Flawed Fracture

by Katie Vack

  "No. Not today, anyway."

  "Well then, I hope you have a terrible day, thief."

  "Sure thing. If one of my associates ever wants a new weapon, I'll tell them where exactly not to come."

  He raised his hand in farewell, not turning to look back as he left the shop. That had been fun. A nice little throwback to his days as a con artist.

  * * *

  He eventually found his way to a street which appeared to be full of all sorts of restaurants and food vendors. The variety, as with everything else in the city, was blinding. Half of it looked amazing, half of it didn't even look edible, and there were very few things that he could recognise. He supposed this kind of variety was necessary, considering the amount of alien footfall they got here. For a lot of people, his kind of food would probably be poisonous.

  After wandering back and forth for a little while for no avail, he finally decided to stop at an Alliance restaurant. As much as he wanted to try something new and exciting, the Alliance setups were the only places which could reliably tell you what you could and couldn't eat, and that made them convenient. At this stage, he simply had to sit down somewhere and rest his feet.

  He found himself a chair within the restaurant, picking up a menu and scanning it. He was a pretty poor reader, having never felt the need to learn properly, but he could get by. Eventually he recognised the human for a steak, there alongside a couple of dozen translations, and ordered it with a beer once a waiter came over. He had no clue what kind of animal the food would come from, but he liked to think of meat as meat.

  It was all very civilised in here inside this mediocre looking restaurant, stiflingly so, but he figured he'd put up with it and contented himself with examining the other customers.

  There was a group of five human fighters laughing and joking around a large table in the centre of the pleasantly lit room. They were wearing the Alliance colours and carrying full kit and weapons, but they weren't wearing the Peacekeeper uniforms, so they were likely PMC; which basically wrote them off as more arrogant mercenaries. In a corner near the back, closer to the air conditioning unit, were a trio of koto, evidently completely out of their comfort zone in the relative heat, boiling even through their light robes. They didn't look anything like fighters, so he put the fish people down as politicians or low level dignitaries.

  Sitting in another corner, opposite the koto, were the infernians, magma tattoos shifting and glimmering beneath their black skin as they shot hateful glances at their rivals. Some bridges, once burned, could never be rebuilt, and Grayson was pretty sure he'd never be seeing a koto and infernian on friendly terms. The four infernians looked pretty rough and obviously thought themselves tough guys, threatening little flames playing occasionally and pointlessly across their muscled bodies. It was bravado of course, and Grayson was certain they couldn't be much higher than rank three, but that observation wasn't much help to the terrified koto as they shuffled as far away on their seats as they could.

  The waiter arrived with his meal and Grayson paid them, again with his stolen money. He must have been right about the aetherials being some kind of minor nobility, because they'd been rich. Even with the four and a half thousand he'd spent on the crossbow, he still had a couple left remaining. He handed the waiter a twenty standard piece and told them to keep the change, feeling very generous.

  He glanced at the knife and fork he had been given and chuckled inwardly. Even without only one working hand, there was no way he'd have bothered. Knives and forks were all just some stupid idea of how people could fit in with the demands of an already screwed up society, and he wouldn't inconvenience himself how the sake of social standing.

  He picked up the slice of steak in his left hand, making sure not to jolt his injured shoulder, and bit a chunk out of it. It was pretty good; certainly better than what he was used to. He took another bite and then washed it down with a mouthful of beer. He decided that, for the sake of the food and drink, he could overlook the pompous atmosphere.

  He continued scanning the room to kill time, his eyes alighting on someone leaning against the wall to his right. That was intriguing. He hadn't seen them there before. He looked over at them, analysing their behaviour and appearance. The boy was a youth of about his own age, of some species he just couldn't place. Bedraggled looking, dirt under the fingernails, hands twitching minutely from time to time. The boy glanced round and the two locked eyes.

  Grayson looked away quickly. Standing there alone, buying nothing, doing nothing. He didn't like that. It spoke a lot more than words. He looked around to his left and spotted three more teenagers, two younger than him and one slightly older, sitting quietly around a table. They were leaning in together, talking in hushed voices. There were plates of food sitting in front of them, but they hadn't been touched. The oldest cast a furtive glance towards the loner, and something important seemed to pass between them.

  That, Grayson decided, was his queue to leave. He stood up, shunting his chair backwards with every intention of clearing out before whatever was about to happen happened. It was a shame letting good food go to waste, but he wasn't going to risk his life for that notion.

  Suddenly though, there was a familiar voice, cutting arrogantly through the background chatter. "Gods, what a disgusting place. Do we really have to eat here?"

  "We don't have a choice. Father won't give me any more money until the escort arrives; apparently he can't trust me to look after it. Damn that caster freak."

  Grayson sat down again, a bead of sweat trickling down his spine. He knew exactly who those two were. Behind him, Blue and Green strode maliciously into the restaurant. Grayson kept his head down, trying to shrink as far as possible down into his chair. Miraculously, it appeared to actually work, and the two aetherials swaggered past him without a second glance.

