These were strange voices. A multitude of them, all distorted and scrambled, coming in just as my eyes closed. Disturbed and restless, they forced themselves open, revealing overwhelming darkness. The only other thing in this void I floated in was a flickering blue shade, so incongruent and hard to make out; a human, perhaps a foetus or a boy. The distorted whispering surrounded me like a sinister audience, speaking in forked tongues.
Such portents, from my lifetime of strange rituals, pagan methods and arcane bounties, dripped with malice. Terrible, dark energies channelled for things man was never meant to conjure or toy with. I had slain many who tampered with such power, but it never stopped haunting me even in my quietest moments. Here, it was no different.
I tried to shake myself back into the waking world. Yet, no matter how much I struggled and resisted, the void only dragged me further in like a hungry, dark trench. Its harassment of my body, from the constricting of my throat and lungs, the scratching in my ears, to the feverish licking of the back of my neck, made the ordeal tortuous; a reminder of how small all of us really were to this world.
What it did not stop, however, was my awareness. Soon, I made out a wholly different whispering. It was meek, laced with confusion, and utterly terrified of the void around me.
Where am I?
What’s going on?
What did you do to me?!
Please, someone help–
The voices gelled together into a malignant choir, overpowering this voice. At the head of this symphony was a conductor whose tone instantly made me struggle harder than before. Like the shade, I hadn’t a clue who it belonged to. The similarities ended there, for this voice carried its identity with pride: an entity so ancient, venomous, and hungry, it had to be older than the universe itself.
WE ARE NEARLY THERE, FRIEND.
ONE PROBLEM TO FIX, OUT OF MANY.
IT IS WHAT YOU WANTED, RIGHT? TO FIX THEM ALL?
ALL WE NEED IS MORE BLOOD.
Threads began unwinding in my head. This void came to me not as a simple coincidence with the end of the Nightstalker. This was part of its cursed existence. This shade at the middle had to be the truth behind its unearthly savagery, pulled and played with by this evil around us. I couldn’t hope to ever win against such power, but I could try and save the shade.
Though the void’s grasp grew stronger, I found that my strength was returning. I kicked, tore, and flailed towards the shade. In the end, I never got closer, restrained once more. The corner of my eyes saw the void pulsate with the same green lightning that emerged from the Nightstalker, spreading outwardly like snaking veins. Their hues grew stronger and stronger, snaking towards the shade. Then, I was treated to the brightest flash I’ve ever seen thus far. A hideous, choked scream filled the void.
A resounding thunderclap filled the air, weakening the walls of my heart. The flesh within my nostrils burned, as if touched by brimstone, while my ears rang painfully from that deafening clap. When the flash had dissipated enough– oddly enough, not disappeared– I found myself face-down on a grimy floor. The smell rushing back to me was horrible, to say the least, but that wasn’t even the start of a new set of issues.
The radiation warning returned in full force. I watched as the cracked screen in front of me flickered in a weak amber glow. As I rolled myself upwards, the warning itself broke apart into dozens of scattered electronic splinters. Barely able to move my head to the side, my eyes caught the sight of the Satine’s insides being consumed by an even larger inferno, only marginally put out by the rain. That wasn’t what I was focused on, however.
Nearby, covered in rubble, was TARN’s chassis, his right arm in the midst of transforming into a medical tool. The warning, while primarily for me, made it clear why he remained deathly inert. Make no mistake, however; I was not confused why he was here all of a sudden. He must’ve found me as I was stuck in that void, just before the lightning hit, and knew of my wounds, else he wouldn’t have brought out that arm.
As I slowly stood up, braving the fire in my own body, and walked forth, he shuddered. There was soft clicking and whirring from within his chassis, his lights weakly pulsing, and his head creaked towards mine. Not too long after a message from him appeared, almost ineligible over the helmet’s damage. The radiation was certainly responsible for the fragmented way it appeared for me.
The targ-gGGget is-is–is regenNn????ting; ooo0x-ginal directives not fulfilled, s-sir.
That much was clear. I ripped off my helmet, now a hindrance than anything else, and desperately looked for my battle axe with a harpoon in hand. Once I had dug it up from a nearby rubble patch, my head spun to face the grave of the Nightstalker. By Tuah, the sight was blinding and nauseating.
