Godclads

Chapter 9-14 Lingering (I)

“I see potential in you, despite how you have offended me.”

“I spit on you. I spit on your name. Kill me if your Crucible meant nothing, if my boy died for nothing. Kill me too!”

“No. I will do nothing that does not please me. I bought your life. I owe you no favors.”

“You wretched creature… faceless coward. Artad damn you. You and all your line.”

[Sounds of a blade ringing; hyperventilating.]

“Coward! Cowa–”

[Blade cutting into flesh; bone parting; Essus screaming]

"You, a grieving father who barely survived the Crucible. A refugee. The world hates you. But you had a friend, a ghoul. The Moonblood. He stood for you when no others would. He stood for you when I sent you to die. Now, he is dead. But perhaps there is potential. Perhaps his legend may live on through you.”

[Saw powering down; whimpering from Essus]

“Give him the anesthesia.”

“N-no.”

“...No?”

“I… don’t want… anything from you.”

“That’s not for you to decide. In fact, I have a new name for you. The ghoul is dead. The Guard-Captain abandoned you. All you are now is mine. I name you Lingerer. I name you. You will bear it. Give him the anesthetic.”

-Conversation between Jhred Greatling and Essus

9-14

Lingering (I)

The spell of Mirrorhead’s self-harm broke soon after. There was work that yet remained.

Cordoned to the fifteenth ring of the palace, Avo planted fragments of mem-data with all the memories Mirrorhead still bore of him. The loose fragments of the phantasmics were hard to track. Avo had confidence they would remain circumspect until he willed them to trigger, even if the estranged Greatling turned his gaze inward and performed a scan through all his sequences.

Piece by piece, the ghoul marked his former “owner” with cortex bombs of his own. A delicious reversal, re-gifting them.

Except Avo would see his mind-rending bomb detonated, and his foe rendered broken.

He had such plans for Mirrorhead, such desires.

+He ain’t what I wanted,+ Draus whispered. An urge to do harm quivered just beneath the surface of her thoughts, like worms writhing through the soil. Yet, greater than the hate that watered the surface of her thoughts, a dissatisfaction ran deep. +We still gotta snuff him but–+

+He’s like a child?+ Avo said. +Like a juv?+

+...Yeah. Somethin’ like that.+

He understood. It was always easier to bring your gun to bear and pull the trigger when it was a ghoul, when it was a monster. It wasn’t pity she felt for Jhred Greatling–for him, she still bore little more than rank loathing and hatred. No. It was the frustration of cleaner vengeance denied, to hear the family of your highest foe deriding the one you also hated, to see a broken son trying to uphold the illusory virtues he beheld in his mother.

Discomfitingly, the memory of Walton came to Avo like a taunt. Was his old worship of his father’s ideals any less pathetic than Mirrorhead’s? Idealization and lies. This was how people were broken. This was a wound that slashed at the ego itself, skipping through trauma entirely.

Existence was an exercise in madness sometimes.

+I make him that way for you,+ Avo offered. +Null away everything but the cruelty. The son. The slave.+

She grunted. It sounded much like one of his. +Get your spook-shit done first. Talk ‘bout what we wanna to do with the Greatlings later. The run ain’t even begun yet.+

Drawing upon his Heaven and reflex enhancements again, Avo finished his preparations within Mirrorhead’s mind, his speed making minutes of an operation once measured in hours. From there, he regarded the few remaining wards and deemed them insufficient to withstand a sudden, focused assault of traumas. Especially now that Avo knew how to hurt this mind the most.

Retreating back into Chambers’ mind. Avo was surprised to discover the enforcer to still conscious. More impressively, the damage inflicted on his mind was moderate, but not nearly sufficient enough to see him nulled entirely.

+Might consider patterning some wards using him,+ Avo admitted. The acknowledgment was a begrudging one. Chambers’ was… a fool. An addict that courted the rash. But he was hard of mind. +Durable. Years of mem-cons and questionable downloads conditioned his mind.+

+Shit,+ Draus said. She chuckled. +Well, he ain’t invincible, but he’s a sturdy half-strand. Didn’t expect that of him.+

Avo considered activating the session he hid in Mirrorhead’s mind, synchronizing himself away from Chambers into his true foe. Yet, despite the high from this dive’s success, he let things settle for a moment.

Mirrorhead had lapsed into inaction. There was a high probability he was still flagellating himself. Regardless, there seemed to be no indication of any continued scrying on the part of the Syndicate Godclad. His ghosts were slowly receding out from Chambers’ mind like waves pulled back into the ocean.

And so, Avo began stitching the broken sequences inside Chambers back together as best he could.

