Godclads

Chapter 9-21 Garden of Burning Lies (I)

Dagger-1: Friendly-fire! Friendly-fire!

Dagger-3: Oh, fuck! Oh shit oh fuck! That was Convex! We hit Convex! Why the fuck was Convex casting at us?

Dagger-1: I don’t care! Stop casting! Stop–

-Incubi Strike Cell “Swordfisher”

9-21

Garden of Burning Lies (I)

+Chambers. Get up.+

The voice thundered in Chambers’ mind, the weight of its presence pressing on the open wounds of his headache.

He had spent the last half-hour sobbing in the corner, whispering curses and prayers to dead gods, offering his life and any number of deviant sexual favors if they would just end his headache.

Clearly one of them decided on the former. A silent series of snaps shuddered through his memories as the clustering agony swelling at the stem of his skull dissolved. His short-term memory suddenly came back online, a vicarity of someone he couldn’t remember anymore getting torn to shreds by a nu-dog was playing. Scenes from a Crucible.

Waves of dizziness rocked him as spasming muscles struggled to reconnect. It was hard to stand. Hard to even discern which way was up. If he had eaten at all that day, he would have spewed his bile across the dust-caked ground.

As it was, only sour beads of spit clung to his lips, the glistening threads of his saliva swaying as he stood.

Another pulse filled his mind. This time, blooming roots of pleasure writhed their way through the left hemisphere of his brain. Color flashed back into his perception. And smell too. He was suddenly aware that he had pissed all over the floor during his seizure, the smell worming up his nostrils in a backlash of stink.

Beyond him, he heard a rattle, followed by a fizzle. Translucent lights pulsed and went out before his eyes. The phase gates were down–the static field of electro-kinetic energy silent. The way out stood unbarred to him and just outside, he saw a holographic outline simulating the last known position of where a body lay.

Chambers stared. “Shit. Did someone get killed while I was… uh…” How had the pain started? Did it finally happen? Did all those mem-cons he got infected by downloading free vicarities finally overload his mind?

No. There wasn’t nearly enough orifice-to-sharp object action in what he remembered from his recent nightmares. It was just a lot of boring stuff like people burning or castrations.

The bit about that girl watching her sister getting skinned and dying did have potential though, but he couldn’t help feeling like he had seen that one already. Something about the body writhing and the pain of the actress and the forcible grafting felt familiar.

LUSTAWAY ACTIVATED

TRANSFERRING PHYSICAL AROUSAL INTO METAMIND

+Out. Walk.+

The return of the voice made Chambers jump in fright. His toes splattered against a puddle of urine. His puddle of urine. Hmm. There was a scene where–

A sharp wrenching pain tore through his skull and he cried out. Clutching his right eye, he moaned in agony as he braced himself against the wall.

It felt like someone had torn the thought from him, ripping it loose from his eye sockets.

+No more filth. Walk. Go. Now... Or I remove all the other vicarities.+

Focus and alarm surged through Chambers like a shot of nova injected straight through the chest. “No!” Chambers cried. He stood up. The world around him spun. Propelled by determination–and fear of losing his precious media–he staggered out from his opened holding cell.

Icons and markers danced into existence around him. Mem-data flowed across his right eye as ghosts stitched packets of knowledge straight into his mind. There were five hundred and sixty-two cognitive lifeforms on this level, approximately four hundred of which were ghouls. The remainder counted for thirty-three techs, a group of three logistical support Necros, and forty-seven “patrolling” enforcers, who wandered aimlessly around the perimeter. From personal experience, he knew their attention would be more focused on vicarities and sims than their actual duties.

A translucent green arrowhead weaved a directional vector attached to the roof of Chambers’ perception. A series of waypoints lined the hall outwards, dotting his path beneath the blistering glare cast by the lights above.

+Follow the marker,+ the voice said. They spoke fast, and though there was a distortion to their voice, Chambers thought he knew the cadence. Looking around, Chambers swallowed. As more of his mind cleared, he found himself peeking at reflections, wondering if that messed up nightmare Mirrorhead kept in his back pocket was going to pop back up at some point.

