Godclads

Chapter 6-3 A Chance Encounter

“Okay. First things first. Whenever you’re diving into someone’s mind, you are not the host. You might be able to change the design. You might be able to steal a memory. You might even be able to unmake all the supporting architecture.

But you are not the host.

Say it with me, Avo.

‘I am not the host.’

Good.

You keep that in mind when you dive. I’ve seen more than one Necro lose themselves inside the mind of another. Things get very, very complex when strands of thought become intertwined. Should your memories become entangled, who's to say where you begin and they end…”

-"Walton," instructing [Redacted] on the basics of Necrotheurgy

6-3

A Chance Encounter

These articles now clung to Avo like a second skin, sparing him the attention of the meek and hateful. It served him better being a figure cloaked in light-shrouded mystery than an obvious beast of gluttonous savagery.

So it came that Avo found himself twice glad of his new outfit upon his descent in the elevator, accompanied by a family of three.

Aside from the one he guessed to be the mother, the twin pre-adolescent sons were enwreathed by dancing shadows, coated with presences twisting and translucent. A mask of painted monochrome flowed with the movements of their heads, its design from that of old Sangshan shadow operas, blessed with patterns meant to denote the wearer as female. These, then, were neuter-masks: instruments of deception granted shape through thaumaturgy.

Once such items were the scarcest of artifacts; rarities gifted to foreign dignitaries for them to spare them from the Dragon-Curse’s notice. Now, it was little more than a commercial appliance. Commonly seen and widely used. By those that could afford them, anyhow.

The mother was weathered and worn, the unmistakable light whine of an implanted weapon glinting beneath her left sleeve. Small traces of cybernetic circuitry lined her face, caging her visual aesthetic in the trappings of long outdated augmentations. There was a presence about her. Something that told Avo she wasn’t unfamiliar with violence, awkward though it still might be to her.

Her children, then, were of a different make. Enhanced from the cell to the sinew. Molded toward superiority. Her virtues were exaggerated in them while her flaws were spared. Their attire was subtle; muted in color and lacking all ostentation in their design. Yet, it clung to flawless skins of glowing amber, and the scents coming from their bodies breathed earthly aromas fresh and unknown to the Warrens.

The taste was also helpful for blunting Avo's bloodlust. Overfed on raw meat as he was, the taste of soil was just another barrier against the predilections of the beast.

From the flowing constellations of clenched lightning that lined their thoughts in a defensive lattice, Avo guessed they were using a Sanctus Starseeker. A most competently made set of wards, though his compliments ended there. It gave too much of a trail, and a journeyman Necro could spoof in from all the gaps left unprotected. There was also the question of why children needed wards of such high potency.

Several guesses sprouted like seeds in the back of Avo’s mind. There were only so many possibilities that could force a mother to bring her children down to a place like this. They reeked of exiled privilege, stripped of status but not of their habits, their design. They had to be. It took a special kind of desperation for a mother to bring her male offspring to a place guaranteed to boil the blood in their veins.

The children continued to chat and laugh away, their small fingers jabbing at the bioluminescent advertisements dancing across the inner folds of the elevator. Animated figures darted and dashed, flirted and fought, until their forms melded together to become some kind of new energy drink with a mem-code to scan.

The Second Fortune was a place of new novelty for the twins, and they were here sampling a buffet of flavors. A vacation. Unlike her boys, however, the mother stood a sentinel, watching Avo from her periphery. Her porcelain-sheened eyes shone like diamonds or cracked glass. Her muscles were loose but her jaw was set, her trinary hearts beating a slow but heavy rhythm.

A new suspicion slid over the waters of his thought like a film of oil. This was not the habit of some fleeing wager. No. She had the ethics of someone familiar with living in the Warrens, body projecting caution but not confusion nor terror.

This was more of a homecoming for her. A place that she knew. Sanctuary. It seemed Green River was a popular lady. One willing to accept all manner of lost and damned.

"You working?" the mother asked, the question finally hurled out over the clamor of her children. Her eyes were still fixed on him. Her implanted gun was pointed straight down at the ground now, its impact trajectory coming alight via his Phys-Sim.

“Visiting someone,” Avo replied. “Not you.” The children seemed confused about the last part. The mother wasn't. She offered a slow, still distrustful nod and kept her gun primed. Smart, though it wouldn’t have saved her if he truly meant harm.

