Sobon found him­self dan­gling up­side down in a dark place by his an­kle. When he looked around, he found that he seemed to be des­tined to be one of a num­ber of grue­some spec­ta­cles, as there were oth­er bod­ies strung up be­side him in a row, all carved open and miss­ing or­gans, only the last of them still drip­ping blood. The lo­ca­tion seemed to be a dead-end al­ley­way of stone walls on three sides, emp­ty­ing out into a cor­ner or in­ter­sec­tion a lit­tle ways away. Of the butch­er re­spon­si­ble for the grue­some dis­play around him, he could see no sign.

He closed his eyes and did his best to re­call what had hap­pened since he ar­rived, though it wasn't much. As he did, that in­ef­fi­cient as­sis­tant roused from its own slum­ber, and he tried to shout cod­ed in­struc­tions at it. When he did, though, it only with­ered back from the in­ten­si­ty of his men­tal com­mands, not seem­ing to un­der­stand.

He tried again, low­er­ing his in­ten­si­ty, but it was not un­til he low­ered him­self to think­ing in words that the blast­ed thing fi­nal­ly re­spond­ed. What are you? he asked, in frus­tra­tion.

[ I'm you, or I was. ] The voice that an­swered was small and shak­ing. [ But I died, and uh... you took over. ]

Sobon parsed those words with a de­cent frac­tion of his old cy­borg ef­fi­cien­cy, quick­ly dis­card­ing any thought of sit­ting around try­ing to un­der­stand why, or if this was even real. They said I don't have qi. What is that?

[ Qi is qi. ] The last word was, at last, a cod­ed in­for­ma­tion pack­et, though it seemed frus­trat­ing­ly in­stinc­tu­al, fleshy. Sobon tore the thought apart, to find that the voice in his head knew lit­tle. Ap­par­ent­ly, the word de­scribed a lo­cal form of Aether, sim­i­lar to the en­er­gy in the great galac­tic veins that pow­ered warp dri­ves and made ad­vanced civ­i­liza­tions pos­si­ble, but it was pure­ly lim­it­ed, in the bro­ken crea­ture's un­der­stand­ing, to re­in­forc­ing bi­o­log­i­cal sys­tems and some ba­sic en­er­gy ef­fects.

That's all? Sobon dis­liked the im­pli­ca­tions of the thought in­tense­ly. These back­wards peo­ple had in their pos­ses­sion the keys to the uni­verse, and all they knew to do with the stuff was punch hard­er and set things on fire? He shook his head, think­ing. There was no way that the body had no ac­cess to Aether; that wasn't how bi­ol­o­gy func­tioned, from the cel­lu­lar lev­el up­wards. The prob­lem was get­ting start­ed uti­liz­ing it.

The thought pack­et had no in­for­ma­tion on that, ob­vi­ous­ly, but Sobon had fin­ished ex­plor­ing the lo­cal knowl­edge for the mo­ment. In­stead, he re­laxed his body, let­ting his nerves feed him un­bi­ased data on his wounds, and cat­a­loged his in­juries. That bro­ken rib was still the worst of it, but he felt agony rip­ple through him with every twitch of a mus­cle, as nerves in most of his or­gans com­plained of bruis­es and worse. Now, of course, his foot was los­ing cir­cu­la­tion where the rope cut into him, and soon enough it would be be­yond sav­ing.

A foot­step at the end of the al­ley­way end­ed Sobon's think­ing, and he jerked his en­tire body with pure will, forc­ing mus­cles that had nev­er worked prop­er­ly in their life to bring his hands all the way up to where a rope grasped his an­kle.

"Oh, thisss one'sss ssstill got fight in it." The voice from the end of the al­ley­way was a sin­is­ter hiss, but Sobon ig­nored it, fo­cus­ing on the knot that held up his en­tire weight. As ex­pect­ed, there should have been noth­ing he could do about it, but the Mixed Ma­rine train­ing pro­gram ex­pect­ed the im­pos­si­ble from their re­cruits.