An invisible shockwave washed through the holdings then. The light flickered. Phantasmics showed countless accretions that dotted the levels above like stars shining through the thinness of matter. Constellations of people in motion. Fear and confusion spilled down like waterfalls.

Something was happening.

Suddenly, the thoughtstuff connected to the three Necros governing security for this level ruptured, the threads of their inner thoughts spewing free, bleeding threads of pain out into the vastness of the Nether.

They were eight hundred feet and two hallways away from him. Yet, he knew what was happening perfectly, the information fed directly into his mind by a hand unseen.

Chambers wasn’t a smart man. Not even close. But even an idiot knew when he was being used as a pawn for a greater power.

Awkwardly, he took his first step in the direction he was pointed.

The holdings were more of a makeshift prison than anything. Before the Uprising, back when New Vultun had plans to officially expand, this place was used as storage for cargo and luggage, the ten-by-ten holding cells meant for things not people.

Overhead, swaying circuits and dormant mechanical limbs hovered like skeletal chandeliers. A transportation railway had been built into the ceiling from the good old days–days when the blocks down here mattered; when people from the Tiers still flowed through on the regular.

All silent now. Even the larger fifty-by-fifty storage slots running sixty feet up were empty, used mostly for holding Syndicate contraband or loose crates of weapons.

Crossing the holdings offered only so many directions. There was forward and backward most of the time. If Chambers was worth a godsdamn at climbing, he might’ve been able to clamber upward.

Such was why his ass tightened when he caught sight of a group of four patrolling enforcers approaching around from the corner, footsteps hammering, thoughtstuff fluid and slick with the touch of inebriation. They were coming out from an intersection and would turn at any moment. Even if he gunned his piece of shit Nitronerve reflex booster, they’d hear his clumsy ass bounding down the way.

And though Chambers was pretty quick in a sprint, he knew he wasn’t outrunning even an outdated rig on foot. Not with the legs he currently had.

“Shitshitshit–”

The fourth “shit” was about the leave him when the announcement came.

INCOG ONLINE

Suddenly, all the ghosts drifting through the block turned into static outlines. Fluid ponds of thoughstuff broke apart into grain-like nebulae. The squad of four lumbered across from him, turning his way.

Chambers felt his breath hitch. He wanted to turn. Years of experience and practiced cowardice told him the best choice right now was to run.

Instead, however, the voice inside his head issued another command. +Don’t move. Let them pass.+

As the enforcers turned, he felt four spears strike against an unseen shield shrouding him from sight. Ghosts whimpered and wailed, groaning against the pressure of direct notice, crackling like paper fed to a fire. Chambers could feel the strain smoking off them as they imitated the world like a wallpaper hiding his thoughtstuff.

Chambers knew what an Incog was, but had never seen one in action. The Guilds had made it a hard time felony to be caught with using such a construct. Only one single Guild–was it Ori-Thaum or Sanctus–had the intellectual rights to make em, so it really wasn’t that easy to just pick off any random street squire’s Metamind anyway.

Seeing his own shivering mug looking back at him from the reflective faceplates of the approaching enforcers, Chambers stepped to the side and hid. He pressed himself against a gap of wall–a lip separating two crackling phase cages packed full of crates and rusted implants.

The enforcers just walked past him. Their kit-bashed exos hissed and screeched, a crude amalgam of reused parts, servos catching and pulling against internal rust. One had a sweet koi holo-tagged along a triple-stacked pauldron. He should have modded his old rig.

Clanging and stomping, they walked down ignoring everything–past even his open cell. He held his breath until they crossed the next intersection. It was like he wasn’t even there. Invisible.

Chambers blinked.

Shit, if he could use this phantasmic at will, there was no telling how much good shit he could steal.

+Keep going. Almost there.+ A distance appeared under the arrowhead. He only had fifty feet left to travel. Ten clouds of thoughtstuff greeted him, each of them a buzzing hive. The ghosts leashed to his mind told him what they were, let him sense the raw violence they yearned for.

