Wash, Whiskey, Wraith

The waters of the Mediterranean Gulf were black, cold and mostly lifeless, just like the rest of post-cataclysm Earth. What little life remained in the poisoned seas in the forms of algae, moss and tough weeds, were harvested, compressed, processed and sold as a variety of calorie compounds for those whom either decided against, or couldn’t afford, mineral or fuel processor replacements. Usually Purists or Growers, or those that lived nearby Growers.

Jaques watched a stout man, near full bionic, balance atop a round boat far off at sea. One of many who pulled long cylindrical filters, caked with black and green muck, from the depths. He watched as the harvester took out his knife and began scraping the slime into buckets. He shivered at the thought of putting that vile stuff in his mouth.

He closed his eye, and dove into the waters again, scrubbing behind his ears, and the rest of his remaining biologics. The freezing waters felt amazing. Once he was sufficiently clean, he returned to the rocky beach where Jean was waiting with a fresh clothes he’d purchased from the market.

“I didn’t find any robes,” he said, tossing the lump of fabrics to Jaques.

“Anything is preferrable to my robes. They were quite unsalvageable.”

“They could’ve been washed.”

“Perhaps, but I don’t wish to be reminded of my previous occupation,” Jaques said and gave a wan smile.

He draped the tunic over his head and let it fall to cover his body. He clicked his tongue when it fell only to his calves and left his bionic forearms bare. The faded pastel blue wasn’t his color either.

“You feeling better?” Jean asked.

“Clean and fresh.”

Jean stood up. “That’s not what I meant, Jaques.”

“I know what you meant. What I feel is irrelevant, though I am glad that I’m alive and safe.”

“Well, safe is a stretch. That is, if you’re coming with us.”

“What other choice is there?” Jaques chuckled. “It’s not as if I’m braving the desert on my own after what happened. With them still out there.”

Jean looked awkward, he shifted his weight from leg to leg, then said, “I’m sorry for the way Mr. Limbo treated you, but he does have a point. You might’ve been followed, you know.”

Jaques threw on his sack of belongings and strapped a belt around his waist. “Justinia assured me that she saw no one. Neither did I for that matter.”

After a moment’s pause, Jean nodded. “Then I believe you. Besides, there’s nothing we can do now but wait for the ship and hope the Conclave lost our scent.” He scratched his auburn hair, then, “look, Jaques, I’m sorry for all of this. I made arrangements with the priest to have this sorted out a long time ago. That was before that kill-bot started tracking me. I was scared, so I hid. If I’d only gone to Roma Prima earlier, perhaps you would’ve never been caught up in this.”

Jaques sighed. He felt like blaming the Grower, but instead he said, “Well, think of it this way, if it hadn’t happened the way it did, I’d still be working for a Conclave agent. Unknowingly, of course.”

“Good point.”

“And now I get to start a life in Venetia. If I ever get there.”

“So, you’re not planning to come with us, then?”

“I think only for the voyage across the Gulf. I’m not made for so much excitement, Jean. I’ve been enough trouble as is. It’s best if I get out of your way as soon as possible.”

Jean nodded. “If that’s what you want.”

---

Buddy sat in the corner booth of the saloon tracing the grooves of the synth-wood table. After his visit to Jean’s laboratory, after seeing real trees and touching real wooden furniture, instead of seeing them in old vid chronicles, this abomination crafted from synthesized pseudo-organics and mineral based compounds, though basically wood in every regard, felt wrong. So many things felt wrong, after seeing greenery like that.

The table dinged. A polite automated voice followed. “Allotment filled, please remove fuel cable.”

Buddy detached the rubber and steel cable from the female socket in his chest with a click. Slowly, it spooled back into the center of the table.

A short girl appeared by his side. Her arms were fully bionic, similar to his own. No muscle work, just titanium bones with interior nerve filaments.

“Calories or poison?” she asked, notepad in hand.

“Poison. Ninety percent alcohol if you have any, thank you very much,” he replied with a grin.

