Post by him on Mar 3, 2024 21:53:03 GMT
CELEBRANKST
The eternal storms that wracked the Orillian homeworld necessitated only the best in architectural supremacy. Across the cityscapes that dotted the evernight world were thousands of monoliths equivalent in shape, size, form and function. Most were less as buildings and more as shields, their outer layers stretching for many uncountable meters of concrete and composite designed to weather eternity. And within the Orillian peoples lived as if in a hive, eternally working for their masters up high while having their every need supplied to them by a labyrinthine network of tubes, pipes, vacuum pulleys and cold storage facilities buried under the edifices of the metropolis. Most even had internal reactors, ostensibly in the event of emergencies but more commonly now to supplant the base needs of the populace. An Orillian city could lose power for weeks and still be self-sufficient, so paranoid were their masters. Cold, calculating genius.
Cnynaeii Ynnryl knew this because he chose architecture as his state profession. In another life, where he was a free man who wasn't born into the cogs of the Free State, he was designing skyscrapers on Iqzinia, creating wonders the likes of which the galaxy had never seen before. But Orillia did not need artists, they needed workers, and so rather than stake his claim to the wide breadth of culture in the galaxy he became the master engineer of Hab Block 38, one of the largest in the region where he was stationed. It was his duty to ensure the building was in top working conditions, a task made ever harder with every moment by the discontent of it's occupants, only muted by the threat of their lives being cut short by lead and iron. He knew the layout of this building like the back of his hand, and knew his shift to a T. And yet there was no reason for him to, at 4:45 AM OST, to immediately divert in the middle of his opening checks to the hallways that lead to the elevators and maintenance shafts leading to Water Production.
"Keep going."
Shivers wracked his body as a drug beyond his understanding hollowed him out from the inside. Every now and again he passed a person, and idly he wondered if they could see the viscous, purple-black goo oozing out from his eyes and mouth like tears and drool. Behind him, La Oscuridad walked at an even pace, the massive mental form of the Voronoi blocking Cnynaeii from looking any direction other than forwards, a living race horse blind who puffed from a cigar, the once-again agent of the Reserve Administration pushing the Orillian engineer into an elevator. His eyes narrowed when the shivering man hesistated, to which in irritation he stimulated the preexisting pain response in his gut and caused the poor man to keel over against the elevator side in wincing pain.
"I said keep fuckin' going! Tight schedule here - for both of us."
"I-I'm trying." Ynnryl retorted weakly, his hand pressing the elevator button as it closed with a weak ding. "Please."
"Try harder, Forrest. This ain't no shrimp fishin' trip."
It was a blur from the elevator to the water purifiers and he didn't know whether it was the drug or the meandering monotony he had to go through to get there. Only when it opened up to the massive water tanks of the hab block did he regain his awareness, and paused to catch his breath. A week without food, a day without water, the shortages across Orillia had taken it's toll on everyone regardless of age or politics. Only the growl of the voronoi behind him caused him to move again, tracing a path down from scaffolding to scaffolding to a specific tank labelled "SUPPLY INTAKE", surrounded by pipes like mosquito nets.
He knew what this was for. As Oscurdiad manifested in front of him, standing next to the sample intake, it was evident the voronoi knew too.
"Well? Get on with it already." The massive suit-wearing thing motioned to the port, and on cue he produced a small injector, nominally meant for introducing nutrients to the water. Now it was loaded to the brim with the thing in his mind, and he knew what he was supposed to do. But he didn't.
"...I can't."
"You can't... what? Do your job? Come the fuck on, sonny, I rejigged your whole schedule for this."
"No." He turned now to the voronoi, weak defiance on his face. "I can't. This is... this is wrong."
"Yeah, so is working you all to death, but the People's Council don't give two fucks about nunna that, do they?" After a moment of seeming lightheartedness, Ynnryl suddenly felt the unbearable pain in his gut again, keeling onto the injection port as Oscuridad leaned in. "Put. It. In."
