Chapter 6: Chapter 6: Pragmatic Decisions

As Rachel and I are led by Julieta towards the tent, Rebecca speaks to me through our mental connection. Her mental voice is a clear, pleasant thing.

“There are ten origins from the setting I am from. Origins are someone’s background and skills, in this context at least, and each of the ten origins comes with eight perks, eight items, and two companions. That said, you are not able to fully utilize the items of the origins at the moment as some of the items connected to each origin are facilities and in this setting the facilities are not useable.” Rebecca reveals.

“The origins that you do not yet have access to are ‘Brute Force’, ‘Shadow Tactics’, ‘Unrestrained Inventor’, ‘Beloved Tyrant’, ‘Conquering Warlord’, ‘Slaving Despot’, and ‘Proselytizing Zealot’. Each of them have unique abilities, and synergize with each other in impressive ways.” My “Familiar” tells me, an eager smile on her face, which is located a bit away from me. Rebecca and Marcus are about to be taken on a tour of the camp by the older guard.

All sorts of eyes are currently focused on Rachel and me. In many cases people are more focused on Rachel than on me, and I don’t blame them since I am not outwardly supernatural and Rachel is stunning, but there are certainly people who elect to focus their gazes on me.

I suspect that they can feel that something is off about me, even if they can’t precisely articulate what, which is fair. I am a bizarre flesh-monster capable of peering into their hearts, and that can be off-putting to intuitive people. With even a cursory glance I can see a person’s deepest, darkest desires.

So far I’ve seen things as simple as wanting to have really intense sex with someone, to desires as dark as a resident of this camp wanting to kill one of their neighbors. It’s almost certainly affected how I look at some of the people here… So it's fair that my weirdness is deemed a bit "Off-putting" by the people round me. It's not fun, but it is fair.

The people in the camp, which is apparently considered a decently large settlement, are eking out a bare-bones existence. They wield a series of handmade weapons and armor, using things like broken chunks of concrete as the main components of weapons and they also eat an array of stale-smelling food. The water bottles some of them are drinking from look identical to the ones I have in my backpack.

“This community can house as many as one hundred and fifty people at its very height. Right now there are about… eighty of us? Almost. A good number of us have to spend time tending to the sick and injured, and ensuring that the infectious among them don’t get anyone else sick. We have eleven people in our… sick tent. As you can imagine it is fairly manpower and resource intensive to watch over them and treat them, and so my decision to help people has gotten a fair amount of pushback.” Julieta tells Rachel and I. She can also see the stares we are getting and gestures at people to stop staring, but very few people listen to that request.

“Zac, the kid you healed, went looking for his brother who was out on vault-hunting duty. He came across a group of entities and only survived because some vault-hunters were making their way back and happened across him and the entities before they could kill him. I wasn’t sure he’d make it.” Julieta reveals, causing me to smile sadly. I’m glad I could help the kid, and it’s nice that I was able to train at the same time. 

“Gustavo is happy to have saved little Zac.” Rachel exclaims, after glancing at me and interpreting my body language. I silently chuckle even as Julieta’s face lights up at Rachel’s remarks. My “Mega Assistant” may not like Julieta, but she sure likes making me look magnanimous. We reach the outside of the tent I am familiar with and Julieta unlocks the padlock keeping intruders out, allowing the three of us to enter the tent.

We step into the small space, though it’s definitely one of the largest tents, and enter a room filled with sick and injured people. Little to no effort is being made to keep the people separate, which even before I gained the healing powers and knowledge I now possess I know is a bad thing for the health of the people here. I glance at Rachel and she nods at me.

“This place is… it’s not sanitary.” Rachel says, in a tone that communicates her displeasure. Julieta sighs but also nods at the two of us.

“You aren’t wrong. That said, this is us making do with what we have. We are devoting one of our largest tents to this endeavor, which, most days at least, tends to be a thankless task.” Julieta replies, which in all honesty is fair. I can’t imagine that people are overly enthusiastic about how much energy it takes to manage this place…

I walk over to the person closest to me, a young black woman, and I put one of my hands on her forehead. As I do I feel my mind filling with information about her, such as her name which is Ebony Okoye, and the reason why she is here: she has a nasty sickness.

