Chapter 18 - Listeners' Fever

↤Chapter 17  - Empathy

After the battle had concluded and as they had accounted for as many Abstracts as they could, they had moved the injured and sick soldiers and prisoners to the hospital-city of Shuuka where they had filled two floors full of groaning bodies and terrified minds. Ukedideka was among them. He was lying on a drab cot, listening to the people and their pained crying around him.

                He was not ok, not in the slightest. The Novans hadn’t been good to him at all; they had hurt him and poisoned him. When the Poltergeist closed his eyes, he could still hear their voices discussing their studies and telling him it would all be over soon. The damn scientists did the same thing to him over and over. They burned him with Malachite, then splashed him with water, measuring the time it took him to heal. Then they burned him with heat and electricity and measured how long it took him to heal from those wounds.

                “Ukey?” A quiet voice broke the Poltergeist from his demonstrable thoughts.

                Ukedideka turned his head towards the sound. Spying a tall man walking across the ward towards him, he slowly pushed himself up into a sitting position to get a better look at him.

                “Oh creator, Ukedideka!” The man cried with joy, running towards him in the dark, frightening the Poltergeist. Ukedideka had stolen a scalpel earlier and was hiding it in his sleeve, it rather surprised the man that had run over to as he found himself swiftly face-down in the sheets of Ukedideka’s bed with the sharp blade pressed against a vein in his neck.

                “Fuck! Ukey it’s me, Rechke!” The man complained, not struggling for fear of splitting his skin on the deadly sharp piece of metal.

                Ukedideka’s grip loosened after a tense moment,  Rechke had thought for a moment that the Poltergeist would cut his neck open. Ukedideka carefully removed his knee from Rechke’s back and dropped the scalpel on the ground with a quiet clatter before sinking to the floor alongside the shiny instrument.

                “Rechke?” He murmured, hugging his knees to his chest for comfort underneath the bed.

                “Yes Ukedideka.” The Healer whispered, rubbing his neck tenderly before getting down on one knee to look at his boyfriend “It’s all right now, you’re safe.”

                Ukedideka shook his head, hiding behind his knees in fear of the other man. He didn’t feel safe even though he knew he was back home. Rechke sat down and moved to sit next to Ukedideka under the bed, prompting the Poltergeist to squirm away a little.

                “It’s alright now,” Rechke repeated, tentatively offering his hand to Ukedideka, wary that he might have another scalpel or worse hidden in his sleeve. He said, in a calm voice, “I will have to ask you if you have anything else that could hurt me or yourself.”

                The Poltergeist shook his head again, then slowly and tentatively extended his hand to grasp Rechke’s. The other man’s hand was warm and comforting, Ukedideka’s tension unwound and he felt better for it.

                “Tell me what happened Ukey.” Rechke softly asked, he knew that Ukedideka was hurt, he was usually a quiet man, but he’d at least have said something by now. His hand was icy too, unusually cold and clammy. “You can talk to me, I won’t tell anyone else if you don’t want me to.”

                And yet Ukedideka held his tongue, staring out at nothing. He was listening though, he could hear things, quiet whispering in his ear. He couldn’t quite hear what it was saying, but the harsh, spitting tone made him want to cry out and scramble away from it. Somehow, he knew that he wouldn’t be able to though. The voice would stay right there with him to spit and hiss its vile scorn at him.

                There were others too, while lying on his own in the bed he had watched ghosts wander through the room and glance down at him with revulsion. Rechke was looking at him with a face full of concern and warmth. Ukedideka took his time, but slowly recounted what had happened in Nova, starting with his fight with the Noble and how he was arrested. Partway through the Poltergeist’s recount, Rechke pulled him into a tight embrace and begged him to stop talking, for he couldn’t bear to hear what the Novans had done to him.

                Ukedideka quietened down, sinking into the embrace gladly. He could tell that Rechke was holding back his emotions, so he didn’t hurt either of them, but he was struggling.

                “You’re alright Ukey, you’re alright.” The Healer murmured over and over to himself, probably for his own comfort more than the Poltergeist’s. Ukedideka gently placed his hand around Rechke’s shoulders, trying his best to comfort the upset man.

                “Shh Rechke, I’m better now.” He whispered quietly, “I’m safe and you’re here with me.”

                The healer nodded silently before helping Ukedideka back up onto the hospital bed, Rechke reminded him that he had to stay here for a while until he was better. He knew that Ukedideka wouldn’t listen to him and he’d probably have to tie him to the bed… even then, it wasn’t like that could hold the Poltergeist for more than thirty seconds. The routine was the same every time Ukedideka got injured on a job, he’d come like a toddler, whining to Rechke to get patched up. Then he’d go running back out into the night to get himself injured even more gravely on his next excursion.