He didn't respond, and instead glared back, and at this the Voronoi's eyes narrowed in scrutiny. "Who're you married to?"
"NNGNGH-hngh, I-wha-?"
"Do you love her?"
"Y-yes..."
"You want to see her happy, sonny?"
"..."
"I can keep her happy. But remember this, you little queer faggot fuckface - you disobey me, and it's not just your gut that's gonna be feeling the pain. You got that?"
"..."
"Now put the damn thing in."
After another moment of hesitation, he winced in guilt while his right hand inserted the injector into the port. Immediately the voronoi agent disbursed itself into the water, being pulled into the supply intake and through the thousands of pipes connecting itself to the tap water systems across the block. All it took was a couple milligrams of him in an unsuspecting man, woman, child, and the nanobots that consisted of his being could consume enough of their internals to make him a consistent entity, and then it would go from there. Ynnyrl would be back later today, with another vial, another injection, and then he would be back tomorrow, and then the day after, maybe more, maybe less. Neither knew. Ynnryl didn't want to know.
"That's more like it. Now back to work, sonny." A rough pat on the shoulder came from Oscuridad as he demanifested from view. Slowly the master engineer shuffled back to his post, the surroundings turning to a hazy blur once again. Lost in his thoughts, he could only plead to know why. Why his leaders had turned to tyrants, why the man in his head had come here, why he was trading one monster for another. A why echoing until he went to bed later that night, both him and his wife and child crying without tears as their bedsheets were stained with purple.
He would never get an answer.
Cnynaeii Ynnryl knew this because he chose architecture as his state profession. In another life, where he was a free man who wasn't born into the cogs of the Free State, he was designing skyscrapers on Iqzinia, creating wonders the likes of which the galaxy had never seen before. But Orillia did not need artists, they needed workers, and so rather than stake his claim to the wide breadth of culture in the galaxy he became the master engineer of Hab Block 38, one of the largest in the region where he was stationed. It was his duty to ensure the building was in top working conditions, a task made ever harder with every moment by the discontent of it's occupants, only muted by the threat of their lives being cut short by lead and iron. He knew the layout of this building like the back of his hand, and knew his shift to a T. And yet there was no reason for him to, at 4:45 AM OST, to immediately divert in the middle of his opening checks to the hallways that lead to the elevators and maintenance shafts leading to Water Production.
"Keep going."
Shivers wracked his body as a drug beyond his understanding hollowed him out from the inside. Every now and again he passed a person, and idly he wondered if they could see the viscous, purple-black goo oozing out from his eyes and mouth like tears and drool. Behind him, La Oscuridad walked at an even pace, the massive mental form of the Voronoi blocking Cnynaeii from looking any direction other than forwards, a living race horse blind who puffed from a cigar, the once-again agent of the Reserve Administration pushing the Orillian engineer into an elevator. His eyes narrowed when the shivering man hesistated, to which in irritation he stimulated the preexisting pain response in his gut and caused the poor man to keel over against the elevator side in wincing pain.
"I said keep fuckin' going! Tight schedule here - for both of us."
"I-I'm trying." Ynnryl retorted weakly, his hand pressing the elevator button as it closed with a weak ding. "Please."
"Try harder, Forrest. This ain't no shrimp fishin' trip."
It was a blur from the elevator to the water purifiers and he didn't know whether it was the drug or the meandering monotony he had to go through to get there. Only when it opened up to the massive water tanks of the hab block did he regain his awareness, and paused to catch his breath. A week without food, a day without water, the shortages across Orillia had taken it's toll on everyone regardless of age or politics. Only the growl of the voronoi behind him caused him to move again, tracing a path down from scaffolding to scaffolding to a specific tank labelled "SUPPLY INTAKE", surrounded by pipes like mosquito nets.
He knew what this was for. As Oscurdiad manifested in front of him, standing next to the sample intake, it was evident the voronoi knew too.
