Chương 218: Act 3, Chapter 67: Sowing discord

Day in the story: 24th January (Saturday), around midnight Alex Weatherlight I was lying on the roof of an old building in New York City's more industrial parts, tucked somewhere between rusted scaffolding and forgotten infrastructure. The sky was entirely covered by clouds and the air smelled of rust, metal, and petrichor, an early sign of the incoming rain. I held the Blade of the Rose at the tip of my outstretched finger, balancing it with a little help of the Authority that resided within the blade itself.

I wondered about all the other weapons that were stored inside the vampire's mansion, thinking about whether they were purely decorative or if they could perhaps hold some magic of their own, like my little Ghostflame did. I could not wait to put my hands on them.

"I am fairly certain that no mages are inside." Maya's voice reached me right after she landed beside me. I turned my head to her, while sending the blade into the Domain. She looked like Alexandra, but was smaller than her, about a foot tall in total. Her body and the dress were one seamless, beautiful thing that shimmered with the moonlight's glow. Her eyes were piercing and her hair flowed behind her, caught in a permanent high ponytail."' Fairly certain' does not sound like one hundred percent sure." I replied.

I hoped she did her due diligence well enough, as frankly I did not pay much attention to what she was doing all this time, preferring instead to wonder about the weapons and the songs I'd use this time. My job was simple: pose as the Rhythm and make him seem like he lost his fucking mind and started attacking Edge of Tomorrow's operations in a plan to make them go against him instead of any of us.

It was time already that Alexandra would stop putting herself in unnecessary danger, when others could do her job instead of her.

"That's the best I can give you, boy." Her voice was a bit unnerving, but a bit less so since Alexandra paid attention to that.

"People are just packing weird containers into the boxes, taping them, and preparing them for shipment or something."

"How many?" I replied, sitting in a cross-legged position with my hands on my knees. I took a deep breath to steady myself.

"Twelve workers, four guards. They have rifles and handguns. No one did anything that would indicate that they are in any way magical."

"This does not sit well with me. They can be just normal people on the job, working for them. Like Zoe is."

"Your morals are admirable, Alex. Now get to work."

"Fine." I replied, standing up.

"I will make it a mess, but next time, I want to go against something that would really hit them in the magical guts. You get me?"

"I will be looking out for that. Now, send me home." She said as she levitated closer to me. I extended my hand with one finger pointing at her. She placed her tiny hands onto it, and just with a thought the world made her go into the Domain. As soon as the Authority I was granted partially evaporated within me, it started filling back in at a steady pace, both from Alexandra herself and Ali, within the Weaver's Tree. I rolled my shoulders once, feeling it settle back into place.

Then I stepped forward and dropped off the edge of the roof. I was falling feet first toward the ground still, when one of my singing blades began playing Weightless, ambient music that made me feel remarkably lighter than I really was. The air around me shimmered as my shadowlight settled in, and my body started falling much slower than it had just a heartbeat ago. When I landed on the paved ground below, only the notes of the song itself could be heard in the air.

And as this melody traveled, it attracted the attention of the gunmen that were supposed to stop me. It was time, therefore, to up the tempo and play something a bit more upbeat.

"Hey, I just met you, and this is crazy…" I started whispering along with the lyrics of the pop song that was now playing out of the knife I dropped into the ground. This time, however, it was laced with an identity of the process of gaining someone's attention and holding it firmly.

"Stop there!" the first of the guards shouted when they noticed me. He raised his weapon toward me, and the one that came along with him did the same.

"You can't be here!" he added.

"Stop this music!" the other one added, but it was clear he had troubles focusing onto me, and glanced back and forth between my position and the vague point from which the music came.

"I fear this cannot be done!" I shouted back at them.

"I ain't here to be playin' nice, or to your or your employer's tune anymore. So be that kind and tell 'em if they wanna have beef with me, they will have it."

"What?" they responded, and I really hoped that the cameras on this warehouse behind them were recording this, because I sure as hell could not count much on their recollection of the events.

"Tell 'em the Rhythm sends his regards," I replied, and projecting a thin film of shadowlight over my frame, I rushed at the men. They were stunned briefly by my speed, the magic that tried to grab their attention and the audacity of the move, but they did not try to reason with me anymore and started shooting. There was, however, already another song playing from one of the blades I had on me: Around the World by Daft Punk.

The pattern of visual looping and countless repetition was a fantastic way to mimic the Rhythm's ability to leave afterimages of himself around the battlefield. And so, coated with light, I ran between the flying bullets, leaving images of myself—behind, to the side, and everywhere in between—for as long as they remained within the immediate vicinity of me at the center of the played music.

The bullets themselves were laughably easy to avoid, as the people in front of me could not be sure which one of me was real, I had perfect way to track their movements with my additional sp-eye-ders tattoos and I was faster than a regular human being. The story has been illicitly taken; should you find it on Amazon, report the infringement. The first one's face went white when he noticed me right in front of him.

I hit him square in the stomach, dropping him to the ground, while yanking the gun from his hands and throwing it aside—stopping myself from teleporting it straight into the Domain. I pivoted away while the other man was still shooting at something that might have been me. His weapon I caught and forcefully removed from his hand, while grabbing his neck with my own. I leaned in close and whispered, "Tell them I ain't takin' a rest until everythin' burns. Nod that you understand!" I switched to shouting at the end.

When he confirmed, I hit him as well and threw him aside. [So far, so good.] Seems like it, Anansi. Well done on the songs. [It's not difficult, but we will need a better system, or the moment we lose connection, you will be on your own.] Don't you have them downloaded on the laptop? Are you using the net to stream them? [I meant connection between us, or me being gone to use the computer. I'd like to get away from it from time to time.] You are right.

