Chapter 132: Chapter 127

I fixed Axle with a stare. “Want to try telling me what BuyMort is again?” I asked.

He wiped tears from his eyes and shook his head. 

“So much worse than I imagined,” he whispered. “BuyMort is a remnant of what your people would call a Kardashev type six civilization. It appears to have destroyed that incredibly advanced civilization, and now destroys anything that can interact with it, as well as the fabric of the multiverse itself.”

“You’ve been reading up on humans,” I said. “Kardashev isn’t exactly everyday material.”

The Knowle nodded his shaggy head. “I have, your world is fascinating, and many of your people have books and other stored information to share.”

“Well, that settles it for me,” I said. “Are you clear on your next job?”

He nodded. “Very. I would go so far as to say Silken Sands has my undying loyalty, for what it has shown me. What you have shown me,” Axle said, reaching out an oversized paw. “Thank you, for the knowledge.”

I shrugged but shook his hand. “You and I had very different childhoods, I suspect. But I’m glad you’re here. I consider you my friend, and you have nothing to thank me for.”

We were interrupted by a sudden thump against the door. I stood to open it and looked back at Axle. He wiped at his eyes and slid his camera away, before raising a finger to his lips and nodding at me.

I opened the door, and a BuyMort pod floated in. It warped in a familiar box, and the smell of fresh flesh-tape permeated the room. Good old Tower, making sure we got our packages, nice and secure.

Axle tore the tape off with a nail, and I pulled the flaps open to expose a brand new, basic version of my starfish suit. Teslak hadn’t given me any choice this time, which meant I was supposed to get another version of the suit I already had. Specter wasn’t just going to equip me, he was going to equip my affiliate too.

I stood and faced Axle. “I’m sorry, Axle, but this one isn’t for you,” I said.

He nodded, looking at my suit again with hesitation. “I might not want one, to be perfectly honest. I am not sure I can stand being ripped apart the way you do.”

“It’s not fun, no. Strangely enough, you can get used to anything, if you have an oasis,” I said. Molls’ beautiful face swam through my mind, and I pushed her aside. I planned to go see her as quickly as I could, but there was one more thing I had to do first. Well, two, since I needed to apologize too.

A few moments later, Axle had gone to find Jada and bring her to the sound-proofed office, and I was searching for Rayna in the underground residential area, carrying the new starfish suit. Her hobbs had directed me to the lower levels, where I found her still in Taytrinn’s old room, sitting in one of the chairs.

The walls were covered in tapestries of hobb accomplishments. Some of them featured battle, but most were about building, or growing. My favorite was a simple farmland, covered in hobbs working the earth and raising wood-beamed buildings. Rayna saw me staring and stood.

“Yes boss,” she grunted.

“It's just you and me, please call me Tyson,” I sighed.

She nodded, and gestured to the chair. “Okay. Tyson. Sit?”

I sat, and Rayna stood at attention in front of me. It became immediately awkward, so I stood again, facing her. “I was harsh with you, earlier today, and you didn’t deserve it, you were just doing your job,” I said, meeting her eyes.

“I understand now, some humans have a different way of providing value, and are to be treated like tribe elders,” the hobb woman said. I could tell by her cadence that she had rehearsed it, after careful thought.

“Thank you, Rayna. That is exactly right. I would extend it to hobbs too. What I want is for anybody who can contribute in some way, to do that. But it can’t ever be forced, especially if they’re unsuited for the task,” I said.

“Mel scared of yarsps. Too scared. It was wrong to push her to yarsp duty, I know now,” she said.

“Good, I trust you. Don’t worry, Rayna, I trust you,” I said, grasping her hand in my own. “I need to talk to you about something important, and I have a gift for you, if you want it.”

She nodded, and I let go of her hand. “Thank you. I don’t want to be fired,” she said.

“Holy shit, you were worried about being fired? I don’t know what I would do without you, Rayna, I’m not going to fire you. I just upped your tribe's percentage to a tenth of our total income, because of how much I trust you. We are partners, Rayna, and I desperately need your help right now,” I said, babbling. It just tumbled out of me. The task ahead was badly frightening, and I was unable to keep it out of my voice.

“I need your help, please,” I said again, sitting down. I reached in my bag and carefully produced the small MortBlock, compulsively hitting the scan button to refresh it. Then I put it on top of the cardboard box from BuyMort between us and slid them over to her.

Rayna stared at the MortBlock, then looked up at me, the question in her eyes obvious.

“I’m going to the Dearth Conglomerate soon, Rayna, and I’m going to try and kill them, and take their MortBlocks. To do this, Lee is pretending to sell me out to their leadership. I need you to keep our MortBlock safe while I’m gone,” I said, carefully choosing my words.

She looked between it and me again, and then blinked. “You want me to hold MortBlock, then give back?”

I nodded, keeping my eyes on hers.

The hobb woman blinked again, looking at the block and then at me. “We are partners. I will guard our MortBlock with my life.”

I smiled and breathed out a sigh of relief. “If I don’t come back, that becomes your MortBlock. You do what you can to save our people, if that happens.”

She shook her head. “It won’t. You will destroy Dearth. I know it.”

We sat in silence for a long moment while I wished I had her confidence. Then I shook my head and pointed at the bigger box beneath the MortBlock. “That’s for you, if you want it.”

You are reading story BuyMort: Rise of the Windowpuncher – How I Became the Accidental Warlord of Arizona. Apocalyptic GameLit at novel35.com

Rayna carefully lifted the MortBlock and set it down on the chair beside her, before lifting the flaps of the box and peering inside. Her grey, pebbled features tilted, and her eyes narrowed. “What is it?”

