Chương 23: Chapter 22 – Unplanned Variables

Bracken froze. He didn't move, didn't blink, didn't breathe. And Cinder just kept on wheezing. Slowly, like ice thawing, Bracken managed to unclench his muscles and turn to face Cinder properly. The man's eyes were wide open but unfocused, staring at something or somewhere beyond the here and now. His pupils dilated and contracted, and the whites of his eyes had turned a sickly yellow. Red starbursts erupted, blood vessels rupturing in that unblinking gaze.

Bracken waved a trembling hand before Cinder's eyes, not quite ready to believe he hadn't been seen. There was no response, just more shaking, more gasping. Heat radiated from the man like the embers of a dying forge and the burn that marked him as Stained writhed like a living thing. Dark and fat and swollen, less a scar than a vein threatening to burst. Bracken cast his eyes about the room, grateful that it was well lit at least.

Cinder had removed his shirt before beginning his meditation and lighting the Graspers. Bracken snatched it off the floor and gently placed it over Cinder's eyes, careful not to cover his nose or mouth. He felt a little better without the bastard's sightless gaze staring right through him. He wondered if this sort of thing would still make him feel like pissing himself once he was Stained, or whether the same Planar influence that threatened madness could make him brave. He supposed he would find out soon enough.

Onward, into the monster's den, he paused atop the stairs, listening carefully before risking his descent. The lights were out on the third floor, the darkness deeper for the contrast and Bracken's night vision spoiled by the brightness of the room above. He considered bringing a lantern with him, visions playing out in his mind of stumbling on the stairs and making a racket as he fell. In theory, Pike would be either completely catatonic or in a slumber that a branding iron couldn't wake him from by now.

Bracken grabbed a lantern. At least if the man was awake, Bracken would have something to hit him with before Pike killed him. Carrying the lantern before him like the world's most useless shield, Bracken crept down the stairs, keeping his shoulder pressed to the wall. He kept it mostly shuttered, the light only spilling far enough to pool a few feet around his legs. The steps groaned and complained, no matter how carefully he stepped.

With every wooden creak, his bladder burned a little worse, his guts clenched a little tighter, and his heart raced a little faster. When he reached the next floor down, he gently placed it on the floor by the stairs and crept towards the bed on the far side of the room. He was only a few feet from the edge, his eyes still readjusting to the gloom when he realised what was bothering him. The room was silent. Not a whisper, not a wheeze. A man Pike's size, deep in his cups? There was no way the bastard didn't snore.

Trembling, Bracken inched closer, suspecting what he would find and hoping against it anyway. It had been a gamble sending Sable to do the poisoning. If Torvin was the most reckless of their number, then Sable was the most ruthless. Passage had mentioned to Bracken that she'd wanted to buy a stronger poison. Neither Bracken nor Passage had known enough about drugs to question her when she described the dose of noctar that she would use.

Nearing the edge of the bed, he feared not for himself being discovered, but that he had helped make a murderer of his friend. That worry stayed with him right up until he found the bed empty. Then Bracken's fear for himself returned tenfold. He spun on his heel, half expecting to see Pike looming behind him ready to spill his brains across the floor. But the room was empty. Bracken crouched there, beside the bed, trembling and alone.

He sat on the floor for a moment, his back to the mattress, and forced himself to calm down. There was still the living area downstairs left to search. Pike would be down there, along with his knuckles. In the two minutes it took for Bracken to regain power over his legs and will himself to stand, he found that he had matured. Yes, for a moment he had worried that Pike was dead and Sable a murderess. But as he approached the stairs again, he prayed to Silk that was the case after all.

Bracken could help her find absolution once he'd survived the night. He was half-way down the next flight of stairs when he realised that he should've prayed to Sael instead. There was a dim lantern lit on the kitchen table, and a round-faced halfwit sitting beside it. Pike looked at him, his face made ghoulish by shadow. He smiled.

"Didden…. Didn't hear… you come in," Pike drawled, slurring the words.

"Oh fuck," Bracken whimpered. The fat man giggled.

"Scared?" Pike asked. He blinked slowly, eyelids moving out of sync and a rope of drool dangled from his chin, wobbling to and fro. Not unconscious, but not exactly functional either.

"Terrified, to be honest," said Bracken. The windows were closed and shuttered. The door, almost certainly locked. A chair was propped up under the doorknob, ensuring it wouldn't open easily regardless. Passage would still be sitting in the boat, close to the far side of the next building over. Even if Bracken screamed, his friend would need to row closer, climb a rope ladder, and burst down the door.

All of which would take about ten times longer than Pike would need to murder Bracken, only to arrive in time to be murdered himself. Shit. This content has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

"You're not… half as clever as you think," Pike stayed seated. He blinked slowly again, slack-jawed smile still leaking drool. Seemed like his eyes were having a hard time focusing.

"Maybe, but I reckon you're at least twice as stupid as you look," Bracken dared shuffle down another step. He couldn't remember if the windows upstairs were open or closed and didn't fancy gambling on the question to try for another swan dive. As long as Pike didn't don the knuckles, he was just a mortal man. With arms partway petrified to stone. Just a strong, stupid, dangerous man, with a long history of gratuitous violence.

