Episode: 5.7

--- Ember ---

(How can she live with herself?) She asked herself for probably the tenth time in as many minutes.

“Alright kid, what’s wrong?”

She glanced over to Aiden with a questioning look, and he just rolled his eyes.

“You’ve had this mopey thing going, ever since we left the station. So, what’s wrong?”

She thought about it for a moment, remembering how Aiden was technically Thorne’s friend.

(Yeah, maybe he could explain this to me…)

“It’s… I get why you’d work for Sanctuary,” (Not that I like that, either.) “but why would that Thorne lady work for them?”

Aiden watched her for a moment as he gestured for them to keep moving. “Can you explain that a little better? Because I don’t quite get your issue.”

She gave him a look, because she really couldn’t get what he didn’t understand about the problem. “She’s an Arcane, a type of Deviant, and she works for Sanctuary, an anti-Deviant organization!”

Aiden tilted his head from side to side, before shaking it. “You’ve got a couple of misconceptions there, kid.”

“Like what?”

“First, and probably most important, Sanctuary is not actually a racist organization.”

She gave him a derisive snort. “They don’t act like it.”

Aiden shook his head with a sigh as he flicked away the bud of his cigarette. “Tell me, are the cops a racist organization?”

She frowned. “No.”

“But you hear about them pulling racist shit all of the time, don’t you?” Aiden argued, in a calm tone as if talking to a child. A tone that she really didn’t like, hence why she didn’t bother to answer his question.

“Right.” Aiden nodded, as if she’d given the exact response he’d wanted. “You see Sanctuary’s job is to deal with Rifts and police the Deviants that happen to be too strong for the regular police to deal with, think C-rank deviancies and up. Now, because they police Deviants a fair number of the people who join up, do have issues with Deviants and wish to abuse what power they're given. An issue that can be found in almost all law enforcement, or political machines, because corruption is an inherent part of humanity.”

She sort of understood the first half of what he was saying, and it didn’t sound like he was actively disagreeing with her answer, just that he disagreed with the way she got there. Though with that last bit… “Isn’t that a little cynical to be telling a twelve-year-old.”

Aiden simply shrugged. “You seem like a smart kid. But anyway, my point is, there are a few people within Sanctuary trying to change it for the better, like Ashe. In fact, because of her this entire district and the areas around it are a hell of a lot more friendly to Deviants than some of the other districts. Compare Amityville out west to New Haven or even Baskerville, then you’ll see what a corrupt branch of Sanctuary really looks like.”

“Isn’t Amityville the town with all the Deadmen?”

Aiden nodded with a bitter look. “Yeah, and because of that they’re given way more leniency to operate than they should be. We’re close enough that it would’ve spread here too, if Ashe hadn’t gotten her promotion just before that whole fiasco with the Dead Doctor.”

A chill ran down her spine, even she remembered the news reports about that nightmare, despite only being six or seven at the time.

(Glowing green eyes… Hundreds of mouths tearing at flesh… Monsters that just would not die.)

She shook her head clear of those… nightmares and tried to get back on topic.

“So, that Thorne lady, Ashe, she’s the reason we’re not like that hell hole?” If that was even remotely true than the woman had more then proven her point in working for Sanctuary.

Aiden gave her a solemn nod. “Yeah, she’s doing everything in her power to keep Sanctuary from becoming another Asylum, at least in New Haven.”

“Asylum?”

He gave her a bitter laugh. “Yeah, those pricks.”

(I feel like I’m missing something…)

“So…What’s Asylum?” she asked curiously.

Aiden waved a hand through the air, his face scrunched up in distaste. “You know, Sanctuary’s predecessor.”

That was a surprise. “Sanctuary had a predecessor?”

Aiden blinked, before frowning at her. “You seriously don’t know?”

She shrugged. “I’m a by-product of the American educational system.”

Aiden laughed somewhere between bitter and amused. “Don’t think you even understand that joke.”

She scoffed. (Oh, really?)

