About fifty yards away at the turnoff from the main street are five guys. Or more accurately, four guys and a bipedal piece of construction equipment.

The four little ones don’t stress me. They’re conservatively dressed - not like Electrofuck’s goons from a few days ago. No flashy lightshow implants, no gaudy hairstyles. Just some thick padded armor and dark colors. They all have their faces covered by black masks. Actual street sharks. Professionals.

Two of them have hotblades - long double-edged swords with a cable running from the grip to a battery backpack. High voltage. Heats and electrifies the blade. They slice, they dice, and cook while they cut. Very painful, and surprisingly stealthy - cauterizing your victim’s wounds as you make them cuts down on blood spillage, if you’re planning on sneaking their body away somewhere else. One of the four has a punch gun - a wide-barreled thing with a rotary chamber. Originally designed by the Watch as a gas grenade launcher for riot control, but modified by some very enterprising criminals. An extra high-capacity air compressor and reinforced barrel let it fire weighted dumdum canisters at rib-cracking velocities. Not exactly lethal, as long as you don’t hit your mark in the face. Or the neck. Or the torso. The fourth guy has a thin needle rifle, probably loaded with tranq darts.

They’re not really the stars of this jolly band, though. Center stage belongs to the catastrophe standing behind them.

This guy is a slab, and a heavy-duty one at that. My height. Shaven head to reduce the chance of dropped evidence. No shirt. Muscle-swollen torso crawling with about as many scars as I’ve got, carving strange runnels in the flesh of his chest. One of his eyes is artificial, but not as compact as mine - a bulky unit bolted into the right side of his face, from cheekbone to forehead, red telescoping lens. He’s a full seven feet tall, and probably would weigh about seven hundred pounds, were it not for the real clank he’s wearing.

Both this cat’s arms are completely artificial, from collarbone to fingertip. Either total cybernetic replacements, or some serious integrated carapace armor. Massive plates of steel, moved by hydropneumatic pistons and whirring servos. His metal shoulders are so huge that they nearly reach his eye level, but hey, who needs peripheral vision when you can grab a guy by the neck and squirt his brain out his ears like a tube of toothpaste? The hands are the size of trash can lids and hang somewhere around his knees. I can see where the interface mesh is digging into the meat of his pectoral muscles and collarbone, and where the command relays shunt into his neck, wires slithering through the flesh to link up into his brainstem and upper spinal column. These augmetics are so colossal and heavy that I honestly have no idea how he’s able to stand upright - he must have some serious gyroscopes and skeletal reinforcements to be able to keep his balance. There’s no way he weighs less than a thousand pounds.

There’s no one else on this street. It’s just a few feeble streetlamps and a blank pavement causeway sandwiched between the plant’s parking lot wall and another building. A wide open arena.

I reply with a smile, “Hi! Nice night for a walk, huh boys?” A deep breath. “Ahh. Smell that recycling plant air. Corpsey and refreshing.”

Mr. Topheavy regards me coolly. “Do you know who we are, Featherlight?”

“Yes.”

He raises an eyebrow. “Oh?”

I sigh, and bring a hand to my head sorrowfully. “I’m sorry, boys. I know your heart’s in the right place, but I’m just too busy these days to have a fanclub. Maybe I can come to some meetings when things have settled down a little. Tell you what, why don’t I sign some autographs now, and in a couple weeks we can see about something more official, huh? I’m thinking… Fantastic Featherlight’s Fancy Fanclub. What d’ya think? Alliteration is important with things like this. Without it it’s kind of hard to take an organization seriously.”

Dr. Topples nods slightly, his face completely neutral.

“Good.”

He snaps the steel fingers of his unraised right hand. A clang rings through the dark, empty street.

The two cronies with blades fire them up and sprint toward me, electrical arcs snapping and humming from their weapons’ heating steel. The ones with guns take aim.

Why me? Why me, gods above and below? Can’t life just be dull for fifty or so more years? I’m sure it won’t take that long for me to die. Millions of people die every day without a single exciting thing happening to them their entire lives. How come I can’t be one of them too? Is that really so much to ask?

Sigh. Bellyaching isn’t going to get me out of this one. Not that it ever has before.

I send a minor dribble of vitae to the inside of my skull, to the parts that mesh with my cogitator implants. Time slows. My limbs feel heavy and unresponsive, my heart is pumping pudding, everything outside me looks like it’s moving through molasses - but my head is full of lightning.

All processors online. Let’s go over the options.

First one - turn and run like hell. These guys obviously want an engagement, so I could just deny them the chance. I’ve got enough vitae left over to muscle up and climb this hab building like a swollen spider monkey, get to the roof, and jump my way across the city’s rooftop canopy a good distance before running out of steam. I’d probably be able to lose them quick enough - I don’t see any mobility equipment on these guys, and there’s no way in hell that big clanker can climb a flight of stairs without risking his spine, let alone an eight-story apartment block.

