Chapter 5-10 Blindside

Chapter 5-10 Blindside

"Look, sometimes shit just goes sideways, and you're not the one who fucked it up. That's not your fault. That's just New Vultun being New Vultun.

But... sometimes... sometimes things just work out."

-Quail Tavers, School of the WarrensThe initial posting of this chapter occurred via Ñøv€l-B!n.

5-10

Blindside

+Nothin' like shitty Syndicate perimeter-sec, eh Avo?+ Draus asked.

They slipped through the unmanned entrance like phantoms given shape only by wind, their holocoats making them peripheral entities; not yet invisible, not quite noticeable. A lone turret drone spun lazily upon its high axis, casting its grided gaze over the four retching guards knelt over by the entrance. Unsupported, its cone-like field of view rendered it an instrument worthy of mockery rather than concern.

Piercing through the thinness of the market's outer defenses, ghoul and Regular stalked past sloppily patrolled checkpoints. Drifting Specters of rudimentary sequences splashed their perception in narrow beams across the foyer, protecting the inner confines of the block's central courtyard.

They were tethered to softly warded minds, wobbling high overhead on strings of phantasmal sinew. Avo scoffed at their make with scorn. The use of a Specter was not in the length of its gaze but in scouting. Hence, the ease of their sequencing; hence, the practice of using them en masse to conceal their deficiencies.

With positions so obvious and routes so rote, it took little for Avo to conduct a bit of counter-scrying of his own measuring, using his Whisper to see where the intersecting paths of perception lay.

As they trailed up a narrow staircase bathed in a clash of flickering neon, a ghost-infused tag along the cracked walls greeted Avo's cog-feed in a blossoming swirl of phantoms.

Head Left to Enter to Carnal-Cluster...

And a cluster of carnality it was. Within the market, kiosks and stalls spilled out as if cancerous growths, dotting the entirety of the courtyard and even rising up several stories on platforms and stacks. Quick-fabbed stairs dripped in dollops of clumping matter, the half-life of the print-job encroaching. Yet, the customers cared little, their feet hammering hard down against every step, their eyes fixated only on the flashing ads screaming of new synth-drugs to purchase, or new vicarites to sample.

Music bled into ceaseless battering that entrapped Avo in a cocoon of sound, the breaths of customers and merchants alike coming in gasping inhales as they flagellated any and all who were unfortunate enough to hear their words. Booming vibrations crashed discordantly out of rhythm with one another, like the war drums of two clashing armies, both bereft of discipline.

A haze of angry red slithered over Avo's perception like someone had opened a vein in reality and just let it bleed. Other colors then greeted him like scars amidst the crimson ambiance. The shine of thoughtstuff burned like the simmering detritus of a cigarette cast over a piece of paper, and the blinding shine cast by the storefront signs shrouded an ever-flowing tide of bodies in bright light and shadow, the aesthetic of both people and word myriad in their forms.

To call the gutter market an urban jungle was an insult to its density. This was no jungle. The better conceptualization of its shape was to use suffocation as a noun. No. Cluster. Now the use of the word made sense.

And exposed to so many lives, their scents all varied, all appealing, the beast licked at the pleasure centers of Avo's mind, urging him to consider--just contemplate--the thrill of letting his Domains loose here. The color upon the plascrete then would match the shine in the air. Red on red. And inside, his Soul would burn...

+Avo,+ Draus said, her voice striking him free from his reverie like a steel rod. The urge shattered and the beast slithered away, seething at the Regular as it settled into primal depths burning within Avo's mind.

He grunted.

Her veil was casting her face into fractals now, nothing of her appearance discernable. Still, he could smell her, taste the purity of her scent, and hear the intermittent strength of her thudding heart. The market was flowing chaos, but Draus stood like a defiant stone amidst the river.

A bloodied bruiser encased in the bones of a half-wrecked exoskeleton cracked into her and staggered. Before he could turn to hurl a curse, the moving crowd tore him away, a riptide of flesh carried on clicking knees and weary feet.

