Mask of Humanity

The Chosen’s leader stopped in front of Nicolai and gazed at him a moment, eyes moving up and down, taking in his various weapons and scavenged armour. Then he let out a little snort of laughter.

‘This guy really bought into this place. Nice sword.’ He smirked, leaned forwards and extended a hand. Nicolai watched it coming then the finger bounced off his forehead. ‘You know, there are guns here, right?’ Tap, tap, went the finger on Nicolai’s forehead, and something stirred within him. Nicolai did his best not to grin, not to show the bloodlust that was rising and twining through him. The man chuckled again, shaking his head, before turning and moving away.

He walked over to Johan, who peered mulishly at him. The blonde man paused in front of Johan, looking him over.

‘You caused us some trouble. Killed a couple of my boys. Anything to say about that?’

Johan adopted a thoughtful expression, and appeared to be puzzling that over. But after a moment he just let out a tired sigh, leaning harder on his sword. He shrugged. ‘Nope.’ He looked like he didn’t much care if they killed him or not.

The leader of the group of Chosen nodded, and considered Johan silently for a moment. Then he kicked out, catching Johan’s sword in the side and launching it away.

Johan let out a mutter of surprise and crumpled, falling to his hands and knees, grimacing with pain. Nicolai could hear his strained breathing. It was clear he was at his limit, and Nicolai was starting to feel even if these guys hadn’t turned up, Johan might’ve just died on him as they fled from his place.

The blonde man squatted down beside Johan. ‘I’m guessing no more fighting?’ Johan snorted and refused to meet his gaze, staring at the ground. The blonde man sighed as though disappointed and rose back to his feet, turning to Nicolai and approaching. ‘What of you, then? What’ll it be? The boss wants us to recruit people. But if you’d rather die, that’s fine with me.’ He grinned.

‘I’m not sure your boss can afford me,’ said Nicolai, his eyes flicking about. The Chosen now stood arrayed around him and Johan, having approached closer in mimic of their confident leader.

Closer than was wise. Bunched up, actually. The two men who’d been behind him had come forward and had moved to join the others, meaning they were all on one side, no longer surrounding him. Tactically speaking, it was a mind-boggling move. It was clear they all considered this matter done, that they’d won, that it was over. Still, they had more people out in the rest of the theatre, up in the stands and the balconies, who remained a more serious problem.

‘What?’ the leader was staring at him with a puzzled grin.

‘I don’t work for just anyone.’ Nicolai shrugged and spread his arms. ‘What’s your sales pitch?’

The blonde man scoffed, shot a half-amused, half-incredulous look at another of them who shrugged, all of them exchanging raised eyebrows, shaken-heads and disbelieving smirks. They watched him with interest, and now a little wariness, guns raising slightly. The blonde man approached closer, and spoke.

‘Give up your Seed, join us, or you die. How’s that for a sales pitch? What’s your life worth, huh?’

That pulled an honest laugh from Nicolai. ‘Not much,’ he admitted, ‘but it’s something.’

‘Ok, Mr. Something.’ The leader smiled, and Nicolai saw him tense as he drew closer, saw how his eyes moved to Nicolai’s midsection.

Nicolai wasn’t surprised when the man lunged and twisted, launching the butt of the shotgun out to slam into Nicolai’s stomach.

Nicolai tensed his abs in preparation for the blow and let it land, made himself light so the force pushed him backwards slightly, and breathed out. As a result it did no damage and caused minimal pain.

But Nicolai turned his controlled exhale into a big pained ‘oof,’ and he bent over, as though the force of the strike had folded him. He continued his slight backward movement into a staggering step. He fell to one knee, grimacing, clutching at his stomach. He made his eyes water slightly

He glanced up at the man’s smiling eyes, met them for the briefest instant then looked immediately away, right down at the ground. He heard a chuckle.

‘You sure you’re worth that much?’