The problem is that running would be a temporary solution to a much less temporary problem. They know who I am, they know where I live, and they already found me once, somehow. I can run, sure, but I can’t hide. I won’t be able to go home, and it won’t be long before they resort to dirtier tricks to get me to show myself. Like kidnapping and torturing my friends, for starters, or who knows what else.

So second and last choice - fight. I uh, have a confession to make on that front.

I never learned how to fight.

It’s not that I’ve never been in fights. I get in fights all the time, whether I like it or not. And I usually win. But that’s only because I’m a titanic freak with magic powers that make me bigger and scarier. I cheat, basically. I never had to actually learn anything about fighting. I probably could have taught myself at some point, but hey, why try at something when you don’t have to, am I right? Haha.

Situations like this are why my laziness is going to get me killed one day.

If I fight here, I’m probably going to die, or worse. I have advantages, yes, but I’m completely outnumbered and outgunned. I really don’t know if I have enough juice to take all five of these guys down.

But in this case, running is just procrastination. And it might get someone else hurt. Option one deleted. I’m either ready to beat these clowns right now, or I never was, and the rest is darkness.

Okay.

I draw myself out of my own head, leaving only enough vitae up there for some flash processing if I really need it. The world speeds up again, and the two sword boys accelerate back to murdering speed.

I muscle up. My inner vitae reserve bottoms out and spreads through my entire body, into all my bones, skin, and muscles. Sturdier. Stronger. Faster. My heart sings, and my lungs are full of fire. My blood begins to shine through my hardening skin, casting a subdued verdant glow across the concrete.

It’s monster time.

First swordsman reaches me, with a lunging thrust to my gut. I step around it - eight hundred pounds of mutant meat moving faster than it should. My step takes me directly into a wild chopping swing from the other sword. I raise my right arm and accept it into my flesh.

The glowing orange blade sinks through my forearm and nearly down to the bone. My blood hisses and bubbles, huffing a gout of steam into the air. The electricity rips a path up my arm and into my chest, trying to stampede over the rest of my nervous system. I don’t let it. My lungs try to lock, my knees threaten to cave, but I stop them. I can barely feel the pain.

The merc’s blade is stuck in the meat of my arm. I can see his eyes go wide above his little black mask, just for a second. He’s not stupid. He might not have expected me to use my own flesh as a shield, but he knows what happens next. He has about an eighth of a second to try and saw it free. It’s not enough.

I grab the sword’s power cable with my left hand and rip it clean out of the reactor pack on his back. The electricity dies. I kick the man in the chest. His armor pads stop my boot from staving in his ribcage like a soup can, but he flies away from me and skitters across the ground anyway.

There’s a vitae cloud right behind me, but I don’t need to feel it. I’m already stepping around the counterswing from the guy that lunged past me. He recovers like he’s going to swing again, but he notices that his partner appears to have teleported twenty feet away into a wheezing heap on the ground.

It is a bad idea to be distracted when there are monsters about. I step forward and raise my fist, to send it into his chest with enough force to blow his lungs out of his mouth.

A ten-pound dumdum can crashes into the right side of my neck at about a hundred miles an hour. Even through the vitae surge, it hurts horribly. My neck almost snaps, the muscles and blood vessels temporarily displaced by the impact. I don’t have a choice but to send more vitae there and begin healing it straight away. Fucking punch guns. If I survive this, I might buy one.

The hammer blow to my neck puts me off-balance, and the sword guy gleefully takes this opportunity to stab me in the left kidney. The blade is so hot that it’s glowing, but it feels strangely cold as it enters my guts. My internal organs start to boil in some places, and this far in the electricity finds a beachhead to conduct right into my vagus nerve and spinal cord. I lose control for a moment, and fall to my knees. The cutter pulls the sword out of me.

There’s an insectile zzzthwip, and a tranquilizer dart stings me in the right shoulder.

On my knees, I can only see the concrete. For some reason I can’t lift my head to look at anything else. The poured stone starts to swim. Every sound comes to me after passing through layers of padding.

I’m so tired. That seems silly to me, considering how much of my time I spend asleep. I’m a well-rested guy. I don’t know if I want to sleep. But maybe I can just stay here and… bleed, for a bit. That doesn’t seem so bad.

It feels like something’s coming toward me. Heavy footsteps. I wonder who it is.

Something shoves me hard in the side, and I tip over. Hello, ground. You’re looking well. Long time no see. Getting along? Taking care of business? Seems like it. You always struck me as a pretty stable cat. I admire that, you know. I’ve always been kind of wishy-washy, in some ways. Like, uh…

Isn’t there something I’m supposed to be doing, right now? If there is, what am I doing instead?

Something’s going on with my arms. They’re too heavy for me to move, but someone back there is being nice enough to move them for me. Thanks, buddy. But where are my arms going? I think there’s something I’m supposed to do with my arms. I can’t remember.

