Godclads

Chapter 4-3 The Gouge

Burner’s Way. Now there’s a godsdamned tragedy if there ever was one.

You wanna know how often communities genuinely cross blocks and come together to make a better home? Fuckin’ never. You wanna know how often all the blocks in a district decide to band together and establish something of a pseudo-parliament of the clades and colors? Elect actual representatives to interface with our “owners?”

Less than never.

And you wanna know what it took for all that to go to hell?

One night?

One night, thanks to one billion cannibalistic subhumans and their half-strand masters that couldn’t let go of a long-dead empire.

Fuck the Low Masters. Fuck the ghouls. And triple-fuck the Guilds for using the Uprising as an excuse to bomb the district. We all know why they did it.

Be with Jaus, Burner’s Way. You were a better dream than we ever deserved.

-Quail Tavers, “The Night of the Long Feast”

The Gouge

The space beyond the windows of the capsule blurred along needles of motion. Even attached to the rig, Avo felt a certain inversion to gravity, as if he was falling sideways, pulled by a force at growing velocity. Yet, there was no danger of toppling, nor any sensation of falling. The powers of a Heaven were at play, and the miracles it delivered inflicted an uncanniness on Avo’s equilibrium.

Before him, Chambers prattled on, showing no signs of discomfort. Familiarity within the capsule, even. From his crudely sequenced Metamind, a spill of three ghosts fused into a Phantom phantasmic, their vapourous forms manifesting to zoom in on the midsection of a megablock.

This block, however, had no number, no identifier. That might’ve been because someone colossal had gouged an entire portion free from the middle of the structure, shredding a half-mile deep into its foundations. It was a testament to New Vultun’s infrastructure that the building was standing if nothing else.

To the flicks of Chambers’ fingers, the phantoms drifted down, scrolling past the damage and dissembling the block into its component floors. Swiping up for what felt like a minute, Chamber grinned and found his prize: floor one hundred and seventy-seven. Just seventy-seven floors above Layer One. He pulled the floor free, as if pulling a plate free from its stack, and flipped it vertically so Avo could get a top-down perspective of the structure.

“There we go,” he said grinning. “Here’s your playground: Level one-seven-seven of the Gouge.”

“Gouge,” Avo said, considering the name. “Name. Because the damage?”

“Yeah,” Chambers said, smiling darkly. “I saw it happen, you know. Was just a juv. Middle of the Uprising. One of Stormtree’s ‘Clads was pushing hard, trying to dislodge a No-Dragon firing position. Manifested a leviathan out of godsdamned raindrops and took a bite from the block. Staring at it made me shit myself. Ma told me I spent most of that week just cryin’.”

Avo grunted. That sounded like a useful Heaven to have. Of course, he didn’t know how it would even interface with his current Heaven. Getting his Hell working was the top priority, and if he was meticulous, perhaps he could even reactive his Liminal Frame without Chambers noticing. But that meant he needed to survive this run, and he couldn’t just trust what Chambers was saying.

That was a rule about being a Necro: never let someone else plan your dives.

“Full details,” Avo said. “Opposition. Positioning. Defenses. Capabilities. Surrounding map too. Open up terrain. Five-mile radius. Want to study local environment.”

“Whoa…whoa,” Chambers said, laughing, “fuckin’, going all strategery on me there, ghoulie. A bit too much for your consang Chambers. Trust me, it’s a simple milk–”

Avo glared and repeated his words verbatim. “Full details. Opposition. Positioning. Defenses. Capabilities. Surrounding map too. Open up terrain. Five-mile radius. Show me local map.”

A twitch of frustration ran through Chambers’ face. The enforcer sighed and tugged at the front of his hair. “You know, ghoulie, you’re a very aggravating person to talk to.”

That made Avo chuff with irony. “You must be rubbing off.”

Chambers snickered. He pressed a rude gesture against one of Avo's optics. “Fuck. You.”

“No.”

The enforcer just laughed louder. “Alright,” he said, expanding the map to show the surrounding area. The buildings surrounding the block looked just as mangled. None had gone untouched by the war in some way, and the streets above Layer One were pockmarked by artillery as far as Avo could judge. Only two structures remained nearby the Gouge, and one towered over it still, looking as if an abandoned broadcast tower with its layered dishes.

