Godclads

The thing about chrome is that it lies to you. Some street punk going from meat to metal gets their wires twisted. Too much too fast. Starts getting wrong ideas about who they are now.

Accelero makes you think you’re the fastest thing in the world. Titanskin? Makes you think you’re invincible. Whistlers are just plain unfair, lets you kill without being in the same room. Put all these things together you…you start getting these flashes…moments of fuckin’ pure euphoria.

Makes you feel like a god.

Heh. That delusion lasts until the first time you go up against an actual ‘Clad. Hells, it lasts until you run up against a proper Necro. Don’t get me twisted, the chrome still makes you better than some flat meatbag, but there are levels to this game just like there are levels to this city.

Dead metal is just step number one. Qualifying round. Make it through that and maybe you might just bag yourself a Soul someday. Then, you’ll get to see how deep the big rabbit hole in the sky goes.

-Mem-Log of Vincentine “Ripperjack” Javvers, Head of the Scalpers Syndicate

2-6

Slaughterman

Avo breathed. The world around him screamed with echoing cheers and crackling flames. A tungsten flechette materialized an inch in front of his right eye. It clattered onto the soot-smeared ground before him, still wreathed in brain matter. His brain matter.

ONTOLOGY REVERTED

RESURRECTION COMPLETED

MEMORY RESTORED

SOUL ONLINE

IGNITING THAUMIC CYCLER: 7 THAUM/c

LOADING PHANTASMICS…

He should’ve been dead. He should’ve been.

Clawing his back up to his feet, Avo felt a pulse run through his mind, rejuvenating his senses. He was dreaming just now. Remembering. The hab-cell he lived in–the block war. That was seventeen years ago up in the Undercroft. Just a month after Walton took him in.

With a shudder, he wondered how the memory could have played. A Metamind doesn’t work when the actual brain it was laced to gets splattered. Resurrection should have been impossible for him. But here he was, coming back to life for the second time that day, no phylactery needed. He was running out of possibilities as to how.

Avo blinked. His cog-feed booted and began filtering data inside his mind. Stumbling away from where he lay, he saw the broken chassis of his drone plastered against the wall, hissing smoke. Bricked. He stepped in something slick. Avo looked down and found a smear of blood painting the trajectory of his death.

Must’ve been made by his body when he fell. Considering how fast he was going, the gore was quite insubstantial. Pieces of skull and brain matter coated the disfigured floor in a crimson drag. A flap of metal had kept part of his scalp as he slid against it. Overhead, broken assembly belts swayed like parts to an alloy willow. Drones rained down in fragments and pieces. Increments of gauss fire hammered out from above, flashing down through the looming dark from on high.

A figure fell, their trajectory immediately marked by his Phys-Sim for a certain collision. For a fraction of a second Avo saw them, he noted that they were dressed in the fashion of a Hellminer. Industrial limb transplants. Goggles. Implanted tubes ran from their necks into tanks on their back.

The figure pulped against the ground, a mangled mess along with the rest of the falling detritus.

Avo picked up his pace before something ended up landing on him. Another explosion flashed above. Seemed he wasn’t the only one that decided going up this was a good idea. He decided to try and spot any thought signatures that were still present. Maybe he could locate the father and the boy again that way. Or get eyes on the person who killed him. He’d like that. Sample their taste. See the flavor of their brain in return.

Navigating through the roiling smoke and ruins left by the collapsed cylinders, he diverted more cognitive capacity to scrubbing the thick-hot fumes that enwreathed him. Immediately, he heard his ghosts begin to wail. Overcapacity. He turned off his Phys-Sim momentarily to alleviate the load. He'd turn it back on again when he needed to engage someone from afar or calculate something.

Instantly, his vision refreshed and it was like the smoke around him never was. More helpfully, it allowed him to avoid running chest-first into a jutting pike.

Smears of oozing thoughtstuff caught his attention. From a distance, Avo could see two figures fleeing through a conveyor gate leading into another wing of the factory some fifty feet above.

The father and the son Avo guessed. At least they were alive. He had no idea how long he spent dead, but seeing as they only just getting out of this area, he must’ve been resurrected quick.

He was about to call out to them when a bright flash seared into his vision overhead. Avo winced and narrowed his eyes. The ghosts tried to adjust but the issue wasn’t with perception, but biology.

He needed starshades or goggles for his eyes to withstand high brightness. A thrust pack gunned its propulsors repeatedly through the air. A deafening voice boomed as wild laughter filled the room. As his sight cleared, Avo watched the vague bright-wreathed outline of an enormous being dash into the same conveyor gate as the father and son.

