The Egg | Chapter 3: The Deal
Chapter 1 | Chapter 2 | Chapter 3
At the core of all things—planets and stars, moons and meteorites, supernovae and comet tails, pulsars and nebulae, flesh and stone, decayed wood and rusted metal, and those once-things long turned to dust; even in always and neverwas, in awareness and sleep, in rainbows and rainclouds too—there is magic; the 183rd element: hecatinium.
This element set the modem facility aglow on this 8th night of Gamelion, AH386. The static purr of the miniature megaliths, themselves wired with hecatinium and HyperNet, was drowned out by an oscillatory hum emanating from a metal wand propped between the weight of two machines, one of life and one of death—a medical unit and a handgun, both of TatNos model and make—wires wrapped in black electrical tape running from the contradictory devices into slots on the wand itself. The wand was consuming the very essence of both things, like some sort of energy vampire, spitting that energy back out with tricephalous force; a line of green plasma swirled from the tip of the humming spanner, spasming softly as it spread itself some ten feet above the tip of the wand, forming a lime-colored bubble dome about the size of six people.
Within the bubble were four bodies, three of which were lying motionless on the hard metal floor; the one in motion was Ellie, squatting near a black tower, her eyes shadowed by a dark pair of circular glasses. She was wrapping two wires together with black tape, accented by a light blue glow woven between the adhesive threads. The wires shot a spark, which struck the young woman’s freckled face, causing her to grimace while letting out a primal noise not unlike keweee! She quickly peered into the reflective surface of a nearby megalith to observe the extent of her wound: The spark had burned a dime-sized hole about two layers deep into her right cheek, revealing something red and stringy underneath. And as quickly as she went to touch the wound, it sealed itself shut as if there had been no wound at all. This realization morphed the pained expression on Ellie’s face into something resembling pride.
“Well, the field works at least,” Ellie said to herself; her voice had a deep softness to it like the midnight hoot of an Old Earth owl; there was a hint of surprise there too, as she had her doubts about wiring two diametrically opposed devices into her spanner, but it appeared to have worked, judging by the regenerative bubble—yet did it work well enough to bring life back to three people on the brink of death? She had never used her spanner in such a way before.
The spanner itself was given to Ellie on her seventeenth birthday by her grandmother; it was a hand-me-down, as Gigi had not the credits for anything else. Officially, the spanner was a standard TatNos 3rd Generation Diagnostic Wrench resembling a falchion in both shape and size; it ran the Minx operating system on a 2nd Generation Hypnos Atom-State Drive sporting 16 PB of RAM and running a microCHU processor powered by a single fingernail-sized H Crystal that fit into a slot underneath the removable plate locked on the bottom of the handle of which was grafted with a rubbery black polymer. Upon close contact with nearly anything mechanical, the wrench would instantly display diagnostic information for whatever it was pointed at, this information displayed on a palm-sized liquid-crystal display located on the nearly indestructible black vanadium shaft; the information displayed could range from internal temperatures to loose screws to packet-transfer speeds to CoO (Complex of Origin) to CHU-usage percentages by core to the name, birthdate, and current location of the last person who serviced the scanned thing (provided that person was chipped, which nearly all Thessalonians were). Functionally, the spanner emitted pulses of hecatinium-infused energy from a retractable repulsor ring in the middle of the spanner’s torque jaw (retractable so that the torque jaw could be used for its intended manual purpose if needed); the pulses were used to adjust the various mechanical details of any machine—from turning screws to replacing internal chips—all controlled by the thoughts of the wielder, which were interpreted by the Minx operating system through the wielder’s cerebrum implant, which interfaced with the wrench through a barely noticeable pin-prick upon gripping the handle. Each 3rd Generation Diagnostic Wrench was installed with a so-far uncrackable Biological Rights Management system intended to allow only the owner of the wrench to utilize its hecatonic functions, but a quirk in the 3rd Generation BRM allowed any blood relative to use the wrench—which was what allowed Gigi to gift the spanner as a hand-me-down to begin with. Unofficially, the wrench—which Ellie had taken to calling The Spanner of Queens for laughs—was modded with a number of enhancements, one being the grafting of a hecatome glove’s innards into the spanner’s own guts, and replacing the original repulsor ring with the ring from the cannibalized glove, which was a necessary modification to accommodate the additional output afforded by the hecatome glove’s internal chipset. These modifications allowed the spanner to manipulate hecatonic energy in such a way that it was not dissimilar from a magical wand out of a fantasy book, capable of much more than simply fixing machinery, and these hecatonic blasts output in the wrench's original green coloring, which coincidentally matched its wielder's big eyes. But Ellie’s intention was not to make a deadly weapon; the hecatomes programmed into The Spanner of Queens matched those Ellie was trained in at polytechnic: tomes of defense, manipulation, and incapacitation—defensive walls and bubble barriers, hands of god and restrictive tethers, and all the soft electrics; and while she had intended to learn regenerative weaving, the tomes were much too complex for her to grasp, and as such she found no way to program them into the spanner’s operating system herself. But hecatonic shock was programmed with no problem at all, as this tome was one she was well-versed in—a simple, non-lethal means of self-defense that proved invaluable for complex life, albeit a self-defense she had only used outside of the Net thrice before; the third time being just a few moments ago.
This hecatonic shock was the lightning that struck the mouse—the same mouse Ellie had seen from her spot in the facility's deep noir, the same mouse that had attacked the people she heard after realizing she had left the door wide open, those same people she only got a good look at once they were splayed out on the floor, being tortured by the rodent all wrapped in hellfire. So, when she lifted The Queen and thought of hecatonic shock and those emerald waves of electricity burst forth thus enveloping every inch of the holographic mouse, she believed she had done the right thing; although she had never run 1,200 volts through a man wearing a holo before, and the mouse’s shaking was far more violent than she had ever expected. But despite all that, she believed she had done the right thing. And when she checked the pulses of each person and noticed that the mouse man had no pulse whatsoever, she still thought she had done the right thing; after all, one of the fallen had a TatNos Medical Unit, known to pump non-beating hearts full of life once more—or at least that’s what she had read on the Net—and although she had never used a TatNos Medical Unit before, the thing was straightforward enough, and she figured it out in less than a minute. The medical unit was lacking an H Crystal, but Ellie’s spanner had one to spare, as did the mouse’s gun, and wiring all three devices would allow the spanner to draw power from the handgun while channeling the regenerative hecatonics from the medical unit. The wiring was a simple matter of electrical tape and know-how, and thus: the regenerative bubble now turning the room into a plasmatic jungle of life.
