Aetheral Space-Chapter 537 - 17.9: Negotiations with an Absent Man

DAY 2

This was not the real world.

Ruth Blaine suppressed a shudder as she walked down the streets of Ward 6, the hood of her coat pulled up, Reyansh by her side. She didn't trust the former member of Darkstar as far as she could throw him -- but even so, she was glad to have someone else by her side here. It would be way too creepy otherwise.

Everything about this place was fake. The snow that drifted down from the sky fizzled away as it made contact with Ruth's body. The snow that ended up on the ground never dissolved into slush, instead remaining pristine, unmarred even by footprints. There was no ice here, either, just snow. Just snow that was just nice to look at.

The people who lived here lived inside a postcard.

There were no shops either, Ruth noticed. That made sense; Haisley had explained they didn't use money on Nehr Mut. Ruth didn't think that was really a bad thing, but it still gave her an eerie feeling as she strode through the crowd. It wasn't just that there weren't shops here, she realised. It was that there didn't seem to be choices, whims.

Everyone knew exactly where they were going, and everyone knew exactly how to get there. There was no need to stop and take a breath. This was a place of constant repetitive movement.

And, all around her, she could hear it.

"I love you!"

"I love you!"

"I love you!"

They said it to use public restrooms. They said it to enter apartment buildings. They said it to get snacks from vending machines.

To do anything here, it seemed, people had to offer their worship to Zephyr Pandershi. This time, Ruth wasn't able to restrain the shudder.

"You got any ideas how we'd dig up this Black Market?" she asked Reyansh as they walked side by side, her voice low. "You've been here longer. How much do you know about the city?"

Reyansh shook his head. "I was stationed in Auberon, waiting for Darkstar's return. Pandershi would never allow me into Zepan proper. He's very… protective of it."

In the end, though, they didn't need to dig up the Black Market. It dug them up first.

A heavy hand landed on Ruth Blaine's shoulder.

Clearly, this person didn't know who they were dealing with. In that moment, it took every bit of restraint Ruth had not to whirl around and drive her claws through their face. Instead, she just slowly turned her head to look over her shoulder.

It was a man she didn't recognise -- heavyset, with a handlebar moustache and an almost comically tiny set of spectacles. He leaned in conspiratorially.

"Ruth Blaine?" the man asked.

Ruth glanced over to Reyansh and gave the slightest, subtlest shake of her head. He relaxed instantly. He'd been reaching for the combat knife concealed beneath his coat. She wondered if this man before them was aware of how close he'd come to death twice just now.

"Yeah," she said, looking back.

"There's someone who wants to see you."

"Who?" she asked calmly. "Maybe I don't want to see them."

She'd been half-expecting the next words out of the man's mouth, but that didn't stop her from reflexively clenching her fists when she heard them.

"Dragan Hadrien."

"In here."

In the end, it was the Black Market that had found them. The man -- Mario, he said his name was -- had taken Ruth and Reyansh along a roundabout route through Ward 6 before finally leading them to an apartment complex near the outer wall. They'd walked through identical, featureless corridors, passing identical, featureless doors, before finally reaching their destination.

Apartment 515. This was where he was hiding out, then?

Ruth glanced over to Reyansh. "Wait outside."

He nodded dutifully. Ruth still didn't trust this man, but if this was some sort of trap, she was glad to have someone somewhat competent around to watch for danger. With a last suspicious look at the mountainous Mario, Ruth entered the apartment.

The place she entered wasn't a living space, but a hideout. No trace of the occupant existed in the decor, no life lived here. She expected that this apartment had looked exactly the same when it was built as it did now.

"You're here."

Ruth looked over. The red shape near the window had been so still, she'd thought it was a coat over a chair or something. But no -- he'd been keeping watch over the streets below with absolute focus. No doubt he'd seen their group arrive.

The man turned to look at her. His face was covered in bandages, and his voice was more of a dried-out rasp, but that silver hair… no mistake. This was what she'd come looking for.

Another fake Dragan.

"Ruth Blaine…" he murmured, almost in awe. "You know, for a little while, I was wondering if you were real."

"What do you mean?" Ruth asked calmly.

The fake Dragan snorted. "A lot of things that happened to me… didn't really happen. I wasn't sure if meeting you and the rest of the crew was something that occurred in reality or not. It's hard to tell, yeah?"

"Oh," Ruth mumbled, nodding. "Yeah. I guess that makes sense. I'm real, though."

"Well, obviously. You're here talking to me."

