Aetheral Space

"Well?" said the Hyena, wriggling cheekily in his restraints. "What do you want, my friend? Backrub? Massage? The services of a masseuse? Tell your pal, tell me."

The crime lord was secured to a steel block at the back of the room, bound there by his arms and legs. An unwieldy box-shaped module had been placed over his chest, monitoring his vitals, and it let out a high-pitched beep every few seconds to confirm he was still in good shape.

The man didn't seem especially concerned, though. Even though he was restrained, his body language was that of a man free to come and go as he pleased. He planned to escape, then. Probably within the next hour. Possibly within the next thirty minutes.

Dragan groaned over the communications channel. His own plan colliding with someone else's was the last thing he needed - his strategy barely worked in isolation, let alone with another criminal running around.

"Let's just leave," he muttered to Blaine, but she didn't budge.

"Where's the rest of the guards?" she said.

It was true - apart from the two of them and the Hyena, the chamber was empty. Hardly the kind of treatment you'd expect for a 'priority prisoner'.

Dragan opened his Archive and went inside.

In his mind, he sat down at a beautifully engraved table he'd seen in a shop window when he was younger. At the time, he'd only seen it from one angle, so his memory-recreation of it wasn't perfect, but his brain did a passable job of filling in the gaps.

Episodes from the life of Henri the Glutton, the last Supreme, decorated the surface of the table. Dragan covered the despot's leering face with the information he'd managed to gather about the Hyena so far.

Crime lord - drug lord. Prominent drug lord, perhaps the most prominent in Breck Kor, perhaps the most prominent on the planet. If so, doubtless had connections inside the government. Planet has too big a security presence for him to walk free for so long otherwise.

He'd been in charge of the men who had come to kill him originally. Security had arrived a few minutes later - too short an interval. Even if they were informed immediately, it should have taken them longer to assess the situation and move in. So they'd known about the attack before it happened.

No, they were part of the attack. A second wave, in case the Hyena's men failed. Direct cooperation between the Hyena and the government, then, rather than just bribery. In that case, the Hyena had been following someone else's orders - his had been the expendable team.

The one who'd declared Dragan a criminal had been Johnston Rikhail, the Lord Mayor of Breck Kor. So chances were he was the one directly cooperating with the Hyena, trying to have Dragan killed.

Then why was the Hyena in prison? A double cross?

A half-glimpsed news article slid out through a gap between two sections of the table. Details on the Hyena's arrest - he'd been taken in at one of his establishments early that morning. The one who'd arrested him was Special Officer Atoy Muzazi.

Ah. That made sense. Special Officers operated outside of typical command structures, so the cooperation between the Hyena and Rikhail would have meant nothing to Muzazi.

The Hyena hadn't been released yet, though. That suggested that Rikhail was running with the situation - he had no intent to let the Hyena go. Their partnership had been dissolved and the crime lord left out to dry. Yet the man was very relaxed.

Too relaxed for a patsy. He had been the more powerful party in the partnership, then, and Rikhail was using this as an opportunity to get out from under him. The Hyena would escape before long, though - and probably have Rikhail killed, while he was at it. The blow to his pride would be unbearable otherwise.

Dragan understood. A stupid, wonderfully cathartic idea popped into his head. He finished blinking.

"How would you like to break out of here thirty minutes early?" he said.

-

Muzazi solemnly observed his surroundings as he marched through the city slums, Luminescence at his side. Prescott strolled just a little behind him, hands clasped behind his back.

From what Muzazi understood, the entire planet of Caelus Breck had once been a single gargantuan crossbreed of a jungle and a swamp. The inhospitable jungle still sprawled outside the city limits - all intercity travel was done through air - but the swamp had found a different way to survive.

The slum streets were half-drowned with mud, impertinent vines and fungi taking any opportunity to crawl up the buildings the city tried to erect there. On his way here, Muzazi had seen more than a few maintenance drones which seemed to exist for the sole purpose of sucking up the bubbling mud before it spread into the main parts of the city.

He shook his head. How inefficient - how could Rikhail bear for the city he ruled to be in such disarray? Surely the man had some vestige of pride.

"How are you finding Breck Kor, Mr. Muzazi?" said Prescott, strolling up beside him, a pleasant smile on his face.

"I dislike it," said Muzazi truthfully. He was sure his reasons for that opinion were obvious on his face, so he didn't elaborate.

Prescott's smile didn't shift in the slightest. "I see," he said. "I find it quite inspiring, personally."

Muzazi raised an eyebrow. "How so?"

"Well," said Prescott, stepping out of the way of a child running by. "This whole world - universe, sorry - is based around survival of the fittest, no?"

"Of course."

"When you are surrounded only by those at the top of that struggle, you forget how desperately one must fight to survive at the bottom. The kind of strength that is born from such struggle is a marvel."

An emaciated-looking man on the street corner glared at the two of them as they passed, but said nothing. Had he disagreed with Prescott's assessment? Muzazi had thought it was quite flattering. However…

He glanced at Prescott - his grooming, his discipline, his relaxed smile. He didn't seem the type to have experienced this kind of struggle in the past. Surely, then, it wasn't his place to assess it.

Muzazi glanced at his companion, trusting that Prescott could read the reprimand from his gaze. If Prescott did, he made no sign of it.

"And here we are," he said, looking up at a vine-ravaged apartment building in front of them. "Hadrien's supposed location. After you, sir."

