Chương 183: Act 3, Chapter 37: Money’s worth

Day in the story: 15th January (Thursday), night-time Gertrude Monkey Alexa's mind conjured my personality as someone who took most of Penrose's teachings to heart. I was detached, vulgar, methodical, goal-oriented, and ready for violence at any given point of the day. For me, art was an afterthought—a skill and a tool that I'd borrow from Alexa if it was useful.

That's just the way she was in highly stressful mid-heist moments, and ultimately that's the set of psychological attributes that had been magnified in me when I was called into existence in this world. That's exactly why I was surprised to find the band of mercenaries Penrose organized in quite a disarray when I arrived with the last batch of troops.

"For fuck's sake, what sort of a clusterfuck have I stumbled into?" I asked, coming closer to Penrose, who was watching Thomas "fucking" Torque beating a man in full guild armor into a pulp—to cheers from one part of the group and boos from the other. I quickly noticed that there was another—more unmoving—body at the sidelines, being stripped of anything worthwhile. It was a man in his thirties, until a hole in his brain decided that he was no longer that.

"Mind your language, Gertrude," Phillip spoke to me with his arms crossed over his chest, as he patiently waited for the scene to end. He was wearing a medium-sized black coat and black cargo pants with long pockets. It was the first time in reality-only-knows how long that I'd seen him without a suit or parts of it.

"You can't speak like that in the presence of those animals, or they will think you equal."

"I'll speak however I fancy, Phillip. As long as my actions speak for themselves, everyone will know that I am above them," I shot back, spitting on the ground.

"What happened?"

"A dispute among those dogs turned into a murder. Thomas used this as an opportunity to show that the only killing allowed here is by his hand."

"So the guy that is being turned into mush—""Yes, that's the murderer."

"Fantastic folks."

"Accidents like that happen in this line of work. That's an unfortunate reality of it."

"You are aware that you are doing this in front of the Supreme Court, right? There are cameras here and the police will likely come very soon."

"What?" Phillip turned, completely surprised. I had never seen him this way.

"This is Ideworld. I've been told shadows are stupid and just pretend to be human."

"False fuckin' news. Most people think that way because they see them when they go drifting. They are pretty much like me and you, they just consider different things normal. And what the guys are doing there, I bet is against their laws."

"Finish this dispute immediately," Penrose raised his voice just enough to get over the murmurs. Thomas paused his smashing, turned toward him, dropping the man whose collar he had just been holding. The man hit the pavement, barely breathing.

"Get into the cars and we move out," he added, right after the first sirens started their police call to action in the distance. He showed me the car I should get into and I followed him there while the rest organized themselves.

"I'd fancy being brought up to speed on this side of the rainbow. Apparently my information is outdated, even though I acquired it just last month," he said, sitting in the rear of the armored SUV. Ramirez was the one driving, with another guy at shotgun position I didn't know.

"Not much more to say about that. I think most mages don't really spend much time in Ideworld, so they consider it just an Alice in Wonderland thing, with pure imitations of humans playing their parts. In truth they are as human as one can be. Death doesn't concern them much, as they will wake up from it—unless it's a rapture, which I am pretty fucking sure happens when their caster on Earth dies," I started explaining quickly what I had already learned.

"They don't sleep the way we do. Instead they drift in thought when doing some mundane and boring things, like driving a car, watching TV, folding laundry, or something. That's probably why people from Earth thought them simply puppets. I know I did once, for that very reason and the prejudice I'd been fed."

"Is this certain?"

"I am ninety-nine percent sure," I told him as Ramirez hit the gas a bit harder. Apparently the police behind us had decided to follow. Penrose didn't seem to care that much.

"Will they follow into Mirrored City?"

"I don't know. I saw people going there in bigger groups. I even saw policemen on horseback, but I did not stay to watch," I replied.

"What is Aether?" I asked him, returning to what he had said before.

"It's like outer space, but grander in concept. It is where different realms are placed—like Earth's universe and Ideworld's—but also where splinters are. It can be crossed by different means, but there are also some ancient beings in there that gain access to those worlds one way or another."

"It's there that splinters collide to create Nexuses?"

"That's what I learned. I would not bet my life on it though, considering that those same moronic scholars could not notice that shadows are people, and you had in just a few months."

