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DATE:3nd of September, the 70th year after the Coronation
LOCATION: Concord Metropolis
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At this point I was breathing only the steam. It was humid and hot. Worse than a sauna. A boiler? No. It reminded me of the desert. Yet the desert was dry, so how could this be the first thought I am brought to?
My senses were overloaded.
It's not that I was harboring panic. In the first place I couldn't see him. Though I could certainly feel his presence. It filled the room in a way where I felt like I was standing inside him and not merely in his presence. Whether it was his aura or some ability or…
I didn't know. I just didn't know.
I was still. Paralyzed. I couldn't smell him, let alone see anything. I couldn't even glance at Pamela to my right.
"Thou art called Kassius, nay?"
I couldn't recognize the dialect. Somewhere between old Albion and Normandian. I couldn't recognize the voice either. A man's by definition, but the way I heard it did not send the impression that it came from a man's throat.
First was the coarse intonation, like the act of voicing words itself was an effort. Not in the sense that it came from an injury, more so that words were beneath him. Wholly that his presence could be heard in ways beyond communication. I get the sense that he could enter my mind right here and now if he willed it. I get that impression from a mere sentence.
Second was the after-effect. The words feel seconded, like another voice recited them in collaboration. And the second one was distinctly mocking. It was palpably sickening and sweet in the way that disappointed parents are. This ensuing voice reminded me of the jester.
And the worst part is that I couldn't face him. Supposedly the Royal Governor entered through the very door I did, yet I couldn't perceive him there. I'm not even sure where his voice came from. Somewhere in this room but…
And even if I knew, my body was aware that I couldn't face him. A different presence entirely from the monsters of my past, from my father, Naomi Sayahara or whoever I faced.
The unique nature of this… man, if I can call him one, reminded me of the Burning entity from my nightmares in Ventia. The angel or whatever that was.
"Silent? Hath thy pride dried up?"
I couldn't respond. Not even due to fear for my safety, I simply couldn't feel my mouth. I was stunned.
Both our chairs were turned towards the door in a single swift move. I didn't see anyone doing this action. The move was fast and my body couldn't ignore the whiplash.
But what I saw didn't appear like the armory. There was still the stone floor, but the racks were gone. And I could see him.
Or part of him. His figure. He was taller than me and his shoulders were wide. Wearing a frock coat suit. I could also manage the shape of a top hat covering part of his head. But only one part was clearly visible. His eyes. They pierced straight through the fog, mist or whatever it was.
It wasn't a glow. The eyes were simply clear. They were green and… human. That's the most disturbing part of him.
But I couldn't keep silent. He made me face him. How could I… Like this…
"W-hat… What do you want? Why have I… WHY did you call for me?"
His eyes watched me with no change. He didn't blink and his eyelids weren't visible. For what it meant, the Royal Governor was giving me his full attention.
"A creature such as thou hath entered mine own domain, yet am I the one to sue with petitions? Or am I to brook a whelp of the Fiend pacing among my folk?"
"A fiend?" So he knew I was a ghoul. "Can you tell me, who is Aionis?"
"Don't… don't listen to that man." She weakly said, with difficulty shifting her weight forward.
"What?" I asked Pamela.
"That man hasn't said even one truth. Ever. Clearly-" Clearly you say…
"To think thou hast dared lead a wailing shade into my priviest chambers, no less one whom thou hast clothed in flesh anew. How wondrous strange." I wasn't sure whether his tone was mocking, anger or maybe curiosity. All at one?
"Kassius!" Her voice was raspy and she was fighting back against the same pressure as myself.
"Kassius is one that's gone, and he is quite another."
"Don't you dare!" Pamela tried to get up from her seat.
"Hold."
It was an affirmation rather than an order.
Pamela's chair scraped back as she went down, more slid than fell, her knees buckling before her body understood what was happening. She hit the floor on her side, one hand clawing at her own throat, fingers digging into skin like she could physically pry an airway open. Her chest hitched in short, ragged pulls that weren't reaching anywhere. No air was making it past whatever had seized in her throat.
I couldn't understand what he did, only that through the fog his thumb twitched and glowed red.
"If he hath such thirst of mind, why resteth he in darkness?... Aionis is but a phantasm quickened into breath by Ventian heathens, the very pack whereof thou wast a limb. Balmundi call they themselves, do they not?"
"That isn't true. It's no, no!... It's not-" What was she implying?
He clicked his boot against the stone a single time and Pamela's sentence was cut. A gust of steam hit us and for a second covered him.
"Hast thou no patience? Thy frame withereth, yet do roots of life cleave deep within thy core. Look thou upon thyself, wilt thou not? Taste of thy torment, shade, forevermore."
