I leisurely moved through the halls of the Lady Black. Titan was no doubt waiting for me in the fighting pits, but I had no need to cater to his every craving for violence. My interest lay with another of my guests.
Biometric security systems scanned my retina and voice before permitting entry to Dr. Salanna’s office and laboratory. I stepped in and found the good doctor standing with a twitchy hand hovering over a pistol holstered on her right hip. She swallowed nervously before removing her hand from the pistol.
“Alessandro.” She kept her voice under control.
“Salanna,” I gave my nearest approximation of a warm smile.
There was a micro-twitch in her eyelids and her body reflexively stiffened at my smile. I almost laughed.
“You have a terrible smile.” She said rather matter-of-factly.
“I’m still working on it.” My armor’s servos softly purred as I entered her laboratory and began inspecting her equipment and a variety of biological samples she’d requisitioned.
“How are the new genetic material analyzers and sequencers working?”
“They’re functional, although not quite as precise as anything Sinodyne or Starlink uses. They still need a few calibrations but I’m confident I’ll have them within acceptable margins of error.”
“Acceptable?” I raised an eyebrow. “What is an acceptable margin of error, doctor?”
“Less than one thousandth of one percent.”
“Ah,” I turned around and regarded her with a mocking smile. “And here I thought you just stuck me full of whatever mods and chemicals you pulled off of the street.”
She tensed momentarily before she was able to speak. “You have a remarkably dry sense of humor, Alessandro.”
Changing the subject. My skull tingled with the anticipation of cornering her verbally, not that it mattered or served a purpose, Salanna’s Psychoconditioning had changed my neurochemistry to derive pleasure from sadistic opportunities.
“I’ve been told I’m a changed man.” I ignored the buzzing of my altered mind and turned away to give her some breathing room. “More importantly, have you made progress on fixing the flaw in my genetic code?”
“Initial analysis of the samples you’ve provided have shown a rare fault in the gene responsible for the development of the Saran Filament.”
“I thought such a failure was common. Blindness or irreparable ocular deformities manifested in no less than 17 of the men I’d been caged with in the earliest stages.”
“It was, but yours was different.” She answered. “In all of the others, the mutations caused an autoimmune response to the Saran hormones responsible for the development of the Filament, in you, it expressed as an insensitivity to the hormone.”
I slowly turned and looked down at her. “Can this be corrected?”
“The probability is currently low, but it is possible.”
I nodded. “Be prepared to destroy all of your data and to kill yourself.”
Her eyes went wide. “But I’ve just barely started! You can’t kill me! Who will work on a cure, or teach you how to perform the Nosferatu augmentations?”
A harsh chuckle slipped out of me. “I have no plans to kill you, doctor, but Titan might roast you on a spit and snack on your raw innards if he kills me.”
Salanna said nothing as I turned away from her and went back to the door. I stopped and inhaled deeply, savoring the hint of stress pheromones in her sweat despite the strong chemical odor of anti-septics and disinfectants.
“He has challenged me to a duel in the fighting pits. With my ‘guests’ as the prize.” I looked back at her over my shoulder with a mocking smile. “I will be at a disadvantage since he has Nervesight, and I do not. A pity that you hadn’t treated the genetic failure when I was an initiate.”There was nothing more for either of us to say as I left.
The fighting pits awaited, and Titan was no doubt infuriated by the wait.
Among the Talons of the Nosferatu, exceedingly few traditions were a commonality. A single chamber would be refitted or even constructed to house a circular raised pit, twenty feet in diameter and filled with harsh sand taken from a world hostile to life, aboard whatever vessel the Nosferatu inhabited. A dueling chamber where disputes could be settled in the only way that many of my barely human kin would accept.
I strode into the fighting pits, where a large crowd of baseline human crew members had anxiously gathered in anticipation of a vicious duel between Nosferatu. Titan was already pacing in the pit, his blood-stained chainsword in his main hand and a spiked club in his off-hand. He was large, even among Nosferatu, standing at an easy 6 feet 11 inches tall, and his broad, muscular frame set him at a daunting 320 pounds. Titan’s ghastly pale skin was slick with sweat and already mottled with the coarse red sand of the pit. He’d been exercising to deal with his frustration, but now he staring at me with naked malice as he idly revved the chainsword’s engine and set its teeth spinning at dizzying speeds.
