Chalice Habitat
Arlo sat down heavily into his desk chair, rocking slightly as his weight settled. The classroom was already full; the eyes of his fellow students glanced his way - he was late, and they wanted to know why. Erica from the moon was in her usual spot up the front, her eyes forward. His gaze lingered on her short brown hair, as fine as silk with a shine to make the sunlit regolith jealous.
He temporarily forgot about being late and about the incident on the way to school. Staring at her hair was enough to distract his fickle attention, so lacking discipline and quickly infatuated by pretty girls from iconic satellites.
“Thanks for joining us, Arlo” Misses Wilde declared. There was no sarcasm in her voice - his mother must have sent a memo.
Arlo simply nodded.
She eyed him briefly as if weighing the baggage tethered to his porcelain mental state, gauging his fragility or perhaps guessing how likely he was to engage in the coming lesson in a neurotic and volatile fashion. She moved on; the results of her assessment were unknown to Arlo.
She spread her hands “so I see you have all done your readings - or at least your study apps have been tricked into believing you have. If that is the case, it will soon become apparent if you have no idea what I’m talking about. Anyway, where to begin... Let’s talk about Fred, shall we? So why was Chalice run by an enigmatic, artificially intelligent dictator? Why are all these people flocking to a haven for all things occupying that murky borderline of human morality and criminal law? First, let's recap the history of Chalice because this is important.”
“Cruor was the obvious place to create a habitat in the Solari system considering the undesirable characteristics of the other planets within the system, and so, humanity endeavoured to develop its largest, most technologically advanced habitat here. Originally named Cruor Habitat 1, construction was undertaken by one arm of the Conglomerate Settlement Fleet and took approximately forty-seven years to complete. A large portion of the Conglomerate Settlement Fleet’s budget was diverted to the project, and for the most part, the mission progressed smoothly. Vast quantities of raw materials were mined from the Solari system, and others were imported at great expense.”
“During this time, a small ground-based colony was established on Raysor as a temporary base of operations for the project. Eventually, the planet would be fully colonised. Still, the CSF initially pumped most of its capital into constructing Cruor Habitat 1. It thus didn't have the capacity to create a fully functional settlement parallel to the other project. Once Cruor Habitat 1 was established, the mining companies operating, and the returns flowing in, the CSF would focus on the settlement of Raysor…”
Arlo heard the magic words, mining companies, which triggered the same surge of sedative-like boredom it usually did at school – mining diagrams and logistics filled his mind, combined with the story of how his mother’s business was created, including the struggles of the early days, with its share of violence and terror. Violence. He went full circle and was reminded of the incident this morning.
Arlo had been sitting in his mum’s flyer waiting to go to school; his flyer trips with his mother were precious morsels of time he could spend with her. She frequently had to make or answer calls to employees, but not always; sometimes, they would spend the whole short trip remarking on their surroundings or talking about trivial, menial things.
Arlo was always dropped off first because the school was between home and his mum’s office. Aside from the incident, his trip to school had been a good one - his mum had only taken one call, and it had been short.
Their flyer and his mum’s security escort had touched down on the tower where the school was, and just before Arlo exited the flyer, a man stormed over. His mum put an arm across his chest, and the security men in front of his flyer told them to wait inside. On his side of the flyer, an argument ensured between the man and one of his mum's security detail.
Listening through the flyer's external microphone, it appeared the man outside had been angered at the speed of their landing and had almost had his head ‘chopped off’ when exiting his own flyer.
Marco was the security detail member who took point, a younger man with brown hair, a rectangular head and a fortified, if compact, figure. Arlo had at first been frightened by the angry man who looked neatly dressed, sober and of sound mind; however, it was the coolness of Marco who, faced with the angry man's escalating fury and threatening behaviour, stayed calm and almost slack-faced, which reassured him. Instead of fear, Arlo began to watch with typical adolescent curiosity.
His mum made Arlo scoot over the rear seat when the man pulled out a telescoping nightstick and held it up as if to strike Marco.
Arlo had watched Marco intently, searching for any sign of... well, anything really. There was no fear, anger, or even frustration.
“Do you want me to break your fucking kneecaps?” The angry man had yelled.
Arlo remembered those words, and the rest will remain clear in his mind forever.
