Death Cultivator

by eden Hudson

  I sucked down a lungful of air. Out here, it felt like I could breathe better. I’d never thought of myself as claustrophobic before, but something about being in that tunnel under all that rock had been getting to me.

  Warcry went straight for the icy water of the creek and dunked his head and shoulders in.

  That looked pretty great.

  “Got your fish-finder on?” I asked Kest.

  She checked her HUD. “We’re safe. No creek carp within fifty yards of our current location.”

  “Awesome.” I took a running jump over Warcry and cannonballed into the deeper water. It was freezing and clear and perfect. I came up whooping with the cold, but happy.

  We couldn’t go running past Ghost Town in broad daylight, so we stuck around the creek for a while, swimming and drinking and taking shifts sleeping in the shade. No creek carp showed up, but Kest had enough string and metal to put together a hand line for fishing. Rali found some grubs in the trees, and after a while he had a little pile of bluegill-like fish. I cleaned them with a knife from Kest’s storage ring while Warcry started a fire. Before long, we had all the little white strips of fish infused with Rali’s All-Nighter Eraser that we could eat.

  When the night sun started to take over the sky, the twins led us through the maze of shut-ins to the east of Ghost Town. We kept a close eye on the top of the cliffs, looking for patrols of OSS, but we didn’t see anyone.

  I thought we were going to have a new problem when we made it to the end of the Shut-Ins because we didn’t have a ladder already anchored and the rock wall there was straight up and down, but Kest had been planning for that.

  “I’ll climb up, then drop down the ladder,” she said. She pulled on her usual chain gauntlet and the new cinnabar gauntlet she’d made after we looted the mine shaft. Then she stepped back and shot a weight into the rock over her head, putting all her weight on the chain to test it.

  Satisfied that was anchored, she touched the cinnabar gauntlet to the cliff. After a second, the strips of reddish metal turned into what looked like mercury and rolled down her fingertips onto the rock. It climbed a couple feet, then burrowed into a crevice over her head, creating a braided chain back to the gauntlet.

  “That is awesome,” I said. “But do you think it’ll hold?”

  “That’s why cinnabar is so valuable,” she said, pulling herself up. “Rolling silver is a lot stronger than it looks. Besides, I’ll have a second anchor point, just in case the other fails.”

  While she climbed, I stepped back into the shade with Rali and Warcry. Kest made rock climbing look almost easy. I’d done a little in the hills along the highway when I was a kid, and it killed your arms and legs. It wasn’t something you wanted to get halfway up and realize you were too tired to make it to the top. But she kept going, the gauntlets anchoring her as she went. It was pretty impressive.

  Then I caught Warcry staring up at Kest kind of admiringly, too, and something weird happened to my stomach. I shoved my fists into my pockets and turned around to watch the trees for creek carp.

  Once Kest was at the top and the ladder was secure, we climbed up and looked around.

  No OSS popped out of the growing darkness and laid the smack down, so we took off through the Rust Flats toward the dig site.

  It took until after nightsun high for us to find the mine shaft. The hills were shadowy and spooky, and the hole in the dirt looked like it dropped into forever.

  We clicked on our HUD lights and climbed inside. The mummies were still sitting there, undisturbed, staring off toward Sheigo’s grave.

  One by one, I took the glowing purple marbles back out of my palm. As soon as I set the first one on the sandy floor of the mine shaft, it rolled over to the mummies, then disappeared into a body. The mummy’s eyes glowed purple, but the body didn’t move. The rest of the marbles followed, picking out who they’d been in life and returning. Pretty soon, the shaft was full of glowing purple eyes.

  Instead of finding its body, the very last marble turned back into a chaos creature. It was the one with the huge belly and stick arms and legs.

  “You have reunited us with our remains, Death cultivator, and now we can be free,” it croaked. “Please accept this as payment.”

  The creature pulled a slip of purple crystal shaped like the jade books out of its forehead and handed the slip to me. The raised characters on the front said Sudden Death Technique.

