My Mamá used to call me that.
Pequeño demonio.
Little demon.
Which was rude, technically, but fair. I was a difficult child. Possibly. Probably. The memories are still all fucked around the edges, like someone took a hammer to a mirror and said, yeah, good enough, that still reflects.
I don't know who this G is, but I sure as hell don't remember anyone owing me a favor big enough to save me from death.
Let alone set me up with 'immortality'.
"Still has to be a mind game...."
I say it out loud because apparently talking to myself is what we're doing now.
"But how the fuck did they know about my Mamá's last words?!"
-silence
The floating gray bullshit has stopped explaining itself, because apparently the mysterious asshole gave me exactly enough information to make me want to bite through steel and then fucked off.
"Great. Perfect. Love that."
I look down at my hands.
They look like mine.
Same scars.
Same lightly tanned skin.
Same fingers.
Same nails, though a bit grimier than I'd like. No ash under them. No blood. No blackened skin. No pieces missing.
My wrists are the same too.
Mostly.
Greed still sits on the inside of my left wrist in dark, sharp letters.
Wrath answers from the right.
"Well that's on the fucking nose."
I flex my hands.
They work.
That is both comforting and suspicious.
The snake is still there too, coiled around my left forearm in black scales and old shadow, twisting around bone and muscle like it survived death out of pure spite. The ink looks real. Mine. Not the weird metallic lines. Not whatever bullshit got shoved under my skin. Old work. Clean work. Elegant in a way that feels slightly threatening, which is apparently my brand.
My right arm is worse.
Not worse bad.
Worse dramatic.
The dragon still coils there, curling around my wrist, forearm, bicep, shoulder, climbing up like it wants to bite my ear off for waking up stupid. I can't see all of it from this angle, but I can see enough. Claws. Scales. Blackwork curves. A mouth half-hidden near the inside of my arm, elegant and lethal, like someone tattooed a warning and then made it pretty enough to ignore.
"Shit, at least I kept the expensive decisions."
Small mercies.
Stupid mercies.
But I will take them.
Reaching up, my hair still feels the same too, shoulder length and half up in a knot, the rest loose in the back. Still dark. Still mine. Pulling a few strands forward confirms it, more or less, unless hallucinations have gotten weirdly committed to hair continuity.
My face feels the same.
Mostly.
"Mostly is not a good word right now."
I run my hand over my cheek, jaw, nose.
Still me.
Then my fingers brush under my eyes.
I stop.
"....the fuck?"
There are lines there.
Not cuts.
Not tattoos.
Metallic lines? Maybe? Thin and hard under the skin, like someone got artistic with a knife and then changed materials halfway through. I press lightly.
Doesn't hurt.
That is not comforting.
My eyes feel strange too. Not painful, exactly. Just...harder? Clearer? Like the world got sharpened while I was unconscious and no one asked me first.
"Do eyeballs get upgrades? Is that a thing? Why would that be a thing?"
I open my mouth and run my tongue along my teeth.
"...."
My canines are longer.
Sharper.
Not huge monster fangs or anything, but definitely more pronounced than before. The surface has a faint cold feeling when my tongue passes over it, almost metallic.
"Well that's fucking ominous."
My ears are worse.
The second my fingers brush them, the same faint metal feeling answers back. Not all over, just enough to make my skin crawl. I follow the line behind one ear, then the other, and find two strange hole-like openings tucked behind them.
I freeze.
"Absolutely fucking not."
I touch them again, because apparently I enjoy confirming nightmares.
Still there.
Small. Clean. Too deliberate.
The skin around them feels normal until it doesn't, until there is that hard-under-soft sensation again, metal hiding where meat should be.
My fingers drag lower, slightly behind the ear, down the side of my neck.
There.
Ink.
Vertical.
One side reads Envy.
The other, probably Sloth, unless death decided to swap my neck sins around for comedy.
Under the ink, around it, through it, that metallic feeling continues. The chrome-shit doesn't replace the tattoos. It sits beside them. Under them. Like some bastard installed hardware beneath a church window and called it interior design.
"Okay. Hate that more."
I drag my fingers down the side of my neck.
The feeling continues.
Down toward the back of my head.
Then around to my throat.
The reaction there is strongest.
I inhale sharply.
"Okay. Hate that most."
The front of my neck feels soft, but not skin-soft. It has give, but not enough. Like something flexible was sitting under it, or in it, or replacing something important I very much preferred not thinking about.
The dragon's head curves up near the right side of my throat, close enough to the metal that the ink and whatever buried machinery this is almost look related.
They are not.
I know they are not.
That certainty sits in me hard and stupid and familiar.
Same ink.
New nightmare.
I tug my vest open, then pull the collar of my shirt down because apparently one bad idea deserves another.
Pride still sits over my heart.
Black letters, gothic edges, old arrogance punched into skin over the one organ people always loved making metaphors about.
"Still pretentious. Good."
I pull the shirt up enough to look lower.