Muzazi nodded, pulling Luminescence from its sheath with a smooth flourish. He walked forward into the darkness of the building's front door, sword ready to cut down anything that came after him.

This first room had likely been some kind of security post once upon a time, but now it had been thoroughly cleaned out, hacked wires from whatever instruments had been installed here poking out of the walls. Even the wallpaper had been torn off at one point, leaving only a rough full-blown texture. A stairwell was off to the side, half-collapsed, stretching up into the dark.

Muzazi let out an Aether ping. No response.

As he stepped towards the stairwell, Muzazi felt the barrel of a gun press against the back of his skull. Instantly, he tensed, readying Luminescence for a backwards swing at his assailant. If he was fast enough, he could very well cut them in half before they reacted.

"I've got a personal shield," warned Prescott from behind him. "I'll survive the first hit, and blast you right after. Drop the sword."

So it was Prescott trying to kill him, then. He hadn't expected that - Muzazi had been under the impression that they got along well. He let Luminescence slip from his grip and fall to the floor with a clatter, blade pointed towards Prescott's foot.

"Hands over your head," said Prescott, voice firm. That relaxed atmosphere he seemed to carry around with him had been replaced with a cold ruthlessness. He wouldn't hesitate to fire if he deemed it necessary. "No sudden movements."

Muzazi followed his instructions. "Am I to understand you're murdering me?" he said calmly.

"That depends on you."

He furrowed his brow. What? "In what way does that depend on me?"

A dark chuckle. "I haven't decided whether I'm going to keep you alive or not. What you say now will decide that. You can think of these next few minutes as the audition for the rest of your life, if that helps."

"I see," nodded Muzazi, finishing the preparations for his counterattack. "May I inquire as to your motivations?"

"You're awfully calm," said Prescott, suspicious. "I'm being serious, you know - one move I don't like and I'll pull the trigger."

Muzazi glanced back at him - Prescott's easy smile wasn't gone exactly, instead twisting just enough to turn into a malicious smirk. His eyes were cold.

"I'm also being serious," said Muzazi, carefully choosing his words. "I might die in the next few minutes. The last thing I want to do is disgrace myself by panicking."

Prescott scoffed. "I'll never understand you warrior types. If it were me, I'd fight tooth and nail to stay alive, dignity be damned."

Interesting. Muzazi wondered if Prescott would make good on that claim in the next few minutes.

"Can I assume the Lord Mayor asked you to dispose of me?"

The sandy-haired man shrugged. "The Lord Mayor, the Hyena … you've pissed off just about everyone with the capacity for it. Who's to say who asked me to do this?"

That didn't make any sense at all. “I don't follow," said Muzazi. "How would the Hyena be the one asking you to kill me? He's a criminal, whereas you are a Supremacy soldier."

There was silence for a few seconds, interrupted by a snicker from Prescott, the barrel of the gun shaking slightly. "I thought you were keeping your cards close to your chest," the man laughed. "But are you actually just an idiot?"

Muzazi frowned. He knew Prescott intended to kill him, but that was no reason to forget his manners.

"I work for the Hyena, and the Hyena works for my father," Prescott sneered. "I really didn't even bother hiding it."

"Your father?"

"A-Are you being serious right now? Are you actually being serious, or is this a funny ha-ha thing? My name's Prescott Rikhail. I'm the Lord Mayor's son. Never even asked, did you? Never even asked my name. Unbelievable."

A cold, murderous sliver of ice formed in Muzazi's heart. "Am I to understand, then," he said, dangerously quiet. "That you have betrayed the ideals of the Supremacy?"

"Hardly. It's survival of the fittest right? The way things are going now, either the Hyena will kill my father, or my father will kill the Hyena. Either way, I'll be able to profit off the wreckage."

"You profit off of the struggle of others," said Muzazi coldly. "And display no strength of your own."

"Yeah, whatever," said Prescott. "Anyway, I'm sure I'll need muscle once I'm in charge around here. How about it, friend? I wouldn't say no to a Special Officer -"

"Impertinent."

There was a flare of white light from the ground below the two of them - and when the light cleared, Prescott's foot was gone, replaced by a gently smoking stump.

Prescott looked down at his stump, eyes wide, the only noise escaping from his throat being a strange crackling. His gun slipped from his fingers and clattered to the floor - right next to his severed foot.

"Wha-" he mumbled after a moment, and then he started to scream.

Muzazi turned and grabbed Prescott by the collar with one hand, pulling him in close and preventing him from collapsing to the ground.

"Your combat skills are abysmal," said Muzazi, disgusted. "A true Supremacy warrior could have easily dodged such an attack."

"My foot! My foot! My - my!"

Dispatching Prescott had been easy. All Muzazi had done was apply an inactive thruster to Luminescence's hilt when he'd put it on the ground. Once the thruster had activated, it had flown through the air and sliced through Prescott's leg without much resistance.

Any warrior of worth would have seen the attack coming, but not a coward who tried to make puppets out of men.

Muzazi lay his other palm flat and - using his Aether - created a thruster there. Not strong enough to propel himself backwards, but enough to produce intense heat. He let the flame tickle against Prescott's cheek, sending a small trickle of smoke up into the air. The scent of burning flesh wafted through the room.

"Now," he said calmly. "You're going to explain this entire situation to me."