Major stuff happening in this chapter and the stuff. Big stuff, cool stuff. Weee.
You know, I'm probably going to go back and re-write the earlier chapters of Twist, maybe release them as revised editions. I really don't like the way they read now compared to these newer chapters. Basically, they're crap in comparison.
Also: There's been some talk from multiple people about the whole dismantling-JC's-body thing. Someone on the forums brought up a good point - Artistic lisence. Needless to say, this isn't the same Deus Ex you played, kiddies. It's a bit darker, a bit grittier, and a bit less sane.
Oh, and by the way. Send me some friggin' mail. I've been getting almost none as of late. Thank ye, matey! Arrr!
--- --- --- --- CHAPTER ELEVEN
--- --- --- ---
There was a sudden light. Excruciating light that cannot be comprehended by sight, and so expands to all other senses, drowning Dominic in a nonexistent expanse. For a moment he felt completely peaceful, for peace often comes wrapped in void, and then the smell of his own sweat entered his nostrils, and he returned to the physical world.
Now the brilliant white changed to various shades of every color imaginable. These colors swam around his body like a magnificent wind, manipulating the appearance of his clothing. It was almost beautiful, the multitude of things he could see. He tried to turn his head, but it remained stationary. He wanted to see all of it. He wanted to drink the beauty around him. And then there was a loud noise.
A whirring, followed by several noises made only by machines. Noises fathomed only by great bodies of metal. The colors paused. Then began again. And then paused.
Everything shut down with a low hum.
Dominic was once again standing in the large operating room, beneath the behometh of a machine that Tong used for a wide range of tasks.
The room was suddenly very plain. The walls were of blank metal. The brilliant colors were gone. Dom looked at his hands. Nothing changed. The process was completely painless. He looked up, to Tong, who was framed in a lit window near the ceiling.
There was the whine of an intercom. Tong's voice cut through. "There doesn't appear to be anything physically wrong with you. Actually, you seem to be in perfect health. That's a good sign." He paused and pressed some buttons on the numerous terminals before him, then allowed a frown. "Okay, you can come back up. This analysis has told me nothing of use."
Dom nodded slowly. He blinked the spots from his eyes and headed towards the stairway leading back up to Tong's level.
Jaime and Alex had disappeared to other places in the compound. Their tracking bugs had earlier been deactivated and destroyed.
Jess was nowhere to be seen.
"So," Tong began, still facing the operating room window as Dominic approached. "You can't die."
"Yeah," Dominic quietly acknowledged. His mouth was rather dry.
Tong turned around and looked at him.
"Forgive me if that's a little hard to believe," Tracer said. He swallowed. "Though it's hard to doubt, with as many witnesses as in your case. But people sometimes hesitate to believe things that have happened immediately before their eyes."
Another pause.
Tong shifted. "I don't suppose there's an easy way to prove it."
"There is," Dominic said. "I could crack my neck in front of you. You could shoot me through the face if you wanted. Or maybe I could just mash my head against this terminal until it became no more than pulp. My head, that is. Any way you do it, I still feel pain. Pain has become..." He trailed off.
Tong didn't know what to say. Dominic looked around, and drew a heavy breath.
"Is there anything else you need from me?"
Tong shook his head.
Dominic left the room.
--- --- --- ---
Jock looked upwards, towards the majestic, wispy array of clouds in the deeply orange sky. Framed within it was the dark silhouette of his destination; It loomed upwards before him, ascending to its lofty glass pinnacle, lost somewhere in its own elevation. Maggie Chow's hotel did not impress Jock. Neither did Maggie Chow.
It was common knowledge that Miss Chow was a snake. She was famous; The young, beautiful actress appeared in films worldwide. Men lusted for her as they did for their cars. Large sums of money gradually became pocket change. This situation led to the most probable outcome imaginable for the weak-minded: Greed. Unstoppable self-indulgence, and the vicious decay of morals.
Maggie worked for MJ12.
She tried to keep it entirely secretive, and it was, but not entirely. Youth and greed often equates folly. Maggie Chow was no different. People knew things that were dangerous to her, and she was clueless to that.
The Luminous Path had suspected Miss Chow for longer than desirable. Either of the Dentons would have already investigated her operations if either of them still existed in a form other than rotting flesh. Jock was the only one left who could be trusted with the job.
He didn't like it.
But there was no one else who could have been sent. Dominic was unstable, and he'd already gotten into trouble with the Red Arrow. If they were to spot him on the streets, there would only be further chaotic engagements. The others did not even have a desire to go, even if they were trusted to do so. Jess was far too tired of everything all at once. She needed sleep.
But that didn't stop Jock from not liking it
He didn't want to have anything to do with Maggie Chow, but now, as he stepped through the automatic glass doors of the building, onto the plush carpeting of the interior, and as the air-conditioned air crawled around his skin, he didn't have much of a choice.
