What made a king…

What made a king a…

John Blair held his side as he limped through the desert sands, the echoed memories of pain stalling his step. When he put his hand to his face, he expected to find wet muscle and blood, but only smooth skin made contact with his fingers. Even after all this, his mind had not grown used to his new form. It expected permanence of injury that simply did not exist.

Still, to think he'd survived even that.

The grenade had blown him up, scattered him to pieces -- the largest remnant consisting of half his torso and a portion of his skull. He dreaded to think what would have happened if his neural implant had been destroyed, but the fact he was still conscious meant that it had remained intact. His will was still his own.

Blair's head was pounding, the ache pulsing like a second heartbeat.

He put a hand to it as he staggered naked through the midnight sands, the winds biting at his skin. Any tiny scratches the sands inflicted upon him were healed a second later, but the pain was unavoidable. Even when it had passed, the memory of it was nearly as intense.

Those two -- the Special Officers of the Supremacy -- had been formidable. To be honest, John Blair didn't know if he'd ever come so close to death. If this had happened before his ascension, they'd have gotten the best of him without a doubt.

He'd been arrogant only to use the first ring of King's Coat. But he never made the same mistake twice.

His golden hair billowed around him -- and when he looked up from his introspection, his eyes glowed a dull red. Defeat meant nothing but education. Only death was of any consequence, and death had not laid a finger on him. He was poison to it.

What made a… what made… the question seemed so far away now. So… irrelevant. Why had he ever cared about such a fledgeling thing?

He could feel the other members of the Dead Hand, Pion and Ian, tugging at his mind, requesting orders. Susan and January were silent: most likely they were dead. He found it curiously difficult to care about that.

They could scream and shout all they wanted: they'd get no answer from him. He was needed elsewhere. There was a place, waiting, prepared for him.

A place all in red

Beautiful clarity opened itself to him, like a primordial fish walking upon the land for the first time. Kings were nothing but men with hats of gold. Crimson ambition poured into his brain: and with it, the promise of greater heights. The word 'becoming' suddenly seemed very, very important.

John Blair marched into the haze of the orange sand.

What made a god a god?

Dominion.

Skipper didn't think it was an exaggeration to say this had been a pretty shitty day for him so far.

Dragan was dead, another body on the pile he'd accumulated, and he'd been cooped up in the basement of this place, forced to listen to the instructions of manipulators and petty tyrants. This whole place made his skin crawl.

He stared at the wall, eyes dull, as the elevator ascended. There was no doubt that the building was under attack -- that rumble had been from a bomb, no doubt. A makeshift thing, not regulation, maybe put together using parts from the Slipstream. As for candidates, Skipper couldn't imagine anyone but the Repurposed.

That was good, that was very good. It was good that he'd left Ruth, Bruno and Serena down below, too.

He didn't like to be seen like this, after all.

The doors slid open into the lobby, and Skipper came face to face with the chief of security -- Marsh. Funny: Skipper had never bothered to learn this guy's first name. Seemed he wouldn't get the chance now. Couldn't say he was too torn up about that.

Marsh's eyes widened, and his hand flew to the holster of his pistol. "What are you --?!"

Skipper took it all in a moment. The slur of his voice, the lack of accompanying guards, the slouch of the body as though this man was trying to hide from security cameras. And of course, most damningly…

"Your face is askew," Skipper said.

Marsh's brow furrowed. "What?"

"Heartbeat Bayonet."

The first strike carved a bloody 'Z' into Marsh, sending him flying backwards from the sudden speed and impact. Even with all the chaos, this lobby had managed to stay clean save for a little dust, but the considerable splatter from Skipper's attack corrected that in an instant.

Skipper calmly stepped out of the elevator.

The bloodied Marsh rose to his knees, reached again for his holster -- too quickly for a normal human, but not quite quick enough to beat Skipper. The second revolution of the Bayonet severed the fingers of that hand at the knuckles, and they scattered on the ground like bleeding sausages. Just to be sure, Skipper sent out a Heartbeat Shotgun with a twitch of his own finger -- demolishing Marsh's pistol and a good chunk of his hip, too. The man went sprawling back down to the floor.

A glance gave Skipper the final confirmation he needed: Marsh's severed fingers were already growing back. The man's face was contorted with pain, loose skin wrinkled like a plastic bag, but the toxic defiance in his eyes remained unchanged.

