#Behemoth AU | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

yeyinde · 2 years ago

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NEON MEDUSA | cyberpunk au

Captain John Price x Reader

"Make the smart choice, love." He doesn't give you anything else. The line goes dead with a click. Silence. Unbearable. Stifling. It permeates the air around you, buzzing like static. A disturbance in the airwaves. A rustle in the stagnant life you've been sloughing through for the last three years. A moment later, your phone chimes. A map appears. Some remote bar on the outskirts of the city—the only place Makarov's influence doesn't reach. Make the smart choice. It's your freedom or your head.

》 WARNINGS: THIS SERIES WILL BE 18+ | no smut; allusions to political corruption, moral ambiguity; standard Cyberpunk rules apply; body modification; technological supremacy; the existential crisis of questioning your humanity

》 WC: 11,1k

》 NOTES: Remember when I said I probably wasn't going to do a chaptered fic? Yeah, me too

SERIES MASTERLIST | NEXT

PART I | STATIC IN THE AIRWAVES

He sits in the crowded bar with nothing to keep him company but a half-empty glass of scotch and a burning cigar.

He alternates between the two. A swallow of his drink. A sip of water. A drag of his cigar.

(Routine. Always in threes. Always with that same pinched look on his face, partially hidden in the shadows, concealed beneath a beanie, and shaded in smoke.)

The ochre tip flares to life when he draws it close to his lips, taking a harsh drag of nicotine. The flash of light, brief and evanescent, illuminates his face in short bursts of orange in a room bathed in indigo save for the stage, where his gaze stays, fixed, almost unwaveringly, on the dancers as they display the greatest feat of technological advancement to date: nanobots.

Their chromatic skin shifts into various hues to accommodate each request made by the patrons, their bodies morphing into something new with each token taken from the hungry-eyed viewers.

Despite the keenness in his sharp eyes, he makes no purchases of his own—seemingly content to just watch the hedonistic spectacle unfolding before him.

It is not uncommon for people to come here and just observe, happy enough to watch whatever the rest of the people—voyeurs—order, but there's something about him that stands out.

(Or maybe it's just you.

He piques your interest in a way most people just don't. Not here. Not in the gold-dusted cesspool of opulent depravity.)

And there isn't anything noteworthy about him. Nothing that stands out against everyone else.

He was easily swallowed by the curated tenebrous that leaked into the tight space of the auditorium—an artificial sense of seclusion and privacy in shades of shadowed indigo that means little when you can see everything from your perch in the observation deck. He isn't flashy in any sense—his broad shoulders are covered in a raw topaz corduroy jacket with tuffs of seashell white plumage around the collar and button lines, and he wears a simple pair of black trousers, and leather boots. A charcoal beanie sits low on his brow.

He's big. Bigger than most of the men in the room—both in width and height. He'd tower over them, and his broad shoulders and thick bulk would swallow them whole.

Your vantage point—a hidden nook in the upper deck known only as the observatory: a domed room completely opaque from the outside looking in with high, arching golden bars dividing each rectangular window making it look a little too much like a cage for you to ever find comfort behind its glass walls—gives you the perfect view of everything in the club. The circular, egg-shaped room with its glass floors and walls has an interface built in to spy on the patrons below.

It's a place where you spend most of your nights when you weren't wandering the alcoves in the underbelly in search of trinkets to sell, or money to make to somehow chip away at the insurmountable debt you owe the owner of the club for saving you, a price you'll never begin to pay back at your current rate.

You come here to watch the spectacle at one of the most exclusive clubs in the city.

(And—

Take notes.)

The bar is a hidden gem of the red light district, a place only known by reputation and hushed whispers in the derelict underground.

On its surface, it looks like any other staple of depravity that the sprawling steel metropolis tries to pretend doesn't exist when foreign diplomats venture close to the technological epicentre of human advancement. Another grim, ramshackle bar in a desolate sea of many. Dingy wax paper covers the floor-to-ceiling windows, giving the passersby a tantalising view of a dancing silhouette beckoning them forward with mechanical fingers, and a bright red grin.

It's only when they try to enter the establishment does the stark differences between every other brothel masquerading as a bar come to light.

A bouncer stands in the enclosed foyer covered in piss-stained cardboard, and a cracked comm with loose wires sparking on the wall. It reeks of stale cigarettes and mildew. For added effect, the shadow of a bug skitters into the fist-shaped hole in the wall.

"Password?" He barks, his hand curling, pointedly, over the handle of his gyrojet. A threat.

It deters most people simply wandering by in search of sin.

Except for the ones with an invitation. The password. That prized piece of information gets them access to a club funded by the Inner Circle.

Most of the clubs in this district are known for their loose morals and shady rules, but none are as infamous as the White Horse, who dabbles in more than just pleasures of the flesh. A place where shady deals are conducted in secrecy in the opulent booths overlooking the stage. Where the madams, and misters overseeing the dancers turn a blind eye to illegal requests that are made.

A den of sin and filth wrapped in decadence. A place where anything goes so long as you have the money, the power, the status. Where nothing is barred, and the beds on the upper level are never empty.

More money passes through here on a bad day than those living in squalor near the district will ever see in their extended lifespans.

Men spend impetuosity to drag the dancers away, the nanos shifting into something new, something garish, to their deviant delights.

And men like him are a dime a dozen. You can find one anywhere in the red light district, sipping on alcohol, and feasting on the libertine victuals offered for the taking. Nothing about him is particularly noteworthy. Another concealed face in the louche mouth of debauchery.

And yet—

He stands out.

The only vice he partakes in is a cigar and drink. He doesn't let his eyes linger on the soft curves of the dancers, or the bared flesh they offer up. He watches with a detached, almost clinical disinterest.

Maybe, then, it isn't so much of what he is, but rather what he isn't.

There is a wryness to him, a soft derision in his steel gaze that seems out of place in a seedy bar filled to the brim with licentiousness. Most men come to quench their lustful appetite on the display of grandeur in front of them, making demands with a press of their finger to shape the dancers in front of them to whatever matches their hunger.

None of them has ever looked so disgusted.

