Page 11

The Aftereffects of a Femme Fatale's Involvement

W hat he had feared was coming to pass. Cassius had chosen to call in a certain incident of his own volition, only to find himself summoned to meet with the incumbent inheritor of the Hashem Family in person. On the surface, it seemed like a friendly meeting at one of the heir’s hedonistic parties, which was already in full swing by the time Cassius arrived. Drink, drugs, pretty women from human to Inax and Saurian. A pair of low-level Mamon Knights beating the tar out of each other; one was a purely insectile type with stingers on his arms, the other a locust with a mantis-like blade and a heavy-lift exoframe cladding his upper body.

The tension that took hold the moment of his arrival, however, was palpable. Cassius was stripped of his firearms, ushered to sit with Semzar, and surrounded by his men. Men. Big, burly men, exuding power and violence. That wasn’t Semzar’s style. Even his own personal guards were eye candy. Sure, they radiated a dangerous aura, but they were, first and foremost, there to look pretty. Semzar himself was only recognizable because of his position, manner of dress, and his face. The body was new, similarly macho to his guards. His face was nothing like his previous body, but it was recognizable in its unnaturally handsome features, which clashed with the body’s rugged hands and bearlike build. He emanated a threatening, powerful aura, different from before but far less in control. The bulging, purple tendrils under the skin of his neck, hands, and forehead were subtle by some standards, but they proved he’d gotten sloppy compared to his old self.

Cassius didn’t know how many bodies Semzar had gone through, but he could be sure of one thing. He felt cornered, and was desperately trying to get stronger. That was the only possible reason why a baneworm would start burning through one host after the next. Such a method could work, but not for long, and he would pay for it dearly in the future, but knew better than to expect this spoiled brat to look further into the future than the next suck and fuck.

“Wait, so let me get this straight,” Semzar started, leaning over the table towards Cassius. It lost some effect since they were still separated by enough distance for Semzar’s guards to act before Cassius could do anything. “Blackhand just… waltzed into your bar, and you let her go?”

Semzar spoke as if suppressing a manic laughing fit. His tendrils writhed and made themselves known, deforming his skinsuit’s face in absurd ways. One of them snaked out next to his eye, and only when Cassius carefully pointed it out did the mafioso snap out of it. The desire to maintain his self-image was stronger than his anger.

“That is… not how events transpired, no. She entered my casino, and I ordered my people to encircle her right away. Habib, that fool, got ahead of himself and attacked. He lost his life because of it. She… fried him. Just shoved her hand into his back like he didn’t have wards at all and boiled him inside out. Then she turned into smoke and ran out the front door. We all shot at her, but it just went right through.”

“Turned into smoke?”

“Yeah. Like a person made of it, not a cloud.”

Semzar returned to his seat, calming down. It seemed, for a few moments, as though his tension might dissipate, but after drawing from a hookah filled with an unknown blend of herbs, the heir cast a razor-sharp stare Cassius’ way.

“Did you get a good look at her face?”

Cassius felt a chill run down his spine. The question was pointed. Purposeful. Despite many being ordered to target the woman, nobody had gotten more than a description, or at best, an artist’s rendition that was not even close to the real thing. Her appearance was distinct enough to tell it was her, but it wasn’t anywhere close to a real photo. His hesitation to answer tipped the mafioso off.

“Hey, hey, don’t worry. I’m not gonna scoop your brain out of your head,” Semzar reassured unconvincingly. “I’m just asking. You’ve seen the pictures, right? Trash. Those self-proclaimed artists don’t even know how to draw burnt skin. I just hoped that you might have a good mental snapshot of the target and the ability to draw it, that’s all. Get rid of the middleman.”

“Ah! Ahahaha… I did get a good look at her, but I’m afraid that I cannot draw.”

“It’s alright, it’s alright. Was that the end of the incident?”

Of course, it wasn’t. Semzar knew that. He was just prompting Cassius to continue, and that he did. “No, no. We gave chase. Caught her in a back alley. I know my territory better than anyone. After that, however, it all fell apart. She used that same smoke-like form, as well as short-range teleportation, geomancy, and a sort of… arm-missile. I’m sure it was theurgy. It felt like theurgy. There was certainly anathema in play, but I am not familiar enough with the vile discipline to know.”

“You stink of it,” Semzar said dryly.

“Is that so? Well, there you have your proof. How else would I get exposed to bane soot?” Cassius latched onto the remark.

