Godclads

Chapter 2-11 Blood Metal

The Sangeist assault golem distinguished itself quite remarkably in the Fourth Guild War when five Stormtree brigades, faced with encirclement by No-Dragon forces, pulled a fighting retreat out of the district of Nu-Scarrowbur.

Survivors of the battle claimed that the breakout would not have been possible if not for the Sangeist’s matter-mimicry capabilities. Indeed, official military sources also cited the golem’s capability to rapidly fabricate multi-megaton warheads from blood. This allowed it to suppress the No-Dragon’s swarm-pattern bioforms and saved the brigades from being overrun.

-The Fall of Nu-Scarrowbur: Annals of the Fourth Guild War, Page 888

2-11

Blood Metal

The storage level of the megablock was so cluttered it made the area a honeycomb formed from plasteel containers. Columns of stacked crates, boxes, and cargo modules partitioned the path into narrow avenues and claustrophobic alleys. A rain of stale coolant spilled down from the exposed pipes threading overhead, their lengths caked with fungal biomatter and rust.

This place was abandoned. Unwanted. Worse, this place had lost all order for its layout. Avo couldn’t tell which way they were supposed to flee. Casting out a Specter would be akin to allowing his consciousness to be pruned with the next thoughtwave blast. Blindly, he followed Draus.

Behind, the gates groaned as something enormous plunged through the walls. Thick barriers of plascrete outright shattered before the golem’s encroach. Avo chanced another glimpse at his foe. He caught sight of its crimson mass, its texture something that was blood and alloy both.

Through the toppling cascade of debris, it skittered after them, its shrouded form rearing eighty feet into the air. As the golem was enwreathed in a fog of dust, his Metamind didn’t quail at its presence this time. Still, he watched as the thoughtstuff of the ghosts around him quivered. Wards protected minds from insanity but the presence of a god still inflicted its strain.

It was like the mind knew that what it was beholding shouldn’t be, couldn’t be, but against all odds, still was. Only the bravest amongst the spectators were clinging close now. Getting one’s Specter splashed by a thoughtwave bomb was like asking for a seizure.

They pushed through a narrow gap where two containers were pulled to face each other. Draus had plucked the father off his feet by this point, holding him while he held the kid, dashing forward. Avo trailed a good twenty feet behind, muscles springing, legs pumping. He couldn’t help but laugh. Even unencumbered, he didn’t move near as fast as the Regular. The blades that were her legs blurred like slashing wheels, chipping gaps into plascrete flooring, giving him a path to follow even as she turned.

A deafening crash burst from behind. Something was bending, folding. A shadow sailed through the air, trailing down as it cast its presence over Avo. He whipped his head in a brief look over his shoulder.

He regretted the action almost immediately.

Two things assailed his attention at the very same time. The first was the twisted remnant of metal that used to be a ten-ton storage unit plunging down toward him like a javelin. The second was the golem–oh, gods the golem.

His Metamind screamed, warnings flashing behind his eyes as his wards were strained.

WARNING: COG-CAP AT 88%--

He deactivated the Specter. Couldn’t risk using that now anyway. The cog-cap dropped down to 55%. The flickering feed stabilized. Didn’t stop the presence of the golem from being branded into his mind.

Rivulets of blood flowed from a shrouded spheroid platform at its core, fusing around it to form a ribbed tower. At its precipice was a jutting wolf-like jaw with its teeth replaced with the palps of an arachnid instead. The light greeted its shell, basking it in a metallic sheen. Limbs of various shapes and designs spilled free from its structure. Massive hammer-shaped hands to swat containers; piercing legs to move its body along the ground; darting tendrils to steer its surging momentum.

It lumbered in their wake, a chimera between tide and titan, its bulk smashing through all that was in its path. Avo’s Phys-Sim clocked it going at thirty-five miles an hour–some inefficiencies with its mass and design.

Of course, its lack of speed mattered little considering the falling container dipping rigged to a red-colored trajector lane. His Phys-Sim screamed of an imminent impact.

Ahead, Draus spun, her arm snapping up to fire a burst of three missiles. A series of three blasts blossomed against the side of the container, knocking it free from its fated trajectory. Avo’s Phys-Sim went from red to blue again.

She fired again, this time at the golem. Where the micro missiles struck, the blood coagulated, hardening into slats of self-supporting, self-repairing armor. Where a thin layer of red was chipped away, more flowed to reinforce.

