24. Obila Part V Holorace
Auren was falling endlessly through a blue-black nothing. In and in and in he fell. The horror was endless. The whispers were all around him. And in that darkest of dark, a shadow had found him. It had flittered out of the tattered unreality that enveloped him, swooping in close only to dart away. It repeated the maneuver many times, and each time he would yell, demanding to know what it wanted. But the whispers only grew louder and more indecipherable. And then, from the dark, the stentor of a pained scream cut into his thoughts?—
Auren startled awake. But the scream went on. For a moment, his mind was a blur. Lupo jolted awake beside him, evidently hearing it too.
The scream was piercing now, a howling shriek of pain that sent a chill down Auren's spine.
"Fengári!" Auren gasped, tearing out of the bedroom and straight into a merc thug with a stun baton standing in their hallway.
The thug spun toward him, his baton crackling with electricity as he powered it on and took a swing at Auren. Auren grabbed his hand effortlessly, his servos far faster and more precise than a natural human. Snapping the man's wrist was easy. The baton fell to the ground, and Auren kicked the man so hard in the chest that he flew out of the hallway and crashed into the wall on the far side of the living room. A crack appeared in the concrete as the man slid to the ground, blood oozing out of his mouth as he pulled himself toward the apartment door, groaning in pain.
Lupo was emerging into the hallway now, but Auren was already barreling into his brother's bedroom.
Inside, Fengári was being held down by four men. One of his feet had been severed and was sitting in a containment vessel on the ground. The bloody stump was shoddily clad in a medical bulb, which had stemmed the bleeding but likely not the pain.
"You know, we almost prefer when rubes like you don't pay up," a merc was saying as he began to carve into Fengári's wrist. "Hands and feet are a commodity these days, and we couldn't have you winning that race tomorrow?—"
Auren snapped his neck. The other three men didn't even have time to react. Fengári's eyes bulged as he watched his torturer's corpse slide to the ground. Lupo was beside Auren now, grabbing one of the thugs and tossing him into another. The final merc was backing away, raising his hands at the sudden shift in the power dynamic.
"Please, just let me go!" the man begged.
"Like you were going to let him go?" Auren demanded.
"We were only harvesting limbs and organs; he'd have been left alive. It's nothing he couldn't replace," the man pleaded.
Auren picked up the saw they'd been using on his brother.
"Auren, no!" It was Lupo telling him to hold back now, just as Auren had done on the resurrection ship.
But he wasn't holding back anymore. Auren had been a victim his whole life. He'd rolled over. He'd run away. He'd been run down. But he wasn't running now.
"Fuck you," Auren growled.
He knocked the merc to the ground and drove a knee into his throat. Then he engaged the electro-saw. The sound was terrible, and the man stared aghast as he finally noticed Auren's eyes.
Auren grabbed the thug's arm and held it against the ground. And then he carved off his hand with the saw. The man screamed in agony, blood spurting everywhere as he wriggled to free himself from the very torture he'd just been inflicting. Auren leaned in close, feeling the man try to pull away, and whispered softly in his ear.
"Don't worry, it's nothing you can't replace."
He released the thug and dropped his lifeless hand onto his bloodied chest. The merc grabbed at his stump, then at the hand, then at the stump again in a blind panic before stumbling to his feet and staggering out of the apartment, the other two that Lupo had injured close behind him. He left a trail of blood in his wake.
The deceased thug lay inert on the floor. Auren observed the carnage and death he had just perpetrated in a detached sort of way. He wondered if he'd snapped after all he'd been through. But then the universe was so cruel—why couldn't he be cruel too, if it meant surviving? Or protecting someone he loved. And a part of him seemed to encourage this new way of thinking… He looked to Fengári, who was fading in and out of consciousness.
"Quick, call him an ambulance," Auren directed.
Lupo stared uneasily at the corpse on the floor. His judgment made Auren uncomfortable—and he felt he was being evaluated for his vengeance by someone who had asked him to participate in theirs. The double standard frustrated him.
"Right, right," Lupo mumbled, grabbing Fengári's holo from his nightstand and typing away.
"It's going to be okay," Auren assured Fengári, kneeling beside his brother.
"By the stars, you kicked the shit out of those guys," Fengári murmured.
Auren was relieved to see his brother's hand was only half severed, and he slid it into one of the medical bulbs the men had left behind. The bleeding abated after a time, and Fengári relaxed a little.
