PROLOGUE - SUYIN
[Komuna]
image [https://i.imgur.com/3xx0XvQ.png]
Vetala
4-4-107 P.I. 4:33 PM
Even with her hands cupped over her ears, the screeching alarm pierced Suyin to the bone. The bang of gunshots and the wails of the dying from outside the main office only compounded her torment. She flinched as another bullet fired, shutting her eyes to the carnage, praying the robbers did not find her unprotected corner.
The little voice in the back of her head warned otherwise.
You are going to die.
Across the lavish space of the office, with its tall windows and many cluttered bookshelves, Suyin could hear the Bankmaster franticly deriding his last remaining bodyguard as they reloaded their exhausted magazines.
“Faster!” he spat as his would-be protector dropped the box of reserve ammunition with a thud.
Spilling across the oak desk before being frantically inserted into mags, fresh bullets clinked then clicked.
But the pair of fools would die alongside Suyin—whatever their names were.
She had never bothered remembering her clients’ names. But she did their faces and had learned to read them quickly in her early days of service. It was a skill born of necessity, as a well-timed compliment or gesture often meant the difference between an extra handful of kuoho and being found dead the next morning.
You are going to die, reminded the little voice.
Another succession of gunshots and the men rushed to the door, their heavy stomping informing Suyin of their position. Then came the creak of a chair, as the impromptu barricade was removed from underneath the door handle.
Suyin’s eyes shot open in horror as the men prepared to storm the hallways. They were going to get themselves killed! They were going to get her killed!
The balding Bankmaster was a spindly middle-aged fellow wrapped in a gray three-piece suit. Oily hands, the same that had been creeping over Suyin's body not half an hour prior, now trembled in terror. In his offhand he held a mirror polished revolver. It was obvious he’d never been in a fight—not a real one. He was the talkative type. The type who floated through the Lawless from one town to the next, always scheming without ever a proper scar to show for it. A netushita coward.
His bodyguard, on the other hand, was muscled and properly weathered, a few notable scars decorating his physique in a pleasing way. Not so many to be deforming, but not so few to be repulsive, as was the case with his master. A line down the cheek. An indent on the left forearm. A bullet wound on his inner thigh. The bodyguard was the spitting image of a proper Lawless man through and through. Unfortunately, he was also as thick as Bactrian dung—and just as putrid. Every time Suyin had flirted with the man, given him any semblance of charm or wit, he had looked back at her with the vacancy of a lost child. He’d even gone as far as asking her to repeat herself on more than one occasion. Now that same dull oaf stood blankly at the door, mindlessly taking orders from a scarless man who knew nothing of what he spoke.
You are going to die.
Her legs went weak, her pulse pounding in every corner of her body, but damn the voice. She wanted to live! She needed to!
Slim lavender dress hanging off one shoulder and satin slippers abandoned who knew where, Suyin crawled to the only space within the open office she could hide: to the same large oak desk sitting in its center. Bare legs chafed against the coarse fur rug as she scrambled over, all manner of curses swirling in her head for the heavens and Madam Burcu.
Had the Madam planned this as well?
You are going to die.
BANG BANG
Deafening gunshots rattled Suyin’s ears as she managed to reach the corner of the desk before the office door was kicked open. The Bankmaster and his bodyguard—who were on the verge of rushing the halls—toppled as the door slammed into them.
They didn’t even have a chance to utter a final word.
The Bankmaster’s brain blew out the back of his head, as did his bodyguard’s midsection. Blood splattered the walls and floor as the shock waves of yet even more gunshots were felt from beyond the room.
New, soul chilling footsteps soon followed. Tucking herself underneath the desk, and too shocked to scream, Suyin pulled her legs close as she curled up as far back as she could possibly go. She wished she were a braver woman, wished she had the courage to face her death with the dignity of a true Lawless, but something far more basal, ancient… shameful… compelled her to live.
You are going to die.
The robber’s boots thumped against the rug, slow and methodical, each foreboding step cautious yet smoothly leading to the next.
Thump
Thump
Thump
They were walking straight toward her.
Suyin pulled her legs closer still as the robber rounded the desk, weathered jeans with cuffs stuffed into thick mud-encrusted boots stepping into view. Heart in throat, she watched helplessly from the shadows as he lowered himself down to her level.