“Under the current political climate, or idiocy of our corrupt ruling political party, the government is more concerned with funding military powers, due to the overinvestment into the military industry made by various profiteering politicians, than paying to educate the next generation to fix the current’s fuck-ups. On top of this, they think by mimicking the practices of conformist societies over our individualist culture through the use of uniforms and standardization they can pretend they're sorting out the problem by incentivizing the system to cut the under-achieving corners rather than actually dealing with the problem. And that’s not even getting into the disorganization caused by the numerous districts acting independently of each other and mucking it up even worse.”

A case of theft: this story is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.

Finally done with her little rant, she gave him a shrug as she started talking at a normal pace again. “In all honesty, I can probably learn more reading a physics book in a day than I will spending a month in school.”

“Huh.” Aiden gave her an odd look, the one adults always seemed to give her when they finally started to realize just how smart she really was. (And even then, they still don’t really get it.)

Aiden seemed to roll his jaw as he tried to process everything she’d told him, before finally shaking his head as he mumbled, something along the lines of, “You almost sound like my brother…”

(Sounds like a smart guy.)

“Anyway, um…” Aiden paused to shake his head, forcibly breaking out of whatever thoughts he’d gotten lost in. “You see, about twenty years ago, the whole Deviant situation was a lot worse than it is today, excluding M.A.D.s and the other less obvious Deviants, they didn’t really have what we consider basic rights.”

She nodded, already knowing about some of that. Such as how there were a lot of riots back in the 90’s when the Rifts and Deviants were first discovered, though she still couldn’t remember having read anything about Asylum during that time.

“In fact, a lot of the anti-Deviant propaganda you see floating around came from the leaders of Asylum, who were obsessed with turning Deviant’s into a second-class citizens, by dehumanizing them as much as possible, and making sure they had as few rights as possible.”

“Why?”

Aiden gave her a look, as if deciding whether she was old enough to know something, before finally shaking his head. “They were a bunch of racist pricks.”

(That… doesn’t sound like a real answer… Especially after the way he defended Sanctuary and the cops earlier…)

Instead of pressing a question Aiden obviously didn’t think she was old enough to know about however, she instead asked, “How exactly do you know about all of this?”

Aiden shook his head with a sigh. “Like I said kid, when it comes to Deviants and the Masquerade, your school isn’t teaching you shit. Anyone over the age of twenty-five already knows all of this crap, because we had to live through it. Guess it was a little much expecting people to talk about one of the biggest fuck ups in modern history…”

Now he had her curiosity. “Well, if no one else is going to talk about it why don’t you?”

Aiden watched her for another moment, only this time he ended up nodding as he pulled a pack of cigarettes from his pocket. “Alright, so you know why most Deviants over the age of twenty-five actually like Sanctuary on some level?”

Her face scrunched up. “They do?”

Aiden rolled his eyes as he put another cigarette in his mouth. “Yeah, they do, and it’s all due to one major difference in Asylum and Sanctuary’s operating policies. Namely that Sanctuary’s are significantly softer, when compared to Asylum.”

“How so?” She asked, because from what she’d seen they were still pretty harsh, even if that Thorne lady was softening them up a bit.

Aiden paused to light his cigarette. “So, you know how Sanctuary treats Deadmen and the Malcontent, right?”

She nodded. “They get the short stick, because of what they have to eat…” She really didn’t want to think about what they actually ate.

Aiden rolled a hand through the air as he inhaled another lungful of (poison).

She frowned, before putting a finger gun to her head and saying, “Boom, headshot.” To emphasize that (yes, I know what we’re talking about.)

“Exactly.” Aiden nodded.

She watched him for a moment, waiting for him to elaborate, before finally putting two and two together. “Oh…”

“Yeah.” Aiden nodded again, smoke pouring out of his mouth as he did so. “It was a fucked-up time, to say the least. One no sane person really misses.”

“So, what changed everything?” Because based on what she’s read in her history books, a military power killing civilians wasn’t a situation that just changed on its own.

“The Tallman.”

“Who?”