Between the tower and the block looked to be a distance of five hundred feet. Avo couldn’t jump that, but if he had a parachute or a jump thruster of some kind…

“Yeah,” Chambers said, waving away the broadcast tower, “know what’s ticking inside your head. Cute. Totally a good idea on a scry, but it won’t work.”

Avo frowned. “Why not.”

“Fallen Heaven,” Chambers said, bringing up the floor plans for the Gouge again. “Lingering contagious Ruptures or some shit. Something’s fucky about the spaces inside all the buildings. Makes it hard to get out, and breathing in the air inside spores you with hydrapedes, supposedly. Fuckin’ painful when they start hatching in your lungs.”

Chambers sounded like he was speaking from experience.

“Loci?” Avo asked, taking an approach he was more comfortable with. He might not have his full list of tools in his Metamind, but he could still make this work. Especially considering the quality of the local Necros. The wards he saw on the enforcers were appalling. “Something to jack into.”

“Just minds,” Chambers said. “Not worth it either. Decent Necro could null most people in the district easily but this is a run-snatch-dash gig. Nothing more complicated than that. Wouldn’t want you to waste a ghost on these worthless fucks, would we?”

“Depends,” Avo said. “Opposition.”

Chambers snorted. He pulled up a simulacrum of a person. They had cheap exo-rigs bolted to the implanted ports on their bodies and hap-tats flashing all over them. What flesh the person had was for rent. Except for the wrist. That was swollen with dripping sap. Joyfiends. They carried a crude-looking rifle that seemed at least a whole eon out of date and were backed up by equally anemic-looking drones.

“The Drippers,” Chambers said. “Small-time gang. Maybe two hundred strong. Likely less. They run organ farms and peddle joy. And use it. You know. The usual. Kit is nothing but spit. Got cheap industrial rigs bolted to their bodies. Good for picking up heavy shit. Bad at moving fast, taking damage, having working servos–you know, that kind of shit.”

Avo grunted. He knew the type. The type didn’t live very long before feeding the city. “Just them?”

Chambers winced. “Well. There are those Scalper fucks across the district but a good ten miles away, across the local stretch of the Maw. Nu Scarrowbur.” Chambers spat. From one of Nightmantis’ many optics, Avo noticed Janand shaking his head at the sight of phlegm coating the ground. “Half-strands. They shouldn’t count for anything anyhow. No sense in them playing around in this district seeing that it's cut off from the Sovereignty. Guess Yuulden-Yang decided that the imbalance in local real just wasn’t worth fixing.”

“Civilians?” Avo asked. He knew the answer. Even after the districts fell, it wasn’t like people could just move around at will in New Vultun. Their residency was bound to a district, to a Sovereignty. Jumping out of line was illegal, especially with the influx of refugees flooding in daily. It was a certain way to lose your spot. Miss out on getting to the Tiers.

“Are FATELESS civies now?” Chambers asked. “Hells, Moonblood. Come on. For serious. Come on.”

Silently, Avo judged the enforcer. The man was no monster by design, nor did he have a taste for flesh, so the failure must’ve been in his nurture. If there was any nurture to Chambers at all. “Choiceless. Not their fault. Not their fight. Killing them is unethical.”

Chambers' eyes narrowed to a thin glare of disbelief. “I’m sorry, but did you, a cannibalistic fucking subhuman monster, just say the word ‘unethical?’

Avo nodded. The armor interpreted the action as a roll of the shoulders. “Prey can’t fight back. Bad diet. Leaves constitution weak. Encourages bad behavior.”

The enforcer grabbed Avo’s hand dramatically and shook it with undue vigor. “Oh, ho, ho! I salute thee, brave saint-ghoul! In fact, I commend thee! I begeth you a questioneth–”

A low growl threatened to work its way out of Avo’s throat. “Question doesn’t need an ‘eth’–”

“–shuteth theth fucketh upeth–pray tell me, have you, perchance eaten any children during the Uprising.”

Probably. “None that I know of.”

That was also technically true. He was more in the middle of the horde. Hard to tell what flesh came from who or where when you were gorging yourself on the disfigured scraps your larger brothers left behind.

“Jaus,” Chambers said, laughing in disbelief, “actual ghoul-paragon of noble virtues. Mirrorhead finds us another freak.”

Avo held back the urge to break the man’s neck and use him as the last bit of Essence to claim his Hell. Every concern was a joke to him. Every principle was something to mock. But Walton had faced his type before. Faced him with an expression unchanging, accepting. Always accepting. For now, Avo decided that he would do the same.

