Slumrat Rising

Truth carefully observed his target. Very carefully. Cops had a sixth sense about when they were being watched. While he had never enjoyed the ‘pleasure’ of an Internal Security Officer’s company, they were notoriously, and justly, paranoid. He would put money down on her either being here on a job, or being here under immense family pressure. She sure didn’t look like she was having fun.

She wore a thin black leather jacket, black wet effect synthetic flesh pants, black heels and he couldn’t see the shirt. What he did see was a pair of earrings that he recognized from the “Defensive Enchanted Jewelry” section of the System Store, and a pair of mat black gems set in mythril rings that he didn’t recognize, but would put a second bet down on them being enchanted too.

And if those were on display, he was quite certain a veritable arsenal was hidden. If there weren't three anti-glamour glyphs tattooed on her, there would be four or five. Likewise, there must be a double dozen hidden alarms for her to trigger, as well as a few more that she didn’t know about. Ready to trip silently, and let her bosses know she had been compromised.

As for offensive means… a talisman hidden at the small of the back, he guessed, based on how she was sitting. Probably a few more concealed weapons too. A tiny lighting wand or asp wand tucked up a sleeve. A salivary gland replaced with a beastcrafted venom gland, ready to spit acid or drip sedatives as needed.

Or it could just be the needler and the badge. All the things he was thinking of were damned expensive, after all, and there were famously a lot of plainclothes IS agents. Depending on the circumstances, there might not even be a needler. Though he was pretty certain anti-glamour measures were a must. The consequences of not doing so were just absurdly high. Truth knew street cops got enchanted badges to ward off low level effects.

Even in his particular corner of the slums, little vials of potions or packets of powders could be administered to make people more compliant, beyond what even alcohol and bad decisions could normally manage. Single use charms or more powerful talismans were usually privileges reserved for organized crime beyond the street gangster level. Certainly no one in his tower block could afford, or even get access to, such a thing.

But a little something in a drink? Oh yes. The Internal Security officer was the only person at the table without a drink in front of them. Truth grinned. ‘Subtle’ was apparently not on tonight’s menu.

He looked over the rest of the table, checking for any unanticipated surprises. There were none. They were all Level Ones. Just ordinary folks, out with their ‘rich’ ‘friend’ and his alarmingly powerful cousin. He drifted over, letting the officer persona fade away.

There were recording talismans in the club, as well as bouncers. This place saw a comparatively higher end crowd. Not a single person or talisman in sight was over Level One power. Cacaos was a nothing fancy nightclub in a nothing fancy big town/small city in almost the geographical middle of the country. Solidly north of Harban, without actually being up in the mountains. Nowhere. The biggest nowhere. No wonder the son of a wagon dealer could be a mini-tycoon here.

“Ah ah ah, none of that. We want happy talk at the table tonight, happy talk.”

“You guys still going to watch the fights tomorrow?”

“Yeah, they won’t cancel those for anything less than a full on earthquake.”

Truth leaned over one of the guys putting on a show and said (loudly, because nightclubs are nightclubs,) “You aren’t even drinking anything, and you still need to “go to the bathroom.” Just to get away from these… people.”

She didn’t even nod. She just stood up, nodded at the table and stalked off. Nobody even rolled their eyes. They kept the conversation going until she was out of earshot.

Truth didn’t hang around. The IS officer wasn’t headed for the bathroom. She headed for the back door. Incisive wasn’t sending any alarms, so Truth just shrugged and followed her. She walked over to a nearby dumpster, lifted the lid, and then turned back towards the club. And waited.

Truth narrowed his eyes. She didn’t blink. He looked a little closer. Even in the city twilight, those eyes were glassy, pupils the size of pinpricks. Someone, or something, had gotten to her before Truth had.

“Who, or what, am I speaking to?” Truth asked

“Spiritual Worm 77173428221. You have triggered one of my activation conditions. In the event that you destroy this vessel, please remember to keep Jeon tidy and neatly dispose of any remains.” Her voice was uninflected, uninterested. “Message begins.” The worm’s voice changed.

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“To whom it may concern. Each of the active worms in my agents have a copy of this message, along with the same activation condition. My name is Colonel Eskevan Cho, and you can find me in the IS field office in Runchon. Please disregard the worm- if you do plan on dropping by, I would appreciate you not killing my subordinates for delivering a message.”

It was eerie hearing the voice of a sixty year old chain smoking man coming out of a thirty-something year old woman.

“Message ends.” The worm’s voice returned. “As this vessel is now compromised, under the Wartime Powers Act, they must be considered a potential traitor. Please do your civic duty and kill the traitor. Remember to dispose of the corpse hygienically and report the situation to your nearest police officer.”

I know there is a reason why I am trying to save this country. I just- I can’t quite seem to recall what it is, at the moment.

“Is it a good life, being a spiritual worm?”

That seemed to throw it for a moment.

“This question is beyond my ability to answer. Please ask a different question.”