I wordlessly begin to pour hearing energy into Ebony and I feel her sickness begin to be burned out by my radiant power. I turn inward as I do this, and I mentally converse with one of my companions.

“Rebecca, how can we improve the power of the hivemind?” I ask my goblin-like familiar. This powerful ability is one of the most critical ones in my possession this early in my journey. With this ability I can enact and micromanage schemes like this one with frightening ease.

I cannot do things like fully transform more "normal” entities like hounds or smilers into humans, at least not yet. I also can’t give them human-like thinking processes, but I can already feel that their minds are sharpening as a result of the corruption that they have absorbed. If I strengthen my hivemind and my skill at wielding my corruption enough, I truly believe I’ll be able to do all of that and far more…

She is silent for a moment, at least mentally. More precisely she is silent relative to me, as I have no real desire to be invasive and shut off any privacy in the minds of those in my hivemind even though I certainly could. All the creatures in my hivemind, even ones like the entities I have corrupted, have private spaces where their thoughts are their own.

She is currently speaking to the older guard guiding Marcus and her on a tour of the camp. She does, eventually, respond to me though.

“If you want to strengthen your hivemind the two easiest methods are to acquire more knowledge yourself, which is a pure and innocent way, or to absorb others into the hivemind and thus add their knowledge to the collective mass of wisdom you possess. Even this can be done in more than one way.” Rebecca replies, as she continues to speak to the guard.

“You can persuade others to join your hivemind willingly and knowingly, though you can trick them as well, or you can enter into a contest of wills with them. If you enter a contest of wills with someone and win their minds are forcefully inducted into the hivemind, though this doesn’t actually hurt them. You can also use the trait that makes ‘Corrupted Consciousness’ stronger and stranger than the ‘Essence of the Hivemind’: the ability to corrupt people.” Rebecca mentally utters.

“Your innate mastery over corruption lends itself incredibly well to the ‘Essence of the Hivemind’. By corrupting living beings, or turning non-living things into living beings using corruption, you can add a range of things to the total intellectual mass you control, but at the same time beings that are only partially corrupted are not fully inducted into the hivemind unless you use the other means at your disposal to induct them.” My familiar explains, rather simply.

“In future settings you visit, one of your greatest strengths will be your ability to corrupt things and creatures. Even creatures far stronger than you can be partially corrupted, and manipulated through the corruption that infects them. Beings far above your weight class can be reduced to your level and absorbed into your hivemind if you do something clever like partially corrupt them and then use your corruption to lower their willpower so you can add them to your hivemind.” Rebecca tells me, deviously.

“And it’s not like your corruption isn’t tempting in and of itself… Your corruption is a power-booster. Even a tiny amount of corruption can have significant effects on things, but a fully corrupted being can experience truly massive boosts in power. They lose some degree of their mental freedom in exchange for the power you give them, but for many people the additional power is worth it.” My first companion remarks, rather darkly.

What Rebecca has said is true though… My corruption is a powerful power-booster when used in conjunction with things. If I used it in conjunction with my abilities I can add a corruptive effect to my abilities in addition to making them stronger on a pure note. So I could, for example, make my healing more effective in exchange for corrupting anyone I heal, or I could corrupt an object while using The Force to telekinetically lift it.

Before long Ebony is fully healed. She remains unconscious but she is no longer suffering and she is resting peacefully. I smile at Ebony, and a small part of me wonders if she’ll ever understand how generous I just was…

When I touch someone I can spread a few of my cells into them, cells which I retain control over. With my cells I can effortlessly morph someone’s mind or their bodies, thanks to both my “Sarkic” powers and my “Corruption” abilities. It is only out of kindness that I elect not to do something terrible to the woman I have just healed. Julieta smiles at me, and I let out a sound akin to a laugh before I turn and face the next nearest person.

This time I am facing a sleeping man that I assume must be of South Asian ancestry, judging from the skin tone of his arms coupled with the few features of his that are not burned, whose skin is covered in acid burns. My eyes, now filled with the powerful knowledge I acquired from the “Essence of the Healer” allows me to be certain that the man will die without my intervention. I walk over to the figure, thinking all the while.

