Chapter VI

Meida and Timor

Adria knew that was her chance to save Corven before it was too late for the poor man hanging, bleeding out. She slid her fingers down to a pocket on her left waist, extracted a red crystaphere the size of her thumb, held it in her hand, and aimed at the alley. A moment before Timor could look to where she was, Adria threw it away; both the man and his partner turned around when they heard the crystal breaking on the floor between them.

Everything turned pink as a vast cloud of sand grew in a fraction of a second from the crystaphere. As the crystaphere worked, Adria could see everything through it; her fingers had touched the sphere before it was thrown, and it had identified her as the user, making her immune to its effects. Confident, she walked in front of Timor. He couldn’t see anything but a pink sandstorm surrounding him.

The man turned around, looking for his accomplice.

“Meida! What’s happening? Did you do this? I can’t see you!”

“Why would I do this, Timor? You’re so stupid!”Her voice sounded like it was a mile away yet Adria heard and saw them without a problem. Meida had turned back to Corven.

“Did a crystaphere slip from your pockets, little rat?”

“Talk so I can follow your voice,” Timor was afraid.

Adria positioned herself right behind him.

“Use your brain!”

Meida hit Corven again, she seemed close to madness.

A quiet “Furkana…” came out of Timor’s lips as he tried to find his way back his partner through the thickening pink sandstorm. Meida, in the meantime, kept torturing Corven, throwing punches at his cuts. Adria emulated Timor’s cautious walk until she perceived he was too concentrated on trying to find Meida through the cloud and acted. With stealth, the extrari grabbed a thin-looking gauze from another pocket in her coat and jumped behind him. Before he could react, she had covered his mouth, letting it grow and wrap around his head.

Blind, deaf, and mute, Timor tried to remove it and failed. The white fabric molded too tightly onto his skin. His hands went towards Adria’s arms, which were wrapped around his neck. He pulled away from her with all his strength. She kept her grip, tightening her arms around him. They struggled for a minute until Timor, who could not breathe through the mask, gave in.

Adria could hear him gasping for some oxygen, helpless; the man fell to the ground, losing force in both legs. Once more and gathering the last of his consciousness, he kept pulling, grasping for her head, trying to break himself free while losing force, falling.

She released his neck. He collapsed to the ground with no oxygen left. A few more seconds passed, and he stopped moving.

If her calculations were correct, Adria had about a minute before the crystaphere lost its effect. She pulled a knife from another pocket on her overall and used it to rip two holes in the gauze where Timor’s nose and mouth were.

She had kept everything out of Meida’s attention. When that dictadurian focused on her voice, she still interrogated Corven. “...your lies. Where are they?”

Adria got closer to them.

“I… don’t… have them,” the voice of the hanged man broke, weak.

“FURKANO! Where did you hide them? I don’t have any patience left in me, Corven, so either you tell me where the alters are, or I’ll slit your throat right here. Your choice. Just remember, I’ll make you swallow a veritaserum crystaphere if you don’t tell me where they are. Either way, this pain you’re enduring will be in vain. I can heal you as many times as I want.”

Meida’s rage had grown worse with the sand crystaphere.

Adria saw how she brought her knife close to Corven's neck. The pink clouds vanished. Time ran out, and fueled by pure instinct, the miner sprinted towards Meida. A few meters before reaching her, Adria leapt like a cat and clicked her boots twice together, activating their ingravitas technology, shedding seventy percent of the planet's gravitational pull.

Adria tackled Meida by surprise, turning on her ingravitas with the tech on her boots. She grabbed Meida by the waist and spun around, using her body as a pivot. Adria then planted her feet on the wall behind them and propelled their bodies upward into the sky.

"Let me go!" Meida fought, trying to free herself. Adria's grip remained firm despite several punches from the vile woman.

"Timor! Shoot this furkana!" demanded her accomplice, unaware that he was unconscious. Once they were high enough, Adria, without hesitation, released Meida, letting her plummet. Meida's beautiful face, filled with rage, looked up at Adria as she fell, facing her demise. Bones broke upon impact with the concrete floor.

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Hovering in the air, Adria turned around before the impact. Her heart raced as she took in her surroundings, a view that never ceased to amaze her. Thousands of irregular, gray streets covered the land around her. In the distance, Dicterium was suspended in the sky, surrounded by hundreds of concrete buildings. This crystalline structure, the size of several football fields, was anchored to the ground by massive translucent chains, standing above everything else, reachable only by the tallest buildings nearby. Dicterium served as the entry point for anyone to Dictaduria, housing one of the four Porters in Sectum—the only exit from the continent.

