Godclads

Chapter 3-13 Lunchtime Chat

If politics is defined as the activities pursued in relation to governance and power, then the greatest conceit in New Vultun is thinking what the “people” want matters at all.

That’s not to say that you–little person–don’t matter. You matter. You matter a lot in the big equations that make New Vultun the biggest, baddest, goddest city there ever was.

Of course, the way you matter is the same why hydrogen cells matter for the aerovec I got for my seventeenth: sure would be good to have more; sure would be bad if we ran out.

So, with that properly set, here is the major divide for terrestrial politics: Massist or Saintist?

Power shared by the many–or diluted by the mob.

Power enforced by the few–or dominion in the hands of singular tyrants.

Calla Marlowe, FATELESS Radio

3-13

Lunchtime Chat

Avo left the Mall-Brawl basking in the glorious silence. He had seen to it that the enforcers present deposit the father, Essus, into a medi-drone for treatment. All the while, he felt the burning gazes of all who were present atop the deck, watching him, judging him.

The spectators lapped at him, praising his violence with uproarious delight. Yet, the flavor of their favor found itself diluted by the synchronous emotions of horror and despair from those of Conflux.

There were no smiles or jeers coming from the enforcers anymore. No calls for continued violence. Their expressions were childlike, eyes wide at the sight of one of their own so mauled. It was clear that Rantula was someone to them–a creature of fear and respect. But their creature. Their monster. Their champion.

And through his act, he reminded them that in this godless age, not even deification spared one from the desolation of violence.

Limping up the steps that split the deck, Avo nursed on a pre-lunch snack: the arm of the father’s former handler, now crisp and fried from the electrocution. Disgust played across countless faces that faded as they sank past his periphery. Their thoughtstuff remained.

Above the food court, the holographic display of the arena continued to play, scenes of med-techs trying to stabilize the still whimpering Rantula, attempting to ready her for drone transport as well. More pleasingly, a single line of text had been burned across the Nightmantis rig.

Claimed.

Another gift was claimed. Or delivered, as Mirrorhead would so say. The idea of being harmed less pleased Avo; the thought of getting actual food after days of feasting on raw meat, even more. Miserable as this day had been, he was still here, still burning.

And if it wasn’t for his Liminal Frame, he wouldn’t have been. Death had touched him thrice this day, and thrice he walked back out of its gates. His fears were beginning to dull, he realized. In his past life, before whatever happened to him over the course of the last week, he would have never engaged Rantula so. Hurt her, yes. But only after getting away, and finding a sliver of memory he could infect with one of his poltergeists.

Now, he greeted his problems in a different way. A savage new pathway had unveiled itself to him, and Avo found himself wanting more. Or perhaps it was the beast that desired bloodlust. It was getting increasingly hard to distinguish where his instincts began and his mind ended. With every act of brutality committed, he felt like the sinews of his being were intertwining.

Guided by the stilt-legged enforcer he called out earlier, he ordered her through grunts to lead him to the cafeteria or mess hall or whatever these street-scrum called the place they ate. He was hurting. He was healing. He needed–no, deserved–more food.

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Body tense with fear and reluctance, she obeyed. No one stood with her. No one pulled her away from him. How solitary it was to be an enforcer? How helplessly alone. Already, she was about to lead him into an elevator and no one had stopped him. It made him loathe the other–

“Oi, rotlick!” Avo heard a voice call out from behind. The heartbeat and scent were familiar. He sniffed again. Ah. They smelled bad. One of Rantula’s minions. He didn’t care to remember either of their names.

A click followed. Avo turned, staring unimpressed into the jutting barrel of a gyrojet rifle. It was in the hands of the bald one again. Their hands were shaking, their breaths tense with withheld gasps of air. They were scared. Genuinely, truly scared of him. Avo chuckled. How amusing it was that he, by all accounts a failed ghoul if judged from the standards of the Low Masters, would be the first to experience a taste of self-actualization.

“Fight’s done,” Avo said. “Won. Finished. Go lick wounds. Find a new master.”

“F-fuck you,” the enforcer spat, sweat clinging to their brow. Was he Issig or Jareg? Avo shrugged. “You godsdamned monster–what you did–”

“Was good for her,” Avo said, digging at the thug’s wound. “She was weak. Slow. Stupid. And all the augs can’t fix that.” He chuckled an exaggerated laugh as he pointed a claw at the enforcer’s implanted limbs. Six insectoid legs. Six limbs to weigh them down. “Look at you. Deadweight and no will. No skill. Best part of you didn’t even come from you. Bought from a grafter. How much did it cost? Three thousand imps? Thirty thousand? Wasted. All of it. Just like you. Little wonder why Mirrorhead wanted me: current stock doesn’t light the wick.”