Then his thumb clicked. No, more so broke at a 90 degree angle. A red echo followed it.
Pamela's hands flew from her neck to her stomach, and for a moment I thought she was just in pain. Then I saw the fabric shift, visibly pushing outward, like something underneath was testing the limits of her skin. Within a second or two it had gone from flat to swollen, the curve rising fast enough that I could track it in real time, the way you'd watch dough rise if someone hit fast-forward.
Her dress pulled taut across her middle, the seams whitening under the strain. The swelling didn't stop at a round shape, it kept climbing, stretching the fabric until the stitching along her side gave way with a sharp tearing sound. In only a few seconds it grew like a balloon. Like something was being pumped into her from the inside.
A wet splatter hit the stone floor. Then a heavier sound, a thud, soft and final, like meat dropped from a height.
A second scream cut through the first, higher, thinner. A baby's cry.
I stood there, unmoving, staring at… at that… Pamela had just given birth. My mind scrambled for an explanation that made sense… an illusion, a trick or anything! I couldn't. I just couldn't understand what happened.
"Such grace as this, thine ill-starred doom would never have yielded to thy grasp..."
Then his other thumb broke in a heavy thud. The baby or whatever it was, was ripped out of Pamela together with the umbilical cord and flayed 1m towards the Governor, positioned between us. It should have been covered in mist now, but both me and presumably her could see it. Then I heard another finger break.
"And how frail, how passing frail is the sum of it all!" His voice was manic and the echo didn't help.
The heat from the smoke intensified.
The baby groaned, but not from the cold, not from being born. His skin was already changing, or burning, or no, something closer to drying, the way vegetables shrivel and darken left too long in the sun. He aged in front of me. Eyes opened, unfocused, glancing at the Governor, then sharpening with something that looked disturbingly aware. His limbs lengthened in jerks, skin darkening and cracking as he crawled, then rose unsteadily onto his own feet, a body compressing years of growth into seconds, each stage more wrong than the last, until what stood there barely qualified as a child anymore. Just a monstrosity stitched together out of damaged, aging flesh.
Then even his crying began to dry up, thinning into something brittle and cracked. His skin split into patches, curling at the edges like burnt paper. The patches turned to ash, flaking away piece by piece, until there was nothing left but dust, and then not even that, scattered into the air the moment a draft moved through the room.
All of it. In under a minute. And not one second did he so much as glance at us, yet my eyes were full of his vision as if I lived through it myself.
It was the most horrific minute I had ever witnessed.
I was nauseous. And Pamela, she was worse than petrified. It was like she went blind from the repulsion of it all. Not even I can imagine how this would have felt. Could I have withstood a torture like this?
"Yield Secundo Manus, else thine own breath is forfeit next, walking dust. I reckon naught of thy lord's idle humours." His voice was humorous after something like that.
As if anything he said could change my memory from… that.
To think this devil would give me a mission.
Creatures like him don't deserve to be in this world, but could I change anything? Even if I used my ability, did I have any weapon that could pose a threat? Seemingly for him it takes one finger per activation. And he has seven left. Could I defeat that?
I just… couldn't. There was only one thought filling my mind. And perhaps that's why my body froze. Even my bones knew the danger.
There's always a bigger threat. I don't know why I became so arrogant. All these weeks I acted as if I could face anything. Because of hate? Simply because I didn't face my usual backlash from my powers? Or were the plans coordinated by Emily? How she acted like a whole team for me?
I didn't know. But what I was aware of was that, different from mere power, from vain hierarchies… there was always a bigger evil. An evil so dark you couldn't comprehend it. Be it that Baal-Zebul's powers are of growth and rot, for this creature to use them like that? Atrocious! Words couldn't contain my disgust.
How dare the Heavenly Saviour exist if monsters like this are allowed to roam the world? In his world? Is this why the Saviour doesn't make miracles? Why does the church plead for man to fight against evil through science and civilization? Is there truly no God? Only demons and monstrous deities?
This evil was distinctly something you couldn't bomb. It wasn't something that one could study. Actions like this go beyond lacking empathy. Because a psychopath would find this torture vain. What objectives does it accomplish? To scare me and to punish her? No.
He did it just to see if he could.
It takes a certain kind of Sadist to punish a woman stepping on his words like that. But this was the very man who binded humans to the machines in that factory where I fought the warrior from Stochk. Men bonded with broken, rotting electronics. Eternally. Mercy be it that the warrior took them out with his suicide. Hopefully.
