Godclads

Chapter 3-3 Mirrorhead

My Scalpers. Our Syndicate. We’re bad. I know we’re bad people. Juvs down the corner. Their gene-parents. They all know. Problem is we’re also the only game in Nu-Scarrowbur. Only real game anyhow. You show me a wager running official contract-gigs, working for imps on the second, and I’ll show you someone who’s bound to get their organs harvested or dosed out on joy in a month.

Without us, the flats and ‘fugees are easy meat for the others. Better they stay our meat.

Besides, there’s plenty of reasons why people join us. Some want the chrome. Some want to hurt folks. Some want to move their families up a Layer. Something about there being better air scrubbers and fewer ghouls.

Ultimately, the choice is simple: we’re all gonna die down here. All of us. I just want to do a bit more of the hurting than being hurt before I go.

Live a little.

-Mem-Log of Vincentine “Ripperjack” Javvers

Head of the Scalpers Syndicate

3-3

Mirrorhead

They threw the father in with him after he carried Draus aboard. The man tumbled across the black velvet carpeting the floor, his rain-soaked body dripping into the softness beneath him. Behind, the rear doors snapped shut with a hiss and the engines throttled up. With a lurch, Avo felt the aerovec rise just as a distant explosion shook the air with turbulence.

“Pick any seat you want.” Unlike when he spoke to his enforcers, Mirrorhead seemingly did nothing to disguise his voice here. His voice flowed like the texture of the velvet Avo was standing on. Deep. Smooth. Languid.

None of the thunder from earlier though. Nor did the glass in the aerovec crack.

Mirrorhead sat with a single leg crossed over the other. One of his shoes shone like a gleaming opal. The other was more akin to polished ebony.

Delivered as he was, Avo felt like a rat presented to a king. Which, in a sense, was kind of what was happening here.

Never taking his eyes off the expressionless mask of Mirrorhead, Avo watched as his every moment was reflected. No ripples or wards sprung over Mirrorhead’s mind, the sight suffusing Avo with dread. No Metamind. No phantasmics. No thoughtstuff. Mirrorhead was somehow projecting no signature into the air, nor trailing any memory signatures. Which was functionally impossible. Everything that thought, that held any capacity for cognition emanated thoughtstuff and released ghosts upon death.

But here Mirrorhead was, defying one of the fundaments Avo had spent his entire life studying; exploiting. It was like staring into an absence–a void that could strike out at you without ever being struck in return.

He laid Draus on her back along one of the couches protruding from the walls. He deliberately kept her as far as he could from Mirrorhead. “Turn me ‘round,” she said, jabbing him with her remaining arm. Avo winced as he felt her knuckles rattle his ribplates like a gunshot. Even dismembered, she packed a punch. “Wanna see the half-strand.”

If Mirrorhead took any offense to the insult, he did not show it.

The interior of the aerovec was spacious. Absurdly so. Beyond the ramp, soft leather couches formed an inverted U shape. Small magnetic trays extended from armrests, their stretch bearing the weight of crystalline glasses with strips of metal on the bottom. Looking up, Avo noticed the ceiling was also paneled with polished glass, separated only by a rod that shone a dim monochrome glow.

Disturbingly though, Mirrorhead was entirely missing in that reflection. In his place, an eldritch presence trembled faintly, the vagueness of its structure only existing in intermittent instants, manifesting to ripples of thaumic mass.

Avo tore his gaze from the ceiling before he gave the game away. He didn’t know what Mirrorhead knew about him–if he could perceive the Liminal Frame that burned within Avo. Once again, if the man–or whatever Mirrorhead was–knew, he betrayed nothing. Instead, he just sat there, waiting. Watching.

Avo was unable to shake the feeling that he was a sparrow in the jaws of a lion, waiting for the teeth to fall. The beast inside him was screaming for him to fight. Die fighting. Or break free and run. Be a ghoul. But doing that right now would undoubtedly see him snuffed. He was dealing with a Godclad. One more cognizant of their abilities than he was.

One that actually had a working Heaven and Hell right now.

For now, Avo did his best to play the role of the ignoramus, turning to pick the father from the ground.

“Stop,” Mirrorhead said.

Avo froze mid-step.

“Leave him. The floor is soft enough for his like.”

Avo shot a glance at the father. The man was stirring. A sudden turn sent him into a roll. Avo tumbled onto a couch, snapping an arm tray and shattering a cup against his lower back.

“Ah, good,” Mirrorhead breathed, uncaring of his property being damaged. “Finally seated.” From the crystalline table in front of him, he picked up a sparkling decanter filled with a glowing red liquid.