It was funny. This version of Dragan didn't even have his face… and yet, he felt so much more familiar than Wyrm. This one, she assumed, wasn't nearly as far away from her.

"Elysian Fields?" he asked quietly. "Was that real?"

She nodded, and he nodded back.

"Good to know," he murmured thoughtfully, before waving a hand at a wooden chair in the middle of the room. "Take a seat."

"Are you interrogating me?" Ruth asked -- even as she sat down as instructed.

"Hm," the fake Dragan scratched his head as he pulled up his own chair. "The first time I met you, you were being interrogated. I guess it's only fitting that we're in the same situation now."

Ruth narrowed her eyes. Oh, she recognised this. Like hell was she about to let this guy take control over the entire situation.

"What do I call you?" she asked, cutting off his first question before it could even begin.

"Dragan Hadrien," he frowned.

"No."

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Ruth wasn't even about to entertain that. Whatever this Per Mutation ritual had done, the things it had produced were not Dragan Hadrien. They were fakes sculpted from flesh and blood and false memories. She'd come here to get the genuine article back -- she wasn't about to get distracted by anything else.

The fake Dragan sighed at her response, but -- to be honest -- it almost sounded like he'd expected it.

"People in Regiment RED call me the Captain," he said. "I guess you can call me that, too."

Ruth nodded. "Okay. You're with Regiment RED?"

The Captain nodded right back. "After what happened to Elysian Fields, there weren't many of us left. I took control and built it back up."

What happened… to Elysian Fields? Not on?

"What do you mean?" Ruth asked. "What happened to Elysian Fields?"

The Captain snorted. "From the sounds of it, things went a lot better for you, yeah? Well, it was a disaster for us. The Supremacy came down on us hard, broke through the shield, massacred us before we knew what hit us. Only a couple of ships managed to escape… and then the planet blew up behind us on our way out. Skipper's last hurrah."

Ruth raised an eyebrow. "Uh… I don't think Skipper was capable of blowing up a planet."

"I'm just telling you what I remember," the Captain shrugged lightly. "How much of that is based in reality… eh, I dunno."

"Things went better for us…" Ruth ventured, before correcting herself. "A little better. The planet didn't blow up, at least. Skipper… Skipper still didn't make it, though."

"I see," the Captain said, voice low. "What about Serena, Bruno…? Did they make it?"

Ruth nodded, and the Captain's eyes widened. For the first time, Ruth thought she might have seen a little gleam of life in them.

"They're here?" he asked hopefully.

"No," Ruth shook her head. "But that's probably for the best, right?"

The Captain snorted. "Yep. Probably."

They sat there in silence for a moment, the only sound in the room being the creaking of Ruth's chair as she adjusted her position. Then, at last, the Captain spoke. The light had gone from his eyes. He was a soldier again.

"So," he said. "How are we gonna do this, Blaine?"

McCoy stood at the bottom of hell.

Just as Pandershi had promised, he'd set up a facility dedicated to the production and immediate harvesting of human corpses. If nothing else, he was adept at the production of spare bodies -- all he had to do was create them without that vital spark of life, reducing them to dolls of meat that were born dead. Here, on the lowermost level of Auberon, they fell one by one from the massive courier-tube above, forming a veritable mountain of the dead.

McCoy stood before it. She extended a hand.

That was all it took. Her orange Aether stretched out like a set of jaws and devoured each and every corpse before her, recording them for later use. McCoy's ability, Corpse Construct, allowed her to recreate any physical phenomena she had witnessed and understood… so long as she had enough corpses to build them with. The Supremacy and the UAP would be arriving within the next couple of days. McCoy had to be ready to face their best -- hence her current routine, standing here at the bottom of Auberon, watching the dead pile up.

It would be the same wherever she stood, though. The accumulation of the dead was the one constant in this world. She didn't feel sorry for these people that were born dead. If anything, she felt envious of them. They didn't have to experience the trials of living in order to earn termination at the end.

As the corpses began to accumulate once more, their limbs snapping as they crashed against the floor, the script in the pocket of McCoy's trenchcoat buzzed. Her attention still fixed on the dead bodies, she took it out and read the message from Niain.

Guess who's still hanging around? There's talk that Ruth Blaine has been spotted in Ward 6. Thought you might want to know! Reply when you see this bestie xx

That trickster. He'd noticed, hadn't he? Niain had noticed the quiet fury that Ruth Blaine had sparked within McCoy's heart. She'd thought she'd withered beyond such emotions, but the words they had exchanged on Serendipity…

"You'd spend human lives just for something like that?" Blaine had asked.