“Samhain, The Tallman.” Aiden said as if that explained everything.

“And who is that?” She tried again.

Aiden stopped and just stared at her as if she was insane.

She looked around, scratching the back of her head, since she wasn’t entirely used to people looking at her like she was stupid. “What?”

“Have you never read a history book?” He finally asked, with mild concern.

“Of course, I have.” She growled back, more than a little defensively, after all they’d already established her school wasn’t teaching her this stuff. (That’s the whole reason we’re having this conversation!)

Aiden watched her for another moment before cursing as he ran a hand down his face and started walking again. “Right. So… Samhain, The Tallman, is the father of badasses. About ten to fifteen years ago, Asylum fucked up, and they fucked up bad.”

“How?” She pressed, since it seemed like this whole topic was something Aiden thought she should know, no matter how dark it got.

“They… They killed his daughter and grandkids.” Aiden answered softly, as if it was something he could relate to. “Sam… The Tallman, he went berserk… Tore through Asylum with the wrath of a vengeful god. Heh. One man, one week, and a four-digit body count…”

“That’s…” She swallowed, because that was downright (terrifying…)

Aiden let out another dry laugh, a mildly haunted look to his eyes. “It’s even scarier when you realize that wasn’t so much the ‘blasted them all to hell’ kind of count, but rather the ‘hunt them down, one by one’ kind.”

“So, this… this Tallman, he… he single-handedly… wiped out Asylum?” She tried to picture someone pulling that with Sanctuary and found she couldn’t.

(Maybe that’s why they changed it…)

Aiden made a so-so gesture. “Other people helped, and technically he didn’t wipe it out.”

“He didn’t?” Because if he didn’t, this Tallman would be significantly less terrifying, which was something she definitely wanted if it was enough to haunt someone more than twice her age.

Aiden laughed; all fear suddenly gone. “No, that, that was just his opening statement.”

She blinked in confusion. “What?”

Aiden came to a stop and grinned, in a way that was damn near savage, as he turned to her. “You see, old man Sam knew that if he just slaughtered Asylum, other people would just replace them, or that the government would double down on killing him. So instead, on a day that both Senate and the House were meeting to decide how to deal with him, he decided that rather than trusting their intelligence, it was better if he went there and told them exactly how to make him go away.”

She stared at Aiden, stunned by the idea of someone trying to hold the government hostage. “And what did he want?”

Aiden held up three fingers. “Three things. He wanted minimum rights for Deviants, meaning they could no longer simply gun them down or wrongfully imprison them, which was enough of a compromise for those stubborn idiots to accept, and that was after killing three of them mind you. Next he wanted the disbandment of Asylum, which he and several others had already knocked onto its back legs. And lastly, he wanted them to leave him the fuck alone, so he could 'mourn in peace'. His exact words by the way.”

It took her a minute to wrap her head around all of that. About the fact that the only reason Deviant’s apparently had any rights was because a single man decided to go on a homicidal rampage before holding the entire government hostage.

“Did they, did they actually let him get away with it?” Because that sounded like the kind of thing no government could let stand, willingly or not.

Aiden shrugged continuing forward now that the main part of his story was over. “From what I’ve heard, they’ve tried a number of times to kill him, always ends badly though.”

“Badly how?” She asked taking a few strides to keep up with him.

“They call his home ‘the Hangman’s forest.’” Aiden explained, before giving a shudder. “Had to go there once before. Place can be downright terrifying at times, and that’s coming from the guy who kills hell spawn for a living.”

(Makes sense, doubt someone with a four-digit body count lives in some cozy little cottage in the middle of nowhere…)

She paused as she suddenly caught something Aiden had said.

“So… you’ve met him then?”

Aiden froze, before blinking as he came to another halt. He turned to her and stared for a minute, while working his jaw, before finally telling her, “Yeah, but I’d rather not talk about it if you don’t mind.” And continuing on his way at slightly faster pace.

There was something odd about his tone, something that told her just how much there was to say, even if he refused to say it.