“Ghouls!” Chambers said, eyes widening as he choked back to a whisper. “You’re–you’re sending me to where they’re hiding the ghouls? What are you going to do? Open the cells and let ‘em eat me?”

This was coincidentally the scenario Dannis Steelhard experienced in Soft Masters: The Second Coming. Well, not the exactly same scenario. The ghouls in that one were only interested in eating a part of him, and could practically pick a lock with their long, sharp–

Something snapped behind his eye, the left this time. “Ow! Fuck! It’s like your scooping shit out my brain using a fucking ladel made out of dog teeth.”

+Think about Dannis Steelhard again and I remove him. Permanently.+

Chambers tried not to think about Dannis Steelhard and immediately failed. “Shit.”

A flood of barely contained violence spilled over from the voice. They were thinking of… of eating his eyeballs. Chewing on the optical cords inside while he writhed.

Chambers frowned. Now that was a very specific fetish to have.

Resuming his trip forward, Chambers arrived in front of the phase gate containing the ghouls. He winced at the sight of them, and despite himself, felt pity well up.

They were all slumped over, lookin all sickly and starved. Stick thin and breathing hard, the subhuman cannibals had taken to feasting on each other, each sporting bite marks and missing pieces of flesh. Usually, when that happened, the ghouls would just eat each other, but Necros were usually pretty good at twisting their minds into submission.

Something about in-built compliance toward obeying ghosts.

Staring into their blank, twitchy black eyes, filth-rotten claws, Chambers shook his head. Even their fangs were cracked, serrated from gnawing at the plasteel of the walls. They looked nothing like the things that tore his father apart, towering monsters that ripped the half-strand to shreds in front of him like it was nothing.

Those ghouls were awesome, glowing bright skin, claws and fangs a bloody blur. Real nightmare fuel.

These ones should have been put to death. Used in the Crucibles. Something. This was just…

***

Waste.

As much as sharing a synonymous thought with Chambers disgusted him, Avo concurred.

Of the ten, maybe only two looked still usable in form, and that was if Incubi hadn’t subverted them already.

The enforcers on the level were all compromised, Specters patrolling every floor interlinked to at least one subverted mind, which in turn was bound to a major lobby. In the time it took him to prepare, the Incubi had not been idle themselves.

He had underestimated the usefulness of this Incog. Though it exacted an immense drain on his sequences and effectively crippled his wards while active, he would have been exposed immediately without it. Manually pruning the traps and blinding the Specters the Incubi left stationed within Chambers’ mind took him more time than he liked, even using his cognitive assets.

Accessing the local locus took some time, as well as one of the drones Draus still had circling the block as a jumping off point. Using heightened processing, he was able to spoof through from the outside. Skipping across aeros and riding his Whisper with the bulk of his sequences, he managed to make an approach timed to Mirrorhead’s movement patterns.

Right now, with the chaos unfolding and the mass traumas that the Syndicate Necros were experiencing, he had a window. Mirrorhead was now walking amongst his peons, surveying the catastrophe unfolding, and with every threshold of reflectivity he crossed, the Incubi’s defenses went silent, wary of drawing his notice.

Using the disruption as a cover, Avo had sought out Chambers again to reclaim his asset–and gain additional ones.

No ghosts lingered in the minds of his brothers. The Incubi likely considered them a waste. In most circumstances, Avo would have agreed, seeing as they were trapped in this box.

Silencing the phase gate, he cast into the two ghouls he deemed yet salvageable. One would serve as his next conduit and shield. The other would serve as a second chance if the first failed.

GHOSTS: [387]

Infusing all the ghosts needed to maintain the sequences of an Auto-Seance, Avo burned the benefactor’s session into the first ghoul’s mind and left it dormant for now. With a thought, he cast his phantasmal reach and bent its memories into his desired shape. It needed to be ready to connect Avo to the mystery agent soon.

“Uh, guy in my head?” Chambers said pointing at the stomping encroach of half a dozen enforcers. They had just entered the holdings from the entrance far down the corner. Good. Avo had hoped something like this would happen. It would serve as a better lure to draw out the Incubi. “We got incoming.”