                Rechke sat with Ukedideka a while, holding his hand as carefully as possible. He knew that the Poltergeist was volatile at the best of times but right now he was hurting and scared, not a good combination for an Abstract.

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                Quizzical woke up in the early hours of the morning feeling very out of place, last night with Glo had started off slow and emotional but had slowly turned much more intimate. The Guardian didn’t know what had come over her in that moment of weakness, but she was glad of it, Glo had confessed some ember of affection towards her and she had stoked it. Quizzical would be lying if she said she hadn’t begun to feel something for the Novan man, even though it was more than illegal for her to even harbour an inkling of such a thought.

                She felt very out of place in the Noble’s bed, especially considering she wasn’t wearing anything substantial. She gently shifted the Novan’s arm from around her stomach and slipped out from underneath the thick, warm covers. The air was chilly as she got dressed in her under-armour; she was trying her best not to stir the Noble sleeping peacefully behind her. When she was in the black clothes, she fetched her armour from the other room and began strapping it to herself piece by piece.

                “You want a hand with that?” Came the tired voice of the Noble behind her, startling the Abstract a little, “The least I could offer after last night.”

                Quizzical pondered a moment before nodding and tossing him a piece of the layered leather and steel for him to strap to her leg. She averted her eyes as he pushed the covers off himself, after last night that was something she didn’t want to see.

                “Put something on and then I’ll let you help.” Quizzical hissed quietly, hiding her embarrassment. He chuckled and patiently did so before kneeling down to help with her armour, gently strapping the plate to her leg.

                “Tight enough?” Glo purred quietly, glancing up at the Abstract who was wriggling into the armour around her chest.

                “Har har.” Quizzical laughed, giving the Noble a look that might have killed, “a little more so it doesn’t move.”

                Glo obliged, pulling the leather strap tighter around her leg. Quizzical winced as it pinched her but didn’t complain, the Noble was being gentle and compassionate to her even though they both knew that if he wanted to kill her now, he could do so easily.

                A few minutes of work later, Quizzical was wearing the full body of armour. Glo had gotten dressed too, although he looked startingly less dangerous in plain trousers and a black shirt. It rather surprised the Noble when Quizzical walked over to his wall and pulled a section of it apart like a curtain, revealing an alley in Perception, the street apart from it bustling with activity and people.

                “Quizzical, a word?” Glo asked, stepping towards the Guardian, who nodded for him to start talking, “I think it’s best if we keep this between us alone, nobody else can know.”

                “No shit, of course nobody else can know, you’ll be ousted, and I’ll be banished at best.” She snarled the last word with a touch of fear in her voice, “But I want to keep seeing you.” Quizzical muttered after a moment.

                “I want to keep seeing you too Quiz, but I have no idea how we’d be able to do it properly, we’ll get found out by the others in our own races.” Glo said patiently, “Keep fighting Quizzy, I’ll find you when I have the chance.”

                “Is that an invitation on a date?” Quizzical asked with a coy little smirk, “A little late to ask a girl out after what you did to her last night don’t you think.”

                “Shut it Aphré.” Glo responded patiently, politely ignoring her inappropriate humour, “Anyway you better be off now.”

                He leant forward and placed a hand on her shoulder before planting a small kiss on her cheek, Quizzical’s attitude went from her cool snark to a flustered mess in a matter of seconds before she croaked out that she’d see him around before diving through the portal like she was leaping away from a fiery explosion, the curtain-like portal flapped quickly closed behind her.

                Glo chuckled to himself as the woman vanished into his wall, not realising at all that he’d just made his greatest ally of all time.

                The Noble stretched and winced as his back let out a sharp crack. Relief quickly flooded in from the popping bones. He hadn’t spent a night with anyone else in a long time, so he’d slept oddly with the Abstract lying by his side. Glo went to his kitchenette and quickly mocked up something that resembled breakfast; he meant to find Svari, see what the Noble had to say for himself before probably beating the hell out of him again. Glo knew that he was up to something, he wouldn’t have been that protective of those Abstracts if they were just simple prisoners of war, they probably knew something that the Noble didn’t want them to… or perhaps, something that Svari didn’t want anyone else on Nova to know.