"I am sure that lots of frequent visitors here know or suspect, but it's easier to think of them as lesser. Easier on most people's conscience." He laughed, then turned to the front.

"Ramirez, my good man, speed up. Cameron, let the car with the least amount of people in know that they are meant to stop and confess to the killing that occurred. We don't need to escalate this." We were in a convoy of ten cars, going through New York's still-busy night streets while being chased by the police, so this was obviously a good decision on Phillip's part. We did not need to turn it into a potential shootout in which more people would die.

Losing two or three people to avert that was just good calculation.

"Yes, sir," the man responded and started talking into the radio comm he had.

"You don't condone it?" Penrose asked me.

"On the contrary," I replied. If you spot this story on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation. Ramirez was doing his best to steer around the busy 6th Avenue as we were heading toward the Intercontinental Barclay. The plan was to get as close as possible and use one of the bridge buildings there to move toward Mirrored City and access their version of the hotel. The same plan also went to hell with the voice coming from the front:"What the fuck is that!?" Ramirez shouted as he hit the brakes.

Right in front of us, something fell out of the dark between buildings. It arrived with the weight of something that did not belong to gravity. The creature slammed in slowed-motion onto a shadow-driven car beneath it, crushing the roof inward with a wet metallic crunch. For a moment the street lights trembled as well. It was roughly the size of a car, but its shape resisted any comfortable description. At first glance it resembled a beetle, yet the comparison dissolved the longer one looked.

Six limbs supported it—jointed like those of an insect, yet layered with obscene and alien anatomy. Tendons flexed beneath translucent membranes while braided cables threaded through the flesh like parasitic vines. Every twitch of those limbs produced a faint grinding noise, as if bone, metal, and something softer were negotiating ownership of the same skeleton. Its shell was not smooth.

The curved plates of its body were riddled with camera lenses—dozens of them embedded irregularly across the chitin like tumors of glass mixed with cancerous biology. Some were dark. Others blinked open with tiny mechanical irises, turning slowly, focusing with unsettling curiosity. The head was worse. It was as large as a man's chest and lacked anything resembling a proper mouth. Instead, the front of it split open along unnatural seams, unfolding like a carnivorous flower.

Petal-like segments peeled backward to reveal layer upon layer of teeth: curved, needle-thin, and glistening as they too hid and unsheathed themselves from the muscles that held them. But the teeth were not the most disturbing part. Between them, nested deeper within the opening folds, were clusters of eyes of varying sizes, wet and blinking independently. From that terrible bloom emerged a writhing crown of thin, razor-sharp tentacles.

They coiled and tasted the air, slicing faint lines through the dust thrown into the air after the landing. Then the thing lifted the armored covers on its abdomen. Beneath them unfolded wings—vast, translucent membranes veined with twitching fibers. Hundreds of tiny eyes were scattered across their surface like spores of sight. They shifted and rolled as the wings began to vibrate toward the crowd perpendicular to us.

The vibration produced no sound anyone could hear, but a short burst of purple shadowlight and the world reacted immediately. Streetlights in that direction blinked out all at once, plunging storefronts and traffic into sudden darkness. People staggered as if struck by an unseen blow. Several dropped to their knees, clutching their faces while thin streams of blood leaked from the corners of their eyes. We barely had time to take it all in, where the fuckery of the fabric of reality unfolded another layer.

Two more of the abominations dropped from the heights between buildings, slamming into the street with ruinous and yet staggered force. Metal shrieked as cars were crushed beneath their weight. Their flower-heads opened wide and the tentacles shot outward, snatching screaming people from shattered vehicles. Bodies were dragged inward, forced between the petals of teeth that grinded the bodies, sprouting the blood all around. All the while those many hidden eyes watched the act from within.

The tentacles folded and pushed their prey deeper into the living machinery. The sound of swallowing echoed wetly through the street.

"Watchdogs," I said.

"Turn around!" I shouted to Ramirez.

"They will blind us and kill us." He gasped, looked into the rearview mirror, and upon seeing Penrose's face—or the traffic behind, I wasn't sure which—he set the car into reverse, hit the gas, and veered the wheel to make us slam into another car behind us, pushing it backward and making way. We felt the hit briefly while he already turned around and drove against the current of the cars.