For only a mo­ment, he was able to lift his en­tire weight with one arm, though he could feel the mus­cles in his arm on the verge of tear­ing, and with his oth­er arm, he pulled on the knot. It didn't budge; it wasn't ny­lon or any­thing smooth, but some kind of dis­gust­ing plant fiber rope, now held in place part­ly by how the frayed edges of it had merged into a dis­gust­ing pulpy mass glued to­geth­er with dried and dry­ing blood.

Nev­er­the­less, a sec­ond tug loos­ened it just slight­ly.

"Yesss, a bit of ssstrength," the voice was close, now. "All the bet­ter to--"

Sobon didn't need to hear the vil­lain's speech. A third tug was all he had left in his arm, and the rope slipped just past his heel. When his el­bow and shoul­der and wrist all gave out--not to men­tion his fin­gers--the sud­den weight shift fin­ished the job.

Sobon had a pan­icked mo­ment when he re­al­ized that as weak as he was, the fall might dis­lo­cate a shoul­der or break a bone, but he man­aged to get an arm un­der him at the right an­gle to de­flect and roll. He tried to turn the roll into a stand, but no part of his legs want­ed to sup­port him in that mo­ment.

At the very least, he could turn to face the vis­i­tor, and he was un­sur­prised to find the crea­ture armed with a very large and very bloody knife. He could feel his body re­act­ing to the aura the wicked thing gave off, re­spond­ing with a su­per­nat­ur­al sense of for­bod­ing, as though what the knife would do to him was far worse than death.

He took that as a good sign, which the as­sis­tant--the dead spir­it of his pre­de­ces­sor, he sup­posed--didn't un­der­stand in any way.

Sobon tried to speak, only to find his tongue feel­ing fat and out of place in his mouth. The ac­tion caused the ap­proach­ing men­ace to pause and ad­just his large, thick glass­es, the over­size gloves that cov­ered his hands drip­ping gore, and there was a pause as he seemed to wait to see what Sobon had to say.

"I'm not dead," he man­aged, though he knew his pro­nun­ci­a­tion felt com­plete­ly off. The lan­guage he was speak­ing was not at all like the one he knew.

"No, of course not," the butch­er said. "If you were, the or­gans wouldn't be fresh when they were served." With a ca­su­al move­ment, the knife shift­ed in his hand into a re­verse grip, and the man raised it, lamp­light from the end of the al­ley glint­ing off the blade. "Do me a fa­vor and try not to punc­ture that lung while you strug­gle. It's worth a lot."

The aura that the blade gave off was the trig­ger, as he hoped it would be. In the mo­ment when his body could sense the blade, so clear­ly that he knew it would be there if he shut his eyes, Sobon grasped the sense, know­ing that it linked to the Aether, men­tal threads tan­gling with it and just bare­ly forc­ing it out of align­ment. Per­haps sens­ing some­thing, the man stopped the blade paused in midair, only for an in­stant, and Sobon rushed for­ward as quick­ly as his pa­thet­ic, grotesque­ly in­jured body could. Al­though he could only bare­ly stand and every move­ment sent waves of twitch­ing through his body, he did man­age, for only a mo­ment, to get his weight over his feet.

He grabbed the knife as close to the hilt as he could, with both hands, and just bare­ly man­aged to pull it free from the butch­er's fin­gers with a pre­cise­ly an­gled yank, cut­ting into his fin­gers in the process. All in the same move­ment, he piv­ot­ed around his bet­ter leg, mak­ing a dou­ble-hand­ed stab with the knife into the butch­er's knee, read­just­ing one hand to grab the hilt as he did.

For a mo­ment, the dag­ger bounced off the man's knee like it was noth­ing. He twist­ed aether he felt on the oth­er side of his link, in the blade, and sud­den­ly the sense of the dag­ger in his mind's eye van­ished, its aether spent, and it sank through flesh and bone like they didn't ex­ist, tear­ing through the crea­ture's knee and near­ly sev­er­ing his fin­gers.

The butch­er screamed, and Sobon dropped the knife and fled, limp­ing away as fast as his body would let him, his body ar­gu­ing at every step that it should be his last, that he should col­lapse and ac­cept death. At the end of the al­ley­way, he found him­self un­able to turn, and plant­ed him­self face-first into the wall, us­ing the bricks to give him some­thing to lean on for a mo­ment, and he closed his eyes against the pain that want­ed him des­per­ate­ly to black out.