The enforcer’s gun cracked apart in his grip, his thoughtstuff boiling as tears of primal rage spilled from his eyes.

“Oh,” Avo said. “That’s right. Can’t shoot. Mirrorhead’s orders. One good thing about Rantula: she was good nu-dog. Listened. Obeyed.” Avo took a step forward. His foe took a step back, wilting, lips quivering like a child. “Another thing about Rantula. She was a screamer. Tell me: you the same way?”

Something broke inside the Rantula’s former peon. His face cracked, raw fear burning away the roots of his hate. The gun slipped from his hands. He inched back. Then stumbled back a step. “Fuck,” he whispered, his thoughtstuff coming apart in wide strands, his will shattering under the weight of terror.

Spinning on his heels, he ran, ejecting the limbs from his back, shedding that which tied him to Rantula so he could flee faster. The sight burned itself into Avo’s eyes as a precious memory, something to savor in his dreams tonight when he was sequencing his Metamind.

“This is power,” Avo muttered, mostly to himself. It was like a light had come on in his head. His Celerostylus; the Heaven; his Hell soon to manifest. All those were a power of physical and metaphysical disciplines. Yet, what he just achieved, the control he had over the fear of another, was equally absolute, equally destructive in its capacity. “This is power.”

A ring sounded from behind him. His head spun. His guide was currently hitting the interface of the elevator as fast as she could, trying to get the door to open before he closed on her.

Slowly, he walked next to her, his shadow shrouding her.

“Which floor?” Avo asked.

She froze. Her stilted leg carved a scratch against the floor while her breath hitched.

“Fi-fifty-second.” she choked.

Avo nodded. “Patience is a virtue.”

The time they spent in the elevator was no less awkward than when he slithered up behind her. Her body was deathly still, faced away from him, eyes locked forward on a reflection. She was trying to will Mirrorhead to intercede, to save her.

That drew Avo’s interest as well. Where was his esteemed owner? The Syndicate-ruling Godclad had been suspiciously silent for a while. It occurred to Avo that the man should have intervened earlier if he wanted Rantula’s spirit to be intact. Which meant that the boss either didn’t care that much or was actually absent.

The former was fittingly capricious. The latter was an interesting prospect; it could give him a window of opportunity to tune things to his advantage.

The Syndicate cafeteria was hosted in the shredded remains of what used to be a gallery, as far as Avo could tell. Dented frames holding tattered parchments of colors greeted him as soon as the doors opened. Most of the remaining rooms on this level had been sealed as well, the symbol of a snake wrapped around a crown telling Avo that the quarantine areas had unfixed memetic contagions. Useful, if his wards could take it.

Mem-Cons made for good weapons.

He needed to swing back around when his Metamind was properly built.

Regardless, feeding took precedence and Avo found himself salivating with hunger as he trudged past the line, making for the bowls of hot food.

“Hey, get back in–” the enforcer was pulled aside by a cohort, their voice a low whisper.

“Don’t light his fuse, consang. It’s fucking Moonblood. Our hitters upstairs said the ghoul just bricked Rantula.”

“Bullshit.”

A flashing holo-recording proved that to be otherwise. A chorus of footsteps followed a mass of people inching back and away. Suddenly, there was space for him at the front of the line. Good. He didn’t want to wait. He wanted to eat.

So it was that Avo found himself standing at the front of the line, looking at an expansive list of food options now available to him. He savored the sensation of bliss. Joy was fickle. All feelings were fickle. But right then, right there, Avo knew true happiness to be a big bowl of pork-beetles set to twenty-thousand calories, served and packaged in record time via hovering auto-chefs working in a robotic assembly line of food.

Peering back, he scanned the myriad of faces greeting him, and found them soft and wanting. Most here didn’t have the exaggerated chrome he saw on the enforcers. A few even looked to be outright flats, bare of alloy and obvious bio-enhancements. These, then, must’ve been the logistical support to the muscle. Drone-jocks as well, perhaps.

He greeted them with disinterest and they greeted him with apprehension. What few bruisers and enforcers there were found corners away from him, trying to pretend he didn’t exist.

