A place to post and share your various stories set within the world of City 12.
WRAITH.CMD.60791 - Sarah Hereford:
I received the call just as dusk had turned the skies an unhealthy ochre shade. I could smell the musty stink of industrial smoke, the carrion stench of a dying city and a decaying world. I covered my face with my mask, not out of distaste for the toxic air, but in anticipation of where I now had to be. I would not allow them to see my apprehension, not there and not ever.
My teeth itched. Like an addict I could feel the familiar crawling sensation beneath my skin and the acid burning at the backs of my eyes, it was as if I had become host to a swarm of flesh eating parasites. I found that I wanted to be anywhere else during that journey, and I had to fight back the urge to submit to distraction again and again. You see in moments such as these, when the urge is upon me and I find myself immersed in something that displeases me, I become hyper alert to my surroundings and to the vulnerability of those around me. Each time I pass a figure on the streets I have to restrain myself, like a wolf on a leash I tug and strain, frothing at the mouth in feral lust.
I know what I am, I am far more honest about that than most.
The Nexus opened to my biosignal yet I took my time as I worked my way down towards my objective. At one time, when such things had a purpose, this place had been a bank, but now the treasure held within those vaults was somehow even more depraved than that parasitic trade of old. I paused, my cuff barely an inch from the lock. Most would at that point have 100 sterilised credits deducted from their rewards packet, but as a Commander I was free to allocate resources as I desired... Yet what lurked beyond I certainly had no desire for. The thought alone turned my stomach.
With a beep and a pneumatic hiss the metallic door unfolded with geometry that was not designed for this world, perhaps not even for this dimension. I stepped beyond to be greeted with a long row of barred iron vaults, behind each was draped a crude privacy screen like a hospital ward, only far less sterile.
An 01 from JURY squad met me, the one that had diligently raised the call in the first place. Without his mask I could see the stale perspiration on his brow and the expectant way that he looked at me as he spoke, as if I had somehow distracted him. With a pale face he repeated what I by now already knew. One of my own had gone, ‘feral’, and had made quite the scene. As I stepped down between the vaults, I was flanked by a vile display that turned my stomach far more than I care to admit. With sunken eyes and pallid flesh, half a dozen whores stared at me, as if my black mask may somehow provide an answer to their pitiful existence. In various states of undress I could see glimpses of alabaster flesh, protruding ribs and wrinkled faces.
I despised them, a sensation far beyond hatred. Each one was older than I and their cadaverous bodies, malnourished and naked, made bile rise up to the back of my throat. Worse than the indignity was the fact that most were volunteers, be it honourless citizens, selling themselves for rations, or prisoners looking for an extension to their pitiful lives. Thrice damned the bastard that had brought me here, and hell to all those pigs that frequent these dives.
I paused at the end of the room, my eyes focused on the crimson spill that had leaked beneath the tarpaulin. Only then did I realise that the 01 had followed me. I turned to him, my hand already on my holster. Without a word he turned and made is excuses, exiting the vault and leaving me alone with whatever lay beyond. My pulse was steady, despite the dry quality to my throat, as I pulled back the sheets and stepped inside.
At once my heart stopped, the sight that greeted me was nothing short of beautiful. The largest singular part of the corpse was strapped up to the wire framed bed, which had been stood vertically against the far wall. Little more than a torso, its ribs had been parted open like the wings of a dove. Inside the cracked egg of human flesh there was little to see, for most of entrails lay in neat order across the blood soaked mattress laid out on the floor before my feet. An armature might of mistaken this presentation as the result of a warped mind trying to understand their victims anatomy, yet I could see at once that it was far more than this, it was an offering.
Splashes of crimson painted the walls and floors, daubing almost every inch in gore. Limbs and organs lay in curious geometric shapes, which had a clear symbology to them that I felt tragically unable to decipher.
Only after taking it all in did I notice the figure kneeling besides me, with his back facing me and his head bowed, unit 37295, Zhou, sat in perfect serenity. I felt no sense of threat as I stepped into the painting, merely perhaps the thought that I was defiling hallowed ground. The mind that had wrought such a thing was one of staggering complexity and depth, so much so that I felt almost overwhelmed by the responsibility of nurturing such a being. I felt as if Zhou was trying to tell me something, that it was in fact his heart laid out upon that mattress and not that of this nameless wastrel.
