Ravensdagger_Kittypunk_Cyberpunk_Kitrpg

Chapter Twenty-Eight — Wick, Candle Wick

Chapter Twenty-Eight — Wick, Candle Wick "Alyssa!" Jenny screamed over the mic.I winced, then lowered myself deeper into the shadows. No one had noticed, fortunately. The speaker around my neck was still set to a low volume, so even her screaming wasn't terribly loud, but that didn't mean that I could afford to have her shouting at the top of her lungs. "Sharp, keep her quiet," I hissed."Sorry! Jenny? Jen, come on, let's back up. She's okay, I'm sure she's fine.""Fine? She looks dead!" Jenny snapped."She's not," I said. I knew dead when I saw it. Alyssa wasn't in anything close to good shape, but the young woman wasn't dead.I carefully shifted to look both ways down the corridor, then waited until someone was trudging by. The moment they were past me, I darted out and slipped into their shadow where I stalked forwards until they were by the entrance to the room Alyssa was in. Then I shifted into that room as well.There were six cages, which really turned what had been a few apartments into a very cramped space. The inner walls were mostly semi-transparent tarps, some of which were covered in grime and filth. There was an office desk to one side, and next to that, in the next apartment over, a small operating suite. The sort of thing I'd expect to see in a back-alley doctor's office.There were no guards, but there was a man in the surgery room walking about and cleaning things. His back was turned, but even so I could tell he was moving with more alacrity and ease than the people just outside.I snuck up to Alyssa's cage, being sure to stay outside of the circle created by the candles on the floor."See, she's breathing," Sharp said. "She's alive.""Oh," Jenny said. There was a whole book's worth of relief in that one syllable.The mage was breathing, but it wasn't great. Short, stiff breathes, like someone who had just choked and was trying to catch some air. A trickle of blood had run down her nose and down her chin, and from the bruise forming on the side of her face, she'd either been slapped or punched pretty hard.I carefully shifted left and right, eying the extent of her injuries. It wasn't too bad. No broken limbs that I could tell. Her clothes seemed mostly intact, though I imagined that she'd been frisked. Her jewellery was all gone, and from the looks of it they hadn't been gentle with the removal.That was fair. Jewellery was often a magical catalyst of some sort or another. Leaving a mage with something like that was unwise if you intended to capture them."Sharp, I need you to look up this candle and salt thing," I said. I leaned way down and sniffed at the ring of white powder on the ground. Some caught on my whiskers, and a whiff of it confirmed that it tasted like plain kitchen salt."O-okay," Sharp said. "What am I looking for?""Ways to restrict a magic user. Especially one tied to an eidolon." I turned and eyed the others in their cages. Mostly men, one other woman. They mostly looked normal, but one of them had a coat covered in a feathery fringe, and another had a large bear printed on the back of his shirt as well as running shoes with a bear logo on the side.More warlocks, then? I couldn't imagine that they all belonged to the same two or three eidolons. This felt like more of a... spread, than anything focused.I moved back to the shadows, keeping low and slow. One of them woke up with a groan and looked at me with barely open eyes, but he didn't make any real noise to alert their captors.I heard arguing over the line, and it took a solid ten minutes before Sharp came back to me with something usable. "Okay, okay. I've convinced Jenny not to run in. Uh. So, we found something. Jenny had access to Alyssa's stuff, and she had a bunch of files on magic things and it wasn't too hard to find something about salt and candles. Well, a lot of things. But I think we found the right one.""Go on," I said."So, there's two possibilities. Are there lines between all of the cages?"I stood up a little, then nodded. "There are, yes.""Okay... well, that was the worst option," Sharp said. "It says here that it might be a way to, uh, suck the magic out of people? Like a living battery kind of