Chapter 10-5 Smoke on the Horizon

Chapter 10-5 Smoke on the Horizon

Well, thats an augury of violence if Ive ever seen one. An entire block flooded with thoughtstuff. Theyre massing alright. Looks like were going to have that fight after all.

Or shits fuckier than we know. You think the Ori



Yep. Absolutely. If theres an open jar, the half-strands from the Incubi probably got one of their invisible fingers dipping inside. Well, they might even be the jar in the first place, running a dive on themselves. Like in Kososo.

Fucking Kososo.The inaugural upload of this chapter took place via N0v3l-B1n.

Yep.



You think your uncle pretending his gates are down will get Greatling to pull something stupid?



Ehh. Ahh. Umm.

Enlightening, Reva. Glad to see our little cadres being headed by an intellectual.

Yep. Know what I think? I think this Mirrorhead doesnt know what hes doing.



You serious?

Well, come up with whatever mad-cap strategy you want, but bunching your fighting-meat up in one place all of a sudden isnt exactly subtle. And frankly, theres not enough of them. Of course, if the Ori have their hands on him someway somehow, they might be feeding him false intel to start a fight in Nu-Scarrowbur as a distraction. Like in Kososo.



Fucking Kososo.



Yep.



So. What now?



Now we just keep watching. We got the time. We got the Longeyes support. And we got four-on-one if it comes down to a Clad on Clad. Far as I can tell, we basically got called in to do a milk run.

...Reva, why the fuck did you have to use those words?

-Conversation between Reva Javvers and Tigertail, Bloodthanes of Stormtree

10-5

Smoke on the Horizon

Avos mind slowed to a halt as he overlaid Draus perception upon his own.

From on high she gazed down at Nu-Scarrowbur, the roof of her newly stolen aerovec was practically scraping the ceiling of Layer Two. Physically masked by the phantoms simulating midnight, her cog-cap remained low as she used the confusion of her environment as attention-ablative plating.

Clever. Theres a trick to keep in mind.

Trickling veins of traffic rounded the countless shield-shaped structures of the district below her. Every two blocks or so, an Exorcists Specter hovered, a satellite between intersections, each establishing a new watchtower for surveillance.

Missing were the patrolling golem knots of the Scalpers or any trace of their associated members operating in the street. At a glance, this seemed an obvious reaction to the presence of the Exorcists, but clearer omens stood in former Syndicate-owned blocks now mostly vacant of thoughstuff and loci signatures.

If the district was a portrait of climbing colors when regarded in the Nether, several major spires were now devoid of luster, bland in a sea of growing voluminosity thanks to the encroach of Tier-security.

+Ill try to get a closer look,+ Draus said. The heft of tension was as if a solid block inside her. She welcomed its weight, reveling in a task fit for her purpose. She yearned to see if she could evade the notice of the Exorcists entirely, leaving her Incog unstrained. +Hows the shit on your end?+

He checked Essus signature. The former father wasnt moving, surrounded by two flanking accretions. +Going to get Essus. Block is ours again. No sign of any more Incubi. Yet.+

Pulling the Crucible mem-data secured from subverted loci, two other memory profiles appeared. A hype-feed advertising a double act who fought with minds in sync and wielded wisping drones lined with threads of monowire. Two upcoming razorgirlstwins named Tsuni and Prani Mandrahuptawere set to perform with him.

All details indicated they were recent contract acquisitions made by Confluxtheir backstory vaguely similar to Essus own, being twin daughters surviving the ascent up a Scalper Crucible while their father didnt.

Unlike Essus, what memories the systems offered presented them as savage husks hollowed by drugs and vicarity addiction. Chrome as they were on the outside, inside was already rot and rust. Death for them was a question of when, and not if.

Essus froze. He turned to face the man. Yes. Better, in fact. Artads blessings.

The techs flickering blue eyes swiveled as they shot a worried look at one of their cohorts. Working to fix the nights murder-filled entertainment, they were spread wide, some assembling wires, other prodding at drones. They werent ready for what was to come.

+The locus,+ Essus said. +Where the the watchers were supposed to come through. It broke with the uh the mind-thief fell ill.+

+Yes. Necros hurt. Going to finish him in a moment.+

Parts of Essus thoughts wavered like a tattered flag, but by testament of will, the man was still sane, still capable of composing his own thoughts. Wounded though he was, shattered but holding was yet the right descriptor.