She exhaled slowly, trying to expel some of her tension. Three in. Three out. She knew how to breathe. Wasn’t the first time she did something like this. He looked at her implanted gun again and guessed its design. Didn’t look cheap either. Or pure-kinetic. Probably something particle then. Spatial-kinetic if she really had the imps for that kind of firepower. The type of stuff an ex-street squire would loathe to part with, even after they got out of the life.

"Had to ask,” she said. “Strange place to have your coat's privacy functions on."

"Private person," Avo replied. "You understand. Casino. Strange place to bring children."

The mother winced. "Short notice. Unfinished business. Needed to get them out of the way for a while. You understand."

Her twins were looking at him now, their eyes glinting with mirth, as their faces twitched with mischief. Rivers of ghost-made chains ran between them as they spoke to one another, likely mocking the tall stranger before them, bearing no sense of fear or worry.

He wondered if they were bound for death as well. Yet, in their faces, he saw nothing of the boy. Where his was a fate of softness and brutality, a certain fated mercy that would see them guarded against true peril. It was a twisted mockery of Essus’ folly, Avo thought, that this woman was likely to preserve the lives of both her children by heading downward, where the boy found only an unjust demise during his pilgrimage toward hope.

But for the Warrens, Avo supposed there were worse places one could hide than Xin Yunsha.

The elevator rang as two swirling blots of ink fused together to form the Sang character for "four" overhead. This was his stop. This was where he and they would part, hopefully never to see each other again.

Yet, before they closed, the professional within Avo demanded that he speak his piece. "Get new wards. Starseeker's for squires. You’re not on a run. You’re hiding. Keep it that way.”

And as if to accentuate his point, his words provoked a spray of surprise, the sensation splashing over him like a shotgun of rainfall.

Past columns of painted brass and lanterns burning flames of midnight black, he walked through the intersections of the fourth floor. Cheering echoed through the walls, cries of jubilance and despair as fortunes were won and lost. They were betting on the Grand Prix, was Avo's guess, handing what paltry imps they had over to the people that needed it the least.

A few hundred shining accretions came alight in his cog-feed. Most were spinning fast, burning hot like a star caught in a cosmic whirlpool, their desires cast near-naked into the Nether through the flaws of their cheap wards.

The opulence was lesser here compared to what was provided to Draus–and by extension, him and Kae. Doors of paper lattice waited here, with cheap auto-locks. A few of the lanterns burned dim, coughing and swollen, the organisms sick with some kind of infection. Hovering autocarts lined with alcohol, designer drugs, and a chipped locus filled with legal vicarities openly peddled their trade through the hallways.

Stepping sideways to avoid one such cart, Avo made for room 4-221 located in the crane wing, toward the far south of the building.

The mod slave--Lucille, as Kae had come to know the girl--was most easy to track. Her mind was barer than most, and the agony that hissed from the scarring cracks in her mind left a distinct flavor. Even if she was lost among a crowd of millions, Avo could have filtered her frequency out from the masses with but a thought using his Metamind.

Bright-Wealth, likewise was also simple to track, due to reasons inverse to Lucille. If the mod slave was naked and broken, the junior Sang was more like a bunker built alongside stacks of glass houses. Again, there was no absolute stealth in the Nether. That which bore memory and thought would always be visible. Hence, the need for masking, for obfuscation in the place of invisibility.

“Finally,” Bright-Wealth said, a rasp in her throat as she just finished inhaling a hit of the wolf-burn hallucinogenic. She lay a coiled rope outside the room, her bio-rig forming a concentric barricade with her real body resting at the center. “Thought you got lost or something.”

"Elevator slow," Avo said, ignoring her jab. "Would've been faster if you got a normal one."

"But Eldest River said it wouldn't be 'aesthetic' enough," Bright-Wealth said, rolling all four of her eyes. She moved, a slither of sudden motion as she removed herself from the doorway. “Been keeping a close eye on this one like you ask, ah. You watch out, yao-guai, her mind gets more mother-fucked by the day.”

“Thought you weren’t supposed to curse in front of the guests.”

Bright-Wealth snorted. “Fuck you, you cannibal half-strand piece of fucking shit. I bless your offspring with the good fortune of being born without an asshole. I bless you with groin rot and the rash. I bless all eighteen generations of your ancestors with eternal torment and I bless your nine family lines with early deaths.” She looked around. And grinned. “Heh. It appears that I can curse as much as I want.”

“Long as one of your seniors isn’t around,” Avo said.

“As long as one of my elder sisters isn’t around,” Bright-Wealth sighed. “It’s always ‘Bright-Wealth that’s unbecoming’ or ‘Bright-Wealth you can’t beat up the customers.’” She snarled. Her accretion spun. A foul memory cracked out from inside her. “Motherfuckers cheated me at Towers, they deserved it.”