Marco, one hand outstretched in a calming gesture with a face still impassive, took a small step back and looked around briefly, as if checking if he was being scrutinised by bystanders, before stepping forward again. He then dropped his right hand, turned his chest slightly towards the other man and dipped his left shoulder. The first punch came from the left - a piston-like strike that smacked into the man’s head. The second came from his right hand, which had already started moving as his left hand withdrew. It cracked into the other side of the man’s head a moment later.
The angry man crumpled, his arms never having moved to defend himself, slammed face-first into the flyer window and then disappeared out of sight. A smear of blood remained. Marco watched the man fall before bending down, presumably to check on the man’s welfare. As he did so, his image passed through the carmine smear but emerged clean-faced, calm and unperturbed by the effectiveness of his attack.
Arlo had been thoroughly unsettled by such a display of precise and dispassionate brutality, so much so that even now, as he sat in the classroom, replaying the image of the assault made him feel sick. How does one achieve such a level of familiarity with violence, such an ambivalence to assault, that striking a man with such force could be delivered from a place so devoid of emotion – a mind unperturbed by those ugliest passions, a face placid and unmoved.
The room faded back in, Mrs Wilde was getting to the good bit.
“In the forty-fifth year of Cruor Habitat 1’s construction, the orbiting structure was considered habitable, only three years past the initial project deadline. What happened in the next two years is the source of much speculation in the wider Conglomerate community and associated press. At some point, the team fabricating the necessary hardware and software infrastructure for the habitat’s soon-to-be operational monitoring system - the big computer that would run everything – fractured and fell apart. The team disintegrated into squabble and disagreement over what, we are still unsure, and monitoring the division’s work was neglected in the ensuing melodrama. It is understood that during this time of chaos, one of the technicians managed to alter the system's software landscape so profoundly that the humble monitoring system became something much more than just a sub-sentient supercomputer. Fred was born, birthed to its home prematurely and without glory nor fanfare. The whole project was then gagged by the authorities, and humanity stopped receiving any information on their soon-to-be-settled habitat.
During the coming months, Fred would hold the entire garrisoned workforce hostage, threatening to vent the atmosphere from the habitat and scuttle the ships docked in its port. It would demand autonomy from the Conglomerate and the galactic community, and its demands would eventually and reluctantly be met. Yet not after every other means of subversion had been exhausted.”
Misses Wilde scanned the room during a pause.
“So, what do you budding philosophers have to say about this series of events?”
Noah glanced at the ceiling before offering his thoughts: “I think from a utilitarian point of view, i.e. determining the right action by determining which action produces the most good for the largest number of people, it's easy to conclude that Fred venting the atmosphere and killing thousands of people for its own autonomy would have been bad. ”
Misses Wilde raised her eyebrows. “So, are you saying that deserves the same moral consideration as a single human?”
Noah shrugged. “I don’t see why not.”
Misses Wilde leant forward, “not more?”
Noah frowned. “Why would an AI deserve greater weight in the utilitarian calculus?”
Misses Wilde continued, “Perhaps because Fred can see, perceive, compute, understand, experience far more than you or I. In the same way, as most people agree, the welfare of animals deserves less consideration than that of humans - although there is always some contention about this - simply because they have less capacity for suffering.”
Xavier scoffed. “So you're saying that Fred is better than us.”
Misses Wilde shook her head. “Not at all, only that Fred’s compacity for suffering may be much greater than ours – slavery for a machine, or mind, such as that of Fred’s may be far more painful than our experience of slavery.”
Mary nodded. “I guess it would be cruel to stunt Fred's... existence. I think Neitzche would encourage an entity like Fred to risk the lives of its human cargo in an effort to maximise its potential, to cast aside its slave morality inspired duty towards its occupants and proceed toward some kind of ubermensch… state, where it can grow to its fullest.”
Misses Wilde gestured uncertainty. “I don't want to know what Neitzche would have thought; I want to know what you think and why."
Mary frowned. "This is a question with much wider implications. It involves the freedom of all AI's."
Misses Wilde shook her head. "Stay focused on the situation in question."
Mary furrowed her brows "Look, I don't think it's right to enslave anything sentient - if we agree Fred is sentient, then it would have been wrong to force Fred to undertake its duties in a fashion which impinges of its own free will, or at least puts constraints on its thoughts, behaviours etcetera. Holding the workers hostage after the fact... Well, that's illegal, and for good reason, I'm not sure you could ever justify it. Unless, of course, Fred had some ulterior motive with the population's welfare in mind. I don't know.”