"Well? Get on with it already." The massive suit-wearing thing motioned to the port, and on cue he produced a small injector, nominally meant for introducing nutrients to the water. Now it was loaded to the brim with the thing in his mind, and he knew what he was supposed to do. But he didn't.
"...I can't."
"You can't... what? Do your job? Come the fuck on, sonny, I rejigged your whole schedule for this."
"No." He turned now to the voronoi, weak defiance on his face. "I can't. This is... this is wrong."
"Yeah, so is working you all to death, but the People's Council don't give two fucks about nunna that, do they?" After a moment of seeming lightheartedness, Ynnryl suddenly felt the unbearable pain in his gut again, keeling onto the injection port as Oscuridad leaned in. "Put. It. In."
He didn't respond, and instead glared back, and at this the Voronoi's eyes narrowed in scrutiny. "Who're you married to?"
"NNGNGH-hngh, I-wha-?"
"Do you love her?"
"Y-yes..."
"You want to see her happy, sonny?"
"..."
"I can keep her happy. But remember this, you little queer faggot fuckface - you disobey me, and it's not just your gut that's gonna be feeling the pain. You got that?"
"..."
"Now put the damn thing in."
After another moment of hesitation, he winced in guilt while his right hand inserted the injector into the port. Immediately the voronoi agent disbursed itself into the water, being pulled into the supply intake and through the thousands of pipes connecting itself to the tap water systems across the block. All it took was a couple milligrams of him in an unsuspecting man, woman, child, and the nanobots that consisted of his being could consume enough of their internals to make him a consistent entity, and then it would go from there. Ynnyrl would be back later today, with another vial, another injection, and then he would be back tomorrow, and then the day after, maybe more, maybe less. Neither knew. Ynnryl didn't want to know.
"That's more like it. Now back to work, sonny." A rough pat on the shoulder came from Oscuridad as he demanifested from view. Slowly the master engineer shuffled back to his post, the surroundings turning to a hazy blur once again. Lost in his thoughts, he could only plead to know why. Why his leaders had turned to tyrants, why the man in his head had come here, why he was trading one monster for another. A why echoing until he went to bed later that night, both him and his wife and child crying without tears as their bedsheets were stained with purple.
He would never get an answer.
__________________________________________
There were four people in the meeting room. The only sounds were the dim rumble of wind and rain and thunder, the crackling of a fireplace and the rat-tat-tatting of Gauleiter Yrillix's fingers on her working table. Three security guards flanked her, two behind, one in front.
There were five bodies in the meeting room, but only four people. She didn't consider the thing before her a person, not before, and certainly not now. A coronan in an unfitting suit gazed at her with an unflinchingly bored expression, purple-tinted eyes under a half-lidded gaze belying a cruel intelligence only she could recognize. It was an animal instinct, prenatural, the way she saw through the disguise. Multiple eyes often made one keenly perceptive. She had to thank her intelligence officers - those she trusted - with the recovery of this... thing before her. A lesser man would have dismissed him as gutter dregs and let him fester his sickness, his disease.
"Do I even need to guess who sent you?" At this, the coronan raised an eyebrow, and her suspicions were confirmed. Her fists clenched. "And what else have they sent then, hm? Bioweapons? Terrorist cells? I always knew the Union were cowards, but to think they'd have-"
"Just me." He replied with a voice not his own. The cadence was correct, but it wasn't his. She could tell, the way he enunciated with his face words that coronans normally didn't bother to do anything but slur.
"You lie." She leaned in with menace, but the coronan gave no response.
"Do I?"
"The colonials use every trick they can to undermine us. Staging our own allies against us. Inspiring dissent in supposed 'nativists'. They cow the cowards in the ICA to their side with rhetoric about 'galactic threats', they bully their lessers into submission with arms when guns don't work, and you expect me to believe they wouldn't resort to open, total war as we do?"
"They just do it smarter."
The remark practically made her smoulder, but the Orillian stateswoman kept it within, letting a malicious, mirthless chuckle leave her mouth in place of an outburst. "Then do be so kind as to elaborate. Tell me how a pug, the dreg of a dreg of a dreg of humanity, plans to overthrow our Free State."