He grunted. He wasn’t sure what else to say so he made to enter the room. He made it a single step before Bright-Wealth moved, a slither of moving curving from his left to his right. “Slow,” she said. “I… I have a request.”

Avo nearly sighed. “What?”

Bright-Wealth’s eyes darted about as if worried that the walls were watching. “Can… can you give her some… good memories?”

The ask knocked a stutter into his thoughts. “Good… memories?”

“Look, paler, you’re not the one watching her at night. You didn’t hear the way she screamed and… and screamed.” A shiver ran through Bright-Wealth her scales clicked. “She’s like an infant from one of those pre-modern vicarities, howling even in her dreams. I don’t know what degenerate shit happened to her but it's bad. Her cries have been following me at night, you know? Before I sleep.” She shook her head. “Poor fucking girl. She doesn’t deserve this.”

“Deserve,” Avo said, almost amused at Bright-Wealth’s word choice. “Your kind didn’t deserve the curse. People in the Warrens didn’t deserve ghouls. Ghouls deserve death but keep surviving. Deserve means nothing.”

She recoiled, face contorting in disgust as if he shoved a fistful of fecal matter beneath her nostrils. “What the fuck is wrong with you, yao-guai? Do you just go around pissing on other people for expressing empathy?”

The beast, predictably, wanted to shove its claws through her eyes and use her face as a new cap for her admonishment. On a more executive level, however, Avo just felt awkward. “Was offering honest perspective.”

“Well, maybe find another one, then,” Bright-Wealth said. “Maybe, next time, just say: ‘Sister Wealth, I can’t do it. I’m not good enough of a Necrojack–”

The beast hissed, but it was Avo who snarled with frustration. “She will laugh when I leave the room.”

Bright-Wealth went silent. Her lips closed, pursed with interest. “Really?”

“Yes.”

“What… if you can’t?”

“I will.”

“But what if you can’t.”

Avo nearly gave into the desire to make a hat of the increasingly insufferable Sang. “I. Will.”

“How much are you willing to bet.”

Avo’s mind slammed to a screeching halt. He looked up, and if his loathing could be manifest as energy, a cored chasm of gore would’ve hollowed the insides of the Sang’s skull. At some point, at some time, this stopped being about offense and was turned to feeding her gambling addiction.

“Will fix girl. No bets.”

Bright-Wealth shrugged. “Fine. But if she doesn’t laugh, I’m going to call you a bad… Necrojack.”

If she did that, there was a reasonable chance that he might not possess enough control to stop himself from making a victim of her. Looking around, he considered his approach and tagged the nearby cameras in his cog-feed. It always helped to be prepared.

“Make her laugh loud, yao-guai,” Bright-Wealth said, gliding entirely out of the way, sarcastically ceding ground to let the master perform.

He was wrong. Her people did deserve the curse if it made her life any more inconvenient than it could have been otherwise. But, shedding the annoyance, it would be a display of mastery to help reweave the girl’s mind so. Good practice for the intricacies he was soon to perform on Chambers and the techs once he was done with her.

Entering with little more than a shove and a low growl, Avo ignored the half-moon of a grin that pulled at the Sang’s lips, prodding him forward toward his task as if a spear.

It was Avo’s call to keep the mod slave separate from where they stayed. His intent was to keep her parted from the group to best help him reduce what he needed to prune. He had ensured local measures were set up to mask her presence as well, deliberately leaving a cracked locus in the room, leaking the ghosts from the local lobby into the room. Such an action held little risk of damaging the girl as well, seeing as she was already buried in her grief; a mountain nigh-inconsolable would not be swept aside by the feeble waters of a river.

The cracked locus also allowed him to siphon the excess ghosts running through the establishment to his own ends. With the eighty-one ghosts currently serving as the foundations of his Metamind, the task would have taken more than a week to complete. With the firehouse of phantasmal resources on tap thanks to Green River’s purchased generosity, Avo needed but hours.

He wondered then what Draus had done for the River that earned her so much favor. Avo had his own fixers–ones that he needed to get back in touch with soon for the sake of reconstituting his missing arsenal of phantasmics–but the offerings gifted to the Regular were beyond that of even friends.

Avo had tried asking Draus what she did, but much like the matter with Mirrorhead’s mother, she spoke of it only vaguely and clenched the matter away, her stubborn silence closing around the affair like a fist.

