Chapter 43.3: The Human

Christoff ran across the courtyard as quickly as he could with that sandbag of an asura slung over his shoulder. Vadd wasn’t big per se, but his uneven, flopping weight had been threatening to pull the man over from the very moment he’d left the testing chamber.

Waves of fleeing asura had worked their way into his path over and over as he left the eastern building, but now the little nuisances were arcing off southward, leaving Christoff to move alone across the road that cut between the two halves of the Inquest complex. The departure was welcome, but it was strange, right along with everything else that had happened in the last several minutes. Where Christoff had expected his distraction in the testing room to drive the asura toward that location, the alarm it had evidently triggered actually had an opposite effect, sending them all away from it and out of the complex alongside him. He hated the wail of that heinous alarm, and yet it seemed to have kept the self-serving, little heathens so taken with saving their own skins that they utterly ignored him running off with one of their own draped unconscious over his shoulder. It was an unexpected result that almost made him wish he’d kept that shock-stick.

Now those same asura were all leaving his course to rally some small distance south of him. They looked like a colony of confused rats. Christoff set his questions aside, though; he had a task, and it was the only one that mattered.

He sped across the road and on toward the line of cubist buildings that comprised the western complex. Only then did he stop, as he recognized something stranger than all that had come before: the flow of asuran traffic had switched.

Rather, the exodus he’d experienced in the eastern end of the facility was also happening in the west, with seemingly all of their inhabitants flowing out into the courtyard as well. The waves of big heads and ears that had been moving with him before had now reversed, slowly increasing as one, then two, then more asura galumphed past him in the opposite direction. He spun, still balancing Vadd over a quickly tiring shoulder, and watched as the first wave of western asura also reached the rallying point at the southern center of the courtyard.

What in Torment was happening? What sort of alarm had he triggered, and why was one side of the compound fleeing away from the released creatures while the other fled toward them?

He squinted at the ever-growing mass of milling asura, where something at their center loomed several feet taller than all the monstrous, little people surrounding it. The looming thing seemed to be paneled in wood, incongruous with the steel and stonework these people used on everything else. The horde of asura hovered about it but seemed to pay it no mind, like it didn’t matter. The exception was a handful of asura and golems who, despite the chaos, continued stacking crates atop the…

Christoff hissed a curse as the situation struck him. He was looking at the wagon, stacked high with crated golems powered by the magic from the jade—his jade. And the damned thing was surrounded by half the population of the accursed complex!

He fumed, feeling his scar wrinkle and crease. Of all the possible results of releasing the creatures in that room, how had this happened? Even in her ignorance, Kikka was still making his life a living Torment with all her asinine schemes.

He bit off another curse and turned back to his course, redoubling his pace. It was no matter. He’d kill every one of the little bastards if that was what it took.

In spite of Vadd’s unconscious weight pounding down on him with each stride, Christoff pressed into the outbound throng that fled the western wing of the facility, cursing under his breath at the sharp increase in suspicious glances he was receiving; he and Vadd seemed harder to ignore when approached head-on. Still he ran on, brushing a top-heavy asura aside as he rushed into the open-air corridor between the nearest pair of buildings and through the north-facing doors he knew would lead to his men. He had only this one chance.

Not yards into the hallway, an armored asura left the flow of fleeing vermin and leapt into Christoff’s path, throwing up a steel staff to bar his way. “Desist, Bookah!”

It was a female. Even without the armor, Christoff often had a hard time telling the two apart. A broad nose thrust out of her angular helmet, and she grimaced stonily, both things giving weight to her presence that her small frame otherwise lacked. And suddenly Christoff recognized her: she was one of the guards usually on duty with his men.

“Relinquish Vadd immediately!” she piped, digging into his chest with the staff.

Traffic had parted to flow around them. All the other asura were still too concerned with their own well-being to give more than passing glances, even when one of their guards had stopped him. Fortunately, Christoff could handle a single guard.

Suppressing a grin, he adopted a put-out tone, still panting from his genuine labor. “Look, if you want to carry him the rest of the way to the infirmary, be my guess. But he is substantially heavier than he looks.”

She eyed the bruises already formed across Vadd’s face, but uncertainty still took root. “And why in the Alchemy should I conclude that you aren’t the cause of his unconsciousness?”