"You still feel pain, huh?" commented Skipper, brushing his metal fingers against the wall as he casually advanced. "That's good. That's the most important part of being human, in my opinion. Being able to feel the world press down on us."

Sparks of red Aether crackled around Marsh's mouth, and he opened it as if to say something. The name of an Aether ability, probably. That was easily solved.

Heartbeat Bayonet visited Marsh again, aimed at his throat, and -- with the cruel precision of a scalpel -- severed his vocal cords. Nothing came out of Marsh's mouth but hollow air -- and, after another Shotgun caved his chest in, blood.

"Sorry to say, pal," Skipper sighed, squatting down as he reached his prey. "But your Aether's not really doing the trick at defending against me. You getting a little reliant on that Panacea, maybe?"

Joints cracked and muscles creaked as Marsh strained, doing his best to push himself off the floor. Skipper smiled softly, placing an almost gentle hand on the other man's thigh. He shook his head.

"No," he said simply.

Green Aether screamed around his hand, and -- with simple, brutal force -- Skipper tore Marsh's leg clean off, flesh and bone ripping free in his grasp. Marsh's silent scream, like a song to the heavens, trailed back into volume as his vocal cords slowly regenerated.

"Then again," Skipper sighed, sitting back down on the floor as he slowly turned the severed leg over in his hands. "Maybe you were never too great with Aether? That's possible, I guess. Some people just don't get the hang of it. No shame in that, yeah?"

He watched, eyes careful and observant, as orange Panacea began to spill out of Marsh's bloody stump -- he was already growing a new leg. Another flurry of Heartbeat Bayonet put a reset to that. Blood and fungus splattered as one against the floor.

With a wince of mocking sympathy, Skipper tossed the leg over his shoulder.

"You're an infiltrator, right?" he asked, as casually as if they were at the water cooler. "That's your role in this little, uh, Dead Hand gang, yeah? Get yourself behind enemy lines and sow discord, assassinate, sabotage, that sort of thing. I'm pretty familiar with at least, uh, at least the second of those things. Am I right?"

Marsh's voice was croaky and unfinished as he opened his mouth. "You…"

Sound whipped past, and one of his ears fell free from his head. Warm blood oozed from the resultant gap.

"One word answers, please," Skipper said quietly. "Yes or no."

He reached over and poked Marsh's face, driving his finger into the freshly healed skin. "Guessing this isn't your original face, too. You throw on someone else's skin and then the Panacea heals it in place, yeah?"

Marsh gritted his teeth, blood painting the enamel. "Yes," he hissed.

"So I'm guessing the original Mr. Marsh is long dead. Well, I'm not too broke up about that -- nobody seems to have noticed you putting on an act, so he was probably an asshole anyways."

Marsh stayed as still as he could, save for involuntary shudders of pain. His caved-in chest was beginning to heal, like something was pressing up against it from the other side. Skipper would need to reset that, too, after his next question.

"So," he slapped his hands together. "You're a lucky fella, so I'm gonna be lifting that yes-or-no rule for a quick minute."

Skipper's gaze drifted to the Panacea diorama over in the centre of the lobby, the orange cross-section like a staring eye. When he spoke, he wasn't entirely sure if he was speaking to Marsh… or to it.

Well, no time for trepidation when brutality needed to be done.

"Not in the mood for twenty questions right now," Skipper sighed. "So how about you tell me the whole plan? What's your goal, how do you intend to accomplish it? There's something in this building you want -- tell me what it is. Tell me now."

His eyes flicked back down to Marsh -- and with them, Heartbeat Shotgun pounded that chest in again. Not enough to stop him from speaking, but enough to disable.

Even with the Repurposed's stolen face, defiance was visible in every line. "Never," he spat. His eyes were those of a true believer. Traveling with the Widow, watching her at work, had given Skipper a good sense of such things.

Difficult to break, but not impossible.

Skipper sat down on the ground, placing his hands in his lap. An insincere smile crept across his lips. For a few moments, he just stared at Marsh -- at the orange fungus slowly spreading out his wounds.

"You know," he murmured, soft and quiet. "My old man was more of a fighter than a thinker, Y rest his soul, but he liked to do his reading. He was really into that whole 'warrior philosopher' sort of image, you know?"