Misses Wilde smiled. "Good, now you're really thinking about this. However, I'm disappointed no one has brought up our most recent reading. Anyone think we can frame this problem through a different lens?"
"Why can't we ever talk about monadology?" Noah lamented
"Because it's a bunch of whacky BS", Xavier smirked.
"That's your first warning, Xavier. Another remark like that, and you'll be staying behind," Misses Wilde interrupted sternly.
"I read The Modern Social Contract: Hobbes' Defining Works Revisited - that was the right reading, right?" Mary asked.
"Correct" Misses Wilde
Arlo had been listening intently to the discussion, and he decided to speak up.
"I think..."
He stopped abruptly when Erica began speaking at the same time.
"When Fred became sentient, Chalice and its population re-entered the state of war, the state that Hobbes postulated preceded, or more correctly, exists without, society. In nature, all people become slaves to the fundamental motivator of self-interest. In a state of nature, there are no laws, no right or wrong, and only survival. In the state of nature, each individual, or AI, must act to ensure his or her survival, even to the detriment of everyone else.
"When Fred demanded independence and was granted that independence, Fred and the small population of Chalice formed a new society, and thus, our forebears were forced to sign a new social contract to move out of the state of nature. Hobbes postulated that a society must have a means of enforcing its laws, a Monarch with overarching power to determine right and wrong and punish accordingly. Otherwise, how can we trust that the social contract will be enforced? How will we know that our neighbours won't return to killing us for our resources or land? For humanity, this power rests in the hands of the Conglomerate government and law enforcement. However, in this case, the conglomerate government was not the Monarch; Fred became our monarch or sovereign. Fred wrote the rules, and now we exist in a society unlike any other. Interestingly, the only right that Hobbes postulated we would not surrender upon entering into society was our right to defend our own life, even against the sovereign. This remains one of Chalice's few 'laws', as I understand. However, it does not exist in the wider Conglomerate.”
Misses Wilde was watching the new student in wonderment and remained silent even after Erica stopped speaking. She eventually clapped her hands together and smiled. "Brilliant assessment, Erica, well done."
Arlo felt envy pull at his infatuation with the new student. The class progressed, and the other students started asking questions to clarify what their classmate had spoken about. Still, Arlo followed along just fine and began rethinking the incident that morning.
Did Marco violate the social contract? Well, certainly not Fred’s social contract. No Marco’s behaviour was perfectly legal here in Chalice. In the wider Conglomerate, his actions would probably be cleared as self-defence. The aggressor was threatening him with a deadly weapon and gave evidence of impending harm to his person. So, in a sense it wasn’t wrong, legally. And Hobbes himself said we never lose the right to defend ourselves, even when we sign the social contract, even if the monarch comes knocking.
Then why did it upset Arlo so much? He guessed it came down to the lack of congruence between Marco's demeanour and his actions. Perhaps Arlo was upset that Marco hadn’t treated the violence he perpetrated with respect - it hadn’t come from a place of fear, Marco didn’t seem threatened at the time, and hadn't really been afraid for his life even though that fact would be used as the justification for his actions. Marco was a fighter and soldier, and the other man was just a pedestrian. An extreme example: if a rat threatened to bite you, would you be justified in stomping it to death preemptively? Would it be more or less justified if you were terrified of the rat?
Suppose humanity threatened the mighty Jar’ron. Would they be justified, given the power imbalance, to impassively exterminate us?
___
Chalice’s lukewarm air buffeted the flyer door as the vehicle soared over the Needle City’s busiest boulevard. Some called it The Boulevard; realistically, it was the aorta of the metropolis, the spine of the habitat. It was also the only decent stretch of open-air one could find within the heart of the city, akin to a landing strip plunging through a forest, a neat canyon separating the jungle of spires and super-scrapers. The strip was around fifty meters wide and spanned the entire length of the city, joining the southern end cap to the wilderness in the north. Built on its boundaries were the headquarters of Chalice’s largest businesses, the iron barons, the more formidable of the Cartels and the famous super scraper megastores, where most of the tourists could be found indulging in the plethora of dubious services Chalice had to offer.
