FATELESS: An unregistered civilian; an individual who has yet to earn Guild sponsorship via merit or lottery.


    FATE: A metaphysical system in the NETHER used by the Guilds for tracking and indexing citizens.


    -The New Vultun Standard Dictionary


    1-3


    FATELESS


    Tumor Face tried her best. Her best wasn’t enough. Avo empathized.


    With a surplus of rage and a scarcity of capability, she came at him, the bulk of her rig hammering the ground like she was heavy cavalry from a historical memory-sim. Blind with aggression, she thrust herself into the jaws of the beast. What little of him was capable of emulating the human emotion of respect commended her.


    The bulk of his mind, still riding high on bloodlust, set itself upon the task of her exsanguination. In his hand, a last gouged pap of flesh claimed from the remains of Green Eyes dribbled as she came. Avo squeezed it. Blood ran through the crenulations of his claws. It would do.


    With a mental command, Avo tried engaging his trajectory calculator. A flashing “null” response in the back of his mind reminded him he had one ghost and no phantasmic engrams. He would have to do this manually.


    The alloyed appendages of her rig reared as she approached. Just in time to catch a splatter of gore across her projection ribs. Blood dotted her face and blurred her eyes. She swung, three limbs cleaving a mangled gorge through the metal walkway above, severing it halfway through. She would have hewn Avo shoulder to hip if he remained before her. Carried by blindness, anguish, and momentum, her crab-like legs sparked along the metal deck, internal machinery overworked, jamming and hissing. Behind, Avo stalked her like the predator he was designed to be, the scratched grooves her skid marks left in the hull serving as nice grips for his claws even as the barge suddenly descended.


    She came to a violent halt after grinding several more feet. They were near the edge now. The flaring engines emanated a corona of unnatural light, casting her in shadow. The rig’s arms slashed out wildly. Avo dove low, between her legs. Tumor Face was still blind, still missing when he tore into her, claws spread, lower jaws unhinging as he prepared to feast.


    Her pilot’s harness was a small canopy, just big enough to fit a flat of her size. The rig itself lacked the mass or capability to seal her properly beneath a layer of shielding. Cheap as it was, her life was likely even cheaper. There was plenty of labor to go by in these depths and not much material to support it with. Her life was worth more to the city lost than it was preserved.


    Avo tore up into the softness of her belly, a waterfall of red filling his eyes. The scent of intestinal fluid and the taste of rust mingled. He chipped his incisor fangs on laced bones reinforced by cheap titanium and worked on her sinews instead. Through the near-thuds of her heart, he could hear her screams, the sound muffled by the blood filling his ears. He reared back and tore out from her innards, sinew, and gristle between his fangs. He emerged baptized. Invigorated.


    Yet, even as a savaged ruin, Tumor Face gasped on, clinging to life as she grasped for him, eyes still burning with hate. Beyond the nest of the projection ribs, the rig was lurching, unable to discern signals from a mind so embroiled by pain and hate. She decided she didn’t need the machine. With a defiant squeal, shrill with outrage and pain, she slammed her skull against his. Avo felt the thud shudder through his bones. Spent, she sank against him and spat strands of blood and disrespect across his cheek.


    “Fuckin’...half-strand bastard.” Mustering what little remained in her, she lifted her head and glared at him, staring him down even as she died. She was more a ghoul than he at this point; body broken, mangled, but still fighting; spirit burning on with the embers of hate and loathing; actions purposeful, but futile. He took hold of her by her head.


    So close, the phantasmal aura that his cog-feed painted her with had cast her in a holy sheen of light. “Best you could do,” he said. He didn’t know if the comfort was for her, or spoken to his past self, her body an altar, a confessional. All he knew was that this was a torturous truth that bound the both of them. “All you could do.”


    She looked at him, hate unfading. Jaws clenched, she didn’t see what he was trying to convey. There was no shared understanding. Perhaps at this moment, the inverse was true: he was more human than she by merit of philosophical gnosis and life better provided for by an adopted father.


    The moment passed with the next beat of her heart; the wafting pungence of her exposed innards calling to Avo. He pulled her head back. She tried to reach from the haptic controls projected from one of the ribs. The reach became a spasm as her neck folded between his teeth. His fangs glided through her unaugmented softness with ease.


