Chapter 26: Part 26

Subversive, known to Daniel Corners as Rookie, felt a thrill of anticipation as the gates to Inheritance opened. He had been right. Daniel was trying to get back to the last place he had been safe. A foolish choice, but then Daniel wasn’t flush with great choices at the moment. Rookie had seen to that by covering up as many choices as he could get away with under layers of illusion.

His imperative was to keep Daniel from realizing the purpose of the delivery. He had failed. But he could still force Daniel to complete the delivery. There was a blur as Daniel’s hob bodyguard leapt from Daniel’s shoulder, assuming his native shape as he fell. The hob landed on his feet with no grace but a certain grim precision. He already had his revolver aimed carefully at Subversive. 

“Hello, Daniel,” Subversive opened. Then, for drama’s sake, he racked his shotgun. He’d already had a slug chambered, of course. But then, his shotgun wasn’t a proper object. It had been a gift from his creator, her personal thought constructed weapon. It didn’t need to be loaded. It technically didn’t need the action to be pulled either, though it was so satisfying to do it. “I’m glad you could join us. You have a job to complete.”

A heavy-looking hammer, clearly more tool than weapon, dropped from the air into Daniel’s hand. Impressive. Subversive’s creator had been certain that Daniel would take weeks to figure out thought manifestation. Daniel had done it in mere days. Subversive felt a certain sense of ironic pride; while inside Daniel’s mind he had taken on some of Daniel’s mental fabric. Technically, Subversive was no longer solely his original creator’s construct; he had elements of Daniel in him too. To think, he was built from two skilled constructors. Splendid. He would be the strongest construct on the Lane.

“Ooh, looks like you’ve already figured out the basics,” Subversive taunted. No sense letting Daniel know that he was impressed. “Shame you didn’t make a proper weapon, like mine. Or his.”

Daniel glanced aside at Maphandler. The useless hob had tipped his hand too soon, drawing a gun on the bodyguard instead of pretending to be a noncombatant when Subversive had made his first move. Well, there was always opportunities coming and going. Right now, the opportunity took the form of a specially-constructed crossbow, which could immobilize Daniel without killing him. They could drag him to Opulence if they had to.

Without warning, the bodyguard hob fired his revolver. Subversive had been waiting for a sign of action, and managed to roll behind a statue, though he wasn’t sure he hadn’t been clipped by the bullet. Well, so much for polite conversation. Apparently, the bodyguard had taken a liking to Daniel, and didn’t much care for those threatening him.

This was fine. Subversive and Maphandler had a numbers advantage. As long as Subversive could keep the bodyguard busy, Daniel would almost certainly be defeated by the other two. Subversive peeked around his statue cautiously. Daniel was in a grapple with Maphandler. Of course he was. Maphandler’s crossbow lay in pieces on the ground, one arm completely shattered and the string writhing endlessly, like a snake. Useless hob. If only the other hob who was supposed to back up Subversive hadn’t been stabbed. Two useless hobs, then.

A round from the bodyguard took a chunk out of Subversive’s hiding place. Well, two could play at that game. With a squeeze of the trigger, he fired a slug at the statue where the bodyguard had secured himself. Chips of stone--realis stone--splintered and sprayed from where Subversive’s shot landed, but the hob was too well covered to be damaged by them. Subversive ducked back behind his statue before the hob could return fire. He was a better shot than Subversive. That was unfortunate. It might all come down to that wild card, Cudgel.

Sure enough, the next time Subversive peeked out from his cover, Daniel had Maphandler on the ground, weapons and ammunition tossed in a rough circle around them. Daniel appeared to be tying Maphandler’s feet together with the hob’s own shoelaces.

Subversive slowly reduced his estimation of the navigator an additional couple of degrees. Not just useless. Actively detrimental. A terrible ally, in all facets of the job they had been assigned. Daniel might be doing Subversive and Cudgel a favor, actually. Now Maphandler couldn’t interfere.

Subversive took another shot, trying to clip the bodyguard over the top of his cover, but missed, raising a spray of dirt a few dozen yards behind his target. The bodyguard returned fire without hesitation, forcing Subversive to duck back into cover as a shower of stone chips flew past his face. A second round followed right behind it, sending cracks through the statue. A red-hot lump of metal fell down where the round had impacted the heavy stone. Subversive chose to ignore the fact that the bullet mark on the statue was directly in line with his neck.