The threat of imminent, lethal violence set my skull ablaze with anticipation and my body twitched with excitement. I donned a pair of clawed vambraces and clenched my fists as I secured them to my forearms.
Father Leon was sitting on a bench, enjoying a medium-rare steak and some wine served by members of the crew. Rictus was squatting outside of the pit alongside the ebony-skinned Voodoo, who was squatting over a little ring of bones and talons with an ivory staff carved from the thigh bone of some great alien beast, reinforced with synthetic materials, and decorated with an assortment of jagged gemstones, sharp bones, and bits of metal on the top-end. In his other hand was a carved wooden cup that rattled with random items until he looked up, and his malevolent orange eyes locked on my own as I approached.
He broke out into a vicious smile and stuck the cup out at me. I peered inside, and was bemused to see several bones, claws, talons, fangs, and broken blade pieces and a thin sheen of a liquid that faintly smelled of Titan’s saliva.
I snorted and slit my palm, blood welled up and I poured it into the odd mixture. Voodoo laughed giddily and shook the mixture, chanting in creole while Rictus narrowed his eyes. Voodoo tossed the mixture into the little ring of bones and he sighed with satisfaction as the little shards, slathered in blood and spit, clattered onto the deck.
“New Blood, you have a bold fortune.”
Titan growled in frustration and revved his engine, which got a chuckle out of Voodoo.
“You’re awfully confident in those claws of yours,” Rictus sized me up. “You sure you don’t want to use something else?”
“No!” Voodoo held up his hand in protest. “The Loa are amused, if he changes his weapons so will his fortune change.”
I snorted. “I only did this to humor you Voodoo, tell me my fortune when I win or when I die.”
Voodoo laughed and beat Rictus’ chest with the back of his hand. “Watch this, brother! Watch, this will be a great fight!”
“When has a duel never been great, Voodoo? And tell me his fortune, what do your spirit-gods say?”
Adrenaline burned through my bloodstream as I stepped up into the pit, the Psychoconditioning setting my skull and nervous system ablaze with the anticipation of bloodshed and pain. The unmodded human mob cheered, equally thrilled by the prospect of witnessing the gene-modded monstrosities who rule over them rip each other apart. The cloying odor of Titan’s blood filled my nostrils and my attention was drawn to the still bleeding wounds in his sword arm.
“You done fucking your little toy?” Titan snarled and pointed his chainsword at me, blood dripping from his arm to the coarse sand. “Maybe if you beg, I’ll be merciful and slit her throat before I strip the meat from her ribs.”
I lowered my stance and brought my claws into a low guard. “You delude yourself, Titan! You haven’t even treated that wound you got from our debate on the Veridia!”
He revved his chainsword and the murderous weapon loosed a banshee’s howl. “It is no delusion, New Blood! You possess neither the bloodthirst of a Nosferatu, nor the gift of Nervesight! I will drag out your suffering as I cripple you, and while writhe like a worm I will dismantle each of your pets and toys while you watch!”
I couldn’t stop a grin that exposed my elongated canines. “Your empty howling will be as useless as your Nervesight in this fight, Titan!”
Father Leon stood and thrust his hand skyward. Titan crouched low and poised himself to launch himself across the pit. I shifted my weight and rocked into a steady bounce on the balls of my feet, learning the way that the sand gave way under my weight and adjusting my movement to compensate.
“Warriors!” Father Leon cried out. “You have come to stain the sands of the pit crimson with your own blood! Now, reveal the gift of your eyes!”
The whites of Titan’s eyes turned a dull orange and spider webs of pale orange spread from the edge of his eyes up and into his forehead as his Saran filament began filtering light to perceive electrical impulses. He grinned seeing that I could not use Nervesight, false confidence derived from the advantage of being able to read my nervous system.
The prospect of dismantling him despite this disadvantage sent a jolt of anticipation through my body.
“Rend flesh from bone!” Father Leon screamed.
Sand flew as we both launched ourselves across the pit. Titan’s Helljaw chainsword loosed a devilish shriek as he brought the full might of his greater height and mass to bear in a single strike. I moved to deflect and counter-attack his strike, and he pulled the strike and swung for my skull with the spiked club in his off-hand. The sonorous clang of my claws on my right gauntlet smashing against his club and the metallic scraping of my left-hand claws preemptively batting aside his chainsword echoed across the chamber before the crowd could even begin to cheer.
