Chapter Eight: Fugitives

+++++Ezra+++++

Ezra once again reconsidered going back to Fenrik's city house. In the off-chance that the sorcerer had given Gladion the go-ahead to abduct him, then showing up at his thrallmaster's house was every bit as bad as turning himself in to the borrenkin crime boss. Fenrik could simply use his control over Ezra's thrall-plug to hold him in place and then wait until Gladion's goons showed up. Plus, even if he didn't, have the sorcerer's go-ahead, they'd probably assume that was where Ezra was headed and try to intercept him.

Yet he couldn’t very well risk venturing out into the city without a brushpin to his name - he'd given his last two par for the ride uphill. He should at least try to secure his belongings from his little cell. He hopped off the street car a block early, feet to the pavement while the car was still coasting, and jogged the rest of the way - a few random borrenkin thugs would be pretty obvious along the promenade and he'd last seen them hightailing it in the opposite direction. He checked the potion in his pocket. He checked it again. He had an hour and some change… if Fenrik spotted him, he'd just down the thing and hope for the best.

The potion felt warm, like it was brimming with energy and thrumming in his pocket. It felt powerful. Maybe it was just his imagination.

No sign of Gladion or his stooges… Ezra reached for the door…

Fenrik would almost certainly hear him come in. He usually did, unless he was fantastically drunk, which it was far too early for, even for him. But there was another entrance, right through the garage - which was usually unlocked. The sorcerer lived in a ritzy enough neighborhood that people had a loose policy on keeping their doors locked.

Fenrik unscrewed the door bolt, wincing as it cracked open, and then rolling underneath the door as soon as it was high enough to enter. Then he eased it back down until the bolt clicked back into place. Then he fumbled through the dark, knocking over a bucket, some mouldering boards, and Anise's magical push broom… Fenrik had to have heard that…

Apparently not. There was no shouting from upstairs, no pulse of pain in Ezra's chest. And… shit! The door to the basement laboratory was already cracked open. The old man hadn't used it in weeks, but somebody had been in there recently. Presumably, Fenrik had gone down to go lord-knows-what while Ezra was busy getting his potion and fleeing from Gladion's overtures. He peeked in… there was somebody inside.

That somebody was not Fenrik… it was a young woman lying on the metal slab of a table that the old man used for potentially-messy experiments. She was supine, clearly unconscious… possibly dead, and nude from the waist up, save for the metal cage of Fenrik's thrall-plug injector. The old man had somehow procured another host body and fitted her with a plug right there in the basement!

Ezra crept in, his heart thrumming his chest, his little gasping breaths bringing in the acrid smell of disinfectant and the metallic tang of blood. The empty phials of two used healing decoctions - the strong sort that Fenrik could make without much difficulty - lay on the little cart next to the table, clinking as Ezra brushed by. He looked at the girl… she was… she was beautiful, like a sleeping angel, her delicate-featured face reminding him very much of Anna Glass, but with fiery hair, almost crimson, splayed out like a corona and now spotted with blood from the procedure. She was alive, taking in shallow, even breaths, but very much unconscious.

He didn't want to think of what Fenrik would do with a thrall who looked like that… he couldn't imagine how much he'd paid for her body. Any sorcerer or sorceress with a penchant for pretty human women would have dropped their stacks in a heartbeat. Without really thinking about it, Ezra had his potion in his hand… was he really thinking of giving somebody else… somebody he didn't even know… his potion? Just because she was uncommonly pretty?

Footsteps thumped about upstairs. "Ezra? Ezra! Where are my aquamarine crystals?" The old man opened Ezra's chamber door and closed it again, the bolt clicking shut. He thumped around some more.

Without even thinking about it, Ezra chucked back the potion, nearly vomiting as it burned down his throat, burned into the pit of his stomach. He collapsed to the floor with a squeak and a thump, groaning, his mouth wide open in pain and shock. But he didn't cry out - he was used to even worse pain when Fenrik was intent upon punishing him. He was used to worse, but he could tell he was dying…

The sensation was especially bad in his chest, around his plug. Glancing down, he gasped in horror at what he saw: his flesh, his tissues, everything pulling away from the plug, and the thrall-plug itself exerting an intense pressure, as if it was trying to pull itself from his body. He gripped it with his hands, but the pain of budging it was too great… but maybe…

Somehow, he managed to climb to his feet. He slipped along the tile floor upon his own blood and sweat. Oily sweat beaded and dripped down his nose and chin, and the pain within his chest pulsed and grew. With a grunt of effort, he lifted the metal frame that the old man had used to insert the girl's thrall-plug within her sternum. It was only four or five kilograms but he could barely lift it. His arms burned, the strength leaving them. He clamped the cage's round reticule over his thrall-plug and braced himself… he was virtually certain he was about to kill himself by ripping the metal plug right through his heart. In for a brushpin, in for a brownback. He secured the frame on a sturdy wall hook and pulled his whole body back, using all his weight. There was a sickening, wet rip and pain shot through the core of his being like a searing white light, and Ezra was only vaguely aware of himself collapsing to the floor.

+++++Ezra+++++

Yet he did not die.

Consciousness… painful, awful consciousness pulsed back to Ezra. It felt like somebody had spent a three-day weekend using his chest as a trampoline. Yet he was breathing and he could feel the breath in his chest. He didn't know how long it had been - not long enough that the old man had come down to check on his latest thrall's recovery. He could hear the clink-clink of the old man sorting through crystals upstairs. But, he realized, the sorcerer hadn't heard him despite all the racket. Ezra's ear mufflers were wearing off and his hearing was simply much, much more sensitive than usual.