I am contemplating what to do from here. Truthfully, I think it’s fair for me to extract a price for my services, one that goes beyond the simple food and shelter my “Hosts” are offering the founding members of my faction and I. I am using truly extraordinary abilities to save lives, and I am even considering doing more than what I’ve already said I’ll do, like laying down a field on this place. Such a field would make it far easier for this place to house any sort of hospital as it would pour restorative energies into the tent, or even the whole settlement that persist after I leave…

As I consider all of this, my mind moves faster than it’s ever moved. I can almost feel time slowing down as I step towards the man. By the time I am standing over the man I have come to a decision that pragmatically advances my agenda.

This time, and in the other cases where I will save the lives of people by healing them, rather than just healing someone who’d recover on their own assuming they continued to receive even the level of limited healthcare the people of the Backrooms can offer, I will add the people I save to my hivemind. This is not an easy decision, but it is a critical one that ensures that I can continue to grow, while properly rewarding me for the life-saving interventions I offer.

I will my corruption to touch and alter the healing energy that I am about to use on him. I place my other hand on this gentleman’s forehead, and I begin to pour my warped healing energy into him. The energy begins to heal him instantly, but in addition to that it also overwhelms him with startling ease.

The corruption touches him and effortlessly begins to spread through him, easily overwhelming the figure. If I had to guess why it’s so easy for this corruption to overwhelm him I’d most likely assume that he was not a particularly strong-willed person, and his injuries left him in a weakened state that further increases his susceptibility to my unusual powers.

The man’s eyes open as he begins to feel my energy seeping into him. I watch the burns be undone by my power, even as the man begins to become beautified. He grows taller and stronger even as he recovers from the pain he suffered during the time he has spent as a burned man.

I also feel fragments of his mind becoming known to me, and I gain the ability to mentally reach out and speak to the figure. As I gain this ability, so do my companions, and I can sense their minds begin to inquisitively peer into the minds of the newest person to join our faction.

“Hello there! How are you feeling?” Asks Rebecca, over what is effectively a “shared” mental channel.

“I’m feeling… whoa, I’m feeling good!” The man, a man of Indonesian descent named Adika, eventually replies. I peer “at” him, within the psychic hive that connects each of our minds to each other, and I begin to see fragments of memories of his.

I feel his knowledge, including of things related to his career as a policeman in Jakarta, bleed into my knowledge over the connection we both share to my meshed consciousness. Among the things he knows are details about all sorts of fascinating trivia, such as how guns work and the blueprints of several types of firearms, and even the fact that he legally owns a few firearms in Indonesia. That is something that I can tell he had to work hard to do, even if the exact details of that are not included in the facts Adika knows that I am currently mentally downloading.

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“Huh, I couldn’t think in English before… At least not this complexly…” Adika mentally mutters, even as he physically pushes one of his hands at me. I take it even as I lift my other hand off his head, and I lift the man up off the floor. He smiles at me and turns to face Julieta.

“This guy… This guy right here is amazing.” He remarks, in lightly accented English. Julieta’s eyes widen and Rachel lets out a quiet titter.

“Gustavo’s healing abilities have, on occasion, left people changed. These changes are invariably changes for the better. Judging from your reaction, I take it that the man Gustavo just healed either couldn’t speak, or couldn’t speak in English before?” Rachel asks, and Julieta nods, clearly taken aback by this unusual accomplishment. I smirk and let out a small, laugh-like sound as they say this. Meanwhile Adika gazes at me happily.

He is awestruck by my presence. There is more than one reason for this, as while it’s true that I healed him he is also corrupted by my powers. My corruption warps the priorities and values of those it infects, and fully corrupted beings are fully loyal to me above all things.

The man, who must have previously been quite close to death, is now fully in my power. I can feel the collective weight of his intellect adding itself to the gestalt mindscape I command and can unleash at will.

I feel the joy he feels at gaining an awareness of my powers. I also sense a burgeoning desire within him to get other people to join the hivemind, and I muse on this for a moment before deciding that it is not a bad idea.

For now I do not intend to do much “recruiting” to my hivemind, but I can afford to occasionally add a person or two to my collective consciousness… Though I definitely note that this decision makes my corruption itself grow more rambunctious inside of me. I can feel the sickly stuff moving with more intensity within me, eager to spread to more people.

I begin to focus on my hivemind even as I allow myself to enter a sort of autopilot like state. My body, driven mostly by instinct, begins to move from person to person, healing them with ever increasing ease.