    Flats made for easy feeding.


    Her suffering didn’t last. His jaws, wide as a serpent’s, had closed around her neck. Skin and muscle parted. The bite found its halt against her columns of spine. Didn’t matter. He pulled free, a mound of flesh coming with him. Succulent. Her head folded forward. When he finished with her trachea, he continued with her eyes. The eyes were always his favorite.


    In the periphery of his awareness, he felt the echo he sensed within her earlier. It poured into him as it did from Green Eyes. Inside, he felt a flash again, like a radiant star bereft of heat. Static interfaces formed and faded in the back of his mind. In the corner of his cog-feed, two lines of information flashed and faded.


    THAUMIC CYCLER - 3 thaum/c


    GHOSTS - [2]


    MEMORY ARTIFACTS DETECTED - INITIATE AUTO-SEQUENCING?


    Avo ignored that for now. Necrothurgy took time. Hours and days at the least to sift through all the contents and traumas that could compose a useful phantasmic. Ultimately, sequencing ghosts was both psychological artistry and metaphysical engineering; a practice usually done while the body was unconscious. Despite all his present mental vulnerability, unless existence was willing to loan him eight hours of time to make some wards, he needed to push on without.


    He still didn’t fully understand what was happening to him, but right then, he didn’t care. He basked in the joy of the kill, feeling his haemophagic cells breaking down the biomass he just subsumed, converting all that was Tumor Face into material for sustenance and repair.


    His blood. The crowning achievement of the Low Masters’ thaumaturgy. A colony self-moving, pseudo-sapient organism unto itself. It ensured that a ghoul fed with maximum efficiency. It also allowed for the infection and conversion of any living creature with enough organic tissue and brain matter.


    Ghoulification, people called it. It was how the numbers of his kind swelled from mere dozens to billions in the span of years. It was how they were able to sustain themselves without the need for food or rest for extended periods. Just a shame they were created at a time when the flesh had long since been usurped by alloy and technology.


    He finished with the rest of Tumor Faces'' corpse in minutes. While feeding, he willed his healing to accelerate as his hunger waned. The worst of the beast had been slaked. Rationality and thought remained.


    And so came the feeling of shame.


    Looking at the bodies of the two scavengers, it was like a veil lifted, fierce joy replaced by dawning disgust at what he had done. Walton would not have condoned this senseless murder, slavers though they were. That was self-delusion. Their admission of immorality simply gave him justification for violence.


    The truth was he just wanted to eat them.


    To make matters worse, he had no idea the layout of the barge, and now he was left with–


    A heartbeat pulled his attention. Avo heard strained gasps wheezing out from a collapsed lung. Wiping the viscera dangling from his jaws, he found Hap-Tat crawling along the deck of the ship. Her legs were bent at awkward angles, and a trail of blood dripped from the rails she was cast against before she fell.


    The memory of tossing her into Green Eyes to knock him off balance returned to him. It seemed so pragmatic then. Now, the act had struck him as pointless. Something merely to satiate his desire to hurt, to maul.


    For the first time in years, Avo was glad of his adopted father’s death. Avo had chosen his surrender, as Walton had taught him, but without his Metamind adjusted to inject doses of shame, horror, or revulsion at the psychopathy, he felt like an addict surrendering to old desires


    He followed Hap-Tat, unsure of what he was going to do. A series of cracks shuddered through his legs. The mending of his lower body was almost complete. His gait was less stagger and more stride now, claws tinking against the deck with each step.


    At the sound of his coming, her heartbeat quickened. She shot a look of terror over her shoulder and whimpered. “No,” she sobbed, “No, Jaus--fuck, please no!” She wiggled her way across the ground, limbs useless, body quivering. A pool of waste spilled out from her. She seemed a mocking mirror to how he had woken in the pit.


    He passed her with ease and came to a stop beside her. Her open wounds still smelled delightfully bitter with adrenaline, but he pulled his focus away from that. Flicking his mind through his cog-feed, he tried to scan her for injuries, but nothing came up. The memories he had weren''t usable yet; they needed sequencing. For now, all he had was a perception-enhancing overlay and two ghosts of unrefined rawness.


