~~~~~
Dastou’s view was void black, and at last he lost the patience required for faking unconsciousness. He had hoped the ruse would help him find out where he was being taken, but they put a cloth sack over his head for the whole trip. All he could figure was that he was in a large, old space, far underground. He also wanted to see if he could listen in on any conversations while he sat motionless with his hands tied behind his back and head covered, which didn’t work out since no one was talking. These people were tight-lipped on the way here, and he was left with a single probably-mute guard after being manhandled into a wooden chair.
Being shoved down onto the chair while pretending to be loose like a noodle hurt more than anything else in this “kidnapping.” He had feigned getting hit several times during the fight against four of Trenna’s homeless contingent in the back halls of the subway hub’s shopping area, and the stabbing injury that was supposed to be so surprising it allowed him to be knocked out was just a flesh wound. His white shirt and leather jacket were more damaged than he was. They also didn’t search him, meaning he still had a couple of Stitch slips tucked away within inner jacket pockets and a sheath he sewed onto the small of the jacket’s back was similarly untouched, the combat knife it carried good and sharp. Taking it all in, it was a haphazard, hurried abduction, and they were definitely waiting for him to wake up.
He began by mumbling in a groggy voice, “surprised” at being tied up and blinded. Then came a few sluggish movements as he struggles with his restraints, and finally a calculating silence. The guard stationed in the room with him departed after a grunt. When the man came back a couple minutes later, someone else was with him, two someones actually. Both new people had lighter steps that could be called dainty compared to the guard’s heavy footfalls. When they all stopped inside the room, the rough-textured sack over Dastou’s head was snatched away with no attempt to be kind about it, and it scratched at his cheeks and bald pate as if went up.
The guard that so unkindly removed the sack was as big as his steps indicated, a tall brute of a man with wide shoulders and what looked like the strength of a person that bends steel pipes for fun. A part of Trenna Geil’s homeless camp, obvious by the ragged clothing he wore, this guy’s priority when raiding during Social Cyphers must have been protein-heavy food and improvised exercise equipment. He also carried an assault rifle, the same model as the ones used in the ambush, and this easily recognized big guy was not one of the bunch that fought him in the hallway.
The other men in the room ranged widely in age. The younger one was easily recognizable thanks to a dark-pink mark across the bridge of his nose. He was New Scar, who’d come to the embassy to attack and then ran off almost immediately, mouthing orders at the time. He was, in fact, very young. Probably twenty, but carried himself like a man twice that age at least, his posture and body language assured and controlling to the point where it seemed an act. His buzz-cut black hair and tanned skin gave him a militaristic look.
The older gentleman was, in fact, in his early-to-mid forties. He was fit, with short-cropped salt-and-pepper hair, light skin, a close, excellently-groomed beard, and traditionally handsome features that included a few distinguished wrinkles. He was dressed exceedingly well: a tan-brown buttoned shirt and slightly darker tie, brown trousers and shoes, and a stylish, dark blue blazer with an excess of buttons. It was all clean, pressed, and tailored to absolute perfection. The older stranger carried himself as if he didn’t give a rat’s hairy behind about who anybody else was in the room because he was there. The gentleman met the Saint’s eyes with no fear, kneeling down to establish a direct eye-line with the seated Dastou. There was no emotion in the stare, and the Saint knew he was being examined.
Dastou took the opportunity to quickly look around the room, a simple square that could be a closet in an all-brick fort. The wooden door to this closet was barely on its hinges, and thick dust covered every inch of the space except where recently disturbed by walking. The grout between the bricks in the wall was not maintained, full of pock marks signifying where bits of it had crumbled away. Everything about the room said that this place was old, very old. The Saint took longer than he should have to look around, exaggerating his head movements to show the salt-and-pepper leader, the scarred wannabe, and Brute, who all stood in a semi-circle around his chair, that they were being actively ignored. After a few long moments of forcing the well-dressed gent to kneel, Dastou finally looked directly at him and started a conversation.
“Hello, Dead Man,” Dastou said.
The stranger signaled Brute with a flick of the wrist, and Dastou received a swift punch to the side of his nose. The Saint heard a pop as his head snapped to the side, but that was from the impact, not anything breaking. It hurt like it should, and a drop of warm blood trickled down to Dastou’s upper lip. He licked it, happy that his nose was not broken by the subdued strike, and wondered how hard Brute could hit when not holding back.