Marsh twitched. "What are you…"

A pair of slices to the tendons of the arms put a quick end to that interruption.

"Anyway, getting to the point," Skipper continued. "My old man knew his history -- well, I say history, but it was more like, uh, assorted trivia. Still, good stuff, though. There was this, uh, this one thing. Little bit of info from way back in the Thousand Revolutions?"

The expected fear didn't appear in Marsh's eyes. Seemed he wasn't as learned as Skipper's dear old dad.

Skipper tapped his hands on his lap. "Apparently," he tasted the word. "Gene Tyrants could regenerate from anything -- nah, nah, nearly anything. See, there was this little trick to it that they figured out. If you, uh, if you cut it apart into pieces around… nine inches by nine inches? They didn't heal at all. Funny how things work out, huh?"

The colour drained from Marsh's stolen face as if on cue. A lump travelled down his throat as he forced down saliva. Still, though, the look in his eyes remained unbroken. Skipper had to compliment him on his resolve, if nothing else.

When Marsh spoke next, it was with a new voice -- one soft and reverent. The reality of the matter, if Skipper had to guess.

"Do as you will," he snarled, with martyrish ferocity. "I will not break."

Skipper's smile faded as Heartbeat Bayonet began whipping through the air, the whistling of it growing louder and louder as it revolved closer to Marsh's legs.

"You're true to your beliefs," Skipper said, staring him down. "I like that. I'm not being ironic there -- I really, really do…"

He blinked.

"But I'm gonna have to ask you again when I get to your hips."

It was a strange thing, to be invisible. Dragan looked down, expecting to see his hand, but was greeted only by empty air. Even his feet were absent as he and the similarly-invisible North ran down the hallway.

His voice and his footsteps -- those were the only proof of his existence. It was an entirely different sensation from using Gemini World: it was like he and North had become beings of sound alone.

"I help you get into Hessiah's labs," he panted as they ran. "And you tell me what Skipper's plan is."

North's voice came from slightly up ahead, the only trace of his position. "Yeah, yeah, like I said. How many times are ya gonna repeat yourself?"

"And why should I believe that you know what Skipper's plan is?"

They turned a corner, approaching the nearest stairwell. Invisible as they were, calling the elevator wasn't exactly practical.

"I went through his stuff the night I left --"

"The night you faked your death, you mean."

North pushed the stairwell door open, and Dragan slipped through before it closed. They began ascending the stark concrete stairs, the sight of them stretching upwards already making Dragan's legs ache.

"Technicalities, technicalities, my good pal," North chuckled. "Got some juicy bits of info from his little hiding places, managed to scrape it together to get an idea of what he's up to. Thought I might need some leverage if the crazy bastard ever came after me, you know?"

Well… it sounded like something North would do, at least.

They ascended the steps two at a time, the click of shoes against concrete echoing throughout the vertical chamber. Dragan kept his eye on the massive numbers painted on the walls, indicating the floor they were on. One floor up from quarantine, two floors up, three…

Five floors went by without words -- then the nearest door opened as North came through, Dragan following behind him.

"Careful now," North whispered, unsettlingly close. "Heading through private quarters -- shouldn't be anyone around, but -- hey -- you never know."

The thin hallway was lined with doors on both sides, no doubt leading to individual suites for guests. Dragan listened carefully, but heard no sound from within any of them. Then again, maybe they were soundproofed? No way to tell, so the best thing to do would be to behave as if each and every one was packed to the brim.

Their pace slowed, North placing a hand on Dragan's shoulder to guide him as he continued to whisper into his ear.

"The entire lab's sealed off," he quietly explained. "Apart from ventilation, of course -- too small to climb through, but Aether doesn't need much space, right? You just use your little, uh, Genimie World thing to get through, then you let me in. Easy peasy."

Dragan rolled invisible eyes. "Why do I get the feeling it won't be 'easy peasy'?"

"Because you're a smart fella. But we'll improvise, you know? That's what smooth operators like us do."

"Hm. If you say so." At any rate, Dragan wouldn't be putting his life in this guy's hands if it came down to it.

They reached the door at the end of the hall, and it slid open. Dragan's eyes immediately widened, and he shut his mouth as quickly as he could. As silently as possible, he took a single step back.

Because he had just come face to face with Atoy Muzazi.