Hunter. One who was running the chrome build of a bruiser and had a powerful enough thrust pack to achieve lift despite weighing a few tons. Wonderful. Avo grinned. More of them to eat. To make matters more interesting, their thoughts were shaped into an opaque, opalescent dome, but lacked the ripple of a Metamind.

Probably just a ward then. Avo knew how to crack wards. And judging from how it wasn't cycling, he guessed it was probably really cheap; something he could make in an hour.

The hunter pried the gate wider and squeezed his way in. Machinery broke. Metal walls groaned, folding. The figure threw back his head and chuckled, his voice the sound of caustic thunder. All the while, the ghosts kept cheering his name.

+Slau-ter-man! Slau-ter-man! Slau-ter-man!+

“Run, flats! Run!” Slaughterman bellowed. Like a wolf descending into a rabbit’s den, the Slaughterman followed the boy and the father. The hunter drifted out of sight in the physical world while his mind faded into the jungle of thought and ghosts comprising the local Nether.

Avo shifted his perception deeper into the Nether, trying to keep track of his new prey. Logic told him this was the perfect opportunity to run. Let the boy and his father face their fate, that they were certain to die. But Walton would’ve tried to help them.

And the beast wouldn’t just leave perfectly good prey alone.

Ethics and desire joined forces. Good sense was overruled. All was wonderful in the world.

The overlay of the Nether grew thicker and brighter, instilling his environment with an etheric resonance. Pulsing ghosts of myriad designs leaking spills of emotion and surface thoughts crowded his vision. There were thousands of watchers in this room alone. They bore chimeric visages with parts of their pseudo-ontology shaped to resemble nu-birds, robots, warships, and even long-dead celebrities. Connected by dangling strands running far up to the massive locus above, their hosts took in the festivities through the eyes of their phantasmal constructs in the safety of their own habs.

It looked strange from the other side. Avo felt a strange sensation–how he should have been among the ghosts, delivering mem-drops or planting nightmares into other hosts for his dives. Rarely did he pay attention to the little people serving as his distractions, doing the surviving and dying while he made his imps.

Suppose it was the same experience that let him spot the hunter’s trail so easily. The ghosts were mostly tethered together. Their leaking thoughtstuff bubbled and dissolved. The hunter’s thoughts, however, left a trail: an oily vector that painted an arc through the open air and down through the crumpled gates. A leak in his wards. Unfortunate.

“Found you,” Avo whispered to himself. Faintly, he was aware of a tendril of ghostly matter leaking down from one of the ghosts above him. It stung out at him. And splashed across his active wards like water. The ghost itself spasmed back as an injection of concentrated trauma flooded it.

Suddenly, it fragmented into pieces. Avo chuffed a low laugh. The host cut the link out of reflex. Ejected the damaged ghosts from their Metamind.

OSARAI MEMGUARD - INTEGRITY HOLDING - 99%

DAMAGE REPORT: OUTER ACCRETION DAMAGE MINIMAL

FRAGGING DAMAGE

REPLACING MEMORY

INTEGRITY - 100%

Through the chamber, more ghosts turned their attention to his presence now. Instead of swirling down to latch onto his consciousness, they kept a distance from him. An example had been made. The rest were wary. Good. He was no more a vicarity to them; not a puppet of meat to perform and entertain for their amusement.

A small measure of freedom reclaimed via his skill. This was a display of expertise. This was what Walton would have wished him to show. Mastery and skill. Satisfaction rose within Avo, but still, the potential pleasure of a possible kill called to him. He tuned into the thoughtwaves of the public lobby as he went after the Slaughterman.

+Jaus! Fucking Jaus alive! The ghoulie is back up.+

+Holy shit,+ a particularly nasally voice gasped, +the ghoulie’s indestructible!+

+No, consang. Flechette just missed its brain. If a ghoul’s still got a brain it ain’t dead. Seen the Reg-sims? Some of the rotlicks kept getting up even after getting cooked by a fusion lance.+

+That’s trash, we all saw its thoughtstuff stop leak after the flechette. Felt it die we did.+

+Well, unless this ghoul’s able to get up from being dead, Slaughterman missed his kill-shot.+

+Pretty fucking gamma-move for Slaughterman to fucking miss a ghoul’s brain with fucking ghost-aimed gun. Weird fucking shit, consangs.+

+How fucking many fucking more fucking times are you fucking going to say fucking, Flamelover99?+

+How about as many times as I fucking want, you half-strand, sub-human, gamma-ware organ-producing sack of fucking waste.+

+WHAT THE FUCK! THIS IS GODSDAMNED SHIT! I BET IMPS ON IT BEING DEAD! A MONTH’S SALARY! IT DIED! I’M NOT GIVING IT BACK! YOU SAW IT DIE! I DON’T GIVE A SHIT! I WON THESE IMPS…+

Avo was about to mentally command his Metamind to tune out of the public lobby's resonance when another voice filtered in.