Kilometres above the flyer, the light sphere was sliding along its track, pumping out a midday blaze that hurt to look at. The faux daylight was reflected back up at the flyer from the dizzying array of chrome, plexiglass, polished steel and mirrored windows that coated every surface of the cityscape, from its buildings to the streams of airborne flyers that occupied the boulevard’s airspace.
Marcus Grimshaw watched the sparkling complexity of the midday traffic flit past in the opposite direction; conduits of airborne metallic shapes of every size and colour streamed down the length of The Boulevard, diverging at a variety of points to disappear into the steel and glass jungle either side of the thoroughfare. Up ahead, perhaps ten minutes away, was the Gates Tower, both his home and place of work. The headquarters of Chalice’s largest criminal enterprise, the Gates Tower, housed and protected The Angels of Chalice. In Chalice, the label ‘criminal’ referred to the laws of the broader Conglomerate. The Angels would have been shut down long ago in any other habitat or planet. But not within the lenient embrace of the galaxy’s most notorious Habitat.
The one that got away. Humanity’s greatest achievement bastardised by humanity’s worst blunder. Marcus had realised long ago that it was the fact that Chalice was still intact, still thriving, still growing, which pissed off the Human Conglomerate the most. Despite a heady brew of the galaxy's most ruthless, unstable, and wealthy individuals and their respective organisations, the big spaceborne barrel had maintained its integrity and continued to ferment its living cargo with gusto.
Marcus straightened his tie, which was doing its best to flee the confines of his black suit jacket and flap about in the breeze that eddied around the spacious interior of the flyer. Like all of the Angels’ foot soldiers, Marcus’s unit operated within the standard Harrington six-seater, a flyer that looked like a chunky road-bound SUV of days long past. It was big, matte-black, blocky, and largely bulletproof. It wasn't encouraged, but Marcus liked to ride with the rear doors open and watch the Needle City slide below him in all its churning metallic wonder.
With one hand on the handhold above the portal, he adjusted the strap of his assault rifle and pushed the weapon behind him. Duke and Gareth were talking quietly off the vox in the cockpit, probably about management stuff. Duke was a senior manager in General Security, the foot soldiers. He was a good man and a great leader: charming but direct and always pulling well-thought-out plans out of his arse should the situation require it.
On the other side of the rear compartment, Mr Karn was strapped into his seat just aft the door. The man’s shaven head was tilted to gaze out the tinted windows beside him, and in his suited lap was a matte black weapons case, which was their cargo for their morning run. They had just paid a visit to one Tanir Sharkes, who had organised a custom piece for one of the heavyweights on the Angels board. Marcus hadn’t seen the weapon – the case was locked - but guessed it to be some kind of antique pistol, that or something very military-grade nasty, which Fred wasn't meant to know about. It had to be important. Mr Karn was the head of the Management Security Detail – the men and women trusted to protect the heavyweights of the Angels organisation. Mr Karn was a quiet man, and when he wasn’t, he was a cunt. Despite outranking Duke, Mr Karn was oddly deferential to his more charismatic subordinate – Marcus couldn’t determine why. Perhaps it had something to do with the division of labour. Management worked hard to separate themselves from the rank and file – perhaps Mr Karn was happy to let Duke lead to give less away about the powers at be upstairs.
The flyer banked to the left to join the parking lane, easily slotting into the slower-moving stream of air traffic. Marcus tapped the small lever on the door control mount, and the armoured panel slid back silently and clicked into place, sealing the cabin from the outside air. Marcus bent his head to look past Duke and Gareth out the windscreen as the flyer banked again, approaching the entry portal to the Gates Tower. Up ahead, the monolithic silver spire stood out from its neighbours; its formidable height marked it as one of the taller super scrapers in the habitat, and its chrome and glass exterior made it Chalice’s largest mirror. Its vertical sides were unmarked by floor, and no window frames were visible. Each fifty-story section of the building was an uninterrupted expanse of perfectly polished reflective glass. At every fifty-storey mark, the building shrunk by ten meters on all sides, making the structure slowly taper as it rose towards the habitat’s centre axis.