He tries to hide it, face folding into something passive, nonchalant, when he thinks people are staring, or when the barkeep makes his way over to pour him another shot, but it breaks sometimes. Beneath the rim of his odd bucket hat, startling blue eyes morph into contempt at the men around him. Even with the rim pulled down low over his brow, covering the colombina mask concealing the upper portion of his face, you catch the anger frothing in cerulean.

It's an odd look considering where he is, and the prestige, the importance (both financial and influential) that he must carry just to be let inside, and yet—

Scorn. Derision. Disgust.

None of it is directed at the dancers gyrating on the flashing stage, putting on a grand performance of a technological prowess yet to be made available to the general public. Their willingness to contort their artificial bodies into various forms—men, women, genderless beings, animalistic features, elongated limbs, and a whole host of pabulum effigies—just for the paying patrons' lustful amusement incites none of the blunt disdain he directs at the men and women around him.

It's not the performers, then, but the audience.

Some come here with their status placed upon their head like a crown, chin refusing to dip down an inch lest the artificial diadem slip from their clinging fingers. They wear their aristocracy like a perfume, letting it permeate in the air surrounding them for all to inhale, to notice. They like to pretend they aren't enticed by the display available to them and are often mockingly cruel to the dancers, and the workers catering to their paying whims. It's a game to them. Coming here is a sport. A fulfilment of a quota.

An invitation alone is worth more than the going price of most cities, and the opportunity to maybe rub elbows with the financier of the establishment is enough to make greed spin in their eyes.

As cruel as they are to the staff, and as much as they like to lift their noses high in contempt, it's a farce. They're posturing.

The intrigue in their green eyes doesn't mask their peacocking.

His, you find, is genuine.

But why?

It's there that he makes his fatal mistake.

A man, a regular from Verdansk, grabs a passing dancer a little too hard, jostling their shoulder until metal grinds together in a piercing whine that goes wholly ignored in the pulsing bass, and jeers from the crowd.

He pulls them down, a lustrous smirk creeping across his face, and whispers something in their ear before jerking his chin toward the upper deck where the rooms are.

The exchange, his rough treatment of them, goes largely unnoticed—or rather, ignored—by the crowd. It's hardly a spectacle—not worthy of their attention like the display on the stage.

But he catches it.

Amongst the vile sycophants and their greedy stares, he stands out in stark contrast when his eyes narrow in anger, knuckles whitening around the glass.

You've only heard of his type in passing. The kind that thinks they're sticking up for something greater than themselves.

A hero. A martyr. A saviour.

Muted whispers in shadows. Promises they'll never be able to keep burrowed into filament; sweet words laced with that detestable thing that rots your insides, and leaves you sick with apathy when it extinguishes. Jaded and wrong and—

His type poisons you with hope, and leaves it to crumble in the hollowed amphitheatre of your aching, mutilated chest when they realise it's futile and do the one thing they're best at: running.

For the greater good, of course.

The battered remains of love in shambles mean little to them when they place the world on their shoulders to absolve themselves of their sins. The weight of it crushes pity and sorrow and contrition and failure into a ground powder that they can sneeze away with—

I had no choice.

Heroes, you find, are usually just a pantomime of their internal ugliness. They lash out at what they name injustice but sometimes slip up and use their given name when calling everything wrong with the world, with them, into question.

It's a good thing that they usually avoid places like this.

One where the people who fight for good, for humanity—the ones who wave and blink and grin on the holographic advertisements on each major street corner, or wander around with their translucent skin and faux smiles as they shell out promises (and products) of a better tomorrow—let their faces twist in horrific depravity under the strobe lights and cover of darkness. Politicians. People in power.

It's enough to snuff out any sense of optimism.

This is a place where hope comes to die with a single press of a greasy finger against a holographic screen.

A man like him has no reason to tuck himself into the corner, eyes misting over in anger and contemptuous spite at the patrons who feed the rapid descent of mortality.

The sight of him gnarls a sense of unease in your chest. A burgeoning bloom of that poisonous seed they warned you to stay away from. The one that strikes like a cobra and burns like a molten rock against your skin. That leaves you a raw, gaping wound festering in the cesspool they make sanguine promises to pull you out of.

They never do.

They make grand claims about being given a prophecy of martyrdom, and how they must devote themselves, wholly, to a cause that never comes to fruition like it does in the aeons-old fairytale of a bygone era when romance meant something.

Your fingers curl over the golden bars of the gilded cage you've been left in, and you wonder through the raw ache in your chest as it splits open, another wound among many, who he's trying to save here.

Then, grimly, you wonder how long it'll take for him to give up like the rest.

Intrigue gnaws at you until the needling pinch of curiosity becomes too much to bear.

(Curiosity, and something you'd rather not think about—)

It's easy to slip away from your perch unnoticed. No one bothers with you much outside of bringing you to sporadic liaisons with the man who acts as a silent owner of the bar—among many, many other things—and you use that sense of anonymity to wander down to the ground floor, and toward the man sitting in the corner.

The difference between them and him is made more apparent when you move closer.

A cybernetic thumb and forefinger knead the skin over the bridge of his nose, eyes pinched shut in a passage of pain that flickers over his face. With him too preoccupied with his headache, he doesn't notice you sidle up, and you take the opportunity to study him with an eager gaze.

He's handsome.

Muted neon blue cuts through the skin of his cheeks, running over his cheekbones, and dipping down toward the corner of his mouth. A flash of metal on his temple peaks beneath the rim of his beanie, catching in the shadowed glow of the pink and purple strobe lights flashing through the dim room. The circular curve and the soft metallic give the impression of the beginnings of a cranial implant. One that costs a hefty price to upkeep, but gives the wearer unlimited access to information fed directly to their non-dominant eye.

It's something only issued to the military. To the police force.

But the shape of it is archaic, old. Something of a crest—a familial design unique to the big families, to the clubs, that run the city, or parts of it. Gangsters. Mercenaries. Merchants. Scholars. Politicians.

Nepotism, undoubtedly, shaped the enhancement, but the design is foreign to you. You think of the common ones—the local police force and security, Shadow Company; the innovative engineers of the Inner Circle; the Shepherd family and their long, and bloody, history of politicians, leaders—but none fit the intricate weavings snaking down his temple.

Another peculiarity to add to the growing list.

