Alright… Can soone explain to just what the fuck… why the fuck did we null our own? What the fuck is going on? HOW THE FUCK DID YOU HALF-STRANDS GET FUCKING CONVEX KILLED? HOW DID WE END UP NULLING EACH OTHER?!
-Mirror-Concave “debriefing” surviving mbers of Incubi Cell “Peregrine” and Dagger-2
10-6
Gathering
Avo expected additional hassle to follow the extraction of the twenty survivors alongside Essus.
Expected it, but found himself pleasantly mistaken.
With the presence of the Exorcists, Conflux was forced to take a more qualitative approach to their operations, eschewing the gaze-attracting mass of quantity for the intimacy of quality survivors.
Behind the tal sheets of the ramshackle maze burst experienced gangers and two squires. They eyed Essus' chro with wary respect, confused by his ramblings of freedom and Artad. All of them had ard themselves with crude shivs crafted from glass and rusted shards of tal, and instead of being ignorant to the nature of things as most FATELESS upon first arrival, those standing within sight of Avo’s cog-feed were seasoned to the ecosystem of the Warrens.
Conflux desired a close and bloody affair to be harvested from their minds. As Avo unlatched the few surveillance phantasmics installed in them before the Syndicate Necro went down, he found most of them were sold together from the Omnitech-dominated district of Theta-12 under the Kzvinsgad Sovereignty. Checking the DeepNav, they must’ve co from eight hundred miles up.
Seed topside smuggling was still operational with the Exorcists choking down the gutters right now.
Entertainnt found a way.
After unsequencing any “unnecessary” mories from the twenty, Avo had Chambers–half-delirious from pain and blood loss–burn a series of openings through the block’s layers leading up and out. He put a final asure in place against any straying eyes by seeding the mories of the local lobby with instances from various vicarities “donated” by Chambers.
It would make the Crucible seem still in session for any straying eyes, long enough for none of this to matter once the day passed.
Essus, Avo said. We need to… His thought trailed off as he realized what the father yearned for. As the man groped behind for the holojectors protruding from his deltoids, the servos of his thick biceps were not flexible enough to afford his desired reach. He was a marionette trying to cut his own strings, but failing.
The wings. He couldn’t tear off his wings alone. Every channel of his mind began to wail with the rawness of swelling trauma. The act of tearing the last vestige he had of the boy off his body would unmake his ego entirely; a self-mutilation too great to bear. Yet, he couldn’t just let them taunt him endlessly, let his son’s presence haunt him like a shroud–so too would he be eroded down to nothing.
In both cases, it was a choice of self-destruction. The only difference if he should plunge the blade down deep or whittle himself down over ti.
Not yet, Avo said. Stop.
The man shuddered. He clenched his teeth and tried to flex strength into his will. Failure greeted Avo as whatever determination evaporated before it could settle upon the seat of lingering hurt. “I need to… I cannot face him… cannot live with him over my shoulder…”
Mind will break if you do it. Not ready. Kill Mirrorhead first. Then decide. Boy deserves to be there for that too.
And where strength failed, hate prevailed. The spreading softness of Essus’ thoughtstuff calcified into a do circuited with coursing loathing. Mirrorhead. The one who inflicted so much on him, who destroyed so many for reasons petty and unfathomable. “I don’t want my son to see…”
Your son doesn’t see. He is gone. He is for them to see. He is behind you. They should know what his life cost.
Like a wick touched by the caress of fla, a new fire ignited in full within Essus. He needed to kill Mirrorhead. He needed to kill Mirrorhead like one thirsting in the heat of a desert needed water. Every second the Guilder wasn’t dead, Essus suffered.
“I must ask you…” the father swallowed. “To guide … I have not the sense anymore. I have not the sense.”
They departed through the opening made by the Blockcrawler.
Walking through the gleam of a fusion-burned exit, Essus watched as Chambers tumbled out from the bottom hatch of the infiltration vehicle. The forr enforcer ca out yowling, thoughts raw with pure agony. Pulped aratnids painted his fingers with a thick ichor, while his bodily disfigure swayed on dangling sinews.
For all the trauma that boiled within Essus, the sensation of surprise within him remained strong. “You… were not lying.”
I don’t lie. Lying’s inefficient. Just change the mories. Give him the Woundhoud.
After Chambers ceased his whimpering about his castration, Avo charted a new path in his mind and directed him after the fleeing survivors. They spat their thanks at the father, but moved quickly, each of them long scarred by a lifeti in these Warrens, their faces hard and ashen as they passed him, basking in the neon glow of his wings.
Ultimately, none of them were from the sa place or even wanted to make the sa run. Their path was clear and they were free. Too many mories and attachnts risked leaving a trace of yourself, getting yourself m-locked or put through a Registry and hunted down later.
Squires lived like ghosts fleeing from ghosts. Pleasure was cheap, but the price of an impression beyond dread or a DeepNa was to court an eventual nulling. The ones that made it would be back beneath the shroud of holocoats and wards soon, masked from the world.