Stolen from its rightful author, this tale is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.
A haunting form-fitting mask covered his entire face. Its oculars were made of large, tinted pieces of glass, diagonally separated from each other down the middle—one side black, one white. Pill shaped filters on each cheek hissed with steady breaths that were exhaled through a larger third, situated in the mask’s center.
Suyin instinctively kicked at her attacker, pushing further against the backside of the desk. Too frightened to speak, her screams were left to echo in perpetuity inside her mind. Like a mouse caught in its den, her whole body broke into trembles, awaiting its end, every second an agonizing eternity. Stories returned to her from her childhood, warnings of the wanderers wearing strange masks, born in blood. Ones that sought the accursed things for the sake of glory, only to eventually be driven mad by them. For whoever crouched before her with their revolver in hand wasn’t just a mere robber.
He was vetala.
Shaking his head, he stood to look at something else before crouching back down. Once… then twice, his hidden gaze flipped between Suyin and whatever remained beyond the desk. His plain clothes hung loosely over his masculine form, the only flash of saturated color on him a pink beanie tucked into the top rim of his mask. The woolen fabric ruffled as the vetala scratched his head, cocking it as he holstered his revolver, focus now fully returned to the woman under the desk. Then, with both hands on either side, the mask was lifted.
The man crouching before Suyin was young, with features somewhat resembling those of her own and the peoples of the far east. Then again, maybe not. A widow’s peak of silver-white hair jutted out from beneath the beanie, his eyes abyssal orbs, so dark and big their pupils became indistinguishable within the shadows. If not for the glint of light and reflection from the windows to his side, one might have thought he had no eyes at all. Stranger still, the presumed gunman’s skin was pristine—even more so than the Bankmaster’s—and while dirtied with dust and grime, showed no sign of scarring, injury, or strife. None. Like a porcelain doll, unnatural, fake.
He was utterly repulsive.
But it was more than his appearance. Something about the man with his perplexed expression seemed off, overwhelming even, as if the very human Suyin saw before her was but an illusion waiting to be dropped. The same basal urge joined in with the foreboding alarms, mind and instinct insisting that whatever stood before her was more beast than man… and she, his prey.
“Of course...” the netushita vetala sighed with a soft smile, his Komuna perfect without a trace of an accent. “Not like Father Fate to go easy on me... then again, I doubt your day is going much better, eh?”
Suyin sat there frozen, only finding herself able to further cover the parts left exposed by her revealing dress. Why hadn’t he killed her? A shiver ran up her spine at the implication, her gaze unable to detach from his.
The vetala sighed again, raising his hand only to retract it slightly as Suyin flinched away. “You’re going to need to move aside.”
Easier said than done, and her inaction only further spurred his frustration.
“I…” He cautiously paused, his gaze darting to his removed mask in hand. “You can call me West. What is your name?” he asked, rolling an open hand in her direction.
He was a strange vetala.
Whether out of a need for self-preservation, or compulsion from the way he spoke, she didn’t know; nevertheless, Suyin found herself compelled to answer. “Suyin,” she hastily replied as she readjusted the skimpy fabric barely managing to cover her breasts.
West gave an acknowledging nod, his focus never settling on anything below her face. “Okay, Suyin, I… uh… you weren’t supposed to be here. If you stay hidden like this, my partner, East, will find you and she will kill you, just like the two guys at the door. So, you can stay here… or you can come with me.” When Suyin just continued staring, the vetala’s offering hand fell limp to his side. “Please don’t make me,” he said with a pained look—almost as if he cared.
A very strange vetala indeed!
Heart still racing, Suyin grasped at the smallest thread of survival and obeyed with a nod. As she rose from her spot and back into the office—now stained with bodies and blood. West had donned his mask again and was now fumbling through the desk’s bottom drawer. A sudden bump came from inside, and West’s mask hissed as a quick, deep inhale of air was taken in through the filters. Turning just in time, Suyin caught a glimpse of the vetala shaking his bare hand.
A noticeable burn, flaky and black, was now present on both palm and backhand. The vetala gave it a flip, shaking his electrocuted appendage as if nothing more than a nuisance. Then, the injured hand vanished back inside the drawer.
