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  This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the authors’ imagination or are used fictitiously.

  Copyright © 2016 Chrysanthalix Press

  All rights reserved. Except as permitted under the U.S. Copyright Act of 1976, no part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.

  ISBN-13: 978-0-9972029-0-8

  ISBN-10: 0-9972029-0-4

  Library of Congress Control Number: 2016930254

  Chrysanthalix Press, Gilroy, California

  Cover design by Firnadi Iqbal

  Formatting by Polgarus Studio

  10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

  Table of Contents

  To Buy a Girl

  A Shot of Treason

  The King of Terrors

  The Halo Eater

  Machinegun Tag

  The Divine Hound

  The Butcher of Hollowstone

  The Devil’s Notebook

  Inside the Spyderweb

  The Demented Scholar

  Through the Memory Glass

  A Girl and Her Ghost

  What You Fear Most

  A Thumb for a Thumb

  The Stygian War

  The Unloved God

  The Verification Days

  The Earth Square Fortress

  The Alley-out-of-the-Way

  A Call Around the World

  The Alchemy Sphere

  The Third Door on the Left

  Bull’s-Eyes

  The Hangman’s Noose

  Daringly Dared

  Deadlocked

  Out of the Underground

  For those who daringly dare

  PART I

  To Buy a Girl

  The Gehenna slum, Oregon

  November 1, 2052

  Neko was prepared to die. His hands trembled on the steering wheel of his Wrangler jeep as he neared the looming entrance of the Gehenna slum: he told himself not to be afraid. It didn’t matter that in Gehenna he might be strung up by a gang or have his organs cut out and sold at the nearest black market stall for a few coppers. It also didn’t matter that he was risking his life on a wild guess. All that mattered was her.

  “I doubt my sister’s in Gehenna, Neko,” the young man in the passenger seat said. “The last place we know she went is the forest. I still think she’s lost in there.”

  “Your assumptions don’t concern me at this point, Desya,” Neko replied. “We’ve already searched the forest—all that’s left is Gehenna.”

  “Then maybe we should search Red Cross and Cell City again, because Snofrid’s definitely not in the slum.” Desya raked a hand over his high-and-tight buzz cut. “She’d break her own leg before going in there alone.”

  “Perhaps she didn’t enter by choice.”

  “Look who’s making assumptions now.” Desya’s eyes, deep-set above his half-face gasmask, hardened on the red laser gate ahead. He sat silently a while before saying, “Fine, we’ll have a look in Gehenna. But we should swing by the slave auction before we check in with any of the gangs.”

  “How much time until the auction begins?”

  “Thirty minutes.”

  Neko would have to drive fast. After deactivating the red laser gate using his identification tag, he accelerated onto the Infernal Highway, toward the entrance of Gehenna. Trash and clods of dry sewage clung to the highway like a railing; the stench was as foul-smelling as the slum’s mass graves and as polluted as Earth’s atmosphere.

  By most, Gehenna was thought to be a war refugee slum just outside of Hollowstone City, but, being a doctor who’d once worked within its walls, Neko knew the truth—that only a fraction of the slum was populated by refugees. The rest were armed ex-military and thugs.

  With each festering carcass Neko passed on the wayside, he accepted that death was as much a reality as his morning commute to work. He didn’t know where in Gehenna he expected to find Snofrid, but, more than anything else, he hoped she wasn’t hurt. He’d always considered her to be intelligent, yet wandering off and getting lost was the mistake of a child.

  He rode the highway into the mouth of a dank tunnel, Gehenna’s only gateway, and switched on his headlights; the beams illuminated a message scrawled in red paint on the wall of the tunnel: Abandon all hope beyond this point. His last string of optimism snapped, only his concern for Snofrid fueled him onward. He would’ve told her how he felt about her if his life was different. If the world was different.

  “Speed up,” Desya advised, eyeing the rearview mirror. “There’s a gun truck on our tail.”

  “Shoot out its tires, then,” Neko told him, who was already driving eighty-five. “When you lay down, you make yourself a carpet.”