Based on my prior criteria, that someone be close to death or would die outright if not for my powers, there are a small number of people here to corrupt. Each time I heal a person I have elected to corrupt the potency of my healing power mixes with the might of my corruption and invariably overwhelms each of the two other people that I target.

None of the three individuals I add to my hivemind have an iota of the powerful will it’d take to resist my corruption. As I incorporate them into the hivemind I begin to peek at their knowledge of this place, and it both humbles and excites me. Now that I am armed with some knowledge of how incredibly powerful my personal corruption is I can imagine how hilariously game-changing this could be in a world less bizarre than the dimension I am in.

The three people, counting Adika, who I greedily add to my hivemind have explored different levels. By looking through their memories I am able to see distant things, like vast fields of wheat guarded by zombie-like creatures, and a city that during the day is bathed in powerful, painful radiation. I am also able to learn about things that Julieta has not told me yet, like the United Nations and Colonies of the Backrooms, an entire pseudo-nation made up of different colonies throughout the Backrooms.

I process this information as my body finishes the task it was assigned and in doing so has granted me considerable amounts of experience with my unusual yet incredibly helpful ability to heal people. My ability to heal people is an incredible boon in a place like this, which is only reinforced by the memories I have now acquired from the latest additions to my strange hivemind, all of whom are people only a bit older than me.

At the same time, I begin to hear a faint noise in the back of my consciousness. After a few moments of careful study I can tell that what I’m hearing is a voice but it’s too quiet for me to make out what it’s saying. It’s annoying to be able to hear it at the edge of my consciousness, it’s like knowing that someone is saying something but just not having the sensory reach to make out the individual words they are saying. But not every new thing that I can hear is beyond my ability to make out…

“More minds… More power.” A voice, not the one I can’t understand but another one altogether, mutters. This voice does not belong to either Rebecca or anyone else in my retinue for that matter. It is a powerful, hungry thing and it doesn’t take me long to realize that it very well might be the voice of my corruption itself.

This weird phenomenon must be due to my innate mastery over corruption, but until now I have not yet heard corruption speak. I suppose the addition of fresh meat to my hivemind was enough to supercharge the stuff… That is intriguing. And a little bit concerning, but mostly intriguing.

I lightly stamp my foot onto the solid floor beneath me and I send out a light pulse of corruption. It spreads out of me in a wave that ripples out of me in a perfect circle. The corruption burrows deep into the floor beneath me and then darts away from where I am, creeping stealthily underground.

I feel a quiet mental theater open up in my mind’s eye that allows me to see what is around the corruption. For now all it can sense is featureless, rigid concrete. I will the stuff to go closer to the surface once I am certain it is far from where any of the campers are.

When the stuff edges closer to the surface I am delighted to note that my corruption is faster now, considerably so, and it can go further than it could before. I have no doubt that these changes are due to the new minds in my hivemind, all of whom express eager surprise at this development as well.

I can hear my companions filling the newcomers in on the situation, doing them a solid and getting them up to speed, and all three of them are, unsurprisingly, quite curious about my powers. I allow my mind to be in a “public” place where my thoughts are audible to my companions and to the newcomers to our collective consciousness, which also lets them see what I can see with my corruption.

I know from Rebecca’s description of the perks that I possess that being fully corrupted makes someone unbreakably loyal to me, I don’t have to fear that they’ll break free or even judge me for my actions. With these powers I can lead people out of the Backrooms, or I can make this bizarre, sometimes even hellish, place a bit more bearable. For everyone.

It only takes perhaps half an hour for my speedy corruption to locate some “Entities”, which is the local language used to describe the supernatural creatures situated throughout the Backrooms. I manage to find a smiler stalking a few hounds and I chuckle. The smiler is located in a darkened hallway, menacingly glaring at a few hounds which growl at each other even as they prepare to attack the creature.

I silently elect to utilize one of the mightier powers the “Essence of the Hivemind” grants me, and I begin to construct a generic looking body out of my corruption behind the smiler. Doing so gets me some wide-eyed expressions of shock from those in my hivemind who do not know the limits of my power, as I realize with a start that my attitude regarding privacy has subtly spread to my companions.

