference. “Just locked up in their own piss.”
That was bad. The NIGHTs would have no need to lock up victims of the rage plague in VPen chairs; no computer chip in the world would affect them when they were in their altered state.
“Where’d they come from?” I asked him, exhausted. It had been a long day, and the last thing I needed was a bunch of raving monsters tearing me and my companions limb from limb.
“I don’t know. I saw some alchemancy-type stuff, looks like they were experimenting on them. Some of them were sedated, but others…”
An inhuman voice howled in the distance outside the room. I looked up at the sound, which echoed strangely against the concrete walls.
I turned back to the human, squeezing his hand. “You’re a bastard, Striker.”
“Don’t I know it.”
“Wait here,” I said, hearing the ridiculousness of my comment as soon as it left my mouth.
I sheathed my pistol and hurried over to Alina, gingerly rolling her over and touching the side of her neck. I felt a pulse, slow but strong, and pulled several syringes of Oxadrenalthaline out of my coat. I applied a couple to my ribs and head first, feeling the drug erase the pain instantaneously, then held the half-auric in my lap and used another two needles on her face and back. The entromancer’s spear had left a nasty gash under the Pitcher’s eye, and Karthax’s spell would have given her a few bruises, but nothing seemed broken.
Alina’s skin warmed in my touch, and her eyes fluttered open after a few moments. She stared at me blindly for a second, then h
er eyes focused on my face.
“Did I get him?” she croaked, putting her hand on mine.
I smirked and shook my head, relieved by the sound of her voice. “No, but he did.”
The half-auric followed my gaze to Striker, who was bleeding out on the floor. The sight gave her a jolt of energy, and she sat up quickly, using my arm to steady her.
“I’ll see what I can do,” she said, half-walking, half-crawling over to him.
I turned my attention to Tribe and Madge, still sitting in their simulations, oblivious to the world. I used my digitab to disable their VPen chips, then the security clasps keeping them in their chairs. They continued to sit there, mesmerized by whatever horrors they had been experiencing.
This close to him, I could hear Tribe repeating a rhyme from some unknown hip hop song, a litany that I hoped had kept him sane through the torture. I pulled the visor and headphones off of his head, untangling them from his sweaty hair. He stared into space, his lips still moving.
I let him readjust to the world and freed Madge from her VPen apparatus. Her olive shaped eyes rolled in her head as I took off the visor, then she shook herself and saw me. Our eyes met and she thrust herself forward in relief. I caught her and held her in my arms as she buried her face in my chest.
“Eskander,” she sobbed. “They made me tell them where you were and when you were coming. I couldn’t do anything, I’m sorry.”
I shushed her gently, stroking her hair and trying to calm her. My heart ached for what they had put her through, but we didn’t have much time before the ragers found us and Karthax’s plan did more damage.
“We need to get out of here,” I said as gently as I could. “Can you walk?”
She pulled away from me, tears streaking down her bloodied face. She nodded, and I saw her clamp down on her emotions with an effort. She wiped her face and nodded again, steel in her eyes.
“What’s happening?” she asked.
I gave her a quick overview of the current situation, Karthax’s triple-cross against the auric king, and the meager remnants of our own plan.