Then, I’m not where I was.

I’m standing, I can walk and move and think. I’m not tired anymore, just curious. I don’t know where this place is. Or what it is. Just a brown stone, dome-shaped room. No entrances or exits. A shaft of light in the middle, shining down on… something.

I can’t zoom in on it to get a better look. My eyes aren’t working like I feel they should.

I want to know. I walk closer.

My steps don’t echo in here. I don’t feel as heavy as I normally feel. I’m conscious of the fact that my body might not be the same, and I should probably look down at it, but I don’t. For some reason it doesn’t seem very important at the moment. I just move through the dark, toward that light.

It’s a rock. Or, a few rocks. Something like a broken cairn. I think these stones were stacked at one point, but a few have fallen over. The light shining on the pile is very bright. I look up to see where it’s coming from, but it’s too bright to tell. I look back down at the stones.

There’s something there, at the top, in a little nest of broken stones. Well. Two somethings.

One of them is a scumbird. It’s alive, and it’s looking at me with its puffy red eyes.

Scumbirds are gross. I heard they used to be another kind of bird, but exposure to air pollution and a diet of mutagenic carrion turned them into… this. Flying plague rats, with leering yellow eyes, sharp gray beaks, and feathers in any combination of colors from the landfill rainbow. That said, this one is as handsome as I’ve seen a scumbird get. Looks healthy, for a critter that’s supposedly thirty percent disease by weight. Big, fat, and strong. Some interesting red-white feathers on its back and wings, too.

The other thing is a… plant. A sprout of some kind, growing up from the brown stone. The column of light is centered on it. It’s tender and soft, with only a few very small leaves. Doesn’t look too remarkable, but I’m not a botanist or anything. When… when was the last time I saw a real plant? Through the glass of the Arboretum, from a long way away? I don’t think I’ve ever been this close to one. Not one that looks as fresh and new as this. It’s beautiful, in the humble way that new plants always are. Or so I’m led to believe.

I switch visions and look at the scumbird’s vitae. I like looking at birds’ auras, even scumbirds. They’re always blue and subtly dynamic, like shifting clouds in a clean sky.

Then I stop looking at this scumbird’s vitae, because what I see is not blue, or pretty. It is very, very horrible, and I never want to see it again.

The bird says, “Some stones shouldn’t be looked under, chief.”

I blink. “I guess you’re right. That was really awful. You’re a hideous nightmare, huh?”

It cocks its head curiously. “Well, not for the moment. I’m a little birdie, aren’t I? But fings change. I could be anyfing, later. Who’s to say?”

The bird has an unusual accent. Rural Krathian, I think? And male. Overwhelmingly male.

I ask, “Where am I?”

It twitches its wings. “Where I am doesn’t look like what you can see. This is less about wheres and more about whats, if you get my meaning.”

“I don’t. Get your meaning, that is. Are you being cryptic on purpose?”

The bird shrugs. I didn’t know birds could do that.

“Old habits.”

I frown, and look around. Other than what’s right in front of me, there isn’t anything to see.

“I wonder where I am. Or… what I am, according to you.”

The bird wriggles a bit and sits, making itself comfortable in the stone nest. “I was never much for philosophizin’. Sounds like you need a good fink. Or a dose of somefing funny, maybe.”

“I think I already had a dose of something funny. Who are you?”

The yellow eyes fix square on me, but sheepishly, somehow. “Don’t look at me, mate, this is your show. I’m just a tourist.”

I tilt my head skeptically. “Mm. Another what, rather than a who.”

“Now you’re getting it.”

“I don’t know what I’m getting. If this is my show, how did you even get in here? There aren’t any doors.”

The three-pound bird snorts. Gutturally. Like a bull. “I’ve been around long enough that doors are more suggestions than anyfing else. How did you get in ‘ere, then?”

“... I’m not sure. But I’ve been here before.”

Neither of us say anything for a moment. The bird doesn’t take its attention off me. I point at the plant, shining and green, the only jewel in a room of stone.

“What’s this?”

Another shrug. “I dunno. Must be pretty important, though. Only important fings go on pedestals, right?”

“You’re on the pedestal.”

It puffs up its chest feathers a bit. “And who’s sayin’ I ain’t important, eh? Every bird needs a perch, every seed needs the soil, every man needs his purpose.”

I consider this for a moment.

“I’m not sure I know what mine is.”

“Then you should fink about it. Or get reminded.”

“... You’re not just a bird, are you.”

“Are you just a man?”

“What else would I be?” I squint at him. “Are you a demon?”

A chuckle. “What’s a demon?”

I frown, and nod. “Yeah, good point.”

Another pause.

The not-a-scumbird says, “You’re in a bit of a bad way right now, eh? Taking a firm drubbing?”

I nod again. “I think I might be. I need a way out. Or through.”

“What d’you usually do in spots like this?”

“Run. Or punch something.”