I thrust for his throat with my right claws and Titan evaded the strike, his Nervesight enabling him to read the electrical impulses that initiated the attack, and he attempted to smash the club into my head. I threw my skull forward, simultaneously threatening to smash his nose and evading the club before dropping down to tackle his waist when he pulled his own head back to avoid the headbutt. Reading my nervous system meant that Titan could quickly adjust his footing to brace for the tackle as he moved to smash the pommel of his chainsword against my temple.
Titan saw the nerves firing off in my legs, but the misinterpretation of those nerve impulses meant he could not react in time to evade my skull as I sprang straight up and smashed his mouth with another explosive headbutt. His head snapped back as teeth went flying and Titan howled with rage as he threw himself forward into a brutish full-body tackle.
I grunted as I was sent flying by the impact and reflexively parried his shrieking chainsword before my feet even hit the sand. Titan’s Psychoconditiong spurred him into a berserk fury and he pressed the advantage with a murderous backstroke with his chainsword that flowed into a savage blow with his club that perforated my flesh and cracked ribs when I parried the chainsword. My heart rate spiked and my altered mind raced with the burning need to butcher Titan as pain flared in my right flank.
I bore my canines in a hateful snarl and stabbed at his face with my left claws, an act that forced Titan to parry my claws with the guard of his chainsword. He grinned as he turned the chainsword and gunned its engine as he drove it down towards my exposed forearm. I twisted my left to bring the claws back into play and brought my right claws in to my shoulder just quick enough that the chainsword’s teeth bit into the claws instead of my arm and showered our sweat-slicked bodies in sparks. Titan grinned and smashed his club at my skull as he drove the chainsword down with his weight. I snarled through grit teeth as I dipped my head just enough to turn a crushing strike into a glancing blow that tore my scalp even as the chainsword’s spinning teeth threatened to rip my hands down and expose my vulnerable flesh and tear through it.
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Titan smiled wickedly as he pressed his off-hand down on his chainsword’s guard, pressing my claws down far enough that his chainsword’s teeth could bite into the skin across my shoulder and upper arm, searing pain jolted from my shoulder as the weapon pulled itself a centimeter deep before I marshaled the strength to arrest it. Blood and sparks showered us both as I strained with my full might to keep the chainsword from pulling itself into my arm and to keep it from tearing my claws out of the way.
“Face it, New Blood,” Titan leaned in close as he locked eyes with me, no doubt watching the nerves in my face firing as my lips curled and twitched. “You are sentimental and weak, a waste of genes unfit to hunt with us.”
“All this talk!” I roared as the warped neurochemistry of my brain and nervous system transmuted searing hot pain into blood-boiling wrath.
I violently twisted my body and threw his chainsword aside with both of my blades and Titan stumbled a half-step forward. That singular instance of imbalance enabled me to slam the crown of my skull against his eyebrow with a satisfying crack. Titan growled as his left orbital bone fractured and he threw an elbow up toward my skull in a savage strike that exposed his armpit. I grit my teeth and lowered my head, allowing Titan to split my forehead with a resounding impact that snapped my head back as I slammed the claws of my right vambrace into his armpit.
I made no attempt to recover my posture or regain my balance and instead focused on twisting my claws to snag and sever the tendons and ligaments in Titan’s shoulder. The crowd cheered over his infuriated screams as his left arm went limp, his enhanced physiology unable to account for the catastrophic damage. His eyes were manic with the unhinged blood rage of Nosferatu Psychoconditioning and Titan dropped his club and curled his arm up, the only movement he could make with his ruined shoulder, and entrapped my forearm with the bio-engineered strength of his left hand.
Titan’s chainsword revved as he slammed it toward my face and I brought the claws of my left vambrace to bear. Sparks showered us as the screaming weapon’s teeth raked at my claws, and Titan hammered the chain-bladed weapon down with savage force that brought the shrieking teeth inches closer to my neck and jaw with each earth-shattering strike.
Unable to dislodge my right claws from his armpit and with my left claws entangled in a faltering defense, I snarled as I violently twisted my right claws to snag them on his collar bone and extended my right arm to leverage him off-balance. Titan bore his elongated canines in a vindictive snarl as he swung the revving chainsword at my legs. I dropped my left hand to guard my leg and swung my right leg at Titan’s left as he redirected his strike to bypass my guard and slice open my belly.