    That was going to be a problem. He couldn’t remember a time when his mind didn’t have a metaphysical fortress shielding it from incursions. Not since Walton decided to take him up the first Tier.


    Avo looked up at the chasm above him again. The light was mocking him. The skein of the Nether itself was mocking him, far beyond the reach of his two ghosts. This Metamind wasn’t his. Didn’t matter if it was built from a copy of his mind or not. His Metamind was created as an echo of Walton. The last thing he had of Walton. And now it was missing, lost somewhere in the continent-wide expanse of New Vultun.


    Trying to hunt a metaphysical construct down would be like picking out an individual air current in a hurricane. Didn’t matter. He would find it, whatever the costs. But first, he had to climb out of the Maw.


    A soft sputter came from Hap-Tat again. Right. He was trying to review her wounds. No engram for it. He had to rely on his paltry guesswork and experience, but from how her organs were filling up with fluid, he doubted she had long.


    Didn’t mean it, he had wanted to say. He decided against it. He did mean it. Would mean it again when the throes of hunger returned. Biting back a hiss of frustration, he remembered what Walton had told him about using the truth, embracing it even if it hurt.


    “I…regret,” Avo said, straining from the effort of this farce. It felt absurd. “That this happened.” It wasn’t an apology. Even now, he wasn’t sorry that he had mortally wounded her, and butchered the other two scavengers. All he was really sorry about was the fact that Walton wouldn’t have approved. That he had failed to master himself; surrendered to the beast at the first chance.


    Across the stretch of the barge’s deck, the withering winds of the Maw whistled. Alone, the ghoul faced the girl he was going to kill and continued. “Didn’t want to do this. Hunger…” he trailed off. Hunger was just an impulse. He made the choice. “Everyone chooses. Everyone lies to themselves. Truth is ugly. Truth is I want to hurt you. Truth is I want to eat you. Tried to fight it. I did. I lost.”


    Again, he wasn’t sure if this was for her or him. It was always easier for him to speak to the dead. To sort and sequence memories from ghosts, turn them into vessels for him to use. Perhaps it was a thing of power. That he could only express the truth when he couldn’t be hurt.


    He saw a tear spill free from her left eye. Along her forehead, the error codes of the implanted ads continued pulsing. “I don’t want to die here…”


    He sniffed. He could smell her encroaching death. It was evident in the blood loss. She didn’t have any regenerative implants, biostasis mods, and she definitely didn’t make near enough imps to afford a phylactery to house her consciousness. She was poor. She was weak. She was going to die. And New Vultun would grow all the stronger for it.


    “You will,” Avo said. She cried softly at his words. “I’m…sorry.” He considered how to make things better for them. At least a bit. “Debt slaves: the FATELESS. Where are they?”


    Through her sobs, she laughed incredulously. “F-fuck you, rotlick.”


    “Need to set them free,” Avo said. “Get them out. Make your death mean something.”


    Her face froze. She looked at him again. “I don’t…understand.”


    He knew how she felt. “Don’t either. Trying to learn still. Want to do the right thing. Help me. Please. Don’t just want you to be just another murder.”


    He locked gazes with her. She swallowed. “Hurts,” she whispered. “I’m scared.”


    A flash of annoyance rose inside him. This was useless. He should kill her and just– he repressed the urge. He tried to remember how he would feel if he still had a secondhand morality inducer. Shame. Guilt. Horror at killing. Violence was dissonant for humans. Shredded their psychology. He imagined what would shred his sanity.


    Hunger. Well. That wasn’t very useful.


    This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.


    “I know,” he said. Awkwardly, he reached down and took her soft hand into his, careful not to flense her with his cleaver-like claws. “Fear. Won’t last. The slaves? Where are they?”


    She swallowed. “They’re below. Three levels down in the phase-pens. Signed premium contracts to be smuggled through the borders.” Distance filled her gaze. Peeking at her leg, he wondered how it would taste if he just took one bite. The injuries were deep. He could taste the marrow. He swallowed back his hunger. She was dying slowly, and the taste was delectable.


    No. Bad. This was bad. He needed to remember how it felt to regret.