Besides, he could always eat Chambers later, after his uses finally ran dry.

Still, If joyfiends were all there was to contend with, then sure, it definitely did look like a milk run. No need to really worry about civilians if he played it subtly and strategically. But there was another thing he learned from diving: it wasn’t about the skin, but the meat beneath. Chambers could be wrong, and the cost of that would be Avo catching a flechette or ten to the chest. The opposition could always be someone else. The environment could always be altered.

Avo needed to keep his own game close to his chest. Chambers wasn’t just untrustworthy, he was also sloppy. Slow road to suicide if there ever was one.

A drone hovered over, pulling Avo’s attention momentarily. In its grip, it held a strange chittering creature with what looked like blubber popping out from its ebony-shelled segments.

“What’s this?” Avo asked. The creature was planted against Avo’s back and suddenly locked in, the ringing sound of the creature’s shell magnetizing and vibrating even through the rig.

“Clickersail,” Janand said, scanning the creature. “Utility bioform. Grown last month. Expires tomorrow. Should still be able to bear your weight and let you catch the winds a bit in case you fall today.”

Avo grunted. Useful. He wondered if he could graft something like that into himself. “How does it work?”

“Automatically,” Janand said. He didn't elaborate any further. Avo was beginning to get the feeling that the tech very much didn’t want to be here.

Chambers snapped his fingers. Avo turned. “Hey, ghoulie, enough dork-shit, focus up.” The enforcer pulled up a route. Avo tilted his head. It was, quite literally, a straight route from the upcoming G-Station exit to the block. “So what you’re going to do is walk over, right? And fuck everyone up. Then climb up the building. Take the package. And leave.”

Avo blinked. “Walk in…and just leave?

“And remember to take the package,” Chambers said. “Speaking of which…” The enforcer twisted his phantoms the dull chrome exterior of a stasis case. A scorch mark ran over the words “GUILD PROPERTY,” which were painted large and white. “Here’s our prize. Biomods. Sealed in stasis case.”

Didn’t really look any different than any other stasis case. Avo wondered if he could crack this one’s mem-code without a Ghostjack. If it was smuggled from Ori-Thaum? No. Not a chance. Any other Guild was probably a yes.

“And in case you’re worried ‘bout the mem-code, don’t worry,” Chambers said, grinning while he tapped his head. “Ol’ Chambers already got the right memories installed for that.”

A low whine filled the capsule. The lurching sensation of gravity righted itself, turning slowly on an incline. A tone sounded. “You are now arriving at Burner’s Way. Please don’t forget your personal belongings. Doors will open to your left.”

Outside, the motion needles began to slow and dissolve. Avo felt his weight sink back into his feet again. The world was right again. Normal. Chambers knocked on the Nightmantis.

“You ready to take a walk, Moonblood?” The enforcer grinned.

“Why not,” Avo said.

What he really wanted to say was that he wanted to spend more time preparing. He always wanted to spend more time preparing.

Unless he killed Chambers and made a run for it. The upside to that was he wouldn’t need to hear Chambers laugh anymore. The downside was that Mirrorhead would likely go from being a potential problem to an active one very soon. Not something he needed with the cortex bomb still in play.

As the rig station released the Nightmantis, Avo felt himself drop. The capsule bobbed as if a boat on the water. Rolling his shoulders, Avo took his first tentative steps toward the opening doors. Light greeted him like a blinding wave and he winced. Immediately, his optics began to make the necessary adjustments, polarizing to protect his vision.

His cog-feed could tune visual details, but it couldn’t get rid of his sensitivity to light. That was a physiological problem.

“Listen,” Chamber said, reaching up to place a hand on Avo’s shoulder. “I’ll walk you through it. All of it. Chambers here has got your back.”

“All I could ask for,” Avo muttered.

“I’m serious,” Chambers said. “I’ll walk you through it. Even send out a few drones to give you overwatch if need be. Shit basic street-gangers won’t have. A fucking child could do this, trust me.”

Yes. Trust the enforcer who decided to plan an entire smash-and-grab operation under the nose of his Godclad of a boss. “Trust you?”

“Trust my self-interest,” Chambers said. “We get this stuff and bring it to Mirrorhead and–” Chambers kissed the tips of his fingers, “–sweet, sweet imps for me, and probably lots of screaming children for you to feed on? How does that sound?”