The wings twitch again, in something like excitement. “I like that second one. Is there somefing what needs a drop of red?”

“I think so.”

“You don’t sound confident in that.”

“I’m not.”

“No? What else is there to be confident in? Life is one long punch-up to see who gets to lie in the dirt first, innit?”

“Maybe. I think you’re missing some parts. And, personally, I don’t spend the effort unless something important is on the line.”

“What’s on the line, here?”

“Me.”

“Ain’t you important?”

“I’m not on the pedestal, am I?”

The bird stands on its little stick legs, spreads its wings, and flutters upward. It lands on my head, and nestles down in my hair.

Its voice comes down from up above my eyes. “There. Now you’re the pedestal. More comfortable, eh? Seem familiar?”

“... I guess you’re right.”

“Naturally. Good supports are strong. They hold fings up. If you’re the column, what are you holding up, instead of yourself?”

I don’t answer. I don’t really know how to put it in a small number of words. But I do know.

The unbird continues, “You crumble now, you’re a shit support. Shit supports mean the whole fing comes down, yeah? You wanna be responsible for that?”

Something happens in my bones and muscles.

“No.”

The horrible voice above me booms, “So what the fuck are you gonna do, Baulric?”

“Stand up.”

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AND?

“And break them.”

BREAK THEM.

Everything goes dark. But then the light comes back.

----------------------------------------

I’m back on the street, lying on my side. My brain is full of clouds, but my heart is hammering.

I’m still alive. I still have power. I’m not done yet. Not done yet. Not yet.

Something on my wrists. Holding my hands. No. Need my hands.

Where are they?

Big one over by the street corner, conferring with one of his cronies. One helping the other I kicked. The fourth smoking and looking right at me. Smart. It’s what I would do. No time then.

I pull my back and shoulder muscles like undercooked taffy. My bones move in their vessels of meat, skeins of flesh slide and contract over one another. The restraints dig into my wrists. The smoking goon says something, but I can’t hear the words. I know what it means.

Ordinarily, I’m not sure I could break these. They feel strong. I can hear chains rattling, wrist clamps jangling.

Something metallic goes ping behind me and flies off into the distance like a bullet. Then another.

I’m stronger than they are.

I can’t think well. But that’s fine. There’s no need to think if you already know what to do.

Voices. They can see me moving.

I pull. The vitae courses through my arms, surges with every pulse. A river of vitality rushes from my heart. Blood runs down my wrists as my flesh splits against the steel.

Then the shackles give way.

Metal shards fly in all directions, impaling themselves in the concrete walls - a shrieking peal like a tortured bell rips through the air.

My arms come around to the front of me, dripping glowing blood. My fists slam into the concrete. It splinters under my knuckles - cracks radiate out from the small craters that now hold my hands. I rise to one knee.

For one moment, everything is crystal and still. The merc’s cigarette falls from between his fingers and tumbles like a lost phoenix feather toward the ground. A spell falls over everything, as if an entire year of winter arrived in a single second. The four others turn to face me. Some eyes widen. The big clanker just scowls in frustration.

The smoke hits the ground. I can hear every single particle of smoldering ash as it fragments on the concrete, the faint crinkle of the paper bending in the middle. It’s as loud as a starting pistol.

About four years before he can raise his punch gun, I pounce. My legs sweep me across the street like a hurricane. I crash into him before he can scream. I grab his face with my right hand. It fits perfectly, like a sweaty, ovoid fruit. I can see one of his eyes between the gaps in my fingers. It’s very wide.

As the merc belts a muffled, terrified shriek into my palm, something worms its way into my head. A thought I didn’t ask for.

If you kill any of these men, you’ll be a murderer.

I know. But look! I could squish this one’s head like a rotten orange. His jaw and teeth and skull would all splinter in my hand, and I would be able to feel his brain squirt up from between my knuckles. Listen to him try and scream. I think it would be fun.

You will become a suspect. The Brotherhood will have their excuse. Deepwell would no longer be an ally. They will all come after you. You can’t kill the entire city, no matter how much of a monster you become.

I could try.

You will lose. And you will be alone in blood, forever.

I lift the merc up by his head. His legs kick and struggle under him, just like a man being hung. I swing him a bit to the right, and a tranquilizer dart intended for me sinks into his back. He stops screaming into my palm, and falls asleep.

He’s so small he could be a child.

I let him go. He falls to the ground in a heap at my feet, snoring lightly. No longer aware of the hungry ogre standing over him.

I take his punch gun, though.

Reflexes take over and my left hand grabs the hem of my coat, swinging it upward to catch another stinging dart. It gets lost in the fabric. In my left hand, the heavy punch gun is only a little bigger than a machine pistol to anyone else. I aim briefly and fire. The trajectories are as legible as street signs to me. I can’t miss. The canister sinks into the tranq rifleman’s belly before he can move out of the way, and he collapses, gasping for breath.