The limited light in the darkened auditorium colour him a chiaroscuro of light of blue and grainy black, and the way he keeps his palm positioned over his face as he rubs the tension from his brow leaves the rest of his face hidden from your prying gaze. A shame, you think, and make the mistake of moving closer.

Beneath a metal knuckle, his eye cracks open.

"I'm not interested."

The timbre of his voice is rough—a masculine rasp that's abrasive, and thick with something heavy in the back of his throat. It makes you shiver. You blame it on the noviceness of your incipient intrigue.

"Oh?" You mock, and offer back a shrug you hope is more blasè than perturbed. "That's kinda surprising in a place like this."

"I'm not here for that—" his words cut off with a sharp huff, voice tapering off as he digs his thumb into the divot between his brow until the skin is indented from the metal.

The way he says the word is full of an exhaustive sort of contempt: the kind that says he's tired. Of this, of the anger coursing through his veins.

A hero on the verge of cracking apart at the seams..

(It didn't take him long.)

He's a picture of bone-weariness when he bows his head over the table, elbows knocking against the surface with a harsh thud that makes you wince. He doesn't seem to notice it—or maybe he's so far gone, that anything that isn't bitter disappointment or the white-hot sting of rejection feels almost good to him. A break in the routine. A physical hurt in place of the emotional turmoil saviours like him must face.

If, of course, he even is one.

You question your original assessment of him when his wrist bends, and his long, thick fingers wrap around the rim of the glass.

A hero. Maybe you were wrong.

He looks like the same tired men who spend their waking hours working a job they hate, one that grinds against their skin until a hole forms and the wound begins to rot. Miserable. They reek of bitterness and discontentment. And when they're not being burnt out against the heel of a profession that doesn't even know they exist, much less care about the droop in their shoulders, the callouses, the ennui and megrim towards life, they combat the existential despair by saturating their organs in liquid formaldehyde to stop the slow, methodical rot of that pesky little thing called hope. Happiness.

You wonder if he came here for something different to numb the self-inflicted loneliness, or if all that anger he directs at the men is just a reflection of his desires that disgust him so much.

It's the crushing sense of disappointment that maybe you were wrong and, worse yet, maybe he was right.

(In this life, there are only idiotic hopefuls and those smart enough to know better.)

Still.

He's different in a way you're not used to. A man with rough edges and sour words; blunt and bludgeoning.

Interesting.

You wonder what makes him tick. What ugliness he's hiding, and what secrets he's running from.

His neck is thick, muscles tensing when he tosses his head back, and swallows down the last of his drink.

(You wonder what it would feel like to sink your teeth into his jugular—)

"I don't need another drink, either," he says, voice thick from the burn of alcohol, and little more than a growl.

You offer another shrug—one that he doesn't see when he bows his head again, palms scoring down his face.

"Again," you murmur, a fleeting tease. "Still not offering."

His thumb presses into his temple, index finger sliding over his forehead until it rests in his webspace. He inhales deeply in palpable exasperation, broad chest expanding and pulling the charcoal shirt taut across his shoulders.

"Then what the hell—"

His lids crack open, eyes sliding to the side as he stares at you, properly, for the first time since you wandered over.

The surprise in his gaze as he takes you in makes your heart jump, slamming harshly against its bone prison. His eyes—a deep, almost unending blue—are pretty. Piercing.

He swallows again, hand pulling away from his brow slowly—dazed, almost, as if he'd been expecting one of the dancers on stage instead of—

Well. You.

Human. Wholly.

It usually catches people off-guard to see someone so bare, so void of any visible enhancements or upgrades.

On the surface, anyway. The debt you wracked up from the man says something must have been done. That one day, you'll dig too deep into your tissue and find wires and cylindrical tubes instead of veins. A circuit board instead of a heart. An artificial stem instead of a brain.

More android than human.

Your teeth sink into the soft flesh around the corner of your mouth, and you brace yourself for it—for the—

"I didn't realise I talkin' to a bloody bot."

It doesn't prickle against your skin—one that bleeds red, and bruises in flaxen when you dig your fingers in hard enough. It doesn't.

"I'm not."

He blinks at you once, mystified, but then something in his gaze sharpens. A keen awareness, a spatial depth, that seems out of place on a mere man. You think of the holographic images of grizzly bears mid-hunt, stalking their prey through the thick furze, and then of the curiosity that dips from beady, ink-black eyes when they find something that disturbs their territory. An unknown thing—neither predator nor prey.

He turns in the seat, shifting until his body is facing you. His elbow rests on the table, hand dropping down again to hold onto the rim of his glass. The other drops to the back headrest of the seat.

He doesn't move over or offer you a spot to sit. A pointed gesture, you're sure. A sign of your disturbance. An unwelcome visitor.

You ignore it in favour of drinking in the display of his body, loose and lax in the seat with his knees spread, and the toes of his boots akimbo. His muscles flex under the tight, grey shirt, moving with each shuffle of his hips to get comfortable.

He's bigger than you thought. Threateningly so.

"That right?" He says the words slowly, and draws them out in that coarse voice of his.

His index finger taps a strange rhythm on the rim of the glass as he considers the weight of what you divulged, and your eyes are quickly drawn to his human hand—thick, scarred fingers; knuckles scabbed and cracked—and to his nails. They're short, and jagged. Grizzled. They're dirty, too. A fine line of dirt sits under the gnawed hyponychium, bitten down to the plate.

"Fancy that—a purist."

His words make you snort, and you tear your gaze away from his filthy nails—dirty hands—and shake your head in refusal. Dismay. Exasperation. Some amalgamation of them all.

He isn't the first to assume that of you, and you know he won't be the last.

Your physical appearance is startling to some who quickly think you're an android with your untainted skin, void of any visible enhancements like the ones cutting through his cheeks, etched into his temple, his chin. The entirety of his left hand.

Some consider the relationship between humans and technology to be almost symbiotic. After all, artificial intelligence, modern human evolution, and cybernetics wouldn't exist without the fundamental human imagination, nor their human hands to construct life into these grand things.

It usually falls into two categories—technological subservience: those who believe AI, androids, robots, cyborgs, and nanobots were created by humans and therefore, belonged to humans; and technological coexistence: the merger between us and them until the lines blur, and it becomes one and the same.