“We got double, or triple distilled only,” she answered.

“Oh, triple by all means!”

She jotted the order down, smiled and retreated back behind the counter. Buddy watched her leave, his eyes glued to her surprisingly curvy behind.

The saloon was quite empty, apart from one or two off duty guards, evident by their red livery, and some old men who were disabled in some way, unable to work. The rest of the town were outside, going about their daily ordained business to eke out a life under the protection of the See.

Buddy had seen many villages, cities, temple complexes and cultures, mostly around the Mediterranean gulf and some in the far east past Neo-Ur. No matter the faith, the creed, or company policy, ninety percent of the population in any given place were either indentured servants, wage slaves, or just downright slaves. That’s why so many strove for positions in military callings. Those that didn’t, but still had the spirit of freedom, fled to the uncontested territories of the North-Afric Sahara. Ironically, most who were born in such places tended to flee back to civilization.

The ruins of Europa, a blasted heath of gray and black, with deadly winters and savage mutant monsters roaming in gardens of fossilized trees, was only an option for the most deranged trophy hunters and hermits. Then there were those that believed in the mythical land of Hyperborea, far more deranged than the wilderness hermits, who sook that fabled ‘Atlantis of the Arctic,’ as it had been dubbed, with a zeal bordering that of the See. Buddy scoffed at the idea. Nothing could exist out there in the freezing arctic. Hyperborea wasn’t like Atlantis; the latter actually existed.

The waitress returned with the drink. Buddy smiled, gave thanks, and drank deeply. Mid swig, his attention was diverted as the small bells by the doors jingled. A tall figure, taller than Buddy, garbed in a white robe, with silver cords and belts wrapping it up from waist to neck, walked in. It looked like a cyber-ophidian with legs. Its arms had been strapped to its sides, and its face was an ovoid ceramic mask with three black holes, two eyes and a mouth by Buddy’s guess, spaced equally apart.

“Creepy,” he whispered.

The thing panned its vision across the scant patronage of the Saloon and locked its gaze on the lone bounty hunter.

Buddy cursed but made no other show of being disturbed. He kept taking sips from his drink, slowly moving his hand to the atomizer’s grip. Keeping cool became very difficult when the thing lurched toward him with a strange grace, its upper body undulating like a serpent, its head locked in place and on target as it moved. It was surprisingly quick, and soon it had slunk to Buddy’s booth, and sat down opposite the tense cyborg. It was tall, and it hunched over the table, its smooth porcelain mask half a meter from Buddy’s face.

“Before thou sayst a thing, hunter, I assure thee I come with amicable intentions,” it said, its voice melodious and feminine.

“Hows about you introduce yourself like us ordinary folk before telling me about your amicable intentions.”

Buddy’s other hand rested on the table, while the other pulled out the atomizer, and glacially aimed it at the creature.

“Forgive me my lapse. I am Epsilon Tertia Altera, fabricated simile of my Pattern Mother, Epsilon Tertia. I am a Chronologist,” the thing replied.

Had Buddy’s replacements and prostheses been of shoddy make, his copper jaw would have dislocated, and quite literally dropped to the floor.

“The hell you are.”

The creature nodded its head slowly. “I am. Furthermore, thou hast no need to brandish thine weapon against me. Please, sheath it.”

Buddy gave an awkward grin, then did as the thing asked. The atomizer vibrated in protest. It felt anxious, it hadn’t been used for some time.

He raised his other hand from beneath the table, then laced his fourteen fingers. “Well, um… Miss. Epsilon, I may call you Epsilon, yes?”

“Thou mayst.”

“Well, Miss. Epsilon, what’ve I done, or will do, to earn the audience of such an esteemed person as a Chronologist?” He asked, trying to sound as calm as he could.

The past month had been overwhelming. Not only had he met an actual Grower; not only had he fought against a dreaded kill-bot and won; not only had he found out that the big iron on his hip was a miniature weapon of mass destruction fabled to be sentient; but now he was given to understand that he was conversing with a Chronologist.