  “This will aid you against the reapers, but beware. It comes with a steep price. You may only use it once without consequence. As we are already dead, we take the price of that first use for you. Use it a second time, and you will pay with your life.”

  Once the creature was done saying that, it sloshed over to the overweight mummy and climbed into him.

  Rali was giving me that wide-eyed manic look again.

  “I told you,” he said. “Go-betweens for the living and the dead. That’s what people always forget about Mortal supertypes.”

  “’Cause most of ’em kill people,” Warcry said.

  “I’ll give you a heads-up if I’m going to do that.” I touched the purple slip to my forehead.

  Just like with the jade books, this new technique rushed into my brain and stuck. Sudden Death didn’t use Spirit like everything else. It used life energy—literally, it stole years of your life—and that was what made it so much more powerful than Spirit techniques. Powerful enough to one-shot something like the angel of death. The trick was, the book didn’t say how many years the technique stole per use, and there was no telling how many total years you started out with. Using it one time could kill you, or it could knock you back to die at seventy-one instead of ninety-nine. Every time you used it, you rolled the dice.

  Unlike the jade books, the second I absorbed the technique, the crystal slip dissolved into thin air.

  I looked at Kest, Warcry, and Rali. “The angel of death wants me dead, not you guys. Next time she shows up, back off, and I’ll use this to stop her.”

  “Next step,” Warcry said. “How do we get to Jade City in three days?”

  My jaw dropped. “Three? I thought we had four days left.”

  “We were breaking rock for most of two,” Kest said absently as she tapped on her HUD. “Jade City’s way over on the west side of the Territories.” Kest turned her wrist around to show me the dot on a map. “Nine hundred miles from here.”

  I looked from her to Rali. “Is there any way to make that?”

  “Bullet train,” Rali said. “But the closest station is in Dust Bowl. The OSS might already be there.”

  “One of us could wear the hairpin array, but the rest of us will be visible,” Kest said.

  “What about New Iron Hills?” Warcry suggested. “It’s supposed to have all sorts of modern amenities, isn’t it?”

  Kest shook her head. “We’d have to cross back through the Shut-Ins. It’ll take three days minimum to get there.”

  I took a deep breath and blew it back out. The tournament was our only chance at getting clear of the Bailiff. If we missed that, we were screwed. Everything lately seemed like more of the same probably die/definitely die choices.

  “Okay, Dust Bowl then.” I stood up and dusted off my jeans. I looked at Rali and Kest. “But if we run into the OSS, you two run for it. Maybe they’ll forget about you if they get us.”

  Fight at the Train Station

  I SNAPPED A KICK INTO the gut of a shark feral missing its bottom jaw. As it doubled over, I smashed through the back of its skull with a reinforced elbow. Rotted brains squelched out as it dropped twitching to the dirt.

  A shadow fell across my back. I spun around and backpedaled, but one of Kest’s weights punched through the feral’s face. It took a step, then fell over dead.

  “Thanks,” I breathed.

  “Don’t mention it,” she said, stepping on the thing’s back and jerking her weight back out of its head.

  Nearby, Warcry tore the head off a scaly feral with a massive hook kick. He dropped
into a ready stance and swiveled his flaming head, looking for more.

  “That all of them?” he asked.

  “Looks like it.” I wiped my arm on my jeans. That shark feral had been juicy.

  “Yep, that’s all from that band,” Rali said, scanning the horizon in all directions. His job was keeping watch to make sure no new bands surprised us while we were fighting. He’d informed us when we ran into the first pack of ferals about four hours earlier that his nonviolence extended to ferals because they were technically still sentient.

  Kest and I started looting the corpses. None of them were carrying much, but after going through half a dozen bands, the Spirit stones and coins were starting to add up.

  Like Rali, Warcry wasn’t helping search the dead ferals. He was on his HUD.

  “Put the speed on,” he said. “We’re only a mile from Dust Bowl.”