“The blood of a Saint is a rare thing to be seen by an outsider,” said the older man.
He had an accent that Dastou had never once heard. Though it was similar to Saan-Hu’s western tribal inflection, the vowels didn’t trail as long, closer to far-eastern nomads’ pronunciations.
“It’s spoken of in stories,” the man continued, “fables created by the brightseer masses over the centuries. Sometimes the stories are pure falsehood, sometimes they are based on the real escapades of members of the Sainthood or their entourages. I have made you bleed twice without touching you myself, Cosamian. Should they start writing stories about me?”
There was no indication that this man was anything less than an immense egomaniac from the way he oozed self-assuredness. It was creepy. New Scar glanced down at the wound below Dastou’s left ribs, where the Saint allowed himself to be cut earlier. That injury was held and squeezed at a few times to bleed more than it should, drops from his fingertips used to make a trail before Dastou went into his fake coma, but the young wannabe thought it was a point of weakness, something that should be shameful or embarrassing to have been allowed to happen. He clearly wanted some kind of reaction despite having said nothing. Going along with the overconfidence on display in this room could be a way to find out more about them, but it would be a lot more enjoyable to antagonize them.
“Is this… a joke?” Dastou asked. The gent squinted. “This, you know, show of yours. The flicking of the wrist to signal a big fellow into decking me. I mean, you guys are perfectly placed around me, this has to be rehearsed.”
“Does nothing make you stop and think about your surroundings? I would ask of you if think the whole world is a joke, but I know the answer.”
“Fine, not rehearsed. Do you three simply work together often enough that you can feel each other out, not step on each other’s performances. You’re very good. In any case, you people know my name, it’s only fair that you tell me yours,” Dastou said, then smiled. “I can seek out your troupe in whatever free lands you travel.”
“Clever,” Dead Man said in a deadpan, irritated tone.
“Yeah, I thought so, too. Are you going to tell me or not?”
“I don’t actually have a name as far as you’re concerned, but I am addressed as Citizen Vaiss. This enterprising young man is...”
“Milser,” Dastou interrupted. “I know him already. He’s the walking piece of rock-slime that murdered a bunch of his friends because they wouldn’t have agreed to come after me.”
“...Milser,” Vaiss repeated and continued, “leader of the natural assemblage in Blackbrick.”
“Leader, huh? Everyone here knows you’re in charge, Citizen Vaiss or whatever.”
Milser couldn’t step closer to the Saint, not really, but he still closed in by bending at the waste and spoke into Dastou’s face with the defensive anger of a teenager. “I got you here, didn’t I? You think you’re so goddamn smart that you fell for everything we did. Now you’re in a chair, tied up, and I could kill you if I felt like
it.”
“And you don’t feel like it, I bet, because that isn’t what the actual person in charge wants you to do.”
Milser closed a fist and pulled it back only far enough to realize he was doing it, and then backed off completely, proving Dastou’s point. This boy was only an implement of violence; the older man was the hand that would swing it.
“Let’s get right to business,” Dastou said to the one he felt like he needed to talk to. “I assume that ambush in the subway hub was as much a distraction as the bombing.”
Vaiss smiled lightly, amused either by Dastou’s question, the answer he was going to give, or the fact that the ruse was figured out by such a whelp.
“Correct,” Vaiss said. “I needed you alone, separated from Corporal Jaydef for a long enough span of time to capture you and bring you here.”
That was it? All the immense suffering of the day for a damn conversation?
“You got dozens of people killed or injured,” Dastou said slowly, making sure his loathing for what happened was as transparent as spring water, “including those that were helping you, and all you wanted was a chat? I was in the embassy; you could have walked in.”
“You haven’t exactly started taking appointments from random strangers, Mr. Saint.”
“My people aren’t dead,” Milser added defensively. “Not all of them, but that freak puppet of yours would go down with them.”
“No, he wouldn’t,” Dastou said to Milser, completely sure his statement was true. “You can call him Nes if you like, and he would not be killed by armed civilians, no matter how much firepower was thrown his way. Those free people, those rare-as-gold naturals that you lived with alongside Trenna Geil, the ones you sent to trap us are all dead, I promise you. And you’re the type of coward that leads not only from behind, but from another room and has no idea that he’s losing the fight. Good work.”