"I'm sorry, seeing you here… I don't know what came over me," Auren said, and it was true.
Violence had never been instinctive for him; in fact, he'd done everything he could his entire life to avoid it. And yet, when he'd crashed into that thug, it had been so natural, so easy. So fun. He shuddered as a shadow danced along the back of his mind.
"Ren…" Fengári said, really fading now.
"The ambulance is on its way," Lupo said. "Five minutes. Let's get him downstairs."
"Ren," Fengári implored, throaty as the effort strained him.
"I'm here," Auren assured him.
"You need to ride for me tonight. The bike's in the garage downstairs. I put everything on it. Everything," he groaned, squinting his eyes at the pain before looking pleadingly at Auren.
Auren had only ever ridden shotgun to his brother, and at one point in his life the thought of getting behind the wheel of a holo-bike and duking it out in a race would have terrified him. The thought only thrilled him now.
"I'll do it. I promise. Just try to relax; we'll get you to the ambulance and then take care of this piece of shit." Auren gestured to the dead mercenary.
"He really was a piece of shit," Fengári said faintly. "Smelled like shit, too." He laughed weakly.
Auren and Lupo carefully lifted him from the bed and made their way out into the dawn.
The ambulance arrived and set down promptly. Obila City services were top tier, and Auren tried to reassure himself that Fengári would be well looked after as the flight medics loaded him on board.
"I'll take care of this. I swear. I love you," Auren said as they finalized his brother for flight.
"Thanks for saving me the hassle of having to replace as much of me as they were planning on taking," Fengári said as the door slid closed. "I love you too, Ren."
And then he was gone.
"You sure you know how to ride this thing?" Lupo hollered as they roared out of the garage.
The bike his brother had picked had been used but was top of the line. It floated above the ground on its magnetic suspension field as it propelled them forward, zipping them off into the streets of Tartarus, where they ripped down one of the major avenues.
"Mostly sure, yeah," Auren yelled back.
And it was true. He'd long studied his brother's strategies. He'd noted how he slowed through the first half of a bend before speeding up as he ejected himself from a curve. He'd memorized how he hugged the inside lane as much as he could—the way he never split his focus from the road…
Auren almost ran into a cargo van, pulling back on the yoke frantically as they sailed up and over it. Lupo, riding behind him, hugged him tightly as they bounced roughly back to skimming the roadway.
"If you say so," Lupo said, sounding wholly unconvinced.
They hadn't spoken much about what had happened as they'd thrown the merc into a dumpster earlier that day. Murder was a common sight here. Tartarus was hell. And no one even batted an eye as they disposed of the man. Had this been the surface, it would have been another thing altogether. Down here? Anything was fair game. The law had learned to turn a blind eye to the place, and in turn, the place had turned a blind eye to it.
Auren gunned the throttle, surging forward, darting in and out of traffic as he wound his way to the bridge where the race always began. When they'd been boys, he and Fengári had hidden under an overpass nearby to watch, wrapped in the tattered blanket they'd shared when they'd been abandoned to the streets by their parents. They'd distracted themselves from the trauma with the thrill of the race. It had become an obsession. And they'd never missed one until Auren had been drafted for Vesperion.
There had never been a race where at least half the riders hadn't perished in the battle royale. He had decided it best not to share the exact details of the sport with Lupo, hoping not to cause him any more undue strain.
The circuit was something most people had memorized from a young age. Growing up here, you knew to stay clear of the bikers' path as they competed. The event was monthly; crowds had already lined up in the darkened side streets and atop rooftop lounges. The anticipation was palpable.
Auren was sure that at that very moment, bets were being placed, traps were being laid, and all the perils of the race were coming to life across the city. He grinned as he blurred off into the night.
He glided his bike to just shy of the starting podium and felt its balance shift as Lupo hopped to the ground. The foreigner looked around, apparently bewildered by the blinding neon lights and roaring pyrotechnics. A nearby racer—a woman wearing a sleek scarlet bodysuit and helmet that matched her bike—was idly spinning a battle-axe from this hand to that, testing her swing.
"Why does that woman have an axe, Auren?" Lupo whispered.
"Don't worry about it. Just go sit over there near the starting line. Let's get this over with." Auren leaned down and gave a still-protesting Lupo a brief kiss, relieved that a part of him still felt joy in the act.
Another racer pulled alongside him, this one essentially nude, covered in inky-black tattoos. A double-sided energy scythe was clipped to the side of his bike, covered in thorny spikes and metal hooks. A human skull adorned the bow of his cycle. Auren had seen him before. He was a living legend: Hárma.