Only a swordsman left. He looks at me, a towering giant with glowing green veins, wrists bleeding luminous red-green sludge that drips to the ground and shimmers like radioactive waste. He looks to his boss, another towering giant with steel arms bigger than people.

He turns tail and runs out of the alley, without looking back.

About a hundred feet away from me, the clanker sighs and shakes his head. He folds his massive arms, the servos and pneumatic pistons clanking and hissing with the effort of the gesture. A hand raises up and flutters its fingers dismissively, in a dandy-ish way that’s totally at odds with his menacing frame.

“It’s very hard to find good help these days. And just as hard to find cooperative marks. You couldn’t just lie down and enjoy your nap, could you?”

“You should have laid out a pillow and blanket. I’m a delicate sleeper.”

“I don’t suppose I can convince you to just lie down and come quietly?”

My palm is slicked with an unconscious man’s scream-saliva. I wipe it on my trousers, because it is yucky. “Depends on where we’re going. Not back to the bar, I’m guessing.”

“No. But I can’t say any more than that.”

I drop the punch gun. It’s not going to be much use against this armored goof anyway. “Figures. I guess I can’t convince you to slink your heavily-armed ass out of this alley and away from me, can I?”

His electric red eye flickers briefly. “No. You can’t.”

“Then I guess we’re at an impasse. Y’know, I’m just minding my own business. And also a small number of other people’s business. What did I ever do to you guys, huh?”

The unnamed clanker takes a fighting stance, one foot back, left fist forward. “You haven’t done anything to me, Featherlight. For what it’s worth, I’ve read your file, and you don’t seem like such a bad man. But business is business, isn’t it? You understand that.”

While he’s talking, I channel some vitae into my wrists to stop the bleeding, some to the hole in my gut, and a little extra into my right hand. I think I’ve got a trick brewing. And… no, I don’t know where all this vitae is coming from. By rights I should have run out a while ago. Head’s still foggy. Tranq dart not completely metabolized yet. I’ll let you know when I figure it out, alright?

“Yeah. I understand.” I sigh, then take my own stance, which is almost exactly like his but much less practiced and more-or-less completely made up. Feet wide for stability, arms and hands open, ready to grab anything I can to establish leverage. Close quarters combat almost always turns into a wrestling match, and this one’s going to be a real street-splitter.

Unless I’m smart about it.

I say, “Okay. Let’s make a fight, big boy.”

He smirks. There’s a sound that’s all-too-familiar to me. It rings through the air for just a moment.

Then his titanic steel arms erupt in howling wreaths of electricity, arcing from electrodes in his shoulders all the way down to his knuckles. Blinding white serpents crackle and writhe dizzyingly across the plates, drowning out the feeble streetlamps and sending flickering split-second shadows in all directions. The air fills with an oppressive hum, like the warning buzz of a thousand electronic hornets.

Of course he’d have an electrite reactor in each arm. Of course he would. This is turning into a very bad night for me.

“By every god above and below, what is with you guys and electricity? I get it, it’s cool, very intimidating and painful, but isn’t electrite expensive? Look at yourself, this is complete overkill! How do you even get the funding for this crap?”

He doesn’t respond with words. He just charges.

… Heheh. Get it? Charge? Like a… like a battery. Electri- okay, yes, there are probably other things to be focusing on right now. I swell a small amount of vitae in my brain and overclock my processors again, just for the amount of time it’ll take for him to pound across the one hundred feet between us.

There’s so much current running across those plates that I don’t think it would paralyze me if I touched them. I think it would just vaporize my flesh outright. Hard to tell though, I’m not an electrical engineer. I think my… my boots? My boots’ soles are vulcanized rubber. Would that… help? Or just cook me faster? I should really read a book one of these days.

So I shouldn’t let him touch me. Thing is, he really wants to touch me. Because I’m popular and attractive. Need to step around any of his attempts to tag me with that metal. A tough proposition, considering his arms are almost six feet long and each nearly as wide as a grown man’s shoulders.

Hmm. Okay. As long as I don’t get blasted into a fine mist, I think I’ve got his number. Just have to use my strengths, and use his strengths against him.

I can’t hold the vitae much longer. I let it drain from my gray matter before my amygdala starts to boil. Time drags itself to normal speed. He’s barreling down on me with an even, conservative gait, not telegraphing any kind of attack. Face neutral. Not snarling, not grinning. Completely cool. Looking right at me.

Here goes nothing.

First move. Running palm thrust, right for my chest. Close-in move, not much commitment. Lets him react to my reaction.

As quick as my overdriven muscles will let me, I lurch my frustratingly huge body out of the way of his hand and toward him to the right, where I think he’ll have to turn to get to me. He’s enormous - he won’t be able to turn fast enough to get a bead on me.

His seventy-pound steel elbow snaps up at an incomprehensible speed and crashes into my right eye plate with the speed of a runaway truck.