From the corner of my eye I saw that there were shapes on the far wall, letters painted in blood. Carefully, as not to disturb the work, I strode over and lent forwards to read. The text was in Latin, a language I hadn’t heard since I was a child at school. ‘What is a beast, but a man bared true’ The words could have come from my own lips, woefully pretentious... Then it struck me, Zhou had been a teacher before the war certainly, but in Shanghai... Would he really have known Latin? That dead language which surely fewer than a dozen still knew this city still knew?
Had I realised half a second later, I would have been dead. I turned and caught Zhou by the wrist, clumsily diverting the swing of his machete. It slammed into the wall besides my head and embedded itself within the brick. His dark eyes bored into me as his fist hammered into the side of my head and slammed me hard against the wall. Dazed I struggled to defend myself and slipped gracelessly on the pile of limbs besides my feet. I reached out and grabbed a hold of Zhou’s collar and brought him tumbling down with me. We landed hard in next room, devoid of an actual bed I found myself upon a filthy set of blankets, complete with unthinkable stains as the tarpaulin fell on top of us both. His hands were around my throat, squeezing with such incredible force that I knew my windpipe would collapse long before I choked out. With not so much as a hint of emotion Zhou stared down through the cracked lens of my mask and at my one eye that was visible. I could hear my own static ridden gasps as my lungs fought to draw in air that would not come. I knew that I had seconds to act before my throat was crushed, I pulled up my knee and threw my hand away from Zhou’s wrist and down to my boot. At once I felt the pressure removed as Zhou rolled away and threw off the plastic sheets that had enshrouded us both.
He let me stand, gasping greedily now with a blade in my hand. Zhou had withdrawn his own combat knife and was sunk low into an aggressive stance. He watched my every move with the indifference of a true apex predator and I knew that he saw all of my weaknesses laid bare. I felt naked before him, short of breath with cold sweat running down my spine. Zhou was larger, stronger, unharmed and without his flak vest and boots, lighter than I. We both knew as I tore off my mask and cast it aside, that I was as good as dead already.
I can’t say that I have ever truly felt the way that I did in that moment before or since. I respected Zhou deeper than I had ever respected anyone before, for he had planned this to perfection, spending the better part of three years coming to know me, my strengths, my weaknesses and my vulnerabilities. It was no coincidence that the scene was set where it was, for Zhou had know full well that this vile house of flesh would fill me with unease, that I would shut down my senses in my desire to escape. Yet even then, when he had me dead to rights, the man waited for me to catch my breath before delivering the coup de grace. The machete had never for a moment intended to kill me, Zhou wanted me to know he was stronger than I.
I threw down my blade, surrounded by the shrill screams of the whores as they tried to flee, pounding their fists against the sealed bulkhead. I am not proud of what happened next, not by any stretch of the imagination. Zhou’s face betrayed his first and last flicker of emotion, surprise at my perceived willingness to bare my throat and submit to fate. He opened his mouth to speak but I was already moving.
Zhou had made one fatal mistake, he had assumed that I had honour. He had assumed that I would fight with blade in a desperate bid to deny my inferiority. The gunshot rang out deafeningly loud within the confines of the bank, as I withdrew my sidearm and shot Zhou in the chest. The shot was poor but no less lethal. It had struck Zhou in the chest, perforating a lung and shattering his spine, he collapsed with a soft groan. Although I had won I found no pleasure in the kill, unit 01 372 had deserved a better death.
I stood for a while longer but the gunshot had brought the attention of the JURY unit waiting outside. The screams of the women had been of no consequence, for when a WRAITH enters a room, one would do well to ignore any screams, a gunshot however was a gunshot. I heard the footsteps rushing up behind me as the sheets were pulled apart. I didn’t bother to turn and the unit knew better than to interrupt. Instead I heard the sound of a re-engaged safety and a long exhalation. I had done what had been expected of me, yet this had been a duty I took no joy in.
To my surprise, I felt a prickle behind my eyes and a lump in my throat that was beyond the pain of being strangled. I knew as I heard Zhou’s biosignal, that I had just lost the opportunity to die with meaning, and I knew that it would of been a death better than I deserved. You may expect me to say that I struggled to contain my out pour of emotions but you would be wrong, I pushed the feeling aside with no more effort than it takes to brush aside a cobweb. By the time I had left that fetid vault I had returned to the comfortable numbness of dispassion. A broken man and a shattered husk of a woman had died also, yet I had to now find myself another 01. I doubted any replacement would last half as long as 372 had, three years as a WRAITH is a long time, far longer than most.