A lineage, that if to be believed, dated back to pre-cataclysm days. The only thing Buddy knew about Chronologists was that they were said to appear to certain individuals and worked as guides to some fate that they had scried or prophesied. If they were human, AI, or something else, none knew.

The eerie form of Epsilon Tertia Altera undulated in response to his question. Its face never shifted from its intense regard. Suddenly Buddy felt static course through his silicone nerves. A pressure built in his brain which radiated to his mechanical eyes. The lights in them flickered. He clamped his jaw shut, his metal teeth grinding against each other as a wave of pain shot through him. The Chronometer, ever in the corner of his vision, went haywire, snapping and glitching into strange symbols and latticed geometric shapes.

“Thou shalt die, as thou has and must. Thine fate is static; for anon in flux, across the fragments of reality, until thou gatherest the shards of the keeper of the past, and guide her to the Dagger.

“Thine struggle is unending, overlapping, repeating. It begins and ends with the assassin’s blades. Each time, each emanation, each reflection. The constants remain. The Hound, the Herbalist, the Lay, the Youth, the Hierophant, the Traitor, and the Weapon.

“When the time comes, dive into the abyss, and coalesce. Become all of thine attempts. Repair the shattered; oppose the architect of dawn.”

With each word of the Chronologists pronouncement, the static, the pain, grew until Buddy was barely conscious of his surroundings. He was a locked ball of tension, each synapse in his system was screaming for release. The pain of his wounded side, now reconstructed, flared with the intensity of a million suns. He would’ve screamed if there had remained any sense of autonomy left in his machine body.

Then he fell unconscious.

---

“What do you mean you won’t let us in?” Lucia asked.

The guard by the barracks infirmary door stared at her through a full face visor. Though neither canine nor mechanic could see his face, a palpable feeling of weariness ebbed from him.

“The soldier you call Justinia is in intensive care. She very nearly overdosed on combat stims and salves. I am under orders from the medical chief not to let anyone in until full diagnostics on her cognitive and locomotive functions have been run. That, and her mem-banks need to be processed. Until then, I ask that you wait.”

Hound kept his eyes on the door to the infirmary, his acute ears, working like satellite dishes, locked forward.

“There is movement inside. It seems she’s awake,” he said.

The guard panned his visor down to regard the talking dog. “Excuse me?”

Hound looked up. “She’s awake, or someone else is inside.”

Before the guard could answer, Lucia said, “and if she’s awake, it’s paramount that we get to interview her. You did hear that she is a survivor of a Conclave attack?”

The guard cocked his head. “Excuse me?” he repeated.

“Are you deaf? She and the one she came in with, they are survivors of the same land-crawler we departed ways from, which was attacked by the Conclave.”

“This is news to me,” said the guard, “the preliminary intel we extracted from the soldier’s memory banks show a fatal reactor malfunction in the crawler’s engines.”

“What about Jaques, didn’t you question him?”

“We extracted visual data from his replacement eye. The vid-feed was corrupted. Data from his perspective is inconclusive.”

Lucia ground her teeth. “Guard, you’ll let us in, now. My companions and I are on an important mission put forth by the highest echelons of the See itself. If you do not comply, I’ll take your ident numbers straight to the governor, and from there, to See high command. You’ll be charged with obstruction, and sedition.”

The guard shifted his weight from leg to leg. “I… uh…”

“You’re aware that we’re escorting a Grower, correct? When have you ever known the See to take relations with them lightly?” she continued.

“Please, sir.,” said Hound, “it is very important that we get to speak with her.”

The guard raised a finger to his ear, his visor clicked, indicating that his speakers had shut to allow for private conversation. Hound heard him, nonetheless.

“Some squire and a dog are asking to see the patient in room three-eight,” he said.

Hound couldn’t hear the reply. He suspected the receiver was a cranial implant that translated the radio signals into a crude form of auditory perception; like hearing a voice in ones mind.