The green of the do-it-yourself regenerative field was dabbed with spots of red as the HyperNet towers blinked angry blinks of connectivity error. But the colors coalesced into the emerald glow shortly after Ellie, filled with reckless confidence, pulled her face out of an open tower panel, her eyes obscured by the glasses on which her hand was resting, tapping one of the many buttons on the frame. Her toothy grin brighter than ever as she brushed her hands together then rubbed the tip of her hooky nose.
Floor 3 was online, but there was little time to celebrate; a groan broke through the room’s electronic purr, and this immediately put Ellie on high alert. She slid behind the central network tower for cover, a single sweaty palm pressed against the matte megalith as she peeked her head out toward the room’s only door, which was now firmly closed and locked old-school with a tilted metal chair as the door’s electronic locking mechanism was fried.
There, near the entrance, a messy-haired young man was twisting around on the floor, wrapped in his own long coat; muted curses as he wrestled his arms free from coattails, propped himself on knee, foot and palm, then rubbed his face with a bare hand, accidentally smearing blood across his face like a wolf after a feast. The coppery smell tipped him off, and he looked down at his bloody palm, blank expression, lost remembering events just minutes before. His reverie snapped when he noticed the green reflecting from the gooey red on his palm, which caused him to do a quick scan of the room—a scan that resulted in a double take at what looked like a ritual totem spewing emerald plasma just a few feet away from him.
“What in the—” Gray whispered, brushing at his knees before scanning the scene: he saw Jules face down in blood, one hand outstretched in his direction; and the mouse man was mouse no more, just a husk, all ceilingward, his one good eye rigored wider than the festering hole on the opposite side of his face which billowed gray smoke like a mortal volcano post-eruption. This smoke could have doubled as visible stink lines, as there was a fetid mix of ozone, excrement, and burned hair oozing from the rodent’s corpse. “Zeus almighty,” Gray whispered as he covered his nose and repressed a gag.
Gray hurried to Jules, kneeling down beside them. Jules had suffered two blast wounds, one to each leg, which was obvious from the singed holes in the artist’s poofy pants, the only evidence of wounds that were now closed shut. A third blast smoldered near the fallen artist’s head—a miss—and a fourth had just grazed the side of their smooth stomach, if the small flames slowly creeping along the mesh of Jules’ fishnet shirt were any indication.
Gray placed a single finger on Jules’ forehead, which must have been the touch of life because the artist instantly turned over and blinked their alien blue eyes up at the young wolf peering down at them. Jules spoke oblivious as if just being snapped out of a weird trance. “I had the strangest dream; there was a mouse, a red mouse, and—”
“—they had very bad aim, right?” Gray said with a smirk that failed to hide the joy on his face.
Jules propped themselves up into a lotus position, then made a quick scan of their body, which prompted a gentle laugh. “It’s hard to aim with only one eye.” And then they both laughed, not at the joke—or even at the absurdness of the situation—but at the realization that their friendship had not been cut short, that they still had time to spend together. Their laughter slowly became louder as if the someone were delicately twisting the volume knob to eleven.
The laughter stopped as Jules noticed the totem, prompting them to tilt their head as if processing the supernatural. Gray looked too, mesmerized by the green plasma fluctuating and twisting and burping in what seemed like eight-dimensional space. Gray broke the silence, “Clearly that’s the thing that saved us, but—” The two friends exchanged puzzled glances before accidentally speaking simultaneously: “Who?” They paused for a moment, then spoke simultaneously once more, “And why?” The laughter returned.
Jules pushed a long finger into the tip of their nostril, forming a lopsided piggy face, lost in bubble glow. Gray stepped toward the humming totem, approaching it with an arm outstretched, as if to touch the thing, but before he could, the no-nonsense hoot of a serious owl rang out: “Don’t even think about it!”
Gray and Jules turned siamese to the hoot. Ellie stood with one hand in the opening of her dark messenger bag and the other on the frame of her shadowy glasses, tapping a single button as if toggling data, haptics tickling her face with each tap.
“You don’t look like a doctor,” Ellie said, peering at Gray over green-reflecting lenses. “And is that your real name—Autolycus? I’ve never heard that one before.”
“It’s Gray,” the wolf responded matter-of-factly, in a somewhat defensive tone.
“And you—” Ellie scanned Jules, her lips curling into a curious smile. “Nothing on you.”
Jules lifted a pale hand and waved an exaggerated wave, unfazed by Ellie’s clairvoyance, tucking a blonde tuft behind their ear before flashing a childlike smile, which Ellie returned in kind.
Gray watched the ginger girl, who stood shadowed in fluctuating emerald glow, which made her look beautiful, like a grassy meadow dotted with sunflowers at dusk darkly. He stared transfixed, as if he had just come face to face with a faerie. But, like any true skeptic confronted with the supernatural, his expression shifted from wonderment to confusion to anger to a superficial cool in phases spanning only milliseconds, and then, finally, the questions. “Why did you save us?”
Ellie blinked big greens, “Why not?”
Gray’s eye twitched at this non-answer. He didn’t immediately respond; instead, he slipped a hand into his coat pocket, which made him feel a little more comfortable. “Why were you here? Are you with the Consortium? What’s your name? And your glasses—are they Net-enabled?”
Ellie’s thick brows furrowed. She sensed where this was going—“This is stupid”—and intended to cut it short: “My name’s Ellie. I’m in my final year of polytechnic, and I was getting an assignment in class before this whole thing started. I was fixing the Net so I could finish my class, but I found you and your girlfriend being attacked by some—” She gesticulated at the smoking mouse man, “—some mouse person, and I figured, ‘Hey, that mouse seems like a pretty bad dude; why not stop an obvious double homicide?’ which, admittedly, wasn’t very well thought out, and I probably should have just hidden in the back until this all blew over, and—”
Jules’ smile twisted at the ‘girlfriend’ remark, and Gray, too, looked perplexed. Ellie paused, noticing this shift. “W-What? Was it something I said?”
“Jules is not my girlfriend—” Gray exaggerated his next word, “—they are my best friend.”
Ellie’s expression dropped, her eyes wide, the freckles underneath stretched to infinity. “I’m so sorry—you’re totally right. What was I thinking? I just figured the only reason you would be in here during an outage is to get away and—err—kiss—err—I don’t know, do something together, and I just kind of assumed and—” She stopped to collect her thoughts. “Jules, was it? I’m so so sorry. I really don’t know what I was thinking. I’m just flustered right now. I normally don’t do this kind of thing. I—”
“My name is Euterpe—Julian Euterpe. I think some people call me Jules.” Jules smiled, they sensed beauty in Ellie, but not in the same way Gray might have sensed that beauty—this was a fizzy beauty, there was an understated intelligence in Ellie’s demeanor, expressed through an effervescent weirdness that was both a little immature and a little charming, they thought.