A frozen lightning bolt, draped in shades of sickly green, had struck the beast’s resting place, emitting a horrible, ear-grinding hum. From its epicentre, a terrible sensation made itself known throughout my body, like a sentient electric shock purposely running through my body. It had blown apart the room, extinguished every flame in its wake. The smell of charred corpses was strong- not strong enough to make me hurl, but enough to let me know that my brief nightmare was coming to life.
From ashes and dust, I saw the Nightstalker’s remains glow under the bolt. Its armoured corpse rose at a glacial pace, jagged edges sticking out from where the harpoon had struck it. Surging with violent energy, the scorched ‘scales’ it wore rapidly fused and grew back– each major act of regrowth causing it to contort in strange, uncomfortable angles. When the corpse finally stood upright, its human-like form was gone; a digitigrade, spine-backed thing built like a demon remained.
Unsteady, chaotic droning and harsh rainfall accompanied the Nightstalker’s first awkward movements. The bolt had vanished into wisps of eerie ghostlights, leaving us in the darkness. What would it do now? Go after its original quarry again? I tightened my grip on the axe handle, trying to remember where TARN was. As my foot clinked against my friend’s chassis, the Nightstalker’s lights turned on and slowly turned my way. The droning grew oppressively loud.
Staring right at the beast, I looked deep into the six, emotionless portholes it now called eyes. The way it scrutinised me without blinking, if it was even capable of such, told me everything- that it knew who had shot it. Its toothy maw opened and behind obscuring green haze was an endless, brightly-lit chasm lined with grinding metal fangs. I found what remained of my confidence and, gripping my axe, prepared for the inevitable.
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Before the thing could attack, a baritone ‘kaihuo!’ echoed throughout the building, preluding a hail of gunfire that hammered the Nightstlaker’s armour. Mengdi's men had finally rallied themselves– whether they were effective, I wasn’t sure. From where I stood, their pitiful retaliation seemed only to make it glower with rage. What it did in fortune, however, was provide me an opportunity to drag TARN away and think up some kind of tactic to beat this thing. I took my chances and retreated, running until the touch of lightly-charged rain glossed over my face.
The sky above us rumbled. Most of the streets around us had been cleared out, including the old matron’s coffee shop, leaving me alone with the cold body of my brother and the orchestra of violence next to us. My voice, hoarse and fragmented after a good hour of non-stop fighting, pleaded with TARN to wake up.
“Damn it, damn it, damn it… come on, I need you here, brother! Not after all we’ve been through.”
No matter how much I rewired and hacked his circuits, he refused to awaken. I pried open the accessway to his radiation shielding components and, seeing the damage the Nightstalker had wrecked, made me realise how badly he was pushing his own luck. After moments of frantic, desperate repair, his one eye flickered weakly, some life squeezed out of his core. I sat him upright on the steps of the Satine and made sure he was able to move his arms. All the while, my mouth was busy babbling panicked reassurances that he eventually snapped me out of with a single gesture.
“Sir, I’m operational.”
“No, you’re not,” I began, “your rad-shielding, it’s burned up. Everything else is barely functioning, bullet holes everywhere and shrapnel in your myomer bundles. ‘Acceptable parameters’ my ass, TARN. You’re a couple doorsteps from frying your neural cortex–”
He put his hand on my shoulder softly. Though his grip rested upon my armour with calculated lightness, there was an undeniable weight on my shoulders. We both looked at each other in the rain before I let out a tired sigh, feeling blood washing down my chin.
“Even close to death, you’re dutiful. I don’t need you going on me for that, you know.”
“It was what I was built for. You have already seen me in worse states, anyway.”
My face scrunched up, “I can’t let you back in there. The Nightstalker, it won’t even need to attack you to finish you off”
“I understand. I will wait here, do what repairs I can.”
“Good, good. Should be no worries about anyone taking potshots at you.”
TARN shook his head. “Deadlock will find themselves slightly short on this contract,” then, with his eye flickering in a shade of green, he asked me a question, “you were dreaming in there, sir, convulsing, trapped in some kind of nightmare before it awoke. What happened?”