“Right you are, right you are, but that does not address my earlier request. I need an accurate image of her face, Cassius. If you can’t draw it for me, well… This house happens to contain an relic from my father’s collection that may prove useful,” Semzar said with a malicious grin. “It’s a working Anampictor Automaton. If you make a clear picture come out, I’ll let you off the hook.”

“Working” and “safe” were two very different things when it came to those machines. They were an ancient and out-of-favor technology, having come into being as one of the only methods of memory extraction . A machine that could pull out a particular visual memory and render it. This was opposed to memory deposition, entailing special techniques or artifacts that allowed someone to willingly place memories into a vessel. When properly maintained and managed by a trained operator, they were safe—- but the margin for error was hair-thin, and the process unpleasant at best. An unmaintained anampictor machine could, at worst, just turn the user’s brain to mush. They were also notorious for causing “mnemonic burn-in,” causing a previously pulled memory to come to the forefront far more easily than others, often in undesirable circumstances. They had been famously manufactured for a little over a year before the makers had their operation shut down and erased by the churches. As it turned out, they achieved what the competitors couldn’t through dark magic that violated the soul and left it irreversibly scarred. Cassius knew this. He also knew that Semzar would probably kill him if he refused.

It was tantamount to making him bet his life on double sixes in a game of dice, and the worst part was that Cassius knew it was still his best chance.

“Alright,” he agreed with a resigned sigh.

“Very good!” Semzar exclaimed, springing out from his seat with a clap of his hands.

His guards immediately grabbed Cassius and led him to the machine. It was a jumble of essentech that resembled ancient Jas’raban machinery to a degree that couldn’t possibly be accidental. Its principal components were a seat, a slot for the subject’s arm, an operating panel, and an upper-half automaton in a turban with a glass pen in its hand. The moment they shoved him into the seat, Semzar instructed, “Focus on the subject's memory. Done?”

Semzar didn’t wait more than a few seconds before he threw the switch and torment became reality.

Cassius wanted to scream, but the only noise that came out was a strained, wheezing grunt. It felt like an eternity of having his soul pulled out of his body by a claw of red-hot iron, and though it truly only took a few short seconds, it very much looked the way it felt. For a merciful few moments, the torment abated.

“Second subject memory, focus!” came Semzar’s voice again. Like a man holding onto the edge of a cliff with broken fingers. Cassius grabbed for that thought, and the torment began with renewed vigor. When it was over, Cassius slumped to the ground, lingering at the edge of consciousness. His mind’s eye repeatedly flitted between Blackhand’s face, with Habib’s mangled corpse hanging on her arm, and her smoke-wrought form, as seen when she walked out of the dust cloud in the back alley. His actual vision was shot; the blood vessels in his eyes had erupted.

An amused whistle came from above.

“Lucky devil. They’re both good, even if one of ‘em is a touch on the abstract side.”

Semzar’s leather boot dug into his ribs, and with something between a shove and a kick, he was rolled over onto his back. The mafioso squatted down over him, staring into Cassius’ blood-blurred vision. He let out a frustrated sigh.

“His eyes are fucked. Hey, Saeed! We got any spare eyes? Pull some grunt’s eye if not.”

At that point, Cassius faded out into nothingness.

He woke up strapped into a grafter’s chair, unable to move a limb, and utterly blind.

Again, Semzar’s voice chimed in, filled with mirthful amusement. “Oh, he’s awake! Make a noise if you can hear me. You probably can’t talk ‘cause of the surgery juice.”

Cassius grunted. It was true. His tongue felt like a dead snake in his mouth.

“Good. You’re getting some new eyes since you did so well with the anampictor,” Semzar said. “I am not pointlessly cruel.” That was truly a lie.

His vision returned, but he had no eyelids to blink with, nor could he move his eyes. Moreover, his field of vision was noticeably wider and sharper. Saeed’s metal fingers came in from the side and tapped against the glass shield of his vision, followed by the renegade grafter waving his hand in front of his face. Just barely in the corner of this expanded field of vision, he caught the forward-leaning figure of a seated Semzar. Cassius grunted again.

“Alright, you can see me,” Saeed said. “Look at that poster over there on the wall. Which one’s better? This… or this ?”

His vision changed very slightly. The second one was better. Cassius grunted twice. This went on for some time, with Saeed dialing in the settings to a point where, as much as he hated to admit it, his natural eyes didn’t even come close. At some point, Semzar left, clearly growing bored. Saeed took the opportunity to come in front of Cassius and inject something into his arm. The paralysis abated a bit, but he still couldn’t move much at all.