  We finished looting, then got moving again. The white sun was trying to kill us. Kest and Rali didn’t seem to notice it, probably because they’d lived on Van Diemann their whole lives, but Warcry and I were frying. He’d taken off his shirt and tied it over his head. I had nothing—my shirt was on the table back in my servant stall—so my OSS tattoo was on constant healing duty, repairing the sun damage. Hopefully, though, that would help get rid of my Transferogate tan faster.

  “How’s this going to work, fatso?” Warcry asked Rali. “The riot team and you not fighting.”

  “I’ve been thinking about that, and I’ve got an idea,” Rali said. “I’ll show you when we run into the next band of ferals.”

  That didn’t take long. We came over a dip in the landscape and almost ran into ten of them, the largest group we’d seen so far. They lurched up from what looked like a horse or cow skeleton and started running at us.

  I sent Miasma down my arms and formed my Death Metal shields, and Warcry caught fire. Kest stepped off to the side, chain gauntlets ready to strike.

  “Let’s see if this works.” Rali slapped me and Warcry on the shoulder. Warm, unfamiliar Spirit poured down my arm and up my neck into my brain.

  Suddenly my sight sharpened about a hundred times, and the strength in my front arm doubled. The ferals looked like they were moving in super slow-mo.

  “Holy cow, dude,” I said.

  But Rali was already gone. He was over by Kest, giving her a speed boost, too.

  I grinned and sprinted into the ferals.

  They never had a chance. With Rali’s booster, one of us probably could’ve taken all ten of them out alone. With the three of us, we cleaned up the whole band in under a minute.

  When it was over, Warcry nodded at Rali. “That was savage, big man. You lads might have a shot at this riot bracket after all.”

  “More than a shot,” I said. “I’ve never moved that fast, even with Ki-speed.”

  Rali shrugged like it wasn’t a big deal. “We’ll see if it’s enough.”

  The black sun was halfway up when we finally made it to Dust Bowl. It was three or four times the size of Ghost Town, with brick buildings alongside the wood ones and even some cobblestone. If you didn’t count the HUDs on every arm, the place looked like it was right on the edge of industrial revolution. We kept our heads down and found the market to sell what we’d scavenged. The empty Spirit stones weren’t worth much, but the filled ones and random odds and ends made us enough for four tickets on the bullet train and some food from a vendor. While we were there, I invested some credits in a new shirt because I was tired of looking like one of those douchebags who went shirtless everywhere.

  Everything was fine until we bought our tickets and headed for the platform. I froze halfway across the station’s tile floor, staring at the huge windows that looked out onto the platform.

  A pair of hooligans I recognized from the saloon were standing out there, watching the station doors. A lady in a hijab walked out. One of the hooligans grabbed an arm and ripped back the hood. When he saw she was just some random lady, he shoved her off and told her to get lost.

  “Well, we’re proper bled,” Warcry muttered.

  I looked at the twins. “You guys need to get out of here.”

  “Don’t panic yet,” Kest said, getting the hairpins out of the storage ring. “There’s a bathroom back by the ticket counter. You guys hide in there until the train comes, then slip through in the crowd. I’ll go invisible and watch them. If the gangsters decide to take a bathroom break, I’ll come get you.”

  I didn’t like it, but it was better than my idea about everybody scattering and hoping for the best.

  So Rali, Warcry, and I spent the next hour hiding out in a smelly, hot, windowless cubicle the size of a closet, telling people who knocked that the bathroom was occupied. We were probably lucky that none of them went and got the station manager to bust down the door. Warcry slept, and Rali meditated. I messed around on my HUD, trying to read up on kishotenketsu, but mostly just straining my ears listening for Kest to get caught somehow.

  She didn’t, but by the time I heard a train whistle, I’d run through a million scenarios in my head of how to run out there and save her if she did.

  “Hey.” I got up. “It’s here.”

  Warcry cracked his eyes and glared like he wanted to punch me for disturbing his nap.

  “That was fast,” Rali said, stretching.

  Someone knocked on the door.

  “It’s shut for a reason, ya dunce!” Warcry yelled.

