Chapter 9-14 Lingering (I)

Chapter 9-14 Lingering (I)

I see potential in you, despite how you have offended me.

I spit on you. I spit on your name. Kill me if your Crucible meant nothing, if my boy died for nothing. Kill me too!

No. I will do nothing that does not please me. I bought your life. I owe you no favors.

You wretched creature faceless coward. Artad damn you. You and all your line.

[Sounds of a blade ringing; hyperventilating.]

Hm. Regardless, let me tell what you are. What the spectators will see.

Coward! Cowa

[Blade cutting into flesh; bone parting; Essus screaming]

"You, a grieving father who barely survived the Crucible. A refugee. The world hates you. But you had a friend, a ghoul. The Moonblood. He stood for you when no others would. He stood for you when I sent you to die. Now, he is dead. But perhaps there is potential. Perhaps his legend may live on through you.

[Saw powering down; whimpering from Essus]

Give him the anesthesia.

N-no.

...No?

I dont want anything from you.

Thats not for you to decide. In fact, I have a new name for you. The ghoul is dead. The Guard-Captain abandoned you. All you are now is mine. I name you Lingerer. I name you. You will bear it. Give him the anesthetic.

-Conversation between Jhred Greatling and Essus

9-14

Lingering (I)

The spell of Mirrorheads self-harm broke soon after. There was work that yet remained.

Cordoned to the fifteenth ring of the palace, Avo planted fragments of mem-data with all the memories Mirrorhead still bore of him. The loose fragments of the phantasmics were hard to track. Avo had confidence they would remain circumspect until he willed them to trigger, even if the estranged Greatling turned his gaze inward and performed a scan through all his sequences.

Piece by piece, the ghoul marked his former owner with cortex bombs of his own. A delicious reversal, re-gifting them.

Except Avo would see his mind-rending bomb detonated, and his foe rendered broken.

He had such plans for Mirrorhead, such desires.

+He aint what I wanted,+ Draus whispered. An urge to do harm quivered just beneath the surface of her thoughts, like worms writhing through the soil. Yet, greater than the hate that watered the surface of her thoughts, a dissatisfaction ran deep. +We still gotta snuff him but+

+Hes like a child?+ Avo said. +Like a juv?+

+...Yeah. Somethin like that.+

He understood. It was always easier to bring your gun to bear and pull the trigger when it was a ghoul, when it was a monster. It wasnt pity she felt for Jhred Greatlingfor him, she still bore little more than rank loathing and hatred. No. It was the frustration of cleaner vengeance denied, to hear the family of your highest foe deriding the one you also hated, to see a broken son trying to uphold the illusory virtues he beheld in his mother.

Discomfitingly, the memory of Walton came to Avo like a taunt. Was his old worship of his fathers ideals any less pathetic than Mirrorheads? Idealization and lies. This was how people were broken. This was a wound that slashed at the ego itself, skipping through trauma entirely.

Existence was an exercise in madness sometimes.

+I make him that way for you,+ Avo offered. +Null away everything but the cruelty. The son. The slave.+

She grunted. It sounded much like one of his. +Get your spook-shit done first. Talk bout what we wanna to do with the Greatlings later. The run aint even begun yet.+

Do not speak to me!

The sheer volume of Mirrorheads shout sent Chambers stumbling back. Man, if Chambers knew a couple of fetishes would fuck his boss up so bad he would watch em with greater care. Or maybe watch them even more and give the half-strand an aneurysm.

Chambers gave a nervous giggle and stepped back. S-sure thing, boss man. Clownishly zipping his lips with his fingers, Chambers poured all the idiocy he could muster into his act and backed away. It was getting harder for him to suppress the sheer hate he felt toward the man. Oh, but Chambers wanted to kill him. He couldnt, but he wanted it something bad. All that keeping his head down, trying to stay away.

All that to avoid getting hurt, getting snuffed.

But Mirrorhead didnt care. Mirrorhead took and took. Mirrorhead hurt him just for thinking. Just for enjoying.

And Chambers couldnt stop him.

He couldnt.

So he smiled. He was a half-strand, right? A master idiot. Master idiots couldnt be angry. They couldnt feel that. He just needed to nod and be him. Its all a joke. Grin idiot.

Its all a joke.