He glanced to the left. The al­ley­way con­tin­ued, door­ways to the left and right, both closed fast. A old, ugly whore in a torn-up dress and smok­ing a cig­a­rette lounged next to the door on the left, and she was look­ing at him dis­pas­sion­ate­ly, nei­ther seem­ing in­ter­est­ed in be­ing the one to squash him like a bug, nor dis­play­ing any sign of hope or in­ter­est in his well-be­ing. At most, he thought she might be cu­ri­ous what would hap­pen, but there was so lit­tle life in those eyes that she might not even have had that. He glanced past, but the al­ley bent, and he couldn't see an­oth­er in­ter­sec­tion any­where close, or even a light source.

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He turned his head to the right, but he could see the blood trail lead­ing to one of the doors in that di­rec­tion, and al­most in­stinc­tive­ly fled the oth­er di­rec­tion. In­stead, he looked past it, see­ing an­oth­er in­ter­sec­tion, with lamp­light.

Light leads to civ­i­liza­tion. Sobon had no idea who to trust, here, but flee­ing fur­ther into the dark­ness would only make him lose out to any­one who knew the dark al­leys bet­ter than he did. He forced him­self away from the wall and stum­bled past, his eyes on the door that the butch­er had clear­ly been us­ing, but he stum­bled past it, un­sure of whether some­one would come out to in­ves­ti­gate the man's screams.

Of course, if any­one had come out in re­sponse to screams be­fore, how could he pos­si­bly do his work? He forced him­self to look away as he passed the door, one strug­gling foot­step at a time.

"You..." The voice be­hind him came with foot­steps, and from the fa­mil­iar hiss to the sound, he knew that it wasn't the whore. He turned around to look, but the butch­er was there at the end of the al­ley, stand­ing on two ful­ly healthy legs, though the pant leg on one was torn, and blood soaked the low­er half of it. "You ssshouldn't be able to do that."

Im­pos­sib-- Sobon cut his thought off im­me­di­ate­ly. Of course it wasn't im­pos­si­ble; it was un­fair. As long as the aether was abun­dant enough, even prim­i­tives could heal some­thing as sim­ple as a stab wound, if they got to it in time. If any­thing, again, this was promis­ing. With­out con­scious ef­fort, he cal­cu­lat­ed the aether den­si­ty that the plan­et must have for even the dregs of so­ci­ety to be ca­pa­ble of so much.

It was high. Ad­vanced civ­i­liza­tions would nuke this plan­et and ter­raform it from scratch to have a hab­it­able plan­et with this lev­el of am­bi­ent aether; that wasn't a guess, it was his­to­ry. Sobon turned and leaned against the wall, star­ing at the man who stared back at him. The butch­er be­gan to walk to­wards him, his heavy and plod­ding steps echo­ing in the al­ley­way, but Sobon was let­ting those men­tal cal­cu­la­tions run on ahead, won­der­ing just what he could do--from scratch--with that lev­el of aether.

Sobon found him­self smil­ing, as his mind set­tled on a thought, and some­how, the look on his face was enough to make even the im­placa­ble butch­er pause.

It's ba­sic bi­ol­o­gy, Sobon re­mind­ed him­self, lift­ing his two hands to­geth­er. Bi­ol­o­gy re­quires aether. Sen­sa­tion re­quires aether. Con­scious­ness re­quires aether. I wouldn't be here if I weren't touch­ing it. I just need to bring that aether un­der my con­trol.

There was a dirt-sim­ple tech­nique, one he had been taught in a med­i­ta­tion class, to help calm his nerves; it was noth­ing more than a cy­cle, to bring fresh aether in and ex­pel "dirty" aether. The use­less hip­py who had taught the class had ex­act­ly the op­po­site in­ten­tions that Sobon had now; he ar­gued that men shouldn't keep their own sup­ply of Aether, and only by de­lib­er­ate­ly emp­ty­ing one­self, in a pu­ri­fied en­vi­ron­ment, could they be free of so­ci­ety's con­t­a­m­i­na­tion.