    “I dreamed of making it up, you know,” she said, wheezing softly. “Wanted to see the…the Tiers. The real New Vultun. Be happy for once.” For the first time, she laughed. “Kinda fucking figured. I just…” Her lips thinned. “The door on the stern shouldn’t be locked. Look, it hurts real bad but…if you want to eat me…okay. Just don’t turn me. Saw…saw it happen to my…my ma. I can’t…I can’t.”


    Avo understood. The haemophage was a twin-edged sword. It subverted as much as it converted. Let it bleed into a living host with a prefrontal lobe and you’d have yourself a nest of ghoullings in minutes.


    "Won’t do that,” Avo said. He thought about squeezing her hand, but her bones were soft. Unaugmented. Her heart was beginning to slow. The echo rippling within her coupled with the yolk of her ghost’s surface thoughts called to him. “Want me to kill you now?” He said it as a favor. Her face cracked, breaking into pure anguish and horror at the coming end.


    “Oh…oh Jaus,” she sobbed. “Yes. Fuck! Do it, do it before I–”


    He pulled free of her hand and took her by the throat. He squeezed like he intended to kill her instead of crushing her skull for torture. Her neck folded between his claws. Her body spasmed as she wheezed a final time, blood welling free from her eyes and mouth.


    Without metal, without enhancements, the flesh of a flat was frail. Too frail for this new age. Baseline humanity was marching down the plank of extinction. Avo wondered if the flats were the adversary that the Low Masters had created his kind to face instead of the beings of alloy and fire that actually dwelled above. Clearly, they did not know the enemy.


    Hap-Tat’s echo flowed up his arm and sank into the simmering flame inside him. Again, it sparked, carrying no heat, only brightness. A flash of another place manifested around him momentarily. Reality stuttered. His cog-feed lagged and momentarily rebooted. He felt better. Heavier. Like he was the anchor of something alien, something that just didn’t belong here.


    It was like he had weight beyond his body–an unseen mass growing and budding like a watered seed.


    Avo decided the new sensation would go down better with a helping of flesh.


    THAUMIC CYCLER - 4 thaum/c


    GHOSTS - [3]


    MEMORY ARTIFACTS DETECTED - INITIATE AUTO-SEQUENC–


    After he was done, he commanded the Metamind to stop asking him if he wanted an auto-sequence. Auto-sequenced ghosts were terrible. Unoptimized for what he needed. Not to mention it was slower than just doing it himself. His cognition required special designs to enhance. And there was the other thing that kept repeating. Thaumic Cycler. Strange. He had four…thaums? Wait, why did he have thaums inside him? That belonged in a thaumaturgic reactor core–


    A loud ethereal call echoed through the ship, washing into his mind and startling him from his contemplation. +Guild specters detected: Exorcists. Three hundred thousand feet and closing. All scavengers, de-rig and proceed below deck. All hands return to central warding chambers and take your depressants. We dive in two.+


    They were going down into the Maw to avoid detection. The Guilds really didn’t like scavengers digging around in their sections of the Maw. Avo wasn’t fully sure why, but he stopped thinking of the Guilds as logical institutions long ago. All he knew now was that if he didn’t get below deck, he would be alone up here as the lightless depths of the Maw ate him away.


    He made for the stern immediately. The barge should have a door there. Somewhere he could go down.


    He killed three people already. Ate them. Felt good doing it, but it was wrong. Wrong in the way only Walton could explain. Wrong in the way of treating people as resources to be consumed. What Avo could understand was that saving a thousand lives granted him a major surplus in ethic-economics than killing three scavengers. Morally, it was harder to conceptualize, so he didn’t bother.


    The barge was an old one. It was shaped as a curved bow with twelve engines attached along its sides. The twelve pits across its length half-filled with refuse and bodies were fed by scooping claws that reached far down into the endless wastes of the Maw. A single multi-faceted diamond horn rose from the tip of the ship, spearing up into the air as it beamed threads of ghosts up into the Nether.


    A locus-projector. It was probably connected to the ship''s main systems. To have it exposed like this spoke of poor design. Or, more likely, that it had been installed on the ship afterward. The grime staining the ship’s hull ran thick between his prehensile claws. Greasy. Seeing as the terrestrial Guilds stopped using mundane matter as infrastructural materials centuries ago, the barge must’ve dated even before the Godsfall.


    Jaus. He was sailing on a relic.