+It’s alive?+ Little Vicious’ voice was nearly all snarl now. +What the fu–ah!+ She caught herself before she could betray any more rage to the publicly-watching spectators. Sloppy. Avo always checked before switching thoughtwaves. +I–as some…viewers might have noticed, there has been an unexpected occurrence regarding the status of one of our contestants. Presently, Fourteen is alive. I…eh…those ghouls and their regeneration, am I right? Anyway, as a gesture…of goodwill, I, Little Vicious, apologize for this mistake and will…allow all winnings to stay…+

Her voice grew more strained with each word. Her rage, on the other hand, flooded the public lobby in a tide, staining the waves with increased agitation. All that hatred for him. Avo was flattered.

Crossing past a collapsed beltway, Avo heard the ringing of his lost frequency blade and found it lodged through a detached cylinder servo motor. It still thrummed well enough. That might give him a chance to finish Slaughterman quickly. The alternative he had planned was to use his Ghost-Link phantasmic. It was more a communicative phantasmic than a combat construct but he knew how to null a mind with it in a pinch. Problem was it eating up a few of his ghosts. That would affect his cog-cap.

Following the already dissolving thought trails, Avo climbed up the wall leading toward the damaged gate using rents and cracks as handholds. Ascending up to the exit where his quarry fled while chasing the father and the son, Avo stared at the damage left behind by the Slaughterman’s warpath. The hunter’s impact left a massive depression in the wall.

As expected: a few tons of weight at least.

+Twenty-eigh–hm, ghoul’s alive,+ Little Vicious cut in again. Her anger was gone now. Choked off. Someone in her staff plugged the leak. +Twenty nine survivors left! But only eight hunters have made it this far as well. We got some fighters on our hands. Not gonna lie, consangs, it’s been a red, juicy night tonight! Love to see it! Looks like New Vultun’s gonna be burning bright tomorrow.+

A chorus of agreements and exchanges of imps surged between the chains. How flattering it was to have your continued survival bet upon by social refuse. Made Avo feel like a real star.

Entering the gate, Avo noted saw the words “INDUSTRIAL” projected overhead as a hologram. The passage itself was damaged and twisted. Wights had been pasted into the wincing gears and the machinery of the belt beneath his feet groaned, jammed from biomass caking their parts. As if emerging from the shattered jaws of some dead leviathan, Avo peeked out into the next room.

A dome-shaped expanse lay in ruins. At its center, a massive ovaline machine some hundred feet tall lay toppled against a wall, compressing what looked to be a control station into crumpled plasteel. Someone had torn through here earlier. Desiccated bodies lay discarded in savaged piles lining the ground. Avo sniffed and tasted no blood. They had been exsanguinated. Months ago, judging from the rank smell. Whatever did this wasn’t the Slaughterman.

Seemed the local Syndicate running these games liked to reuse locations.

Dented imprints of heavy footfalls left a trail further into the chamber. The dents were recent; the scent of the father and the son was strong.

The tingling thrill inside Avo grew stronger. Even with a frequency blade and knowing how to use a Ghost-Link, his best chances lay within an active ambush. Slaughterman was chromed to the gills. More tank than person. Avo didn’t care. The hunter had killed him. Shot him down. Spilled his brains.

Avo wanted to even the score. His natural impulse made it hard to wait.

The Low Masters cut a lot of emotions out from their ghouls. Hatred wasn’t one of them.

Stepping off the belt, Avo circled in cautiously, listening more than he watched. A loud hammering came from behind the ovaline machine lying on its side. A black shell of thoughtstuff glowed through the blocking matter. He found Slaughterman. And past him, saw splashing sprays of thoughtstuff–minds naked with terror.

Father.

Boy.

Deactivating his Auto-Seance momentarily, Avo activated his Metamind’s new Specter function. Suddenly, the pattern of his ghosts changed. Phantasmics were useful that way. Fluid between software and hardware, they simply gave the Metamind new constructs to shape and wield, opening newer options for the mind.

