Avarice: The Realm Chapter 7: Blood Oath

Blood Oath

The next job won’t be as easy as the first. I caught Mandrake Signa and his gang off guard; they didn’t even know anyone was after them. From here on out they’re going to be ready for me.

After I arrive at Fort Lincoln in a burst of light, I am greeted by Pierre, who grabs me by the shoulder and pulls me into a makeshift tent near the fast travel tower.

I enter, and most of the Fort Lincoln brass is there. Their faces tell me everything.

“He retaliated,” I say. I cough into my hand.

Pierre nods. “Much faster than we thought he would,” he says. “It’s been ten minutes since you successfully captured Ronald Delinsky.”

I hold out the apprehension module. “You should probably take this.”

One of the brass grabs it and slips it into a secured, tracked, and electrified storage container.

Pierre turns away from me, facing the wall. “And we’ve had an attack on an embassy near the British Fort Dunkirk. Two diplomats were killed, and we’ve had a lot of injuries to important people.”

“So he knows it was me,” I say. I feel a little tingle coming up through my arms.

“Not you exactly,” says Pierre. “But the US. We’ve beefed up security around all of our bases, but we’re not sure that we’ll be able to withstand Mandrake’s wrath.”

I cough, and a wave of dizziness takes over me. I know exactly what is happening.

Blowback.

“I can deal with that later,” I say, as I clutch my stomach. “If you need me.”

Pierre nods. “We’re all Freax users here,” he says. “There’s a blowback clinic just two buildings down.”

I cough up a thick, green fluid. The familiar feeling of numbness inserts itself into my abdomen.

I stagger out of the tent. As I do, I hear one of the officers speaking.

“Are you sure he can handle this?” the officer says.

“I know he can,” says Pierre.

I peel away before I can hear the rest of the conversation.

The blowback clinic is just like the one run by my friend, Daxton, in the real world.

I enter through an automatic door and am met with a blast of air-conditioned cool. There are two bialysis chambers against the wall. One of them is being used.

“Is it that time of the month again?” says a man in a lab coat. He is wearing a lopsided grin.

I clutch my stomach. “Yeah,” I say.

“I’m Doctor Fan,” says the man.

“Great,” I say, still holding my stomach. “Just get me cleaned up.”

“Clothes off,” says Fan.

I turn my armor back into card form and do the same for my clothes. I am standing in my underwear, and it feels a bit chilly.

Fan puts a special bismuth bronze fabric over my body, sort of like a magical hospital gown.

“Since The Realm is only accessible by Freax users,” says Fan, “There are plenty of places to get detoxed.” He shrugs. “But even so it’s pretty expensive.”

I step into the bialysis machine and lay against the fabric. I close my eyes.

My mind clicks. I am used to it by now, but even so it’s a difficult process. My soul rises out of my body and stands in the middle of a cluttered mess of a house. There are trash bags full of takeout boxes everywhere. The sink is overflowing with dishes and algae. Cockroaches scanter across the floor.

I walk through all the trash bags and head up worn stairs to the second floor. One room is filled to the brim with old furniture.

The whole house has a nostalgic feel, as if I had lived here as a child and forgotten it.

I begin the cleanup process. I know that, in the real world, I am being injected with liquid Freax. But to me, in the depths of my mind, it takes the form of an army of robot maids who skitter about the house, picking up trash, dusting, doing the laundry and the dishes.

This is what Freax does to the mind. It changes you. It controls you. Once you’ve taken the drug, you have to keep taking it. Forget heroin withdrawals; if I were ever to stop taking the Freax drug, I would die a horrible and painful death.

Superpowers come at a cost, after all.

The robot maids toss all the garbage into a portable lava bucket, each bag sizzling before disappearing into the red abyss. They wipe everything down, fumigate, and rearrange the furniture.

After about half an hour of experienced time my mind-house is cleaner than it’s been since the last booster dose.

I wake up underneath the metallic dome of the bialysis machine.

“Your vitals are all good,” says Fan. “You were out for eight hours.”