My brows furrowed as I tried to remember the shade’s form, “I- I can’t remember clearly. Two actors in a void, one scared and one malicious. An inner struggle, then a flash of light. That much I can remember.”
“Is it possible, then, that our quarry–”
“Quiet,” I said. My sudden venomous tone was deliberate. I did not want to confront this possibility again, “whatever coincidences we have witnessed following this thing is just that. Coincidences.”
“Sir–”
“Enough!” My voice was loud enough that I recoiled, “There is nothing more to this. We have seen what it has wrought, what it can do, and that we cannot let live. It is our job, brother, that we end this nightmare.”
At that very moment, supporting my fiery words, a man flew out from the Satine screaming. His leg was gone and soon, his entire body was too; exploding in a shower of gore from the sheer speed of his launch. I looked back and TARN, who had deflated noticeably, resigning myself to pity. As soon as I sat down, forgetting that we were on the clock, I reigned in my words from earlier and spoke softly.
“...a nightmare for the wicked.”
The admittance caught TARN off-guard. “Junshi?”
It took me a while to arrange my thoughts. When I finally did so, Javol’s heavily-armed team had appeared in the distance, heading towards the building. Figuring I did not have much time, I chose to voice my doubts carefully.
“Listen, old friend. That anger I let out It’s not for you. It’s for myself. After all that we’ve investigated, all that we’ve done in pursuit of the hunt, I’m not even sure if we’re fighting a monster or protecting one. We’ve done our fair share of dirty shit, yes. That’s how we’ve always rolled. But this contract- this target… the only thing that makes it horrific is its methods of violence. It hasn’t touched a single damn undeserving person in our three months of following it at all. Do you remember that interview with the mechanic? Don’t play the recording, just remember it.”
Javol’s men were getting closer. TARN let out a low hum, then nodded. “Yes. He was severely traumatised, but his injuries were purely collateral. He mentioned the beast helping him, but we chalked it up to hallucinatory fumes.”
“What if it wasn’t? What if,” I raised my shivering hands, “we’ve been chasing something that’s been righting wrongs? Delivering twisted justice?”
“Even so, there can be no excuse for its barbarism. The path it walks on will only lead to even more violence. Once Mengdi is gone, it will pursue more like her, addicted to its vigilantism. Soon, we’ll be in its sights from what we’ve done.”
TARN was never one to mince words. As soon as he said that, I fell on my back, confronted with seemingly only one outcome for the night. The reward on that bounty seemed less and less appealing now. Before there was any sort of rebuttal or discussion, the marching of heavy patrol boots had finally become audible over the rain. A coarse, wearied voice called out for us, having ordered his men to stack up at the front door of the Satine.
“Sir Junshi?” Without delay, he called for his hunter team’s medic and technician to attend to me. I could only stomach a few seconds of bright lights and oppressive questioning before I waved them away. The constable still wore his look of surprise even under a heavy-set helmet, “Good Gods, what happened to you two?”
“What do you think, Constable?”
He looked at the Satine, then back at me, narrowly missing out the remains of the thrown henchman behind them.
“I’d hoped you got the situation under control. Once we saw our radiation counters go wild, we had to intervene. What areas we didn’t evacuate before are now clear, about a few districts more. CELURIT’s gearing up to get involved as well.”
“By Tuah, they’ll only fuck things up more.”
“I tried delaying them, but the council was adamant. We’re here as first-encounter assessment,” Javol said, “your robot friend’s testimony did get a good word in to them, but you don’t look fit for service, sir.”
To prove him wrong, I bit my tongue, endured the biting pain of my injuries and stood tall with my axe at the side.
“Mark me wrong. What’s the cause of the radiation spike?”
I briefed him as best as I could. By the time I was done, the rest of the hunter team was now whispering to themselves, shaken by what they’d heard. Javol and his team were essentially beat cops with some measure of military training. Their chances against an inhumanly fast, bulletproof thing that just swept through Deadlock mercenaries were pitifully low.
“I’m surprised that crazy lady’s guys are still holding up against the thing.”
“Mengdi’s got the best on her payroll. That, or the most desperate.”
“Don’t suppose you have a plan?” Javol asked with utmost sincerity, “unless you want to wait for our support.”
“I have something of a plan,” I said, taking the lead at the entrance, “And I have to see this one through.”