Fair enough.

“You are a spiritual worm?”

“Yes.”

“What is a human?”

“A vessel.”

“For what?”

“For a spiritual worm.”

Truth laughed silently. Funnily enough, he had almost never used the primary intended function of the Blessing of the Brass Sea. He laid his hand on the IS agen’t head, and destroyed the possessing spiritual worm. It wasn’t even on the level of an imp.

Life returned to the agent’s eyes. She whipped out a needler and swept it back and forth, looking for targets.

“INTERNAL SECURITY, SHOW YOURSELF!”

Truth just shook his head and walked away. It had been a good enough evening. Time to find dinner and have a good think.

Truth sat up on a rooftop and confronted an unpleasant fact. In addition to not knowing how to cook, he didn’t have the means to cook. He had grabbed a cutting board and knives from the Sung mansion, but he had neither hotbox nor stove in his storage ring. He knew you could cook on open fires, he had seen it done. He suspected that there were better portable alternatives.

He just didn’t have any of them. Or know how to make them.

“Maybe a portable grill? Throw some charcoal in there, or a heat talisman or something? Wood? Can you throw straight wood in there?”

He had no idea. It would have to be takeout again. Maybe he should stop by a camping store or something? He looked up into the glow of the city lights. It would have to wait until morning.

That message was interesting, on several levels. That it existed in the first place. That it was copied on who knows how many spiritual worms, inserted into IS agents across Jeon. That it was tripped when he used Incisive to influence the agent. That little collection of facts had the hairs rising on the back of his neck.

Someone, probably several someones, was operating against Incisive. They were building very, very subtle dams and nets for him, as he tried to swim the sea of the masses.

The Hell Prince will arrogantly move, he will bend the will of the people around him. Sooner or later, he will run into an agent of Internal Security. And when he does…

Well. He didn’t think it would be something as crude or direct as explicit violence. Which led to part two of the message.

A name. An address. A plea for his subordinate’s life. Even a subtle jab at the worm itself. The worm being implied as part of a system separate from the Colonel, despite it being the Colonel’s message that it was carrying.

Dissecting it a little bit further- there was simply no collection of statements, made by anyone, anywhere, at any time in his life, at any time in the life of the human species, that would persuade Truth that an IS Colonel gave any kind of a damn about a subordinate’s life. God, personally, could park the Chariot directly in front of Truth and provide a testimonial and Truth STILL wouldn’t believe it.

He would also have a few unrelated questions for the Almighty, but that was neither here nor there.

The plea was calculated. Every word was calculated. This was another attack on his mindset, on the impressed identity Jeon was shaping for him. Hell Prince. Hellish, but a Prince would disdain soiling his hands with a lesser’s blood. Especially when a proud person lowered their status to beg. It implicitly elevated the Prince’s status. It put the power in his hands three times over- if he decided to visit, and if he decided to spare the subordinate, the Colonel would owe him a favor.

It was the logic of gangsters, expressed with the subtlety of ministers. Even if he was resisting the Hell Prince identity, it was a social attack that would work on almost any son of Jeon.

“I, a high status person, a person you have spent your life pissing yourself in terror just thinking of, have taken immense efforts to invite you to visit me. And I’ll owe you one if you prove you are the bigger man.”

Power. Status. Vanity. Truth had spent long enough introspecting to acknowledge the obvious- The attack hit him like an armful of the good stuff. He could fight the high. He could do his best to stay clean. But he had grown up in these streets. He had grown up eating this with every meal. Got double helpings of it in the meals with no food.

It was what he always wanted.

It was what he killed himself to get. Enough power, enough status, that even the mighty bowed down. That even the prideful took a knee before him.

The thoughts boiled his blood. The drugs worming his way through and warming him, licking at all those fragile places in the mind. This is what you need to feel good, it whispered. This is how your life should be.

Truth stood on the roof of a nothing building in a nowhere place and felt the world spin around him. Understanding the poison in the wine only made the wine sweeter. The smell of it spooling up his nose and leaving its barbed hooks, as the red tainted wine poured down his throat and into his heart. Washing away the old blood, replacing it with the new.

He stood on the roof and reveled in the majesty and terror of it all.

He laughed, a quiet little sound in the night. He touched his chest over his heart, feeling that little fragment of Etenesh burning within him.

Such petty glory. Such hollow majesty. Hadn’t he already seen how phony it all was? Didn’t he know better since he was a kid?

You only drank the wine when there was no water. With open eyes, he could see the pure torrent pouring down on him every moment of every day. He just had to cup his hands, and drink. Nothing in the world tasted better than that.

He pulled Perks out of his shirt and had a good look at him. Perks looked fine, but Truth was sure that it had been more than a week since he had eaten. The old man said Perks needed a mouse a week. He was looking lumpy. A little off.

“Alright buddy. You and I are going to take a little trip to the seaside. But first, we need road snacks.”

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