(Or, more extreme: technological dominance—zealots who believe that god exists in the mainframe of AI, and worship them like deities.)

On the opposite scale lies the purists. Those who believe that the relationship is not symbiotic, but parasitic. A curse.

"Hardly—" The defensiveness in your tone makes you wince, and you soften the edge of your words when his forehead creases, adding: "It's all internal."

"Internal, huh," his eyes dip, rolling down the length of your body as if confirming your claims. The weight of his gaze makes your skin burn, blistering under the intensity of his bold stare. "That's unusual, ain't it?"

"Not where I'm from."

"And where is that, hmm?"

The way his voice tapers off into a growl makes you shiver. Feverish.

Dangerous. This man is dangerous.

"I—" You swallow down the thick pool of anxiety that swells in the back of your throat. You're not afraid of him, but there's this overwhelming sense of intimidation that bleeds from the furrow of his brow, the unrelenting stare he fixes on you—almost as if you're being interrogated. Unease makes your stomach churn.

Maybe this was a mistake—

His eyebrows lift in a silent display of impatience.

It's not something you speak about openly—or at all, really—but the words brim on your tongue, as if pulled there by the magnetic draw of the man sitting in front of you, fingers tapping against the rim of the empty glass while the other reaches over his chest, torso twisting as he blindly pats around for the cigar burning away in the ashtray.

"I don't know," you murmur, letting the words puncture your chest when they slip past the seam of your lips. "Don't remember much of it."

He considers your words with a slight tilt of his head. Thick, metallic fingers draw the burning cigar to his full mouth, partially hidden behind the wry curls around his lips and chin. He settles in his seat again, eyes lidded, heavy.

"That so?"

The end burns orange when he draws in a mouthful of tobacco-saturated smoke, eyes creasing slightly as the endorphins bloom under the deluge of nicotine coursing through him.

The sight of him, thick thighs spread over the polymer seat of the booth, elbow resting on the table with his wrist bent, fingers still on the rim of the glass, cigar in his other hand, makes something warm fill your chest.

Trepidation, you hope.

You offer a shaky shrug in response, and nothing more.

He hums. "Unusual, innit? Not rememberin'."

The entire history of your life is a black hole until three years ago when you woke up in a luxury hospital room with an unplayable debt on your head and a body that has never really felt like your own.

(A man, maker, who called himself your saviour, and ensured you'd never really be free.)

You echo the words he said to you all those years ago when you asked who you were, where you came from, and why you didn't know—

"It must not be worth knowing."

It's a murmured echo not meant to be taken seriously. There's no deeper meaning behind the regurgitated words that ring out in your head; a quick response to those questions that rear late at night when you can't sleep, and your mind wants to torture you further.

It doesn't matter.

And really, it doesn't. You can't remember it, and in the three years you've been living, reacclimating to the idea of recall and recollection, no one has ever tried to find you.

There's no memo being sent out to the great beyond with your name or face attached to it. No one but him has claimed to know you. To care.

Whatever happened in that life is gone. Empty. A black void of nothing, not even embers or a crackling voice. It's a hole where your sense of belonging goes to rot.

It does not matter. Not anymore.

But the way he flinches at your words—a barely concealed jerk of his limbs, half-aborted when he realises he's doing it—makes you think, for the first time in three years, that it might.

It's swallowed down by a flash of teeth peaking through his amber beard. A rictus grin greets your words.

"That so?"

All you can do is nod.

"Doesn't help convince me you ain't a bot."

"I'm not."

His brow ticks up. "Do bots know their bots? Androids can be made to think, created with sentience, but they aren't. It's only when they hurt, do they realise—they were never human at all."

Your chest tightens. He didn't just strike a nerve, he bludgeoned into it.

"I am," you argue, but the words are less sure, firm, than you want them to be. They tumble out, shaky and filled with the fears that have been twisting inside your head since you blinked into existence, and read accounts of androids doing the same. "I bleed. I hurt. I feel. I think. I—"

He bites on the end of his cigar before drawing both hands up in front of him, palms open and facing you.

"Easy, there." He mutters, voice low and muffed around the stem of the cigar, and—

Soothing.

"I'm only teasin' you. If you say you're human, you're human. That's all that matters, mm?"

You shudder. "I am, I—"

"What's your name?"

You echo the name given to you when you woke up in a daze and were told to meet the man who saved your life. The one he greeted you with when he welcomed you into his luxury office of cut mahogany and reinforced carbon.

When it slips out, the pinch between his brow deepens.

"That's your name? Or is that just what they call you?"

"It's—" you flounder for a moment. "It's my name."

"You don't sound too sure."

"Can I be sure of anything?" You volley back, venom leaking into the words.

"You haven't gone lookin'?"

"For what?"

Where would you even start?

"You know…" he begins, shifting in his seat once more. There is a tension in his brow. An even curl to his lips, teeth still bared. "I try to find people like you. Bring them home. To justice—or whatever that might be. A lot of 'em claim to not remember, to not know what they did, or why they ran. You tellin' me somethin' similar, love?"

"I'm not missing."

His eyes are filmed with a facsimile of something placid. Even. But there is a current beneath the surface. A raging torrent of unsettled water churning up the seabed. It'll drag you to the bottom, and press you flat against the rocks as it roars above you.

You might be able to crack your eyes open under the swell, fingers digging into the murky sediment below your supine body, and vaguely make out of the rippling surface. A taunting mirage just within reach but the tumultuous waves would crush your fingers for even trying to grasp for it.

You shiver.

"You sure about that, love?"

Love. Love. The words stick against some part of your head, clinging to the fibrils and ringing across gyri until every synapse rattles with the heavy tenor splitting you apart.

"—Do you know me?"

The look surfaces.

"No." You seldom feel hopeful that anyone does anymore. Maybe on a distant planet, in a distant city, someone is still looking for you. "But I am lookin' for someone."

"Looking—" your brow furrows together as you eye him warily. Concern etches into your chest. Knotting tight like a spooled ball. "Looking for who?"

He shrugs.

He shifts in his seat, brings his hand away from the glass, reaches into the sherpa-covered folds of his jacket, and pulls out a small device. He proffers it to you, the design is reminiscent of a netphone, but—

Out of date.

