“Simple. One Guild has to finally win. Or at least decide to stop funneling arms down to fight their proxy wars.”
-Chief Paladin Naeko, answering what it would take for cri in the Warrens to go down.
3-2
Stay of Execution
The drones dove in first, guided forward along threads ghosts connecting them to the three Syndicate enforcers. They were small models, barely larger than the boy. Well, around the boy’s size when he was still whole and not mangled pulp.
From needle-tipped scanners, the drones cast out a holographic threshold, securing the area like Paladins would a cri scene. Most of the dozen or so drones hovered out in a defensive array, circling and securing the outer edges of the premises. Two of them narrowed in on Avo, their jagged forms forwards shivering with bottled energy.
A faint pulse shone over their matter for a mont. His cog-feed had identified similarities between it and the matter his Heaven was channeling right now. Tungsten. If he said sothing wrong, or maybe if the enforcers decided that they just didn’t like him being alive, these drones would probably punch through his head in a blink.
“Jaus,” one of the enforcers muttered, staring at the sheer amount of gore and viscera left over after the night’s festivities. “I think that’s Vicious…what the fuck.”
Avo could sll the disgust rising in their throat. Interesting. Their rigs weren’t vacuum sealed. Told him about the quality of their kit.
Their drones scythed scanning grids over the host’s remains. She was dead. Dead as he could make her.
Her eyes tasted so sweet.
The muscle dispatched to retrieve them was your standard Syndicate muscle: probably over-auged with cheap coldtech implants before locking themselves beneath the chanized plates of titanium they called an exo-rig. Chro in, chro out. Each of them had so personalization to their armor, but the models were the sa: dod heads, and bulbous bodies. Looked more like diving suits back from the bygone ages.
The exterior of their armor was harshed with holo-haptic decals of black and red, lining their bulbous shells with slurs and skulls. A few even had recordings of so of their previous kills and atrocities playing across their bodies. Probably a habit they picked up from criminals that the Paladins Sin-Marked. Once you got your cri burned into a constellation for everyone to see around you, it made it impossible to hide who you were, even if you erged sane after getting your mind used as processing power for a locus.
Three weapon systems were festooned to their rigs.
A las-cutter jutted over their shoulders on a focused beam emitter. It seed more anti-air than anything. Sothing to fry a drone or cook a missile’s targeting systems.
In their wrists, they had the requisite fusion burner, spinning with a spreading barrel of gleaming gold. It had beco standard for most close-quarter operators after the Fourth Guild War. Good for slagging halls and burning the oxygen out of rooms. Made clearing habcells a matter of capturing O2 junctions rather than a room-to-room firefight.
Avo fought the urge to flinch at the sight of the weapon. Fusion burners, more than anything else, painted his nightmares with an eternal incandescent crackle.
The last system they had was just a Shuriken. A particle-lancer. Their models looked slightly less modified than what Slaughterman used, but close enough that Avo knew what to expect.
They ca to an unsteady halt about twenty feet away. A beat of silence followed as midnight’s long-scheduled rainfall began gaining montum. Basked in lights of enshrouding red spilling from the drone scanners, Avo studied his reflection in their pallid helms.
His undersuit dangled from him in tattered pieces and his skin was flecked in rivers of red. Blood. So of it was his, from a past life. So of it was from Little Vicious.
A drone hovered by, scanning the command module. Draus’ finger rose from the inside, her rude gesture matching the ascent of the holographic voidship in the ad. “Tryin’ to enjoy my internal bleeding in peace here. Find yourself elsewhere.”
With a thought from the frontmost enforcer, the drone obliged, slinking back as its jock strode forward.
“Speak Standard, ghoul?”
Probably better than you can. “Just fine.”
His lack of snarling or incoherence seed a surprise to them. A synchronized whine of servos sounded as they all turned to stare at each other. They probably wanted him to be a feral. Just another monster festering in the streets. All they needed to do then was shoot him and move on to the others.
Less paperwork that way.
“Data says you’re Fourteen.”
“I was,” Avo said.