The man behind the counter, dressed stiffly in a dark blue suit and tie, displayed his fake smile for one of many times in his day, addressing Jock plainly, and initially in Chinese. Jock stared, rather stupidly, having only a small grip on the language.
"I'd like to speak to Miss Chow," Jock said, in English.
The man's smile immediately collapsed beneath a frown. He made a simple, hesitant gesture towards the elevator behind him, then returned to whatever business he had been performing beforehand.
She's probably watching me right now, Jock thought. She probably listened to what I just said. He would have been more surprised if she hadn't.
--- --- --- ---
Bishop sat at the well-kept bar in the Luminous Path compound, propped upon a stool, leaning with his elbows upon the reflective countertop... Lost, as he usually was, amongst the activity of his thoughts, disassembling things in his mind until they became great nothings, then piling them back together again...
Dominic tried to remember when any sort of routine left his life. He stopped sleeping on a schedule long before any of the changes had begun. He ate when hunger hit him. He drank when needed. He lived in whatever quarters were available and urinated in whatever spot was convienient.
His life, not different from his mind, had collapsed to chaos long before he ever actually acknowledged it. Not to say that the NSF had impacted his life negatively; On the contrary. He was lost before them... And then when they came to him, or he came to them, he belonged to something, and he achieved a reason. Fighting the shadowed enemy. Outcast into the dark corners of the world. It suited him well. He didn't desire any other method of living. Dominic didn't know how to live. Meet the status quo? Fill a seat in an office? Return home each day to a wife and children? Suddenly he recalled Jess.
A man sharing drinks came to him then and allowed a bottle to regurgitate further liquids into Bishop's emptied glass.
Dom retrieved it. He abruptly noticed a fleeting, pulsating pain in his arm.
Probably nothing.
He drank.
--- --- --- ---
"That's terrible!" Maggie Chow blurted, blatantly feigning distress. Her acting sucked. "Paul and I were... We were close."
"Yeah," Jock said. "I'm sure you can barely see through your frantic, distraught tears. But I'm here for a reason and I want to be frank about it. Tong is getting impatient. The Triads, as you surely know, are at war. This needs to end, Maggie."
Miss Chow frowned. The situation was no longer so amusing for her. She knew where the conversation was about to lead. She didn't want to have to deal with it. Neither did Jock.
Chow's maid, a short, plump woman who seemed as excited about her job as a chicken would be about getting its head lopped off for butchery, stood readily at the bannister. Maggie motioned for her and instructer her to fetch some aspirin. The maid vanished quickly. Jock couldn't decide whather Maggie had done that to get rid of the maid for more open conversation or whether the woman sincerely had a headache.
Maggie leaned back on her expensive couch, lifting her slender legs from the colorful, wonderfully crafted, no doubt priceless carpet. She glanced tiredly at one of the surrounding floor-to-ceiling windows. They were so elevated that, from their current position, most of the view consisted of sky.
--- --- --- ---
The pain in Dominic's arm wildly intensed. He clenched his glass... It shattered in his fist... The drinking man looked at him without comprehension.
Dom grasped his head between his palms. There were screams... Such a collection of screams that they bled into one overwhelming unit of white noise, a noise like no other... And within it there was a great driving force, a new pressure. Something Dominic had not felt before. A new presence gracing his body... And suddenly he knew that Maggie Chow was guilty as hell.
Then there was a voice. Unmistakable. He'd heard it before.
"Ignore this," it said. "It is a temporary disturbance." It was the blue-faced man.
--- --- --- ---
"You're not the least suspicious person, Maggie," Jock doggedly persisted. "You've got something going on, and it probably involves the Dragon's Tooth."
"I find that accusation insulting," she stated firmly.
"So pretend to be insulted. I don't care. You probably don't even know the half of what you've involved yourself in. You're probably too stubborn to find out."
--- --- --- ---
He knew she had it. He just knew. The screams told him... The driving force showed him that sword, licked with blue, electric flame... He grasped his head. He could feel them... So many. They drowned him... He felt his spilled drink begin to wet his clothing.
"No," the blue-faced man said. "No." He almost sounded angry. "Ignore this. Ignore it."
--- --- --- ---
"This is ridiculous. You will cease your rude behavior immediately or you will be removed from my hotel."
"Don't worry. I don't plan on staying. I came here on business. Maggie... Listen to me. Do you know anything about the location of the Dragon's Tooth?"
Miss Chow remained silent.
"Do you?" Jock persisted. "Forget, for a moment, the money, and the... opportunity, or whatever the hell it is you're being bribed with, and consider what's going on around you. Don't be oblivious. Where is that sword, Maggie?"