It seemed he took a certain pillar of stability in their little pecking order away from them. How unfortunate. With Rantula now broken before her peers, Avo wondered if a power struggle would develop, see a new enforcer come after him for the spot of “dominant bruiser” under Mirrorhead.

Maybe someone would go for Rantula first, now that he had made her so weak. It was an easy way to rise. Prove themselves strong.

Avo’s problem was that he didn’t fit in this little miserable ecosystem and he ultimately didn’t want to. He was an invasive species here, and he wanted to get out. That meant finding leverage on Mirrorhead and breaking his hold on him. Removing the cortex bomb as well. These street squires might be content to spend the rest of their short lives fighting over who was the biggest dog in the yard, but Avo had little interest in being someone’s dog. He saw where that road ended before he even came of age.

A humming whistle came from the auto-chef in front of him, refocusing his attention. Its shell was like three balls stacked atop each other, the middle producing the food while the topmost sphere projected the selection options via a holo-haptic lens. They looked aesthetically pleasing. He guessed they were more like actual purchases than salvage. Probably smuggled through the Deep Bazaar to avoid DRM or NRM breaches.

Along its shell, the logo of DynaHome Technologies shone from a mem-code. Another defunct subsidiary. This one was of Ashthrone’s roster. Made sense, still active corporations and companies had active fab-licensing chips, and licenses were never cheap.

Looking up at the ceiling, Avo looked at himself in the mirror. Still no Mirrorhead. Missing, then. He couldn’t imagine his new boss just letting his new prize ghoul run around and wreak havoc. No. He was occupied. Avo was curious about just what had drawn the Godclad's attention away so suddenly.

A slot chimed at the center of the auto-chefs, the indicator flashing green. Through the opening came a large plastic bowl of pork-beetles. Avo sniffled in the scent and clacked his fangs together. These nu-bugs wouldn’t be long for this world. Still, it felt wrong not to bite down on something that didn’t struggle before it died.

He wondered if all his recent killings twisted his psychology. Or maybe just the fact that he wasn’t suppressing the beast with a morality mod in his Metamind right now.

As he retrieved lunch, he caught Stilt-Legs trying to sneak away, thinking her task was done. He caught up to her from behind again.

“Name?” Avo asked. His forcibly-obtained guide slammed thigh-first against a table as she leaped, jolting with fear.

“M-mine?” she stammered.

Avo just stared. He would continue to just stare until she decided to get past this pointless display of cowardice so they begin more useful conversations.

Stilt-Leg swallowed. “Ved.”

“Ved,” Avo said. He studied the woman’s features, looking for defining marks beyond the implants. Her skin was pale. Unnaturally pale compared to most of her peers. “Native? Nolothi?”

Ved blinked. Her eyes lit up. “Yeah! Uh, my mother’s mother’s mother was here before New Vultun even was establish–”

“Find seat,” Avo said, cutting her off.

Ved’s jaw opened and closed. A flash of offense spilled across her face at not being able to finish her story, but she did as she was told.

Joined tables made from insta-fabbed plastics ran from wall to wall. The chairs, meanwhile, were metal stumps. Had to be with how heavy some of these enforcers were. This place was still mostly empty right now. Strange. He expected there to be more people here, eating. It looked like it could seat a few hundred easily.

But with the wealth that Mirrorhead displayed so far, he was pretty sure the Sydnicate boss had more than this single establishment, this single location filled with personnel and equipment. No one concentrated all their goods in one place. Not if they wanted to keep playing this game for long.

Ved found a nicely vacant row for them. There were ten chairs to the left and the right. The eyes of the others in the room were still locked on Avo. He wondered if they were planning to attack him at some point, and found that doubtful with how placid their thoughtstuff were. It was tense. Tense, but not nervous. Just a dull acceptance that there was a ghoul in their midst, and that he had hurt one of their number.

Besides, Avo doubted anyone here could actually ambush him properly with their pounding footsteps and thundering hearts. The constant chattering was a dulling miasma of noise to his senses, but he had lived in different Undercroft megablocks all his life. Those had millions of bodies all packed together across a few hundred levels at the most. The noises warred, a symphony of eternal discord. And the smells. What to say about the smells, other than the fact that his feelings regarding the smells were better left unsaid?

It taught him compartmentalization if nothing else.

“Family,” Avo said, as they were seated, pawing a handful of pork-beetles. The little spliced bugs struggled in his palm as he tossed them into his mouth. He munched them, the crunching bringing him an ineffable satisfaction. Strangely, he had expected to gain an echo from that.