Another pause. Another glance between the enforcers. Avo felt a dull resignation set on him. Whatever was going on with them, he wished they would just get on with it. If they were going to shoot him, he doubted that he could stop them. After all the beatings he took, he was all out of fear.
The leader turned back to look at him. “The system also says you're dead.”
Avo looked down at himself. His body had shed its scabs, his cheap temp-skin undersuit a shredded ss. Besides that, he was as healthy as he had ever been. He lifted his arms in a show of health.
“Wasn’t inford.”
The leader just studied him for a mont. “A smartass ghoul. Never thought I’d see one of those?”
Avo glared. “Can do math too.”
“Cute,” the lead enforcer chuckled darkly. Their Shuriken snapped open, the helix cupping a building mote of light. One of Avo's Phys-Sim impact lanes went red. He prepared his Ghost-Link. "I think I'm gonna enjoy--"
A flash of sothing flashed out from within the reflective surface of the lead enforcer's helt. Like sothing between a hydra and a leash, a ghostly construct slithered into the mind of the enforcer, yelping as his comrades stumbled back, their body language tense with worry, but not incomprehension.
A deep, thunderous voice flooded the Nether, the weight of the mind bleeding out from the shifting glass like a storm. Were these my orders? To threaten our victors with death? The voice was tinged with raw annoyance.
The lead enforcer quivered with confusion. “I–yeah, boss! I an, no! I an...you said to deal with them."
I said deal with it. Not them. See the matter done. Not the people. I wanted them to be gathered. Brought. Back.
"Oh, ah," the enforcer, laughed nervously. "Shit, Mirrorhead--I an, boss, I didn't ant--"
The glass surface of the enforcer’s do-like helt suddenly cracked, folding inward like bladed fractals. The enforcer howled, armored fingers gripping at their faceplate. The modulator for their voice cracked and broke, letting their true tone spill free. What used to be the booming resonance of an ironclad warrior beca the anguished cries of a tortured man.
Their glass helt fractured. Blood misted out through the cracks. A faint gurgle ca from the enforcer as they slumped down, the stuff of their skull leaking in dollops from parted chasms of silver.
THAUMIC CYCLER: 23 thaum/c
GHOSTS - [36]
The rain fell. The other two enforcers stared at their dead leader, bodies gripped in a stasis of fear.
The killing was secondary to Avo. No. What drew his interest and worry was another matter altogether. With the cracking of the glass helt, the presence of the intrusive mind suddenly vanished. Like it never was. Ghosts fray and thoughts dissolved, but they never just vanished. There was sothing more at work here. Sothing greater.
A low ebb of nervousness solidified inside him. He flicked a look at Draus and found an unsteady frown burned into her face.
The presence returned. A flood of its essence erged with a glare of light through another of the enforcers, ghosts sprouting free from their helt. Chambers. You are in charge now. Bring them to . Deal with them. No more wasting ti.
The rightmost enforcer–the one the voice called Chambers–snapped to shivering attention. “Sure thing, boss-man, anything you want–”
The ghosts sank back into the glass, disappearing.
And as soon as they were gone, the enforcer made the sa rude gesture that Draus had made. Except he was pointing his middle finger directly at the ground. Avo cocked his head. It was as if the man was signaling his ire beyond the visual reflection of the glass.
“Alright, ghoulie,” Chamber said, sniffling. “I suppose we best get you and the rest of the lucky winners to your reward.”
“Reward?” Avo asked.
“Yeah,” Chambers said. “You just won an all expenses paid luxury car ride with the boss. Lucky you.”
Enforcer didn’t make it sound so lucky.
***
Things accelerated substantially afterward.
The thing about enforcers was that their expertise was narrow. They did well with breaking things or killing people. Vulgar displays of force and coercion mostly.
What he presented to them was a situation that was beyond their station. Sothing that made soone up top get involved. Sothing that said soone up top didn’t want them to solve by shooting, torturing, or threatening.
Soone up top wasn’t what Avo wanted or needed right now. What he needed was middle managent.