The gates of his warded thought accretion extended in a thin phantasmal sinew. A new visual feed manifested within Avo’s mind.

SPECTER DEPLOYED - EXTENDING PERCEPTION [67] FEET

COG-CAP - 67%

Carefully, Avo guided the extension of his awareness over the corner. The ghosts were watching him silently now, some of them commenting in surprise about how a ghoul had a Metamind, or at his obvious experience in using a Specter. He ignored them and stayed focused for any lurking traps.

As he peeked around the fallen machine taking up the center of the room, he caught his first glimpse of the Slaughterman.

Steam fogged the air, hissing from the ribbed radiators lining the hunter’s shoulders. Flaps of synthetic plastic masquerading as tanned human leather clung to the hunter’s back like a cape made from human faces, the eyeless flaps of skin peeled off mid-scream. His body was all ebony lacquered over jagged edges, layered in interconnected plates of titanium. A dormant helix-shaped cannon floated over his right shoulder, connected by a magnetic link of some kind.

Slaughterman was closer to a light armor platform than he was even a chromer. Getting grafted into a cyberskeleton would do that. It was also stupid and wasteful in Avo’s option. If you wanted to be a vehicle, why not just get a Ghost-Link and jack into a vehicle? No need for surgery that way. But maybe Slaughterman was the type of half-strand who liked needing a team of grafters to dismantle his groin so that his flesh bits could piss.

Leisurely, the 3-ton hunter kicked at the sealed door between him and his prey, a small flickering icon marking the exit as “MAINTENANCE.” The thoughtstuff spilling from behind the doors gave away the father and son. The way their brainwaves were moving, they were beyond terrified. Still, they were alive, which means they technically performed better than Avo did.

He frowned. Now, there was an annoying thought.

He drew the Specter back, deactivated it, and reactivated his Ghost-Link and Phys-Sim instead. He was about to consider his angle of attack when a pulsing wave of thought washed over him.

PRIVATE LOBBY REQUEST INCOMING - HOST: LITTLE VICIOUS

PAIR THOUGHTWAVES?

Avo narrowed his eyes. The host personally communicating with a survivor? Now didn’t that seem a bit suspicious? Part of him wanted to ignore the summons and go about his violence, but his curiosity couldn’t be denied. He accepted and twinned the surface thoughts of his ghosts to the paired resonance.

Even deeper into the Nether he sank. The noise of the spectators and leaking emotions faded. Alone, he found himself looking up at Little Vicious, her face formed by the lengths of a coiling hydra, her eyes represented by the gleam of two miscolored scales. She loomed over the greyed-out room, her cog-cap derived entirely from massive threads spilling down from the locus that burned them like a star.

+So,+ Little Vicious’ said, tone flat. +What’s your deal?+

Avo didn’t say anything. He waited for her to keep talking. See if she would give away her game.

+I muted the other half-strands. They can’t hear us. I know you can understand me. I watched you manually jack that drone. Saw you download the ghosts and patterns the jock couldn’t get out into your Meta. You’re not the typical kind of ghoul we use to pad out the roster.+

Avo grunted a laugh. “Typical ghoul.”

As if his brothers had a personality beyond “kill” and “eat.” They were their urges. Aside from heeding the will of the Low Masters, there was nothing a ghoul lived for more than satisfying their impulses.

He wouldn't be any different without Walton.

+You aren’t,+ Little Vicious repeated. +And because you aren’t, I’m getting very, very upset with you fucking up my little stream here, so I’d like some explanations as to what’s going on.+

He stared at her and frowned. Oh. He understood what this was. She thought he was a plant of something. Maybe a highly modded ghoul deployed specifically to hurt her views. Or perhaps just a life-bored Guilder who sheathed their consciousness into a ghoul's body on a suicider-bender, trying to experience all the savage delights available before time ran out.

He waited a moment longer.

One of the snakes twitched where her lip should have been. +Fucking answer me!+ Little Vicious snarled. Oh. He must’ve hurt her betting pool something bad by not dying. +Why are you here?+

+Trying to survive,+ Avo replied. +That’s all.+

She scoffed. +Really? A ghoul with a Necrojack’s capabilities turns up in my godsdamned Crucible just ‘trying to survive?’ Fuck. You. You hear me? Fuck you! Give me an honest answer? Who are you?+

Except he didn’t have one to give. The paths ahead of him narrowed. Avo realized that no matter what he did from this point on, her attention would be on him. Fixed to him. And if she could, she would see him dead if only to regain control. Her rage told him that this had gone beyond being professional into the personal.