"Auren, I really don't like this," Lupo pleaded, tugging at his arm, obviously beginning to understand that the race was more than a race.
"Don't worry. I know the course by heart. And besides, what's the worst that could happen?" Auren said, not at all uneasy for some reason.
A part of him was even yearning to test itself—to push against everything it had been and become something new. Something more. And the whispers urged that part of him onward at the expense of all the rest. He wasn't just a survivor anymore. He was something else.
Lupo gave him one last look, then slung his head and loped to a set of grandstands erected out of old cargo pods and scrap metal, taking a seat amongst the horde, not taking his eyes off Auren even once.
Auren gave him a thumbs up—which he weakly returned—and then rolled toward the starting line, where most of the fifty-odd contestants were already massing. Hárma was a few bikes down the row, and being this close to the man he'd seen win so many of these (and kill so many racers) was totally surreal.
"You don't have a weapon," the biker next to him said with a sneer as the announcer described the night's event over the loudspeakers.
"That's because I am the weapon," Auren said darkly. He turned to look at the man.
"Your… eyes…" The stranger gasped, leaning in to get a better look at them.
"And now… three… two… one… ruh-ruh-ruh-RUMBLE!" the emcee screamed.
Auren punched the man square in the chest at maximum strength, sending him flying into the biker next to him and knocking both to the ground, where they began brutally stabbing one another.
Auren grabbed the bronze trident the first man had attached to his bike and ripped it free before speeding off to catch up with the peloton, where he'd have his best shot of drafting up to a respectable place.
He tore through the city at breakneck speed. Holo-bikes were fast. Even with his synthetic reflexes, Auren struggled to keep his bike on course at its maximum throttle. And the trident felt awkward as he gripped it. He attempted to keep the prongs forward-facing as he approached the rear of the pack, watching as two racers swung bladed instruments at one another. One of them bashed into the other's bike, crushing their leg before running them through with a sword. The body fell limply to the ground, and Auren swerved around it as he approached.
The killer flipped him off as Auren pulled alongside him.
"Rat-faced little fuckwit!" the man cackled.
He veered into Auren and took a wild swing, his sword clattering off the side of his bike and cracking open a deep gash in its shell. On the next swing, Auren grabbed the blade with his bare hand, feeling it cut into him as he wrenched it out of the man's arms and threw it to the ground. His hand was bleeding but stitching itself together rapidly, and he couldn't help but grin as he surged forward.
But even as he did so, the killer tried to repeat his strategy, albeit without his sword now. The racer clipped into the rear of Auren's bike as the pair approached a hairpin turn ahead, crunching the fragile frame and causing him to almost lose control. The man approached again and grabbed at him, attempting to pull him off balance. And he nearly did.
But Auren had just noticed the turn. The killer, still dogging him rabidly, had not. Auren braked abruptly to maneuver the course, kicking out the back of his bike before accelerating again. The man shot past him, a look of confusion on his face. Behind him now, Auren heard the other racer's bike explode into Tartarus's cave wall.
The next section of the race dropped into one of the open-faced drainage sluiceways that riddled the understory of Obila. He caught air as he shot off the roadway and into the muck-filled dank. He passed by a few other riders in various states of dismemberment or disrepair. One even tried to hop on his bike as he passed, and he had to kick out at him to prevent him.
Auren ducked his head into the wind, wishing he could disable his sense of smell as the contaminated run-off steamed around him. The pack had thinned out by this point, and he darted by a couple of slower contestants without fanfare as he approached what he believed to be somewhere near the middle of the leaderboard.
A plasma bolt whirled past him, blasting a hole in the surface of the drainage sluice. Then another. He dodged this way and that, scanning the rim of the half-pipe ahead for the source of the shots. Another arced out and nearly connected with him. Auren hurled the trident at his attacker, watching in shock as the weapon coupled with the thug and sent him reeling out of sight.
Projectile weapons weren't allowed in the race. Still, cheating was common, especially in this remote section where spectators rarely bothered to watch due to the smell. The hosts let almost anything go so long as it was good entertainment.
He'd made his way into the middle of a throng of bikers, all gunning through the half-pipe as they swung and cursed at one another with various implements and barbs. On an overpass ahead, a group of onlookers had braved the stink to catch a glimpse of this stretch of the race. Auren eyed them uneasily as he ducked under a war hammer that another racer had hurled at him.