Pike frowned at that remark, as if struggling to work out exactly how dumb that made him. His sunken piggy eyes narrowed when he finally puzzled it out.

"Slow's not the same as stupid," he grumbled. His breathing was laboured, and he paused between sentences, his tongue halfway lolling out.

"No, it, it definitely is," said Bracken. He wished there was some reason, some cleverness behind him insulting the bastard. There wasn't. His mouth just kept running while his mind was busy working, and his gut was telling him that neither one was going to save him.

"Yeah?" Pike fumbled for a rebuttal.

"Well, fuck you." Nailed it in one. Bracken hoped that momentary sense of superiority would keep his spirit warm on its journey into the hereafter.

"Real thinker, that one," Bracken finally reached the kitchen floor. The table, the lantern, and Pike occupied the centre of the room. A thorough blockade between Bracken and the front door. How solid were the shutters? Could he jump through them, risk a face full of broken glass in order to get outside to where Passage and the others might be able to back him up? Pike wobbled to his feet. The knuckles dangled from the leather cord around his neck, bouncing against his belly. Four connected stone rings.

They'd be bad enough without the weight of Durnheim's magic, easily enough to split skin and crack bone with Pike's strength alone. With them, he would have strength akin to a Forged, the equal of ten men or more. But perhaps only that. It was an assumption. Or maybe just a fervent hope. But so long as the Implement only made Pike stronger, and not faster, Bracken just needed to make sure he didn't get hit. And if he was wrong, he doubted he'd have a chance to realise it before he splattered across the walls.

Bracken glanced at the kitchen, hoping for a knife or a cleaver or something else suitably violent to be conveniently left out on the counter. No such luck, just a couple of greasy wooden plates. What had he done to spit in Sael's eye? Probably nothing. Not even the Aldaryn could save a fool from himself. Pike took an unsteady step closer. Still six feet apart but that didn't seem nearly far enough. By Varr the fucker was big. Had he always been so big? Standing, he seemed to take up half the room.

"How's that poison feeling, buddy? You getting sleepy yet?" Bracken asked, still stalling, thinking, hoping for a better idea.

"Jush… just fine. S'bit of noctar, yeah? Love noctar," said Pike. Of course he did.

"Yeah? Well, Cinder's dying, you know," Bracken's mouth and his mind finally started speaking to one another again, his thoughts seizing on the first spark of a plan and following it like a fuse.

"It wasn't noctar that we slipped him."

"What?" Pike paused, smile faltering. He wiped his mouth on the back of his wrist and smeared spit across half his face.

"Yeah, no, he's properly fucked. Reckon he has maybe an hour tops, unless he gets the antidote." Bracken had never seen Cinder be anything short of an absolute prick to Pike, but the two of them also only had one bed, and the halfwit followed the Stained around like the Gutters' ugliest duckling. He was hoping Pike hadn't been thinking of breaking up.

"Yew're lyin'," Pike slurred, but there was doubt written plainly across his face.

"Glass' honest truth. Those Graspers he smoked? Frightful potent, as black of a poison as they come. Won't be long now till his lungs stop working right. Then his muscles, they'll all lock up. Then he'll start bleeding. Out of his eyes, his ears, every hole in his body, really. Unless you give me those knuckles of yours and let me on my way. You do that, and I'll make sure he gets the cure in time." Pike looked from Bracken to the knuckles hanging from his chest and back again.

His face twisted, an idiot child fiddling with an abacus behind his eyes, trying to do the sorts of math he was a dozen concussions too damaged to handle. Bracken doubted the noctar was helping much either. Which might have been why, even though the bastard decided to believe him, his answer to the problem was appropriately stupid and shortsighted. He pulled the knuckles from around his neck and slipped them on.

"Where?" Pike blinked hard, obviously trying to focus.

"Where's the cure?"

"Not here, not on me," Bracken spoke quickly, newfound confidence disappearing like smoke between his fingers. He took a shuffling step sideways, towards the front of the house. When he spoke again, he dropped the swagger, trying to sound more like Passage.

"I need to go get them. And I will, if you just hand those knuckles over first. Alright? Those are the terms. Let's be reasonable about this." Pike seemed disinclined towards being reasonable.

"Nah," he shook his head.

"You tell me now, or I'll smash you."

"If you smash me," Bracken began. Pike ran out of patience. The fat man charged and Bracken yelped. He tossed his lantern straight at Pike and darted to the left. Pike snatched at him, clumsy and slow. The lantern bounced off Pike and shattered on the ground. Bracken dodged and Pike crashed past him, slamming into the wall. The building shook, dust falling from the ceiling. One of Pike's arms punched straight through to the house next door, buried in the wall up to his shoulder.

He tore it free with the sound of snapping wood while Bracken scarpered for the door. Bracken kicked the chair out of the way and tried the handle. Locked. Shit! He reached for the lock, but the key was fiddly and jammed. Pike was already lumbering toward him again. Too panicked to even scream, Bracken ditched the door and ran to the other side of the room, trying to put the table between them. Pike paused on the opposite side.

"How the fuck are you going to get the antidote if I'm dead?" Bracken squealed.

"Give it to me!" Pike yelled, his approach to negotiations both simple and direct. He smashed a fist down onto the table and it exploded into splinters.

"Passage!" Bracken screamed.