+Me?+ Avo said. +Someone who chooses. Choosing to survive. Choosing to leave. Didn’t want to be here. Wasn’t up to me. Cut me from the system. Let me go. I fade. Take those two. You won’t find us again.+

A wheeze between laughter and outrage sputtered from her mind. +You…arrogant…fuck! What the fuck was that? I asked you “who” and “why!” You give me a half-answer of cryptic shit about choosing? And then make demands? You gotta be a Guilder? This a suicider? You wearing that body on a suicide run? Busting up my show for fun? Are you with the Reg?+

The Reg? A Regular was here? Avo sighed. More questions. More confusion. This conversation started nowhere and was going nowhere. She wanted something to vent her anger at, but in honesty, he was about as in the dark as she was. He hadn’t a clue as to how he found himself in the Maw. Even less about how he was constantly coming back from the dead. Ultimately, he didn’t have any good answers to give her.

And besides, she was cutting into his feeding time.

+You trying to save the kid?+ Little Vicious asked, suddenly switching gears. +That was an easy meal that you skipped out on. Tell me, how hard was it? How bad was the fix calling to you in the body?+

Taunting him now. Trying to get a rise.

Avo stopped responding. There might’ve been a path where he could have persuaded her to release him. To trade something for his freedom. He didn’t have the skills and attributes for that path. What he knew how to do were kill and jack. Right now, he intended to do both and keep moving.

Something in the back of his mind told him that after this, every last asset Little Vicious could deploy would be on him. Right now, he didn’t care. Death was light on his shoulders and growing lighter yet. He didn’t know how many more times he could come back, but he was two lives for two deaths so far.

What else to do but play those odds further?

+Not enough,+ Avo replied. He changed his thoughtwaves and rose out from the lobby. The last sensation he felt was Little Vicious' erupting rage. Almost worth it. But now, he needed to work fast because, after that, every last hunter would soon be on him.

He needed to deal with Slaughterman, and fast.

A plan formed in his mind. Well, more like a series of interconnected hopes manifested from growing hunger. Reaching down, he plucked a loose piece of metal and threw it across the chamber as far as he could. It skipped a few times before bouncing against the wall. He was already mid-run by this point, preparing to leap.

Something mechanical was turning on the other side.

Jumping up, he mantled the side of the ovaline machine, climbing over it as the large printed letters spelling “DISPOSAL” glared at him. Ah. This machine was where the disqualified Wights were burned then.

Ascending to the top, he found himself a full ten feet above the still unaware Slaughterman. Its helix cannon was pointed at where the metal shard struck the wall, too late to fire upon Avo as he descended down, blade angled for a killing thrust.

Or so he thought.

The helix cannon snapped back into place. Avo’s eyes widened. Faster than both he or Slaughterman could reach, the cannon fired on auto, flashing as a coruscating beam ignited the air. A pillar of heat sank through Avo’s gut and cored through the ceiling as well. He bellowed in agony. The cannon flashed twice more before he concluded his descent. Twice more, Avo screamed.

Blindly, he lashed down with the blade and felt a sudden pressure pass through his blow. The cannon suddenly stopped firing. The frequency blade sank an inch further into Slaughterman’s shoulder. The three implants acting as the hunter’s eyes flashed. Behind him, his thrust pack expanded in a corona of light. Slaughterman struck Avo like a tidal wave of metal, burrowing against a wall.

Inside, Avo felt his bones shatter, darkness creeping up from the corner of his eyes as the pain followed. Just in time for Slaughterman to swat the blade from his snapped wrist. Cold titanium fingers locked tight around Avo's neck, sinking deep as his vertebrate popped in a chorus.

Weakly, Avo lashed out, feet and arms ripping, his claws squealing uselessly against metal. Slaughterman laughed and slammed Avo against the wall. Once. Twice. The third and all the rest blurred into one big beating; a miasma of pain. The tidal wave that was Slaughterman became a tsunami of raining blows. Avo felt his muscles fray, his bones fracture.

Again and again, the hunter’s punches sank through him, the smacking sounds of the impacts wet with ripping skin and spilling blood, made even heavier by the timed bursts of his thrust pack.

A mouthful of bile and blood poured out between Avo's broken fangs. Titanium fingers thick as batons clenched him tight, holding him aloft. Bloodied and concussed, Avo found himself gazing up at the three glowing eyes of Slaughterman. The hunter’s nose was missing, his teeth were like monofilament chainsaws.