For Avo, mory was a thing of malleability. He checked a final ti for if he left any traces and spurred Essus and Chambers toward the point of their egress. Gate thirteen was approximately eight miles away from them, currently anchored to a darkened alleyway right next to a forr pseudo-ball court in the gutters.
With how things were to proceed, discovery mattered little. Even if so tech decided to break from schedule and ca down to survey the Crucible in person, or one of the fleeing survivors was caught, he had Mirrorhead’s ear. All he needed was to finish designing the trap.
They were on the cusp. The kill was so close Avo could practically taste the quivering radiance of the Guilder’s Fra. In flesh, mind, and Soul, Jhred Greatling would belong to him, feed him, suffer him.
It was as the Guilder said: All would be made perfectly wrong.
Scouting ahead with the Whisper more than he relied on the Incog, Avo directed Chambers and Essus in their final escape.
Climbing up and out of the block was a short affair for Blockcrawler and cyborg. However sneaking from alley to alley and timing the Exorcist Specter patrols, took substantially longer to surmount.
Avo cast out a confirmation of the father’s extraction to Draus and ignored a spike of paranoia when she didn’t imdiately respond.
He could have fully activated her session and connected to her but decided against it. Not before present tasks were completed.
After nearly two hours of plodding progress–along with a single instance of spending the Woundhound against a stray assortnt of ghouls to distract passing Specters–both Essus and Chambers arrived at the vertical slit of shadow-gate thirteen.
Flicking a command over to the EGI Core, Avo opened the tunnel and exited from the dive. Erging back into the real, he shook out the lingering static and blurring mories rushing through him. He recalled subrging himself in the depths of the Nether for far longer in real-ti, but never before had he sequenced through so many mories in so few dives.
Truth spoken, he would’ve likely needed to retreat and consider another plan if he faced the Incubi bereft his Heaven.
Around and within, blood twisted to his will. As the shape of the Blockcrawler and Essus staggered in, world behind them a spill of muted neon and distant sirens, Avo sensed the blood rushing through the newcors’ veins before anything else.
In fact, focusing on where their blood touched matter, new alchemical patterns blossod in his mind, and where the red flowed, the speed and force connected whispered to him.
The more he used his Heaven, the more he felt himself bleed over into his Fra, like it wasn’t just grafted to him, but interwoven.
“Be not wary,” the Woundshaper said. “It is rely the blurring between you and your domain. In ti, certainly with your growing power, it will beco near impossible to divine where your domains begin and you end.”
“Is this why my mind isn’t overwheld anymore? When I see another Heaven? A piece of a god?”
The reply his Heaven gave was indirect. “Concepts do not fear each other. Epherals fear concepts. Epherals fear the absolute and the divine. You are to delude yourself no longer with the frivolities of mortality. Rejoice. Apotheosis is a practice and an act.”
Whatever more about his burgeoning ascension was interrupted by the approach of Essus.
The doorway provided by the darkness-manifested tunnel was wide. Wide enough to fit the Blockcrawler with ease. As such, the exoskeletal form of the forr father did not seem to tower until he finally strode within fifteen feet of Avo.
It was odd eting the father’s shining optics eye to eye. Even more uncanny was the presence of his forr sheathe hovering over the man’s shoulder, hissing and biting at sothing unseen. Faintly, Avo was aware of Kae’s rising nervousness by her surging heartbeat and the acceleration in her veins at the cyborg's heavy approach. The gore he was coated in shone softly, greeting Avo’s Heaven of Blood like an distant ontological extension.
For seconds that drew on, Essus just stared blankly, mind numb with conflicting emotions as Chambers disembarked from the Blockcrawler. Bits regrown, Rantula’s coat curtained his nakedness admirably. Chambers chuckled under his breath as he shuffled his way out shaking his head.
“Alrighty,” Chambers said. “That was… well, kinda fucked, to be honest, but hey-hey, you steered right, consang. You–” His voice trailed off. He tilted his head as he looked up at Avo, aratnid goop dropping from his ssy blonde mop of hair. Squinting, Chambers resembled evermore the weasel. “I’m an… the hells are you anyways? You so kind of… Sang-ghoul fucking–”
Avo cast out a thought. The false mories he had running in Chambers collapsed. The forr enforcer yowled and suddenly, realization burst from his thoughtstuff. Realization, and a sudden spike of anger.
“Avo! You rotlick–” Chambers swallowed the outrage back down. Again, Avo was surprised at the man’s self-control. The rage was replaced by fear and obsequiousness. “You half-strand, you! I knew you would find a way to get us out of there. Really! Masterful Necrojackin’. Beautiful work. Mirrorhead didn’t even see ya comin’. Gleam-job, consang.” Chambers added a bit more vigor to his nodding. “Gleam job.”