Titan cried out in surprise as his left leg went flying out and he dropped to his right knee, and his cunning attempt to disembowel me failed as the chainsword stopped millimetres short and only tore through a bit of skin. If Titan were quicker he might have been able to thrust the chainsword into my gut.
Instead he cried out in agony, the crowd cheering as I violently seized him by the hair with my free hand and slammed him to the ground on top of his own revving chainsword. Titan angled himself to fall upon his useless left arm as my claws tore themselves free, a ferocious growl rumbled from his chest as his own weapon ate its way into through muscle and ground to a halt as it lodged itself in the bone. I twisted my hips and smashed my shin into his face as he gripped the chainsword’s handle.
Father Leon leaned forward, a sadistic smile on his face as the resounding thunder crack snapped Titan’s head back and knocked him onto his ass. Titan tore the chainsword free of his mutilated left arm in a shower of blood and swung the screaming weapon at my knees.
With a short back-step I evaded the chainsword as Titan threw himself off-balance, and predatory joy surged through me as I pounced. The crowd whooped and hollered as I grabbed Titan’s left arm and dragged him onto his stomach. Their cheers reinforced the exhilarating buzz that overwhelmed my skull as I eviscerated his right tricep with my claws - rendering him incapable of wielding his chainsword - and raised his right wrist to my bared canines.
“Yes! Yes! Eat him!” One man cheered. “That’s what you fucking deserve!” A woman shrieked.
Titan howled with impotent rage as I tore the ligaments from his wrist, savoring the warmth and richness of his blood and flesh on my tongue. The blood-soaked chainsword fell from his weakened right hand to the sand as I ground cartilage between my teeth and swallowed, setting my body alight with unfettered pressure.
“I’ll fucking kill you!” He snarled as he contorted his body.
My head snapped back as his heel rocketed up into my jaw and the world swam around me as my right palm slammed into the sand and fully submerged as I stabilized myself. The Psychoconditioning set my nerves ablaze with the need to kill. Somewhere in the swirling blur of my vision Titan was moving, and I launched myself sideways and slammed my palms down to brace my arms in the sand the moment my bare feet touched the the coarse sand. I slid nearly a foot, kept upright only by my braced arms, and shook my head before I turned to where Titan was.
My vision still swam, but was clear and focused enough to see he now had the chainsword in his left hand, braced low against his hip as he launched himself into a full sprint and gunned its engine. I breathed deep and stayed low, allowing myself the precious seconds I needed to focus and recover as he tore across the sand.
Titan fully committed himself to his impaling charge and he hurled himself the last fatal inches forward to run me through with the screaming chainsword. I swatted the chainsword aside with my right claws and locked eyes with Titan as I sprang up into a pivoting sidestep. His lips curled up to expose his canines in a hateful snarl as he flew helplessly to the ground. I flashed my canines in predatory triumph as he crashed into the sand and pounced on his exposed back.
The chainsword plunged into the sand and sputtered to a halt as it clogged itself, and Titan screamed in its place as I slammed my right claws down into his lower back and twisted, the jagged blades eviscerating discs and nerve clusters. My skull burned with mind-numbing satisfaction as I slowly and messily tore my claws out of Titan’s ruined lumbar spine. He grit his teeth as the crowd cheered at his helplessness and the other Nosferatu licked their lips in anticipation of the coming brutality.
“All that talk,” I seized a handful of Titan’s hair and lifted his head to expose his throat. “And yet you couldn’t kill me, Titan.”
“Let go of me you worthless wretch!”
I slammed his face into the sand, he struggled to lift his head from the smothering sand, and I smiled at his futile effort. “Nosferatu can hold their breath for upward of 15 minutes, Titan. Why struggle? Hmm? Scared of sand, are you?”
He thrashed uselessly with his shoulders and waist in a desperate bid to free himself from my grip. The scent of his blood made my mouth water and his frantic thrashing sent delightful shivers through my body as I giggled.
“Are you humiliated that a sentimental weakling who doesn’t even have the gift of Nervesight is smothering you?” I lowered my left claws to his left hip. “Hey, let’s do a little experiment Titan! Let’s see if I left enough of your spine in tact for you to feel this!”