The boss threw a disgusted hand, flicking his fingers atnothrough Chambers. The backmost mirrors in the room shimmered, the reflection growing misty as the submerged outline of a giant formed. Lingerer. Get him out of my sight. Put him in holding with the other two. I will need to see to him later.

For a moment, the towering figure held still. Chambers squinted as the torso of the creature seemed to twitchas if it was a module loose from the whole, straining against the arms and legs.

You sound pained, master, the so-called Lingerer said. The unseen mans voice was an alloy of sound; distortion mixed with a choked rasp, sprinkled with a faint note of irony. Chambers frowned. That voice sounded familiar. Like he heard it somewhere before. Like not too long ago, even. Sir, did something happen?

Just take him from my sight and begone, Mirrorhead snarled. Uncharacteristically, the ruling power behind Conflux collapsed into his faux throne, his posture slouching as he turned away and brooded.

Fuck, consang, Chambers muttered, I didnt know he hated nu-dogs that much.

From beyond the quaking glass a chrome hand reached through, skeletal cogwork beneath flayed skin, translucent strips that dangled between hissing steam whistling free from the exposed mechanisms within the arm. A chambered monoblade jutted below five twitching fingers.

Chambers swallowed.

Come. A face broke through the surface of the glass, peeling free like a drowning man breaking through the surface tension of an icy pond. Wires and fibers of metal ran beneath the flesh of the mans face, mutilated beyond comprehension. Their eyes shone red while their teeth were filed down to resemble the fangs of a ghoul.

As the chromer shifted closer, Chambers saw that only a naked torso and a bare-pated head remained in terms of flesh. The mans limbs had been taken, with pikes planted into the missing stumps. Their personhood was at the core of their new exoskeleton, meat clasped within an opened coffin, augmentations seeming cage and vehicle both.

It is not wise to make him wait, the man said, eyes daring a fast look at Mirrorhead. Spare yourself pointless misery. There will be enough in your future. A soft laugh fell from the mans lips. They sounded like a beaten animal, spent and hollow.

Inside Chambers, a strange sense of deja vu flared. He knew them. He knew them from somewhere, familiarity spilling over into his mind as if from someone else while his body approached the portal-exit of Mirrorheads sanctuary. Through the other side, through gaps behind the chromer standing before him, flashes to the interior of an elevator greeted Chambers.

They were going to take him down. Straight down to the cells. Where the ghouls, slaves, and prisoners were kept.

Shit. Shit. Shitty-shit-shit.

Keep smiling Chambers. Keep smiling. The boss said he still had a use for you. That he needed to see you later. Maybe yeah, he could spin a yarn, get Mirrorhead to keep using him. Thats the plan.

Within reach, the strangely familiar cyborg gestured for Chambers to follow as he fixed the still-brooding Syndicate boss with a sneer. Your words. My will. Mirrorhead. Each word sounded tortured, spoken through clenched teeth.

As Chambers flicked his eyes at the glass around him, he swallowed, wondering just where the eldritch leviathan was.

It is not here, the chromer droned. It is everywhere. Do not look for it. It will not be found by us unless he desires its full manifestation.

Right Chambers muttered. The cyborg stepped backward first, sinking behind the veil of the reflection.

The enforcer lingered a moment longer as realization suddenly struck him. Yeah Yeah, the face! He knew that face. Wasnt this guy that the one he saw when

During the last Conflux Crucible. The one with the rotlick and the Reg and the

And the flat.

Oh. Well. Mightve been better if that poor half-strand died down the gutters.

Sympathy twitched inside Chambers.

It aint no life being owned by Mirrorhead.

***

From the moment Avo tasted the newcomers mind, he knew. He knew that pain too well and knew the shape of the accretion. The wounds.

A flash of the boy passed through his mind, an apparition made manifest by the fabric of ghosts. New wards had been installed behind the surface thoughts, but they served paltry means against keeping the hurt sealed in. Moreover, Avo knew these wards. This was the same type the Slaughterman used in the Crucible, the same type that shattered against a thoughtshiv.

Avo grunted. He studied the face of the father. Former father. A strange placidity clouded their expression. They seemed resigned to their suffering like they werent fully present in their body.

Unsurprising. To have so many implants forced on you caused dissociation. Phantasmic overload inflicted similar pressures on the mind, but that usually resulted in more hyper schizophrenia.

Staring at the man they left behind, Draus frowned. +Avo is that+

+Yeah. Essus.+