And this wasn't the only demon contractor. Certainly there were many others. The king jumped to his mind. The Royalty of the Unified Kingdom. They weren't humans. But were they Scourges like him?
Where was the Heavenly Saviour?
No, even if he wasn't here, then I was! And I won't accept this. I am not on the same level as this creature. I won't act like him. Even if I lose myself and everything that I was, I will still not accept to stand by his side.
And I won't accept his actions either. Things like him existing…
Even if I die early and suffer eternally for my sins, I won't accept this!
I stood, back straight, and didn't look away. Let him see the scowl.
The Governor wanted to say something, but stopped himself. He wasn't observing anymore. The gesture was small, but definite. One eyebrow raised. Only marginally.
But I couldn't-
I heard a snap. Another finger.
And he was gone. I blinked only once, while thinking, and he was gone. HE and the mist and… I… I don't get it.
All my energy disappeared with him. Realistically, I had been running on fumes and my body merely relaxed.
I fell to the ground, only barely raising my hands to keep my jaw from ramming into the stone.
I would have possibly stood there transfixed for an hour or more, but a groan from behind woke me up. The general cracked his back and rose from the desk. He was the only one of the five that didn't die. Was he sub-contracted to the Governor, a minion of his? Was the spell from earlier, the smoke, his or the official's? I couldn't tell. And it was hard to even think.
I only had the power left to glance, not anything else.
Seeing me on the floor, the man took his time approaching, unhurried, like he wanted me to watch him decide to bother. He crouched near my head, not close enough to touch, holding his own head loosely between both hands the way someone waits out a headache they find mildly amusing. He didn't grin, his face stayed carefully neutral, almost bored, but the amusement was there anyway, sitting just under the surface, in the tilt of his head, the way he let the silence stretch before speaking.
"Happy now?" His voice was quiet, almost conversational. "Are you satisfied with 'not having wasted your time'?"
He glanced sideways at Pamela, just a flick of the eyes, and scoffed, a short, dismissive sound, like she wasn't even worth a full sentence. Then he rose in one smooth motion, unfolding to his full height without any of the effort I would have expected after crouching that low.
He kicked me in the side of my head, precise and almost lazy, like he'd imagined in his head exactly how much force was necessary and no more.
"How pathetic."
He walked out without looking back, the door closing behind him with a soft, unhurried click that felt worse than if he'd slammed it. And then it was just us, frozen, or perhaps only pretending to think.
A few minutes later some soldiers came in and raised me by force, changing Pamela with the same lack of care from her ruined clothes into a standard issue uniform. I was made to watch, almost mockingly. I couldn't tell what expressions they had under those gas masks and no matter how my body wanted to act, I just didn't have the energy to resist.
We were dragged, or rather carried through the same set of hallways and thrown into another APC. This one presumably for the way back.
They didn't bother to have the tank APCs this time. Apparently we weren't seen as much of a threat anymore. They didn't even have anyone watching over us inside. Only now did I realize that these vehicles didn't house drivers. They must have been remotely controlled. No wonder the crew had so much space.
I wonder, if the Governor is so invested in stopping Secundo Manus, then why not involve himself? Is there a condition preventing him from that? In the way his powers work? That he can't leave the Castle? His enemies roam this city freely… and he orders me to stop them? And not the Combine. Precisely Secundo Manus. Something didn't click. I don't get it. I managed to meet him, but I only received more questions. And nothing on my contract.
Pamela's face had gone pale, drained down to something closer to grey, and her breath came so shallow I had to lean in just to confirm she was still breathing at all. Her body had left that room, but I don't think her mind did.
"Pamela." I kept my voice low, level.
I didn't get a reaction.
"Pamela."
Nothing.
I kept my voice low, level "Why do you think he lied about Aion?" The question came out almost conversational. Talking to her like this might have looked insensitive, but she couldn't be allowed to keep replaying that room in her head.
That isn't a burden a human can carry. The best way was to forget and move on. But Pamela didn't hear me and I didn't know what to do. Alice was simple.
If she was Alice, I would have hugged or kissed her and sung all those meaningless pleasantries until she focused on me, but how could I ever catch Pamela's attention? I made fun of how she sticks around no matter what I do, but she clearly wouldn't do that if the option existed.
At best she finds me vaguely interesting to 'solve' and at worst she despises my existence, but hides it. It's not like I cared about her mind, but I didn't haul this woman for nothing. I wanted my answers.
I faintly rose and grabbed her by the throat. The bumps in the road didn't even impact me. My strength had recovered since earlier.
"Pamela!"
Nothing. She couldn't even see me, much less care about a threat. Her pupils were dilated. I wonder if she actually lost her mind.