They watch a plain-faced figure, standing only five feet tall exactly, appear behind the entity and I feel the hearts of my newest allies racing in their chests. Even now that the wanderers have been added to a hivemind that includes actual entities, they can’t get over the fear they feel towards the creatures.

To be fair, to many wanderers entities represent a menacing, active, perpetual threat. There are few creatures in the Backrooms more hostile to human life than a hound or a smiler, and the sort of trauma that such creatures can inflict is not easy to get over.

I take command of the new body I have formed out of my shadow-like corruption and I order the average Joe to point a finger in the direction of the smiler. The man does so with a neutral look on his face, and when he is in place I begin to use one of my perks on the figure: “Technocyte”. The potent perk causes a subtle hole, just large enough for a bullet to be fired through, to etch itself onto existence at the end of one of the man’s finger.

The body I have created is, in every way that matters, my body. I can use my perks from the body with frightening ease, and that skill makes me an immensely dangerous combatant, which I am about to demonstrate right now. While it’s true that my other minds can pilot the body whenever I am not controlling it, I don’t plan to relinquish control of the body.

When the hole is fully formed, and I sense the “Gun” I am currently controlling enter a state of readiness, I chuckle. I then activate “The Flooded”, an immensely powerful “Nalka” perk that lets me freely control my body or those who are considered me. As soon as I do I feel myself gain a terrifying amount of control over the body I have spawned near the smiler.

Until now I have not used my Sarkic powers in conscious, specific ways. My control over my flesh has been used in unrefined ways, ways that are easy and do not require the targeted usage of perks. In this moment I am changing that, electing to well and truly embrace the “body” part of the body horror abilities I possess. And using my powers, intently, for the first time feels odd. It feels good, but odd.

I quickly use my biomantic powers to create a weapon, a bullet, in the “chamber” I created for the generic body I fashioned in the shadows of the hallway. This bullet is a simple thing: a tooth. My generic body takes a breath, as he prepares to fire the bullet and while he does that I order some of my corruption to invade the tooth bullet.

I smirk when it does, though only on the inside since I am currently walking with Rebecca inside of Julieta’s home. I watch as my new body expels a small bullet with a sudden, violent motion. Smoke begins to trail out of the hole on his fingertip.

I study the bullet through the eyes of the corruption that has been lurking near the surface of the floor beneath my new body and the smile. The thing flies true and it flies into the back of the beast’s head and then out of the front of its skull. As it enters the thing’s head I can watch the bullet not leave a trace, entering and then later exiting it, like the damn thing is phasing through something.

It takes me a second to be sure that attack even hit the smiler. In fact, the only reason I can be sure of that with any level of certainty is that I feel the predatory mind of the beast suddenly enter the weird nightmare scape that is the “sight” and sound of several voices talking to and over each other, but inside of someone’s mind.

The damned beast took the hit, at first, like it was a tank! Fortunately, moments after the bullet hit the feline the corruption in it managed to get her and remake her, causing her to suddenly and momentarily fall over, shortly before she gets up and shakes her head in determination, her mind now filled with thoughts relating to me and my objectives.

The damage I deal determines how effective my corruption will be, or at least that’s one of the factors that determines how corruption affects living things when transferred via violence. So I suppose I must have dealt the beast a critical blow, since my blow completely corrupted the dark cat and the creature is now on my side. It is hard to keep calm and not be excited with the knowledge that I was able to handle a smiler all on my own, just using Sarkic powers mixed with a corruption sprinkled in for good measure.

The dim voice that I can barely hear begins to get a little louder, but I still can’t quite understand whatever the voice is trying to say… I silently realize that I will still need to abduct more creatures and add them to my super-mind, before I can fully piece together whatever the voice is asking for. And that’s a task I can throw myself into.

My generic body smirks at the sight and sensations that accompany his first successful hunt. I know that he may soon become an exceedingly skillful hunter of all sorts of supernatural creatures, given the fact that even now I have to go and incorporate the minds of perhaps several more monsters into my mental mess.

I smile at the body, aware that it knows where I am. I elect to throw the body into the task of assimilating more minds, for now just those belonging to entities, so that I can figure out what the strange voice I can barely hear, wants. Meanwhile, more than a few moments have passed since I have healed people, and so I find my true self in the decently large tent of Julieta, Rachel and I listening as she offers us bottles of almond water and mentally psyches herself up so she can ask me for something.

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