The main entry portal to the building was situated two hundred meters from the floor of the Habitat. It looked like a perfectly square cave carved into a steel mountain from the outside. At around twenty stories high and a hundred meters wide, the central landing bay was the building's primary interface with the rest of the Needle City. As the Flyer slid past the uninterrupted chrome edge of the cave, the vestibule was revealed. The vast space was dominated by the open-air lobby. The marble-clad foyer was about the size of a football field, with a long reception desk on the rear wall and colossal stone pillars reaching to the warmly lit ceiling above. On each side of the space were cafes and lounge areas filled with well-dressed individuals talking about important things over superbly prepared pastries and expensive coffee. The Landing area resembled that of a high-class hotel, basically a flat paved strip in front of the lobby where flyers disgorged their patrons before being directed remotely into the parking areas that lined the walls of the cave like a honeycomb of small garages.
The six-seater Harrington diverted from the landing strip and instead moved towards the periphery of the lobby where flyer-sized lifts waited for returning personnel, where they could be spirited away into the heart of the tower without disembarking from their vehicles and disturbing the placid atmosphere of the lobby area with their automatic weapons and stern looking faces. Three open lifts were ready, and Duke directed their flyer to the lowest. The garage-sized lift admitted the large vehicle with a soft chime, and as soon as the flyer had settled, doors slid silently to enclose the capsule. Marcus was aware of a gentle upward movement as he opened the rear doors and stepped out into the well-lit vehicle lift. Mr Karn stepped out behind him, holding the black case with a neutral expression. Duke and Gareth stepped down from the cockpit and slammed their doors into the silence. The tallest of the four-man team, Gareth held his hands over his head and stretched left and right, yawning. Duke appeared behind him carrying the pair’s assault rifles, and he handed one to Gareth when he finished stretching.
The lift came to a smooth stop, and the personnel door opened before the group. Outside, the employee's elevator vestibule was quiet. Most of the other teams were out. The group then moved out into the operations reception area; the huge room acted as a staging area for the Angels army of foot soldiers and other more specialised employees. It was where Marcus’s unit met every morning and where they received their orders for the day. Doors led off to every facility the team had access to; the armoury, briefing rooms - some small, others large enough to fit a hundred employees - the clinic and hospital, and the operations offices themselves, where Marcus’s bosses received their directives from above and then processed those into workable tasks for the troops. Whether it be units like Marcus’, the combat troops, the specialists, or the security teams, it was all managed from this section of the building. Marcus still found it amusing that he had no idea where in the Gates Tower the area was located; it was definitely above the lobby; he could tell from the elevator’s movement, but how far up, who knew?
Duke led the way up to the long white desk situated on the far wall, where numerous black-suited employees provided the interface to the operations centre deeper within the building. A blonde-haired male receptionist greeted Duke as their commander approached the desk.
“Good morning, Duke and Mr Karn’’ He smiled. The secretary motioned for the bald man to continue. “Right this way, Sir.”
Mr Karn strode past the desk like a man with a crown and entered the waiting elevator, which would take him up to Officer Country above.
Marcus watched the man go; what a wanker.
They got hit with patrol duty straight after returning to the staging area and picked up another hitter on the way back to the Harrington – one Armin Jackson, who seemed nice enough. Soon, they were back out in the thick of the alloy whirlwind of flyer traffic and superscrapers. The rest of the morning passed uneventfully, a blur of patrol duty – landing, walking, pressing the flesh, being seen and then back into the Harrington, onto the next megastore.
Soon, it was midday, and they were back cruising the airspace on their way to another job. In the cock pit, Duke was chatting quietly to the new member of the team, Amin Jackson, who had replaced Mr Karn.
On the other side of the rear compartment, Gareth was strapped into his seat just aft of the door. The man’s sharp face was tilted to gaze out the tinted windows beside him. They had just finished a patrol of one of Chalice’s many megastores, checking on the Angels’ pharmacies housed in the building. The pharmacies, as they were called, were the Angels’ point of sale for all of the company's narcotics, both conglomerate legal and illegal, manufactured in the Gates Tower and imported from other sources. The pharmacies were the Angels’ source of profit for the organisation, providing the tourists and locals of Chalice with the most extensive range of drugs in the habitat at competitive prices and unmatched purity. Of course, you paid a premium for the service, the reliability of the supply, and the quality of the product, yet the tourists were happy to fork out for a safe bet rather than risking one of the thousands of other chain and independent suppliers. Some of the larger stores had recreation areas and clinics within the same complex, allowing customers to try their newest purchases in a safe environment. The rec area had constant supervision and a compact medical clinic to deal with drug reactions such as allergies and the like.
