Godclads

Chapter 9-7 The Volunteered

Shard-3: Convex, I need an emergency transfer for all mem-data you have on one Aedon Chambers–a former Conflux asset. Sending a general memory profile now. Half-strand came back from the dead. There’s chatter saying that he escaped from the Scalpers. We’re not sure how yet.

Mirror-Convex: Received. All relevant memories will be uploaded into your Meta upon confirmation. How is Greatling?

Shard-3: Being a miserable shit as usual. He’s been doubling patrols and spiking hires. I think he intends to spend us in massed waves against the Scalpers. Food for their drones. Conflux definitely doesn’t have the golems for this fight, and we’re going up against at least half a dozen Knots. It’s going to be a slaughterhouse. He doesn’t give a shit though. Blessed be the Worthy my rash-hollowed ass.

Mirror-Convex: Understood. Would you like extraction to be expedited? The situation between the Elders is getting tenuous. Our cell remains uncompromised but you know the risks. It’s election season. A little scandal goes a long way.

Shard-3: Negative. I want to see how this Chambers thing turns out. Just get me that update.

Mirror-Convex: Received. Be careful Shard-3. We’re getting a lot of unconfirmed chatter that a Stormtree Godclad Cadre is in play as well. Don’t get pulled into the fire.

Shard-3: Copy that. Shit. This thing’s really starting to spiral. Won’t surprise me if the godsdamned Low Masters launch a second uprising by this point.

-Conversation between Incubi and Handler, Ori-Thaum

The Volunteered

+Chambers. Wake up. Time for you to be useful.+

Terror came for Chambers midway through his old smut vicarity as the sky above the simulation came asunder. With a fissure of thoughtstuff, phantasmal seams ruptured as ghosts invaded; foreign thoughts crackled and flowed, rushing into his mind like a rapid spilling into a wound.

For the briefest of moments, he froze in and beyond the Nether. Mind and body stiff with fright, he looked up, beyond the aratnid being shoved into a certain orifice it didn’t belong, beyond the flailing limbs and screaming face. Like a mirage overlain atop the fabric of his entertainment as the mirage of a monster’s face, the backdrop tuned to a paused instant of an extremely questionable porn vicarity.

The sky above the Chambers’ Metamind palace wIt was that last part that made Chambers suddenly realize who was talking. Avo's face looked different. Like all the moon pale skin had been peeled away and replaced with grayish tendrils sewn together along spidery silken threads.

+Hey, hey, consang…+ Chambers said, transmuting all the charm he possessed from a spreading well of terror.

Chambers blinked internally. Dealing with Avo was a real pain. There was just no read on the ghoul. He was hot, he was cold, he was everything in between. Half a dozen times he thought the rotlick was going to kill him. Probably was thinking about killing and eating him now.

But he didn’t. And that was the worst of it. The tension. The anticipation. The restraint of the release.

Hells, he had to survive this. What do? What do? Avo was a godsdamned murderous psychopath. What–flattery! Yes! Flattery works on anything!

+So, uh, you look different, Avo,+ Chamber said, adding a chuckle to come off more puckish rogue than bored pervert. +Did you… did you do something with your hair?+

Shit! Too much stupid in that question. Ghouls didn’t have hair. Godsdammit, distract! Distract! +I’ve been expecting you?+ Too much like a question, Chambers. Offer him a favor! +I’m ready to do that thing you were prepping me for. Whatever that thing was. I–uh. It’s good to see you again? Thanks for not hittin’ me some more?+

He was serious about that last part, most his bosses were all about the hitting and Avo talked real great for a ghoul. Even if those conversations were primarily based on doing terrible things to Chambers’ eyes or limbs or mind or other bodily bits. Man, if there was one rotlick in need of therapy, it was Avo. Being too smart did that to you, and not just for rotlicks.

That was the score: Aunt Nenda always said it was bad to be too smart. She said his mom had been too smart. Which is why she left him and his dad for the Layer One Expansion Initiative all those years back, going down to start a new family on a Guild stipend.