I let go and sat the opposite way.
The only thing I could do was stare at that blank expression, waiting for it to mean something.
But I didn't have that for long.
An explosion hit, and thought stopped mattering. Or it was closer to an earthquake. The vehicle bucked like something had grabbed it from underneath and yanked. Metal screamed against metal. We were airborne for a fraction of a second before we slammed down hard, the whole frame rolling until we came to rest upside down, the ceiling now under my shoulder blades.
Rifle fire followed almost immediately, cracking in short, controlled bursts somewhere close outside. Supposedly, the soldiers reacted. This meant that at the very least the other two APCs weren't empty.
I didn't know what state Pamela was in, but I wasn't planning on staying here to find out how this ended.
I drove my heel into the door, once, twice, before my brain caught up with the obvious: this wasn't some hands-me-down vehicle, it wasn't going to buckle from a kick. I fumbled sideways instead, hand finding the handle through the disorientation of being upside down, and shoved the door open against gravity and its own weight.
I pulled myself out into the open air, and got my first real look at what we'd driven into.
The road had turned into a junkyard. One of the other APCs lay on their sides, still spinning a single track uselessly against the asphalt, grinding itself down to nothing. Smoke poured from a crater in the road that hadn't existed a minute ago… a crater… the asphalt folded inward like something heavy had simply decided gravity applied more to this spot than anywhere else.
Crater?
He hadn't aged well since the warehouse. Or maybe he had, and this was just what 'recovered' looked like on someone who'd had his knees rebuilt out of spite. Quite fast might I add. Then this confirms he was Secundo's agent. He certainly does wonders. This also means that the Albion bureau remnants work with Secundo Manus. Perhaps even Deus.
Crater stood in the middle of the wreckage with both palms pressed to the ground, and the road bucked and rippled around him like something alive.
The soldiers didn't last long enough for me to feel anything about it.
Three of them tried to form a line, rifles up, shouting something about hostile contact that got swallowed by the noise. The ground under their boots simply stopped being ground, it sank, then spiked, impaling two of them through the gut on pillars that hadn't existed a half-second earlier. The third ran. Didn't matter. A slab the size of a car door caught him from the side and folded him in half against what used to be a guardrail.
That left the other thing.
It walked like nothing was wrong with it, which was somehow worse than if it had limped. Charred skin, cracked open at the joints, black fire leaking out of the cracks like the body couldn't hold its own insides anymore. No mask, but I recognized him immediately. It was Cinder, the fire hero Mordo subdued.
But this only made me think, is Mordo actually allied with Secundo Manus? Then I can assume the Necromancer also is.
Alarms started in the distance, but I probably shouldn't count on reinforcements. On hades, I can't even count on Pamela. So much for a body shield.
The last two soldiers fired everything they had into it.
It didn't stagger. Not even seeming to register the bullets as anything more than mildly rude. It opened what used to be a mouth, and the sound that came out wasn't a scream, it was a hiss, air rushing past something that used to be a throat, and then black fire rolled out of it in a wave. A wave, low and wide, the kind of thing you don't dodge so much as you stop existing in its path. The soldiers didn't get the chance to do either.
Ash. That fast.
Great. So that ruled out asking either of them nicely.
I crouched by the nearest corpse and pried a rifle out of hands that weren't going to need it anymore. The puppet's head turned toward me. Slow, skeletal and cranked, like the joint itself had forgotten how necks were supposed to move.
I put three rounds into what was left of its head.
It staggered, black ichor hissing out of the new holes instead of blood, more chemical burn than anything resembling a wound. But it didn't go down, and it didn't seem particularly bothered by the interruption. Its ruined mouth peeled open again, chest cavity glowing that dull orange-black from the inside, and I recognized the tell for exactly what it was half a second too late to feel clever about it.
I threw myself flat.
The burst went out over where my head had been, wide and indiscriminate, chewing a black scar across the overturned APC behind me. I felt the heat of it pass an inch above my spine. The very asphalt under my cheek started to soften and bubble where the edge of the spray had grazed it. My own clothes were fine. Barely.
I didn't waste time being grateful.
Still, this meant I could take him down by decapitation. Over-using his ability seemed to have weakened that part of his flesh.
There wasn't a point in staying here and trading potshots with something that couldn't die from potshots. Normal bullets weren't going to put this thing down, and I didn't have anything else on me that would. What I did have was forty meters of open, cratered road and a very particular kind of desperation.
The last APC lay tipped on its side about thirty meters off, and unlike mine, this one still had its roof-mounted turret intact, swiveled at an angle that actually had line of sight on the wreckage.