"You piece of shit!" the hammer's owner shrieked, ramming him a few times and trying to spit on him as she drew near.
At least a dozen of them were approaching the overpass now, all locked in battle as the narrow space approached. The race leaders had passed through the opening just a moment ago, and as he neared it, Auren noticed the spectators above beginning to spread out, signaling something to one another as they all started to pull on…
Auren slammed on the brakes and cut the engine, causing his bike to slam into the ground and skid out from underneath him. The other racers flew by. The woman who had been attacking him turned to give him a rude gesture, sticking her tongue out at him as she neared?—
And then she was cut clean in half, along with all the other racers he had just been jockeying alongside. The nanofiber filament was invisible, but he'd known it was coming when he'd seen the group up on that bridge fan out and begin pulling on something. He'd seen the same thing happen just once before. The scale of the sabotage had caused such dishonor that the race had been canceled for an entire year before resuming.
One of the trap-setters had slid down the embankment of the sluice and was approaching him as he dragged his bike under where he imagined the fatal wire to be drawn taut.
"Oy, smart move, dodging. But you know the drill. A job's a job. And we don't get paid for survivors." The man raised a plasma pistol and aimed it squarely at Auren.
He launched himself at the man, leaping at least twenty feet in a single, predatory bound and landing on him with a crash, knocking him to the floor with an oomph that sounded simultaneously shocked and confused. He prized the gun from his shaking hand and looked at him curiously. The man stared at him in terror.
"What are you?" he cried, the hot barrel of his plasma pistol searing into his forehead as Auren pressed it into him.
"I really wish I knew," Auren mused.
He pulled the trigger and turned the man's skull into slag.
The rest of the mercenaries above him were screaming at him angrily, though not making any further attempt on him. He ignored them and dragged his bike hastily on, mounting it, doing his best not to look at the severed bodies all around him. Auren rubbed his neck anxiously as he powered up the holo-bike and set off after the race leaders.
They were still nowhere in sight as he left the sluiceway and its carnage behind. His bike was making an odd scraping sound now, not appreciating his treatment of it so far, and he worried he wouldn't be able to get it to the finish line, let alone win this thing for Fengári. Auren grimaced as he forced himself to carry on.
The streets ahead were quiet. Most of the riders were either behind him or had fallen to the brutality of the race. Auren blasted into the final stretch: a perilously zigzagging section that climbed up to Tartarus's solitary suspension bridge. The miles-long affair spanned a considerable portion of the city, terminating in the finish line.
His bike groaned as he urged it faster. Ahead, he could see Hárma and the scarlet-clad rider duking it out as they glided onto the bridge. Hárma was rebutting her attempts to ram him over the edge, swinging his scythe dangerously close to her.
They were nearing the midway point when the female rider switched tactics. She abandoned any pretense of rule-following and threw her battle-axe to the ground before producing a plasma rifle from a compartment in her bike, discharging it wantonly in the direction of Hárma's iconic ride.
There was an eruption of flames and fuel cells, and then Auren shielded his face as bits of Hárma and his bike rained over him, cutting and splattering across him in equal measure. Hárma was dead. And now he was equal with the crimson woman, who gave him a little wave before leveling the gun at him, too.
Auren jumped. And even as his seat departed the bike, he felt its hot, jagged eruption exploding behind him. The concussive blast sent him flying right where he'd directed himself: into the frame of Crimson's bike. His mass connected with it at high speed, and the weight of his artificial frame caused the red holo-bike to crack and snap in two.
He and the rider tumbled to the ground as the remains of the bike skidded just shy of the finish line. Auren's back seared with pain, and one of his legs had been broken in the crash and was struggling to mend itself as quickly as it usually might have. He dragged himself upright, the pain white hot and all-consuming now. His eyes burned with tears as he swung around to confront the final rider.
But she had miraculously gotten to the ground before him and was already arcing a high kick at his face as he turned. The blade built into her shoe glittered as it cut across his face, slicing a deep gouge into his cheek that sent blood splattering to the roadway. She struck again, and again. And for some reason, between his broken leg and the overwhelming sensory feedback he was experiencing, he found it hard to move. The cuts were adding up across his body now, and he felt himself growing sluggish as his internal mechanisms struggled to keep up with the ongoing damage.
Auren held up a hand that felt heavy and distant, protesting her relentless abuses. But she wordlessly continued her onslaught, forcing him to stumble to the ground, unable to rise. He felt his vision begin to go dark, and he wondered in a disoriented stupor whether this time he'd genuinely die.