“Yes, the same ones that came in this morning… You sure? I—” the guard stiffened. Then, at length, “oh Christ, really? Authorization is that high? Alright, sir.”

His mask clicked again, then his voice came through, garbled by static as it had been earlier, “you’re authorized. You may enter.”

A moment later, the reinforced, white infirmary door hissed and slid open. Inside, various medical accoutrements and tools were spaced between hospital beds, sheets minty-green and frames a buffed chrome. Everything shone and smelled of sanitation, with a hint of blood and oil beneath.

Hound didn’t like hospitals, or any form of healing huts or workshops. Something about them made the tuff of hair going from his neck to his tails stand on edge. As though a bad memory, lost from immediate recollection, tried its best to reassert itself. Places like this were the worst. Medical equipment whined and vibrated at subsonic levels that made his metal teeth tingle, and the silicone musculature of his ears tense.

One of the beds had a faded curtain draped around it, behind it a short, slim and crooked shadow worked.

“Excuse me, Justinia, may we have a word?”

The curtain snapped back. Justinia lay still on the table. Cables and rubber veins pumping liquids of unknown origin snaked from her to miscellaneous machinery. Several monitors on hinged adjustable arms were scattered around her, indicating data and biometrics that Hound found difficult to read.

The person, or rather, personality, that stood by the unconscious soldier, was a crooked bot, its synthetic skin long since lost, with only its brass and steel endoframe bare. It’s wan yellow eyes, like old halogen lightbulbs, gazed at them without emotion. It wore a white gown and a boxy medic cap with a red cross. Hound remembered that Sandra, the elder medic mechanic, had worn one as well.

“Who let you in?” she snapped, her accent curious.

“Excuse us, Mother,” Lucia said with reverence and bowed. “My name is Lucia Minor, and this is my associate, Hound.”

Hound nodded in greeting. “It is a pleasure to meet you, ma’am.”

The medic looked quizzically at Hound. “Polite chap you are ain’t you? No need for no ma’ams or Mothers, just call me by my Laird given name, Rousseau. Now, why’re you wee ones here?”

“I was hoping, Ma’am, that I could make sure of something regarding this soldier. Ask her a few questions.”

The old crank cocked her head. Hound could’ve sworn he heard clockwork gears clank.

“I said no need for that little squire, and as to this poor lass on me slab, she’s as dead as the desert. No life in her whatsoever. Dead on arrival. Dead like the deadest… thing I’ve seen. Poor young’un, it’s a miracle she didn’t keel over and short during the night. Well, she’s with the saints now,” the old bot spouted out, each exclamation and lamentation emphasized by a melodramatic gesture.

If Hound could’ve raised an eyebrow like Buddy, he would have done so.

Lucia clicked her tongue and giggled. Quickly she covered it with a cough. “Is it still possible to access her memory banks?”

“Aye, but there ain’t nothing there to see. Lot of sitting and gambling, Lord have mercy o’er her, then an explosion when the reactor malfunctioned. Then being pulled out from the sands by that blessed bald man. This Silvia lass was a good soldier, didn’t deserve her fate, but the Lord’s ways’re a mystery for us miserable folk of old dead Earth. Oh, but she’s with the saints now,” Rousseau said, reaching over to caress the dead soldier’s cheek with a scratched and nicked brass hand.

Lucia stomped over to the bed, eyes ablaze. “You said Silvia, not Justinia?”

The old bot medic looked up, her lightbulb eyes, though bereft of brows or lids, betrayed confusion. “Aye, twas her name, Silvia Quinta from Roma Secunda.”

“This is from her ident chip? There are no other official epithets?”

“Aye, and No. Why?”

“I knew it!”

“Knew what?” Hound asked.

“There was no one named Justinia on the crew manifest, I checked and re-checked. I thought it might’ve been an honorific, but even they are scribed into official records, programmed into the chips.”