Ab­sorb the lo­cal aether, and let it back out.

Sobon's eye­lids twitched, but less from pain this time than from the queer tick­le of cold, for­eign pow­er through dam­aged--per­haps crip­pled--chan­nels.

The foot­steps sound­ed again, and Sobon took a breath. All he need­ed was a sin­gle thread of it--just one in­signif­i­cant thread, thin­ner than a hair. His new body's chan­nels hadn't even the ca­pac­i­ty for that, but he forced it any­way, cre­at­ing the sim­plest thing he dared, even as his spir­it burned in protest.

One spi­der­web-thin hair at­tempt­ed to form a cir­cle, and failed. Sobon re­viewed the data buried in his emo­tion­al state for the rea­son why; the body want­ed to fight or flee, not to stand here fo­cus­ing on aether with­out mean­ing or pur­pose. It wasn't ac­cus­tomed to the pu­ri­ty of Aether; it de­mand­ed a rea­son to act. There was no emo­tion­al will­ing­ness to be de­tached un­der these cir­cum­stances.

An­oth­er foot­step, and Sobon grabbed hold of his en­tire mind and will. He had forced the body to act when he knew it would de­stroy it­self, and he could do the same for this body's spir­it. His eyes glowed, and a hair of pow­er formed a com­plete cir­cle, even as his own be­ing flared in agony from the act.

That was step one. The thread hung be­tween his hands, and he felt its ea­ger­ness to leap at the en­e­my, but he re­fused it. The thread, the cir­cle--that was the lev­el of de­tach­ment he need­ed. He grabbed it with his mind and turned it like a knob, de­spite great re­sis­tance, know­ing that the twist would cre­ate a crude aether dy­namo, a flim­sy con­struct to cre­ate more aether, aether that would be at­tuned to him and him alone.

A mo­ment lat­er, there was a speck, as thin as the thread that formed the cir­cle, and bare­ly as long as it was thick. It ap­peared nat­u­ral­ly at the ring's ex­act cen­ter, the thorn to the dy­namo's cy­cle. Sobon de­tached his mind from the dy­namo it­self and fo­cused on that point of light, his eye fi­nal­ly fo­cus­ing back on the real world.

The butch­er was two steps away at most, well with­in the reach of a lunge, and his long arms felt en­tire­ly too close to Sobon, giv­en how small and bro­ken his body was. Those eyes, hid­den be­hind the shine of lamp­light on his glass­es, stared down at him. "You ssshouldn't be able to..."

The speck of an aether thorn length­ened with every mo­ment, and Sobon took a step back away from him. The cy­cle spun, and the thread grew, the speck of dust length­en­ing just a bit, go­ing from near­ly spher­i­cal to a bug's whisker.

"...ss­stand, let alone..."

He took an­oth­er step back, but his an­kle gave way where the rope had cut into it, and he fell to a knee. Only his Ma­rine re­flex­es kept his cen­ter of grav­i­ty in be­tween his foot and his knee, keep­ing him up­right as the bloody crea­ture took a step to match his own, re­main­ing just not quite close enough to touch.

"...sssense the great qi veinssss of thisss world." The butch­er knelt, one hand go­ing to his knee, the oth­er re­main­ing at his side. Sobon cal­cu­lat­ed, but if the crea­ture had any sort of re­flex­es, he could dodge any at­tempt to thrust at him with the new thread-thin thorn. That would be the end of it, most like­ly; Sobon had the one shot, and noth­ing more.

"...but more cu­ri­ousss­ly," the butch­er hissed, "I wasss told that you did not pos­ssesss the tal­ent for qi. I hear a great many liesss from a great many peo­ple, young street rat, but I too mussst live in fear of the great pow­ersss of the world." The man's back hand, by his side, ges­tured, and sud­den­ly, the knife that Sobon had dropped was in it again.

"Ssso, I mussst know, who your massster isss, young ssstreet rat." The knife re­versed it­self, from a thrust­ing grip to a back­hand­ed one, and he moved the knife be­hind his body, as though to hide it. "I would not wis­ssh to in­ss­sult a great massster by dessstroy­ing hisss work."