  “I’d rather be a carpet than a corpse rolled up in one.”

  When Neko didn’t budge, Desya massaged his eyes, as he always did when reevaluating his strategy. “Alright, look at it this way—if those guys pin us down on our way out of the slum, we’ll risk getting Snofrid out safely. Just speed up or pull over.”

  “The day I pull over will be the day my dead body steers this car off the road,” Neko declared. He stepped on the gas pedal until he’d dusted off the gun truck. He doubted a day would come when his species of Inborn saw eye-to-eye with Desya’s. They were like lightning and rain, existing together, but clashing in their very natures.

  The tunnel eventually branched into nine separate tunnels. Neko veered into the second tunnel, descending deeper into the belly of Gehenna. He hadn’t driven a hundred feet when the stench forced a hot sprig of vomit up his throat. Swallowing, he wound a black scarf over his gasmask filter cartridge. The morass of rank odors—urine, vomit and open sewers—singed his eyes, blurring his view of the dusty road.

  “No wonder so many people drive into ditches down here,” he croaked. “I can’t see through the blasted windshield.”

  “No one down here gives two cats’ asses,” Desya said, also wrapping a scarf around his mouthpiece. “Just watch out for spike strips.”

  Neko coughed. “Why me? You’re the one with super vision. If we hit a spike strip, you’re replacing my tires, and whatever else might get damaged.” He coughed again and the oxygen enflamed his lungs in spite of his filter. But the noise was worse, like a maniacal orchestra. Death metal rattled the walls of the tunnel, echoed by working machinery and a chorus of human languages.

  “All right. Run through the plan,” he wheezed, as he slowed his jeep on a dirt plain scattered with armored Growler cars and cargo trucks.

  “You’re the buyer and I’m your bodyguard.”

  “And if the auction goes bad?”

  “Then we put on Concealing Spells and squat on the upper levels.” Desya fed his rifle a cartridge and shrugged into a flak jacket. “Lycidius will swing by at 0700 hours with backup.”

  Neko hoped they wouldn’t need backup. He dug a box from his jacket pocket and removed a pair of optical lenses, equipped with facial recognition. “We’ll keep contact until I make the buy,” he said, fitting the contacts over his eyes. He blinked until his vision colored green. “I’ll stream you a feed of the auction, along with the private information of each buyer. If anyone looks questionable, send me his records.”

  “Yep.” Desya grabbed his computer bag off the console. “Let’s go. The doors close in thirteen minutes.”

  Neko grunted. “Thirteen minutes is the earliest I’ve ever been in my life.”

  “Come on, man,” Desya grumbled. “For once help me out without forcing me to pay for it.” Slinging his rifle over one shoulder, he jogged toward the row of cage el
evators at the furthest end of the plain. Neko slammed the car door and ignored the stain of guilt that had run across his conscience.

  During the descent to Stratum 23, Neko tuned out of their environs. The rotting bodies strung up on the rafters didn’t bother him, though the same couldn’t be said for Desya, whose eyes filled with pity when he glanced at the labyrinth of stacked shacks and sweatshops below. This was something Neko would never understand about Desya. He pitied everyone, even took compassion on suffering strangers that might club him to death after he’d tossed them a coin. Neko could only guess it was because Desya and Snofrid had once lived in Gehenna and, for some reason, Desya still counted himself as part of this world.

  “Which street is the Oubliette Hotel on?” he asked, once the elevator rattled onto ground level.

  “Rock Spider Street.” Desya yanked open the cage door and waded into the heaps of trash that carpeted the ground. “The slaveholder’s name is Master Mookjai. He’s the top Inborn trafficker in Gehenna, and he only holds his auctions once a month, so there’s no chance she was already sold. We’ll definitely have to pay up, though.”

  Neko scoffed. “Lycidius gave us fifty-thousand silvers. If Mookjai asks for more, all he’s going to receive is my foot in his rear.”