The blades gently sliced into his skin and parted his flesh, the cold metal blades made jagged by the gnawing of his chainsword. He hardly even twitched as I found the ligaments connecting his femur to his pelvis and sloppily snagged, twisted, and snapped them.
“What a pity,” I couldn’t keep the disappointment out of my voice. “I was too rough with your spinal cord.”
I removed the blades from his hip and raised the blood-slicked metal to my lips. I extended my tongue and shivered when I once again tasted the augmented richness of his blood. Victory needed to be declared, so I stood and hefted the defeated Titan to his feet by his hair.
“I am victorious,” I presented the crippled Nosferatu to the smiling Father Leon. “I claim his flesh, blood, and life as my prize!”
Father Leon’s malignant smile stretched across his face as he locked eyes with the defeated Titan. “It fills me with joy to see you embrace your Urges, do with him as you will!”
A manic grin crossed my face as I craned Titan’s neck around and met the impotently burning fury of his murderous gaze. Nosferatu do not experience fear, our neurochemistry and physiology were so extensively augmented and modified by the Psychoconditioning Salanna pioneered that our bodies and brains were no longer capable of experiencing the most fundamental of human emotions.
“I will not kill you yet, Titan.”
He spat, the sticky fluid splatted against the bare skin of my chest. “Soft as ever, New Blood. When I heal…”
I barked a scornful laugh at him as I grabbed his chainsword and dislodged it from the sand. “Heal? Oh no, brother, I will make use of you, but you will not be allowed to heal.”
I tossed him out of the pit like a slab of messily butchered meat and he raised his bloodied right arm to catch himself but remembered the bite I’d taken out of his wrist and the crippling cut in his tricep. Titan tucked his chin and his forehead smacked against the cold metal deck with an echoing bang. I jumped down from the pit and grabbed Titan’s hair.
Rictus knelt down, bringing his corpse-like grin to Titan’s eye level as I dragged the sorry bastard. “Not a bad fight, New Blood! I didn’t believe Voodoo when he said you’d pick Titan apart!”
Voodoo came with a celebratory laugh as he prodded Titan’s face with his staff. “Papa Legba hasn’t dug a grave for you just yet, old friend.”
“To hell with your superstitious bullshit!” Titan spat. “Mark my words, I will peel the skin from your flesh with my teeth and devour your…!”
Titan grit his teeth as I smashed the inert chainsword against his face. He growled as I peeled the chainsword off of his temple and cheek, thin strands of blood clinging to the weapon’s teeth as sand formed bloody clumps in the shallow punctures left in his face.
“Quiet, your delusions are irritating.” Blood trickled from his wounds down his limbs and left a trail of crimson as I hauled him out of the pit. “I will have a great many uses for you, brother.”
“New Blood!” Voodoo called out. “Do not keep him alive for too long! Papa Legba may soon wish to dig his grave!”
I dragged Titan’s mangled body through the halls of the Lady Black. Much of the crew were baseline humans, and many of them stopped in their tracks when they witnessed a Nosferatu reduced to bloody meat being dragged like a mauled calf. Titan was snarling and gnashing his teeth at any who stared at him for too long, and the poor things nearly jumped out their skins each time.
“Back to work,” I chastised a woman with a cybernetic arm. “If you don’t want another of my brothers to take the rest of your limbs you will work hard to escape their notice.”
Her eyes were wet with pain yet hardened by rising anger. “Thank you.”
She bowed her head and quickly turned away.
“Isn’t that the one that murdered Jacobs and Teal?” One man whispered to another. “The one that’s all fucked up?”
“Shut your fucking mouth, they can hear you!”
I chuckled as I dragged Titan towards them and exposed my bloody teeth with a mischievous grin. Both of them stiffened under my gaze and swallowed anxiously as they forgot to control their rapidly accelerating heartbeats, prompting the Psychoconditioning to kick in and my skull buzzed with satisfaction. I watched their glances shift between my blood-stained vambrace claws and the sand-clogged chainsword in my off-hand. The buzz spread through my body and transmuted itself into a swelling need to make them cry for mercy.
With a modicum of effort I hefted Titan up to their eye-level and tapped his gut with the chainsword’s guard. “He did eat those two, slowly, might I add. The two of them screamed for days while he butchered and ate them.”
