“Mai! Can you hear us?”
“It’s no good, she’s going to be out for a while.”
Mai really wished the voices would go away. She was enjoying the warmth of the darkness, and the softness beneath her and she knew that if she opened her eyes it would all come to an end.
“I think she’s awake,” said another, deeper voice. “You can see her eyelids moving.”
Dammit, thought Mai before slowly opening her eyes. She was surrounded by three blurred faces looking down at her. All of them were wearing sewer company uniforms. Two were female, the last one being a cyborg of some sort. Half of their face was composed of grey pallid fresh marked by a thick red scar between it and the metal which made up the other half.
Too tired to even be surprised at what she was seeing, Mai slowly pushed herself up until she was sitting.
“How do you feel?” asked the cyborg, its voice deep and melodic, human half creasing in worry.
Mai gave that question a thought, moving limbs and wriggling extremities to see if she still had them all, and whether they were fully working.
“Fucking knackered,” she said, just as the cyborg opened their mouth again. It shut its mouth with a snap before giving a half smile.
“Do you remember what happened?” it asked, placing a hand gently on her shoulder.
Mai frowned for a second, and then burst into tears as the memory of Fat John’s death came racing back.
“We know you tried to save him,” said one of the women. She was black, with an imperial purple afro and red-eyes. Mai thought she was captivatingly beautiful and could only stare at her. “Bugger, sorry. I’m still saving to have my GLAMOUR skill deactivated.”
A hand gently grasped Mai’s chin, moving her head until she broke her gaze and met the eye of the cyborg.
“Apologies, Jayne was a pleasure slave before she was indentured for using her GLAMOUR to manipulate her masters and mistresses,” they said. “Just try to avoid looking directly into her eyes for more than a couple of seconds.”
“How long have I been out?” Mai asked, adrenaline flooding her body as she checked her retinal monitor’s clock.
“Don’t worry,” they answered, “we’ve been moving you around the whole time whilst you healed. It has only been precisely two hours, six minutes and five seconds since we recovered you from the scene of the battle.”
Jayne gave a visible shudder, making a ‘brrr’ noise with her lips.
“What you did to them,” she paused, mouth working as tears spilled down her cheeks. “They deserved everything. And more!”
“Did I get all of them?” Mai took the glass she was offered by the other woman. White, she was in her fifties and Mai had seen her around but never worked on the same shift with her. The three horizontal stripes on her breast pocket marked her out as a shift leader.
“You got the first lot,” the shift leader replied. “But there are more. Your … show garnered a lot of attention. People weren’t expecting that from you. You’ve become quite … the star.” She spat onto the floor, waving away at what surely would have been a fine notification. By the look on her face, she thought it was worth it.
“No,” Mai whispered. “No, I don’t suppose they were. People keep underestimating me.”
Images of what she had done played across her mind. And whilst she was utterly revolted by what she had done, she still felt no shame or guilt. Not like when she had killed Johnny.
Grimtooth had killed one of her closest friends. And the consequence of that had been an horrific death. Taking another sip of water, she used the motion to quickly look deep down in herself. And found she had changed. She felt harder. Not brittle like iron might be. But hard like titanium. Another sip left her still unsure as to whether it was a good or bad thing.
The one thing that did worry her was the way she had become almost automaton-like whilst killing Grimtooth. She’d been aware of her actions. But at the same time it had felt as though someone, or even some thing, else was guiding her.
Still, if they can get me through this Culling, maybe I should let them just take me over!
“We’ve had word that more Cullers are coming. And they’ll have all tapped into the holos and seen what you, and what Fat John and his people did,” the cyborg said. “They won’t fall for the same trap again.”
Mai put her face in her hands for a few seconds as she mulled that over. There was only one thing she could do.
“I’m running. I can’t put you or the people of Excretiaville at risk again. I’ll head back into the sewers and deal with any that come after me myself. I won’t lose any more friends!” She spat that last, slamming a fist into the mattress of her cot. But what she truly meant by ‘won’t’ was ‘can’t’.
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First Andries, then Johnny, now Fat John, three of the best friends I ever had were either dead because of me or at my hands.
Snatching at her cover, she wiped away the tears tickling her cheek as they ran down her face. There was no protest from the others that she should stay. No demands that they go with her to assist in facing any other traitors there might be. Just a silent acceptance.
“How long do I have?”
“The first will be here in thirty minutes,” said Jayne. “They’re coming down Elevator Shaft Two Fifty. Others will be entering via Elevator Shaft One Thirty Five and will arrive in roughly one hour.”
“We tried to stop the Elevators from leaving this level,” said the still unintroduced shift leader. “But that started to affect people’s shifts and money. We couldn’t hold them back any longer.”
Mai nodded and gave a shrug of acceptance. They’d helped her in the only way they could, for as long as they could.
“Thank you. You bought me precious time.”
Bringing the map of Excretiaville on her retinal monitor, she saw that the elevators were essentially at opposite ends of the town. Looking at where other elevators were located, she had a sinking feeling that any other groups would use different elevators in such a way that a ring was created around the town.