Its soldiers had abandoned it. Presumably they were the ones to sound the alarm.
So I ran.
The monster decided that the burning APC was more interesting and didn't turn around.
Crater on the other hand made more pillars in my direction, but whether it was the distance or something else, they all missed, rising upwards before falling into the ground near my position, trying to track me. Perhaps it was a lack of experience in shooting at moving targets.
Gravel and shredded rubber tore at my knees as I scrambled over the APC's flank, boots finding purchase on a track guard that hadn't been designed to be climbed. My hands found the rear hatch and I wrenched it open, throwing myself inside headfirst, more falling than climbing, landing hard against a mess of cabling and a dead soldier's boot. Quite unlucky to die from a puny earthquake.
I found the gunner panel bolted to the front wall of the infantry compartment, a slab of reinforced glass and switches with a joystick jutting out at an angle that suggested whoever designed it had never once considered the vehicle might end up on its side. The screen was still lit, thanks to no god in particular, feeding a grainy image of the wreckage outside from a camera mounted somewhere up top that had survived better than the vehicle around it.
Still, there wasn't such a screen in our APC so it was either also controlled remotely or the panel has some kind of folding mechanism.
I grabbed the stick.
The targeting reticle swam across the screen, sluggish, lagging a half-second behind my hand. It was pretty damaged, but most likely still working. I settled for pointing it in the general direction of 'everything currently on fire or made of stone' and squeezed.
The turret up top screamed to life, chain gun hammering out rounds faster than I could track them, and through the grainy feed I watched Crater throw himself sideways as a line of impacts chewed up the ground where he'd been standing.
He didn't stay exposed for long. Both hands slammed down and a wall came up out of the broken asphalt in front of him, it was crude, thick and ugly, but a wall all the same. Rounds sparked and buried themselves into it, chipping divots that didn't matter.
The ghoul didn't bother with cover.
It walked straight into the stream of fire. Or rather galloped. Rounds tore through what was left of its legs, meat and char coming apart in ropes, one knee giving out entirely so that it lurched, dragging the ruined limb behind it, yet it kept coming. Didn't slow nor collapse.
Pretty smart for an animal. Shooting his fire wouldn't have stopped the bullets.
It just recalculated its balance and kept walking, closer and closer, close enough now that I could see the black cracks in its chest widening like something underneath was trying to get out.
Heat hit the camera feed and then me. I felt it through the hull itself. The metal around me started ticking, expanding, a low groan running through the whole frame like the vehicle was digesting something it shouldn't have swallowed.
The turret seized above me in a wet, metallic shriek, servos cooking in their housing, and then silence where gunfire should have been. There wasn't even a feed left to check, though I don't know why I expected anything more from the camera.
Great. So that plan was dead too.
I wasn't going to out-damage something like that, and I definitely wasn't going to out-melt it. Fine. Different problems, different tools.
I shoved off the panel and started tearing through the compartment, kicking aside crates, checking labels I could barely read in the low light. At least it wasn't empty like my own APC. Ammo. Ration packs. More ammo. Then, shoved into the corner under a fold-down bench was a crate stenciled with a symbol I didn't need a translation for.
Grenades. A full case of them.
I almost laughed. Didn't have the breath for it.
There was a coil of utility rope hanging off a bracket by the door, the kind meant for towing or securing loads, and I didn't waste time being clever about the knots. I just bundled the grenades together as tightly as the rope allowed, six of them cinched into an ugly cluster, pins still in, praying I wasn't about to turn myself into the next thing scraped off this road.
I primed one, just one, hoping the others would go with it out of sheer proximity.
Out the hatch, into open air thick with the smell of melted steel and whatever the ghoul was leaking. It hadn't noticed me yet, too busy closing the last few meters toward the dead turret, toward where it thought I still was. I swung the bundle in a wide arc and let it go, lobbing it up and over the APC's hull, aiming for the space right in front of that ruined, walking thing.
Then I turned and ran the other way, legs burning, not bothering to look back to see if the throw had even landed clean.
The road ahead had its own gift waiting, one of Crater's earlier tantrums had left a sinkhole gouged into the asphalt, jagged edges and rebar jutting up like broken teeth. I didn't slow down to appreciate the aesthetics. I just jumped.
The drop knocked the air out of me, concrete and grit biting into my shoulder as I hit the bottom and curled in on myself, arms over my head.
The explosion arrived a half second later.
Even from down here, even with my eyes shut and my face pressed into rubble, I saw the light bleeding through my eyelids, bright enough to leave an afterimage burned into the dark behind them, followed by a wave of heat and pressure that rolled straight over the hole and kept going, like the sky itself had exhaled. Kind of overkill for something held this casually. I'd be concerned about fighting in such an APC.