There was a question in that: what made one death release an echo, while another gave nothing more? Was it tied to the ghosts? Could it be that only the intelligent, the self-aware granted him echoes?

“What?” Ved said, blinking.

Avo fed himself another mouthful of food before he could sigh. Writhing little limbs prodded against his tongue, tickling the roof of his mouth. His fangs fell like a guillotine, splitting their little bodies. The oozing of their juices on his taste buds was sublime. Sour and sweet, each coming apart with a satisfying pop. Glorious food. All the killing had been worth it for this alone.

Ved watched him with paling features. “I–uh–I didn’t understand the question.”

Swallowing the second mouthful of bugs, Avo waited for the food to go down before talking. Manners were important. Walton said so. “You were talking. About family.”

“Oh,” Ved said, understanding. “Oh–oh! Yeah, uh! So as I was saying my mother’s mother’s mother’s…”

This went on for some time. It appeared Ved had an aversion to using the word “grand” in front of “mother.” Even a, “my distant ancestors” would have been better. For a few minutes, Avo just pretended to listen, nodding and grunting as the family backstory began to expand into a metaphorical territory Avo regarded as “beyond useless.” He did his best not to remember anything that Ved told him aside from the essentials. Minds had limited space and he didn’t want Ved’s story about her grandmother’s funny wart to be using any of it.

“...I mean, Jaus, consang, it was like she didn’t even care about mom. After everything mom did for us, she just leaves. Takes the fucking Guild job and leaves. Complete half-strand behavior, the fucking sow. Fuck. Can’t believe we’re related.”

“Yes,” Avo said, “the sow.” Whoever the aforementioned sow was. Probably family. People hated their families. He interjected before Ved could go off on another spiel.

“Ved. Rantula.” Ved went silent. Nervous. Her heart pace doubled. “She respected?”

He swallowed. “Rantula’s one of the classics, consang. Been working for the boss since day one. But you messed her up good. The shit you did to her...” She cupped her ear and swallowed, steeling herself for something to come. “Wasn’t right. You should’ve stopped. Should’ve let her be. She surrendered. We all heard. You could’ve stopped.”

Avo understood the sentiment. But understanding didn’t mean acceptance. “Would she?”

“Would she what?”

She was being deliberately obtuse now. Didn’t want to answer. Avo didn’t care. “Would she have stopped? With me? With the flat? Would any of you?”

Ved opened her mouth, words slow to come as she mustered all her tact to put what she felt into words. Avo knew what was coming. He had known for years. He just liked hearing it said by another, to remind him of what the city thought about his kind.

“You’re a ghoul, consang,” Ved said. Those words explained everything. “There's no one in this room who didn’t lose someone to your like during the Uprising.”

A moment of silence settled between them. “Low Masters,” Avo said, wanting to trade honesty for honesty. She had been brave. That was a virtue. Virtues should be rewarded. “They said that we were saving you from Guilds. That our sacrifice was for you.”

That made Ved laugh. “Jaus Avandaer said he was going to give everyone their own Heaven, consang.” She mimed getting stabbed in the chest. “Suppose nobody predicts getting stabbed by their own kid, yeah.”

Avo grunted in acknowledgment. No one really wanted this. No one asked for this. They just got what they got and chose from there. “I didn’t ask to be.”

“I–I know,” Ved said, unsure how to respond.

“Want to hurt you,” Avo continued. Across from him, Ved went stiff. “Want to hurt everyone. Eat them. Always. Not easy, trying to deny it. But I choose. You understand. And that’s why I hurt Rantula. She never chose. She’s a coward. She’s like my brothers. Don’t be coward Ved. Don’t be like the sow in your family. Whoever she was. Be–”

A blaring blast wave of ghosts tore through the level. The lights flickered. Avo felt a surge of adrenaline flow through him. +Situation in medical! Repeat! Situation in medical! Staff down! Patient missing–the Regular is loose! She's fucking loose! Send help–send–+

A loud rattling scream cut the flow of thoughts off. The ghosts snapped with the termination of the host, dissolving as the phantasmal broadcast broke away into nothing.

Draus. It had to be.

Avo left that shiv with her on a whim. Just in case she wanted to make her own options. Avo hid a smile. Good for her. But… wasn’t the father bound for medical as well?

Sighing, Avo stood, taking the bowl of pork-beetles with him. “Medical?” Avo asked. “Where?”

Ved blinked. “It’s the second to last level. All the way."

“Lead,” he said. “Get the elevator. I follow.”