The rest of the black SUVs I brought here started similar maneuvers as we all tried to unfuck ourselves from the mess we got into. To make matters worse, other drivers were escaping this chaos as well—or at the very least trying to. And their strategies varied from attempting an escape with a vehicle like we did, to abandoning it entirely and running on foot, which made for one hell of an obstruction for us to get through.

And to top it off, police helicopters appeared above us, spewing high-speed, high-caliber bullets at the creatures and, unfortunately, also at the cars and people in the way. Penrose was the first to open the door when we stopped dead, as Ramirez tried to figure out a way out of this that still involved a car.

"Get out. Everybody out," he shouted. So fucking great that I spent so much time and energy teleporting those cars in here just for us to abandon them five minutes in. I followed, coming out into the overwhelming sound of suppressive fire directed at one of the eye-bugs as it jumped toward the blacked-out building. Its flesh was carved through by the heavy fire, but it still managed to unfurl its wings and, with one clear attack of its Authority, stop the helis from shooting.

Its body dropped dead onto the sidewalk, while the two others continued their feast in the immediate vicinity. We, on the other hand, ran into our group and moved into 4th Street, amid the blood-fucking wailing of people being eaten alive.

"What is this cold feeling?"

"I am fucking shivering." That and other similar voices could be heard from our commando, now led by Thomas at the front. He remained silent, much to my liking. Penrose joined and moved alongside me. We all ran for a while, but turned into a fast-paced walk as soon as most of the noise faded into distant echoes. Only then did he turn to me with a question.

"Gertrude, did you feel the warmth leave your soul when those watchdogs were nearby?"

"I did. It's a sign of eldritch beings. I don't know why it happens, but the way you described it made me realize that they might be feeding on our souls' energy."

"Authority," Penrose corrected me.

"Yes. I've heard from the Guild that they induce the feeling of cold, but on the other hand, cold is the lack of warmth, and it might suggest that they take it from us."

"How many of us managed to get away?" Penrose asked some man in front of us.

"Thirty-six, sir. All that were in the cars. Two men gave themselves up to the police, two we left at the beginning."

"You are not really giving me my money's worth of manpower, Pablo, are you?" This suggested that the man Phillip spoke to was the leader of the mercenaries—at the very least a part of them. He frowned and turned around to Phillip, facing him and forcing the men behind us to stop, which was followed by those in front when they noticed. He grabbed Penrose by the collar and dragged him closer to himself. He was a bigger guy too—muscular and well-built—and looked very imposing in the armor.

"Are you fucking serious?" he said, spitting into Phillip's face.

"We are God-knows where, fighting monsters! I also sacrificed two of my men so you could have your clear getaway, after your muscle decided to show who's boss."

"There's been a misunderstanding here, Pablo. I apologize." His voice was even and calculated. Pablo's grip eased, but his face did not follow the gesture.

"You are paying us, but that does not make us your slaves, capiche?"

"Problem, sir?" Thomas said, pushing aside mercenaries and coming closer.

"Yes, of my own doing, unfortunately, so please stand down, dear friend."

"You heard the man." Pablo spat on the ground in front of Thomas, who moved a step back.

"I will double your payment for the inconvenience," Penrose added, forcing a smile onto Pablo's face.

"I hope your best people are still with you."

"Of course," he said, and I moved back as a shiver ran down my spine. I'd seen this move before. I didn't want to get dirty, when the man is killed as a show of power. When Penrose reached behind his coat, however, Pablo grabbed him by the hand and twisted it back out.

"You think I'm stupid? You want to make an example of me?" Pablo said, grabbing Penrose by the collar again with his other hand.

"Those are just the money." Phillip said calmly, looking at his own hand holding a roll of notes.

"I wanted to pay what I owe you straight away," he added, smiling at the man in a cold manner. Pablo turned his head and relaxed, noticing the cash and not the weapon. And as he was reaching for it, everything suddenly changed. Blackness was all I could see. Shouting of confusion, terror, and the strange noise of the watchdogs' legs was all I could hear. And only then did I realize that the shiver I felt, ran through my soul and not the body.