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 Warrens
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.
But she was trying to help him. Not trying to stop him. Not trying to chain him.
It was almost as if she understood.
It took them the better part of ten minutes to shoulder through the crowds. More than once, Avo flensed a wandering hand trying to plant something on him. Judging from the sounds of snapping arms, the cries drowned out by the crowds, the Regular was no more gentle than he was.
The thick of the crowd worked on him, iron against iron. Every moment, every sound brayed at his instincts, a taunting call to unfurl the brutality sleeping inside him.
He saw flashes of children--offspring of wagers come down to see the sights, to be granted boons of entertainment with their exhausted parents. Most of them must've been born after the Conception Ban and the rash. Vat-grown, with their births provided on behalf of Voidwatch.
Choiceless. They provided a better buffet against his growing want to harm. Them and their parents.
Without a statement, Draus pulled him free from the current line of foot traffic down to the side as a Syndicate nu-dog emerged out from the corner of a stall, additional eyeballs and nostrils grafted along tendrils, searching for things and people that didn't belong.
Finally, they peeled free from the worst of the thicket, emerging at a clearing before the block's elevator. Steps of polished obsidian led up to the grand pillar of the mega-structure, the heft of its bulk spearing past Layer One and likely even further upward. At its base, a rumbling sound ebbed from behind the gargantuan plasteel doors of the block's central elevator.
From here came the primary installments of shoppers, delivered in batches up and down the block. The lower ends of the block were a bit like an entertainment center in that sense. More establishments dotted the stairs sinking along the sides of the elevator door. A grafter was practicing somewhere in the lower right wing of the block, their holo-ads promising betaware cybernetics cleared for high-intensity combat encounters.
To the left there was a single sign: Butcher's Lair.
A symphony of howled glee followed the echoing bellows of some manner of bioform. Beneath his feet, Avo felt a wash of vibrations run up and rattle his claws. Whatever was fighting tonight was large and heavy.
+Alright,+ Draus said, as a whistling sound signaled the return of her microdrone. +We might-gotta few minutes before--+
The elevator doors groaned, a hiss of air washing out as heated mist. Shoppers spewed forth from its interior as their sweat-soaked wagers staggered out, bodies wan of flesh and festooned with budge chrome.
Amongst them, coming forth from the very back strode a figure, unlike all the others. Her slatted coat rattled with each of her thumping steps. Her shadow, meanwhile, was a vastness that covered those behind her in their entirety. Neither Draus nor Avo could be described as diminutive, but Captain Aseleri was a ponderous mass of bio-enhanced muscle lined with spots of chrome.
Two of her crew flanked her sides, neither one recognizable to Avo. The attention he gifted them was brief, however, as another figure drew Avo's focus.
This one he did recognize. He had seen her across the holo-feed of the barge's bridge and watched her scream alongside her sister as her father was executed. Now, she was like a hollowed ruin nested inside the shell of a girl.
Aesthetic bioware lined her skin like moving blots of ink. A thin membranous structure expanded from her back like that of a butterfly. Her body was bare along the arms and legs while her torso was caged in a prisoner's harness, gripping her like a metallic lattice. From her neck, a holotag swayed in the front, the imps of her person and the active mods she was showcasing listed along different lines. Behind, Aseleri held her on a similar leash that was used on the father--Essus.
+Shit,+ Draus snorted derisively, +weren't pissin' around when you said she needed killin'.+
Avo clacked his teeth. Inside, the beast shook itself loose from its brief exile, grinning at the presence of the captain. +Seen the girl before as well. Watched Aseleri execute her father. Limited seating.+
+Is that why she killed him?+ Draus asked sardonically.
+Was the excuse,+ Avo said.
Even amongst the labor-stricken masses did the captain and her maw-divers stink. More than stench drew Avo to them, however, as he felt a familiar entropy clinging to their bodies, the very same kind that he wielded when venting his Hell.
Perhaps his First Circle and the Maw were tied, then? At least in design. A question for the Agnos later. Within his cog-feed she and her two crew flared with a silvery outline, Draus marking them from the crowd.
+Reckon you make for her now,+ Draus said.
Avo watched as Aseleri doddered forward, swigging a large bottle of Taver's Black in one hand while steering her peddled showcase slave with her right.
Clearly, the captain was looking to offload her "goods" before she was to make her descent into the Butcher's Lair. Imps came from a sold slave, and imps gave one more room to make bets.
But this also presented a unique opportunity. One that Avo was keen to capitalize on.
+Draus,+ Avo said, trying to hide the fact that he was salivating. +Got an idea. A better one.+
If he pitched this right, Draus could help him isolate the captain and her crew. His wants coincided with their objective: to keep this op silent and efficient.
+No,+ Draus said, +Changing the objectives at the last--+
+Not that. The slave. We can use her. Isolate Aseleri and her crew. Make kill away from sight. Even lower risk.+
The Regular froze. All the while, the captain hawked her slave, hollering loud, voice sweeping through the market. +You wanna lure her someplace private under the pretenses of buyin' the mods out from that girl? Or even the girl herself?+
+Yes.+
+Might work,+ Draus said. +Also makes me wonder a few things. Like if you're doing it for whatever vendett--.+
+Yes.+ Avo admitted. What reason was there to lie. +She's a slaver runner. Murderer. Sold me to Crucible. Want to eat her. Want to do it slow. An opportunity is now present to eat her. Do it quietly too. Why shouldn't I take it?+
To that, Draus gave him a slight nod. +That honesty of yours is gonna get you in trouble.+
+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.
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