Maybe these are one of those explosives that are benign until primed. Otherwise they were idiots.
I pushed myself up out of the rubble, palms scraping against broken concrete, and rose to get my first look at what I'd actually bought myself.
The APC was gone, reduced to a smear of twisted plating scattered across forty meters of cratered road. Whatever the ghoul had been standing on when the bundle went off wasn't there anymore either, and I decided not to go looking for pieces.
Then the ground in front of me stirred.
So he had been waiting too. And what a fool I was to leave the rifle earlier in the vehicle!
A column of stone and packed asphalt tore itself free of the road, wobbling upright before smoothing into something like a platform, and on top of it stood Crater, riding the thing like he'd been born on it. It glided toward me low and fast, gravel hissing off its edges, and I didn't even have time to decide whether running was worth the effort before he closed the distance.
He raised one hand and closed it into a fist.
The asphalt under my own feet answered him. It grabbed, closing around my body before I'd fully processed what was happening. The sensation was gross, but a hot, cobbled slurry couldn't be anything else. I was hauled off the ground like a fencepost being planted, gravel and tar knitting together around my legs, pinning me a good meter and a half in the air with nothing to brace against and nothing to kick off of.
"We meet again, Carter."
His voice had changed. Not the pitch, not really, the same square jaw plastered with a semblance of a smile. But there was a weight behind it now that hadn't been there in the warehouse, something colder sitting underneath the words. Whatever they'd done to him in recovery wasn't only about healing the bullet holes.
I tested the grip around my legs. Solid. He wasn't flailing anymore. That was the difference. But confidence was only part of it.
"I see you recovered quicker than me." I let my head loll to the side, taking in the ruin of the road. "Quite a ghoulish performance!"
"Don't compare me with something as lowly as you." The grip tightened. I felt tar bite into my shins hard enough to bruise, the pressure creeping toward something that would eventually start breaking bone if he kept squeezing. He said it like an insult, like the comparison itself was the injury, not the crushing.
So whatever leash they had him on, pride was still a nerve they hadn't managed to cut. Good to know.
"You were quick on your finger this time." I kept my tone light, lukewarm, even with my legs steadily losing circulation.
Not like I had any weapons. At most I could poke his eye to break the concentration. Yeah, that was probably the plan.
"And your powers have improved, eh?" I tilted my chin toward the platform he was still balanced on. "I see Secundo Manus wasn't quite happy last time."
Something flickered across his face, there! Then gone, replaced fast enough that I almost missed it. Not quite shock. More like a discomfort.
"How... you?" He caught himself before the sentence finished forming, jaw tightening, and I watched him visibly decide the question wasn't worth finishing. "No matter. Then you are aware of what happens next."
"Why does he even want me, eh?"
He was mystified as if I already knew the answer and only posed it out to amuse myself. Well, it was also half true, but I didn't have any confirmation for my theories. That seemed to bother him more than the actual fight had.
"Not my problem."
Crater turned his head toward what remained of Cinder. He checked the wreckage with a jerky, anxious glance, shoulders tense, like he half expected the corpse to come lurching back out of the smoke to scold him for losing it. Not exactly the performance from a minute ago.
Interesting.
"So the Necromancer isn't actually allied with Secundo Manus."
"What?!"
His head snapped back toward me so fast I almost laughed. There it was.
"It's obvious, isn't it? You let the monster die so you had dibs on the prize!"
I didn't actually know that for certain. But If they were working the same leash, he'd have at least flinched when I lobbed it. An effort at minimum.
"You think you're smart, eh?" He almost chuckled.
Not a denial.
Past his shoulder, at the edge of my vision, I caught movement. It was Pamela, climbing unsteadily out of the wrecked APC, picking her way over debris toward the column of stone holding me up like some kind of morbid maypole. The explosion must have shaken her loose from wherever her mind had gone. Yes! Thank whatever god was on shift today that she'd woken up with enough sense left to move quietly.
Best to keep his eyes on me instead of on her.
"I am! And you know what else I wonder? Why didn't you collect me when you sent Emily? Doesn't this mean you only recently came under Secundo Manus? The Combine must be pretty distressed." That last part came a little mockingly.
I paused, just long enough to watch it land.
"Or,they don't know. Yet." I raised both my hands, faking a surprise.
His jaw clenched.
"Then are you aware of what I know?"
"Ahh?" I tilted my head as far as the grip allowed, playing it dumber than I felt, mostly to see how far I could push before the pillar decided to make a point out of me.