“It was my right as a Nosferatu!” He seethed. “Fate is written in blood! And besides, where was all your sentimental softness when I ate them, hmm? I remember the look in your eyes, how you hungered for their flesh!”
I took a deep breath and my nerves tingled with pleasure when my nostrils were filled with the odorous sweetness of blood and stress pheromones. “Hush, brother, nothing you say will change the fact that you are now the one at another’s mercy.”
I lowered Titan and continued to drag him through the halls.
Titan was none too pleased about being paraded about the way he was so inclined to do to one of his unfortunate victims. So when I dragged him into the stunned Dr. Salanna’s laboratory, he was frothing at the mouth.
“You brought me to her to gloat, New Blood?”
“His yapping is irksome,” I nonchalantly said as I dragged him through the laboratory to one of the tables. “But now you have a specimen for your experiments and projects.”
“Alessandro, I can’t restrain him.” Salanna calmly said. “Need I remind you that Nosferatu are at least as strong as Terran gorillas?”
“You won’t need to.” I dragged the cripple through the lab and unceremoniously tossed him onto one of her tables. “I can acquire an adequate restraint system soon enough.”
“And what will I do until then?” Her voice was strained, hints of fear plucking at her vocal chords. “Nosferatu were designed to be able to rebound from crippling injuries, he’d only need about three weeks before he’d heal enough to kill me.”
I flashed another of my terrible smiles at the doctor as I restrained Titan. “Doctor, did you forget that I am also a Nosferatu?”
She swallowed anxiously and Titan growled miserably. “I do not understand you, New Blood. You cripple me to protect your little fuck toy, and now you threaten her?”
Salanna lowered her eyes, micro-twitches rippled through her body as she strained to control her breathing. Still smiling, I pressed my claws into the pit of Titan’s right elbow and his torso rippled with explosive effort as he bore his canines to lunge for my throat. I hammered his skull down with the hilt of his chainsword and his forehead split open under the strike. Salanna visibly flinched when I shattered his nose with another strike and she took a small step backward as I struck him again. My body burned with a volatile mixture of satisfaction and hunger as I rained down blow after blow on Titan, the repeated cranial trauma stripping a little more focus and sapience from his eyes with each strike until he was staring up at the ceiling with unfocused and hazy eyes.
I savored the feeling of his blood on my skin and the rich smell of it made my mouth water. I grit my teeth and wrestled my altered mind’s urges down and turned to Salanna.
“I told you, I am a Nosferatu.”
She nodded slowly. “I understand.”
I removed my claw from his elbow. “I want him to be lucid when I cripple him. He won’t scream the way normal humans do, the Psychoconditioning that you pioneered won’t allow him to. But he will scream, and I am curious if his mind can be broken.”
She said nothing for a while, perhaps processing the situation. I turned to her and she tentatively risked making eye contact. Her body strained as she willed herself not to flinch or show fear, but she was still unnerved.
“This is nothing new to you Doctor, you would have seen us tearing each other apart a dozen times over in those dank, filthy pits you sealed us in.” My lips twitched as I checked the Psychoconditioning’s urges. “What’s the matter? Nervous without inches of missile-proof glass separating you from your handiwork?”
She exhaled sharply. “I will run a scan on his vitals and start a psychological profile on Titan for your experiments.”
I smiled wickedly. “Evasive as ever, doctor. Feel free to collect whatever samples you must. I would like to experience the gift of a functional Saran Filament.”
I turned to Titan, whose eyes were beginning to harden with smoldering hatred as he recovered from the abuse he had endured. His eyes sharpened when they recognized his chainsword being waved at him, and he groggily turned his swollen and beaten face towards me.
“Don’t worry brother,” I teased. “I’ll clean this chainsword and get it working very, very soon. If I’m feeling nice, I might even give it back when you draw your last miserable breaths, you insatiable dog.”
“To hell… With you!” He worked the words out of his mouth and spat at me.
My eyelid twitched as I reined in my anger for a fraction of a second. “Brother, I have brought hell to you!”
I turned the chainsword so the guard was facing him and raised it high overhead so he could watch as I brought it down. Titan bore his canines in a show of defiance as the chainsword’s guard smashed into his skull and he went unconscious as his head bounced against the table.