  “Guys, it’s me,” Kest said. “The train’s coming, but those OSS guys are still covering both doors to the platform. I don’t think you’re going to sneak through in the crowd. It’s not thick enough.”

  “Still just two of them?” I wracked my brain for some way around them.

  “Yeah.”

  Warcry stood up. “We’ve got a plan.”

  “What plan?” I asked him.

  Instead of answering, he pushed past me and opened the bathroom door. Kest was still invisible, but I heard her grunt when Warcry bumped into her.

  “Oi!” He threw his arms out wide and waltzed toward the hooligan covering the closest door. “Looking for me, yeah? Come on, then, come and get me.”

  They both rushed him at once.

  But that left the far door wide open.

  Red flames flared, and some of the crowd pulled back from Warcry. The closest hooligan got to him first and swung a massive haymaker. Warcry ducked under it and chopped a kick at the dude’s shin like I usually did.

  Crap, we were standing there letting his distraction go to waste.

  “Let’s go,” I said.

  Kest frowned. “What about that idiot?”

  “Or genius,” Rali said.

  “I’ve got an idea,” I said. “Just make sure you guys are on the train waiting for us.”

  We sprinted for the far door, staying wide of the fight and squeezing through the passengers pushing their way onto the platform. I heard Warcry’s prosthetic’s baseball-bat-like ping. It sounded like he was holding his own, but there was no telling how long that would keep up. Neither one of us had worked with Ripper and the other two hooligans during training to learn how to fight more than one person at a time.

  Once the twins and I were out on the platform, I pointed them toward the train and doubled back to the other door.

  Through the window, I could see one hooligan on the floor, unconscious in a pool of his own blood and teeth. The other had Warcry in an ugly arm and throat lock. Grappling wasn’t one of Warcry’s strengths. He was thrashing and fighting, but the hooligan just kept choking him.

  Taking the chance that the guy wasn’t paying attention to his surroundings, I ducked inside and pumped Miasma into a Death Metal shield. Then I poured on the strength and speed and ran straight at the hooligan with the hold on Warcry. I meant to stagger him so he’d lose his grip, but I hit him so hard that he and Warcry both slammed into the tile.

  He did lose his lock on Warcry, though.

  I grabbed the burning redhead and dragged him toward the door, b
ut Warcry shook me off. Red fire blurred as his prosthetic shot out, slamming into the guy’s temple, an instant K.O.

  Outside, the train let out a long shriek.

  “Come on!” I shoved him toward the platform. “It’s going to leave without us.”

  “Yeah, all right.”

  We bolted out onto the platform and jumped on the train just as the doors started to close.

  Jade City

  IF DUST BOWL HAD BEEN stuck on the edge of the industrial revolution, then Jade City was what happened when the fancy futuristic technology got old and grungy and everybody thought it was overplayed junk. As soon as the bullet train pulled into the outskirts, our HUDs began reeling off an automated message with text scrolling along the screen.

  “Welcome to fair Jade City, honored guest.” The voices from all the HUDs in the car synced up to give it a sort of eerie I am Legion vibe. “Please note that in the week leading up to and following the Big Five Wilderness Territorial Tournament, all rival gang activity is prohibited. Intergang violence during this time will be met with summary execution. This is your only warning. Shogun Connor Ylena.”

  “Sounds like Ylef trash,” Warcry muttered.

  Kest flipped her wrist over so that her HUD wasn’t facing us, then pushed mine and Warcry’s down.

  “This is a Technol-controlled city,” she whispered. “They probably have relay devices on the trains to sort through responses from incoming passengers and send the flagged ones straight to their headquarters so they know who to keep an eye on.”

  “Isn’t technology fun, guys?” Rali asked, oozing false enthusiasm.

  “Bleed ’em,” Warcry said, leaning back in his seat and crossing his arms. “I’m not going to watch what I say just ’cause someone can hear me.”

  “So, basically, while we’re here, there’s no privacy. That’s a little creepy.”

  “Privacy’s always been an illusion, Hake,” Rali said. “You’re just notiticing it now because it’s been presented to you via something outside what you think you control.”