Saeed pulled a cable from his arm, inserting its end into a physical slot on the side of Cassius’ head. One which hadn’t been there before. With the grafter’s cold metal fingers resting against his freshly shaven, sore, stitched-together scalp, he heard the man’s abnormally soft voice echo in his head.

“Don’t try to move, alright? You’re five kinds of fucked up. I had to go digging around in your skull, scoop out, and replace what was left of your visual cortex and some other bits. Lucky you, the astral injuries weren’t too severe, and you might fully recover, but expect lapses in memory. There are ways to help repair astral injuries, but… I can’t help you with that. I have neither the tools nor the know-how. A word of warning: I told Semzar that with this visor you would have to switch between a cripplingly near-sighted or far-sighted visual mode, so keep that in mind. I also gave him a remote control which he believes can forcibly trigger the vismode-switch, but its actual function is to ping his location to you, and to show a heads-up message of the fake vismode-switch. Whenever he uses it, you’ll be able to trace his location for a few hours.”

Cassius managed to turn his head then tilt it with a questioning grunt.

“I’m a heretic, but Zavyuzz is still my god. It’s just not the version of him the Grafting Church believes in.”

Another questioning grunt.

“Just think what you want to say. It might work.”

“Why would an Apocryphal Fundamentalist ever work for a bunch of baneworms?”

“I’m not a fundamentalist, but close enough. My goal is to kill the lot of them, of course. Every last one. They’re all abominations against Zavyuzz.”

Remaining plugged in, Saeed continued working, tinkering with things. Slowly, elements of a heads-up display flickered into view, and Cassius’ vision sharpened even more.

“Is that why you’re a renegade?” he asked.

“No,” came the answer. “That belief didn’t get me in much trouble at all, funnily enough. Baneworms are only still around because they’re easier to keep in check than they are to exterminate. You never know how they’ll react to a significant change in their surroundings; it’s a truly extreme example of polyphenism. The church finds it easier to keep them under control and do what we—sorry, what they can to slowly reduce their numbers, like the free body deal. So I figured, if I want to wipe them out, I need to work with them to gather data on how that might be achieved. Hence… well, this situation. As for your question, I left the church of my own volition. A relationship between a man and his god should be personal.”

“Why tell me all this?”

“Who would the Hashems believe? A grafter who has been with the family from the very beginning, or a washed-out fuckup? Besides, if you try to fuck me over I’ll know, and I’ll set off the talisman I wrapped around your brainstem. Don’t worry, only I can do that, so if you don’t try to fuck me, you don’t have to worry about getting your mind blown.”

The sound of approaching footsteps could be heard. Saeed quickly pulled the plug out of Cassius’ head, and stepped in front of him.

“Try and close your eyes. Look at me—don’t blink. That’s a different nerve impulse. Close them. And keep them closed. I need to work on something delicate.”

To his great relief, Cassius’ vision went dark. While he waited in the total blackness, he vaguely sensed Saeed rummaging around and could smell solder.

The door opened. Footsteps approached the chair and Semzar’s obnoxious cologne almost instantaneously hit him in the face.

“Well?” he asked Saeed.

“Almost done. Just a moment.”

“Does that mean a minute or an hour?” Semzar asked with an impatient tone.

Saeed sighed. “A minute if you sit down. An hour if you keep hovering over my shoulder.” There was not the slightest hint of fear or even respect in his voice.

A chair squeaked as it was sat upon.

“Alright, done. Don’t open your eyes yet,” Saeed advised with annoyance in his voice.

Chair squeak. Footsteps.

“Open.”

He saw… not what he had expected.

It wasn’t Semzar’s insufferable mongrel face.

It was Blackhand.

Rather, a picture of her, a surreal one, like… like a bad memory rendered from a mind on the verge of breaking. It was the second image the anampictor had dragged out of him, derived from his memory of her smoke-like transformation.

Semzar leaned down slightly. Cassius felt his stomach turn, and a violent impulse sparked in the back of his head.

“The other one was much more realistic, but this… I really like this one. I’ll frame it, I think,” he said in an entirely earnest tone, one which inadvertently came off as mockery.

“Do you have a title in mind? It’s your hard work, after all.”

“He likely won’t be able to speak yet,” Saeed warned.

Grinding his teeth, Cassius hissed, “Green-eyed Demon!”

The next day, Crescent Jezail received copies of both images alongside the first half of his quoted payment for the Three Shot Special. That was the absolute maximum he was willing to do for a non-trusted client, to prevent any attempts at draining his resources and leaving him vulnerable. There was also the fourth shot, sure—the full custom from the Talisman Mistress—but it was entirely self-powered, making it a non-issue.