Ezra pulled himself to a sit, glancing at what had been his thrall-plug. It was red and brown with congealed gore, a particularly nasty gob of stuff at the narrowing terminus that had once held his soul crystal. It had since been absorbed into his body and now held nothing but the remnant organ behind. Ezra glanced down to his chest, running his finger over the pink, ring-shaped scar where his plug had once been… he winced, but it was only a reflex. The pain in his chest was already receding and the scar, if anything, felt slightly numb.

He noted the poor, doomed girl again. Dear lord, she was beautiful. For the first time in months, he felt his heart flutter in his chest without the odd sense of something solid and oppressive sitting right next to it. It was bizarre how you could get used to a thing like that. If only he had another…

Actually, he still did. He'd only managed to down about half of the potion before nearly coughing all of it back up. The other half was still in there, sitting on the little cart right in between Fenrik's empty healing phials. Only a single drop had been wasted to the cart's rubberized surface. Should he?

"Ezra!" Fenrik shouted. And Ezra got an odd sense from the thrall-plug sitting by his feet… that the old man was now pulsing pain into the thing. If it had been a normal day, about now, Ezra would have been in the library with about fifteen more minutes before he decided to head home to avoid the old man's wrath. He'd have been whimpering and writhing in pain, flopping like a fish out of water right in the middle of the library stacks because he wasn't home when the old man wanted him to be. Under the best of circumstances, that was what the girl had to look forward to.

The old man thumped across the floor. He opened the door to the basement stairwell… took one step down and then another…

Ezra opened the girl's mouth and poured the remainder of the potion in. Then he unhooked the metal chest-frame from where it had lodged on the wall hook and positioned it over the girl's chest. The old man was almost to the bottom of the steps. From there, it was five steps to the laboratory door. Ezra darted forward and bolted it shut.

Despite her deeply unconscious state, the girl's muscles fasciculated and little whimpering mewls escaped her lips. In an instant, her golden-hued skin went ashen and her breathing hung up. With a wet crack, the tissue withdrew from around her nascent thrall-plug, letting Ezra clamp around the thing with the metal chest-frame. Right outside the room, the old man cursed and rattled at the lock.

Ezra yanked the thrall-plug out of the girl's chest just as the laboratory door flew to splinters under the sorcerer's power. Huge chunks of wood flew everywhere but, somehow, all that got Ezra was a few splinters. About half of the metal-reinforced door remained creaking on the hinges. The sorcerer's eyes flashed with rage and he prepared to unleash a terrific magical attack…

But Ezra was very fast. He threw the metal frame and the attached thrall-plug as hard as he could, connecting with the side of the sorcerer's head and dropping him like a sack of potatoes.

+++++Ezra+++++

"Shit!" Ezra looked to the girl first - she was breathing and appeared to be fine, save for a few splinters and a huge ring-shaped wound in her chest that gradually sealed itself before his eyes.

Then he went to check on Fenrik. The sorcerer was still out cold with a sizable welt on his head, but his breathing was regular. Briefly, Ezra considered whether to kill the man… there was an ivory-handled scalpel right over on the table with the sorcerer's surgery tools. It would be easy to take the scalpel and kill the bastard - the world would be better off without him. He decided to do it, grabbing the scalpel with a shaky hand and stalking back to the unconscious sorcerer. With the old man gone, nobody would know what had happened here. The St. Arbalest authorities didn't exactly have a CIS lab, and even fingerprinting was in its infancy. There was almost no chance that Ezra's would be on record. Ezra could disappear and, if he was lucky, Gladion or some other shady character would be blamed and nobody would come looking for him.

He held the scalpel to the old man's neck, a single bead of crimson welling up beneath his shaky grip. It would be so easy. Just push it in, you coward! he thought… and then: What will Anise think? Shit.

She'd never forgive him. He was a bastard. He was a monster. But he was also her uncle. And whether for that reason or just because Ezra didn't have it in him to kill a man in cold blood, he pulled the scalpel back and placed it upon a nearby shelf, a wave of relief washing over him like autumn rain.

Somebody pounded at the front door. They pounded again without giving much time for response, and then they saw themselves in - the front door was unlocked. Stamping footfalls far louder than Fenrik's shook the house.

"Fenrik! Fenrik!" There was no mistaking that voice for anybody else - Mr. Gladion the basso profundo borrenkin. "You owe me, human! Go and find the bastard…"

"Yes, sir," one of his goons said.

More thumping about upstairs. Ezra looked to the unconscious girl on the table - her wound looked to be fully healed. He swaddled her in a white sheet and dragged her out to the horseless carriage, dumping the girl on the back bench. He ran back to the laboratory just in time to hear very heavy footsteps marching down the stairs. He grabbed the chest cage, the two gory thrall-plugs… he wasn't letting Fenrik keep those… and the handful of unused crystals he'd seen on the shelf nearby. Then he darted out to the garage, unbolted the door, and hopped into the passenger control seat.

"Hey!" A brawny borrenkin forced himself through the narrow door to the garage.

It was the same goon from before. He must have had an aptitude for nearly catching Ezra. Ezra flipped him the bird - which wasn't really a thing on Medias - and backed out as fast as he could. Their car clipped Gladion's carriage as they did, crunching the bumper and spinning Fenrik's carriage into the exact right spot to zoom off down the road. And, just like that, Ezra was a fugitive infernic, and he had no idea where to go.