Little Vicious’ shrill laughter flooded the room in a deafening rumble. +Keep running! Make me work for this! Make me fuckin’ earn this!+ Distantly, spectators cheered and whooped with her, thrill building on thrill, coating the room with excitement.

A cone of crimson darts ripped out from the golem’s fluid shell. Jagged glints of red sprayed free into their air, alchemized into nanometer-thin darts. A rain of unaimed shards sheared through the rusted storage units all around Avo. He only managed to evade getting perforated himself thanks to his Phys-Sim’s estimates. Whatever her blood was mimicking right now, it was far more than mere steel.

“Avo! Duck!” Draus called.

He didn’t hesitate.

The Valquist G-7 was an old gun. A railgun when most modern arms were designed on a gauss standard. Didn’t stop it from ringing loud against the outer shell of the golem. Like a stone cast from a sling of ancient myth, the shot sailed and met interlocking cells of haemokinetic armor.

It struck. Some of the blood bent in and folded at an angle. The flechette skid off. Little Vicious laughed.

Draus cursed. “Shit. Didn’t penetrate. Keep going. Deeper into the stacks!”

Shouldering the rifle, she pulled the father and boy tight to her with both arms as she sprinted. Ahead was a winding set of stockades made by rusted overturned cargo crates. Lagging slightly, Avo followed. The last sight he caught of the golem before they rounded into the labyrinthine paths was its jaws splitting through the plascrete floor like scissors gliding through the fabric, bifurcating through the ground itself to get after them.

“Can’t outrun it,” Avo shouted. Draus didn’t reply. “Need to lose it instead!”

Draus led him on a turn left. Then right. Then left again. She pointed up. With a single bound, she cleared a full ten-foot leap. Annoyance filled Avo. The Low Masters had designed his kind to overrun and storm the Tiers. Yet, here was a Regular outside of her combat-skin, casually outperforming any of his capabilities.

Eight feet tall. Capable of moving a ton on his shoulders. Rapid cellular recomposition for survivability. Cellular infection vectors to remove the logistical need to recruit willing participants for a standing army. All these qualities made up a ghoul. And all were entirely worthless against a modern combatant. That was what it meant to be a ghoul. To be pre-made into obsolescence by masters of a long-conquered nation built on blood, slavery, and violence.

With a snarl of frustration, he jumped, the sounds of the golem closing in. Draus reached down and pulled him by an arm before he could finish mantling. His jaw opened wide before he caught himself. It took everything he had not to tear into her arm, to bite and take her hand. Old habits. Physical contact meant violence.

“Won’t outrun her,” Avo repeated. Behind, a stack of five crates came apart. A lashing blood-metal limb slid out, parting metal like an axe attached to a pendulum. Meanwhile, Avo could already hear the thundering hearts of the father and son, smell the exhaustion on their sweat, the fever burning above their brows.

They were mere humans in a city that had long left that behind. How fragile they were. Even softer than he.

“Not tryin’ to outrun it,” Draus said. “Just need to–”

Her left shoulder burst apart. Her coat veil began spewing out more error codes. Draus spat blood, the first true sign of alarm flashing through her eyes. Raw instinct took hold of Avo. He barreled into her, knocking her, the father, and the boy over.

Two more crackles followed. Avo’s Phys-Sim lined blue trajectories leading back to a distant stack of storage units and the control station of a crane attached to the roof of this level. More railguns. Snipers. This was another kill box.

In the public lobby, the distant cheering was approaching a deafening pitch. The violence and thrill of the engagement grew rapturous, some cheering for Little Vicious and her group to kill him and the Regular, some calling for them to keep fighting, to survive.

Another crate sailed past them, missing by an inch. The golem was coming for them, Little Vicious’ fury now mixed with nigh-psychotic laughter. They had seconds before the golem was on them again.

A choice had to be made. Simple calculus. They couldn’t pull a fighting retreat with the father and the boy. Draus couldn’t be weighted down. The answer was clear. Avo pulled the two from her.

“Kill sniper,” Avo said. “I’ll get these two. Stash them. Come back for you.”

Draus glared in annoyance at the tattered sinews still connecting her left arm with its shoulder and nodded. “Don’t eat ‘em. Or I’ll come for you after.”

“Try not to. No promises.”

She rolled off the side of the container and blurred out of sight. Must’ve fired her reflex implant again. Probably couldn’t go that fast earlier without turning the flats into misting gore. She was probably running an Accelero. Now there was an aug Avo would have wanted if his blood didn’t reject or subsume every bit of foreign matter placed in his body.