    The hatch leading down to the bowels of the ship emerged on a small semi-circular outcropping. It also looked like a new addition to the vessel. The bolts and burns around its edges made Avo guess it was constructed recently. On the left and right of the hatch, layers of tarp and plascrete covered what might have been missile silos or some kind of launch platforms. Avo didn’t know enough about ships to judge.


    Suddenly, footsteps rattled out from behind the hatch. Above it, a green light flashed. The hatch lifted with a hiss. A gaunt, sharp-chinned man emerged rolling his left shoulder. Both of his arms were cheap implants: three-fingered with visible hydraulics. His neck was layered in ad-tats. One was a MemCode for a joy dealer. Avo couldn’t imagine the man getting enough imps to justify renting out space on his body for advertisements.


    “Kald! The boss said…” His eyes bulged when he saw Avo. They stayed bulged even after Avo opened his throat. Rational dismay clashed with euphoria. Another life belonged to Avo. He could not deny the savage delight it brought him. He told himself it had been necessary, but ?he could have just as easily taken the man hostage.


    Blood and circuitry splattered against the walls. Red spilled out between the man’s titanium fingers as he sank down against the side of the door, dying quietly. Avo felt the man’s ghost and echo sink into him again, drawn inexorably like stars seeping into a black hole. Interesting. It was like he was a center of gravity.


    THAUMIC CYCLER: 5 thaum/c


    GHOSTS - [4]


    Picking up the body, Avo threw it off the side of the ship and watched as it smeared into spraying mist as it got sucked through the engines. He blinked. He killed that one without even thinking. It was all reflex: too easy. He needed his Metamind sequenced. He needed a morality injector.


    The walkway down into the guts of the ship was narrow and cramped. It was not built for a ghoul nearing eight feet in height. His arms kept bouncing off things. The UV lights cooked his sensitive crown.


    Reverberating heartbeats and footsteps came from all around him. The reek of body odor mixed with cheap lab-grown meats filled the air. There were over a dozen people down in this section alone. Narrow walkways spilled out in three ways. Avo made his way left, toward where he could sense the fewest gathered personnel.


    He tried to carry himself lightly, walking on the tips of his claws. He was a digitigrade. Designed for sprinting and gripping, prehensile claws on both ends. His mass didn’t help his subtlety. Still, the hum of the ship masked his approach.


    Past a sparking, busted security scanner, Avo peeked into a room and found four of the crew sitting in the corner, dull expressions of bliss on their faces. Empty vials and injector guns were scattered on the floor. A fluorescent glow stained the sheets of one of the four bunk beds protruding from the walls.


    These people were joyfiends. Addicts. Easy prey.


    Avo took a step in. The crew barely reacted. One laughed.


    “Hey, consangs, that one looks…looks like a ghoul.”


    Avo froze. Like a ghoul. Still just a ghoul. Biting down, Avo mustered the fullness of his will and turned away. He had killed four people scant minutes after waking up from his supposed death. They didn’t need to die. But they would taste so good. Kill three and leave one alive? He could infect the last one and let the infestation distract and destabilize the ship while he freed the slaves.


    But what would he do if he ate them? What would he do if he found the slaves after? Could he stop himself? Wouldn’t they be easy prey as well?


    “You are what you do.” That was what Walton had told him. “Never too late to make a different choice.”


    It was with that thought held firmly in his mind that he overcame the beast for the first time without the aid of his Metamind. That, and the fact that he recently feasted. Now, he was here to save the helpless. To balance his earlier transgression. Feeding his vices now would see him collapse later.


    Avo chose. And against his screaming urges, he backed out of the room but froze when he heard footsteps down the hall behind him. Just one. Good. Perfect opportunity. Avo slipped into the room and waited.


    “Yous right,” another one of the crew chuckled. She was an over-muscled woman with steel spines sticking out of her head instead of hair. “It is a ghoul.” They all laughed as if his presence was the best thing to happen to them. Bliss did that to a mind.


    Shadows lengthened around the corner. The steps drew closer. A whistling tune came with it. A stout, bald man sauntered down the walkway, an orb-shaped drone hovering behind him. In a burst of violence, Avo dashed the drone against the wall with a vicious backhand before snatching the man off his feet and dragging him into the room.