Gray’s skeptical look softened. He removed his hand from his coat pocket and spoke, “Well, it’s a strange coincidence, still, you being here. I don’t—”
And then there was a loud mechanical burp; the green bubble wobbled out of phase, then returned to normal, then warbled, then returned once more. The spanner started vibrating just enough to create an audible rattle that overtook the room’s default purr. This prompted Gray to turn and approach the totem.
Ellie shouted, “Don’t!”
Gray ignored Ellie’s frustrated hoot. “It sounds like it’s overloading.” He took a moment to appreciate the eldritch wiring between the three devices. “This is really impressive. I’ve never seen anything like it. I’m surprised it even works,” he said, reaching out to touch the magical wrench.
Ellie shouted again, “I said don’t touch it!”
Gray heard a faint whoosh and felt the air by his face shift as if he had just barely dodged a bullet. Ellie had removed a thick screw from her bag and thrown it at him, which barely missed, crashing into the spanner with a loud clang. The spanner toppled over, and the regenerative bubble burst as if it were made of green slime, pooling on the metal floor like goo before dissipating into little green dots.
Ellie gasped, realizing her mistake. But instead of rushing to the spanner, she bolted to the mouse man on the floor and grabbed his stiff wrist, pressing down hard with her thumb; she put her head to the man’s breast, listening closely. Then she popped up, positioned her hands on the man’s chest, one atop the other, and began pressing in turns. She started counting but lost track, and when there was no response, she hung her head and went silent.
Jules wonder-watched as Ellie played first responder on what was obviously a corpse. Gray approached, as if to stop Ellie, but Jules lifted their hand and shook their head. Several moments passed in near silence—the only noise being Ellie’s whispered curses as she dropped her head to the man’s chest to check for a heartbeat one last time.
Gray thought, surely this care for the mouse’s life was because Ellie was a Consortium member herself and the mouse man was her colleague—otherwise, why would she care at all? His eyes narrowed at this thought, but then he considered how Ellie had saved their lives, which only served to confuse him more. Moments of contemplation passed before waves of revelation washed over him, leaving nothing but a stoic expression on the shore; he concluded that Ellie simply did not want to kill anyone, and this annoyed him, as she was now trying to save the life of the person who had nearly murdered him just moments earlier.
Jules did not share their friend's annoyance; they were instead smiling a yin-yang smile, both somber and serene, as they enjoyed learning more about Ellie with every passing moment.
Ellie, however, was not smiling; she lurched toward Gray, who put his hands up as if to defend himself. “You idiot! Why did you have to go and mess with my spanner?” Her emerald eyes lit up like a forest fire. “If you just listened, this guy wouldn’t be dead right now!”
Gray shot back, “You threw the damn thing!”
“I wouldn’t need to throw anything if you just listened to me!”
Jules took a lanky step toward the heart of the forest fire, hoping to quell the flames. “You deserve credit for trying, but the mouse had already given up the ghost.”
Ellie, still scowling, heard Jules but ignored them; she was fixated on Gray. “Neither of you knew that! And those medical units have healed worse!”
Gray took a step back, giving Ellie some room. “Don’t you think he would've healed by now? Whatever you did to that guy ghosted him quick. In fact, he’s been dead for—” Gray peered down at the glowy square on his wrist. “—over twenty minutes now.”
Ellie’s eyes welled into mossy pools, extinguishing the wildfire, and Gray felt like he was stepping into a mossy pool himself, his understanding of the young woman’s motivation deepening as the water rose around his legs. For a moment, it was as if Gray were being purified by Ellie’s healing waters.
But Gray resisted purification. “He was trying to ghost us. He was a gangster. He would have ghosted you too. You shouldn’t feel bad. He had it coming.”
Ellie shook her head. “It was just Hecatome: Shock,” she mumbled as she placed a hand on her face. “It’s like a taser. It’s designed to incapacitate. I programmed it myself. There’s no way it could kill someone. No way.”
“Well, it incapacitated him straight into a grave,” Gray said, misreading her shift in tone and topic, which resulted in a fresh look of disdain from Ellie, whose mossy pools seemed to evaporate instantly as the wildfire returned. “What?” Gray said, gesturing nervously. “I’m just saying.”
“I have no right to take anyone’s life. That man should have been arrested, tried, sentenced—something! You could have been trying to kill him first—I don’t know!”
Gray started with soft chuckles that grew into deep guffaws.
“What’s so funny?” Ellie demanded, defiantly stomping the floor with one foot.
“It’s just—” Gray interrupted himself with loud “ha's.” “—just cute that you think the justice syst—” He couldn’t stop, half of his sentence lost in laughter. “Especially in a complex—” He placed a hand on his stomach as if to contain a gutful of guffaws.
Ellie, eyes welling with tears, stomped right up to Gray and pushed his shoulders—“Shut up!”—causing the wolf to stumble lightly backward, his laughter calming somewhat. She pushed him again and again and again, into a wall. and the wolf was not retaliating.
Sensing this was getting out of hand, Jules held out their own gloved hand; it glew blue, and, as if by magic, a long Old Earth concert flute dotted with many keys appeared, semi-transparent and azure in its holographics; they held the instrument to their lips and played a jingle that was sharp enough to be annoying but melodic enough to be hummable. This jingle caught Ellie’s attention, who turned to Jules with abrupt curiosity. Jules then snapped their fingers; the flute faded like aerosol into atmosphere.
There was a moment of silence.
Gray was leaning back against the metal wall, no longer laughing, his dark hair tufted and ruffled, his face still streaked with his own blood—he wore the expression of someone playing the punching bag to a person who just had to let it all out. He no longer thought Ellie was a member of the Consortium—she had passed a number of internal checks, and he now believed her to be exactly who she said she was: a student in the wrong place at the wrong time; a student gifted in tomes and engineering. And so, the next words Gray spoke came from a place of sincerity: “I appreciate it—you saving us. I owe you big time. But you’re free to just walk out of here. I won’t tell anyone what happened—this was my problem, and it still is.” He flicked his wrists dismissively, as if gesturing a lighthearted joke. “I release you.”
Ellie turned to face Gray once more. “You don’t get to release me! Do you think leaving solves anything? I’ll still know what happened! I won’t be able to live with myself! And if anyone finds out, I’ll be expelled from polytechnic—I’ll never be able to run for office or change things for the people stuck down here!”