I received the call just as dusk had turned the skies an unhealthy ochre shade. I could smell the musty stink of industrial smoke, the carrion stench of a dying city and a decaying world. I covered my face with my mask, not out of distaste for the toxic air, but in anticipation of where I now had to be. I would not allow them to see my apprehension, not there and not ever.
My teeth itched. Like an addict I could feel the familiar crawling sensation beneath my skin and the acid burning at the backs of my eyes, it was as if I had become host to a swarm of flesh eating parasites. I found that I wanted to be anywhere else during that journey, and I had to fight back the urge to submit to distraction again and again. You see in moments such as these, when the urge is upon me and I find myself immersed in something that displeases me, I become hyper alert to my surroundings and to the vulnerability of those around me. Each time I pass a figure on the streets I have to restrain myself, like a wolf on a leash I tug and strain, frothing at the mouth in feral lust.
I know what I am, I am far more honest about that than most.
The Nexus opened to my biosignal yet I took my time as I worked my way down towards my objective. At one time, when such things had a purpose, this place had been a bank, but now the treasure held within those vaults was somehow even more depraved than that parasitic trade of old. I paused, my cuff barely an inch from the lock. Most would at that point have 100 sterilised credits deducted from their rewards packet, but as a Commander I was free to allocate resources as I desired... Yet what lurked beyond I certainly had no desire for. The thought alone turned my stomach.
With a beep and a pneumatic hiss the metallic door unfolded with geometry that was not designed for this world, perhaps not even for this dimension. I stepped beyond to be greeted with a long row of barred iron vaults, behind each was draped a crude privacy screen like a hospital ward, only far less sterile.
An 01 from JURY squad met me, the one that had diligently raised the call in the first place. Without his mask I could see the stale perspiration on his brow and the expectant way that he looked at me as he spoke, as if I had somehow distracted him. With a pale face he repeated what I by now already knew. One of my own had gone, ‘feral’, and had made quite the scene. As I stepped down between the vaults, I was flanked by a vile display that turned my stomach far more than I care to admit. With sunken eyes and pallid flesh, half a dozen whores stared at me, as if my black mask may somehow provide an answer to their pitiful existence. In various states of undress I could see glimpses of alabaster flesh, protruding ribs and wrinkled faces.
I despised them, a sensation far beyond hatred. Each one was older than I and their cadaverous bodies, malnourished and naked, made bile rise up to the back of my throat. Worse than the indignity was the fact that most were volunteers, be it honourless citizens, selling themselves for rations, or prisoners looking for an extension to their pitiful lives. Thrice damned the bastard that had brought me here, and hell to all those pigs that frequent these dives.
I paused at the end of the room, my eyes focused on the crimson spill that had leaked beneath the tarpaulin. Only then did I realise that the 01 had followed me. I turned to him, my hand already on my holster. Without a word he turned and made is excuses, exiting the vault and leaving me alone with whatever lay beyond. My pulse was steady, despite the dry quality to my throat, as I pulled back the sheets and stepped inside.
At once my heart stopped, the sight that greeted me was nothing short of beautiful. The largest singular part of the corpse was strapped up to the wire framed bed, which had been stood vertically against the far wall. Little more than a torso, its ribs had been parted open like the wings of a dove. Inside the cracked egg of human flesh there was little to see, for most of entrails lay in neat order across the blood soaked mattress laid out on the floor before my feet. An armature might of mistaken this presentation as the result of a warped mind trying to understand their victims anatomy, yet I could see at once that it was far more than this, it was an offering.
Splashes of crimson painted the walls and floors, daubing almost every inch in gore. Limbs and organs lay in curious geometric shapes, which had a clear symbology to them that I felt tragically unable to decipher.
Only after taking it all in did I notice the figure kneeling besides me, with his back facing me and his head bowed, unit 37295, Zhou, sat in perfect serenity. I felt no sense of threat as I stepped into the painting, merely perhaps the thought that I was defiling hallowed ground. The mind that had wrought such a thing was one of staggering complexity and depth, so much so that I felt almost overwhelmed by the responsibility of nurturing such a being. I felt as if Zhou was trying to tell me something, that it was in fact his heart laid out upon that mattress and not that of this nameless wastrel.