She squinted. "You will leave immediately or you will be made to leave."
There was a pause. Jock shook his head.
"You are disgusting," he told her, and then rose to leave.
--- --- --- ---
The screams halted.
Dominic stared. Blankly. He did not move, or even blink, for ten minutes. The drinking man made several attempts to offer him a new glass. The drinking man received no response. For ten minutes. All was blank.
Then Dominic returned to the bar. He still sat in his stool.
He felt clean.
Then: As if one half of a moving train had suddenly reversed directions, tearing the vehicle apart on its tracks, so Dominic's thoughts did the same.
Something different had just happened to him.
He was used to having strange experiences. He was used to the ringing in his ears and the way the headaches built towards the front of his head, then tingled slowly, languidly throughout the rest. But this was new. Never before had he heard the screams. And they seemed to cleanse him, as though the experience was a desirable one.
As though something unusually pure had just touched his brain.
Yet he remember the blue-faced man. Ignore it, the man said.
Somewhere, perilous and shadowed, there was a deep rift.
--- --- --- ---
Rain poured down.
A great vertical apacolypse; Thunder shook ominous clouds brooding overhead. The weather frowned upon Wan Chai.
The sun had almost set, and even if it were still hanging at its peak in the sky, the thick, angry storm would have blackened all light. Sullen darkness lingered. There was serenity within chaos.
Jess stood in the downpour. She could have waited inside, but who cares? Water is water. The rain was cooling. The noise soothed her. She toyed with her weapon. It gleamed, reflecting light of unknown origin.
The magnum was powerful.
There was a noise at the gate; Jess looked up and saw Jock penetrating the Luminous Path walls through the large, metallic doorway.
She leaped down the few steps before her and met the pilot halfway through the courtyard.
"Jock," she prompted.
"Yeah?" He paced towards shelter, with grim expression, his arms crossed.
"Tong wanted to talk to us."
"All of us?"
"No. Everyone except Dom."
He looked at her and then nodded.
--- --- --- ---
Dominic was lying on one of the numerous bunk beds positioned in the large lower floor of the Luminous Path compound. He stared thoughtfully at the ceiling above him.
A clock ticked.
Someone coughed.
There were several men sitting at tables. Reading. Writing.
Everything was very vivid, very bright, very clear...
--- --- --- ---
Four of them made their way to Tong's lab. Jess, Brian, Jock, and Alex.
When they reached their destination Jaime was already there. He had been talking softly to Tracer.
They both looked at the newcomers with a mutual expression of deep concern, or despair, even pity...
--- --- --- ---
Dominic opened his eyes.
All light had fled. Had he fallen asleep? He thought he had. The room was silent. He must have fallen asleep. It must have been late, all the others present must have been sleeping as he had been.
Perhaps he hadn't?
There was a snuffling noise. It was almost inaudible at first. Dominic was almost ready to conclude that he had simply experienced a fault of hearing before he heard it again.
A snuffling. Like a noise a small animal would make.
He sat up and attempted to look around him, but his eyes had not yet adjusted to the blackness, and he could not even detect his own hand in front of his face.
The snuffling noise...
Hair on the back of Dominic's neck rose.
His stomach twisted.
Abruptly he had a very, very bad feeling.
For minutes there was only silence. But not peaceful silence, as silence one experiences before falling into an unbroken sleep. It was the excruciating silence one experiences when hoping not to get caught commiting some unapproved act, or when one is listening for a noise that one hopes will not occur. The kind of silence that becomes so intense it grows to a dreadful ringing of the ears, that fake, self-contained ring, that sweat-bringing ring.
There was the pattering of small feet. Very soft, quick feet. Where had it come from? Dominic scanned the - blackness. He could see nothing. He was blinded. He wished for a light, or-
He suddenly experienced the greatest feeling of utter, undescribable dread he'd ever experienced in his life.
He felt it now. There was a weight on the sheets that covered him.
It moved slowly. Up, towards him...
There was the snuffling noise, unbearably close.
Dominic's eyes began to water.
Oh, my God.
There was the angered hiss of an animal. A very fierce animal, ready to slaughter its prey, ready to gnash at the throat of its enemy and suck the marrow from its victim. Silence broke. Skin crawled.
--- --- --- ---
The heavy door rumbled open behind Gordon Quick. He turned and looked. Dominic stood there, pale-skinned, frantic, appearing as though he'd seen the most disgusting of atrocities just moments before.
"Where are you going?" Gordon asked with puzzlement.
"I have to leave," Dominic yelled, his voice quavering with absolute terror. "I have to-... There's something-..."
He had to go kill Maggie Chow.
He had to go retrieve the Dragon's Tooth.
His muscles burned as light exploded and he was gone.
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