You stifle a grin as you take it from him, but it's barely hidden, and he huffs when he catches sight of it. A soft chuff of mirth spilling from between full lips.

"Watch it," he mutters.

Your eyes run along the length of the thin phone—dark chrome, chipped in some places along the sleek, curved edges, but the screen is intact—and you marvel at the oddity presented to you. It's not like the netphones made by Four Horseman Corp., but the design is almost a replica.

The man reaches up, and presses his cybernetic finger against a small, concave placeholder near what must be the mouth of the device, and the screen flickers to life.

A man stares back at you. His hair is blond with the sides shaved, and the top long. Handsome, you think, with his full lips, and long nose. The light dusting of his beard around his cheeks and moustache—just as blond as his hair. He looks like the models that pose on the holographic glass of the boutiques downtown.

"Who is he?"

"Alex Keller. He's been missing for six days."

Six days.

Something ugly rots inside of you.

"And you think he's been here?"

"Last place he was."

"Couldn't be," you murmur, shaking your head. "I'm here almost every night, and I've never seen him before."

"Might not 'ave noticed him, bein' so distracted 'an all."

"Distracted?"

Your lift your chin, confusion etched into your furrowing brow.

When he catches your eye, he jerks his head toward the stage. "You work here, don't you?"

"Work—"

It never really occurred to you that he'd think you were a dancer. A working bot. An android. Pleasure Androids—a disgusting attempt at cheekiness from the makers; the slogan on the advertisement makes pledges and promises about the state of the art pleasure-bots designed to suit your needs, upgraded now with nanobots that change their shape, their anatomy, in the blink of an eye.

You exhale through your nose. It isn't the first time you've been mistaken as such, and maybe if you were, the debt would have some small indent in it by now, but—

"No, I'm not allowed." You murmur, shrugging. "I know the owner so I just come here sometimes to hang out. People watch." A wry smile twists at the corner of your lips. "You see all manner of things in a place like this. Kinda entertaining if it wasn't so—"

Disgusting.

"You know the owner?"

His words are careful. Concise.

"Do you?"

He shouldn't. He is many things, but stupid isn't one of them.

The man says nothing, and gives away little more than a slight incline of his shoulders. Neither agreement nor refusal. His prevarication worries you.

"Hey, who did you say you were again?"

He brings the cigar to his lips, eyes never wavering from yours, and draws in a mouthful of chemical fumes. It was that intense stare that drew you to him, but now that the weight of it is on you, you find yourself feeling like little more than a bug under a microscope.

His chest rumbles when he shifts, twin funnels of smoke flaring from his nostrils. It disperses into wisps, and quickly scatters when it meets the fur lining his jacket.

"I didn't," he mumbles, voice pinched in a low, airy growl tinged with smoke. More evocation.

"Well," you add, brows notching up in a pointed gesture for him to continue.

He doesn't, opting instead to bring the cigar back to his mouth. Ashes drop, landing in his umber beard.

He's messing with you. Drawing your discomfort out.

"Who are you?"

The demand comes out less forcefully than you intended, words trembling with your surmounting unease.

It would be all too in character for him to send someone to spy on you, to catch you unawares, and to feed the hungry with his secrets.

"Doesn't matter."

Your glare does little to away him. "I'm leaving—"

"I'm just lookin' for my friend."

"Like I said, he couldn't be here. I've been here every night this month. I would have seen him." Seeing the gnarled expression that slips over his brow, a broken anger tinged with equal parts frustration and, most breakingly of all, desperation, you add, if only to soften the blow: "I can ask around, maybe. See if the workers know anything."

"I've been," he rasps, words still bleeding with his frustration. "They don't know anything."

You huff, shaking your head. "Asking those kinda questions here is what makes people go missing in the first place. Is that what your friend did? Come poking around and—"

Balming one wound just to prick at it later. Your words, the bitter sting, get you a flash of teeth, bared canines in sharp indignation.

The man leans forward, eyes pelagic and fixed, unflinching, on you. It makes you squirm. Heat blooms under your cheeks. The rush of it makes you dizzy.

"And what makes you special, then?"

You shrug, and hope the tremble in your limbs goes unnoticed. "I get a free pass."

"Why?"

"It helps to know people."

"Like the owner."

"Yes," you murmur, voice laced with your hesitation. "Like him."

"Him, hmm?" His eyes narrow. "And his name wouldn't happen to be Vladimir Makarov, would it?"

"How—?" Then, hastily, you add: "No. The tech mogul? No. Why—why would—"

"Save it." He reaches into his breast pocket and draws out a sleek, black card. Cupping it in the palm of his hand, fingers curled over the edge, thumb braced against the side, he tilts the screen. Immediately, the black filmed surface under his thumb shivers, flickering into a shape. A logo.

The emblem makes your eyes widen. "Military police?"

He hums. When his thumb pulls away from the surface, it changes back to a blank, black rectangle. Void of any meaning. Any substance.

Your breath quickens when he slides it back into his pocket.

"Why are you—"

"Makarov's been naughty, hasn't he? The future Zakhaev promised is a bright one, isn't it? Better eyesight. Better sense of smell. New, indestructible limbs—" He rolls the knuckles of his cybernetic hand at you, appendages moving instantly. "Stop ageing. Stop getting sick. Everything that could kill us is no longer an issue, hmm? For a price, of course."

"Nothing in life is free—" the words are ripped from Imran's advertisement ages ago. Nothing in life is free, but sometimes a better tomorrow is worth the price of today.

"Yeah," he murmurs. "Just get a loan through the Four Horseman, hmm? Pay them back a paltry sum every month. Worry about the payment later—upgrade yourself now."

The new slogan. You try not to shiver under his abrasive, scorching stare.

"But," he continues, shrugging. "When you can't pay, is he the one who sends his henchmen after them? The ultranationalists. The ones that take back his tech through force and sell the parts on the black market. And—" his eyes harden. "The cycle repeats. People die, debts go unpaid, and yet—mysteriously enough, he grows richer. Now, why is that, mm? How can that be possible?"

"Makarov isn't connected to the Ultranationalists. He's—"

"A businessman? A pseudo-politician? A philanthropist just tryin' to make the world a better place, hmm?" He leans forward, eyes cutting into jagged ashlar. "Then why is the Horseman funding them?"