“And then look what happened to her,” Aunt Nenda had sneered in between mouthfuls of Slurp-E-Sludge, “Eaten by ghouls. Her, and her ‘perfect new family.’ Stay stupid Chambers. You stay stupid and you stay out of the way. You gotta master the art of being a half-strand.”

“How's there an art to being a half-strand–ow!” She had flicked a particularly jagged piece of sludge crust at him then, the hardened synthetic sugar substance darting against his skin like a flying piece of flint.

“See that?” Aunt Nenda said. “That’s part of the art.” She wiped her mouth with one hand as the tubes running up her back suckled the fat out from her body into the machine she always wore. The liposuctor beeped cheerily and played a happy jingle, rating the drop in her obesity index.

Aunt Nenda was a strange woman with a strange job: she was a “caloric inspector” for an Ashthrone subsidiary. Something about testing junk foods and using her own body as an instrument to record the data. He wasn’t sure how she got the job, only the fact that she said this specific job was one only a “master idiot” could get.

“Flicking food into other people’s face?” a confused young Chambers had asked.

“No, dipshit,” she had sighed, “That was an ‘accident.’ I’m an idiot, remember? Just a klutz. Can’t expect jack from shit if you’re looking at me. That's the secret art: you gotta be just annoying enough to deal with, enough that people wanna leave you alone. You gotta find that line between where you’re just repellant, and where you become a problem. That’s what it means to be a proper idiot. That’s how you keep yourself from dying.”

“Wow,” Chambers said, nodding.

A month later, Aunt Nenda died when one of the candy bars she swallowed “woke up” in her throat and ate its way back up.

At least he got her carpet out of that mess. And some advice.

At present, the ghoul was glaring down at him with naked disgust. Something told Chambers he was being judged. He didn’t like being judged. Being judged got you beat up. Snuffed. Or worse–robbed.

Being poor in the Warrens was like… a fate worse than getting fed to some Fallwalker’s cycler.

Avo–formerly known as Moonblood to them Crucible viewers–was a novelty item of a rotlick. Chambers meant that as a compliment. Really. He didn’t know many other ghouls who could handle a real conversation. Not the ones Chambers’ had tried to speak with anyway. It’s always “kill” this and “flay” that. Frigging Low Masters needed to give them more spunk and personality. There was more than one flavor to psychopathy, even.

Like Avo.

Of course, that just made the half-strand more terrifying. A ghoul that could invade your mind and do things to your memories wasn’t anything anyone wished for. Except for Chambers, maybe. Shit, if someone sold action figures of a ghoul that could eat memories and fight crime he would have snorted that stuff up as a juv. Ghouls were pretty nova and gleam if you thought about it: You could eat anything, see in the dark, infect rats and shit. No Guild taxes. No day job.

Well, there was the whole getting killed en masse thing. And their frankly pathetic constitutions. And their–

+Chambers,+ Avo growled. +Focus. Mind’s like a river. River of filth. Need to–+

Whatever thought the ghoul was about to send was interrupted by the sensation of tearing flesh, the squeaking of an aratnid, and a bone-shaking wail.

“No! It’s eating its way up! Stop! I’ll tell you anything! Anything!” Came the vicarity’s lead. Distracted again, Chambers nodded appreciatively at the acting. Ah. Dannis Steelhard. Now there was a true old-school vicarity smut-star, willing to actually suffer the indignities of the flesh instead of having a death-double like some other people–like that fucking Yu Wan; she was a poser! Why couldn’t she had been the one to get the ras–oh shit, Avo was still there! Avo was looking at his… his entertainment.

Mind stunned and thoughts frozen, the ghoul startled as the “interrogators” cackled with laughter. The chimeric tail of the aratnid disappeared into the cleft of the wound, and a hydrapede was brought out as an encore.

Violence and brutality should have been hyper-stimulating for a ghoul, but there was but one emotion rolling off Avo in that instant, and its name was confusion.

Clicking fangs together with confusion, the invading ghoul watched as Dannis Steelhard began his famous “blood, snot, tears, and other lubricants” act, with each sensation transferred directly into Chambers himself.

Two layers of phantoms clashed against each other. One that continued playing the third-person vicarity. The other that captured Avo’s frozen stare, the blank expression of the Moonblood ghoul portrait perfect.