The enforcer proved to be a good instrument thus far.

No sense in letting him go to waste now.

***

“Auugh auugh wuuugh aiiiieee,” Chambers shrieked.

What he wanted to say was: “Sweet godless fuck! My brain! It’s on fire! Stop jamming your ghosts inside me, you half-strand!”

Such words were hard to produce when one’s mind resembled sawdust more than branching pathways, but, as always, Chambers managed to find some sense of self.

Mostly thanks to the fact that one of his vicarities came back on in the depths of his mind.

A strange, low moan keened out from his throat as his eyes rolled back down, bouncing like rubber balls as the first spark of true consciousness returned to him. Multiple sensations screamed at him concomitantly.

The ground was cold. His nose was bleeding. His fingers were shivering. The room was bright. His brain was a boiling mess, like someone poured molten metal through it. He had a hard time remembering how he got here, who did this to him, or even what his first name was. His face was sore.

A flash shuddered in his mind. Two seconds of memory; the first was his father kicking his chair out from under him. The second was the man’s fist coming down.

The world itself rattled when the blow hit him, and he bounced skull-first off the ground.

For a beat, Chambers thought he was five again, and struggled not to cry.

Then, Dannis Steelhard’s moans reminded him that it wasn’t so. That he was still himself. Still sane.

And that his piece of shit father was still dead.

“F-fuck you, dad,” Chambers choked. Nineteen years and counting. In nineteen years Chambers beat him by. “I’m–I’m still winning, you… you half-strand.”

His mind was pooling back together. Slowly. The pounding hurt in his skull grew muted as someone filled the gaps in his thoughts with what felt like the soothing balm of cement. Memories suddenly joined back together. Pieces of him snapped back into place.

He was Chambers.

He just spoke to his boss.

He was an idiot.

His boss was a half-strand.

Somehow, he was still himself after all that. Still un-nulled.

Quavering between a gleeful bout of mania and a full breakdown, Chambers sat there and held himself, chuckling and sobbing both. “I knew… I knew downloading those… those mem-cons was a good idea.”

Turning onto his elbows and knees, he fought off the wave of nausea as he pulled his naked butt back to the seat using the desk more than his legs.

“Get out.”

Chambers froze. Mirrorhead sounded pissed. Super pissed. Depressed even. Oh, fuck, what did the boss man see? What did he see? The vicarities weren’t that bad, were they? Like, Stellanda: Nu-Dog Dominatrix wasn’t that bad. It was also fake. They weren’t actually using nu-dogs. He wasn’t that much of a–uh–he had standards.

“L-listen, boss,” Chambers squeaked, swallowing, waiting for the killing blow to hit him at any moment, “I reacted the same way too the first time she tied that dog down on her bed and–”

Mirrorhead glared at him. Chambers felt the glare. It was like a lash of pain cracking against his mind. He gasped, clutching at his head as he stumbled back. Shit, the room was spinning again. Thoughts broke free from him in drips and spurts. Spots formed in his vision.

An explosion of torment rocked through his brain as he was festooned in the body of a woman, her flesh and mind tortured beyond his powers of description.

Also, she was strapped down. Kind of like that nu-dog from the vicinity. It was… uh…

Kinda hot.

LUSTAWAY ACTIVATING

The pain stopped. The ghosts gnawing at his mind broke apart. An ocean of disgust erupted out from Mirrorhead, splashing over Chambers.

“You,” Mirrorhead said, “are going to… to leave. I can’t… I will not deal with this. Leave. Before I kill you.”

“Look, boss, I can’t help it–”

“Do not speak to me!”

The sheer volume of Mirrorhead’s shout sent Chambers’ stumbling back. Man, if Chambers knew a couple of fetishes would fuck his boss up so bad he would watch ‘em with greater care. Or maybe watch them even more and give the half-strand an aneurysm.

Chambers gave a nervous giggle and stepped back. “S-sure thing, boss man.” Clownishly zipping his lips with his fingers, Chambers poured all the idiocy he could muster into his act and backed away. It was getting harder for him to suppress the sheer hate he felt toward the man. Oh, but Chambers wanted to kill him. He couldn’t, but he wanted it something bad. All that keeping his head down, trying to stay away.

All that to avoid getting hurt, getting snuffed.

But Mirrorhead didn’t care. Mirrorhead took and took. Mirrorhead hurt him just for thinking. Just for enjoying.

And Chambers couldn’t stop him.

He couldn’t.

So he smiled. He was a half-strand, right? A master idiot. Master idiots couldn’t be angry. They couldn’t feel that. He just needed to nod and be him. It’s all a joke. Grin idiot.