I sigh. That’s about normal for a Freax booster and bialysis operation. Normally this process would run me about two thousand dollars, but ever since I started working with the government I’ve been getting the operation for free.

I get up out of the machine. As soon as I do, another marine gets in.

“Binder.” I take the cards representing my clothes and armor and equip them.

Once out of the bialysis clinic, I am greeted by Pierre.

“This was the worst possible time for you to get blowback,” he says. “We’ve needed you desperately for the past eight hours.”

“Another attack?” I ask.

“No,” says Pierre. “It’s Ronald Delinsky. ReaperGoon.”

“And?” I say.

“He refuses to talk to anyone but you,” says Pierre. “We’re not allowed to use any more … Painful methods to extract information. But something tells me you’ll be able to get something out of him.”

“Don’t you have mind affecting Freax users here?” I ask.

Pierre shakes his head. “We tried. This man has been trained to resists mind-altering Freax abilities.”

I sigh. “Take me to him.”

Pierre leads me through Fort Lincoln until we reach an entrance to an underground bunker. We ride an elevator several floors down and step into a well-lit hallway. People with lab coats are walking back and forth.

“This is our research lab and quarantine unit,” says Pierre. He leads me to a nondescript door at the end of the hall.

I open it. The room is dark, and there is a shadowy figure strapped to a chair in the rooms center.

“Heh, heh,” says the figure.

Pierre turns on the light. The figure in the chair is Ronald Delinsky.

Ronald spits. “You knocked out several of my teeth with that footlock trick,” he says, wearing a dangerous lop-sided grin.

“You wanted to talk to me?” I say.

Ronald laughs. “No! I want to kill you!” He cackles. “Mandrake is going to repay you tenfold for what you’ve done to me.”

Yuck. I really don’t like this type of person.

“Just tell me what you want with me,” I say, “And we can end this early.”

Ronald laughs again. “Like I’ll ever do what you want!” His laugh is maniacal. He knows that he is in trouble.

I sigh, and sit down on a chair directly across from Ronald.

“We can do this the easy way,” says Pierre, “Or we can do this the hard way.”

“You Americans don’t have the guts to torture me,” says Ronald.

Pierre shrugs. “The Geneva convention states that we can’t torture prisoners. However,” Pierre puts on a very scary face, “The Realm isn’t beholden to those rules.”

Ronald spits. “You Americans have, like, some sort of election thing going, right?” he says. “You do something to me and you lose that chance!”

“First,” says Pierre, “Military personnel aren’t elected.” He holds up two fingers. “Second, no one has to know what happened to you.”

Ronald cackles. “Well, I’m dead anyways,” he says. “And I’ll take my secrets to the grave.” He winks at me. “I just wanted you here so that I could do this. Binder. Tracking Beacon!”

A flash of light surrounds me and my skin begins to tingle.

“This is not good,” says Pierre.

Ronald continues to laugh, and then his body boils.

“Binder,” I yell. “Ethereal shield!”

A shield made of yellow crosses surrounds me just as a lance made of boiling blood slams against it. A foul-smelling steam surrounds me.

Pierre gags. “That’s nasty,” he says.

It looks like, in his final moment, Ronald used his own blood as a weapon to try and kill me.

“Is there a card to remove tracking beacons?” I ask.

“It’s a Gold Card,” says Pierre. “And the US government does not have one.”

This is going to affect my work. Now, Mandrake and his goons are going to know exactly where I am at all times.

Not good.

I examine Ronald’s body. His skin has shriveled, and all the blood in his body is gone.

“Nasty,” says Pierre. He puts his hand to his ear. “Yeah. Call the biohazard cleanup crew.” He puts his hand down. “Sorry to subject you to this,” he says.

“I’ve seen worse,” I say. Though, the room is giving me some strange vibes. I back out as slow as I can and let Pierre close the door.

I stand in the hallway, my hands in my pockets.

Pierre sighs. “He pulled one over on us,” he says.

I shake my head. “You had no idea.”

“I should have anticipated that!” says Pierre. “I’m a veteran of the Realm.” He grits his teeth. “But, to tell you the truth, I’ve never actually been in a real binder battle.” He turns away from me. “And it showed.”