Nicolai didn’t respond, busy breathing heavily and looking pained, hearing them chuckling, a few of them gesturing to one another. He saw bodies that had been tense relaxing, guns lowering. For a moment they’d thought he might make trouble, but his brief challenge had been easily broken. He made an act of rising on wobbly legs, avoiding all eyes and adopting a fearful expression, still standing slightly hunched.

The man scoffed. ‘Well, what’ll it be?’

Nicolai sighed. ‘I’ll join.’

The man smirked. ‘Good man.’ He threw a glance at Johan. ‘And you?’

Johan nodded, face pained, sullen.

The blonde man made a gesture to those around him, and a pair of Chosen each started towards Nicolai and Johan. ‘We’ll be taking your weapons and your Seeds, then we’ll bind you, then you come with us.’

At this point, astonishing as it was, not a single gun was being pointed at Nicolai. Their wariness towards him had faded to the point that many were directing their eyes towards the exits from the room. They were more concerned about the possibility of being surprised by another group, rather than that the two cowed men might try anything. The ones in the balconies were relaxing, chatting.

‘Good,’ Nicolai hissed, barely audible, his head turned at the ground to hide the savage grin that had worked its way onto his features. He wrestled his face back into submission, looking up at the men approaching him.

One of them had a submachine-gun, which the man had released to hang on its strap from his neck. The other held a pistol which he was in the process of sliding into a holster. The man with the submachine-gun circled around Nicolai, looking to get behind him. That one would hold his arms from the back while the other, approaching head on, would disarm him. They moved like they’d done this before, and had a bored confidence which suggested no one had ever, at this particular stage, opted to fight back. Nicolai’s Soul Sense tendrils felt all around him, worming over the two men. One of them got into the submachine-gun’s magazine and Nicolai found it to be fully loaded, safety-off, round in the chamber; ready to go.

A plan coalesced in his mind. He spread his arms a little wider, offering himself up, entirely compliant and submissive. Beaten. The men moving around him were relaxed, not expecting anything. He bid his Seed to begin feeding Oma into his glove, charging it for use.

The pulse of Nicolai’s heartbeat was slow and steady, his body calm, but inside the fire was building and building, twining through him, ready, hungry.

They were in for quite the surprise.

The guy with the SMG who’d circled around went to grab him from behind, but at that moment Nicolai dropped his passive, defeated act.

He took a smooth step to the side, pivoting, arms moving out. One back-handed the man in the face, disorienting him for just a moment as Nicolai grabbed the submachine-gun. It squirmed eagerly, seeming to work itself tighter into his hands. He knew what it wanted. Nicolai turned in a snap and squeezed the trigger.

Everything happened in a frozen, smeared instant.

The hammer-rattle of a fully-automatic weapon crackled through the air as bullets vomited from the gunbarrel. Nicolai held it tight against him, pushing down to control the recoil as he swept it in a half-circle at everyone standing on the stage. The guy who’d holstered his pistol and had been approaching Nicolai was closest, and he danced as the bullets carved through his flesh and organs.

Then they were all twisting, falling, either throwing themselves down or being caught by the bullets. The leader was one of those who threw himself to the ground in time to avoid being shot. Shame.

The submachine-gun was still attached to its old owner by the strap, and the man had recovered from his shock and now he lunged for Nicolai who stopped firing to jab him in the face with an elbow, sending him stumbling back. Nicolai stepped back and ripped the submachine-gun away, the strap catching at the guy and pulling him over before coming free.

Nicolai turned and sprinted away, raising his gloved hand to the side and activating the shield, a writhing disk of colourless energy which formed just in time as shots rang out from the balconies and slapped into the shield with a crack. Each shot weakened it and he forced more Oma from his Seed to feed the glove’s rapidly depleting supplies, which then immediately surged out from the glove to replenish the shield.

He got behind the stage wall, blocked from the sight of those on the balconies, but he knew that those behind were already recovering, taking aim at his back. He could feel it, and a sudden throbbing from the Swollen Eye amulet made it doubly clear.

He spun and raised the shield, hunkering lower as he backed away to the exit.