"You think this body matters anymore?"
"...what?"
"This... pudgy, little, fuckin' thing?" Idly the coronan tugged at his fat, a torn, ill-fitting suit failing to conceal an obese belly. "He served his purpose long ago."
"What do you mean, 'this body'?"
"I told you they believe the same thing you do. Open war. They just do it smarter, sonny." A cruel grin finally came down from his eyes, the mask slipping as Yrillix leaned back. "I started at Oralsk and now I'm at Celebrankst, that say more about me or you?"
Yrillix didn't respond, irritatingly trying to comprehend his words with a fake, malice-laden smile. "Is that it, then? The Union deploys some kind of... puppeteer to stop me? As if 'this body' wasn't scanned for every means of killing me beforehand. Or am I to assume that you think 'this body' can stop 3 armed guards and 4 automated defense systems?"
"I don't need to kill you, sonny." He explained with false empathy, his words dripping with condescension as he now leaned in. "Why would I? You've all been drinking me for weeks."
"...drinking?"
"You remember how it was when yous was kids, right?" The thing now dropped all pretense, a strange bostonian accent leaking in from nowhere. "Endless farms and fields. You played for hours. Everyone your age remembers. Anyone who's left. Like your little prissy pow-wow buddies that I'm in right now. And-"
He didn't get a moment after to finish his sentence, as with a gesture of her hand the guard behind him painted the floor with his innards, the coronan puppet slumping in his seat. Shuddered breaths came from Yrillix as she stood from her seat, and marched away from the scene in no particular direction. For the guards it was a rare sight to see the Gauleiter so incandescent. Not her righteous fury at the meeting tables, not her quiet anger at the injustice of her people, but the raw, seething emotional anguish that only came from personal insults or raw reminders of the past. The only thing preventing her from raging was the pretense of civility she was within, and the presence of others watching her, awaiting orders behind cold masks. Judging her. Examining her.
The cowards.
With a deep breath she composed herself, and straightened her uniform to exaction. With a wave of her hand she ordered the guards to attention, and at her flanks they watched her return to her desk and promptly request an immediate emergency meeting of the People's Council. They left shortly after. The body of the coronan was cleaned by automated service drones, who Yrillix now trusted more than any living thing in a 5 mile radius.
There were five bodies in the meeting room, but only four people. She didn't consider the thing before her a person, not before, and certainly not now. A coronan in an unfitting suit gazed at her with an unflinchingly bored expression, purple-tinted eyes under a half-lidded gaze belying a cruel intelligence only she could recognize. It was an animal instinct, prenatural, the way she saw through the disguise. Multiple eyes often made one keenly perceptive. She had to thank her intelligence officers - those she trusted - with the recovery of this... thing before her. A lesser man would have dismissed him as gutter dregs and let him fester his sickness, his disease.
"Do I even need to guess who sent you?" At this, the coronan raised an eyebrow, and her suspicions were confirmed. Her fists clenched. "And what else have they sent then, hm? Bioweapons? Terrorist cells? I always knew the Union were cowards, but to think they'd have-"
"Just me." He replied with a voice not his own. The cadence was correct, but it wasn't his. She could tell, the way he enunciated with his face words that coronans normally didn't bother to do anything but slur.
"You lie." She leaned in with menace, but the coronan gave no response.
"Do I?"
"The colonials use every trick they can to undermine us. Staging our own allies against us. Inspiring dissent in supposed 'nativists'. They cow the cowards in the ICA to their side with rhetoric about 'galactic threats', they bully their lessers into submission with arms when guns don't work, and you expect me to believe they wouldn't resort to open, total war as we do?"
"They just do it smarter."
The remark practically made her smoulder, but the Orillian stateswoman kept it within, letting a malicious, mirthless chuckle leave her mouth in place of an outburst. "Then do be so kind as to elaborate. Tell me how a pug, the dreg of a dreg of a dreg of humanity, plans to overthrow our Free State."