Comparatively, Lucille–long regarded as merely “mod slave” in Avo’s mind–was a fountain of damage, her mind shredded clean and raw. She didn't rise to greet him even after he entered the small, cramped room, choosing instead to stay entombed beneath the folds of her lung bed. The space she was given was scarcely half the size offered to Draus, but it was cheap, and Avo was technically paying.

Beside the bed, the locus spun on a bedside nightstand, fissuring strands of phantasmal sequences into the near-Nether. The break was done most technically, allowing a concentrated breach of substance instead of a wide and uncontrolled spread. Aside from the locus, only a small holovision hung from the ceiling, and a narrow bathing cubicle occupied a narrow groove in the corner.

A shadow moving in the dimness, Avo arrived at her bedside to study his subject. She looked back up at him then, her gaze blank and features ill. After the steamed bun he gave her nearly a week ago, her relationship with food grew capricious. For days, it looked like she trying to starve herself, eating only when Bright-Wealth demanded it. On other days, she was an endless font of hunger, insatiable during bouts of sudden mania.

A deep blue had stained her skin, drowning her skin with the tones of a midnight ocean. The extraction of her bioware left to take place after the cleansing of her mind, a thing decided on by Draus. The Regular had thought it best to leave the girl with a start of imps with her separation from old wounds and memories. Whatever the bioware was worth, part of it would go back to her.

The likelihood was that she was either going to end up working for the casino if her restoration proved to be stable or just another joy-fiend or suicide if not. But that was a choice best left to herself.

Truth be spoken, Avo cared little for the girl beyond the value her mind offered and the chance to correct an ethical debt. With how many Aseleri had sold, he doubted she would be the last amongst the slaves he would encounter, especially if he was to take a gander through the Maw-barge when Mirrorhead was good and snuffed. Ultimately, the sooner he finished her neuro-edits and copied the damaged sequence, the sooner they could part.

He caught a taste of her vulnerability before and found it most unpalatable. It reminded him of being a ghoulling. Choiceless in the most direct of senses. Though he could ignore the urge to eat her now, he wasn’t capable of shaking off the shroud of annoyance he felt toward her. Like she was some kind of insect, one better served to feed the flames of his Soul than any other purpose.

The strange thing about that was he couldn’t remember if his animosity burned so intensely before he was bestowed with his Liminal Frame.

“I’m ready,” she said, her dry throat cracking the glass that was silence. Her words were lies. That fact could be read from the way her eyes were drifting about, from the lethargy impairing the fluctuance of her thoughtstuff; her pace of thinking was crippled by weariness, and her weariness then was a malady brought upon by night terrors. Readiness was beyond her. And that is the way it would continue to be until he cleaned the harm that festered inside her.

But it was a lie that mattered little. He was the one that needed to be ready–prepared for her onslaught of trauma. She, on the other hand, merely needed to make a choice.

“I still… I don’t want to forget,” Lucille said, eyes searching the ceiling. Hers was bereft of an aquarium, leaving only a swaying light and blank enamel in its place. “I want to remember my sister, my father.” A shiver of hurt bubbled over her. “Aselerei.”

“Yes,” Avo said, considering the challenges her requests presented. “Anything else?”

She shook her head. “I want to be me when this is done. I want to still be myself.”

Still be her. It was laughable. It was understandable. It was human. New Vultun ate humans.

“Won’t change your fundamentals. Just edit damage. Make you stable. Unroot some of the pain.”

“Okay,” she said, voice growing thick. “I’m scared.”

“Can stay scared. Won’t affect process.”

“Will it hurt?”

Avo chuffed a near-laugh. “Opposite. Feel better by the end. Even laugh.”

Now, she finally looked at him, fixing him with a baleful glare from one of her eyes. “Don’t mock me.” A hint of steel; a whisper of anger. It meant nothing before Aseleri, and so, it weighed even less when placed upon Avo.

“Not mocking,” Avo said, looking over her mind wounds one more time before he began the process. “Just telling you what’s going to happen.”

Sitting down against the wall, he linked with the locus and felt a tunnel of ghost flood out. He did not, however, allow them to use his brain as a junction. No easier way to catch a mem-con. Instead, he would purify them, and use the hyper-extended sequences from the Second Fortune to serve as a bulwark against her trauma while he reshaped the roots of her damage.

With a thought, Avo guided a tide of ghosts to funnel into her cracks. Wardless, it took little more than an edited idea of tiredness smuggled into the folds of her surface thought for her to fall asleep.

The rest of the task, though, would be immensely more challenging.

Good. No better way to get back into form.

INITIATING META-DIVE…