Chambers stole the moment and saved the image. At least the ghoul wasn’t disgusted–oh, nope there it was… all coming back. Two other faces split away from him, the fullness of the monstrous face shrinking as others divided out from him.

At the center was still Avo, but two new minds entered the realm of Chambers’ thoughts. To the left was that Regular lady–the mean one that was… well, fucking mean. No good deed went unpunished. All of Chambers being nice when she was a limbless, uselness torso thrown back in his face. He could still feel the beating she gave him. Mainly because she dented the hell out of some of his subdermals.

On the right, though, was someone Chambers had never seen. Or at least, thought he hadn’t. He didn’t know. Something about her seemed familiar… First thing: old consang was old. Like, “damn, get this sow some life-extension treatments old.” Like, poor FATELESS that kept managing to avoid death somehow old. She reminded him of… of one of those godsdamned old trees with the ugly bark. Shit.

Wait, grandma was only about forty-seven when she got eaten by the ghoulies so…

+Avo,+ the Reg said, lip curled, +we really want to head this run with… with him?+

+Hey,+ Chambers said, offense lingering in the back of his mind. He still wasn’t totally sure about everything they wanted from him, put in him, or thought of him, but he wasn’t going to be treated like some punk-ruster. He had the fire in him. Unless they wanted to do some shit like kill Mirrorhead or negotiate peace among the Guilds, in which case, he would go back to watching his smut-vics and die with the ghosts in his head buzzing with pleasure.

+Ah, that’s not what the cleft should look like.+ The ancient interrupted. Chambers blinked. Avo and the Reg also blinked. All eyes were on that old lady. +Aratnids wriggle and skitter into living flesh. They don’t make a clean burrow.+

The Reg looked at her as judgy as Avo looked at him. +Got into the habit of some war crimes there, didn’t you, old timer?+ She jabbed more than she questioned.

The old hag humphed. +War crimes are for the bested. And I have never been bested. As such, my ethical purity remains intact.+

Disbelief came from her two cohorts. And Chambers, but with a tingle of betrayal.

+What?+ Chambers whispered. +No! They said they did this live! With in-studio watchers. Like… visual evidence. Dannis Steelhard is not a fake! He doesn't fake any of his deaths!+

The matronly woman clicked her tongue with faux-pity. +Sorry, boy. This wound doesn’t resemble any aratnid-based torture I have inflicted–and I have inflicted more than most. I would bet my next kill on this being an edit.+

+N-no,+ Chambers said. A coldness came over him. Were there no posers in this world? Were the only ones who lived hard and raw and real the squires, ghouls, and him? Were there no heroes in this world?

+I know,+ Zein said. +Pathetic, is it not? So many promising ideals, yet people fear living up to them. How miserable. How sad.+

A sigh rumbled forth from Avo. +Zein. You've seen him. Seen the asset. Can we–+

To Chambers’ surprise, the old woman–Zein, was it? Well, she kept talking. +We have a use for you, Chambers. You, and your… less interesting friends. Tell me, are you good with twisting honesty?+

His mind trickled down as he considered her question. What was she asking? If he could lie? No, it couldn’t be that. If she was asking about him lying then she wouldn’t have used those words. Those words exactly. Now, he was an idiot, but then again, so were most people. Generally, it wasn’t hard to find out what they wanted. Especially when they hinted at it with their actions.

Aunt Nenda’s voice came back again, the memory of her carrying a wise but haunting echo: “That Dannis Steelhart sure had a long–”

Wait. No. Not that memory. The other one. The one about–fuck. He couldn’t recall. He was gonna have to make some shit up.

+I… that depends on your perspective?+

The old woman frowned. Something in the pit of his stomach dropped. +I expected more from you.+

For some reason, her words hurt. They hurt real bad, like someone was questioning if he was good enough at being a piece of shit. If he didn’t have that, what did he have? +Wait! Wait! Come on, come let Chambers have another shot, yeah? Don’t be like the rot… lick.+

There was a strange glint in the ghoul’s eyes as he continued to glare. It was as if they stood pale, bolted windows shielding the world from a strange fire. An instinctive shiver shuddered through Chambers’ physical body.