Grabbing the boy by the neck and pulling the man to his feet, Avo started running along the top of connected containers. Behind, the golem smashed through where they were standing. Stumbling, but not falling, Avo continued his sprint, dragging father and son along as he began to consider a plan.

+Where’re you going, ghoulie? There’s nowhere to run!+

Avo ignored her. A flash of electricity sparked above him. He looked up and called his ghosts to magnify his perception. A blurred simulation of a figure poking out from a cubic control station greeted him, their tri-barreled gun pointed directly at him while their thoughtstuff was vibrating with excitement.

That didn’t last.

Their skull snapped free of their neck as something punched through them at an angle. Draus. She made that shot one-handed. He could barely see that far.

The wind whistled. Five diamond-shaped drones dove down from behind. Avo sighed. Little Vicious really wanted him dead. He squinted his eyes and wondered if they were automated cleaner models or piloted assassins. A flash of light came from one. Pain spiked across his cheek. The left side of his face felt like a bouncing flap of meat as he sprinted.

Assassins. Of course.

They needed to get back down. Draus led them up so they could make a straight dash out from the storage room. As far as he could tell, that was all the way toward the center of the chamber where another large platform was affixed to another tower like the one in the silo. A new elevator leading up to the block’s lobby was his guess.

With the drones hunting them overhead, however, Avo felt that his odds of making the run was bad alone, let alone with two people in his care. He needed to adapt. Change the situation. Lose the golem, if only temporarily.

A trajectory-lane manifested ahead of him. Avo moved to the left, just in time for a haemokinetic spike to spear clean through the container ahead of him, Avo noted the open doors in a stack of containers ahead. His claws had torn the thinness of their material earlier.

A plan formed in his head. He turned to gauge the velocity of the golem. It was going fast.

Too fast to make a sudden stop.

Avo grinned.

The golem might have dominion over the domain of blood and matter, but it still couldn't beat physics. And the drones, as far as he could judge from the brief glances he got of their thoughtstuff, didn’t have any complex phantasmics capable of enhanced tracking. Old models. Just like everything else the Syndicates fielded.

“Follow,” Avo growled at the father. The man was gasping. Wheezing and whining about Artad or whatever dead god he worshipped.

Slipping two more lashing beams, Avo jumped into the darkness that lay behind the open cargo container, greeting its vast emptiness with a pleased hiss. Outside, the golem washed over the stacks they were running on like a tide of liquid metal, mangling and swallowing all in its path.

+Fuck! Fuck! Fuck!+ Little Vicious howled slurs and curses like a child, whipping tendrils lashing, biting deep into the ground to stop its charge. Inertia was a beautiful thing.

Next to Avo, the boy whimpered. The child was too tired to cry, too shocked to react. In the dark, a gnawing want bubbled up from Avo’s insides. He could kill the boy. Eat him. Kill the man. Trick the golem into smashing the box. Draus wouldn’t be able to tell. So close, their wounds tasted so sweet, their adrenaline staining their tired bodies so deliciously bitter.

The beast wanted. Avo wanted. But Walton wouldn’t have wanted. Walton would have chosen to live by his ethics. Walton would have inflicted his will on the world as much as he could, instead of having it be the other way around.

An act of mastery instead of slavery.

Avo was not Walton.

Putting down the boy, he flexed his claws. The father was asking him something. Pleading. Out beyond the lip of the container's entrance, the drones were descending again. The golem was still crashing through things from how things sounded.

Avo tore. His claws fell. He barely managed to pull himself away from pulling the child apart. Instead, he poured his frustration and his energy into clawing his way through the metal.

The boy inched away into his father's embrace. Avo felt his digits peel cheap and rusted steel, ignoring the shiver that ran up his spine as he mangled his way through inches of metal.

A beam cut along the side of his head. Another three went wide. Four cored holes gleamed through the other side of the container, allowing bars of light in. The boy screamed. The father whispered hushed nothings. Drones were blind-firing through the container.

Avo snarled and peeled a full sheet of metal open. “Down!” he said, pointing to the exit he made. The father obeyed, tumbling in just as Little Vicious’ voice crackled in the back of Avo’s mind.

+Still alive, rotlick? I’m gonna tear you out from that container? I’m going to make you watch as I hurt the boy–+

Avo grunted. He watched father and son jump down into the hole he made. A flash of light filled his periphery. He dove in after them, hissing in pain as a lancing heat cored through his left thigh. Sinking into the darkness of the container below, Avo wasted no time as he found the hinges on one of the doors and barreled into it, bursting out the opposite side from where he entered.