From the corner of my eye I saw that there were shapes on the far wall, letters painted in blood. Carefully, as not to disturb the work, I strode over and lent forwards to read. The text was in Latin, a language I hadn’t heard since I was a child at school. ‘What is a beast, but a man bared true’ The words could have come from my own lips, woefully pretentious... Then it struck me, Zhou had been a teacher before the war certainly, but in Shanghai... Would he really have known Latin? That dead language which surely fewer than a dozen still knew this city still knew?
Had I realised half a second later, I would have been dead. I turned and caught Zhou by the wrist, clumsily diverting the swing of his machete. It slammed into the wall besides my head and embedded itself within the brick. His dark eyes bored into me as his fist hammered into the side of my head and slammed me hard against the wall. Dazed I struggled to defend myself and slipped gracelessly on the pile of limbs besides my feet. I reached out and grabbed a hold of Zhou’s collar and brought him tumbling down with me. We landed hard in next room, devoid of an actual bed I found myself upon a filthy set of blankets, complete with unthinkable stains as the tarpaulin fell on top of us both. His hands were around my throat, squeezing with such incredible force that I knew my windpipe would collapse long before I choked out. With not so much as a hint of emotion Zhou stared down through the cracked lens of my mask and at my one eye that was visible. I could hear my own static ridden gasps as my lungs fought to draw in air that would not come. I knew that I had seconds to act before my throat was crushed, I pulled up my knee and threw my hand away from Zhou’s wrist and down to my boot. At once I felt the pressure removed as Zhou rolled away and threw off the plastic sheets that had enshrouded us both.
He let me stand, gasping greedily now with a blade in my hand. Zhou had withdrawn his own combat knife and was sunk low into an aggressive stance. He watched my every move with the indifference of a true apex predator and I knew that he saw all of my weaknesses laid bare. I felt naked before him, short of breath with cold sweat running down my spine. Zhou was larger, stronger, unharmed and without his flak vest and boots, lighter than I. We both knew as I tore off my mask and cast it aside, that I was as good as dead already.
I can’t say that I have ever truly felt the way that I did in that moment before or since. I respected Zhou deeper than I had ever respected anyone before, for he had planned this to perfection, spending the better part of three years coming to know me, my strengths, my weaknesses and my vulnerabilities. It was no coincidence that the scene was set where it was, for Zhou had know full well that this vile house of flesh would fill me with unease, that I would shut down my senses in my desire to escape. Yet even then, when he had me dead to rights, the man waited for me to catch my breath before delivering the coup de grace. The machete had never for a moment intended to kill me, Zhou wanted me to know he was stronger than I.
I threw down my blade, surrounded by the shrill screams of the whores as they tried to flee, pounding their fists against the sealed bulkhead. I am not proud of what happened next, not by any stretch of the imagination. Zhou’s face betrayed his first and last flicker of emotion, surprise at my perceived willingness to bare my throat and submit to fate. He opened his mouth to speak but I was already moving.
Zhou had made one fatal mistake, he had assumed that I had honour. He had assumed that I would fight with blade in a desperate bid to deny my inferiority. The gunshot rang out deafeningly loud within the confines of the bank, as I withdrew my sidearm and shot Zhou in the chest. The shot was poor but no less lethal. It had struck Zhou in the chest, perforating a lung and shattering his spine, he collapsed with a soft groan. Although I had won I found no pleasure in the kill, unit 01 372 had deserved a better death.
I stood for a while longer but the gunshot had brought the attention of the JURY unit waiting outside. The screams of the women had been of no consequence, for when a WRAITH enters a room, one would do well to ignore any screams, a gunshot however was a gunshot. I heard the footsteps rushing up behind me as the sheets were pulled apart. I didn’t bother to turn and the unit knew better than to interrupt. Instead I heard the sound of a re-engaged safety and a long exhalation. I had done what had been expected of me, yet this had been a duty I took no joy in.
To my surprise, I felt a prickle behind my eyes and a lump in my throat that was beyond the pain of being strangled. I knew as I heard Zhou’s biosignal, that I had just lost the opportunity to die with meaning, and I knew that it would of been a death better than I deserved. You may expect me to say that I struggled to contain my out pour of emotions but you would be wrong, I pushed the feeling aside with no more effort than it takes to brush aside a cobweb. By the time I had left that fetid vault I had returned to the comfortable numbness of dispassion. A broken man and a shattered husk of a woman had died also, yet I had to now find myself another 01. I doubted any replacement would last half as long as 372 had, three years as a WRAITH is a long time, far longer than most.