It’s all a joke.

The boss threw a disgusted hand, flicking his fingers at–no–through Chambers. The backmost mirrors in the room shimmered, the reflection growing misty as the submerged outline of a giant formed. “Lingerer. Get him out of my sight. Put him in holding with the other two. I will… need to see to him later.”

For a moment, the towering figure held still. Chambers squinted as the torso of the creature seemed to twitch–as if it was a module loose from the whole, straining against the arms and legs.

“You… sound pained, master,” the so-called Lingerer said. The unseen man’s voice was an alloy of sound; distortion mixed with a choked rasp, sprinkled with a faint note of irony. Chambers frowned. That voice sounded familiar. Like he heard it somewhere before. Like… not too long ago, even. “Sir, did something happen?”

“Just take him from my sight and begone,” Mirrorhead snarled. Uncharacteristically, the ruling power behind Conflux collapsed into his faux throne, his posture slouching as he turned away and brooded.

“Fuck, consang,” Chambers muttered, “I didn’t know he hated nu-dogs that much.”

From beyond the quaking glass a chrome hand reached through, skeletal cogwork beneath flayed skin, translucent strips that dangled between hissing steam whistling free from the exposed mechanisms within the arm. A chambered monoblade jutted below five twitching fingers.

Chambers swallowed.

“Come.” A face broke through the surface of the glass, peeling free like a drowning man breaking through the surface tension of an icy pond. Wires and fibers of metal ran beneath the flesh of the man’s face, mutilated beyond comprehension. Their eyes shone red while their teeth were filed down to resemble the fangs of a ghoul.

As the chromer shifted closer, Chambers saw that only a naked torso and a bare-pated head remained in terms of flesh. The man’s limbs had been taken, with pikes planted into the missing stumps. Their personhood was at the core of their new exoskeleton, meat clasped within an opened coffin, augmentations seeming cage and vehicle both.

“It is not wise to make him wait,” the man said, eyes daring a fast look at Mirrorhead. “Spare yourself pointless misery. There will be enough in your future.” A soft laugh fell from the man’s lips. They sounded like a beaten animal, spent and hollow.

Inside Chambers, a strange sense of deja vu flared. He knew them. He knew them from somewhere, familiarity spilling over into his mind as if from someone else while his body approached the portal-exit of Mirrorhead’s sanctuary. Through the other side, through gaps behind the chromer standing before him, flashes to the interior of an elevator greeted Chambers.

They were going to take him down. Straight down to the cells. Where the ghouls, slaves, and prisoners were kept.

Shit. Shit. Shitty-shit-shit.

Keep smiling Chambers. Keep smiling. The boss said he still had a use for you. That he needed to see you later. Maybe… yeah, he could spin a yarn, get Mirrorhead to keep using him. That’s the plan.

Within reach, the strangely familiar cyborg gestured for Chambers to follow as he fixed the still-brooding Syndicate boss with a sneer. “Your words. My will. Mirrorhead.” Each word sounded tortured, spoken through clenched teeth.

As Chambers flicked his eyes at the glass around him, he swallowed, wondering just where the eldritch leviathan was.

“It is not here,” the chromer droned. “It is everywhere. Do not look for it. It will not be found by us unless he desires its full manifestation.”

“Right…” Chambers muttered. The cyborg stepped backward first, sinking behind the veil of the reflection.

The enforcer lingered a moment longer as realization suddenly struck him. Yeah… Yeah, the face! He knew that face. Wasn’t this guy that… the one he saw when…

During the last Conflux Crucible. The one with the rotlick and the Reg and the…

And the flat.

Oh. Well. Might’ve been better if that poor half-strand died down the gutters.

Sympathy twitched inside Chambers.

It ain’t no life being owned by Mirrorhead.

***

From the moment Avo tasted the newcomer’s mind, he knew. He knew that pain too well and knew the shape of the accretion. The wounds.

A flash of the boy passed through his mind, an apparition made manifest by the fabric of ghosts. New wards had been installed behind the surface thoughts, but they served paltry means against keeping the hurt sealed in. Moreover, Avo knew these wards. This was the same type the Slaughterman used in the Crucible, the same type that shattered against a thoughtshiv.

Avo grunted. He studied the face of the father. Former father. A strange placidity clouded their expression. They seemed resigned to their suffering like they weren’t fully present in their body.

Unsurprising. To have so many implants forced on you caused dissociation. Phantasmic overload inflicted similar pressures on the mind, but that usually resulted in more hyper schizophrenia.

Staring at the man they left behind, Draus frowned. +Avo… is that–+

+Yeah. Essus.+