"He isn't. It must be some kind of mistake—"

"You say that like you know him. Know him personally."

"I don't—"

"Don't lie to me, love. Won't do you any good." He leans back, hand falling to the side of his glass. He taps out a strange rhythm with his index finger—the old tune of some forgotten song. Tap, tap, tap-tap, tap. "I heard about you."

His words are a strangled pressure around your throat. Heard about you. Impossible. No one has. No one ever does. You're as invisible as Makarov wants, followed around by his henchmen at a sizable distance. They never bother interacting with you. Never speak unless they have to.

You're a flea hiding in the soft coat of a millionaire. Unneeded. Unwanted. A burden.

Your circle mostly consists of people who frequent the underground. The black market where you can find almost anything for a price—even the age-old books about fairytales and fantastical adventures. Information, too, if you know what you ask for.

Your face has never shown up on a missing person bulletin. No one has ever asked about you.

(No one cares, no one knows—

—six days.

Three years.

It doesn't matter—)

In your crushing silence, the man's eyes narrow. There is no flash of victory in his gaze, but you scent the arousal of a predator stalking its weakened prey nevertheless.

"Heard 'bout your debt, too—" he tuts, a rasping coo that sounds how you imagine the bristled tongue of a big cat would feel shredding your skin. "He's the one who saved you, ain't he?"

It becomes too much. The pressure bubbles over.

All your meagre years of existence have taught you to quell the surge of fight or flight, to push it down and stand firm, stoic, amid the array of nefarious people who happened to cross your lonely path in the catacombs where they barter over lives, and makes deals with the devil for any number of precious commodities—even people. A person with a debt, you found, is worth significantly less than someone without. A truism you've heard hissed into your ears when you turned their offer of freedom down.

Handing the leash from one hand to another is hardly autonomous.

You know from these experiences that any sense of weakness or fear is blood in the water. A struggling fish on the verge of being eaten by the predators lured in by its futile struggle to stay alive.

In its effort to survive, it inadvertently signs its death warrant.

If you don't look like you belong, then you don't. A simple fact you've picked up from years of weaving in and out of Makarov's towering shadow.

It's easy to forge some sense of delusive confidence in the face of those people, the ones who clutch at your arms hard enough to leave an ache in your bones, but something about his composure, his gall, to approach you like this makes that carefully constructed mask crumble into broken pieces at your trembling feet.

His eyes, you think. They're not the flat, empty gaze of a predator sparking to life when a piece of meat is dangled in front of it, but something deadlier.

The assured placidity of a man who can play the long game; a hunter who is used to stalking his prey over long distances.

The look in his eyes says he can wait this out for as long as it takes.

Fight or flight. You've crushed the concept down to basal parts: a silly whim that will just get you killed. Fight and you'll be forced to contend with people who've been doing this a lot longer than you have. Flee and you'll never be allowed back inside.

You've never had any choice but to ride the high of adrenaline and paranoia out until they got bored with your vacant stoicism.

(Or—when in doubt—use your trump card of touch me again and do you have any idea what Makarov will do to you?)

Somehow, you know neither option will work on him.

And it itches under your skin. Hackles raising. Heart pulsing. Blood rushing with the heady cocktail of adrenaline.

You turn, ready to flee, but his hand lashes out through the shadows, catching your forearm in a tight grip.

"Look, love," he murmurs, words low, guttural, like he's speaking to a cornered animal. "This is bigger than you. Than me. Do you want that debt gone? To be free of 'im? Well, here's your chance."

A test. The information he knows is too much for any regular officer—even a military one.

"Makarov isn't like that."

There's a flash of something—disappointment, maybe; disgust—but it's gone in an instant. Hidden behind layers and layers of distance.

"Maybe not. But several of his companies showed up on someone's ledger. We know this person wasn't a partner in the Horseman. He wasn't one of the four. But he was collecting money from Makarov."

"It's probably through his charity fund."

"Don't you wanna know why your saviour is funnelling money to corrupt officials? Or why do people who can't pay for upgrades end up dead on the street? Stripped down like a piece of meat and sold for profit. Doesn't any of this concern you?"

"Makarov would never do that—he'd never stain his public image."

"He isn't the man you think he is. None of them are."

"Maybe you're not the man I thought you were. Maybe coming over here was a mistake."

An impasse. Uncrossable.

He's a rat, you think. A plant from Makarov to test your resolve. Your will.

The glare on your face hardens. Yuri must have told him your type. Must have let it slip the kind of man that seems to catch your interest. Broad shoulders, thick thighs. A tapered waist. Gruff, chiselled men with dirty hands, stained from hard work. Honest, good men.

Men who belong in fairy tales. Blacksmiths and forgers. Miners. Ironworkers. The kind who wants nothing in life but simplicity, a warm bed, and a hearty meal. Ones who stand up to injustices but would never, ever call themselves a hero.

A rough gentlemen that wouldn't even consider themselves as such.

Stupid. How stupid.

He was always too good to be true. You should have known better.

When the silence stretches on, pulled taut like a rubber band, he huffs. Shattering the icy tension with another roll of his massive shoulder.

"Here," he reaches into the folds of his jacket once more, and retrieves a new card. A chip. "If you ever change your mind, gimme a call."

Makarov is a smart man.

"I won't."

But he's raised you to be smarter.

Makarov is many things—a money-hungry monster included—but above all of that, he's a businessman with a reputation.

He's only one-fourth of a massive tech conglomerate that puts public relations and corporate profits over everything else—even personal gain. None of the heads makes any decisions without express permission from everyone who eats at the table. Doing otherwise would get you killed.

Have you ever heard the story of a hydra? That's what we are. Four horsemen. The heads might change but there will always be four.

To do something like this would put him at direct odds of everything the Horsemen, the Inner Circle, set forth to do. Risking it all to sell his own repossessed parts at a lower profit margin on the black market is absurd. Crazy.

He'll make more money on the interest each debt accumulates than he would having it paid off in full, or even wiped. It's an unspoken underline all the Horsemen profit from. Their own personal gain.

You can't see him losing that over a meagre payout in the black market.