He poured himself a glass. And then promptly pushed the glass through his face.

A knock sounded above Avo. Jolting from the suddenness of the noise, he looked up to see Mirrorhead’s arm offering him the drink through the ceiling, reaching out through the reflection as if it was a pond. Yet, in the veil beyond the glass, Avo caught sight of something greater, the enshadowed counters of a being far vaster than that suited figure that sat before him. Its limbs were as if shattered shards of glass fused into six spreading wings. Three baleful eyes burned at its core as small rings of scripture revolved around it, spinning in cycles of radiance.

It was strange beholding the Heaven of another. Dissonant. Like staring through a pinhole from one existence to another. Even from here, Avo could feel the intensity burning within Mirrorhead, its presence slumbering, but powerful. A new ravenous hunger bubbled within Avo then, his flame wanting desperately to feed on the other, to be the only thing that burned. Souls were no living things, but still, the want it wailed from a place deeper than bone was impossible to ignore.

“Drink,” Mirrorhead said. It was not a question. Trapped between a deep reluctance to trust a drink from the ruler of a Syndicate and the risk of angering a Godclad, Avo erred on the side of less probable death and took the drink.

Mirrorhead motioned for him to take a sip.

Avo acquiesced, the glowing liquid feeling like lighting traveling down his throat. He shuddered uncontrollably. His blood thinned at the intrusion of alcohol. Ghouls weren’t much good for drinking. He couldn’t get drunk with his metabolism, but liquor never failed to give him a headache.

Mirrorhead tilted his head curiously. “First shot of Ambrosia?” He hummed. “I’ll admit, you took it better than most others of your kind did. Better than even I, in my youth…” Mirrorhead trailed off. “But again, we are not equals, you and I. Do us both well to remember the difference. Finish the drink.”

There was always a casual menace to the man’s voice. An edge ingrained behind the words that made every statement a command and every action a possible threat. There were people like him in the Undercroft too. Back when Walton was alive, he was the one that dealt with them while Avo did the legwork.

Here and now, Walton was long gone. Avo had to face the other monsters alone.

Finishing the drink with more composure, Avo held the glass back up to the mirror where Mirrorhead’s arm once pressed through. No eldritch god floating behind the mists of the reflection. Just Avo’s reflection.

That seemed to gain Mirrorhead’s attention. Moving for the first time, he clenched and unclenched his fists. Avo felt as if he made a mistake. “Bold maneuver, handing the glass back off to me like you’re the master and I’m a…servant.”

Avo kept calm. If he was all soft, Mirrorhead was going to eat him alive. There had to be some edge here. Syndicate types get over-enthusiastic about boundaries if you don’t leave hints. “Didn’t assume you were gifting me the glass.”

A tense silence fell.

Mirrorhead slapped his thigh, guffawing. “‘Didn’t assume you were gifting me the glass!’ That’s funny.” Mirrorhead wagged a finger at him, each jab forceful, spearing through the air. “You’re funny. I’ve suffered a few other ghouls in my time, but no funny ones.”

He reached down into his face and took the cup from Avo’s hand. Producing a silk handkerchief from his inner suit pocket, he wiped down the glass. If he feared Avo as an infection vector, he didn’t show it. “Now. I’d like to begin the formalities between us with an admission. For honesty’s sake. My enforcer, earlier. The one I killed. I did tell him to shoot you. Ordered it, in fact.”

Avo didn’t know what he was supposed to say to that. Was the man fishing for a compliment? Good. Good for you Mirrorhead. Most of my brothers have a hard time knowing what “psychopath” even means, let alone that they qualify. Truly, you are more self-aware than the average ghoul.

“You want to know why I killed him?”

No. “Yes.”

“Because he had no fiber.” Mirrorhead poured himself another drink and explained no more. Fiber. As if that explained everything. Swirling the ambrosia, he spilled the amber liquid directly down into his skull, the flow disappearing into the reflection. “Tell me about how Little Vicious died.”

The segue came without pretense or warning

Mirrorhead was scrubbing the glass now, working the material meticulously. Another psychological tactic? Or maybe he just liked clean. Didn’t matter. Avo was going to have to tread carefully here. He had no idea what Mirrorhead meant by fiber but outright lying wasn’t a good choice. Talking about how Little Vicious died, however, was suicide. For all he knew, it would make Mirrorhead snuff him right then and there and toss his corpse out the aerovec for a Guild to claim.