He hoped he’d run into a Syndicate accountant or underboss of so kind. Walton liked those types for a reason. Wasn’t that hard to blackmail them or appease them with new profits. Avo had co to concur with his father’s assessnt in ti. By now, he had done enough dives in the Nether that he practically knew where the m-forts of all the big players were.
Seeing as he didn’t recognize who these enforcers were and that they didn’t possess any visible logos beyond wearing silver bowls of reflective glass over their heads, he guessed they were a sub-family to a larger Syndicate at best or small fry at worst.
Their extraction from the area was conducted post haste. One of the enforcers handled Draus with as much care as they could. Avo guessed it was the holo-tags still burning around her neck that did the trick. Scum that most Syndicate-muscle were, the folk of the Warrens still rembered what the Veterans did for them during the last days of the war.
“You’ll be alright, Reg,” Chambers said. He snickered. “Caught so of the stream; that shit you pulled in the silo–”
“Shut the fuck up, son,” Draus said, eyes closed with exhaustion as the enforcer hefted them from the cradle that was the broken golem. “I’m talkin’ to my hurt right now. Don’t got ti for you.”
The father, they were less gentle with. When they grabbed him by the shoulder, whatever was broken in the man before snapped again. Where his thoughtstuff spooled like loose strands, now they boiled and lashed like a simring whip.
He fought. As much as a barely six feet tall screaming flat with no augs or grafts could. Unfortunately, his opposition was an eight-foot-tall cybernetically enhanced butcher encased in multi-alloyed armor.
The father had the will, the burning desire to lay next to the pulped soup that was his boy and wait for death to take him. But they had the orders to take everyone and leave.
The resulting “light” jab they gave him to put him in his place probably fractured the poor fool’s skull.
The father got no better care from the enforcers after. They dragged him up the rubble, his head bouncing and shaking, face pulled and sliced on outcrops of glass and rebar. Strangely though, it was his tear-stained eyes and gushing nose that made him look beyond wretched.
Avo sneered. “Hey, at.”
The enforcer turned to glare at him. “Fuck you want, rotlick?”
“Not ,” Avo said, biting back the urge to shove one of his mind-shivs into the enforcer’s cheap wards. “Your boss: he going to be happy when you bring this one in cold? Those his orders? Or maybe he’ll do you like your friend.”
Avo shrugged. The enforcer looked away from him.
“Carry him proper,” Avo continued. “Survived the gas. Should survive you too. City decided it wants him.”
Maybe it was the threat of the enforcer’s boss stepping in. Maybe Avo was more persuasive than he rembered. Whatever it was, the enforcer slung the father over his shoulder instead of flaying him against the ground.
Thank Jaus for small rcies.
Surmounting the toppled ruins, Avo looked up and found himself beholding the underside of the Warrens. Stacks and stacks of blocks rose into the smog-gripped sky. Gunfire and thundering bass echoed from the forest of bridges connecting each gabuilding to another. So far down, he could only see the underside of platforms and the jutting extensions of the buildings. Light from the upper tier made its way down in dappled flashes.
Here then was why they called this place the Warrens: the sheer urban density had reduced the environnt into a near-continent-sized sprawl connected by burrows of glass and tal, studded with towering blocks that were barely maintained. Flashing holo-ads blood from all angles, splashed against the underside of avenues and bridges, booming at maximum volu.
Above, a swirl of error codes was projected over the bottom of Layer One where a moon should be. Running so hundred feet above, a hexagonal series of district-wide techno-organic bone plates expanded like a city-sized umbrella, grown to separate the refuse at the depths of the Warrens from that which was still salvageable on the surface.
As they were led through a series of winding paths, they were led out to a parking lot that looked more akin to a landfill. Droplets of rain splashed down on them and stopped, the rainfall choked with every other step. The infrastructure above them was so dense that most of the spillage could barely get down. Cheap ads burned in both reality and the Nether, with the most common sight being offers of debt bonds and organ-breed sponsorships.
Distant gunfire pulled his attention. Through the air, a curving salvo of missiles tore through the thickness of traffic filling the skies to punch down into the abandoned gablock they were erging from. A plu of dust and debris rose into the air. The block trembled. Its walls crumbled a bit more.