And as a regular peruser of the market, you would have noticed him, or someone in his circle, down there.

(You know everyone down there.)

It's impossible.

And yet—

The run-in with the man rattles you still.

You're quick to deduce that he isn't a plant by Makarov. He'd never let one of his talk about him like that or accuse him of the kind of things that would bring the Horsemen together in a way that could only end with Makarov on trial.

It being Makarov is a gamble he'd never take.

But him not being on Makarov's payroll is equally risky. It's not exactly a secret that the Inner Circle runs around with shady groups—Ultranationalists., and Konni rogues being some of them—but nothing has ever been confirmed, and the Ultranationalists have never been loyal to anyone except their agenda.

People who tend to ask questions about the Horsemen are either added to the payroll or, if that doesn't work, silenced.

Military. They don't usually get involved in corporate affairs.

But you suppose a missing friend is enough to spur anyone on.

You should forget him. Should push him from your mind, and pretend he was just a figment of your imagination. Something that crawled from the foetid cesspit where hope rots, and stood in front of you offering sanctuary with hands that leaked pestilence down on the grungy floor of the club that bred and reared depravity.

What he was offering couldn't exist in the same space as that place.

But he knew you. Knew about your debt. The one thing you wanted more than anything else offered up in a chrome-plated palm. And—despite everything you've tried to erase it—the only group who'd have the ability to do so approaches you.

It's odd. This whole situation seems strange.

Offering up information on Makarov to the military in exchange for freedom. You know it isn't him. It can't be. The risks outweigh any potential money Makarov would make doing this. His life for a paltry sum when a single person's debt on their upgrades singlehandedly paid for several of his his penthouses in Al Mazrah.

Seems too good to be true, and you were taught to be wary of the hand that feeds you.

Logically, you know you should toss the chip away, and never deal with this again. Or, better yet, to hand it over to Makarov to deal with and bargain for a chunk to come from your debt.

If you were selfish, you would.

No.

If you weren't selfish, you would. But you are, so you don't. You don't because he didn't promise a chunk, he promised all. All of it. Gone. Erased. Voided. The balance on your head would be zero. Nothing. You'd be free of Makarov—a man who saved you only to imprison you in a gilded cage.

A man who is more enigma than you could ever begin to unravel.

Why he keeps you around on a short leash, content to let you weave in and out of his many assets as you please, only having to meet with him every few months in what feels like glorified check-ins to confirm you're still desperately seeking a way to sever the ties that are reinforced with steel.

The man is strange, but Makarov and his murky intentions for you are even more so.

It makes those needling questions rear again. Ones that can't help but wonder if Makarov keeps you around because you happen to be his greatest achievement: manufactured sentience.

After all, even the most sentient androids in the world know, fundamentally, that they are not humans. There is a categorical difference, and the idea of false humanity was deemed too cruel to bestow upon someone—android, cyborg, or otherwise—and so, telling you outright that your insides are an immaculately designed machine is not only illegal, but it's also the one thing he'll do anything to avoid—

"—a PR nightmare," he spits, words soaked in the same venom that leaks from his narrowed glare. You watch the implosion from your perch near the floor-to-ceiling window in his penthouse, eyes gazing impassively out at the technicolour city sprawling below. His voice carries through the room. "A fucking—"

Disaster.

In a stroke of unfortunate luck, someone in the local police department made a report on a man left for dead in the gritty downtown streets of the city—affectionately named Killhouse—after being stripped of all his implants with near-surgical precision.

No one ever reports on these specific cases because of how often they happen, and where. It's no secret the police keep a wide distance around the area that moonlights as a broken redlight district and the entrance to the black market. It's almost wholly under the thumb of the constantly warring Vanguards—the Hellhounds and the Tyrants are almost always in some type of civil dispute—and a very not-so-secret secret is that they pay the police to turn the other way.

This, then, is quite a deviation in how things are normally done.

His debt to Four Horseman Corp is made known to the world—an insurmountable number that never seems to decrease due to the exorbitant interest piled high.

It brings about uncomfortable questions, and the greedy outlets sink their claws into the morsel offered like starving rats scavenging for scraps. They plaster it everywhere until a discussion starts.

Why is interest so high?

The discourse surrounding the oligarchy on technology is not a new one by any means, but for the first time in a very long time, it doesn't feel like it's going to get swept away anytime soon. The launch of their new nanotechnology is halted until it dies down. Until the media circus has quieted enough not to let sales of a new product tank.

PR nightmare, indeed.

The timing is suspicious, but the cop who made the report is new enough that it doesn't raise too many eyebrows. Human error. A simple mistake.

You think back to the man, fingers idly running over the groove of the chip you told yourself you'd toss out nine times already, and wonder if it's connected.

Makarov's call wasn't too impromptu considering he regularly likes to check in, but he sent Anatoly instead of Yuri and something about the brutal man leering at you sets your teeth on edge.

His usual meetings mainly just consist of him lauding your neverending debt over your head, and reminding you he doesn't accept dirty money. And, of course, to gather names.

Your appearances at the White Horse are less about contemplating the depravity of the upper echelon, and assembling a list of men and women who visit, and what they purchase.

Makarov's greatest achievement—and his biggest spy.

"You hear anything?"

In the darkened glass, his reflection lifts his head from where it was bowed over a netpad, angry eyes skimming through the abundance of articles, and fixes themselves on you. Narrowing.

"Hear what?"

"What else?" He huffs. Wrong answer. "Anything about this when you were at the club."

You haven't been back since that night, offering excuses to your watchman, and glorified chauffeur as to why you couldn't go.

"No," you say and hate the way your mind immediately flashes back to that man. "Nothing really."

He stands up from his chair—throne, really—and lays his palms flat on the surface of his chrome-plated desk. It sparks to life under his fingertips, LED lights flaring through the wires embedded into the grain. A holographic menu in net blue pops up in front of him.

The glass inverts the image, but you could make out the familiar cage anywhere.

"You left your post for a while. Borodin said you slipped away from him."

It's not outright accusatory yet, but you catch the paper-thin wisps of suspicion in his tone all the same.

It doesn't surprise you when he follows it up with, "so, where'd you go?"

"I saw someone," you shrug. "Wanted to get a better look."

"Who was it?"