Regarding the man as one would a particularly strange aratnid that wouldn’t die even after being run over repeatedly, Avo instead directed his attention at Essus. The father hovered, his body shivering with tension.
Cracks were forming in his thoughtstuff. Sorrow mixed with relief spilled through.
“I… I am free… I…” Again, the forr flat looked at his large chanical hands. They were still stained with blood. “Oh, Artad. What has beco of ?” Skeletal fingers of blood-coated chro closed into fists. He turned to stare at Avo again and his face wrinkled around the implants. Even his ability to show pain was chained; bereft of organic eyes, tears had no place to escape.
He took three trudging steps closer to Avo. No one spoke and no sound followed besides the screaming of glitching servos.
“I must confess…” Essus swallowed. The height between him and Avo was near negligible now. Both of them had changed in mind and sheathe, but where one was slaved and dimd in spirit, the other was risen with hunger ascending. “When we first t, I envied you for your height. My wife. She… she often teased about being so tall. I… wonder what she would have said about you.” His face darkened. “I’m glad she did not survive the journey. I’m… I’m glad–”
Essus choked. A sob broke from him as he collapsed, falling against Avo as he slid down to his knees with a resounding crash.
Briefly firing his Celerostylus, Avo only cald his reflexes when he realized the father was clinging to him in the form of a hug and ant no violence by it.
Tearlessly, the father sobbed, and Avo stared, mind stunned with more than a note of philosophical horror rising in the corners of his awareness.
A flash of sonder sparked inside him as the pain of the father’s thoughtstuff overflowed. This was not how the world was supposed to be. Avo was made to eat people like the father, to serve as bandwidth and trauma dump for a phantasmal civilization bound between realities in perpetual exile. An instrunt to be used against New Vultun itself. A plague.
Yet, here he was: A monster comforting a man against the city as if he was the savior and the world around them was the horror.
Uncontrollably, Avo grunted a low and deep laugh. How did things beco like this? How did Jaus’ vision of a future beco this parody? What were they doing here?
He felt Kae moving then, her mind finally catching up to the scene unfolding before her. Turning, he watched as she mid for him to hug Essus back. Rantula’s coat rustled and he found Chambers motioning to do the sa thing a second later, mirroring Kae. There was also a questionable glint in the forr enforcer’s eyes as he looked between Avo and Essus with a broad grin.
Whatever rash-courting filth the man was imagining, the less that was known about it the better.
Awkwardly, Avo patted the father with his claws. The man was clasped and coated in layers of armor by this point, but the fragility he emanated made caution seem proper.
“Can I have a hug too?” Chambers asked. "After him of course." He looked down and forced a quiver into his lip.
Avo glared. “Co close and I eat your eyes.”
“Fuck , consang, a 'no' would suffice.”
Standing from her seat at the table, Kae humd. “I-I’ll be willing to…give… give a hug.”
Chambers spun and bead. “Alright! I knew soone–”
A squeak ca from Kae. She inched back and put her hands over her mouth in shock. “Oh–oh, Jaus! Where… where are your–your pants? And why… uh… why is there so much blood.”
The enforcer looked down and winced. “I was ambushed by a fuckin’ aratnid.” And he fixed Avo with a side-eye. “And whoever sold back to Conflux didn’t include clothes. Let this be stated: Chambers is not a nudist. Chambers likes clothes. Chambers isn’t trying to start the rash.”
And just as he said that another voice crackled in the back of Avo’s mind.
Avo. Open gate forty-five. Make it fast. Draus voice told him all he needed to know. He sent the order and the George Washington answered, redirecting the shadows to create a new tunnel as the previous doorway vanished and another appeared.
As the pathway opened, a single figure shrouded in fire and ash ca marching through, a new gun shouldered over her right side while dragging a corpse in using her left hand.
Draus’ Incog was off and she was drenched in blood–none of it slling like hers. Distrant rattles of gunfire and the sound of a structure collapsing in the smoke behind her told Avo her little “scouting run” had not turned out quite as anticipated. As soon as she ca through, she released her hold on the body and hissed: “Close it. Now.”
Avo obliged.
She opened her mouth but found herself rendered speechless first at the sight of Essus hugging and crying against Avo, then Kae covering her eyes, and then Chambers trying his best to hide his nakedness using his coat.
“The fuck’s all this?” Draus asked. She looked Avo and the kneeling chror up and down. “What’re you, tryin’ to start the rash? Get ‘em off you.”
The ghoul grunted. “No risk. Not intimate for either. Just hurt for him.”
She shook her head. “Yeah, no, don’t… Essus?” She trailed off as she realized who it was. “Hells. You got him back.”
“Didn’t get my cast?” Avo asked.
Draus shrugged and looked down at her kill. “Things were ssy. I was gonna read your ssage after.” With that said, she kicked the body of a Scaarthian clasped in a warg-styled spinal exoskeleton over to the center of the room. “Right, now, it seems like Stormtree wants in on this party too.”
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