Light flooded his sight again as he found himself in a small clearing. Only an abandoned industrial rig lay abandoned near a holo-tagged column that rose up to impale the plascrete ceiling. A dormant mag-clamp swayed.

At any moment, Avo expected the golem to smash through the stacks behind him and bury him beneath a mountain of mass. Instead, he heard the ringing echo of a railgun. Little Vicious shouted out this time, her paltry wards leaking raw surprise. That was a problem with detonating a thoughtwave bomb–damaged your wards too if they weren’t properly secured.

Another crack. Was that Draus making another shot? This one struck something that wasn’t the golem. Whatever it was, it sounded like it burst apart, sparking.

Faintly, Avo heard the drones pulling away, the sound of their engines growing further on the winds.

Four engines. There were five drones. She got one.

+Fuckin’ Reg,+ Little Vicious snarled. +Godsdamn sow ruins fuckin’ every. Gonna cut her open. Make her watch in the mirror…+

More threats followed. Avo stopped listening. Staggering out from cover, Avo found himself lost as to where he was again. From what he could remember, they might’ve been closer to the leftmost corner, and escape lay in the middle.

“Lookin’ the wrong way,” Draus said from behind. Avo jumped, his claws flashing as he spun. He saw her then, and she looked as badly mangled as he. Flaps of cauterized meat oozed already scabbing blood on her face. Her rifle was shouldered but her left arm was gone. He could see the glinting plates of her subdermal armor through her open wounds. The first hints of exhaustion crept into her features.

For the first time since he met her, she felt fully human. Which meant the beast was screaming for him to eat her now, to savor Regular flesh while it was weakened. He would never have the chance again.

He chuffed and chittered, gnashing his fangs against each other.

Draus scoffed and shrugged. “Take your shot. I’d still bet on me.”

The worst thing about that was Avo agreed. As much as the beast wanted to hurt her, as bloodied and mauled as she was, he was still much, much slower and softer of flesh by far.

He swallowed back a mouthful of saliva. “Lose them?”

“For now,” Draus said. “Bomb nulled the chance of using all external phantasmics. They’ll track us down soon enough. Just got to get close enough for our thoughtstuff to show again. Soon as Vicious’ done throwin’ her fit, she’ll tune in and tune us out.”

“Should run,” Avo said. “Push for the middle.”

Draus laughed. “Yeah, no. They’ll cut us down like chaff. Got drones circling the skies, two snipers on overwatch, and a light assault golem that’ll keep on our asses like a nu-dog modded with enhanced scent-glands. Gotta drop it.”

She was insane. It was eighty feet long. It was heavy enough to barrel through stacks of containers weight dozens of tons.

His beast wanted this fight. But his beast, like the Reg, was suicidal.

Avo still had a life to live, still had taxes to pay, and work he wanted to do.

He already died twice today. He wanted to live.

He wanted to live.

“Transfer phantasmic,” Avo said. “Will hide us.”

“Can you do it thirty seconds?” she asked, tilting her head.

No. “Yes.”

She shook her head. “You’re a strange godsdamned ghoul, you know that? Barefaced lyin’? That’s somethin’ people do.”

So people kept telling him. “What then?”

“Split apart.” She shook her head. “Don’t know their full numbers. You and I can lead them off.”

“Then what?”

“We make contact.” She shot a glance at the father and son. “They hide.”

“Terrible plan.” Avo said.

“They’re drawn to entertainment. We’re good stock. We make good entertainment. Boy and his pa amount to hot piss on a summer’s day.”

Oh, Jaus and his eight, she was being serious. She actually wanted to do this.

“Yeah. Entertainment,” Avo said. “Entertainment for a moment. And no more. Golem. Four las-drones. Maybe three more hunters. You’re injured. I’m soft. Easy kills. Make it a minute.”

She smiled. The fact she was capable of such an expression gave him whiplash. “Bet you we’d make it two.”

It was then that Avo had a sudden epiphany about the Regular. Something he should have seen in her from the moment they met.

It wasn’t hate that she radiated toward him and the others. No. What stood the gulf between her and everyone else was neglect. She wasn’t afraid of him. She wasn’t afraid of anyone or anything. This whole thing seemed to bother her as a little more than a momentary annoyance.

“You don’t care if you die, do you?” Avo said.

She snorted. “Do you? You’re a–”

“Yes!” Avo snarled. “I care! I care!”

His admission struck the smile from her face before it could form.