"I don't know." It's not a lie. Not the whole truth, either, and you think he senses that.

"It wouldn't happen to be a police officer, would it? This stupid shit—," he lifts his hand, sweeping it across the articles drifting by in the side of the screen before laying it over his brow. "—could end me. And the timing, too."

Words bubble in your throat. You don't know what compels you to speak them aloud—maybe the needle of humour weaving through the conflicting tangle of everything gnarling inside of your chest—but they tumble from your lips without any regard to who, exactly, you're speaking to.

"Maybe once you're gone, I won't have to worry about my debt anymore."

The hand rubbing his forehead stills.

You tense, teeth sinking into your tongue until you taste blood. Stupid.

"Is that what you think, kitten?" Slowly, he lifts his head, hand sliding down until it covers his jaw. His eyes are burning. "You don't owe a debt to me—you owe a debt to the Inner Circle. Not the Horsemen, not Zakhaev. But to us."

You turn from the window with a sharp jerk, eyes widening. Despair sinks its claws into your jugular.

"You're an asset. An investment. The technology used to save your life is unprecedented. Do you think we'll just let you go? Do you know how long it'll take to pay your debt off, kitten? Five hundred and thirty-six years—and you're barely paying off the interest as it is."

Makarov often has his lackeys do the intimation for him—Anatoly in particular—while he hides behind the mask of a charismatic innovator just looking to improve the world. It's rare he ever raises his voice, or his hand.

This, the picture of anger perched behind his chrome throne, is the closest to something true to his real self than you'd ever seen before. Anger. Bitterness. Contempt.

He moves slowly around the desk, and you feel every second of it like a blunt stab to your chest. Trepidation, fear.

You've become so complacent with what Makarov pretends to be that you forget who he really was.

When he finally reaches you, the storm cloud in his gaze clears into something like sadistic victory. Vindication.

He leans down, his chin brushing over your cheek.

"You better hope nothing happens to me. I'm the only reason you're not being made to work for us as well. You like your freedom, yes? Then I suggest you pray I stay alive, kitten."

You stare at the image on the screen, and try not to let yourself weep at the sight of it so bluntly looming before you.

A debt owed to the Inner Circle.

A contact promising payment in addition to employment to them. The handler of the current account is Vladimir Makarov.

Maybe it's naïvety, ignorance, but you've always assumed the loan was only to Makarov. He was the first person you saw when you woke up—the first real one, anyway—and something about him seemed almost too big for the small room you were housed in. Too surreal. Everything felt new and strange and familiar and old and comforting and—

And then he said:

You know how this works, don't you?

You didn't. Or maybe, once upon a time, you did, but everything inside of your head was scraped clean with a scaple until the walls were barren and empty. Void of any substance.

Who you were was a black hole. A vaccum.

Makarov was the one who filled the vacant space with purpose. With meaning.

And you hated him for it.

Made to pretend to be whatever he decided fit his needs; a puppet for his amusement.

He owned you.

Made you whole again.

In that, you just assumed that he was the one who footed the exorbitant bill to resuscitate you from whatever hell you clawed out of, narrowly avoiding the gnashing maw of death. It made sense.

And in many ways, you just assumed that he would die.

A corrupt CEO. They're rampant here. Heads roll all the time, and you were content with waiting it out until someone put the barrel of a gun to his forehead and told him his tyranny was up. Freedom drenched in the blood of your financier.

Fitting, isn't it?

You were pulled from the blood-soaked cobblestone, and given a second breath of life by his hands.

Born in blood.

(Born in blood. Died in blood. Born in blood. Freed.)

You slip the chip into your phone, breath held in your throat as the calling card loads.

It's archaic. No one uses these chips anymore except old people, and the government. Untraceable. It's good for a single contact number only. The sight of it makes you huff—a shaky bloom of mirth in your chest.

It feels out of place. You trample it down, hiding it behind a mask of indifference, nonchalance. The same veneer Makarov glues to his own.

(Something you'd rather not think about.)

The screen idles for a moment. No answer. A sham call. A fakeout. A—

He doesn't appear on the screen. It's blank. In the black surface, your sallow face stares back. Traitor.

"I was wonderin' when you'd call."

"You expected me to?"

"If you were smart, you would have."

"If I was actually smart, I wouldn't be calling you at all."

"Mm, I'm glad you did," he murmurs, voice tinny and thin through the speaker. "A debt that big won't just go away…"

It stings. You swallow it down. "Yeah. Guess you got that right."

"What's wrong?"

"Aw, do you care? That's sweet."

"I've been called many things, love. Sweet ain't one of them." He shifts. You hear the clink of his metal fingers tapping over the ancient phone in his hand. A surly old man with an old chip. You stifle a laugh. It's ridiculous. You're ridiculous. This whole thing is—

"—Important that we find the link between the missing parts and Makarov. It might lead us to Alex, and—"

"Huh?" You blink. "I never said I'd—"

"Go see what you can dig up for me. I need something—a paper trail. I can't get into the black market, but you can."

"How do you know what?"

"Know a bit about you, love."

"How?"

"You ain't the only one with friends in high places." Another shift. The grind of metal against metal. "Now, are you in? Or are you gonna try and pay this debt off on your own, hmm? How long will that take you? Few hundred years?"

"Makarov will kill me if I do this—"

"And how many people will be killed if you don't?"

You don't answer. Can't. That responsibility shouldn't be on your head.

He sighs. A rough huff of static through the line.

"If you want that debt gone, meet me at the location m'gonna send you. You called for a reason. Makarov can't touch you if you owe him nothing. Their ship is sinkin', love. You gonna go down with them? Be a prisoner your whole life? Or are you gonna be smart an' abandon ship while you still have the chance, because once I leave that place, m'not gonna answer again. You'll be on your own."

"I'll think about it."

"Make the smart choice, love."

He doesn't give you anything else. The line goes dead with a click. Silence. Unbearable. Stifling. It permeates in the air around you, buzzing like static. A disturbance in the airwaves. A rustle in the stagnant life you've been sloughing through for the last three years.

A moment later, your phone chimes. A map appears. Some remote bar on the outskirts of the city—the only place Makarov's influence doesn't reach.

Make the smart choice. It's your freedom or your head.

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