    Throwing the man against one of the beds, Avo leaned and whispered: “Scream. I’ll open your throat. Blink if you understand.” This proved to be hard as the man had what looked to be cheap-chrome blinkers for eyes. They flashed between red, yellow, and green. Avo sighed. The fool had traffic lights implanted. “Nod if you understand.”


    The man nodded.


    Avo thought of his plan. “How many on the ship.”


    “Three-hundred and thirty crew,” the man croaked, terror staining his voice. “Plus the captain.”


    Fewer now, but the man didn’t need to know that. “Phase-pens?”


    Red eyes looked at him confused. “Two levels below. Why–”


    Avo barred his fangs. The man remembered who was asking the questions. “Take me down. No. Control center first.” He needed to take the ship. If he could seize the ship he could seal the doors. Take control of its locus and channel its store of ghosts to null the minds of the crew without a fight.


    The man led Avo out quietly, his pace gripped with tension. Aside from the man’s eyes, he was practically a flat. Probably not that far removed from being a refugee or a newcomer to the city himself. Most natives in New Vultun had something in them that wasn’t natural. Most snuffers were mostly inorganic due to their profession. The Guilders had no need for chrome. With their bioware and nanoware, they were already postmortals walking amongst apes. The fact that they held the monopolies on Souls and had most of the Godclads under their employ meant that they didn’t just have favor with the metaphorical deck, they essentially owned it.


    Still, this boded well for Avo. A shipful of flats and lesser-chromers meant he was unlikely to run into someone with military-grade Titanskin or an Accelero. If he ran into someone like that, it wasn’t a question if he could win, but how much of his corpse they’d leave behind.


    Most of the crew were in their rooms or gathered in other chambers to avoid the worst of the Maw’s radiative entropy. Avo had no idea how much the titanium shielding of the ship would help them, but something told him they wouldn’t be enough. Scavenging was bad for longevity.


    In his periphery, he noticed a dim flame burning, piercing into his attention through the walls. Avo frowned. Shutting off his cog-feed for a moment, he watched as it faded. He activated his cog-feed again and caught Traffic-Sight by his scruff.


    Avo pointed in the vague direction of the flicker. “What’s that way?”


    “Reactor room,” the man said. “I can–”


    “No. Keep going.” He would study the reactor later when he had the time. Something about it called to him. Called to his hunger. Inexplicably, he wanted to know its taste. Right now, he needed control.


    It took a few more turns before he found himself finally descending down an incline. The door leading to the bridge was a layer of rusted steel. It looked dissonant beneath the green tarp and insulating foil that seemed to plaster the walls of the interior. Still, as Traffic-Sight approached, the door hissed open.


    On the other side, a mountain of a woman in a coat made of melted slats was glaring down at a bloodied man on his knees. His face was mangled and swollen. His lower lip was clenched in her left hand, gloved in gleaming scale. He reeked of pain and torture. She stood over him, a tower of indifference radiating rank annoyance.


    Unnoticed, Avo gripped his hostage in warning and watched.


    Her face was a patchwork of cyberware and scars. Her jaw was a thing of chrome running far up the right side of her face. Acid burns marred what little flesh there was on the other side. Both her eyes glinted like coals in the dark. As her coat drew back, Avo noticed that her legs looked akin to industrial pistons.


    The captain certainly made an impression. Even unintentionally.


    In the background of the narrow chamber, numerous holo-feeds were projected on a concave screen, lighting the dimness of the room in a glower of blue. The largest feed showed a few of the crew holding knives to the necks of two women. Twins. They shared features with the man currently kneeling before the captain.


    The captain sighed. Her lungs bellowed air in gales of breath. “Again, Mr. Streklov, the eldest or the youngest? We signed a debt contract for two. I currently count three people in your family. I might be a no-good useless drunk piece of shit long past her heyday, but I can still do arithme–” She paused as a wind blew in through the hatch leading into the bridge. Frowning, she noticed Avo and Traffic-Sight and tilted her head.


    “Engineer Yully,” she said, “are you aware that there’s a ghoul standing behind you.”


    “Hostage,” Avo explained.