                Glo sat down to eat, casting his mind back to the battle. All the Abstracts looked unwell, even more than he’d expect prisoners of war to. Glo knew their rights as prisoners of war and it meant that they were better treated than they looked, Svari knew he was wrong to be keeping those Abstracts in that condition. Even more from what Quizzical had told him, most of them were now extremely ill with drug overdoses or severe malachite burns on their body. Svari had most likely been working with Achromatopia, one of the less mentally sound scientists on Nova.

                Glo didn’t know Achromatopia very well, he’d spoken to him in passing and from the sparse moments he had spent around the man, Glo thought he was utterly psychopathic. He was obsessed with Abstracts, specifically where they came from, he had an insane theory that they were created as a superweapon by Nova thousands of years ago. But Nova had lost control of them and they had to be banished to another dimension by one of the Nobles, Quantum.

                Achro had been pestering the old Noble for years, asking him over and over again if his theories were true. Unfortunately for Achro, Quantum was one of the oldest beings in the universe and had severe amnesia to the point he could barely remember the names of his friends, never mind something he would have done thousands of years ago.

                The Noble finished eating quickly; he had work to do. Running his hand through his dyed hair, Glo drew himself to his feet and casually tossed his plate into his sink. There was a sharp clattering noise as the glassware shattered, prompting Glo to swear through grit teeth. He toiled in the kitchen for a moment before deciding he simply didn’t want to clean up the shattered shards right now and left it for the Glo that would return home.

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                “Who the hell do you think you are, coming here and speaking to me like that!?” Svari bellowed, making the Novan standing before him cower in fright, “If Achromatopia is angry with me then he should come here and tell me himself!”

                The Noble of light had been graced with good news a few minutes ago, he’d been told one of his investments would turn out amazingly and make him a lot of money. Now he felt like grasping the young man’s throat and squeezing till Svari could not hear his fluttering heartbeat anymore. The Noble took a moment to calm himself down after his outburst; he let his nobility drop, the oily black power running from his hands and dripping into nothingness. He couldn’t just go round slaughtering someone whenever they got on his nerves, although it was becoming increasingly tempting to expunge the Novan man in front of him. Achromatopia was blaming the breakout on Svari. Too much of the media had come knocking on the Noble’s door to the point he had burned out one of their cameras when they had stayed outside of his house to report on his part in the battle.

                There would be a proper news story out soon, something that Svari would pull his usual strings to mould to his needs. He’d be painted as a hero as per usual while Glo and Izzac would be thrown into the road for working alongside that Abstract cur, Svari could then try to regain the trust of Glo and Izzac by making some sort of public appearance in order to try to deny some defamation of the other Nobles. Nova would believe that Svari was trying to protect the planet on his lonesome while Izzac and Prizmatica worked with an unknown Abstract Guardian in order to try and kill him.

                “Tell Achro that he should have told me this himself.” Svari hissed after a few moments of silent, dangerous thought, “But I will happily meet with him to discuss our…” Svari paused a moment to consider his words, “To examine our further relationship.”

                “Yes sir!” The frightened Novan man stuttered before spinning on his heels and trying his hardest not to run down the pathway to Svari’s home.

                The Noble gently closed his door, the mechanism sliding perfectly into place. He would deal with Achromatopia later, but right now he had more important things such as the press to deal with. He would most likely have to pin one of the news executives to a wall until they understood his message. Svari would prefer if he didn’t have to kill anyone this time, threats of violence were usually enough to get him what he wanted.

                Svari made his way through the hall of his abode to the sitting room, he was exceptionally startled when he found someone sitting in his favourite chair, their legs crossed comfortably. They were obviously an Abstract and were holding a short dagger, rolling it like a coin between their dextrous fingers. Svari couldn’t see their face for the mask covering it, but he could tell that the Abstract was male from his posture. Before approaching the comfortable man, Svari gently slipped one of his hands behind his back to hide the black oily Nobility creeping up his forearm.

                “Excuse me?” Svari asked, carefully eyeing the Abstract as he shifted his position and with a practiced motion slid the dagger into a sheath on his forearm. “What are you doing here?”

                Even though he was speaking Novan to the Abstract, Svari knew that he could understand, Svari had a universal translation device sewn into every one of his jackets. The man gently uncrossed his legs and pulled his hood down from his head, he pulled the mask down from his face and smiled dangerously at Svari.

                “You are Svari?” The Abstract asked, his dark black skin and opalescent hair a stark contrast to the white fabric of the chair he had purloined. The man wasn’t giving out any more of an aura of danger than you would expect from an Abstract playing absent-mindedly with a weapon.