  “I’ve never paid much attention to the slave business, so I don’t know what he’s gonna ask for. Just be cool. If he finds out we have no idea what the hell we’re doing, he’ll think we’re rat jackets and toss us in the meat grinders.” Desya booted a dead rat from his path. “If it comes down to it, I’ll call Lycidius and ask him to transfer more silvers.”

  Neko pulled on a pair of gloves with two violent tugs. Knowing that Inborns were being peddled to humans as either pleasure slaves, organ donors, surrogates or laborers made him hate humanity even more. Some would claim that all humans weren’t such villains, but a great many businessmen used the Inhuman War—the twenty-two-year conflict between humanity and Inborns—as a means of exploiting refugees. Even though it was widely known that the Oubliette Hotel facilitated the illegal Inborn trafficking ring, not a badge had stepped in. After all, another dead Inborn, another human smile.

  Leaving the elevators, they walked down an alley that meandered through the sweatshops. Neko picked up on the aura of misery as if it were a stinking gas cloud. Here and there, black X’s had been slopped on doors, broadcasting to all that disease had killed the inhabitants; half-naked children sprinted down the steel drainage pipes, so skinny that their skin cleaved to their skulls, and child soldiers patrolled the streets without fear or inhibition; women with black rashes on their faces hastily rinsed tunics in muddy gutters, averting their eyes from the armed street soldiers urinating in the dirt.

  Neko stared at his shoes as he walked, avoiding the animal carcasses bloating in the sewage rivulets. He’d always detested the sight of poverty; it reminded him of his home planet, which had been rich in natural resources but had been plunged into desolation in the last years before the Inborns had abandoned it. The memories of its decay were torturous, so painful that he’d considered extracting them more than once. At this point in the Inhuman War, Earth was seeing a similar decay. Filth. Everywhere was filth, and not just externally. Man at his core was rotting.

  “The Oubliette Hotel is just up that ramp,” Desya said, pointing to a dirt ramp that twisted up the left side of the alley. “We have four minutes.”

  Neko made the climb after Desya, disliking that his back was exposed, before stepping onto a rusted platform. One look at the Oubliette Hotel and he was amazed that it was standing. He’d never seen such a lopsided pile of stitched up lumber in his life. However, it was a high class establishment in comparison to its neighbors, which didn’t even have electricity or running water.

  The mob of attendees fanned Neko’s impatience; buyers of all nationalities poured through the splayed doors of the windowless hotel lobby. He hadn’t expected the competition to be so high and knew it risked their chances of a successful purchase.

  “Here’s our number,” Desya said, tossing him a bidding stick. “It’s pretty jammed, but I saw some room at the back.” He checked the platform’s edge, where the buyers’ bodyguards had assembled, and cocked the bolt handle of his rifle. “Personal security details aren’t allowed inside, so I’ll wait for you out here.”

  “Stay out of sight,” Neko cautioned. Gathering his courage, he fastened the top button on his jacket and then followed the buyers into the warehouse. He’d never attended a slave auction, but the layout was self-explanatory. Sweat-stained cushions ran a ring around a broad center stage area. Most of the buyers were already lounging on the cushions being served vodka by Inborn slaves in black tunics, who crawled on all fours and carried the alcohol on their backs. The place buzzed like a hive, roiling with the tumult of conversation and laughter as men and women discussed their preferred slave type, the worst species to purchase, or their most recent conquest.

  Neko melted into the crowd at the back of the warehouse, just as Desya’s voice echoed in his earpiece. “Incoming,” he said. “Three o’clock.”

  Neko noticed a slave girl crawling toward him like a mutt.

  “Vodka, master?” she asked, staring up at him from the tops of her eyes.

  “No.”

  “As you please, master.” She inched toward the next couch. Neko eyed the jangling chains on her ankles and a sick feeling bucked in his gut. Suddenly, the fantasy of dragging Master Mookjai into the alley and forcing him to drink from the sewage rivulets shot to the front of his mind. His fingers itched as he imagined the man gurgling in his hands. No one would care that one less bounder worked the street. But he’d do nothing until he’d confirmed Snofrid wasn’t in the slave lineup.