Sobon tried to cal­cu­late the truth be­hind the man's words, but he had no frame of ref­er­ence, not from his time in Crest, nor from the spir­it of his pre­de­ces­sor. It could be a farce, some­thing more sin­is­ter, or it could be... well, as close to gen­uine as a blood-soaked child-killer could be.

Sobon, though, could feel his body run­ning low on en­er­gy, and he care­ful­ly con­cealed the ring and thorn he had made in­side his spir­it. As he less­ened the spir­i­tu­al pres­sure he put on the dy­namo, the ring slowed its turn­ing to near­ly noth­ing, and the thorn be­gan to lose its glow, be­com­ing dor­mant with­in him.

The best chance he had here, he sup­posed, was to count on this filthy mon­ster's self-preser­va­tion in­stinct.

"Sobon," he whis­pered in the dark­ness, his lips curl­ing into a sneer. "My mas­ter is Sobon, and he will kill you."

The butch­er frowned even deep­er, the dis­gust­ing wrin­kles in his face deep­en­ing, and Sobon col­lapsed, feign­ing un­con­scious­ness for only a mo­ment, hop­ing that he could still rise up if the threat didn't work.

Un­for­tu­nate­ly, real un­con­scious­ness fol­lowed too soon, as his bat­tered body gave in at last.

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

Sobon awoke in what could char­i­ta­bly be called a bed, and he glanced around, feel­ing his eyes refuse to fo­cus, but still in­tent to take in what­ev­er he could. A blur­ry fig­ure moved near­by; it was not the butch­er, but an old man, his pro­file well-lit by a near­by lamp. Un­like the oth­ers he had seen so far, this man ap­peared at least slight­ly healthy, but he didn't dare trust too deeply. This world was dan­ger­ous.

The old man moved with a me­thod­i­cal­ly slow pace, as though he had more time than tasks, and Sobon could tell that he was wind­ing ban­dages around an arm--a very thin and short arm, like a child's, and if he were to guess, not a well-fed one. With a ca­su­al use of aether, he sev­ered the ban­dage with­out look­ing and set the roll of cloth aside, bring­ing his hand back to the arm he was ban­dag­ing. His eyes glowed a mo­ment, and he was lit strange­ly, as though from a light in his hands, and then he set down what he was hold­ing and stared at it for a mo­ment.

"You shouldn't be con­scious." The old man's voice was heavy and plod­ding, like every­one Sobon had en­coun­tered. And then, with a strange feel­ing like death him­self ap­proach­ing, the old man was sud­den­ly there in front of him, sit­ting on a stool and look­ing down on him with the same neu­tral, blank ex­pres­sion on his face as he'd had on the last pa­tient. "Your in­juries are too se­vere. Your spir­it shouldn't count on be­ing awake to save you. Very odd." He raised one hand, and in the cup of his hand, a spot of green and yel­low light leaked out, light that spoke to him of aether use.

Sobon closed his eyes at the light, but when he felt the tick­le of aether across him, noth­ing hurt any worse--or any less, for that mat­ter.

"You have the be­gin­nings of a qi core," the old man said. "But it is in a strange form. Who is your mas­ter? I will call him."

Sobon hes­i­tat­ed. It was too soon to re­veal his bluff, but hav­ing the old man at­tempt to con­tact a non-ex­is­tent pa­tron would only cause more trou­ble lat­er. Sobon felt his cheeks twitch, and re­al­ized this body didn't have the self-con­trol to lie con­vinc­ing­ly. He kept his eyes closed, and whis­pered, "He will find me."

The old man was qui­et for a mo­ment, then growled. "A hunter, then. Very well." With Sobon's eyes closed, he felt--again--a strange spec­tre like a grin­ning reaper hang­ing there in front of him, death in­car­nate judg­ing him and his lies, but the feel­ing van­ished a mo­ment lat­er.

Sobon opened his eyes once more, to find the old man had dis­ap­peared, and no glanc­ing around would re­veal to where or how he had got­ten so sound­less­ly away. A part of him want­ed to shiv­er, dwelling on the in­ci­dent, but Sobon in­stead let him­self sleep, forc­ing the thoughts away and let­ting the ex­haus­tion take over.