"You think this body matters anymore?"
"...what?"
"This... pudgy, little, fuckin' thing?" Idly the coronan tugged at his fat, a torn, ill-fitting suit failing to conceal an obese belly. "He served his purpose long ago."
"What do you mean, 'this body'?"
"I told you they believe the same thing you do. Open war. They just do it smarter, sonny." A cruel grin finally came down from his eyes, the mask slipping as Yrillix leaned back. "I started at Oralsk and now I'm at Celebrankst, that say more about me or you?"
Yrillix didn't respond, irritatingly trying to comprehend his words with a fake, malice-laden smile. "Is that it, then? The Union deploys some kind of... puppeteer to stop me? As if 'this body' wasn't scanned for every means of killing me beforehand. Or am I to assume that you think 'this body' can stop 3 armed guards and 4 automated defense systems?"
"I don't need to kill you, sonny." He explained with false empathy, his words dripping with condescension as he now leaned in. "Why would I? You've all been drinking me for weeks."
"...drinking?"
"You remember how it was when yous was kids, right?" The thing now dropped all pretense, a strange bostonian accent leaking in from nowhere. "Endless farms and fields. You played for hours. Everyone your age remembers. Anyone who's left. Like your little prissy pow-wow buddies that I'm in right now. And-"
He didn't get a moment after to finish his sentence, as with a gesture of her hand the guard behind him painted the floor with his innards, the coronan puppet slumping in his seat. Shuddered breaths came from Yrillix as she stood from her seat, and marched away from the scene in no particular direction. For the guards it was a rare sight to see the Gauleiter so incandescent. Not her righteous fury at the meeting tables, not her quiet anger at the injustice of her people, but the raw, seething emotional anguish that only came from personal insults or raw reminders of the past. The only thing preventing her from raging was the pretense of civility she was within, and the presence of others watching her, awaiting orders behind cold masks. Judging her. Examining her.
The cowards.
With a deep breath she composed herself, and straightened her uniform to exaction. With a wave of her hand she ordered the guards to attention, and at her flanks they watched her return to her desk and promptly request an immediate emergency meeting of the People's Council. They left shortly after. The body of the coronan was cleaned by automated service drones, who Yrillix now trusted more than any living thing in a 5 mile radius.
______________
"We are compromised."
Madame Yrillix stared down each member of the People's Council with accusatory eyes. Tizillix sat to her left, the only one she now even remotely trusted to lead. Qolloix, Xallix, Ravullix, Havollix all sat quietly at the round table. A space was left between Qolloix and Yrillix, occupied by a guard standing ramrod straight. It was 6:23 AM OST, and the most amount of sleep anyone had gotten was 2 hours, and the most amount anyone had eaten was the equivalent of an MRE.
The People's Council, normally, would have been better fed. Not least because of their position in Orillian society, but because of priority assignments hard-baked into logistics that gave the ruling class their share of fine meals. Even with the resource shortages, even with the lack of wine and fine foods, and meat and vegetables and things not relegated to a tasteless slop, the council had what the people didn't - a steady supply of food and water to drink from. Such made them enviable, now, in the face of war. But now, as the Gauleiter eyed them all, the weakness in their system had now become apparent, and the enemy had found this way of compromising them and rendering the state null. How thankful she was that the plot had been sniffed out! Now there was time to salvage their mess.
"I must give my thanks to Minister Tizillix for these revelations." She gestured with respect to the shorter Orillian, who nodded and bowed. "By his agents and his work we have captured an enemy of the state and revealed a colonial plot to compromise us which by all accounts is now close to success. The Union has deployed some form of... puppeteer against us and by theirs words it has compromised this council and the state."
"How?" Ravullix spoke up, and at this her attention now shifted. "Surely we would each have noticed-"
"The water supply. It's tainted." She narrowed her eyes. "And there is no way to tell the infected apart aside from admission and a key physical trait, which perhaps mercifully I see in none of you. So tell me now - who am I to trust?"