    The woman nodded. Like this was an everyday occurrence to her. She had probably seen weirder. This was New Vultun after all. “Right. Ghouls talk. They can do that. Just don’t remember any of them taking hostages…” She frowned. Sighing, she casually pointed her palm at the man–Streklov’s–face. A flash of light speared out. A clean beam cored an open wound into the man’s head. His daughters screamed. The captain cut the feed with a wave of her hand.


    Still, the echo and the ghost spilled over into Avo, sinking into him like before.


    THAUMIC CYCLER: 6 THAUM/c


    GHOSTS - [5]


    METAMIND ADJUSTMENTS RECOMMENDED - FOUNDATIONAL STRUCTURE REACHING CAPACITY


    “There,” the captain said. “Debt contract absolved. On to the next issue.” She looked Avo up and down. “You can understand Standard, yes?”


    Avo grunted. “Perfectly.” As if she didn’t hear him speaking it earlier.


    “Right,” she said. “Just had to make sure. I had a bit too much to drink earlier. Was afraid I hallucinated you into existence.”


    Avo wanted to tear into her. No. Needed a better means of attacking her. He didn’t know the depth of her implants and her capabilities. The lack of properly built ghosts meant he couldn''t scry her either. Instead, he repeated one of his old tricks. With a sudden thrust, he launched Traffic-Sight at her and darted at an angle. The man collided with her and bounced off. The captain sighed, unaffected. Avo closed in, claws open–


    He made it two steps before a twin-layered halo rippled over out from her mind. Avo’s eyes widened. Over the crown of her halo, a phantasmal sigil ignited into a symbol of a sword. Like a constellation, the memories of her ghosts erupted from the center of her halo, flooding over his senses. This, then, was the difference between a poorly sequenced collection of ghosts and a factory-setting Metamind.


    A tidal wave of trauma swept into him unimpeded. Without properly made wards, he had no counter. No defense. At the whims of her will, pain exploded across his nerve centers as her ghosts usurped his mental functions. Avo gasped, toppling as her ghosts burrowed deeper, tearing through his surface thoughts, and rendering his mind porous. Hard to cling to.


    WARN-


    His cog-feed sputtered out. A flood of madness poured into his mind. He descended into a maelstrom of dreams, of chaos. Memories of being beaten and tortured overwhelmed his senses. It remained for a while until his mind was dulled enough to recede like waves returning to the ocean. A curtain of darkness remained over his eyes; a miasma of static parted him from his senses.


    Through a narrow pinprick of awareness, he felt his body spasming against the ground. He tried to stand. His body wasn’t listening. The captain was actively intercepting snatching his thoughts before they could travel across his body.


    “Is it dead?” he heard Traffic-Sight ask through the darkness.


    “No,” the captain said. “That would be a waste. It’s a talking ghoul. Don’t see that shit every day.”


    Frantic footsteps rattled down the hall from whence Avo came. “Captain–captain!”


    "Yes, yes, I know. Ghoul on the ship.”


    “Kald, Tagma, and Jessa are all dead. Li-ying’s missing.”


    A beat followed. The captain sighed. “I think I can deduce why. Yully. Get the crew on high alert. See if he’s…infected anyone. Ms. Katha, take him down to the pens. Put him across the product and link him to the locus. Dose him with nightmares. He won’t stay out otherwise. Fucking rotlicks.”


    “The pens?” the unfamiliar voice asked.


    “Yes, the pens. So we can sell it later.” The captain scoffed. “It’s already killed three of mine. Might as well spin a profit from it somehow.”


    “I just thought–”


    “Chuck it in the Maw?” the captain laughed. “Why? So its death can be nice and painless. No. When we get back to Mazza’s Junction we’ll offload it with the FATELESS.” At the sound of that, the beast within him exploded. It raged against the ghosts latched to his mind. It raged uselessly.


    A curtain of discord descended over his thoughts. His mind was drowned in a whirlwind of confusion, his senses flaking away from his awareness. He thought he was being pulled upward by something before he dreamed of a screaming saw slicing into the side of his abdomen. Next, he saw butterflies spill out from his wounds before the intestines he shouldn’t have had turned into serpents and sank their fangs into his eyes.


    Then, came the final memory. He was falling into a burning house as he choked on smoke. The haze grew thick. So thick that they were all that remained of his thoughts. A growing fog ate away at him, drowning him in darkness.