Syndicates were bottom feeders; carrion businesses. They fed off what they could steal from the downtrodden and what scraps the Guilds left unguarded. But a fox didn’t cut its teeth on fighting dragons. If Mirrorhead knew what Avo had inside him, what they both shared, the Syndicate boss would either cut the Liminal Frame out for his own use or ransom it up to one of the Great Eight for a big payday.

So, the whole truth was off the table. The next best thing instead was a lie of omission. “Happened when the elevator was going up. Golem broke. Malfunctioned.”

Mirrorhead hummed casually. “Some of the Spectators claimed that they saw you get torn in half. Be there any truth to that?”

Avo winced. “She hurt me. Couldn’t kill me. Healed.”

Mirrorhead stopped scrubbing the glass. And then started cleaning the other way around. “The golem. Tell me how it malfunctioned?”

“Not sure.”

“Hm,” Mirrorhead said, looking distractedly at his glass. A sudden series of five rings pulsed out through his head from within. Avo felt his stomach drop. The Syndicate boss had activated his Metamind. The ghosts were emerging from beneath Mirrorhead’s face, spilling out through a distant boundary. Little wonder why Avo couldn’t detect anything–the adversary was probably broadcasting from another part of the city entirely, using reflections to transport the information.

Clever. It was good counter against most Necrojacks. Prevented the opposition from studying your sequences, getting a mem-lock on you.

“If you can’t offer an answer, you should at least offer me a theory. One worth swallowing.”

Avo thought carefully about what he was going to say next. Right now, he was on the edge. His Ghost-Link still had one thought-shiv attached to it. But if Mirrorhead could transport his own ghosts through reflections, Avo wasn’t sure how sophisticated of a Metamind pattern he was up against. Mirrorhead could be in a specially-tuned amplifier lobby for all he knew.

Avo shot a brief look at Draus. She ran her tongue over her bloodstained teeth and winked. He had no idea what the hells that meant.

Avo shuffled awkwardly. “Not really sure. She caught up to us. Used decoy golem and thoughtwave bomb to distract us. Used me to…to infect the child. But something happened with the golem while it was tearing into me. Problem with locus, I think? The commands–”

Mirrorhead’s interruption came without any hint or prelude. “You know, she spent a frankly unreasonable amount of resources trying to kill you, two flats, and a dishonorably discharged Reg ten years out of the service? A dozen snuffers under my employ: all dead. An assault golem that I personally fueled using my Soul: broken. More, it appears that the Heaven itself is gone; beyond the presence of the coldtech shell of the command module, anyhow. And to plant a sour cherry on an already bitter, bitter cake, my host is dead. Mutilated. Achieving less than nothing after wasting an inordinate amount of imps to kill just. Four. People.”

Less than nothing. Avo wasn’t designed for empathy, but even a ghoul knew that two hundred people was enough to feed on for at least a week. Ethics aside, if Avo himself had killed that many people himself, that was more than enough thaums for him to have both his Heaven and Hells. Probably worth a good amount of money for the echoes of those slain to be fed to a tech-thaum reactor somewhere.

Mirrorhead scoffed and shook his head. “I would have snuffed her personally for this…farce. But I suppose I have to thank you.”

Avo didn’t know what to say, so he defaulted to reflex and grunted.

“Why are you special, Fourteen?”

That question stymied Avo for a second. “Not special. Just ghoul.”

“Well, you have to be special. Have to be. With the money she spent trying to kill you, I could have bred a thousand ghouls from the slaves I could buy. And please, don’t push this over to Former Captain Jelene Draus here,” Mirrorhead regarded Draus with a small nod. She responded by spitting on his carpet. “She’s a known variable. A problem that was eventually going to be dealt with. But she wasn’t who Vicious spent the most time hurting. Don’t say you are not special. Little Vicious clearly believed that you are. She died believing you were special. Tell me why you?”

What to say here? What made him special? Jaus, was this an interview or an interrogation? It was like Mirrorhead was judging him for a job. Or trying to make him admit to having a Soul inside. “I think she wanted me to fail. Maybe had money against me. Made her mad by not dying.”

Mirrorhead tapped the edge of the cup with his fingers. The clinking noise was jarring. “I see.” The crystal cup suddenly cracked and sank out of existence, into the reflection in Mirrorhead’s hand. The Syndicate boss sighed and stood up, adjusting his coat. “I…think you’re bullshitting me.”

With a snap of his finger, the back ramp of the aerovec hissed open.

Outside, rain fell hard to the percussion of thunder.