Gray’s brown eyes narrowed, and the corner of his lip curled as if he had some brilliant insight about Ellie’s character forming in his mind—an insight manufactured to overwrite the truth that he was envious of Ellie’s ability to care so deeply about human life when he himself cared so very little. He didn’t understand this care fully, but he understood it well enough to see that perhaps Ellie knew something he did not—something about life and its sacredness that he could not comprehend. At the very least, he thought, there was something fundamentally different between Ellie and himself, and this made him crack inside. Was she better, ideologically? This envy simmered into a soft rage beneath his projected persona of cool, and, intending to hide the rage with some insightful quip, he accidentally expressed it with the following words—words that cut to the truth he had made for himself, this false truth that calmed his envious mind, made him feel a little better, and filled him with dubious justification: “Is that what you really care about then—your standing at school?”
Ellie stood glaring wildfire once more. She saw Gray’s face covered in blood, looking like a rabid wolf, ready to draw more blood with words if he could, and she knew this about him simply from the vitriolic tone of his question. She closed her wildfire eyes for a moment and took a deep breath, and when she opened them, they were verdant once more. She calmly walked to her fallen spanner, picked it up off the floor, detached the wires connected to the medical unit and the handgun, and then proceeded toward the only exit in the room, all without exchanging another word.
But before Ellie could exit, her attention was captured by the dead man’s cargo pants, which started to rustle and buzz loudly. The fabric of the dead man’s pocket burst at the seams, and out flew a black ball the size of a fist. Its metal body reflected the space around it, and it seemed to have a mind of its own, floating as if magnetized opposite the floor. The ball buzzed around the room like an amphetamine bee, dodging modem towers and navigating webs of wire effortlessly. Ellie watched, her head tilted; Jules leapt for the thing, missing and landing flat on their face; Gray, a fearful look overtaking his faux stoicism, pulled out his whirring pen and whirred it in the direction of the flying ball, but the thing was much too fast to get a clear lock. The ball zoomed toward Ellie’s head, stopped just short of impact, then opened a small panel on its reflective surface and flashed a matrix of bright red, lighting up Ellie’s pale face, who tried to swat at the metal bug with her spanner, but it zoomed toward the exit with such force that it crashed through the metal door, leaving a sparking hole in its wake, zipping down the outer hallway, never to be seen again. Ellie was left rubbing red out of her eyes.
“Necromone,” Gray said confidently, slipping the pen back into his coat. “Wasn't expecting that. Rare tech, haven't seen one in a while—mostly because they’re really expensive.”
With one final rub, Ellie’s vision focused. Still angry, she let out a “Whatever” and approached the exit.
Jules intercepted her, “It’s dangerous to go alone.”
“You’re not going to let me leave?” Ellie proclaimed, placing one hand on the curve of her hip, spanner dangling from her other hand.
Gray spoke, “The thing that scanned you—the Necromone—it profiled you, likely already sent everything back to Ursa Major.”
“Ursa Major?” Ellie asked, side-eyeing the wolf.
“The boss of Complex 42,” Gray replied, exaggerating the word “boss” with a tinge of sarcasm.
“Zeus?” Ellie blinked.
Gray laughed. “You really don’t get out much, do you? Spend too much time in classes, I guess.” He paused to pick up the fallen TatNos Medical Unit, sliding it into a large inner-coat pocket as he continued, “Complex 42 is controlled by the Callisto Consortium.”
Ellie's single raised eyebrow revealed her curiosity, but her face was still flushed with frustration.
“Consider yourself lucky not knowing about the Consortium. Every credit goes through them, one way or another. Cross them, intentional or not, and you’re dead—or their slave, in which case you might as well be dead.” Gray took a moment to brush muddy bangs from his dark eyes, parting his hair to the side, intentionally revealing a small keloid scar shaped like the letter C. “Some of us are born into it; barely anyone gets out; everything is about money; ‘pay, perform, or perish,’ that’s their catchphrase.” There was a pause before Gray ruffled his bangs once more, covering the scar. “I guess, depending on your circumstances, you may be able to avoid dealing with the Consortium growing up. But, since you live here—in a lowly complex underneath the stars—you can’t avoid them forever, so it’s about time you learned. I’m just sorry you had to learn this way.”
“There’s no way I wouldn’t know about this.” Ellie looked incredulously between Gray and Jules. Her little bump of a gut told her that Jules was the more trustworthy of the two, so the singer’s serious expression helped alleviate some of her initial skepticism, as did Gray’s scar, but she was still doubtful. “The Pantheon would never allow another group to gain control like this. It’s ridiculous.”
“Do you honestly believe that a bunch of Star Touched who call themselves ‘gods’ would really care about what goes on down here?” Gray’s tone was bitter, almost angry. “The Pantheon is up there in their starships, playing in literal gardens, eating Old Earth delicacies, while we’re down here withering on a radioactive desert planet surrounded by cold steel, subsisting on nothing but BioBars and mind-numbing drugs that they are supplying us!” His bitter tone morphed into mockery. “The ‘gods’ are gorging themselves while we’re slowly dying.”
Ellie protested. “The Pantheon does care about us—even if some of them individually do not. The economy, and society as a whole, would collapse without complex workers. Plus, we elect them! Things might not be great right now, but they can be changed. We can vote!”
Gray tilted his head down, a single hand covering his face all to hide a massive eye roll.
Ellie’s scowl was stronger than ever, but so was her raised eyebrow. “If this Consortium really existed, it would be all over the Net. You can’t hide something like this.”
This prompted a sharp laugh from Gray. “The Consortium are pros at wiping away their existence.” Gray scanned Ellie up and down, this time with a more critical eye. “What are you, seventeen, eighteen?”
The non-sequitur irked Ellie, but the low estimate coaxed a grin out of her at the same time. “I’m twenty-two.”
“Twenty-two years of ignorance. Lucky you.” Gray paused, a finger underneath his nose like a pretend mustache, thinking carefully about how to drill the seriousness of this situation into someone as stubborn as himself. “You know that mouse you ghosted?”
Ellie’s poise broke, her shoulders sagging under the weight of shame. She spoke meekly. “Quit saying that.” She looked down and gripped the rubbery hilt of her spanner tighter than before. “My memory isn’t that bad.”
“He was a Consortium operative. An Alkaid—footsoldier—I think. He attacked me in The Idyllic Garden, over a—” Gray’s thin lips pursed, the mask of confidence he wore so well now slipping, “—an old debt.” He then scanned the room, walked to the mouse’s long-barreled handgun, picked it up, analyzed every inch of it, nodded to himself, and then slid it into his coat before turning back to Ellie, whose attention was bound to the floor, as if speaking to cold metal with her mind.
Ellie was formulating her next steps, preparing her mental talk track; once she believed herself to have it all worked out, she spoke with shaky conviction: “This is all a misunderstanding. I’m going to turn myself in to the Moral Agents. Explain everything. I was only attempting to stop a crime. The Complex Authority can pull the biometrics from the room and figure it out themselves. Easy.”