Gluttony marks my right ribs.
Lust sits low, right where stomach becomes pelvis, half-hidden by the beltline and bad life choices.
More ink crawls around them. Script. Ornamental blackwork. Lines that look almost like thorns if you squint and like promises if you're stupid.
The old tattoos are dark and clean.
The new black lines are not.
They adorn my body in patterns under and over the skin, subtle until the light catches them wrong. The texture feels close to my throat. Not exactly the same, but in the same family of what the fuck.
"...."
I stare.
Then stare harder.
Still there.
"Shit, at least I kept my Ink."
I can't see my back, obviously, because my neck has not yet decided to become a swivel joint, thank fuck. But I know what should be there. The sword down my spine. The gothic mess around it. Wings and thorns and script and all that poetic lethal bullshit I apparently paid someone to carve into me with needles and patience.
The memory of it sits under my skin.
Mine.
At this point, the list of things I understand is down to: hot, car, desert, headache, probably me.
Pulling my shirt back down, I start reaching around for a mirror somewhere whe-
"THE FUCKER'S STILL ALIVE YOU GONK BASTARD!"
The roar of an engine interrupts my me moment.
"...."
I look left.
Over a hill comes a truck.
Not a friendly truck.
Not an oh good, rescue truck.
A loud, ugly, dust-kicking, murder-intent truck with a man standing in the bed holding a massive rifle that looks like it could kill a blue whale and then complain the whale was too easy.
"THOSE HANDS OF YOURS CIRC OR WHAT DESDEN?!"
The driver screams loud enough to reach me through glass, engine noise, desert wind, and what I assume is severe brain damage.
The man in the bed screams back.
"I ZEROED HIM! I SAW HIS PINKY BRAINS PAINT THE CAR! I AIN'T CIRC YOU GANIC FUCK!"
"...."
I stare at them.
They stare at me.
The rifle starts coming up.
"Right. Leaving."
Realizing that now is the moment to leave, I grab the wheel, slam the gear, and accelerate as fast as possible.
The car lurches forward as it resents me personally.
Wrath flashes on my right wrist as I grip the wheel.
The dragon coils with the movement.
Like ten seconds into not being dead, and I'm already getting shot again.
"Home Sweet Home."
"CHASE CHASE CHASE, THAT WAY IS YUCCA! GOTTA CATCH HIM FIRST!"
"Fuck they're loud, what the fuck is Yucca even?!"
The truck comes after me in a storm of dust and engine scream.
I don't know how I know to drive this thing.
I don't know how I know this road is bad.
I don't know why the wheel feels almost familiar under my hands, or why the desert outside has that awful childhood-memory flavor, like I saw it once long ago in a dream I hated.
Everything is wrong.
The car is wrong.
The sky is wrong.
The words those idiots are screaming are wrong.
And somehow, under all that, something is familiar.
The dry dirt.
The cactus.
The ugly hills.
The way the road bends just enough to kill you if you stop respecting it.
screeeee-claang!
A bullet flies through the rear glass and punches into the metallic dash on my right.
"FUCK!"
I jerk the wheel, almost overcorrect, and fight the car back straight while chunks of safety glass rain down behind me.
"Okay! Thoughts later! Murder idiots now!"
♪ The desire To destroy, To disrupt, To lose control, To rebuild and then, To tear it down again ♪
The radio comes alive so suddenly I almost crash.
"AH SHIT I HIT THE RADIO ON PURPOSE TO GIVE MUSICAL ATMOSPHERE!"
"....I'm being pursued by fucking idiots with guns."
That is my life now.
Maybe it was always my life.
Hard to tell.
Ruing my own existence for a moment, I notice a very important detail in the now blown open glovebox.
A gun.
Hopefully loaded.
"Please be loaded. Please be loaded. Please be loaded."
"DESDEN I SWEAR ON EVERY DAMNED EDDIE I HAVE I'LL ZERO YOU MYSELF IF YOU DON'T LAND A FUCKING SHOT!"
"FUC YOU TIELER! THIS IS WHY MOTHER GAVE ME FATHER'S NAME AND NAMED YOU AFTER A SHITTY HOLO!"
"...."
I'm being murder-hoboed.
I can't even get chased by fucking sane murderers at least.
Reaching over, while trying not to bash my head into the roof due to every bump this road apparently keeps as a personal collection, I pull the pistol out of the glove box.
Except it is slightly not a pistol.
It's some revolver-type deal, heavy as shit, with the cylinder awkwardly placed underneath the barrel and ahead of the trigger guard. Not completely dissimilar to a Mateba MTR-8, though bulkier, meaner, and apparently designed by someone who thought wrists were optional.
The weight hits my hand.
Something in me likes it.
That is probably not great.
Greed twists on my left wrist as I check my grip.
The snake around my forearm shifts with the tendons and muscles, scales bending in the sunlight as if it were alive enough to be annoyed.
screeeee-claang!
Another shot tears into the car.