Avo chuckled even as he hacked up his insides. The hunter looked like a child glued too many razorblades to a melted doll’s face. It was absurd.

“Thought I killed you,” Slaughterman said. His voice was like the growl of an engine, more machine than human. “Could’ve sworn I saw you come apart on the ground. Neat trick with the drone though. Very impressive. For a ghoul.”

“Missed,” Avo said. He coughed. Three of his fangs fell out. The sheer force of the blows left the right side of his body paralyzed. Shuffling his blood into his spine, he found what was wrong: part of his lower columns was now embedded in his left ribplate. Not good. Sword missing. Time for the other option. “Bad…shot.”

Slaughterman laughed. “Suppose I am. But it wasn’t too bright of you to come after me. I–heh–you know you pissed off Vicious something fierce. She’s yelling in my brain now. Screaming for me to kill you. You did come close, though. I’ll give you that.” A thoughtful expression came over Slaughterman’s face. “How long does it take for you to heal spinal damage? Wait, don’t tell me.”

He slammed Avo against the wall again. Something slid out of place. Avo’s nerves came afire as a conflagration of agony. The sounds that came from him were tortured. Animalistic. Familiar. Pain was pain. Pain and its fleeting nature were what it meant to be a ghoul. Pain was focus.

Avo activated his Ghost-Link. Plan B.

Jacking a mind, at its base, was fundamentally simple. You were not attacking the will of an individual. That was a separate metaphysical construct altogether. No. You were altering memory and wielding trauma as a weapon. What most Ghost-Links did was connect minds together via ghosts. It was more a bridge than a weapons factory.

That being said, however, Avo had an option up his sleeve: one that he almost never used. The four initial ghosts he claimed on the barge were raw. Unsequenced. Untuned. The deepest memory imprinted on them was being murdered by Avo. Pain. Fear. Agony. Horror. All condensed together. Avo was too beaten to spoof the ever-shifting wards of ghosts that shielded Slaughterman. But he didn’t need to.

He just needed to plant the ghosts deep enough. In an instant, Avo condensed and amplified every ounce of trauma his Metamind could identify from the scavengers' ghosts and fused them together into a piercing bomb. Pushing it out using his Ghost-Link's connect function, he thrust his makeshift weapon into Slaughterman’s wards.

Immediately, he felt sinews of infectious thought bite back at him, trying to flood him with countermeasures. Also composed of trauma. The climbing memories infected his bomb first, increasing its damage potential. Avo grinned. Fool. He pushed the ghosts deeper using his Ghost-Link and then ejected them from his system.

GHOSTS EJECTED

GHOSTS - [24]

Immediately, the wards cracked. A fissure ran deep. Avo’s grin grew wider.

Slaughterman cried out, clutching his head with a wince. “Agh! That stung! How’d you–”

Suddenly, the opaque shell that was Slaughterman’s wards fissured as the bomb went off. Multiple expressions flashed over the hunter’s face. None of them were peaceful. A choked sound tore from his throat as he shook and spasmed.

In the Nether, Avo could see the blasted threads of Slaughterman’s mutilated thoughtstuff flowing free, dissolving spill by spill. There was still enough solidity at the center containing something of the man’s ego, but it too was beginning to collapse. Insanity, followed by catatonia, then, were the next steps.

“You–you—” Slaughterman gasped. He tried to close his fingers around Avo's neck. Break him. Something major was missing from his mind. He couldn't do it.

Avo laughed, still held against the wall by the hunter. Not how he wanted to win. Or imagined it. But still, he broke the Slaughterman. He broke–

The door leading to maintenance opened. Someone blinked out from the door like a streak of lightning to the chattering voice of the boy.

The top half of Slaughterman’s skull vanished at an angle. Blood splashed over Avo’s eyes, coating his tongue with flavor, and blinding his eyes with the splatter. Reaching up with his left hand, the chromed bruiser pressed his fingers into the softness of his brain tissue. The physical damage matched his cognitive ruination now. Fitting.

“Shit,” Slaughterman muttered as the last breath wheezed out from him. He toppled backward, his grip on Avo’s neck loosening. His body met the ground with a final thunderous tremor.

Sliding off the furrowed slope of the wall and flopping down to one side, Avo could do nothing but wait as the clinking of metal against metal slowly approached him.

From the corner of his right eye, he saw the pointed tip of his recovered frequency blade pointed low in a hand not his own. A low contralto voice greeted him.

“Huh. I don’t remember your kind ever wearing clothes.”

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