My neck jerks and I’m knocked backward - out of his reach, thankfully. My vision blanks out in a haze of static. It comes back after the split-second system reboot, but my right eye stays dark. Half blind. I can smell fried metal, and feel an unpleasantly hot sensation in that half of my skull. If my ocular implants hadn’t been insulated from the rest of my cranial augmetics by a layer of neurosynth, my flash-fried prefrontal cortex would be hissing out of my ears right now.

He bears down on me again for the followup. A blockbusting fist rises like an iron sun.

Heh. I might be down one eye right now, but it’s you that needs to see more clearly, buddy.

I stumble forward like I still haven’t found my balance, then pass under his arm and slam my shin into his, hard. I fling my right hand back and toss the goopy handful of Super-Silk™ I’ve been building up. It splats onto the pavement.

I continue past him. My ankle-snagging blow to his leg sends the ludicrously topheavy clanker off-balance, and he trips. He lands chest-first into the pile of goo. The pavement-rattling wham behind my back is possibly the most satisfying sound I’ve ever heard.

I turn around. There’s still sparks and bolts of white energy hissing from his arms, but he can’t move. If his arms were normal-sized, he’d be able to get into the push-up position and find leverage, but his shoulders are so big and his chest is being held so close to the ground that he just can’t manage it. His comparatively tiny legs keep trying to kick and find a grip somewhere under the rest of him, but his torso is too heavy.

Like a turtle on its back, but in reverse. Heheh. So a… turtle on… its belly. Where they usually-

Look, I’ve had a long night. You try getting tranquilized, beaten, stabbed, blinded, and swimming through hallucinations before coming up with snappy analogies.

I take a few steps toward him. The lightning stops, letting the dark and quiet back into the street. He stops moving, face in the pavement, coming to terms with the fact that he really is glued to the street like a leaf stuck to a bit of spat-out chewing gum. Three inches off the concrete is a long way for an accomplished mercenary to fall.

I don’t know many of what I guess you would call “spells”. Super-Silk™ (patent pending) is one of them. I learned it by watching a spider one afternoon, a long time ago. It takes a lot of energy, and a minute to temporarily turn my palms’ sweat glands into spinnerets, but the payoff is a handful of some of the gnarliest stuff ever. There aren’t many occasions where a mitt full of industrial adhesive is advantageous, but I guess I found one.

He says to the wall in front of his chin, “Well. This is embarrassing.”

From a respectful distance behind him, I reply, “It’s alright. I’ve been in worse situations myself. Remind me to tell you about the time I ended up running down the street in Sector Sixteen wearing nothing but a smoldering pair of underpants chasing after a deeply nefarious and strangely athletic hot dog salesman. Talk about mortifying.”

“... I’m sure. This really is a remarkable compound, you know. You could make a tidy profit selling it to some chemical engineering firm or another.”

“It’s magical, friend. The worst thing a thing can be.”

“Ah. Yes.”

A brief pause. I take out a lollipop, because I’ve earned it. Peach-pear. A victorious combination.

“Well then. I appear to have fallen directly into your web. What happens next, Featherlight?”

That’s a good question.

I think I want to pull his head off his neck and bite into his skull like an apple. Right? I think that makes sense.

Do not do that.

Hmm. I dunno. I feel like it’s the right way to go. Eat him. I mean, I’ve got to, don’t I? I won. That’s just kind of what happens afterward. I can’t just leave him here, he’ll come back for revenge. Gotta... break him! Heehee. And the kind thing to do would be to put him out of his misery afterward, right? By eating him. It’s just the way of things.

Listen to yourself. Think of what will happen. Think of what you’ll turn into. Something is wrong.

I think something’s wrong.

There is something else here and it is wrong.

I don’t know what’s happening inside of me.

Then don’t listen to it. Listen to yourself instead. You can trust you. Just do what you know you’d normally do. Fucking talk to the guy instead of anything new and insane.

Yes. Yeah, that makes… sense.

A little something in my head makes a little noise and then stops being there.

I have no idea what that was. Or what any of this is. But there isn’t time to think about it now. Later. Keep it together, Baulric.

“I’m not sure. You put me in a bit of a… sticky situation, ahuhuhuh.”

“Hilarious. Be a gentleman, yes? If you’re going to kill me, do it with your fists instead of your… comedic stylings.”

I think about this for a moment. It’s been a while since I’ve had one of my eyes knocked out. Being a cyclops is distracting.

“I’d rather not kill you. I don’t have the stomach for murder, you know. If I don’t, will you just keep coming after me?”

A sigh. I see his head drop as he rests his forehead gently on the pavement. “That will depend.”

“On?”

“Things. Things that I can’t discuss. You’re a mercenary too, Featherlight. Use your brain.”

I understand what he’s driving at. He can’t openly divulge the particulars of the agreement between him and his employer. It would stain his reputation, and reputation is everything in mercenary work. Once you go against your word a single time, you’re an oathbreaker, and no longer reliable. This is all unwritten, but it has a serious effect in these circles, and can make it almost impossible to find work afterward.