She stood over him, flipping back her visor to reveal a heavily tattooed face and stringy purple hair. Her mouth was a cruel smirk.
"My my. We were expecting Fengári. Not… well, whoever the fuck you are. But organs and hands are organs and hands. I don't know how you survived the ambush back there, and I don't care. Anyone with half a brain would realize that the real prize in this race is mopping up all the bits and pieces of you idiots and selling them topside. Don't you know the race is fucking rigged? You Tartarans really are stupid trash, aren't you? Now be a good little pup and die."
She raised her bladed boot above his neck, preparing to make a clean kill. But Auren had noticed her plasma rifle on the ground nearby, and he had healed enough to grasp it if he could only just…
The boot was beginning to come down even as he snatched at the rifle and wheeled it onto her, blowing her leg clean off in a confusion of gore that left them both momentarily stunned.
"What the fuck!" she shrieked.
He'd blown her leg off at the hip, and she was looking around as though she might spot it somewhere, as though it hadn't been vaporized. She fell to the ground in agony.
Kill her, the whispers implored.
Auren shuddered, then slowly aimed the rifle at her as she patted stupidly at the viscera-covered mess spilling out around her.
Kill her now! they insisted.
The cacophony of their chorus was deafening, and it caused fresh discomfort to sear across him. He gritted his teeth so hard one of them cracked.
"I'm not your pawn," he growled.
Auren hurled the weapon off the bridge instead and began to drag himself toward the finish line, feeling the roadway cut and scrape at his raw, exposed flesh as he inched forward.
"Get back here, you bastard!" Crimson cried out, the arrogant attitude replaced by sheer panic.
Auren ignored her.
"You spineless coward!" she yelled. "You Tartaran shitstain!"
A part of him wished he'd listened to the shadows as he absorbed her ongoing barrage of insults and taunts. Still, the crowd's roar was beginning to dull out the sound of her voice calling after him, and he was having trouble focusing on anything save getting himself to the finish.
A dull, rhythmic thud had begun to vibrate the bridge itself as the thousands of onlookers willed him on with their cheers. The drama that had played out had surely been unprecedented, and the horde was going wild for him. Auren clawed his way across the finish line, only to be helped to his feet by the master of ceremonies.
He'd won. He'd fucking done it. And yet all Auren could feel was a dazed detachment as he wobbled toward the victory podium, trying desperately not to listen to the whispers that were even now urging him to stumble back out onto the bridge and finish what he'd started.
"She was supposed to win, you little fuck. Do you know how much trouble you've caused me," the master hissed, grabbing Auren's arm so tightly he felt dizzy.
Snap. Rend. Tear, the whispers urged.
Auren doubled over, vomiting a mess of fluids onto the man's shoes.
"Oh, this is just fucking wonderful. You've pissed off some dangerous people today, you little nitwit. And now you've ruined my fucking shoes. You think we don't know where your brother is? He owes more than what you just won. Now smile and wave for the cameras like the dumb little shit you are, and then run like hell because they're going to be coming for you. They always collect on their debts," he warned, waving cheerily at the audience.
Auren stared on dumbly, too engrossed in battling the shadow's desire to rip the man limb from limb right then and there to react to his menacing with anything but silence. He could feel his broken leg finally setting as he stood on the victory podium of his favorite childhood spectacle.
But it had all been a lie. It was just another of the many corruptions that Tartarus had peddled to him—the place had little more to offer than the cheap and hollow facsimile of a life. And he realized then that his home lacked a soul despite his many memories here. He was changing. And it scared him.
"Alright, that's enough. Now get the fuck out of here. I can smell the stink of this place on you. Good luck—you're going to need it."
The master released him abruptly, and the tall man sneered at him once before a pair of mercenaries in full battle armor escorted him away.
"By the stars, are you alright?" Lupo had shoved his way through the crowd and appeared at his side, checking him over and assessing the damage. Auren was still bleeding from dozens of wounds.
"Never better," he said weakly.
"Do you want me to disable your pain feedback until this all clears up?" Lupo murmured, gingerly straightening Auren's shirt, struggling to look at him in his damaged state.
"No," Auren said at once. And he meant it.
Auren believed that the pain might be the only thing still connecting him to his humanity. And letting go of it wasn't a shortcut he was willing to take.
The whispers screamed at him.