"There's nothing cheaper in the world than human lives," McCoy had replied.

Such naivety. Such ignorance of the world around her. McCoy had done some research into Ruth Blaine, and she couldn't fathom it at all. From the life Ruth Blaine had lived, she should surely understand the flow of misery in this world… and yet, she continued to stand in useless defiance of the current.

It was unpleasant.

McCoy put the script back into her pocket, and looked at the growing pile of bodies. They weren't going anywhere. Orange Aether sparked…

…and in a flash of movement, McCoy was gone.

"What do you mean?" Ruth asked.

The Captain didn't blink as he stared at her, blue eyes gleaming from behind his bandages. "Don't play dumb. You clearly already know all about the Per Mutation ritual. You came here looking for me… or someone like me. Why?"

Ruth swallowed. "I want to ask you to join us."

"Who's us?"

"Me, Atoy Muzazi, and some others," Ruth replied. "We're going to take down Pandershi and his allies. We need numbers to do that… and I figured people based on Dragan Hadrien would be strong."

"Atoy Muzazi?" The Captain murmured. "So he's actually alive, huh?"

Ruth nodded. "Yeah. A lot's happened since Elysian Fields. Right now, we've teamed up to --"

The Captain leaned forward in his chair.

"Who're some others?" he asked coldly.

Ruth blinked. "Huh?"

"You said your group consisted of you, Atoy Muzazi, and some others. Who? Who're the rest?" The Captain's voice was steady but inexorable, the look in his eyes growing more intense with every word. "Do you not want to say for some reason?"

Shit.

The Captain was exactly right. Ruth had been hoping to skim over this for the time being -- she hadn't wanted to let the Captain know that there was already another Hadrien variant in their group. He seemed like a cautious person. She hadn't wanted to put him off by revealing she was already allied with one of his opponents.

And, of course, her silence was basically telling the whole story now anyway.

The Captain sighed. "You figured people based on Dragan Hadrien would be strong. You've already got other variants on your side, haven't you? One? More? No, just one. Still… you're asking me to team up with someone who probably wants me dead."

Ruth raised a hand to cover the bottom half of her face. Damnit, this guy was doing some Cogitant shit -- reading her microexpressions for tells. He'd pulled the information right off her face like a cheap sticker.

"Let me ask you something, Ruth," the Captain said quietly. "What are your intentions regarding the Per Mutation ritual?"

There was no point in lying. Ruth took a deep breath and opened her mouth.

"I want to put a stop to it," she said honestly. "I'm bringing the real Dragan back."

The Captain narrowed his eyes. "You realize you've basically just told me you want me dead?"

For the first time, Ward 6 actually felt cold. Ruth clasped her hands together as she leaned forward in her chair, her eyes locked onto the Captain's.

"I guess I did," she said. "But you basically want my Dragan dead too, right?" 𝓯𝙧𝙚𝒆𝙬𝙚𝒃𝙣𝙤𝒗𝓮𝓵.𝙘𝙤𝙢

"You're assuming things."

"Am I? From what I've been told, if this ritual thing is completed, the original Dragan gets overwritten with the winner. You don't call that dying?"

"I won't lie," the Captain leaned back in his chair. "That is what would happen if someone won. If."

"What do you mean?"

"Personally," the Captain said. "I think the present situation is very nice. I don't see that there's any great need to win the Per Mutation ritual. I already have a physical body and an independent existence. What does fully replacing the original get me, apart from bragging rights?"

"So what is it you want?"

"I think it's sort of compatible with what you want, yeah?" the Captain continued. "I want to secure Per Mutation and keep this ritual going in perpetuity. That way, nobody has to die, and we Hadriens can make use of our new numbers. There's a Supremacy that needs bringing down, after all. The original fucked it up, but I think as a team we could do some damage."

He said something so insane so naturally. Just like the real Dragan. Just like -- and Ruth hated to make the comparison -- Skipper. Even the way he talked was kind of similar.

"And what happens to the original in your little scenario?" she asked, readying herself. "He's not dead, but if the ritual keeps going, he's not really alive either, is he?"

Slowly, the Captain closed his eyes. Clearly, he too had realized what the next few seconds would hold.

"Comatose is better than buried, isn't it?" he said.

There was no need for him to keep explaining, and there was no need for Ruth to answer. Both of them knew there was no way Ruth would accept that state of living death for the one she hoped to save. Their negotiation had reached its inevitable conclusion.

Blue Aether sparked…

Red Aether surged…

…and for the second time in a week, Ruth Blaine and Dragan Hadrien clashed.