"Killing you could shut that annoying trap. It's too much of a bother keeping you around."
"But this won't do, you dumbass!"
The grip tightened around my legs and for a second I actually thought he might follow through out of spite alone. Why do heroes take everything so personally?
"It's one thing if I die to the Necromancer, because it can bring me back." I kept my voice level even as the pressure climbed. Not like pain was shutting me up. "But what about Secundo Manus? The whole point is finding out the secret behind it!"
Crater went silent.
I watched the anger draining out of his expression just enough to let something more useful back in. He almost made a grave mistake and his face nearly paled.
Behind him, Pamela kept closing the distance, slow and silent. Shouldn't he be able to feel through the asphalt? Or is that a different power? Concrete empathy… yeah that sounds wrong.
"What a moron! Crater must stand for that empty skull of yours! And you know what else is funny?"
Crater didn't respond. His jaw stayed locked, eyes fixed somewhere past me. Not sure that he was listening, but whatever.
"The Necromancer, or at least Mordo, must have also seen how you let his ghoul die!"
I was smiling at him now. Couldn't help it. There was something almost therapeutic about making fun of morons.
...
"Idiot."
That one landed somewhere he actually felt. His free hand shot up, and a fresh column of asphalt and gravel tore itself loose from the road behind me, sprawling wide before closing around Pamela and hauling her off her feet, hanging her out to the side like a second, less cooperative trophy.
"Who are the idiots now?"
He said it like he'd won something. like I was supposed to go quiet and start negotiating.
He'd misjudged the action. To bring her closer… what a crater.
Pamela didn't flail in spite of the asphalt fingers wrapped around her ribs. She just started to swell like she was inhaling a breath that never seemed to end. The stone around her groaned once, a warning creak, and then it simply gave up. Pack the bags! All at once, chunks of packed gravel exploded outward from her frame like she'd stopped bothering to be contained by something as mundane as physics.
She used the pillar under her as a trampoline.
Crater threw up a slab in front of himself on pure reflex, some pathetic last-second wall summoned half a beat too late, and she went through it like it was drywall. I heard the crack of stone shattering, saw fragments spray sideways, and then her hand was already closing around his throat before the dust even settled.
He tried spikes. Three, maybe four of them, jagged and desperate, aimed at her side, her back or wherever an opening presented itself. Every single one shattered against her, or just stopped short, like the ground itself had lost confidence in the order it had been given.
If he'd had half a brain left in that skull, he'd have gone for me instead. Had he at least threatened my life, then by chance it could have forced her to choose between finishing him and saving the annoying man dangling nearby. Would've been the smart move. The only move, really.
He didn't take it.
Fear does that to people, it makes them forget the clever option exists. Defaulting to whatever feels like fighting back in the moment is what weak animals do. And clearly whatever I'd done to him in that warehouse had carved itself somewhere deep in his bones that now, half-strangled, his instincts skipped right past me and went straight for the thing actually killing him.
Some people simply can't escape their nature. Or perhaps he doesn't have the hunger to survive in him. Then clearly powers don't make an ordinary man 'super'...
Well, strangling him was a bit… when she had the force to rip his hands off like balloons…
You could call it a small mercy. Or maybe not even that. I doubted Pamela would have so much as blinked if he'd grabbed for my throat instead. She had this energy radiating off her now that I hadn't seen before, not even when I'd tortured her days ago, not even at her worst. Something scalding. Something that didn't seem to care what happened to me one way or another.
Pamela's grip tightened.
I watched his hands scrabble uselessly at her wrist, fingers slipping, the asphalt holding me finally starting to shudder with the loss of his focus. To think i could have been in his place days ago… wait, I was!
Then not escaping is certainly a skill issue if even I could. Maybe if he would offer his knowledge of our enemies… oh well.
A wet thud followed and the force behind it just stopped.
I felt it in the grip around my legs. The pressure eased. Loosened. Then let go entirely, and gravity remembered I existed.
We both fell. Ten meters, maybe more.
Hurt like hell.
We waited for the reinforcements to arrive because for one I didn't want Crater's corpse to be grabbed by the Necromancer and second that taxi drivers probably evacuated the area and I felt like shit from the fall. No broken bones, but my whole body was swelling.
Pamela didn't talk, but instead stood still, radiating heat. They say psychopaths are cold and stationary, but she was more like a bumbling cluster of energy. She was raging, but there was nothing to rage at anymore. Hopefully not me!
I think she regretted killing Crater so soon, but I'd say she might as well have punched dirt if that was enough to satiate her anger.
Well, I'd say this morning reversed and was suddenly quite productive. I didn't expect to get so much out of Crater's stupidity.