Christoff snorted derisively. “It’s hardly my fault that your panicked associates trampled him in their race to vacate the lab.” He hefted the limp form. “And it’s even less my doing that this one has the dexterity of a geriatric ettin. I’m not certain he tried to get out of the way.”

His arguments were changing her expression, but not quickly enough. Christoff’s mind went to the contents of his pocket, but he only had three shards. He couldn’t afford to use them haphazardly, and certainly not here: too many witnesses.

Christoff changed his gambit. Shrugging, he shifted Vadd’s weight toward the guard, and as if on cue, she reeled away from him.

“Well, if I can’t take him, and you don’t want him,” Christoff groaned, righting himself, “perhaps I should lay him out here in the hallway so these milling fools can finish the job their friends on the other side started. Truth is, if you don’t care, neither do I. I just couldn’t have your previous, little overlord blaming me for his death.”

Staff still raised, the guard remained stubbornly uneasy. Charm seemed to be failing, the flow of traffic was definitely ebbing off now, and Christoff knew he couldn’t allow this encounter to go on forever.

The female’s ears dipped and her expression softened. “It’s of little consequence now.” She cast a sidelong glance at another running asura as he passed. “Do you honestly assume any of the medical staff is still there?”

Christoff blinked. He hadn’t considered— well, he hadn’t considered the alarm and what had come after it at all. The pointy-eared guard was likely right on this point, and as usual that burned him. “I suppose you have a point,” he said through a grimace.

“Your optimal course would be to return to the courtyard, and I can provide assistance finding a medic.” She lowered the staff and gestured back the way he’d come.

With that, Christoff’s choice had been made.

Nodding, he took a step back toward the courtyard and let his knee buckle under the guise of Vadd’s weight, only just catching himself and stabilizing the load. In truth, Christoff was getting tired of the weight on his shoulder, but not nearly as much as he put on.

He feigned a worn smile. “Now that you’ve held me up, I wouldn’t mind a hand.”

“Alchemy,” the asura groaned. She shifted the staff to her off-hand and closed in beside him, reaching up to receive part of Vadd’s weight. “The height difference will not make this effort simple.”

Dipping his shoulder, Christoff moved Vadd in her direction and quietly slipped his free hand into his pocket.

The guard reached up to receive the weight of his thigh onto her shoulder. “If you settle his seat to my shoulder and keep your grip under his arms, we might be able to leverage our elevation disparity more effectively.”

Another evacuee darted by with hardly a glance, and Christoff did as the guard said. But while her attention was on receiving Vadd, he found a shard, found her bare forearm, muttered an incantation, and drove the chisel-tipped jade as far into her skin as he could before she recoiled. 

The glowing purple mineral still protruding from her arm, she leapt back with a yelp, dropping Vadd and taking her weapon in both hands. She thrust it between her and Veritas as she inspected the injury, one eye still on him.

“Why you treacherous…” She trailed off, blinking and trying to focus on the space around her. Not at him, but at everything. She glared at empty air to either side of her and stumbled back into the smooth, stone wall behind her. “How many of you are there? How are you doing that?”

The madness seemed to be producing hallucinations in this one, and it was happening rapidly, more so than Christoff had anticipated. He let out a low whistle, stalking a step closer to her, even as he fought to lift Vadd upright again. There was, after all, an element of the charade he still had to maintain.

Another straggling asura rushed down the hall. This one stopped, giving a wide berth to the pair and inspecting the situation.

The delirious guard grimaced, flashing paranoid looks at specific points in the open air. She stabbed her staff at one of them. “You aren’t even human, are you?” She stabbed more aggressively, turning to swing the weapon in a wide arc that both Christoff and the passing engineer had to jump out of the way of. She stumbled aside, intently but unstably, still jabbing at the air and ranting more loudly.

Another asura approached, joining the other onlooker, and Christoff turned to both of them. “I don’t know what happened,” he said, forcing his eyes wide, “but you’d better go get her some help.” He nodded at Vadd as he hoisted him back up to his shoulder. “This one needs medical attention.”

The two exchanged uncertain and unnerved looks, glancing again at the guard who’d begun sobbing even as she went on fighting the air. They nodded and ran on toward the courtyard, leaving Christoff once again free to move. He did so, spitting an insult at the guard before pressing on, around a corner and father into the western wing.

He would have to remember that particular imbuement, though. Rapid-onset hallucinations could be very useful if he could replicate it.