thing. You're meant to use it on like, creatures you capture from enemy eidolons until they're drained."The story has been taken without consent; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.That was horrifically ominous. "And yet these are human practitioners," I pointed out."Yeah, nothing about that here. But there are lots of warnings about not disrupting the salt circles and making sure that all the candles stay lit. There's a whole process to go through to replace them once they're about to run out, so I think that the whole thing falls apart if you just turn one candle off?"I hummed. "I'll test it," I said."Yeah, it's probably best to test it first," Sharp said. "Not on Alyssa though!" she added.I huffed. That was obvious. I sauntered over to the man with the bear-print stuff. He slowly blinked, then tried to push himself upwards, but barely moved before slumping back down. The man had cuffs on, and judging by his musculature and the blood on his knuckles, he hadn't been taken easily. Our eyes met for a moment, then I casually reached over and tipped a candle to the side.It clicked slightly on hitting the ground, but the sound wasn't all that bad. I half-turned, then delicately ran my tail across the salty line.The man stood up a little straighter, and I could see that colour was returning to his cheeks almost right away.I tilted my head deeper in, and he followed my gaze to the surgery room and the man within. He nodded, and I hoped that he understood that I wanted him to keep quiet for the moment."That worked. But it feels like it'll take some time before our friends here are in any shape to fight. And they're still in cages."I glanced up. The cages were... frankly, kind of crap. They were made of corner tubing, welded together with more enthusiasm than skill. I was pretty sure a few swift kicks would break someone out. The front was locked in place by a large commercial padlock. Were I still human and in possession of a bobby-pin, I could unlock one of those faster than if I had the damned key.I nodded to the bear-warlock again, then slipped across the room once more. I snuffed out candles as I went. One per cage, including the one holding Alyssa. No obvious alarms went off, but two things worried me. One, there was that man in the next room over, and two, there was a camera in the corner ceiling. I had no idea if it was functional or not, and all the candle smoke was gathered in the ceiling which probably made visibility poor, but still, if we did something, we'd need to be fast about it.Moving next to the surgery, I snuck my head in and stilled to observe.The man within was in a stained lab-coat. Mid-thirties, bespectacled, greasy hair, one hand replaced by a higher-end doctor's prosthetic, the sort that concealed several knives, injectors, scissors and other tools, but which could transform back into a hand for ease of use.This wasn't a drugged up, addle-minded cultist that would go down easily...Not unless I got creative, and the large tank of oxygen next to the surgery platform gave me an idea.It would be loud, however.I continued to look around, but when I discovered the keys, I was upset to find that they were in the man's labcoat pocket.Well, nothing for it.I slid into the room, then padded next to the surgical bed in its centre. I'd have to be fast, and hope that he was more distracted cleaning than he was attentive. He had earbuds in, and I could just barely pick out the sound of what might have been an audiobook playing.I did love it when a target distracted themselves.I jumped up onto the bed, then leaned over to the command console next to it. There was a full suite of anaesthetic diagnostics systems there, none of it locked. It took three taps to start sending oxygen out of a plastic-tube with a mask on the end.I hopped down the bed, then darted back into the room full of warlocks. There was some groaning, and a lot more motion. They were coming awake, Alyssa included. I had to hope that they were awake enough.Grabbing a candle by the base, I held back a wince as some hot wax dribbled onto my whiskers, but I now had a source of flame.Now, this next part was going to be interesting.I'd really turned into a sloppy assassin since turning into a cat.