                “I am.” Svari replied curtly, moving around to give him the most room to leap back in case the Abstract was to lunge at him. “Who are you and what do you want?”

                The Abstract pulled one of his gloves off and laid it across his leg, quickly laying the other next to it. “My name is Inkosi, otherwise known as the King of the Dark, in Imagination.”

                “Quite a title, Inkosi.” Svari replied, still very unsure of the curious man’s intent. “Are you here to kill me? Because I assure you it won’t be as simple as ramming a knife into my throat.”

                “My friend if I was here to kill you, you would be strewn on the floor foaming from the mouth.” Inkosi replied casually, “You have left yourself open to at least fourteen attack vectors in the last two minutes alone.”

                Svari glanced at the glass he had been sipping from before he was interrupted by the courier, wary of the poison that may be infecting the once delicious alcohol.

                “That aside, you don’t pose me any danger?” Svari asked, his Nobility still dripping down his arm.

                “Not as of now.” The Abstract replied patiently, “Now you’re slightly less agitated, I have a number of things I wish to discuss with someone with links such as yours.”

                Svari was still unsure of his safety around this Abstract, so he kept up his connection to his Nobility as he sat down across from Inkosi. “Why should I listen to what you have to say?” Svari asked dismissively, not expecting a true answer.

                “Because you hired me to murder your compatriots.” Inkosi replied, placing the file of Nobles, given to him by Svari a few months prior, “It’d be a shame if your government were to find out about that.”

                Svari prickled, if that sort of information got out he’d never recover. Even He couldn’t stand up to the wrath of that number of Nobles, Svari knew that Glo was holding back when they had fought back in the battle, Izzac too. If she had wanted to hurt him she would have, he would have been a bloody smear on the ground if Izzac had wanted to kill him. Even light can be bent to the whims of gravity.

                “Alright, what is it that you want.” Svari asked, “I don’t exactly have a choice in this. And of course you appear to be clever enough to have a contingency plan in case I kill you.”

                “Of course.” Inkosi patiently answered before pushing the file back towards Svari, “I want to first return this to you, we have made copies of it and I’m guessing that you wouldn’t want classified materials with your name on them to be found in the hands of Poltergeists.”

                Svari took it back and made a mental note to destroy the file as soon as possible, then looked over at the Abstract again, “You’re not just here to return this file, you want something from me.” Svari stated, receiving a nod from the Abstract in reply.

                “In that you’d be correct. What I want is information onto what you did to some of my people, I don’t give a shit about the majority of them, but the Poltergeists I do.” Inkosi demanded, “You give me that and I think we may be able to form some sort of mutualistic relationship.”

                “I can get you the records, but what form of mutualistic relationship might you be referring to?” Svari replied, already thinking of all the things he could get done if he had his own personal army of Abstract assassins and infiltration specialists.

                “I mean the sort where you give me information I can use to overthrow your government and I don’t know, replace them with someone you like. And in return I can assist you in the deletion of whoever you might dislike.” Inkosi answered, tapping his forefingers together, “I’ve been told that having a government on marionette strings is quite enjoyable.”

                “You’re selling me quite something there, essentially a private military.” Svari replied, “You taking sides here?”

                “I’m joining the side of the war that I believe will win, this fluctuates. But I’ve seen what the weapons on Nova can do and I’d rather that not happen to my world.” Inkosi carefully answered, gently rolling his words from his tongue, “Anyway, I’m sick of serving Imagination, they’re all about aggressive expansion and I’d rather not get involved in that, I prefer actually getting something political done.”

                “You’re spinning quite the web here, Poltergeist.” Svari replied through his teeth. “You want to sell yourself to me to get what you want.”

                Inkosi clapped his hands together, “Well done Svari.” He charaded, the sarcasm dripping from his tongue like venom. “Don’t get yourself too happy, I still want that information and am likely to switch sides again if our relationship turns out not to be beneficial.”

                “Do not mock me.” The Noble replied, a hint of indignation blackening his words, “I will get you what you want, send someone in a few days and I’ll hand it over. I’ll expect your service to begin at the beginning of next week.”

                “You will expect my service to begin when I decide it begins, Noble.” Inkosi sternly replied, knowing that he was still the one in charge of the situation.

                Svari smiled and got to his feet, informing Inkosi that he was no longer welcome in the Noble’s home. The Poltergeist also stood up, offering his hand to Svari. Svari clasped it genuinely and walked the Abstract to the door, hand in hand. A novan custom to thank good guests for their visit.
Chapter 19 - Deep Dark↦