  "He got lucky. He surprised me, coming out with the shadows like that. Any other time and I'd have ripped him to pieces."

  "Of course you would. You're an Aerie."

  The two stopped at the counter and began harassing a waitress. Grayson didn't wait for them to turn around. He began to get up again, but then his attention was caught by a glimmer of movement. He looked again, checking the street, reflected as it was within the mirror-like finish of the polished wooden bar. There was an alleyway just opposite the restaurants front windows, and standing in the centre of the alley, back to the shop, was some kind of enormous man.

  He couldn't see much in the reflection, but the man must have been at least seven feet tall- not all that big by nowadays standards, except that he must have been another three in width. Grayson turned to get a proper look at him through the windows.

  The man was wearing a faded and beaten Stetson, and a grey weather-beaten poncho which covered everything from his shoulders to his thighs. He was wearing leather riding boots and boasted some dirty stubble around his jaw. More to the point, he was carrying something very large and very heavy.

  The man began to turn, almost as if in slow motion, as a voice carried over from the counter. "Wait a minute, that's him! He's right here!" Grayson barely heard it, tumbling as he was into a sense of impending doom.

  The man turned to face him, and shrugged the poncho of his shoulders. It began to slip away, revealing thick metal shoulder straps securing something onto his back. There was an electric whirring noise, like a motor spurring up. "Hey, freak," came the voices again, "we've got you now! You can't run, you little devil!" Grayson didn't even register the angry aetherials.

  The poncho fell away, and Grayson just had the time to pick out the glimmer of shining gunmetal before instinct took over. He hurled himself to the ground, covering his ears with his hands and screaming a silent prayer; and then all hell broke loose.

  A rain of lead shrieked across the room, ravaging it like a bloodthirsty scythe in a field of wheat. The glass windows shattered into thousands of minute pieces, flung all across the room. A few slivers stuck into his unprotected hands, but his thick cloak shielded hi
m from the worst of the debris.

  The hurricane swung around, ripping the restaurant in half at chest height. The counter was blown to bits, splinters of beaten wood and yet more glass flying in every direction as the exploded bar spat its liquids across the floor. The lights went out, leaving the room lit only by the bloodstruck fading light of the falling sun.

  Three of the four infernians were torn apart in the first second, shredded by dozens upon dozens of high calibre machine gun rounds, but the fourth somehow managed to survive. Two of the humans went down, one with his head cut in half and another his heart blown out. The waitress the aetherials had been abusing went down near enough decapitated, and Blue had his left arm torn off at the elbow.

  The rest of the customers sprung into action. The surviving infernian rose to his feet, bellowing in fury as his body began to blaze with superheated flames. The humans kicked over the table and rolled into what cover they could find. Magazines were locked into place, HUDs blazed into life, and charging handles slammed forward. They, at least, seemed to know what they were doing.

  The two aetherials tried to throw up a shield to protect themselves from the hailstorm. Green managed it just in time and bullets began to shatter against the air before him, but with his injuries Blue couldn't focus properly and was just too slow. A stray round took him straight through the eye socket, excavating his cranium and flinging him back over the shattered bar.

  The humans began to return fire, light assault rifles clashing against the whine of the minigun outside. The shooter finally went down, but not without taking another mercenary with him.

  Through the haze of the gunsmoke, the youths who had been lying in wait attacked. They sprung over to the koto, wicked knives flashing in the smog, and blue blood sprayed across the walls. The infernian turned towards the nearest and flung a wall of blazing flames their way, but there was a flash of purple and suddenly the teenager was no longer there, but behind the incandescent devil man. The boy pulled out an antique looking revolver and shot the fighter twice in the back of the skull.

  Grayson rose to his feet, adrenaline overpowering his pain. He still couldn't put a name to the species, but these people were rift-wielders. He'd never had any real contact with them, so he didn't know all that much, but they had the ability to create micro-rifts, warping space to create shortcuts between multiple points. This was definitely not something he wanted to be involved in.

  He sprinted towards the exit, arms pumping at his sides, painfully aware of the sounds of violence behind him. He had to escape, had to get out of here before he was dragged into this insane conflict.

  There was a flicker of purple before him, and all of a sudden he was running towards a rift. The coruscating two-dimensional pane of purple-black energy rippled like the surface of the mirror, and the loner stepped through.

  The boy reached into a couple of rifts which appeared just before his hands, pulling out a couple of beaten up derringers. It wasn't quite summoning so much as retrieving items one had already acquired, so that gave Grayson a little hope. These guys could have whatever ridiculous abilities they wanted, but at least their equipment was still crap.

  They boy brought the pistols around and Grayson leaned into them, bringing himself lower to the ground as he sprinted towards his attacker. The guns fired, not quite simultaneously, and the light calibre rounds flew past on either side of his head. That was pretty much what he had expected- as cool as it looked to dual wield, there were few people at this level that could actually pull it off.