I'm well aware Mordo was watching this debacle unfold and half expected his forces to swarm us, but no one came. Must have been scared off by Pamela. I certainly never saw her like this. She must be seriously angry at the Governor. No matter, rage can only get you so far against someone like him.
But if Mordo and Secundo Manus aren't allies, why are they working together? By circumstance? Probably the common funding from the Combine.
Then I heard her exhale, heavy and long, and the heat went out of her with it, rolling off her skin in a visible shimmer, like watching a furnace door swing shut. Whatever had been swollen and radiant in her a moment ago deflated, leaving her standing there naked, staring off into the middle distance without any particular direction in mind. No modesty at all! This woman…
So much control, and I hadn't even had to train her for it!!! Proud, almost. Like an absent father watching his kid become the star athlete. I really should thank the Governor for the gift.
Well, maybe now she'll listen. I couldn't exactly walk, nor straighten my back, nor… well, mostly everything.
"Pamela."
Nothing at first. Then her eyes found me, slow, like she was surfacing from somewhere deep.
"The Governor did something unforgivable." Her voice came out flat, stripped of the tremor from earlier. "I won't rest until he dies."
"That's not exactly realistic," I said, mostly out of habit. The words were out before I'd finished deciding whether saying them was smart.
Her head turned toward me fully, and whatever was behind her eyes made me reconsider pushing the point any further. I'd seen a lot of dangerous looks in my time to recognize it.
I decided not to argue semantics with a woman who'd just torn through solid concrete with her bare hands.
"What could you even do?" I asked instead, rather curious.
"The Governor was scared of you."
"Who, of me?"
"Why else would he only hurt me? Why not touch you at all?" She took a step closer, and the heat that had drained out of her seemed to be creeping back in, just slightly, at the edges. "Why leave the second you decided to face him?"
I didn't have a good answer for that. I hadn't exactly stopped to ask him why at the time.
"There's a reason," she said. "Whether it's you. Something inside you. Your master. Something else entirely, or… I don't know which. But he's scared of it."
"...to not even respond!" The words came out sharper than the rest, cracking through the calm, and I realized she'd been circling this exact detail the whole time.
It wasn't jealousy that I was spared, more so a hunger for answers. A lead to defeating him.
I opened my mouth to say something. Deflect, probably, but didn't get the chance to.
"The Royal Governor will die."
I decided not to argue with that one either. Earlier I said the same thing, but I was mostly angry. Before being angry I am rational, and the reality is that there aren't many options available.
Anyway, a whole army battalion arrived and I had to explain the situation while on a stretcher. Pamela wasn't all that helpful and being naked only worsened my efforts. Had to decline being sent to the hospital as I felt tired of them lately and instead requested for a helicopter ride to the hotel. Least to say I immediately swallowed a fistful of aspirin. This time I really needed it.
And I still couldn't stretch! Not like I was going to stink the place out, smelling like burning asphalt and all that. If not for the cleaning cost for my own sanity in sleeping here.
I had Pamela shower me, which she surprisingly didn't complain about, at least sparing me a tantrum… then she grabbed and placed my body straight on the couch as if to sleep there. I was getting weary of seeing both of us only in bathrobes. Like what, these are the new suits? She took the armchair to the side and turned on the tv.
I think she expected me to doze off, but I didn't have that in me and instead stared with what little dexterity I had left between her face and the screen.
I could grasp a quiet rage from the way her eyebrows sat. But rage and revenge can only get you so far.
It's not about them consuming your life that makes me abhor them, but the fact that their usefulness becomes futile after a while. Usually because too much time passed and the goal wasn't met. As they used to say, haste breaks good work.
She was burning inside.
The news was reporting on our ambush and how successful I was. "Aionis took on two villains in an ambush that surprised the city. Then he defeated them and___" Blah Blah. It droned on for quite a while. They were speaking as if my explanation to the battalion was an inspirational speech. And what's with these absurd testimonies? Where were all of these supposed witnesses? The road was empty.
Gosh, Meyer was right. These channels really glamour anything I do. I should publish a book about pissing upright to see their reaction. 'The way a hero sits'... yeah, that's the name.
Ohh, but how focused Pamela was. She wasn't exactly listening to the news, but gawking at something in the feed. The corpse-hero, maybe?
Let's test if she was at least functional.
"Hmm, aren't I the best? Big hero."
Nothing.
"Though our little date was a bit too rough for my liking." She didn't bat even an eye.
Some audiences, they are just too much!
And to think it was barely afternoon.
Well, if she fights like last time, then who cares what she is going through?