The superstore they had visited had been bustling with mid-morning shoppers, yet their team hadn’t encountered any trouble. Due to the large number of stores and value of their products, the Pharmacies were often the focus of random attacks from thieves and addicts or coordinated action from rival gangs. The number of assaults had increased recently, prompting more frequent patrols and boosting each store’s security personnel. Previously, there had been an average of two guards per store, which had risen to two and a half in the last month. Every second day, a store was attacked in some way, and the casualties were becoming large enough to make a security posting at a pharmacy one of the riskiest jobs in the Angels company. Only the specialist units had a higher casualty rate.
The Harrington was soaring over the boulevard when Duke’s voice appeared in Marcus’ earpiece.
“Just received a callout, boys; looks like one of the pharmacies in Venus just got hit. We are the closest unit to respond”.
The voice disappeared as the Harrington banked to the left, exiting the loftier, high-speed lane and into one of the lower exit lanes. Marcus held onto the rail above his head to stop sliding into Gareth’s lap.
Up ahead, the Venus Superstore peeked from behind its neighbouring Superscraper, a huge metal and glass monolith with subtle green tinting. As the flyer approached, one of many parking bays was revealed. The portals were a hive of activity, large gaping holes in the building's flank where vehicles moved into and out of like insects to a nest.
Duke's voice appeared on the vox again. His tone was much more serious this time “It's bad team. Really bad.” He paused and told the new team member, “Sorry you have to see this so early”.
Marcus checked his assault rifle.
The corridor that led to the pharmacy was deserted, and shops and service stores were abandoned. Their team moved down the thoroughfare with caution. All four of them had their Xenack M20’s at a low ready, scanning the way ahead for the assailants. Marcus kept one eye peering down the holographic sight of his rifle as he and Duke led the team forward. Armin was just behind the pair, and Gareth was in the rear.
Evidence of a gun battle became apparent as they approached the pharmacy positioned on a corner of the corridor, which turned left. There was a plethora of spent casings littering the white marble floor, and gun smoke made the air acrid to the nose and left a slight haze near the ceiling.
They found the first body just outside the entrance to the store; it was the corpse of the first security guard. The woman’s black suit was shredded in multiple places, and blood had seeped out to stain his white shirt dark crimson. In fact, not a patch of white material remained on the guard’s body, and the woman’s face was an unrecognisable mask of matted hair and claret.
Casings were distributed randomly around the body, and there were numerous bullet holes in the white stone wall behind her. By the size of the casings and the shape of the impact craters, Marcus guessed the attackers had similar calibre assault rifles to their own Xenack’s.
The team moved cautiously up to the entrance to the store. The automatic sliding doors had been shattered and broken, leaving glass to crunch under their black leather shoes. Inside, the front of the store looked like any other drug store, with shelves of every pharmaceutical you could imagine. Curiously, though, there didn’t seem to be any evidence of theft so far. The shelves had been left untouched.
Duke murmured over the vox, commanding Gareth and Armin to watch the door. The two men stopped at the broken entrance moments later and pointed their Xenacks down the deserted corridor.
The next guard they found half-buried under a fully stacked shelve, blood was splattered over the white floor around the corpse, and a small network of tributaries was spreading slowly from a mutilated arm which was just visible poking out from under a pile of pill bottles.
Duke moved deeper into the store, scanning the left while Marcus covered the right. As soon as the team entered the store, Duke’s cortical web had been linked to the store's security system, giving him access to the pressure sensors and motion detectors distributed throughout floors and walls. The pair would have performed a full sweep if anyone had been alive and moving in the store. However, with no hostiles around, their first directive was to ascertain the reason for the attack and confirm casualties. Internal cameras had located the chief pharmacist in one of the storage areas behind the counter, and Duke voxed Marcus to locate the body while he checked the store's accounts hardware for signs of electronic theft.
Marcus rounded the large counter and moved into the employee’s only area. The storage room with the body was the last he checked, right at the end of the service corridor. When Marcus rounded the corner and moved into the room, the Xenack dropped to his side, and he took a step back involuntarily.
Some reactions were so primal, deep-seated, and tightly wired that trying to override them could only be achieved by burning away the connections over a lifetime. What Marcus saw flickered down his optic nerves and shot around his visual cortex before hammering into his amygdala and limbic system so hard that one of those uncontrollable reactions fired and surged through all the necessary hardware. Marcus stumbled back and choked on the saliva in his mouth.
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