“Eh?” Rousseau voiced.

Lucia ignored her.

“So, she lied about her name. Why is that so important?” Hound asked.

“Because, I don’t think that’s a See soldier—”

At that, in a flurry of motion and snapping wires and tubes, Justinia, or Silvia, whichever she was, shot up. In an instant her arm was around Lucia’s neck, the other grabbed the squire’s sidearm and aimed it at bot and dog in turn.

“Clever bitch. I really should’ve made the effort to scrounge the real idents from the chip. Thing is, that useless civilian found me way too early.”

“Oh dear!” Rousseau exclaimed, backing away.

“Don’t move!” Justinia snapped and fired the gun. The old automata’s head exploded in a shower of translucent nerve wires, clockwork, and oil.

Hound’s ears were back, metal fangs shining and bared. He tensed, ready to leap.

“Who are you?” Lucia asked, her voice strained as the vice grip of the soldier’s cybernetic arm slowly crushed her windpipe.

“None of your concern, you’ll be dead soon.”

The guard banged on the door. “What’s going on in there! Hey! Why’s the door sealed?”

“I’ll shred your neck to bits,” Hound growled, neon eyes gleaming.

“You’re free to do so,” Justinia winked, “this body has served its purpose.”

“You’re corpse-chassis!” Lucia gasped, “you’re a virus infiltrator!”

A cold wave passed through Hound. He’d always heard rumors, whispers on the streets of Neo-Ur, of things called Wraiths. Cognitions that were said to be uploaded into great data-banks, existing purely as code, called upon when needed to supplant the autonomy of either a living being, or a corpse.

“Correct, and correct,” Justinia said, tightening her arm.

Lucia gasped and kicked at the floor as her neck began to be crushed.

“Let her go!” Hound barked.

The sonic shock wave caused the monitors and lights in the infirmary to flicker, even Lucia tensed. Justinia covered her ear with the butt of the handgun, winced, then smiled a crooked, condescending smile.

“Scrambler, very nice. Doesn’t work on me though, I’m detached from the cybernetics of this vessel. I’m just code,” she brought the muzzle of the gun to regard Hound. “Now, mutt, say goodbye.”

“Not so fast ye banshee!” Rousseau’s voice boomed from nowhere and everywhere. “You’re still connected to me.”

Justinia made the mistake of glancing at the remaining cable that was still hooked to her shoulder. Hound didn’t hesitate at the opportunity. With a powerful leap, he shot towards the Wraith, clamping down on her wrist, pulling her to the floor. She was forced to let go of Lucia, who dragged herself away, gasping eagerly for breath as Hound growled, tugged, shook and bit the Conclave spy.

“Now, rat, let’s see if we can’t smoke you out from there,” Rousseau said, and in that instant, Justinia’s eyes glazed over and she flopped to the ground, limp as the corpse she was.

Hound heard a charge whine up, then let go in time as a surge of electricity shot through the cable into the Wraith’s arm. The corpse that had once been a See soldier began convulsing violently.

“A-ha!” Rousseau exclaimed. “Full wetware replacement, completely synthetic! Can’t hide from me in here!”

Hound and Lucia watched in a mute horror as the body arched, the motion so violent Hound could hear the titanium skeleton within groan under the stress. One by one, the monitors around the room shorted and burst, shooting sparks in a shower of golden, escaping energy. Light fixtures on the ceiling burst next.

“Come on out you sly spirit, I cast thee out in the name of Christ!” Rousseau bellowed.

A tinny metallic scream burst from the slack jawed body of Silvia Quinta, it spasmed and arched again, this time so violently that it looked as though it would split in half. Smoke rose from her ears and nose, her eyes began glowing like molten iron until they were white hot. They burst with a shattering pop, scorching the faux-skin of the soldier’s face. Then, suddenly, it fell limp and remained so.

Lucia and Hound, the former still lying on the ground, the latter tense and expectant by her side, watched, and waited.

 

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