+I have done terrible things,+ Essus said. Shame followed. Emotions were breaking inside the man like a dam. There was no time for this. +I refused to kill at first but they they put memories of other children dying inside of me until I+

+Essus. Cant make that right. But Mirrorheads not watching now. Bomb in your head wont go oft. And the Necro is down. You understand?+

Slowly, he felt Essus offer him a nod. +Yes yes+



His fist lashed out, the blow a surprise to himself and Avo both. The tech he just spoke to barely managed to widen his eyes before death came. Titanium greeted flesh and the bones that comprised the Confluxers jaw emerged as a burst of darts through the back of his skull.

A cry of alarm roseand droned as Avo accelerated his reflexes.

Around him, a few personnel and the two razorgirls imbued with the enhancements of neurachem or other reaction booster moved as if inches, twitching barest increments before his gaze. The rest might as well have been frozen solid.

The first targets were the twins. They were chained in mind and action, moving in tandem as they ejected the threaded monowire drones out from their spines. The drones didnt even fully detach from their bodies before they broke.

Synaptic lightning forked through the Nether, striking the closer of the two. Ghosts imbued with all the pain in Lucilles Regret splashed against wardings and wardings shattered. A mental scream sounded for but a beat before it was subsumed by the banshee howl of channeled traumas.

As he blew out the first razorgirls mind like a candle, he watched as his traumas overflowed across the link so fast the second mind in the conduit burst immediately after the first, wards popping like a lightbulb after her sister was extinguished.

A glitter of thoughtstuff speckled his Metamind. Only shadows of memory remained of them.

Shadows, and a fortuitous secondhand realization that one of them had a Woundhound injector on them.

Leaving the techs for Essus to slaughter, Avo slipped his Whisper out from the fathers mind and cast torrents of mind-nulling ghosts at the already crippled Necro and the drones. Then, he scanned the minds of the survivors. Two Auto-Seance sessions were unsequenced from inside their minds. A thoughtcast toward a nearby locus containing a Nether lobby for the block was nulled mid-travel.

In effect, he was tearing the sound out of out of the Confluxers as they screamed, neutering any chance they had of survival.

Much like they planned for the twenty people trapped within slatted sheets under the pretense of playing a game of death and survival.

When no more possibility of escape remained, Avo slacked his haemokinetic mass and slipped back into Essus mind.

The following brutality could be encapsulated in a single word: Catharsis.

Bodies broke and smeared against walls. Limbs came free of sockets and splattered further against skulls. Nonoptimal cyborg that he was, Essus was rage unchained and grafted toward the sole purpose of dispensing crude, vulgar violence.

Vulgar violence the techs were helpless to halt with their crumbling morale and absent martial prowess. Without enforcer protection and the overwatch of their drones, the resulting moments belonged to a nature documentary.

Avo remembered the No-Dragons promoting a patch release of one of their nu-hornet variants made to eat away the near-endless swarm of locusts spilling out from a rupture near the Silk Spiral. Cradled in the mind of the hornet, he experienced a wholesale culling as the bioform tore through the cloud of locusts, its crystalline form and virulent exoskeleton cutting the pests from the skies via blade and plague both.

What Essus performed wasnt nearly as impressive in terms of magnitude, but the experience of the vicarity was the same.

Pulped and twisted remains pooled across the ground like soup.

Standing upon a pond of gore, Essus looked at the shadowy outline of his own body within the crimson pond, basked by wings of neon bleeding into the faintness of apparitions. The boy and Avo himself hovered over his sides, looking upon the butchery with approval.

Essus did not throw up. With all the parts taken from him, the act was no longer possible.

He did, however, squeak. A soft whimper escaped from him as he faced the shadow of himself. Artad why? Why.

+Hes not here Essus,+ Avo said. He could have left it at that. He didnt. +Its just me.+

Sobering at the words, a series of palms slapping metal pulled Essus attention. The survivors were pounding at the inside of their enclosure. They wanted to escape. To be freed.

I I need to free them, Essus said. A soft sob choked free from his throat. I dont need to kill I can save someone. Finally. Finally

Avo understood. He grunted. +Yes. But grab the Woundhound injector off the dead razorgirl. Need it.+

What? Why?

And even through the thickness of the sealed blast doors closing off the space behind them, out from the titanium hive of a Blockcrawler, the agonized screams of a certain degenerate traveled deep and true.

Something had indeed become unlatched.

+Chambers testicles are giving birth to aratnids. Will need replacement.+

I see.