The enforcer carrying the father sighed. “It’s those Scalper fucks again, I bet. Half-strands won’t stop going for us.”
The new leader–the one called Chambers–groaned in agreent. “Raid! Raid! Double ti!”
The two hitters exploded into motion, but they still weren’t particularly fast seeing as they were running in a near-ton of armor. New missiles bent through the chaotic floods of aerial traffic. Drones shot up to intercept. Las-cutters flashed, the beams blinking in wide flashes. Rumbling explosions blood behind them. Avo found himself pushed ahead of the group as he went from follower to shepherd on these empty streets strewn with waste.
Crossing out into an exposed part of the Warrens, the rain hamred hard down on him. As they pulled the father into the deluge, Avo noticed the wounds on the man’s face already closing. A group of street-juvs glared at them, bloodied knives in their hands. Their cut wrists rapidly nded.
Who needed healthcare when the Guilds seeded the midnight rains with miracles? That wasn’t the right question down here. The right question was who controlled the street corners where the raindrops actually landed.
For a stretch, the rain poured so hard that Avo could hear it knocking against the bone of his skull, stinging him. Chambers did his best to expose Draus to the wet. She, in turn, opened her mouth and took in mouthfuls of water. That would resolve the internal bleeding sowhat, but she would still need a grafter for surgery. Soone to replace her augs and limbs.
Another missile landed much closer this ti. Daring a look behind, Avo saw a trailing Specter following close, triangulating the shots. With a snarl, he flung his Ghost-Link out at it. It rejected his request to connect, but he left it planted with a special surprise. His shiv sank deep through the poorly maintained Specter’s wards, injecting its insides with an expanding mory from one of the hunters he killed back in the Crucible. It was like staking a snake made of glass, and few things were more satisfying than watching a mind co apart at the seams.
Chambers shot him a double take as they kept moving. “The hells was that, ghoulie?”
Avo shrugged. Enforcer didn’t need to know his capabilities. “Guess their ‘Jack got nulled?”
A chorus of whistling engines drew his attention back ahead. A tunnel opened impossibly through a curtain of rain in the distance. The deluge parted along four invisible slopes as an unclear shape approached. They were at the edge of the parking lot now. There were fewer hills of debris here; more space to land.
What approached them was much, much smaller than an aerobarge, but still large enough to fit one of the enforcers. Even in the rig.
The aerovec was shaped like a sleek arrowhead with four tetrahedral engines hissing microfusion propulsors. Avo’s Phys-Sim simulated its most likely trajectory and drew a lane curving down from the outer edge of the Layer One hexagon. Avo wondered which district he was in; which sovereignty.
Chambers handed Draus back over to Avo. “Better not drop her, ghoul.”
He took her into his arms. She coughed out so rainwater and glared at the enforcer. “Gotta work on your cardio, consang. Could feel your heart hamrin' even through the armor.”
The aerovec spun and landed in front of them. Chambers jabbed Avo in the head with his fusion burner. “Listen, I don’t give a shit what happens to you or the fucking flat but this one was a Reg. She deserves better than this. This is as close to begging as I get, ghoul: do not fuck with Mirrorhead. He will make you wish I killed you. You synced with , consang? You saw what he did to Yulens back there?"
“Yeah,” Avo said. “Synced.”
Chambers gave him a nod. “Get on then. And don’t fucking lie to him. He’ll know.”
A blast of cooled air washed over Avo as he felt Draus shiver in his arms. The aerovec had opened its rearmost doors to him. An inviting ambiance greeted him with soft cellos playing and musky aromas nibbling at his nose. He sneezed. The light was a dim purple trailing off into what should have been darkness.
But Avo saw just fine without light and beheld an immaculately dressed individual in a monochro suit. His face was featureless, reflective. The sa could be said about his hands.
There, against a large curving sofa with wyvern scales running down the armrests, sat Mirrorhead.
And imdiately, Avo realized he wasn’t even dealing with so random Syndicate boss. No. This was soone with a na worth knowing. Soone that scread danger.
Right then, Avo wanted to do anything other than get into the aerovec.
Few people got what they wanted in this city.
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