Looking down, Adria clicked her boots again, restoring fifteen percent of gravity, allowing her mass to regain weight. This made her heavy enough to land without issue. She then rushed to the hanged man, jumped, activating her boots' technology again. She floated towards the rope, took out her knife, and cut, freeing Corven. Catching the rope's ends before he hit the ground, she carefully lowered his body to the floor with one hand before letting go and landing next to him.

She knelt to his left as he lay unconscious in a puddle of rain, blood, and sweat.

Adria examined his bloodied torso, and assessed the damage. Meida had sliced his body six times; while some cuts were deeper than others, blood poured from all of them, and fat protruded from a couple. Considering everything, Adria believed Corven was lucky; the sadistic woman hadn't cut deep enough to expose any organs.

Back in Malkuth, Adria had rarely come into contact with blood, except during her period. Her brother Zeban, however, was often injured in their childhood, suffering broken bones and cuts.

One incident, where he jumped out of a window to a malfunctioning levitator and was saved by a protective grid in their Domus, had traumatized her for years. Their father came back with her brother in his arms, one broken leg, exposing the bone.

The memory of it made Adria laugh. Sectum had forced her to overcome her phobia, making her adept at handling blood, a necessity in a place inhabited by the system's most notorious criminals and where her healing skills had flourished through the years.

Corven awoke scared and in great pain when Adria slapped him. He looked at her with panic, traumatized by Meida’s memory. She allowed him to see the maniac lying on the ground behind them, unconscious. "Calm down; I've taken them down."

The plan was to check on them after attending to Corven's wounds. Thus, she left to retrieve her bag, which got left behind at that corner before attacking.

Walking by Timor, whose rising chest confirmed he still breathed, though unconscious, the dictadurian felt relieved; killing was not pleasant for her nature. She retrieved her dust covered bag from behind a block. Taking her bag back to Corven, who was curled up on the floor in discomfort, she took a bottle of water and cleaned her hands with it.

With a clean rag she cleaned Corven's chest and then spread some Curaten—a green ointment that reeked of menthol to mask the natural scent of the plants, chemicals, and nanites—to treat his wounds.

"This is going to hurt," She warned as she approached the deepest cut.

He allowed her to proceed, flinching and stifling screams of pain. She was relieved he had overcome his shock; the ointment worked by rejoining the skin sliced by the cuts, acting as an antiseptic, killing any bacteria that might have entered the wound. It was excruciating, but effective.

"Wait until the Curaten has scarred your wounds, then clean yourself with this," she instructed, leaving the bottle and another rag beside him. "I don't see your clothes around, so you'd better take Timor's before he wakes up. I'm going to deal with Meida."

"Why are you helping me?" Corven, confused, asked.

"Someone did the same for me once. One day, I might need help, and you'll be there without questions. You owe me," Adria mused for a moment, reminiscent of her early years in Imperia.

"Sounds fair... Agh!" Another wave of pain made him flinch.

Leaving Corven to manage his pain, she walked towards Meida, dreading to find her dead. The alley was wet from the rain, now brighter as the sun broke through the clouds. Two dictadurians walked across the back streets at a distance, connected by the same alley, oblivious to the crime. Adria examined Meida's body sprawled on the ground, her limbs twisted in unnatural positions, both legs with exposed bones and bleeding. She had landed on her feet, which were shattered.

Feeling a pulse on Meida's neck, she was relieved; not for the butcher being alive but for the amount of trouble it saved them. Meida would likely end up paraplegic but not dead, which was sufficient. She wouldn't be massacring anyone else.

"Let's go before someone discovers this mess. Unless you want to explain it to the sentinels by yourself," she said, returning to Corven as he sat on the ground, cleaning himself and enduring the pain.

"Where are we going?" he inquired, looking up at his savior.

"As far away as we can. Trust me; you're in good hands."

She provided just enough information to indicate there was a plan before turning at his captors, unconscious.

"Okay, yeah, you’re right, we should get away from here." He pushed himself up from the ground, breath short. "Who... are you?"

Adria made sure those two were out before hushing her response, trying to avoid old mistakes.

"Name's Zaraz. Now that we've met, can we leave?" She asked, gathering her things to hurry him along.

He approached Timor, preparing to undress him. Struggling, Corven managed to take the clothes with Adria's impatient assistance in removing the unconscious man's pants.

"I don't think I should wear this, though. I need my overall, but Timor burned it," the wounded dictadurian said, dressing as quickly as he could, pointing at a dark mass in the opposite direction to the charcoaled piece of fabric.

"Do you have a better idea? Because unless you do, you either wear that jacket and try to blend in, or you walk through dictaduria shirtless, with all those bloodstains," she retorted.

Without a defense, he complied in silence and once dressed, they left the back alley behind.

****

That's it for Chapter VI!

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Indigo Sapiens.

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