I could just beat the information out of him. Or try, at least. But I’m not an experienced torturer, we’re out in public, and it won’t work anyway if he’s disciplined enough. Instead, I’ll have to engage my brain meat and see if he’s willing to talk in a different way. He might not exactly want to cooperate with me, but he is currently glued to the floor and at my mercy. He failed, and he knows the drill.

Tired. Legs tired, arms tired, brain tired. I sit down with my back against the hab building wall, right next to where his head is. Probably too close to him, but… I can’t help it. A little solidarity, even with the enemy, can go a long way. Besides, I almost ate him just now, apparently. I feel bad.

I’m also finding it hard to hate the guy, even if he tried to kidnap me. He’s a whore. All mercenaries are, ultimately, just with violence instead of sex. A living weapon, available for rent to anyone that can pay. Not the most honorable lifestyle, maybe, but when someone gets stabbed, you don’t blame the sword. Someone wielded this man against me. For the sake of my health, I need to figure out who.

“Does your employer make a habit of hiring mercenaries?”

“Not as far as I’m aware, no.”

“Do you like working with them?”

Now that I’m sitting by his side, I can see the left side of his face. He smiles slightly.

“They’re a touch dogmatic, I think. But they pay in the form of upgrades, which, as you can see, have not gone unappreciated. As you said, electrite is very expensive.”

Ah. Everything is illuminated.

“Do you work with them often?”

“Often enough for them to see me as an investment. Which I am.”

“Are you religious at all?”

“Not even slightly. But that doesn’t bother them. A wrench does not need to believe in what it tightens.”

Isn’t that the truth. “Are they prone to throwing away their tools once they’re broken, or no longer useful for the job?”

“It depends on whether the tool can be changed to better suit their purposes.”

“Are you easily changed?”

“Externally, yes, as you can see. Internally, no. I only select contracts that allow me a certain degree of autonomy. My employers are inclined to tolerate this, as my results speak for themselves.”

“Getting stuck to the ground is going to say something very different, isn’t it.”

“Yes. I imagine it will.”

I look him in the eye. “Do you hold grudges?”

This is the most important question I could ask him. He knows it, too. I can see him try to meet my gaze.

“No. I believe such feelings have no place in the mind of a professional. A point upon which my employers and I differ. Do you hold grudges?”

“Nah. I’m not much of a professional, but I am lazy, and I don’t have the energy to carry things like that around. Have you been lying to me?”

He scoffs. “No. I am an honest man. But that’s what a liar would say, isn’t it?”

I know he isn’t lying. A tendency toward dishonesty would show up somewhere in his vitae. His is the sharpest, pointy-est, most rigid facade I’ve ever seen. All blue-white, arrayed in a defensive formation so inhospitable and labyrinthine that I don’t know how he doesn’t get lost in it. And it’s freezing. It’s so much ice, spikes and spikes of it. I’ve only met two people whose vitae I can feel in the form of temperature. Emaphra on the hot side, and now this guy on the cold. These meticulously sharpened barbs of metallic frost are so completely devoid of heat that it almost feels like they’re reaching toward me, to impale my skin and absorb all my internal warmth. But they’re not. They’re perfectly, flawlessly still.

Not a liar. A lot of other things, but not a liar.

“What’s your name?”

“I’m sure I have no idea what you’re talking about, Baulric Featherlight.”

I nod, then stand up.

“I guess that’s it, then. Boy do I wish I had any idea who you are or who you work for. Talk about frustrating! But, I guess I’ll just have to find out some other time. Your discipline is too steely for me to break. Woe is me.”

He grunts. “Shall I stay here and be pecked clean by the scumbirds, then?”

I start walking toward the end of the street. I say loud enough for him to hear, “It’ll wear off in a few hours. Nice meeting you, Thunderhand. Better luck next time.”

“Until then, Mr. Featherlight.”

I leave the alley and turn out onto the primary streets. I’m not walking well. I don’t have much energy left. My neck hurts. My arms hurt. My brain is having difficulty holding on to… think-nuggets. The right half of my world is completely dark.

The sun is down. The streets are quiet. There’s no one there to witness me. Home is a long way away, and it really isn’t much of one to begin with. I’m bleeding and drugged and damaged, without the juice or expertise to mend myself. I’m being hunted by things and people that will keep trying to kill me until it finally sticks. All because I wanted to do the right thing for once. Serves me right.

And it turns out my sanity might have decided to turn its fangs on me too.

One of my kidneys is still leaking. My right arm is mangled and not moving very well. Neck is more bruise than it is banana. Half blind. Head full of chemical sludge.

I think I have to go to the doctor.

For certain… kinds of people in this city, getting hurt isn’t what you’d think it’d be, considering we live in a technological wonderland full of electric miracles and synthetic happiness. Doctors don’t work for free, and the current landscape of medical science is so scattershot, partisan, and weird in its lurching attempts to be perfect that a lot of people just don’t get cured.