A beat of silence ran within their link, though the world yet roared with noise. For a second, he thought she was going to cancel the run. For a second, he could taste the doubt slipping over from her end of their connection.

Instead, she primed him with a question. +You good for this?+

+Yes,+ Avo said, trying to shed the hunger from his voice. +Was just...+

+Thinkin' 'bout killin' everyone? Eatin' everyone?+

+Always.+

Even as deafening synth-pop exploded from his left, Avo heard Draus chuckle. +Was an exercise they teach us, back before I was formally a Reg. Was about visualization, to help some of those... less mentally stable among us stay zoned. Basically, whatever you imagine doin' to someone, imagine you're doing it to yourself. Think of feelin' it. The good or bad. Whatever it is. Keeps you grounded. Helped me some for a while.+

A quiet visited Avo's mind with the concept. To eat another. To eat himself. To kill another. To kill himself. He understood her intent and the purpose of the exercise. To center one's ego as a lodestone against any atrocity or virtuous deed committed.

But a ghoul feasted on pain and violence, and it cared not from whence it was derived. In his infancy, he watched more than a few of his brothers succumb to autosarcophagy--the act of devouring oneself. After all, why seek flesh that is harder to claim when the succulence grew on your very bones?

Avo had taken care not to bite into himself after beholding the outcome. The Low Masters let the faultier of his brothers run their course, and in turn, his other brothers found the self-devourers a most cooperative feast.

+I'll keep control,+ Avo said.

+Haven't shown me otherwise yet,+ Draus replied.

There was a latitude she was showing him. A growing trust. He wondered if it was because of the trials they shared in the Crucible. Or perhaps she just found him too interesting to kill. If that was the case, he could not claim the feeling to be mutual. The beast instead wanted him to kill her, to end her and feed from her in a triumph against an old foe.

But Avo wouldn't. He refused.

Draus wasn't quite a friend. Honestly, he couldn't even claim to know what a friend was. But it had been a long time since there was someone he could rely on since Walton's passing. She wasn't the same. No one would be the same as Walton.

+Am I in trouble now?+

Draus breathed, considering.

+Please,+ Avo added. +...It's what a consang would do. We can go free more slaves from her ship. Is good. Ethical.+

A strange absurdity filled him as he cast the word at her using his mind. He felt as if a ghoulling again, begging Walton for permission to eat the neighbor's nu-cat. The answer to that request had often been a soft no.

+Ethical.+ Draus said. +You know, Avo. I'm beginning to wonder if you're just... using that word when you want to justify a killin', but...+ The captain clamped down on the shock trigger to the girl's collar, forcing her skin to shift its colors and earning a hoarse scream out from the mod-slave.

A beat followed. A spark of bloodlust simmered into their shared link, and this time, it didn't come from Avo's end. Draus sighed. +Hells. You think you can do that thing you did with Vicious again? The one where you make wings out of their organs.+

Avo grinned. +Might be able to do better. Can also dissolve evidence now. Hell's working this time.+

+Well,+ Draus said, cracking her neck, +Suppose that'll be interesting to see. Want me to make the approach?+

+Yeah,+ Avo said. +Might still remember my voice.+

The Regular approached the captain with casual confidence. Her veil had switched to reflective fractals and she intercepted the path of the drunk maw-diver.

"Hey, you," Draus said, trying to keep the scorn out of her voice. "Hold on a minute there. How much for her?"

A slight burp worked its way free from Aseleri's mouth as she looked Draus up and down, frowning at the obfuscated figure before her. Holocoats weren't uncommon in the city, but they were made popular by street squires and snuffers specifically. Generally, people who didn't want to leave a visual footprint. Said kinds of people also weren't exactly the most trusted types in society.

"Right, right," Aseleri said. She tried to point at the prices projected from the girl's holotag, missed, then managed on her second attempt. "See you aren't much of a reader. It's... uh... written right here."

"Nah," Draus said, shaking off the giantess' words like they were nothing. "I mean the real price. Somethin' that might just make us keen to a bit more business. Maybe by the batch?"