  “Do a sweep,” Desya instructed. “I need the buyers behind you, too.”

  Neko scanned the crowd and his optical lenses identified the buyers through their Tags—wrist implants that verified they were human.

  “Most of these guys are dead-heads,” Desya told him. “Two of them are from Hollowstone City, so they might pay more, but other than that, we don’t have to sweat. I doubt most of the others will cough up more than a couple hundred coppers a slave.”

  “That’s both reassuring and insulting,” Neko muttered.

  “Welcome, great masters, to Oubliette,” a shrill voice with a Thai accent called from the center stage. “Let’s make some winners!”

  Neko checked out the announcer and recoiled in disgust. The man looked like a toad, except he had facial piercings in place of warts. Ornamental chains, stitched to the skin by safety pins, were strung from his earlobes to his mouth like a bridle. He reclined on a plywood litter with his neck turned toward the audience, for he was too heavy to hold his head upright, and oozed a lazy indifference belied by the calculating sheen in his eyes. A floral robe sheathed his sagging gut, but dipped at the neck to reveal his bald chest. Fruit flies whirred around his infected chin piercings.

  “For those of you who don’t already know, I’m Master Mookjai,” he continued. His voice was hoarse as he puffed on a glass bong. “I see new masters, so I’ll run through the rules for their benefit. Most importantly, all sales are final! Done! Finished! If you’re dissatisfied by your slave in the days to come, I won’t repurchase her. From the moment she leaves the Oubliette, she’ll be yours to do with what you choose.” He took a cracked coconut from one of the slaves and sipped the milk. “Following the auction, you’ll pay for your property here and then take possession of it at the back of the warehouse. Any buyer who fails to pay the coin he’s bided will pay in blood.

  “This evening, I bring for your pleasure eighteen slaves,” he declared, picking at a scab on his chin. “Taken from the forests, rivers, cities and mountains of Oregon, the girls I bring to you are among its finest Inborn treasures. Groomed by my best masters, they’ll submit to whatever you desire. We begin with a Necromancer of nineteen years.” He rang a bell that was looped around his pointer finger. A trapdoor slid open in the
floor and two street soldiers hustled a sobbing girl onto the stage.

  The crowd erupted into laughter. Quick as a clicking dial, Neko realized his error in thinking he could stand calmly aloof. The sparkling green power source, or Halo, on the girl’s right bicep indicated that she really was a Necromancer Inborn, like him. Her bruised body quaked under the coos of the onlookers. Dressed in a silk tunic, her brunette hair was wound in copper wire, and half of her Halo was burnt by nitric acid, ensuring that she couldn’t fight back.

  “We begin the bid at 20 coppers,” Master Mookjai said.

  One by one, buyers raised their bidding sticks; after an inner struggle, Neko held off from joining in: he knew that one less silver might decide the difference between saving Snofrid and watching her be sold to another buyer. Staring at the wall, his posture rigid, he ignored the girl’s cries, and muttered, “The bastard should be beaten to death with his coconut.”

  “He’s a slime bag,” Desya agreed, his voice quiet, “but if someone wanted to pop every criminal down here, they might as well burn down the slum.”

  “I’m considering it.”

  “Sold at 62 coppers,” Master Mookjai concluded, burping out a cloud of smoke.

  When the girl had been hauled out the back door of the warehouse, another took the stage. She appeared oddly composed. Standing with her ankles crossed, she picked at the beads in her hair with the red claws that jutted from her fingertips. From the scorched red Halo on her left palm, Neko identified her as a Hematic Inborn, like Desya.

  “The second product is a Hematic flower of fourteen years,” Master Mookjai announced. “We begin the bid at 30 coppers.”

  Neko did another survey of the crowd. Most of the girls were being sold at offensively cheap prices, but only because the wealthier citizens had turned up their noses at the girls displayed thus far. He assumed that the ‘best’ of the selection were being saved for the end.