There was a brief silence. Jules fiddled with their gloved hand, biting their thick bottom lip, eyes shifting back and forth from glove to Gray to Ellie and back, as if watching a pivotal drama play out between characters in Old Earth Broadway.
“The Complex Authority is the Consortium,” Gray said, watching Ellie intently, trying to predict her thoughts, but he couldn’t even begin to guess; to Gray, the two seemed nothing alike apart from the stubbornness.
The room’s electronic hum was as clear as cicadas on a holographic summer night. This hum vibrated all around Ellie, who stood peering over dark glasses at the metal below, her brow furrowing here and there, her grip on The Queen’s rubbery handle going from hard to soft and back again, as if this had a calming effect.
Gray became impatient. “The point is, the Consortium thinks you killed one of their operatives. They won’t stop coming after you. That Necromone scanned you. They know you now—your name, your age, where you live, your DNA, your living relatives, the last time you took a piss, probably even your favorite band.”
Ellie, overwhelmed, abruptly turned to the exit, nudged past Jules, pushed aside the chair, and made her way through the now holey, sparking door. The harsh light of the hallway contrasted with the darkness of the modem facility, temporarily blinding her; she went to cover her eyes but let out a loud sneeze instead. When she regained her vision, she looked down both ends of the hallway, a dead sign indicated HABITATION TERMINAL B to her left and FLOOR 3 CONCOURSE to her right. She turned right in a huff, soon finding herself in the massive Floor 3 hub of Complex 42.
Ellie wandered through the hub, seeking a Moral Agent to confess her sins, but she only saw walls of chromatic steel stretching into misty vapor, dark swirling columns decorated with inert light-emitting diodes lined in endless rows, gigantic ducts, vents, and fans sucking and swirling high up in the walls and ceilings, occasionally blasting her with gelid winds as she passed. She saw once-moving walkways, now silent and still, mingling with hover chariot pathways, converging into intricate, circuit board-like mazes across the gunmetal expanse. She saw lost souls, all fetal against the chrome, their spirits burned into the retina displays of their plastic headsets. She saw dead neon signs on every wall and corner, and she read these signs in passing: PREGNANT? NO PROBLEM! and ALL TOMES MUST GO and SEE DEMONS: SYNTHETIC ABSINTHE and CYBER-SUSHI-24HR-BUFFET and SNOW SYNDROME TREATMENT and GIRLS! GIRLS! GIRLS! and CHEAP INTELLECT ENHANCERS and REAL WATER NO WEIRD ADDITIVES and EZ LIMB REPLACEMENT and HEPHAESTUS’ HOVER CHARIOTS and ANY FLAVOR BIOBARS and GET GUNS QUICK: NO BACKGROUND CHECK and MECHANIZED OPTOMETRY YOU CAN TRUST and another that just read SWORDS. She broke into a jog, her rusty hair bouncing in tandem with her messenger bag as she searched for absolution, cold twisted neon unfolding with every step: BOYS! BOYS! BOYS!, CATALYSTS & TECHNO-MAGERIES, WHITE HOT NOVA TOPIC, PANTHEON OF POWER: FREE PULLS WITH EVERY PURCHASE. She shifted her head from side to side, searching for signs of life and non-life alike. ECHOS MYRON MEMORY BANK, CHEAP H CRYSTALS, FEEL GOOD INC., AUTO-CAT EMPORIUM, LIGHTLY USED HEADSETS & HOLOTABLES, and one near a seedy corner that just read SAD? :)—its purple-blue fluorescence flickered faintly, as if the complex’s auxiliary power fueled all sorrow on the planet regardless of circumstance and was happy doing so.
Ellie had never seen the concourse so barren. She felt uneasy. She thought of the Consortium. How could she not know of the Consortium? She was aware of the major gangs of Complex 42—the Children of the Nightmare Kernel, the DDR69s, the Eliminator Jrs, the Boomslang Distribution, to name a few—so why was she just now learning of the Consortium? How could she go twenty-two years without hearing about them? Gray’s words repeated in her mind: “They know you now—your name, your age, where you live, your DNA, your living relatives.” She thought about Gigi. But it had to be nonsense, right? But what about Gigi? Is Gigi safe? Is she alive?
Ellie’s mind flooded with Gigi, who was likely, at this moment, sitting on the hard cushions of the couch in the glorified box that was their living room, flipping through holos for something to watch now that Floor 3 was online, clueless about the trouble her granddaughter was getting into just a few terminal blocks away. Senile and nearly blind, unaware if someone had broken into their quarters, and likely to become insolent at the slightest provocation—a trait she passed on to Ellie—she was completely defenseless against any two-bit assassin this Consortium could throw their way.
Ellie knew that if anything happened, it was her own fault, and, however irrational these thoughts may have been, they caused her to stop her fruitless jog through the dead neon to make a quick call. She lifted her hand to the frames of her glasses and started tapping, haptics vibrating the skin around her eyelids. There was a positive jingle, and then the ringing started, a ringing that only Ellie could hear, bouncing around inside her skull. It rang and rang and rang. The silence that followed twisted Ellie’s stomach into a knot, and this knot caused her to abruptly turn, dashing off in the opposite direction as fast as she could.
Ellie nearly skid fire behind her as she turned the corner into the hallway from whence she had come just minutes before, rushing to the habitation terminal that lay just beyond one final turn. As she rounded the corner into Terminal B, the steel-gray walls of which were imprinted with the letter B and caked in stylized graffiti and band posters—JENOVAKILL, Audiovisual Adolescence, The Peggy Suicides—all yellowing and peeling at the edges, she thought for a moment that she had kicked up real flames as something brilliant and orange reflected off a nearby sign that read HABITATION TRANS-AM: TERMINAL B in dead glass. But it wasn’t Ellie’s shoes that had kicked up flame; it was someone else. Someone was playing with fire, and that someone was surrounded by a mass of people who stood odd-watching in awestruck quietus, drawn moth-like to flame. The fire rose higher than the tallest head in the crowd, butterflies and birds burned the oxygen above.
Ellie, as if possessed by some supernatural force, forgot all about her grandmother and was compelled to approach the flame, to become one with the crowd; and when she did, the masses parted like the seas of Old Earth religious texts, revealing the solitary flame caller—a terminal performer. The performer stood majestic, flames exhaling from a part in their lips as if they had dragons in place of lungs. The flames were blown onto a long, curved blade, which then flicked the fire into the air, this time flashing a momentary constellation in the shape of a vicious bear that supernova’d into hundreds of smaller horses, which fizzled out as they galloped off somewhere near the massive industrial ceiling fans that spun so large that they could slice ancient giants in twain.