“Go fuck yourself, demon!” Milser spat. “You’ll die before this day is over, and I’ll be back with...”
Vaiss cut the fool off with a raised hand, calling for silence. If that very short tirade wasn’t stupid enough, Milser also seemed completely impotent the second a slight gesture came his way.
“I’m not going to indulge a pointless argument,” Vaiss said, “but I must agree with my young friend here. Your Nesembraci Jaydef is dead by now with near certainty. Thanks to having to protect Ms. Trenna Geil, his abilities in combat would have been reduced. That worshiper of yours made for excellent bait, if nothing else. Those naturals that perish along with them will not matter in the long way of the world.”
It wasn’t worth saying it again aloud, but these men were seriously underestimating Nes. Yet, the Saint became more disturbed. This Vaiss had so much callousness when speaking of getting people killed, of using them, of leaving them to die, that it was far more frightening that Milser’s louder version of the same. At least the latter was showing real emotion.
Dastou stared into the callous older man’s eyes, studying their color. They were dark-brown, striated with a striking yellow-amber tinge, something he’d never seen before, much like he had never heard the accent. This man was oddity upon oddity.
“Well then, Vaiss, what do you want from me?” Dastou asked. “First the attack and deaths on the street, which I don’t think was meant to succeed. If you were going blast me to the skies you could have done it better.”
“You are correct, I knew the first attack would not reach you.”
Milser was still at that, showing no surprise. The kid knew the attack would fail, too.
“But it would lead you here,” Citizen Vaiss continued, “to me, alone. What I want is something that you have been hoarding like an animal before a long winter.”
One of Dastou’s eyebrows went up in confusion. “The only thing I hoard is artsy trinkets. If you want one I guess I can spare the glass figure shaped like a fishing boat. I hate fishing.”
Another flick of the wrist from Vaiss and this time Brute went for the gut, swinging with full strength. The single blow knocked the wind completely out of the Saint. He breathed in too fast, and on the exhale was racked with a coughing fit that shook his entire body. He wasn’t feigning that; the punch rocked Dastou, and taking in air became a painful chore for a while. When the coughing finally abated, he spoke.
“I appreciate… the lack of delay,” he said about the signal and punch, the words difficult to force out. “A pleasure to see… such teamwork.”
Vaiss elaborated after letting Dastou’s dumb commentary hang in the air for a second. “I want information on the Social Cypher. Everything you have collected and studied. Timings, locations, durations. All of it.”
Dastou laughed, then coughed, taking his time before speaking again, his throat half-raw. “Our data on the Cypher? No, I’ll keep that, too, thank you.” He coughed, wheezed, and then went on. “You wouldn’t understand it anyway.”
“No, you don’t understand it,” said Vaiss with clear irritation, the first emotion he’d shown so far. “Your agents scour the world studying the events like men and women obsessed. You know nothing, yet desire for critical information as if it will edify. You plan on war with a system at the heart, in the veins, and utterly necessary for this world to function.”
“War?” Dastou asked, confused. He wanted to wreck the Cypher to bits, sure, but Vaiss was hinting at confrontation, aggression, by an inanimate structure of rules. Was this man saying the system itself was capable of returning fire, so to speak?
“Yes,” Vaiss hissed, accidentally answering the question in Dastou’s mind as well as the one that was said aloud. “I know far more about you and your kind than you think, I know about every wish you have for your Academy’s, its goals. You think gathering this information will give you a road map to breaking away? It is impossible, and you will only disturb it. However, that disturbance could be great, if temporary, and cannot be allowed.”
“Well, that was a pile of cow dung,” Dastou said, and Vaiss and Milser both responded with scowls. “There’s no way that my fight against the Cypher is temporary if you’re willing to come this far in my direction to stop me. If you’re a cultist that supports it to an extreme, you’d want nothing to interfere, no matter how small. If you’re the ambivalent type, you wouldn’t care because it’s just how things work – thinking about it is pointless. And if you hated it, you’d be on my side if you knew as much as you claim to. But, only knowing for minutes, I can already see you’re something else, outside all that. Why do you want to keep it going?”
“The system works, Saint, no other reason. It has built cities, educated children, provided with near perfection. No one wants.”