I could always use the phone, but something of a magical nature would be better. I will think about it. I replied, while kicking open the door to the whole place. Right from the front, I was greeted by surprised turns of heads from the workers closest to me. They were packing something that looked like a big brick of salt filled with liquid into a glass container, then putting that into a box and filling it with foam to keep it from breaking during transit.

As soon as the realization that my presence here was not good news hit them, they scattered away.

"Listen closely!" I shouted over the quiet hum of ambient music that was supposed to keep them awake at those ungodly work hours.

"You have a minute to get away!" I continued, while my tattoo eyes picked up on two additional guards coming my way on a mezzanine above. They overlooked the whole operation from there. Some smaller woman jumped out of a room up there, made from some kind of industrial shipping container or something. I knew better than to judge. Some people wanted to have their universes attached to things like that. Hey! Alexa's sharp voice ran through my head. * Watch your thoughts, boy!

* That woman must have been some kind of overseer, because she was waving her hands around until they finally pointed at me. After that, she reached for the phone.

"Stay there, and don't move!" one of the guards up there decided it was wise to give me an order. They were all sloppy in here. They should have reacted as soon as I appeared outside, but most likely they were busy doing fuck all and did not take their job seriously. I hoped this would send a message to their bosses, but also teach those people to be more careful in the future.

"Okay!" I shouted back at them and raised my hands.

"I ain't stoppin' the count, though!"

"What!?"

"You've around thirty seconds left to leave." I looked up at them, furrowing my borrowed brows—my mask following the mimicry of my thoughts. Thanks to Alexa's memory and makeup skills, she'd made a good enough latex mask of Robbie's face and, with a little sprinkle of Authority's magic, it now believed itself to be my own. To their credit, they did not blindly shoot in response to my mocking and authoritative tone. Instead, they waited for confirmation from the woman who had come in with them.

Instead, however, they must have gotten orders to stand down or whatever, because they all abandoned their post and started running away. The sound of their boots clacked against the metal as they went farther and farther away.

"Good choice!" I shouted after them, while my arms fell back to my sides. I noticed that a few of the cameras stopped following a set pattern and instead focused on me. I pointed my fingers at one of them, shaping them like a pistol, and took my imaginary shot, looking right into those electronic eyes. And as my gesture hopefully took most of their attention, my foot touched one of those things they packed and sent it right into the Domain.

It sat there obscured by boxes and a table, so I was relatively sure they would not notice, or would attribute it to the destruction that erupted from me at the exact same time. During my search for the perfect songs to weaponize identity, I found a gem— Snowblind by System of a Down. It started in a pure eruption of a merciless barrage, like a gun already mid-mag dump. There was no restraint from the virtuoso guitars that recorded that masterpiece; it was clear, mechanical violence.

I fed just enough Identity to make the speaker painted on the singing blade beneath my coat real. And as it answered, another layer of that merciless magic forced the music to become something it represented in my mind. Every beat snapped instantly into shape. The first volley of bullets made of pure force detonated outward from me in a perfect sphere. Hundreds of invisible rounds screamed through the air at once, shredding everything they touched. Crates burst apart into splinters and dust.

Metal walls caved and buckled. The air itself seemed to flinch, rippling under the sheer pressure of it. And as the rhythm accelerated, so did the destruction. Each beat was another strike against reality. Debris I created never had time to fall before it was struck again, reduced further and erased almost completely. At the center of a roaring, perfectly symmetrical storm of force, I strolled forward. The sphere moved with me—my personal halo of annihilation that pulsed in time with the music. A beautiful thing.

"You did a fantastic job, Alex," she said, as I petted Liora, who munched on something that looked like a tentacle. We watched a group of minions move the thing I'd sent in here out of the Agora into the plain that connected it on the east side to the forest that lay farther out. It was here that Alexa had tried her explosions after receiving the Animation soulmark. But since then, vegetation had replenished its losses.

"Thank you, Alexandra," I replied. She stood to my right side, keeping her hand on my shoulder.

"It's going to blow, human," Lóng spat, then went back to munching. I could have sworn he was bigger than the last time he was in here, but it was difficult to say for sure.

"I don't think it will, Lio," Alexa answered him.

"It was handled by humans."

"Then why bother placing it outside? It is below us to care for such mundane things."

"I bother because my belief that something will not hurt me is not enough. I need to be certain. It could suck the magic out of me or something or do nothing at all."

"We should have given it to Victor," I said.

"He would be quicker in determining how it works and what it does."

"Nah. I will let my little spiders poke at it for some time and wait for the news about your little show. I will most likely learn more about what it is from snippets I overhear than from experimentation."

"What are they saying?" Liora asked, jumping to the front of both of us, turning around with a tentacle half-dropping from his mouth.

"Can I join the next hit?"

"The word is that Robbie went crazy and destroyed the Lamp shipment facility."

"That's it?"

"Lamp could be anything, really," I mused, disregarding Liora's question.

"A name that fits the physical look, but the thing itself could be something else entirely."

"My assumption as well," Alexa said.

"How could it be anything but?" the dragon asked.

"You are the same person."

"People, my dear Liora, can have vastly different opinions or ideas depending on when they think them, in what capacity they use their brains, or in what environment or crowd," Alexa replied.

"This is just chaos. That could be true for a regular human," he hissed the word in his usual manner, "but for you? With so many bodies and minds, it's only going to sow discord within your soul." He went back to eating his catch after that, while Alexa and all four of us Personas began to wonder whether he was right. I wondered what Gertrude would think about it too.