  He leaped forward, pivoting on his right foot to spin round and hit the boy with a reverse side kick. The boy reacted admirably, dropping his weapons to cross his forearms over his chest, but he still wasn't quite good enough. The kick lifted him off his feet and flung him onto his back. Powers meant nothing if you didn't have the skill to back them up, and Grayson knew that on a good day he'd have won this fight in seconds.

  Grayson tried pressing home his advantage, bringing his right foot down like an axe towards his prone enemy, but the other boy simply vanished again and Grayson's blow came down solidly on the floorboards. Fresh pain sprung through his leg and he growled, dropping down involuntarily onto his knees.

  He knew the blow would be coming, but in such a position there wasn't really much he could do against it. He twisted round to look behind him, bringing both of his arms up to block, but he knew the moment he saw the baton swinging his way that the best he could do was simply keep his brains within his skull.

  The heavy metal bat hammered through his arms, compounding his agony, and then smashed into the side of his skull. He didn't even get the chance to scream.

  Friend and Foe

  Grayson opened his eyes, slowly, painstakingly. By the feel of things, somebody had been having fun setting off hand grenades within his head. He wouldn't have been too surprised. His eyes brimmed with tears, unable to adjust quickly enough to the influx of harsh fluorescent light. He couldn't see much, just make out the outline of a grey stone room.

  He tried raising his left arm to his face to feel his skull, but a throb of pain lanced through it. He had, it seemed, picked up another broken bone. Lucky him. He tried again, this time being careful not to move his wrist or fingers in any unnecessary way. Sure enough, the left side of his head was matted with dried blood, his hair stuck to it in little clumps. Just wonderful.

  He wiped the tears from his eyes with the back of his hand, and took a look at where exactly he was. It was some kind of cell, cold and damp, with not one window to let in light, but a fluorescent tube overhead. The only door was a thick wooden thing with a small barred window for a jailor to look through. There was a scrappy blanket piled up in one corner for warmth and comfort, and a rusty bucket in another. Was he supposed to crap in it? Like hell he would.

  He rose to his feet, pushing his back up against a wall to secure him in place. His vision swam, little black spots dancing before his eyes as they shut down for a few seconds. He let it pass. Standing up and walking around all of a sudden after being knocked out would have that kind of effect.

  He walked over to the door, still supporting himself against the wall to counteract his dizziness, and inspected it. A couple of inches thick, solid wood. The bars were an inch in diameter of iron, and even if they weren't it wouldn't have helped. The window was too small for him to squeeze through. He tried opening the door for the sake of it: locked. He had expected little else.

  He couldn't get out of here. His powers weren't suppressed, he could feel that much, but it didn't do him much good if he couldn't escape the cell. This thing was clearly meant for people weaker than him, which was what made it so infuriating- without all his injuries he could have smashed the door to pieces. Not without seriously damaging himself in the process, but he could still have done it. Now, though, he didn't have even that option.

  He fell to his knees, and agony shot through his skull. He flung himself weakly towards the bucked, dragging it over and throwing up repeatedly. It seemed the despicable thing would come in useful after all. He spat what he could in to it, and wiped his nose and mouth, but he couldn't get rid of the flavour of his half-digested food. On the one hand it smelled and tasted disgusting; on the other he felt a little better now.

  He crawled over to the rags in the corner, curling up in them and making himself as comfortable as he could, which wasn't very. First the aetherials, then Crayton, then the leech, and now these newcomers. If there was a God, he was a vindictive asshole who had it in for him.

  What made it worse was that he didn't even know what he was doing locked up here. Of all the things he had done wrong in his life that he deserved to be imprisoned for, here he was sitting in a cell simply for being in the wrong place at the wrong time. He didn't know who these people were. He didn't know what they were after. He didn't know why they had attacked the restaurant. All he really did know was that they were a group of young rift-wielders, although that too could have just been coincidence- after all, the machine
-gunner hadn't fit that trend.

  He mulled it over in his mind, replaying the events of the fight. A group of dishevelled young rift-wielders, attacking a UA restaurant out of nowhere. It hadn't even been a particularly well planned attack, it just managed to catch everyone by surprise. That, to him, indicated that whoever was behind this was not some high level private organisation, but a poorly organised group of like-minded individuals. It had, he surmised, definitely been an attack. Robbers would have gone for a bigger target, vandals for a smaller. This meant that there had been someone there that they were after.

  It couldn't have been the aetherials, humans, or infernians- they were all unimportant fighters and warriors, pawns in whatever game was currently going on here. It hadn't been him, either- there was no way the Boss could have pinpointed his location like that and had people there fast enough to take him on. Or actually, could he? By all accounts this was a pretty large conglomerate he was working for, and organisations of that size tended to have fairly extreme networks of informants and thugs.