“It’s a suit like mine,” I said, eyes on the floor. I still heard her breath as she caught it, a barely audible choke of surprise and terror.

“Like yours,” she started. “Suit like yours put you back together when yarsps tear you apart. When Drusk kill you. When stupid humans shoot you.”

“And when the Sleem engulfed me, and when the aggropedes super-shivved me, and when the suicide-bomber bombed me,” I droned. “Yes, it’s that kind of suit. It embeds some kind of indestructible metal all over your body and recharges when you break things. Then, if you get hurt, it just cuts that part out and replaces it with a new one that it makes itself.”

The hobb lifted the starfish shaped harness out of the box and turned it to read the etching on the flat side. She looked at my chest, where mine was seated. “It gets smaller?”

I nodded again and she frowned.

“How do we know this works on hobbs?” she asked.

“We don’t. But I suspect it works on any form of sapient life, based on the affiliate,” I replied.

Rayna set the starfish down, took a deep breath, nodded, and pulled off her own shirt. “I trust you, boss,” she said with conviction. Then she pressed the starfish to her own bared breasts. I winced as the suit began to deploy.

It unfolded and extended across her chest from between her breasts, rippling as it went lower across her stomach. Rayna’s eyes shifted, first steadfast, but quickly filled with fear. Tracks of plating forced her head back, her arms out, and her legs stiff. She grunted in pain as the turbine ground its way down into her sternum, and smoke arose from between her gray-skinned breasts.

Her shorts tore free as the plates folded down her legs, and covered her groin, forming a shield similar to my own out of tendrils, and then retracting it to expose her genitals. I looked away, as she groaned in pain. The turbine wound up and Rayna gasped as something in her midsection tore free. The machine’s sound became thicker, and gray blood and flesh ejected from the turbine, to spatter the BuyMort box and concrete floor around us.

I stood to go find something to cover Rayna with. The room around us was their domicile, with large wooden and reed furniture against the walls. I went to a small set of drawers and began opening them, looking for clothing.

In the top was a jumble of human panties, mixed in with older looking gray cloth rags. I quickly closed it and opened the middle. Fresh clothing in the form of sports attire populated the drawer. I snatched a pair of basketball shorts and tossed them across the room toward Rayna.

Her naked body convulsed on the floor as something else was torn free, this time from inside her throat. The turbine ejected viscera and gore as she clutched at her throat and her chest heaved, unable to draw air. “I’m so sorry, Rayna,” I whispered, turning back to the drawers. The bottom drawer held shirts, jerseys for local sports teams. I grabbed a large one and turned back to help her.

Whatever the suit had torn out of her throat got its replacement popped into place, and Rayna took a great, gasping breath. “What is happening?” she cried.

“It’s repairing you,” I said, kneeling down to hold her hand. “Anything that was sick, or broken, is being cut out and replaced. She gripped my hand hard, crushing down with all of her strength to keep from screaming. Tendrils had deployed down one leg, and busily carved out a section of her shin, before rapidly producing replacements and slapping them in place. As it lasered the final wound closed, Rayna blinked away tears of pain and squeezed my hand again.

“Is it showing you a strange creature yet?” I asked.

The nude hobb woman nodded rapidly and pointed at a chair across from us.

“You’re okay, it does that. You can talk to that thing to change some of what your suit does. It’s annoying but won’t hurt you,” I said, draping the jersey over her chest and pressing the basketball shorts into her hands. “I’m sorry it was this hard on you.”

I turned away again as Rayna dressed, still watching her own cartoon starfish. I had actually forgotten about that before I offered her the suit and felt terrible for not warning her. But if she was going to protect this place without me, I needed her to be able to survive anything that threatened us.

“I think it is over,” she said, shakily moving to the chair again and slumping into it. She breathed hard and looked over my shoulder, as her features slumped to vacancy. “I had many old wounds, my broken leg was from childhood, I had forgotten about it entirely. What did the suit give me,” she breathed, still reeling from the drugs. “My head is so fuzzy.”

“A pain drug. It should wear off soon, mine always does. You need to get used to that feeling, it can’t slow you down during a bad fight,” I told her. It was much easier to look at her now that she was clothed again, and I strongly approved of the way neither of us were mentioning it. I had forgotten it ripped your clothes off when it installed itself too. Almost like I had blocked those memories out or something.

“I must tell Tollya,” Rayna whispered. Her forehead glinted from beneath her thick, dark hair line. The suit’s lines were much thicker on her than me, but I knew an upgrade would fix that. She was a fighter, and chose this, knowing what the suit did to me regularly.

“I am sorry, I should have warned you more thoroughly,” I said, shaking my head.

“Do not apologize, it is fine. I am fine,” she breathed. Her voice was steadier, and she sounded stronger already. “It is much to take, at once. That is all.”

I nodded. “I understand and agree. It gets easier. You get used to most of it.”

“Most,” Rayna repeated. She leaned back in her chair and breathed slowly.

I thought of Molls again, of her roasting hot car, and her scales pressed against my skin.

“I need to go, are you alright?” I asked.

The hobb nodded, slowly. “I am alright,” she said. “I will guard our MortBlock with my life.”

“And you’ll be harder to kill now,” I said, standing up to leave. “Much harder to kill.”

Rayna stood suddenly and raised her fist to salute me, pressing it to her chest. “Thank you, boss.”

I stood tall and returned the gesture, meeting her eyes. Then I turned and left the room, walking out into the Arizona sunshine. 

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