It was also kinda alluring–

LUSTAWAY ACTIVATED

TRANSFERRING PHYSICAL AROUSAL INTO METAMIND…

They must’ve read his mem-data then because the old one laughed, the ghoul widened his many, many teeth, and the Regular just shook her head.

Chambers wasn’t gonna lie: This was like the forty-seventh worst day in his life. It really didn’t feel good being shamed inside his own mind during his own private time. Never mind he was a prisoner.

Actually, never mind he was a prisoner. With the bomb gone, Mirrorhead gone, and that nerd Janard suffering too, Chambers didn’t feel so alone. Things were pretty good.

But then, they just had to ruin his favorite smut-vicarity star and attack his self-esteem on the same day. Damn. He'd get through this somehow.

+Avo,+ Chambers said, his mind boiling with as many joyous memories as he could recall. He didn’t need the rotlick to sense his fear. He was the idiot. He was the one true idiot. He was too stupid to kill. He was still useful. +Consang. My rotlick. My buddy. The mind… is a curious thing. Sometimes, it’s like the wind, other times it’s like a… very horny nu-dog.+

A crackle of irritation thundered within his Auto-Seance. It was spilling… some kind of shit that made him think of watching his sister get tortured to death. Like, there were flashes of pain and screaming, and him getting grafted, and feeling his sister die on a grafting table and this really, really tall woman. Except he didn’t have a sister. Dark as the intrusive thoughts were though, they did feel kind of kinky. Maybe, like, if the sister was getting eaten by ghouls…

LUSTAWAY ACTIVATED

TRANSFERRING PHYSICAL AROUSAL INTO METAMIND…

+Jaus,+ the Regular muttered. Chambers could feel her shaking his head.

+Enough,+ Avo growled, frustration boiling over. +Not here to see his porn. Not here to see his fetish. Here to examine the subject. Here to prepare him.+

Chambers could feel his heart rate accelerate. Prepare? Oh, no. Not more preparation. The last time the ghoul prepared him he lost a whole lotta memories. Half of his favorite sims were repurposed into sequence-locked phantasmics he couldn’t access but still looked like the sims from the outside. He barely understood how the rotlick did it. It was like the ghoul was a brain magician locking Chambers outside his own house.

+So,+ Chambers said, trying to keep the apprehension out of his mind. +When we say prepare–+

+Going to put new memories into your mind,+ Avo said. +Change memories. Need to check your stability after. Minor fixes.+

He didn’t like how Avo said fixes.

Then, Avo continued. +Need you to get Mirrorhead’s attention. One on one meeting. Can you do that?+

A series of words flashed through Chambers’ mind. He wanted to say no. He wanted to say hells no. He wanted to say a great many things. Most of those things, however, might upset the ghoul. The ghoul currently holding the stability of his mind between its claws. Dangerous situations called for displays of sudden cunning.

+Yeah,+ Chambers said, +no problem–I mean, who ya talkin’ to? I'm always good for it.+

Internally, he screamed. That wasn’t a display of sudden cunning, that was a blatant lie. He didn’t want to get the boss’ notice. More than that, his old boss’ notice was the thing he wanted the least. His entire tenure of survival at Conflux was avoiding Mirrorhead’s attention, not getting it.

They were pretty much signing his suicide… warrant.

Fuck.

The old woman threw back her head and laughed softly. +Yes. Yes, he will do. He will do just fine.+

Somehow, her words made him worry the most.

+I,+ Zein began, +have some questions for you first regarding your former master, however. And then, the ghoul will have some after he is done to see if the… operation can be considered successful.+

A squeak of pure terror escaped from Chambers’ mind. +I uh…+

+Don’t worry,+ Zein said, smiling benignly, +pain of the mind is but a lie. Just accept what is to come. Insanity is so very hard to mend.+

Avo grunted in agreement as Chambers felt a rumble of ghosts flood through his Auto-Seance.

Blankness swallowed all his protests, all his thoughts.

In the background, the vicarity continued playing.

LUSTAWAY ACTIVATED

TRANSFERRING PHYSICAL AROUSAL INTO METAMIND…