The performer towered over the masses, standing nearly seven feet tall. They wore a tan, pyramid-shaped hat woven with synthetic bamboo; the tip added inches to the performer’s already incredible height, and the wide, sunken brim obscured their eyes and cast long shadows over their square face. They wore a long, dark blue robe over their mountainous, masculine shoulders; the robe itself was threaded with many golden moons—from new to crescent to quarter to gibbous to full—and these moons played amongst smoky clouds that were so amorphous they seemed to billow and burst at even the slightest wave of the fabric. Around the performer’s waist was a simple brown rope, tied tightly above the hips, which produced a subtle hourglass shape to the performer’s imposing figure. Tied on the left of the belt was a long, curved sheath of glossy black, itself dotted with golden moons. The sheath was empty, as the performer held the blade at their side while blowing flames from their mouth after taking long sips from a jug imprinted with a single foreign symbol on its tan surface. The blade, which Ellie assumed was a katana of Old Earth Russian make—or so she had read on the Net—was longer and more curved than any she had seen before, with a circular golden guard that separated the glistening steel—of which the metal was both like a black hole and a sea of silver—from the hilt, which was the size of a short sword all wrapped in midnight-blue cloth.
Both the performer’s fire-breathing and strikingly foreign aesthetic captured Ellie’s attention, but what she thought most interesting of all was the performer’s shoes, which were simple raised sandals made of synthetic wood that hooked around the performer’s large, brown feet with a single red strap, reinforcing Ellie’s impression that this was, indeed, a terminal performer on the clock, as they were wholly unequipped for everyday complex life otherwise—after all, Old Earth blades were considered antiques for a reason: they couldn’t withstand a single hecatonic blast.
Ellie was suddenly overcome by great shame; she had forgotten all about her grandmother, however momentary, and this realization broke the performer’s spell on her. She stepped backward twice in a daze before turning completely, intent on hurrying home. But she only made it a few feet before she felt an extreme heat on the back of her neck, which caused her to turn toward the performer, who had blown a large flame directly at her. The blaze billowed out just inches away from her face, singeing at least two freckles and frizzing the tips of her already fiery tresses. When the flame vanished and the smoke cleared, she found her eyes locked upon those of the terminal performer. But the performer’s eyes were like nothing she had seen before: white stars, dead television, holes in space. A tingle ran down her spine, her body locked up, and her right hand tensed on the grip of her spanner. As soon as she froze, the crowd unfroze, as if snapping out of a magicked reverie in unison, everyone looking around at each other with their wild haircuts and grafted metal, all confused, as if they didn’t know how they had gotten there. Then the crowd dispersed, leaving Ellie face-to-face, frozen, with the terminal performer holding the longest curved blade she had ever seen in her life.
There was silence in the ghost terminal.
Ellie’s mind was working, but her body would not cooperate. She realized she wasn’t breathing, and this caused a mental panic that was only made worse by the performer’s next words.
“Pay. Perform. Perish.”
Ellie’s eyes would have gone wide if she could have moved them at all. A million thoughts raced through her mind in the span of ten seconds, and she tried to grab only the most important ones: the words the performer used—they were the same words Gray used to describe the Consortium: pay, perform, perish. So Gray was telling the truth, unless this was a practical joke—but no, that’s not important; she discarded that thought. What’s important? What was this man doing to her? That’s important. He wasn’t holding a hecatonic device that could cause paralysis like this, unless it was the sword, but the sword looked antique, classical. Maybe he drugged her without her noticing? The fire? Something in that tan jug? But this seemed to happen after she made eye contact with the man. But those eyes, those white eyes—blind? Some sort of fleshy machinery—inserts?—maybe a hypnotic sine wave or a subliminal message? She had never seen or read anything like this. No, the reason doesn’t matter—or does it? What matters is that she’s stuck, unable to move. But was she really? Perhaps this was all mental; she tested this theory: tried to move her hands, tried to tighten her fist, but it was of no use. She wanted to close her eyes, lose herself in darkness, formulate a plan of some sort, but she couldn’t close her damned eyes. She had so many thoughts. Useless thoughts. She became flustered, frustrated. Hopelessness set in. She felt a cosmic dread wash over her at the sudden realization of her own fragility—immortality, lost. “How immature was I.” She was going to die. Then panic set in. She knew Gigi would be next. Images of Gigi’s head rolling on the floor, a bloody path behind it like the slime trail of an Old Earth snail. Her grandmother’s old, faded eyes blinked up at her from the floor as she stood helpless, unable to move. The pit in her stomach became so wide that her brain fell through it. She became thoughtless.
And then her vision went black.
Within the inky dark, she saw a faded green bump map of a three-dimensional face poking through voidant space. Ellie felt as if she were standing in the void, watching this bumpy face as it tried to push its way through a thick cloth of pitch black, its light barely poking through, leaving only an outline. The experience would have been frightening, but there was a strange familiarity to it all, similar to bio-circuiting into the HyperNet, and this put Ellie at ease.
The bump map face, still unrecognizable, started to glitch wildly, and suddenly a cacophony of noise erupted throughout the void. The noise was like the sound of machines being murdered. Amidst the hellish clamor, there were faint voices—one voice, many voices; it was hard to tell. But as the noise continued, Ellie was able to pick out the phonetic sounds, assemble them in her mind, and make meaning from the chaos.
XX?/s/dfs/dfs/??G?Sdgsdgsgsgs//!!!!!!!!!!!!/WEGwegCANYOUHEARwgw2@!%@!#%@THIS!#$!#@66IMPORTANT!#@5123fdsaMOMENT53564xzczxTURNINGrwetwPOINTqwr13r$^3453365//wnANCIENThtn/2352352/5gasdBREAKf2439ut2352!23526Xx@#%@!#%52352CURSEgaweg42g////////////////GEKKOMAHI/////////////////fqf243324623476sad&^&4573w5THINKITdsfdsagasdgFEELITqwr3qr1524720194514t55@GRAYS#%0^$#&$..12.JULES4124/GONE1/STILL12/4142-12DEADsdgdsag41024AN294IMTHEasfasfONLY2358ONExxqtegLEFTxsaxXNOW3u3215151Iefwegwq@253235sad235626326213t521ewwTHEefxxEGGxxafw2t42q4652641
Gekko Mahi. These words stood out, but what did they mean? Ellie, in this voidant world, this mindspace, stepped toward the twitching, bumpy face; it was as big as a star in this black hole realm. Ellie spoke like an Old Earth monkey trying to communicate with a god. “What does it mean? Gekko Mahi?”