Keeping his head low, Christoff moved as quickly as he could through the deeper hallways, crossing only a couple more asura. Back here the corridors shrunk dramatically, as though none of the asura’s mechanical monsters ever came this way. It might have been a curious observation, had it not been for the still screaming claxons and hollow echoes of running feet that kept Christoff’s mind on his objective: freeing his people. 

Hunched forward to protect his head and the asura still asking over his shoulder, Christoff moved as quickly he could through the last hall, just sliding to a halt as he hit the mouth of the corridor that would open into the prison where he’d find his people. He set down Vadd’s unconscious form, snatched the remaining jade shards from his pocket, and leaned just beyond the edge of the doorway to scan the room for his targets. If nothing had changed, there were two guards stationed here who had agonizing gifts awaiting them. Veritas only had to hit them before they had a chance to recognize the threat.

Except, he realized, the guards weren’t there.

He drew back and then peaked again to see the same thing. The control terminal stood still and unmanned, the case containing his people’s armaments was still locked but unattended, and all other corners of the room were empty, all except the cramped cell that held every member of his crew. The humans were the only ones there.

“Boss!” Gregor raised his hands to the ceiling, looking childishly glad to see Veritas. That wasn’t nearly as strange as it should have been; no one else in the cell quieted him. In fact, a murmur rose behind the big man, a murmur that none of the others would be dumb enough to allow had they still been guarded.

Still, Christoff stepped cautiously into the room. After all else that had happened, this couldn’t possibly be so easy.

Remi recognized it. “Don’t worry,” he said. “All of them are gone. Whatever you did, it worked. Sent them all scampering away like mice.”

“Rats,” Gregor barked. He thumped a fist into his open palm. “They’re rats, leaving us all here to burn!”

Christoff’s continued glances confirmed everything his men said: there was no one in the room that wasn’t human. Furtively, he slipped the two charged bits of jade back into his pocket. He’d have two additional weapons at his disposal, whatever might come next. It seemed the Unseen Ones had indeed finally smiled on his efforts.

Wasting no more time, he made his way to the terminal that he knew, from too many days of observation, controlled the energy field confining his people to their cell. He only had to figure out what its smattering of glowing, archaic glyphs meant. Christoff bit off another curse. He’d counted on having one of the guards still coherent enough to do this for him, and just like that, his good luck had once again turned.

He’d barely taken in the console when Gregor piped up again, his throaty voice turning pitiful. “Come on. Open it up. I don’t want to burn, Boss!”

Christoff sneered. “What in the Unseen One’s graces are you babbling about?”

“It’s a fire,” the big man barked. “I could face a thousand rats, but I don’t want to burn!”

Remi put a hand to his temple. “The alarm. He’s talking about the alarm. Before the guards ran like a pair of cowards, they said something about a fire alarm. He’s gone on about it ever since.”

“A fire alarm?” Christoff had released all their psychotic creatures, and the asura had triggered a fire alarm? For all their bluster of brilliance, these condescending parasites continued to be just as foolish as anyone else the bandit chief had ever known.

Gregor, the enormous child, paced anxiously behind the energy field, continuing on with his fears of being burned alive, and Veritas only shook his head, returning his attention to the panel, to the work of interpreting its symbols and opening the cell. Nothing he tried worked.

“Unseen Ones damn this place and these people,” he spat, slamming a fist down on the console. “I don’t have time for this!”

He scanned the room and quickly found his answer in the form of the arms locker in the corner of the room. Marching over, he flung the doors open and grabbed his pistol and rapier, strapping them both to his waist. Then he reached for Gregor’s hammer—the weapon weighed easily as much as the asura had, if not more—and he dragged it back to the console, lip twitching in a rage he’d been building for days.

All at once, Christoff barked a roar, hefted the hammer, and brought it over in an arc to slam back down into the console. The strange, greenish screen exploded in sparks and glass as the man smashed the hammer’s huge steel head into it over and over again, finally cracking the stone that made up its base. The room’s lights flickered, and the wall of energy fizzled, retracting back into the emitters along the walls.

Panting, Christoff Veritas dropped the huge weapon and stepped back from the terminal. His people were already spilling out of their cell.

“Enough deals, enough negotiation, and enough pandering to that mewling cur,” Christoff barked. “We’re getting my jade. Now.”