I put my arm on Pierre’s shoulder. “I can deal with this,” I say. “As soon as Mandrake and his goons are dead, I’ll be safe. I just have to strike first.”

“Right,” says Pierre. “We’ll support you all the way.”

I walk to the elevator and take it up to the surface. Pierre is silent.

Garnet is leaning against a wall outside the entrance to the underground bunker. “Did you get anything out of him?” she asks.

I shake my head. “He put a tracker on me and then killed himself.”

Garnet scoffs. “He deserved whatever he got,” she says.

“It’s going to get tough,” I say. “Mandrake will most likely continue to retaliate. Now that he knows where I am at all times, I’ll have a lot of difficulty sneaking up on him.”

“So what are you going to do?” asks Garnet.

“I have a plan,” I say. “It involves the card Focus Teleport. You have some of those, right?”

Garnet shrugs. “I mean, yeah. We have a lot of cards here.”

“Get me two copies of Focus Teleport,” I say. “And ID some sort of physical object that both of Mandrake’s remaining underlings are in possession of that they may leave in a place I can reach.”

“Um, okay,” says Garnet. “That’s a pretty specific order.”

“It’s necessary,” I say.

“I’ll get our intel team on it,” says Pierre.

Pierre and Garnet split to do their respective jobs. I sit down on a metal bench and put my chin in my hands, watching the X-marines walk past. They’re doing some sort of tank exercise, and about a dozen Abrams tanks are rolling across the demonstration grounds.

A man wearing a black fedora approaches me. I recognize the pin on his lapel; it’s the emblem of the Black Marches.

“You’re pretty brazen to make your way into a US military base,” I say, as the man sits down next to me.

The man tips his hat. “Indeed,” he says. “I have a message to deliver. Someone has put a hit out on you.”

“I had guessed that,” I say. “Why are you telling me this?”

“That someone is an enemy,” says the man. “As the saying goes, the enemy of my enemy is my friend, yes?”

“Hah,” I say. “Mandrake Signa must have done something stupid to get on the bad side of the Black Marches.”

“It’s not Mandrake,” says the man. “Mandrake is cookies compared to the person we’re talking about.”

“Sure,” I say. “But my job is to deal with Mandrake.”

“And that’s what you’ll do,” says the man. “Just keep a few Ethereal Shield cards handy.” He passes me half of a medallion. It looks like the metal has been sheared with powerful bolt cutters.

“This is one half of the Gold Card called Rainbow Coin,” says the man. “And Mandrake has the other half. Once you unite the two pieces, something special will happen.”

“You obviously gain something from that, right?” I say.

The man shrugs. “Of course. I work for profit, after all.” He winks. “And you might receive a reward as well.”

“What’s to stop me from keeping the card?” I say.

The man stands up. “You won’t.” He pulls out a black card. “Evecin.” A familiar pillar of light surrounds him and then he is gone.

Garnet runs up to where I am sitting. “I just saw a transfer light,” she says. “What happened?”

I shake my head. “Just a secret organization contacting me to give me a job,” I say. I hold up the half of the Gold Card. “Do you know what this is?”

“No,” says Garnet. She takes it from me and looks at it under the sunlight. “Isn’t this Bismuth Bronze?”

“I guess,” is say. “I’m no expert on metals.”

Garnet hands the half medallion back to me. “Well, if you do actually find a gold card, the government will buy it off you for an exorbitant price.”

“What are we talking?” I ask.

“Millions,” says Garnet.

Is that what the Black Marches representative meant when he said I wouldn’t keep it?

“Card,” I say.

The medallion stays inert.

“Card,” I say again.

The medallion refuses to turn into card form. I slip it into my pocket.

“Mandrake Signa has the other half,” I say.

“Looks like you have another reason to do your job,” says Garnet.  

“Sure,” I say. “As if I didn’t already have enough of a reason.”

Garnet turns away from me. “I’ll contact you via telepathy if I find out anything more.” Then she heads towards the HQ building.

It’s time to get to work capturing my next target.