As she thought these final words, she snapped back to her senses, finding herself once more in Terminal B. She reflexively stepped back in real time and space, lifting her spanner into a defensive stance, disheveled but hiding it well. The terminal performer stood before her, emotionless, but something in his posture indicated a level of surprise that mirrored Ellie’s own—she could move again, but how?
The performer, a veritable swordsman, lifted his long steel and pointed it directly at Ellie, who was slowly stepping back, making sure not to make eye contact with the man. He spoke, his voice deep but calm, as if hiding the fact that he could tear down a mountain with a single shout. “Pay. Perform. Perish.”
“Never,” Ellie said. She meant to wave her spanner in front of her, but instead accidentally looked into the performer’s eyes, which rigored her body, locking her in place once again. She cursed herself mentally.
The swordsman slowly walked toward Ellie, the sharp tip of his blade sparking against the floor. There was a hesitation in the man’s approach, but not from fear—more from curiosity. This curiosity quickly vanished in one elegant motion as the blade flashed vertically through Ellie’s frozen body.
But Ellie had already figured it out: “Gekko Mahi.”
In an instant, Ellie clasped the rubbery grip of her spanner with both hands, holding it like the horizon, the swordsman’s blade caught on the nearly indestructible black vanadium of the spanner’s shaft. The blade appeared still, but the wrench shook violently, typhoon-force waves sending ripples up the skin of Ellie’s arms; the adrenaline pumping through her veins made her unaware of the blood dripping from her palms as she held the blade back, her meek muscles bulging, drool dripping from her lower lip. Seconds passed before Ellie was able to shift the force of the blade slightly to the left, breaking posture; the swordsman was nearly unfazed, but the force sent Ellie stumbling backward several feet, nearly slamming her back against a wall plastered with Old Earth brick decals. The wall turned into a thin hallway that dead-ended into a garbage chute. She took this opportunity to slip around the turn, pressing her back against the wall in a quick attempt to gather her composure. Thoughts of getting back to Gigi—doing it for her—kept her focused and calmed her nerves. She kneeled slightly, placing one hand on the fake brick behind her, flipping her spanner to view the now cracked LCD—25%—and pressed an up arrow that cycled through words before she settled on one with a nod.
Ellie poked her head out from behind the fake brick to catch a glimpse of the swordsman, who was iconic in his slow, silent stride, his blue robe flowing like midnight waves reflecting serious moonlight on a beach with a hurricane just one mile out. She knew she had to act quickly, incapacitate the man, make her escape down Terminal B, hopefully without killing him. But she lacked confidence in her hecatonic shock after the last incident—but what choice did she have? The calm of seconds before started to slip away, but Ellie remembered Gigi’s words from when she was young, playing at the Recreational Facility for Children on Floor 7, when she leaped from platform to platform without a hint of hesitation—”My little Elpis, recklessly confident, as always!“—and Ellie figured this was a good trait to have when facing off against a fire-breathing moon assassin without an exit strategy. Her confidence returned, and after a single gulp, she jumped out from cover and called lightning; crackling lines of lime green sparked in the air between her and the swordsman, who merely lifted his long blade vertically, one hand on the hilt and another in half-prayer on the steel. All the electricity began to pull into the black side of the blade as if it were some sort of magnetic energy vampire. The sword's silver metal pulsed green, as if it had its fill of sparks, and in the next instant, a silver flash returned the green lightning back at Ellie in the shape of a crescent moon.
The resulting shock dropped Ellie to the hard floor, convulsing on her side in the wild agony of 1,200 volts. Her high-pitched scream echoed down the terminal hall.
The swordsman, without a single word, unclipped the jug from his belt, took a sip, then flicked the contents of the jug toward Ellie's now quivering figure. He blew a wicked flame that caught the spilled contents around Ellie, encircling her in a ring of fire, as if she were a demon being sealed. The swordsman stepped through the flame, unaffected. He towered above Ellie, who, through great strength of will, had managed to writhe her way through the electric pain, bringing herself to a crouch. She tilted her head up to get a glimpse of the man, forgetting about his deathly orbs, and found herself locking eyes with him once more, which froze her solid. But she thought the words—Gekko Mahi—and regained control, falling to her bottom and pushing herself with hands and feet to the far edge of the burning circle.
“Interesting,” the swordsman said to himself before sheathing his long blade, the curved sheath nearly touching the floor. He peered down at Ellie through eyes tuned to a dead channel—Ellie was unsure what he was actually seeing—then he spoke the words once more, as if offering another chance: “Pay. Perform. Perish.”
Ellie, flames reflecting deviously off her flecked face, covertly tapped a button on her spanner, making sure not to look up at the man. “I told you my answer!” Ellie smirked as she lifted the spanner; a green hand shot out of its ring—Hecatome: God Hand—the emerald hand was massive and attempted to clench around the swordsman.
“Odachi: Gekko!”
An instantaneous flash of light left a circular afterimage in the shape of a golden crescent in the space between the swordsman and Ellie, and the hand of god shattered like porcelain, leaving only a green mist behind; the ghost moon soon faded, too, leaving only a gold vapor in its wake; the swordsman stood majestic amidst the golden green, his sword drawn in a vertical two-handed grip, the flat side close to his face.
Ellie looked at the swordsman; wide-eyed, medusa'd, defeated.
The swordsman flashed one final flash into Ellie’s frozen figure.
There was a loud blast; the terminal walls flared red. At the same time, the swordsman’s blade arm twisted into a defensive posture over his face, dragging steel along with it, red vapor trailing from the silver side of the blade; a smoking hole appeared in the wall behind him. The swordsman’s head tilted toward the far hallway, from which Ellie had arrived earlier, and there stood The Wolf Itself—Gray—arm outstretched, long-barreled handgun in hand, red vapor dancing ballet from the barrel. He shouted across the hall while wiggling the handgun slightly, “No BRM!”
Beside The Wolf stood The Artist—Jules—ethereal blue flute in hand, blonde hair covering one side of their face.
With the swordsman’s attention diverted, Ellie quickly got to her feet and, with reckless abandon of which Gigi would be proud, ran as fast as she could through the circle of fire, her arms covering her face in a cross, spanner pressed against her chest. She gambled that the swordsman would not cut her down right then and there, and her gamble paid off as she skid to a stop near Jules, who looked at her with a rare seriousness before speaking in a whisper, “He felt bad.”
Ellie returned Jules' glance with an uncertain smile before a burning sensation on her hip made her acutely aware of the flame smoldering on her cargo pants; the sound of frantic patting disrupted the silence between all parties: Gray, gun pointed at the circle of fire, his smirk fading into stoicism; Jules, holo flute raised to their lips, as if ready to play a solo; and Ellie, now done with her patting, holding The Spanner of Queens in front of her chest in something of a contrived action pose. The three of them stood protagonistically, as if they had just leapt out of a holotable game, and the whole thing felt dreamlike to Ellie, who was trying very hard not to think too deeply about the situation, lest her reckless confidence turn into sudden hyperventilation.