Another impact. The sound of something scraping along the ground. The groaning of weight digging through plascrete sounded like the golem was smashing through different parts of the room, looking for them.

He should stay quiet. Keep as much as he could and find another way to run. But still, Avo couldn’t let it go. He needed the Regular to know–to admit he was a person too. He didn’t want to die again. He already lost enough. He already fell far enough; died enough.

“You afraid, ghoul?” she asked, genuinely curious.

“Yes,” Avo said. “Want to go home. Want to go back. Feed fishes. Find my Metamind. My Metamind. Not this one. Find who did this to me. Pay rent. Pay taxes. Watch soaps. Play sims. Live my life. My life! Is it much? No! Do I own much! No! But I was happy! Satisfied! Safe! Not hunted! And I belonged! To myself! Not slave! Not monster for Low Masters, or toy for Syndicate, or wager for Guilds! I was free! And I will not die here for them!”

Them. The father and the boy. The two flinched as he stabbed a claw toward them. Walton would’ve been so disappointed, but Avo wasn’t half the person his father was.

All he knew was that if the golem caught him, it would break him for its own amusement, to slake the thirst of its pilot. He had enough. Of Little Vicious and her games. Of the Tiers above that never cared about him. Of the Warrens below that hated him for what he was.

He just wanted to go home.

Draus’ stared wordlessly. The golem was growing closer, clattering limbs sounding its approach.

“Brother, sister,” the father said, approaching them, “please, we must–”

“You have a home?” Draus asked.

“Undercroft. Pendross’ Ravine. Block-12. Level 324, room 52-A. Next door is Guild-sanctioned Grafter. Belongs to No-Dragons. Her name: Auntie Peng. Specializes in bioware. Grew me some new fish last week. Salmon. Love salmon.” He thought. It felt like last week. He still couldn’t remember anything between then and now.

Draus blinked and let out a breath, looking away. “That’s great, Avo. Real good.” Slowly, awkwardly, strangely, she shrugged. “Get those two safe. I’ll get you two minutes at least. I’m still good enough for that much at least.”

Avo looked at the father and son and spun back around at her in disbelief. She was going to go to her death. Just like that? No arguing? No mockery? Avo shook his head. The father and son weren’t going to make it out in two minutes. Avo barely knew where they were going to go. And the only one among them that could fight worth a godsdamn had a death wish.

Before he could say anything, Draus blinked out of sight. She was gone again. He was staring at the rusted side of a container. A crude drawing of the megablock’s administrator was scratched into the side with the words “No Future” holo-tagged over them.

Avo growled and spun on the father and son. “Stay. Run toward middle.”

“What?” the man asked. Avo took him by the collar and snarled. “Run. Get to platform.”

Avo held out his Mirrashard. Wouldn’t work on the golem anyway.

“Keep the gun,” Avo said, handing the man the auto-laser. The father promptly swept the boy with the gun. Avo sighed. Idiot. “Take one of the side paths. Get toward middle. Circle the room or something. Don’t know.”

The father shook his head. “I don’t even how to–”

Avo decided to spell things out for him. “It's for you. For the boy. If something finds you.”

His words struck the father silent, much as a blow across the head would.

Avo continued. “If I and the Reg get snuffed, it's just you. And the boy. Need to do the right thing. They find you, they’ll play. You’re entertainment. The ones who play don’t care about children. You’re not a citizen. You’re not protected. Do the right thing. Only one who can. Spare the boy. He can’t choose. You have to.”

It occurred to Avo that this might’ve been the longest unbroken bit of dialogue he had with the father. And all of it about killing his son.

The father mustered a nod. “You’re going after–”

Avo grabbed the man by the jaw and clamped his mouth closed. “Get the boy. Start walking. No more sentiment. Go.”

Without waiting for the father to respond, Avo turned and began trailing Draus by her scent. Wasn’t particularly necessary considering that she hadn’t gotten far, but with irregular thoughtwave detonations, it was still hard to track people by their thoughtstuff.

“Two minutes,” Avo said to himself. He chuckled. “Three at least.”

It was suicide. He hated himself for doing this. Hated the idiot he had to keep alive and not eat. Hated not killing the boy and drinking from his flesh earlier. The boy waved as the father took him in his arms. Avo ignored him, instead focusing on how much he hated Draus and her suicidal inclinations.

Damned Reg was determined to discover how many times he could die before he stopped being able to come back.

Against his better judgment, Avo found himself walking toward certain danger, off to die alongside an old enemy.