Take me, for a big fat example. I sure as hell don’t have health insurance. No company would ever willingly cover my aberrant, forcibly-mutated ass. For all they know, I could either live forever or die in a puddle of my own biotic sludge three days from now. Way too much for the bean counters to want to factorize. I am magical, though - I’m just not going to die of the kinds of things that kill normal people. Normal people are fragile, and strangely enough, insurance companies are only really incentivized to provide coverage to those that are never going to need it. Funny how that works, huh?

The normal people just die.

And in that way, Wellspring City isn’t that much different from the damn wilderness, though it is way louder and smellier. If you break your leg, well… I hope you have lots and lots of money stuffed into a mattress somewhere. If not, I hope it doesn’t get infected, or start bleeding internally. If that doesn’t happen, I hope you don’t get into an accident from having to walk like an arthritic crab for the rest of your life, when your wife or whoever inevitably fails to set it properly and you insist on trying to stand on it. So you can keep working. So your kids don’t starve.

It’s a real fucking jungle in here for a lot of us. That said, there are some people out there that buck the proper channels.

They’re smart enough to know the internal workings of the human body, stealthy enough to steal from under the noses of the medical corporations, swift enough to stay one step ahead of both disease and bureaucracy, and compassionate enough to do all this for a fraction of what they’d earn if they shacked up with an actual hospital. They cure under the light of the moon, stitch flesh behind secretive sheet metal doors, steal medicines to pass from hand to hand under dark cloaks. They mend hurts without a license and risk both their purses and their lives to get disadvantaged people the care they’d never get otherwise.

The Shadow Surgeons.

If there’s any group of people in the city more deserving of respect, I’ve never heard of them. And of all the tenebrous cabals in this city, they are the ones you’d least want to fuck with. Would you screw around with a secret society of nameless scalpel-wielding ghosts that can pass through security systems like smoke and possess intimate firsthand knowledge of how to dismantle a human body ligament-by-ligament? Yeah, neither would I. The Surgeons take their jobs gravely seriously, their dedication makes them impossible to bribe, and I cannot stress enough how amazing they are at murder. Frankly, they scare the shit out of me, and I’m far from the only one.

That said, I’m friends with one of them. Because of course I am. Where did you think this was going? I’m a total buffoon - there’s no way I have enough technical know-how or manual dexterity to take care of all my implants, and the people that put them in me in the first place have uh… changed their tune about me, since the last time I was on their operating table. Without the Shadow Surgeons’ help I would have been a short-circuiting heap of bioelectric refuse a decade ago. Now, yes, I’m too broke to even afford the Surgeons’ discounted medical care, but I’m on their VIP list. Sort of. They might be a terrifying bunch of butchering ghouls, but they’re decent ghouls, and one of the only organizations in this entire damn town that’s been willing to cut me a break.

I get off the train in Sector Eight and bid a fond farewell to the respectable amount of blood I left on the compartment floor. With one hand clamped on my leaking flank and the other on my carved roast of a forearm, I drive my unsteady legs through the sanitized Inner Ring streets and toward a place of darkness and recuperation. Gotta get off the main thoroughfares quick. This is the Inner Ring, and a bleeding, sweating gutter slab like me is going to get held up for suspicious activity faster than you can say “innocent before proven guilty”.

Sector Eight is, interestingly enough, home to the largest medical district in the city, and the Surgeons buried one of their secret clinics here as both a matter of practicality and a show of defiance. It’s in the top layer of the Subterrane. The secret passages that take you there are, uh… secret, and also heavily monitored by the Surgeons’ security systems, which are extensive and multi-layered enough to put even the Brotherhood’s electronic paranoia to shame.

I slip underground using a false sewer grate in a utility alley nearby, and start picking my way through the lightless stony passages. Some of these are so narrow that I have a hard time fitting through when I’m at my best, so with a blind eye, a clipped wing, and about an entire teenager’s worth of blood already lost, I figure I’ve got about a 62% chance of making it to the Surgeons’ front door before I pass out and hemorrhage quietly to death in the dark.

Just as the true darkness starts to close in on my half-functioning night vision, I come to the unassuming steel hatch. It’s right over there, at the end of this passage. I can… I can make it, can’t I? Can’t I take these steps? There’s only… what, a few hundred left? I think I can do it.

And that’s when the ground decides to go sideways.

Oh, that ground. It’s always playing pranks on me. I give it a little kiss, now that we’re so close. You’re such a goofball, ground. You’ve had your fun, though. Wanna go back the right way up, so I can get over to that door there? I’ve gotta get in that door. I don’t really remember why, but if I’m this motivated, it’s probably… pretty important.

Huh. Maybe it was only about a 14% chance, now that I think about it. What was I thinking? What am I thinking?

I’m so tired.

i’m sorry