The swordsman walked slowly through the flaming wheel, his robe unscathed, his expression unfazed, a blaze of dancing fire along the edge of his blade. Odachi: Kagero. The flame wheel fizzled out behind him.
Gray spoke softly, “Ellie, on three, I want you to throw out your best tome, then turn around and run for your life—oh, and hold your nose.”
Ellie’s eyebrow raised at the nose bit. She side-eyed Gray and Jules, throwing her voice, “He’s got this thing—a tome maybe, I’m not sure—freezes you.” She noticed both Jules and Gray were focused on the swordsman’s feet, not his face, as if they already knew. “The words ‘Gekko Mahi’ seem to break the spell.”
“One…” Gray flipped a switch on the gun’s grip, a faded crystal discharging from the bottom panel, which fell into his free hand and was swiftly pocketed. The swordsman drew closer. “Two…” Gray hurled the gun at the swordsman, and as quickly as it was thrown, it was sliced in two, the pieces whizzing past the swordsman’s head, small explosions sparking as they impacted the wall behind him. “Three…” Gray’s coat hand emerged, holding a small tan ball with a rudimentary fuse burning near the end; he lobbed it at the swordsman, and it exploded into a dank cloud that engulfed the halls of Terminal B.
Ellie gagged at the pungent smoke but managed to wave her spanner through the gross cloud, weaving an opaque barrier before the party; it was the size of two men standing atop each other and as thick as the densest emerald. Hecatome: Mighty Guard. The wall moved slowly toward the swordsman, hovering just inches off the ground, growing larger with each passing moment. Jules then blew a sharp note on their flute, which reverberated into a shrill cacophony, as if a siren had been summoned into the hall.
Noses pinched, the party bolted down the hallway.
“That’s Zale! Trained Parivir—whatever that means!” Gray shouted mid-sprint, his voice funny as he held his nose, his coat lashing at the nasty smoke that spiraled down the narrow hallway. “We’re no match. Gotta lose him.” Still sprinting. “Guy’s blind—had to mess with his senses a little bit.”
Questions flooded Ellie’s mind as she ran alongside Jules and Gray. Where were they going? What about Gigi? Was she safe? Ellie could feel her stomach knotting again, but she didn’t have time to dwell on it because, in the very next moment, a great pillar of flame rose before them, spreading into a wall of fire that blocked the hallway from wall to wall.
“Run through it!” Gray yelled, ducking his head as he sprinted faster.
“Meow!” Jules shouted, preparing to leap feline as they approached the flames.
Ellie gulped.
As they closed in on the wall of fire, a sudden gale launched them backward. Ellie’s spanner twirled through the air, landing several feet away, and her circular glasses went flying with such force that they shattered before even reaching the floor. Miscellaneous items from Gray’s coat scattered ceilingward, each chiming as they hit the metal floor below. Jules was like a cat caught in a tornado before being thrown against a wall.
Zale stood where the fire once burned, blade drawn. How he got there was anyone’s guess. Ellie regained composure just enough to see that Zale was walking toward her, so she fumbled around the floor for her wand, but it was much too far away. Her legs were weak from the attack, she was unable to stand, but she tried, and this only toppled her further, putting her in an even worse position with her back against the wall. A sharp melody rang out—it was Jules—but the melody was cut short as the swordsman’s odachi, with supernatural precision, flashed across Jules’ gloved hand, causing the flute to blink out of existence, leaving only a trail of sparks behind.
Gray hurried to his feet and rushed Zale, holding something like a hilt without a blade, the only item he could find in his coat pockets; but Zale closed the distance for him, palm striking the wolf’s stomach and slamming him into the wall with a yelp.
“My contract is only for the girl,” Zale spoke solemnly from within the shadow of his bamboo hat. He afterimaged to Ellie’s fallen frame, blade drawn, the tip less than an inch away from the young woman’s forehead; yet this still placed Zale over four feet away from her. “She has some promise, but she has refused the offer.”
Ellie kept her head down, avoiding eye contact, insane options racing through her head until she realized that she had no options left except for the worst ones. She gulped. “If I accept…” Her voice meek, defeated. “If I perform…” A single tear turned into a chime on the cold steel below. “What will happen to my—”
Gray’s shout echoed down the hall—“Article 16 of the Callisto Covenant!”—like magic words that commanded Zale to click his blade back into its sheath. “I accept her blood debt,” the wolf said, now standing tall, gusts of air from a nearby vent whipping his coattails all around, his dark hair a windy mess.
“No!” Ellie shouted, overcome by dread. “Whatever you’re doing—stop!”
Gray ignored her plea. “Zale, you and I both know she has no say in this—she’s not a member of the Consortium.”
Zale nodded, his large-brimmed hat tipping along.
“Transfer her debt to me.”
Zale was silent for a tense ten seconds before he spoke. “Look at me, Wolf.”
Gray shifted his gaze to the swordman’s white orbs but was not paralyzed.
“The killing of a Consortium agent comes with a great price.” The swordsman placed a dark hand on his left ear, pausing as if listening to something only he could hear. “We doubt you can afford it.”
“I’m good for it. Just scored big off a recent job.” Gray hoped that the slight tensing of his shoulders went unnoticed as he feigned alpha wolf confidence.
“And there are other crimes of which you are guilty.”
“I’ll settle those too.”
Ellie, stumbling to her feet, inserted herself between the two men. She faced Gray, her hooked nose scrunched in anger. “I don’t need a white knight, you moron!” she shouted, but Gray responded only with a sideways glare. Jules watched from the nearby wall, big ocean eyes shifting back and forth between all three parties. “Jules, you’re his friend, right? Tell him to stop!” Ellie gestured toward the musician, but they said nothing.
After a tense feeling of forever, Zale’s hand lowered from his ear to rest on the pommel of his great blade. “The Consortium has agreed to the terms outlined in Article 16 of the Callisto Covenant. The debt has been transferred—all six million credits' worth.”
To anyone else, Gray’s posture was unchanged, but to Zale, who lived and breathed even the most minute atomic shifts, the wolf’s rigid stance relaxed; and this made Zale smile an unusual smile before he tipped his hat with a single dark digit and said, “You have three days to pay the debt—the Consortium will give you no more chances, Wolf.”
Ellie blinked, and just like that, the swordsman was gone. She wasn’t even sure how he left; he just wasn’t there anymore.
Chapter 4 (Coming Soon)