Avo did not accelerate his mind this time. No. They would just jack out and entrench further in the grid they were setting up. He needed his foes to be thrown off guard to achieve the desired ambush. In some respect, he was copying their strategy, feeding their confidence and drawing them toward an unseen trap.

+Hide.+ Avo said, placing a marker within the phase cell. He jumped from Chambers to mount the mind of the ghoul, the connectivity of his Metamind stretching to accommodate the hop.

Chambers, to his credit, was remarkably willing to enter a cell filled with ghouls. A flash from the man’s childhood greeted him, the sensation of repeated trauma earned at the hands of a screaming drunkard–all made better when the man was destroyed by claw and fang.

Was there a word for anti-trauma? Such was the closest thing Chambers seemed to feel when lingering around the ghouls.

As he activated the phase gate and sealed the former enforcer in, Avo urged his new puppet to move forward, to round the corner and face the enforcers.

Shivering and staggering, his brother obeyed, struggling to walk forward. Straining against malnourishment and its own weight.

+Won’t be long now,+ Avo said, whispering notes of certainty to it.

“Yes,” the ghoul growled. “Yes, Master.”

Avo’s mind went black.

The ghoul rounded the corner and slowed to a halt before a wall of enforcers, their titanium-bulwark bodies twitching to a stop.

“Escap–”

Of the eleven enforcers standing before him, none had wards worth regarding. He accelerated momentarily and unleashed his traumas as a torrent. He refrained from using the Secondhand Fatality, seeking to draw Incubi’s attention rather than unmake a few fragile minds.

From the depths of his new labyrinth, his phantasmics came aglow, crackling with flowing lightning as ghosts surged through the weave of his sequences. Slipping free from the jagged cleft that was his Metamind’s opening, the trauma poured forth, its structure a chimera between a tidal wave and a storm.

Wards buckled and broke. Servos screamed as enforcers slammed into one another. Augmented bodies impacted against walls, denting and collapsing in percussive beats, knees meeting the ground while hands clawed at their metal-caged skulls. A stray shot went wide. A clean needle-shaped wound opened in the wall next to the ghoul, the auto-aiming ghosts in the enforcer's gun also shattering, spewing fragmented memories as it stopped functioning.

Again and again, he lashed at them, his ghosts edged with torment and regret whipping into and through the wailing enforcers. As thought-offal oozed free from their mental wounds, Avo slipped out from the ghoul and approached, his speed still baseline, taunting as he tried to draw them out.

In the corner of his vision, his DeepNav registered Mirrorhead making another transition, drawn down by the affliction the Necros were suffering on this level. Twin sessions then flashed within the mind of one of the more stable enforces, the gleam of Quicksand wards greeting him like the glint of an alleyway dagger striking light.

Good. Everything was collapsing where it needed to.

With a single command, Avo activated the Auto-Seance session within that Mirrorhead used to contact the benefactor. At once, a tunnel of ghosts manifested, the fire nu-dog tree lightning sequence forming the bridge connecting the Avo and the unknown Necro.

The mysterious monotone of their voice spilled free just as Avo cast the first trauma at one of the Incubi emerging in front of him. Praise the Quicksand, the ward was an excellent build, but they really should diversify.

He watched as his trauma struck against their fortifications, and as they lanced weaponized ghosts back at him, he sank back into the mind of the ghoul housing the session, housing an opening linking Jhred Greatling to the benefactor.

As the latter’s wards flashed fully inside the ghoul, the benefactor’s confusion spiked, offering a first and only response. +Mirrorhead? Is there–+

The first trauma exploded against Avo. His wards shook but ignited and hardened.

COG-CAP: 33%

The next five broke and bounced off against him, uncycled traumas shattering like glass against his adoptive wards.

And before a sixth could strike him, before Incubi or the minds connected to the newly activated session could adjust to the situation themselves, Avo jacked out, the last thing registering on his cog-feed a trauma plunging past him, impacting the benefactor in his stead.

COG-CAP: 35%