The capsule’s doors sheathed themselves vertically, opening the path for Avo’s departure. “Rather have beef.”

Chambers shrugged. “Beef’s expensive. ‘Fugees are free.”

Avo didn’t bother giving the enforcer an answer. Slowly, he stomped out from the capsule, feeling the weight of neural lag pulse from his nerves into his armor a moment too late. Janand’s adjustments made the responses of the exo-rig more fluid but it still felt a half-second behind Avo’s body. Or maybe he was just faster now, thanks to the Celerostylus. Both could be true.

Whatever the case, the sooner he got this done, the sooner he could be finished with Conflux. Get his frame working again, and his freedom back. Then, he needed to get his bearings and deal with Mirrorhead before the Syndicate boss came looking for him first.

“Check-check,” Chambers said, switching to communicating with him directly through the armor’s coldtech communicator. Avo was about to ask why the enforcer didn’t use ghosts, but seeing the condition of the man’s sequences, decided that he didn’t want a link to a mind that compromised anyway. “Hearin’ me, ghoulie.”

Avo grunted.

“Alright. Janards here should’ve uploaded a map into your rig’s enhanced intelligence. Should lead you to the right path. Just stick to the blinking lane and you’ll be right as the midnight rain. You can do that right?”

Avo grunted again.

“What? You taking a shit in the rig? Use your words.”

“No,” Avo said.

The sensation of being spoken to through dead metal was still uncanny. Each ghost had aspects of personality and memories. It made communicating feel natural like there was something there that resembled the aspects of one’s own mind. With coldtech, everything was numbers. Code. It wasn't that Avo was bad at math, but the sheer emptiness of the machines left him…

Starving, in a sense.

The G-Station at Burner’s Way had clearly been bombed. Repeatedly. Jutting beams and half-melted plascrete dolloped along the skeleton of the floor above, the light of day pouring in through a particularly large chasm. Peeking out from the optics on his shoulder, Avo noticed that the tunnels leading down to the next station were long collapsed.

All they had was three stops. Three stops more than he expected considering the sheer ruinous force the Guilds brought down on the city during the war.

Stumbling past translucent pathways made by fusion-burned glass, Avo found only slagged stumps where the ticketing barriers were supposed to be here. Three hunched figures stood in the corner of a burning aerovec power cell placed in a barrel. Over the flames writhed the impaled body of an aratnid, eight jagged limbs stabbing blindly into the air. One by one, Avo watched the eight eyes pop across the creature's rat-like face, trailing down to feed the fire like ichorous tears.

Inside the rig, Avo clacked his teeth in hunger. Aratnid. Juicy and tasty. He wished the rig was easier to open. He wanted a bite.

“Don’t tell me you wanted to eat that,” Chambers said, a note of disgust in his voice.

“Meat is meat,” Avo said. “Good nutrition.”

“Bleh. Jaus, your breath must smell like death.”

“No,” Avo said. “Breath smells like nothing.”

“Just... shut the fuck up and keep moving. You can stare at frying spider-rats later.”

Ascending the narrow steps leading out of the station was easier than Avo thought it would be. The mass of his armor helped. With every step, the blades he had for feet dug furrows into the superheated ground. He found himself frowning at that. Obvious track marks. Not very good if he wanted to hide his tracks.

Exiting into the city itself, the sheer ruination inflicted on the district struck Avo like a blow. Bloated maggots some six feet in length and double again in width clawed up and down the desiccated skeletons of the buildings around him. Yet, what pulled his attention more were the human faces pressing out from the soft skin lining the creatures’ backs, static pulses of thoughtstuff still misting from within their jiggling forms.

“Those people…” Avo asked.

“As I said, consang. Fallen fuckin’ Heavens. Don’t need to make sense to work. Such is the way of the Guilds, as was the way of the gods.” Chambers spat again. Avo couldn’t hear a smile in his voice this time. “Sick shit. Should’ve at least burned ‘em. Finished the bombing properly. Gave ‘em mercy.”

Avo supposed Chambers was more talk than he let on.

Warily, Avo moved on, walking down into the forest of urban decay ahead of him. Flickering neon pulsed overhead as he followed the indicated path flashing across his visual feed.

A mile away, the gouge, a wounded monolith at the center of this hive of damnation. A single reticle narrowed upward, seventy-seven floors above.

Slowly, Avo accelerated his approach to a slow jog. Best that he figure out what this rig could do before trouble found him first.