Muzzles barked and spat, cracks of light, the bang of gunshots and the whining snap as bullets passed him close by or hit his shield. He saw Johan cringing on his knees amongst them, white faced, teeth gritted, hands on his head, looking very worried indeed.

The energy expenditure of his shield was huge and he felt his Seed beginning to strain, knew that it was coming to the limit of how much Oma it could provide at a time.

Just as he ducked into the exit, he felt a throb of horrible pain from his Seed as the leader fired at Nicolai with the shotgun and his shield was smashed apart. Its final act before splintering into shards of Oma was to deflect the shotgun pellets away.

Nicolai stepped aside down the hall but as he did so he saw a flash as a man sprayed rounds at him with an SMG. Bullets caught him in the side and leg, sending him stumbling, a grunt of pain forcing its way out from between his lips.

He snarled and gasped as he struggled down the hall he found himself in, moving as quick as he could. The bullets had caught him in the side and gone straight through, carving lines through his flesh, leaving holes and bloodstains on his shimmer poncho.

The pain made him grin but he knew this was not good. He could feel the slick, hot wetness of blood crawling down his leg. The bleeding was bad, they’d caught some of the more important blood-vessels. Bad luck.

As he retreated he heard a humming from behind, and he paused to twist and take aim with the SMG, his body tensing. The drone swam into view and he plugged it with a round through the centre, the expensive piece of equipment spinning out and smashing into the wall, falling to spark on the ground.

He limped a bit further then paused again and took aim. A head poked out and he shot but they’d already twitched back into cover. As he continued backing up Nicolai fired the last couple of rounds at the exit, one shot, then another, spread out, to make the enemy wary of following, make them think he was sitting there waiting, buy himself a little more time.

The SMG clicked empty and Nicolai stumbled away. He turned a corner, slung the empty submachine-gun over his shoulder and kept going, re-activating his shimmer poncho as he went. It would be less effective, now, with bullet holes in it, but only by a little.

Under his control, his Seed was crawling through his glove towards his rings, a position which meant he needed to take care with his hand movements lest he crush it between hand and glove, but that was a necessary sacrifice. He was losing too much blood and needed to activate the Blood Bite ring.

Nicolai turned another corner and staggered into sunlight. He was somewhere he’d never been, some place on the outside of the castle, bridges around him. He heard sounds from the tunnel behind him and knew they’d be on him soon. He saw a balcony up above, and his Seed had reached the rings, touching on both.

Activating the Pegasi ring Nicolai stepped off the ground. He was floating through the air as he saw the Chosen boil out of the tunnel below. He landed on the balcony then crept into a doorway that presented itself as their shouts rose up after him. They hadn’t seen him, they didn’t know where he’d gone. Without their drone they wouldn’t be finding him. He’d gotten away.

He was feeling woozy. How much blood had he lost? A lot. It coated his poncho. Through his Seed he activated the Blood Bite ring and he felt his wounds and body stir, itching, his blood clinging tight, attempting to stay in him rather than leave, while he felt the Oma stored in the ring begin to decrease.

Nicolai stumbled, barely aware of where he was going, struggling to see. Breathing was difficult. He felt sick. His fumbling hand unclipped his poncho’s face cover and he pulled the hood off, but it made little difference. His wounds had stopped bleeding but they were still open and painful, and more importantly, his body was still struggling with the shock of being shot. The adrenaline rush had held off the shock, but now the rush was wearing off.

In such a situation, he knew what his body was going to do. In order to protect itself, his nervous system was going to temporarily shut down. He was going to lose consciousness. He needed to make sure he was someplace safe before that happened.

There was a door. He staggered towards it, the world hitching and jumping around him, everything wavering, colours smearing and jumbling. He leaned up against the solid wood, his fingers scrabbled at the handle, then it opened and he collapsed into the room, falling to his knees.

There was movement. His head snapped up and the rapid motion caused a sudden dizzy nausea. He saw people, staring at him, faces frozen in shock. Something shifted to his side.

He heard a crunch, and pain erupted from the back of his head. The last thing he felt was his body collapsing into the stone.