* * *

Chapter Twenty-Nine — Warlocks Unlocks

Chapter Twenty-Nine — Warlocks Unlocks Explosions were fantastic. They were also sloppy, loud, and governments and corps feared the use of them more than just about any other type of targeted attack, with the possible exception of biological attacks.It was simple, really. Bombs were indiscriminate. Inaccurate, loud, catastrophically messy, but most of all, indiscriminate.They were the sign that things had gone horribly wrong with a job. The tool of the novice who didn't care for the art enough, but sometimes that tool was still worth using.Fortunately, I wasn't planning on using an explosion. I was merely planning to light things on fire in a very rapid, very hot, and very spontaneous way. That wasn't an explosion... technically. It was a conflagration."Sharp?" I asked."Yes?" Sharp asked. "Jenny looks like she's ready to run across. I told her to wait, but I don't think she will for very long. Yes Jenny, I know you can hear me.""Never mind that," I said. "I'm about to go loud. Alyssa is... somewhat awake. Once we go loud, the alert will sound out. I'm going to need you to do everything you can to distract the people below. I don't know how we're going to escape here, but hopefully unleashing half a dozen angry warlocks all at once will cause enough chaos to let Alyssa and I slip out."And if the girl didn't make it? Well, she was a low-priority person. I was a killer, not a hostage rescue specialist.I padded back into the little ripper section of the room. The man there had turned around and was fishing one of his earbuds out.He leaned forwards, a frown on his face as he listened to the soft hiss of the oxygen tank emptying. He leaned to the side, and picked up the oxygen mask and gave it a sniff. "What the?" he muttered before reaching over to the bed's LCD and shutting off the oxygen.Damn. My time was almost up. I still needed something to light this moron up with. Then again... humans could be quite flammable.I took off running, then leapt up onto the surgery bed. The man blinked, then gasped as I took another jump right at him. He wasn't expecting a sudden cat. He was expecting the lit candle in my mouth even less.I landed on his face, claws digging into skin to grab a solid grip on the man. That was enough to let me scramble upwards. The candle was dropped right atop his head, dripping wax all over and the lit wick immediately caught on his scruffy, greasy hair.The man screamed, which was a perfectly natural reaction to getting a cat to the face. Then he discovered that he was on fire, and he forgot all about me the moment I leapt off.The landing on the floor was pretty harsh. The guy wasn't tall, but it was still the furthest I'd fallen. Fortunately, I still weighed next to nothing, and rather than splatter, I kind of bounced off the ground. I flipped over, then ran at the man.It was disgusting, but needs must! I reached out and chomped his calf.He screamed a whole new scream and kicked out, but I was gone already. A bump against the back of his knee was enough to tip him backwards, and just like that he came crashing down onto the floor with a loud wallop.Perfect! Now he was at my level. I jumped back up to the bed, then grabbed a tool from a rack nearby. A scalpel.It was small enough to hold in my mouth, and it even had a nice rubber grip to spare my teeth. I fell back to the floor just as he was swatting the last of the fire out of his hair. It wasn't even hard at that point to sneak up to his side and allow the scalpel's sharpness to do most of the work dipping into his exposed neck.He gasped and slapped a hand over his side even as I dove away from a gush of arterial spray. Some hit me anyway, but it was mostly on my coat. Small mercies."What the fuck? What the fuck?" he said rather calmly as he turned around and stumbled to his feet. Then he crashed down to a knee. He was pale, dangerously so.I knew the signs. He had a minute or two to go. People didn't die instantly, even to a cut as serious as that. But combine it with some serious discombobulation and a bit of fire.Unauthorized tale usage: if you spot this story on Amazon, report the violation.I ran towards him, then dipped out of the way when he swiped for me. There was blood running down the side of his once-white coat.Just to be sure, I came in from behind him and stuck the scalpel into his thigh. I used to be an expert at finding the femoral artery, but it was tougher when going at it with my mouth. Still, I stuck the knifepoint in, and he helped by smacking it.This man was done, and so was I. I jumped back onto the bed, then paused for a moment. My heart was racing madly, and I could feel the drain of tiredness pulling me down. The trip up here, this fight... I wasn't quite ready for all that."Enemy down," I said. "I'm going to check on Alyssa. Tell Jenny to have her car ready for a quick escape. If... when we make it to ground level, we're going to have to get out of the area quickly.""Got it!" Sharp said."And Sharp... it's possible that I won't be able to save her. If that happens, you're going to have to let Jenny charge in on her own. Find any excuse to break free and get away. I'm stealthy enough to find my way out of here later, once things have calmed down.""O-oh," Sharp said. "Okay."I was about to return to the room with the cages when I remembered. The keys! Right, there'd been a reason why I killed that man.I ran back, found him bleeding out on the floor, and carefully made my way into his pocket to pull out a ring covered in keys. They had small plastic tags with numbers on them, numbers that corresponded to the cages in the room.A few of the warlocks were properly awake now. The bear guy looked like he was finding his own way out, a foot pressed against the door and his back against the opposite wall of the cage, the muscles in his legs were bulging and the entire cage was stressing.I shook my head, which had the effect of making the keys jingle. Then I ran to Alyssa's cage. She was blinking herself awake. She looked... slightly better. More blood in her face, more life in her eyes.The keys caught her attention, and then she stared at me for a long moment. "Sharp's cat?" she asked.I couldn't talk to her, and I didn't want to. Instead, I moved my head into the cage and spat out the key-ring.Alyssa grabbed it with a trembling hand, then fumbled through the keys until she found one that matched the number above her cage. It took an eternity for her to get the key slotted in and the door unlocked, and when it was, she practically fell out of the cage.The other warlocks started to call out for her, then there was a loud banging crash as the bear warlock finally kicked the door in. "Calm your tits," he snapped. "Don't need the morons hearing us. Girl, get the next cage open."Alyssa blinked and seemed almost ready to protest on reflex alone, but she nodded and stumbled over to the next cage.My job here was mostly done, so I did the clever thing and made myself scarce. I hid in the shadows, aware that a few warlocks had gotten a good look at me, but they weren't making a fuss.Alyssa opened two doors before the keys were taken from her by a lithe man with a large fox tattoo across his entire arm. He was a good deal faster than Alyssa about opening the remaining cages. Which left a room filled with a dozen warlocks, all linked to different and disparate eidolons."Well?" the bear man said. "I for one don't plan on staying here to die. You chumps can follow me or sit here and wait to be shoved in a cage again.""Gimme a minute," a woman said. She started to mutter something, and with a snap of her fingers a crown of yellowish feathers appeared around the heads of everyone in the room, myself included. I almost batted at mine before they faded awayI blinked. I had gotten so used to the constant droning sensation that enveloped the entire mega building that its absence was almost a surprise.The fox guy soon had balls of fire hovering around him, and the bear man ripped the handcuffs off of another warlock's wrists with far too much ease.There was a very real possibility that this group in particular were exactly the kind of people that could make a desperate escape out of a tower like this.

* * *