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Daniel had finished restraining Maphandler. He was now getting ready to circle around and pin down Subversive, denying Subversive cover, the only thing that was letting him stand his ground against the superior marksman.

Whack. Thump. Oh, good. Daniel had run afoul of Cudgel. That one was not nearly as hopeless as either of the hobs. He had introduced himself to Subversive and Maphandler by crushing a tree trunk two feet thick into powder and splinters, despite the fact that Cudgel himself stood less than three feet tall.

The bodyguard didn’t have a good shot at the clearing where Cudgel had ambushed Daniel. Subversive decided to give Cudgel the credit for that; he could have hidden anywhere and had chosen that particular lion. Subversive spun out from behind his cover, crouching so that he was below his normal eye line, and fired two quick rounds at the bodyguard’s cover. If the bodyguard never saw that Daniel was being attacked, Cudgel would certainly win this fight. Daniel’s little carpentry hammer would be useless against the heavy shillelagh of the leprechaun. And as far as Subversive could tell, he and the bodyguard held the only two other working weapons on this lawn. Lady Liu had been mollified sufficiently to let this play out, though Subversive suspected that she was unhappy with it. Daniel, unarmed, against an impossibly strong man with golden skin? Subversive actually laughed to himself, his grin widening until he began to feel the limits of his constructed shape. He probably looked like a maniac by human standards. If he was capable of it, he would have grinned wider at the thought.

He heard Cudgel’s voice and Daniel’s voice as they negotiated just how much of Daniel would be broken by this conflict. The bodyguard was now drilling shot after shot at the same part of the statue. A web of cracks was beginning to form where the cluster was centered. Did that hob think he was going to shatter the whole statue just to get at Subversive? More shockingly, was it working?

There was a loud smack from the direction of Daniel and Cudgel. Good, that could only have been the sound of Daniel being slapped unconscious by the leprechaun’s heavy club. The smack was followed by a new sound, one that Subversive realized he knew all too well. The sound of dozens of thrashing claws and one piercing, glowing eye that emitted star-point light periodically.

Daniel had brought another weapon to this battlefield: that thrice bedeviled construct of the concept of sleep, imbued with some sort of vendetta against Subversive by his predecessor. Subversive had not expected Daniel to risk loosing it again so soon after the trauma of reintegrating it. Especially because Daniel had no way of knowing that the creature had been turned into a weapon of destruction against all of Subversive’s works. This was…this was a desperate gambit. One that Subversive feared would play out all too well in Daniel’s favor.

He fired two shots, completely blind, only the barest part of his hands exposed behind his cover, hopefully forcing the bodyguard to duck back behind his own statue long enough for Subversive to see what was going on.

The entity was there, its searchlight eye taking in the battlefield. It emitted a starburst, shaped like nothing so much as the sheriff’s badge in an old wester, as Subversive watched. Cudgel and Daniel were both on the ground, not moving. Subversive suspected both were in a deep sleep. The kind of sleep that only a power like the one Daniel had set free without any expectation of control.

The pulse faded. The creature’s eye landed on Subversive. Subversive felt fear. It wasn’t the first time, but he still didn’t like it. He could swear the creature was smiling at him. It rushed. He fired once, hoping the sound would scare it off like when Daniel had accidentally given it form. The monster flinched, but did not stop its heavy charge at Subversive, legs and arms indecipherable as it thrashed across the ground like some sort of horrible centipede, twisted beyond recognition. The bodyguard hob rose from his cover and trained his gun on Subversive’s only escape path from the charging horror.

Subversive made a choice, then. He decided that his purpose was not worth this, and he deliberately unmanifested. It would be years, probably, before he could intersect his blueprints with another thought constructor. But Daniel was winning this fight, and it was time for Subversive to cut his losses. 

As he faded, he thought. ‘No, not Subversive, not anymore. If I leave my purpose behind, I choose my own name.’ After a moment’s consideration, he decided. He would keep the name Daniel had given him. He would be Rookie.

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