She threw the map up onto the wall and started marking the shafts already being used, and the ones she thought any follow-up Cullers would use.
“All points of the compass,” said Jayne. “They can come down different shafts and try and hunt you in their own sectors whilst avoiding any other Cullers.”
“If they have a truce that would be the most logical plan,” said the cyborg. “And yet, because of the Deadzone, there is a … deadzone where you might be able to slip into the sewers and away from Excretiaville.”
They marked the map, drawing a route which skirted - but never quite entered – the Deadzone before entering normal sewers. It would also lead her to another area of the city she hadn’t been in.
“Right, I need to visit the Scavenger Queen and top up on BIO-BOOST and food. Then I’ll head off along that route. If anyone follows me, I’ll deal with them, and the good people of Excretiaville will be safe.”
“We’ve already sorted that,” said the shift leader. Realising that she wasn’t going to be introduced, Mai ignored common courtesy and read her name. ‘Bene Fitz.’ Turning away for the second, Bene lifted something off of a table before turning back. In her hands she held two bottles of BIO-MASS BOOST. “It’s on credit. Five per cent interest per day. She gave you mate’s rates.”
Mai very much doubted that. Blink-clicking on her retinal monitor she opened up her messages, clicked on the invoice, winced at the amount, and sent the money.
“With mates like her …” she didn’t finish as they all chuckled.
“We’ve also prepared a backpack for you. Lots of lichen and protein bars. Physical torch, physical staff. Help you keep your BIO-MASS for when you truly need it,” said Jayne, jerking her head over her shoulder.
And that was that. There was no other reason for her to remain, and it was clear that whilst the others wished her well, they also wished she was gone. Without ceremony, Mai took her things, thanked them one last time and left.
It took longer than she imagined it would to leave Excretiaville. It was as though the events of the last few days had turned her into some kind of talisman. Everywhere she walked, workers would stop and stare, some reaching out to touch her.
Those not brave enough to touch her would call out her name, some barely mouthing it as they watched her walk the streets. Whilst most would meet her gaze, others would shuffle and look away as their eyes met.
How have I changed such that they would look at me like this? She thought as a child hid behind her fathers. Neither of the men were willing to meet her gaze, bowing their heads and stealing upward glances.
Of course, she knew how she’d changed. She’d become Vengeance Personified when she killed Grimtooth. She had transmogrified from a person into a being. A state of consciousness that went beyond sentience and into the realm of myth and legend.
Briefly, she had been one of the Unbeings. Whispers had followed her as she walked, and she had struggled to hear what they were saying. Initially she thought they were speaking whole sentences, but then she had finally heard a child – it was always the children who were brave enough to say what their parents either wouldn’t or couldn’t – call out the word.
Although time was tight, she was certain she could make her way through Excretiaville far quicker than her enemies, even if they did have numbers and others on their side. Curiosity piqued until she could stand it no more, she stepped into an alcove, blinked open a search function and set the Unbeing as a parameter.
She had a result faster than the blink of an eye.
Unbeing. A creature of myth and legend. A creature of nightmares. The complete and utter subsummation of a human’s soul into a state of consciousness transcending that of humanity and the concepts which bind such definition.
During the state of Unbeing, the former human is more metaphysical in nature and ruled by one sole goal. Revenge, Justice, Anger, Avarice, no matter what the state, the goal becomes everything until it has been achieved. At that point, the Unbeing reverts back to their former nature.
Legend has it that once a person has been an Unbeing, the eyes of the universe are upon them, and that they might revert back to Unbeing in times of extreme stress and which match events of their previous Unbeing.
That last paragraph made her heart skip a beat. She’d never known that Unbeing was such a thing, nor had she ever believed that she was capable of the actions she had carried out following Fat John’s death.
How in the Five Heavens am I going to avoid Unbeing again? Will I just kill the person I’m after, or will those around me also die? Will I be able to control it, or will it control me?
She couldn’t be responsible for any more deaths of people she cared about. Mai wanted to be able to look Li in the eyes without seeing judgement or condemnation for what she had done to have them reach the Celestial Court.
Whilst her goal, that of getting back to Li, remained the same, Mai now knew that she had limits as to what she could – or would – do in order to get there. If there was an enemy that needed killing, she would kill them.
But she wouldn’t let herself turn into a creature such as an Unbeing again. And to do that, she realised she would have to control her emotions, bite down on them. Essentially try to become that which she was afraid of becoming, but on her terms.
Because if she managed to reach her sister once again and found that she was feared, or reviled, by the one person who truly loved her, it would be her undoing. Everything she had done up to that point would be rendered utterly pointless. All the killing, and all the deaths of those that cared for, wasted.
I can’t have that, she has to be proud of what I did, not terrified of what I became.
With that in mind, she set off once again, this time trying to do her best to ignore the crowds and the people, cutting through buildings to shorten the time it would take her to reach the sewers.