A momentary confusion peeled across Aseleri's face as she tried to decipher what was being asked. "I... yeah. Mr. Larkton." She handed the leash over to one of her accompanying crew. "I must apologize. Haven't... haven't made your acquaintance yet. Captain Aseleri of Mawfarer II." She hiccuped and grinned. "And... unofficial destroyer of the Mawfarer I."

Draus just nodded. "Well. Good meetin' you, Aseleri. You know a place where we can talk proper?" She revealed a flash of her imps, a constellation of motes shining like diamonds before the slave runner's eyes.

Aseleri immediately sobered up at the sight of currency and cracked a broad smile. "Yes, yes, I think I do. You uh... you come along now. Let me get you a proper drink."

The detour that followed was a short one. Draus trailed behind the babbling Aseleri and her crew while Avo lingered a bit further, trying to keep some distance in case anyone was watching. They might not be able to locate him using a Recollector thanks to his holocoat, but a tail was still something that could be obviously spotted.

He found the journey's end to be a long cluster of cubes lining the corner of the courtyard. Shines of thoughtstuff flashed through the opacity of each glass chamber squared along the wall. He guessed this was where certain Syndicate deals were struck. Pitiful.

With a scan of her Meta, the captain called open the doors to one such booth and waved for Draus to head in first. With the crowd thinning along this quarter of the market, Avo clung closer to the shadows and moved with caution, casting his Whisper to get a bird's eye view.

It was only when the booths were quiet and straying eyes were few that he made his move. The local nu-dog was missing and the turret overseeing the area likewise was too narrow to notice him again.

Drawing upon the power of his Heaven, he pushed his blood along the doorframe and unlocked the haptic mechanism from the inside. The door hissed open. He stepped into the booth, its length more like a miniature meeting room.

"... and so, I ended up installing the Neuraskin in her," Aseleri said, gesturing to the shifting shivering girl kneeling before Draus, the mod-slave's colors a constant flux of change. "Even got a new tagline for it. Neuraskin: Think gorgeous, think pretty--"

She finally noticed Avo standing at the end of the room. With a wave of his hand, the doors closed again.

"Ah," Draus said gesturing to Avo. "My associate's here."

Aseleri blinked. "Asso--"

Avo fired his Celerostylus and his Heaven free. From his veins, he cast three branches of flowing blood. Two crashed into Aseleri's crew, piercing their bodies. With a thought, he alchemized their blood and bent their bodies under his control, slamming them hard against the ground.

Aseleri, possessing a lesser reflex booster but a reflex booster nonetheless, unleashed her Ghostjack on him again, her phantasmal weapons flashing free at the speed of thought. A constellation of sequences burned across her Metamind as the shape of her Ghostjack flared into existence.

Yet, despite possessing such a powerful instrument, despite bringing him low a mere two days ago with a casual thought, this time, her ghost-fused weapons crashed against him and splashed off his wards.

His cog-feed screamed, the strain placed on his cog-cap high but sustainable. She disgusted him. Blessed with the single most versatile phantasmic there was, she wielded it sloppily like a phantasmal hammer, making nothing but missiles of trauma to be dashed against his wards.

His final branch sank through her gut and snapped her into the air with a flick. Aseleri gasped, a mouthful of blood spewing free. Avo caught the flow and forced it back into her mouth. He manually kept her blood flowing.

She would not get to die so easily. Not from internal bleeding. Not from the trauma. Grasping feebly at the pillar of crimson forced through her liver, Aseleri gasped and writhed. "F-fuck... why... who?"

Avo dropped his veil and lifted his helmet. Through the haze of pain on her face, he watched as recognition dawned across her features and knew it to be a beautiful thing.

"Oh... oh, Jaus... oh, fuck me."

"Must apologize," Avo said, drawing Aseleri in close with a twitch of a finger. "We've met. But I haven't formally made your acquaintance. Was rude of me. Now. I'm ready to make up for lost time."

The fact that Draus was grinning as well didn't escape his notice.