"STOP MISSING YOU LACE-ADDICTED GONK!"
"Hard disagree," I mutter. "Please keep missing."
Pulling the revolver up out of the glove box and pointing it out of the now missing back glass, I wait for a moment of even terrain.
This is stupid.
This is so fucking stupid.
The car bucks.
The truck roars closer.
The man in the back, whose name seems to be Desden, braces that whale-killing rifle again.
I twist, aim fast, and pull the trigger.
bam!
The kick is less than expected.
Still hefty.
Still enough to snap through my arm and shoulder.
But less.
The shot tears through the left side of Desden's sternum.
He drops like someone cut the strings.
"DESDEN!? DESDEEEEEEEEN!"
"Sorry Desden."
I immediately line up another shot toward the driver's windshield and fire as quickly as possible.
bam!
The round slams into the glass.
It does not punch through clean, but it does enough.
The distraction of the shooter's death, coupled with the shock of the impact on his windshield, makes the driver swerve hard.
Too hard.
The truck catches a boulder sitting in exactly the wrong place, because apparently the desert also hates him.
The front left wheel lifts.
Then gets ripped off the chassis with a shriek of metal.
The truck flips aggressively onto its back, rolling over itself like a dying animal.
The now dead guy in the roof flies out like a, well, like a dead body.
"...."
I keep driving for two seconds.
Three.
Then pull my foot off the accelerator and ram the handbrake up.
The car swerves to a stop in a cloud of dust and bad decisions.
I sit there for half a breath, both hands tight, lungs working hard.
The dragon on my right arm stares back at me from the curve of my wrist.
Very judgemental for ink.
Then I remember I am probably still in danger.
"Right."
I undo the seatbelt and bolt out of the car, weird revolver in hand.
The heat hits me like an open oven.
The smell hits next.
Dust. Hot metal. Burned rubber. Gasoline. Blood.
The overturned truck ticks and groans ahead of me.
I move toward it, not running now, because running with a headache this bad feels like putting my brain in a washing machine full of knives.
But I move quick enough.
Gun up.
Eyes on the driver's side.
The driver's door is bent in, jammed, but not enough.
"I know you're still breathing fuckface."
I hook my fingers into the edge and pry.
For one weird second, the metal gives easier than it should.
Too easy.
The door opens with a tortured screech.
I stare at my hand for half a beat.
Greed stares back.
"Not now."
I point the gun through the gap with one hand.
"I have questions and you have answers. Fuck with me and I'll put a bullet through your balls before I put one through your head."
The driver hangs awkwardly from his seatbelt, blood running down his face, eyes wide and stupid with pain.
"F-Fuck man relax, we're all chooms here right? Hey, we didn't kill you right? Can't be mad for something we didn't do!"
"...."
The idiot speaks idiotically even now.
"Wrong answer."
crack!
I slam the butt of the gun across his face.
There is a sharp noise. Quiet enough to be fracture instead of break.
Good.
He should still be able to speak.
"AH! FUCK!"
"Where are we? What year is it? Who are you, and why are you trying to kill me? What happened to the U.E.N?"
I fire off the questions before the shock leaves his system and makes him useless, pushing the barrel of my gun into the fresh wound on his face.
Wrath sits black on my wrist beside the grip.
Little bit theatrical.
Little bit fitting.
"FuCk! You psycho! Shit! What kinda questi—"
I raise the gun.
"AHH DON'T HIT ME AGAIN I'LL TALK I'LL TALK!"
His eyes are heavily dilated.
Two minutes tops before he's useless.
Maybe less.
"So answer. Now."
"Shit we're in the Badlands, almost by Yucca, it's the last town before the Border. It's 2077 and my name is Tieler, that one you killed was my brother Desden, and we wanted to strip your implants is all!"
He sucks in a wet breath.
"Also I got no fucking clue what the U.E.N is, that a snack?!"
"...."
Everything stops.
Not outside.
Outside, the truck keeps ticking.
The wind keeps dragging dust across dirt.
Somewhere, the radio in my car is still faintly singing about destruction because the universe has a sense of humor and I hate it.
But inside me, something stops.
"....2077?"
The number sits wrong.
No.
Wrong is too small.
The number lands like a body hitting pavement.
"What fucking border?"
Tieler blinks blood out of one eye.
"You making jokes now?!"
I ready myself for another well-deserved smack on him, because either he is lying, insane, or I am, and none of those options are improving my mood.
I—
「Integration at 90% Proceeding with Memory Sync 」
"Wh—"
Pain detonates behind my eyes.
"FUCK THAT HURTS!"
I drop to one knee before I can stop myself, gun still in my hand, other hand clawing at my skull like I can rip the pain out through bone.
The dragon curls up my arm.
The snake twists around the other.
Pride burns over my heart.
The sword I cannot see runs cold down my spine in memory.
For half a second, I know every inch of my own skin and none of my own life.
"SHIT MY FUCKING SKULL FEELS LIKE A BEACHBALL!"