“Also cow dung. Most people want to be free, whether they say it out loud or hide it deep in their comfort, and they’ll accept the change once they know how to provide for themselves. Almost no one wants to be assigned their job as if they were a machine, or where they’ll live as if they were a pet. No one wants to work in a fucking mine one day, taken away from families until sent back in a year, or two, or three. Maybe never, if they die out there, alone.”
Dastou had started that response with his head far cooler that it ended. His hatred of the Social Cypher, his desire to see it gone, had bled through. His memories of friends and loved ones losing friends and loved ones had flashed across his eyes in a blur, and he realized he didn’t care that it did. The Saints may be immune, but there’s almost no denying they’re part of the system. Two born to a generation, exactly two, like clockwork until recently? It’s only a coincidence to the inattentive. He’s the last, the last chance for the most powerful beings alive to do the type of good only they are capable of.
“You’re not as right as you always think you are,” Milser said after a moment. “More of us want exactly what you pretend to be so terrible than you want to admit. The system works, like the Citizen said. I want to be back with my family, I want to never have to try and find food or clothes or things to melt into candle wax. Being
a natural isn’t natural if you want to live like less than an animal, and that’s what you want for the world? The Citizen knows how to take away my immunity, he proved it. I’ll do anything for that.”
Trenna did say that when these people were suddenly immune, their old lives moved on as if they didn’t exist, and a mention of suicide for the ones that couldn’t deal with it. Dastou guessed that Vaiss found Milser, somehow convinced him that his immunity could be reversed, and made all the plans necessary for this underground conversation with a tied up Saint to take place.
“What do you want with that data?” Dastou asked, moving the conversation back to a useful place. “How is it valuable to you and not me, what’s so ‘critical’ about it?”
“You and your teachers and predecessors,” Vaiss began with a hint of mockery, “have taken a great many walks and dives into the Null Bank, as you call it, and you don’t know the answer to that yourself?”
Dastou did everything he could he keep his expression and movements very still when Citizen Vaiss mentioned the Null Bank, one of the Sainthood’s greatest secrets. That place, exclusively in the minds of all Saints, is where they got their strength, their seemingly infinite set of skills and knowledge. No one outside of an entourage – though, admittedly, Dastou’s entourage technically numbered at over three-hundred people by now – would know about it. Earlier in the day, after the bombing, Dastou mediated to walk into the Null Bank and research the smells he picked up in the air, the chemicals they were linked to, and how all that could be used to create explosive devices. A stranger to the Academy and Sainthood wasn’t supposed to know about it, let alone casually reference it in conversation. But the pause in speech Vaiss indulged in after asking his loaded question suggested that he knew he wasn’t supposed to know about it, and that he enjoyed having such intimate information.
“That is all the proof I need,” Vaiss continued. “If your kind is so self-absorbed as to never bother to understand the Social Cypher and still put yourselves in opposition to it, you do not deserve to know anything about it at all. You are an anomalous creature, and while I admit that your boldness in action by starting this school of yours as a preemptive strike against the system is impressive in scope, it is a waste.” There was a tangible bile to his words now, as if he was tired of talking to someone he was so disgusted by.
Dastou tried to wrap his head around why Vaiss sounded like he was revolted by the mere past existence of Saints. They never made an enemy that was actively against them, and most groups that opposed or despised them did it quietly, usually by shirking away from maintained parts of society. That was fine, of course, as most Saints on average never cared about hurting anyone who distrusted them. Those who did were pariahs, left to be alone and disconnected from the rest of the Sainthood. Citizen Vaiss not only hated Saints, but he seemed to have some piece of knowledge that made him confident in the rightness of that loathing.
Citizen Vaiss stood back up, stretched for a second, then turned around and ordered Milser out with a wave. The younger man walked out and Vaiss followed. The Citizen stopped at the door and turned his head back before speaking. It was melodramatic, but Dastou appreciated Vaiss’ flair for it and would have applauded if not tied up.
“You have no clue what you are stockpiling, and I will tear your entourage apart to make sure you no longer have it. You are the last of your people, Cosamian, and you have, at last, failed.”
“I refuse to believe you didn’t practice that in a mirror,” Dastou responded, and realized that he was spending too much time with Nes – his sarcasm button was getting a hairier trigger than normal.
Vaiss ignored the retort and exited. The door was left half open and Brute took a position leaning against the jamb before giving Dastou a quick “if you try to escape I’ll beat you into paste” look.
~~~~
Blurred Weaponry (Saints of the Void, Book 1) Page 13