Silence followed. True silence. The type only recognized after the cacophony of the world was forced to still.
The alarms, after having blared on repeat for so long, had gone quiet.
It was suffocating. Her every move now betrayed her, the sniffles of her muted panic, her shaking knees, the pit-a-pat of her feet against the stone floor struggling to find confident footing.
West squared up to Suyin’s side, the black eyepieces of his mask holding dark reflections of herself and the room. Injured hand gripping his revolver, he ignored her panicked flinch as he shifted his mask and allowed his voice to be heard.
He jerked his head in the direction of the open doorway. “Play along,” he said without a modicum of sympathy, revolver pushing deeper into Suyin’s side.
So, she did. What other choice was there?
Suyin held in a scream as the vetala took her by the shoulder, gun still firmly planted as he guided her out the room.
Perhaps it was the chill in his words that kept her from struggling, or the steady hiss that came from the filters of his frightening mask, or perhaps the simple fact his rangy form surpassed her own by a full head. Through just the contact with his fingers, she could feel his lean muscles on the verge of crushing her in their trembling grip.
She knew the touch of a murderer; she’d bedded more than a few. Perhaps they numbered even more than those who weren’t. No matter their face or kindness, no matter the façade, few men or women could hide such darkness in the secluded privacy of a brothel. But Suyin wasn’t within the confines of such a place, nor under the protection of her Madam’s watchful eye. She was alone, her clients dead, her life held in the arms of a vetalan man who showed no desire of hiding his bloodlust.
And yet, he had spared her.
Suyin whimpered as his nails dug into her shoulder, forcing her to stop halfway through the doorway. The blood pooling around her bare feet was still warm, the scent of coagulating ichor laying heavy in the air. Gaze glued to the tiled floor and acutely aware of the revolver pressing against her back, she was too frightened to do anything that might add her body to the surrounding corpses. Still, when the wheezing cough came from right outside her field of vision, morbid curiosity drew her to its source despite her better judgment.
The Bankmaster’s bodyguard lay propped up beside the doorway, his hands slathered in the dark blood that oozed from his side and stained his clothes. The wrinkled skin of his pained face was no longer vibrant, eyelids drooping in tandem with each exerted breath. He didn’t look to Suyin, his attention transfixed on the vetala standing above him. His grizzled square jaw moved up and down, as if he spoke an inaudible language known only to him.
When in the presence of the undead themselves, even men of stature succumbed to their mercy. So what hope did Suyin have?
A moment later, the vetala named West pushed Suyin through the office doorway, closing it behind them and leaving the bodyguard to slowly bleed out from his wound.
Unfortunately, the gruesome scene only worsened as they stepped into the bank’s halls.
West’s grasping hand held her steady as Suyin’s knees faltered dangerously to folding in. The horrifying world of the halls spun as a burning sensation rose to the back of her throat and the remnants of her last meal splattered her blood-soaked feet. Death was a part of the Lawless. Sooner or later, you were bound to come across a body, maybe even see one drop. But this? She heaved again, the sour taste of vomit so strong she could smell it in her mouth as her guts emptied themselves once more.
Bodies. Over a dozen of them.
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Komuna: The native and proper name for the common language of Lawless Asia.
Kuoho: A once prevalent self-imposed currency of the interconnected Lawless Zones of Asia. Based on the value of an unuopa, a small battery and the most common form of energy found in the Lawless, the currency itself was simple plastic casings of ordinary pens. Each casing, or marko, was valued at half a kuoho. A unuopa was worth 15 kuoho (thirty marko), while a marko itself usually was only enough for a liter of water.
Netushita: Komuna slur meaning “untouched”, used to demean someone who is lacking substantial scaring, and by extension, proof that they are true Lawless.
Vetala: Mercenaries originating from the Taklamakan Lawless and its sister regions. Signified by their high-quality masks, a great deal of superstition surrounded these outlaws, particularly that their masks themselves were cursed. Historian Marcus McNamara once noted the similarities between the vetala and another subculture of mercenaries for West Asia roughly translated from Komuna as “The Living Undead”, hypothesizing a shared origin of influence between them.