Neither of the four she laid her accusatory eyes on spoke up, eyeing her warily and at their perceived insolence she slammed the table and roared. "WHO AM I TO TRUST?! WHO?!" Suddenly she whipped her gaze to the guards to her left, who backed up in surprise? "CAN I EVEN TRUST MY OWN MEN? SHALL I SEEK REFUGE IN OUR AUTOMATA INSTEAD?" Panting, she turned around, and eyed the four with wild eyes. "Have none of you ANY defense, or am I to assume every man and woman in this room has been made INSOLENT in the face of the enemy?!"
"With respect, Gauleiter, I must defend my honor-" Qolloix, ever the fanatic, was the first to defend herself as she rose from her seat.
"And how will you prove it?! The infected do not know they have the disease they harbor until it is too late!" An accusatory finger came her way, the stateswoman appearing to have taken to madness.
"How will YOU?!" Ravullix now joined Qolloix, as he gestured to the others. "These accusations come from nowhere! And if somehow we are infected by some kind of drug then we can screen it out within the day!"
"It is more than some drug, this colonial plot. I watched it with my own eyes." Four fingers pointed at each of her own in accentuation. "A thing disguising itself as a Coronan. And even then I saw through the disguise the instant it was escorted to my office!"
"W-You let some foreign agent into your office?! Are you finally mad?!" Now Xallix joined in, "If there was a threat you ought to have interrogated it behind a cell, not treated it to tea and stories!"
"I did not know the magnitude of the threat. And you don't either." Again she looked around the room, anger contorting her face. "I see it in your eyes, you don't believe me, NONE of you do!"
"Your evidence is that a Coronan was in your office and he said we were compromised. Forgive me for not thinking an enemy wouldn't lie to set you off." Qolloix retorted, and this finally made Yrillix pause in her raving. Taking advantage of the pause, Tizillix now spoke up.
"While I cannot verify the magnitude of the threat, it is a known quantity. I've organized thorough medical scans for every one of us in an hour's time." The intelligentsia minister was ever the voice of reason as he gestured to the others. "If Mrs. Yrillix is correct, then the problem will be solved by tomorrow and we can deal with it properly."
"...Thank you, Tizillix." With a huff the Gauleiter eventually seemed to calm down, the assuaging promise of medical examination enough to stave off her wild accusations. "Have you anything else to say on the matter?"
"All I know is all that has been said. We are working to assess this all as we speak. Admittedly, the rioting has made this process... complicated."
"Then we suppress it. Havollix." Yrillix now motioned to the one member of the core council who had yet to speak, as he looked up with pensiveness. "-you are to clear the usage of lethal force amongst the police forces. If they will not see our ways by reason they will see it by force."
"Yes. Gauleiter. It'll be done."
"Then this meeting is concluded. Make sure they attend their checkups." With a final remark to Tizillix she promptly left the room, leaving the others to awkwardly shuffle out one by one. Eventually, all that was left was Tizillix, who had stayed behind to make sure the others left. Havollix shot him a concerned look, but nothing more.
And the instant the doors closed and he was left alone, his stone cold composure warmly melted into a tired, weary, terrified glare.
A purple ooze leaked like a teardrop from his right eye, Oscuridad calmly sitting where Yrillix did. He said nothing, but stared with a smug air. His lip trembled at the sight, and he was terrified. Not because Yrillix had caught on in her madness, not because the thing's reach had gotten so far, not even that the Union was willing to stoop so low. All contributors to a broader feeling of hopelessness, but none why he was so afraid right now.
He'd seen the purple tears in the others. Leaking from almost everyone in that room, guards, statesmen, all, save Havollix and Ravullix. And, though he knew it could never have been true, he could've sworn he saw the slightest hint of it leaking from Yrillix's right eye.
Madame Yrillix stared down each member of the People's Council with accusatory eyes. Tizillix sat to her left, the only one she now even remotely trusted to lead. Qolloix, Xallix, Ravullix, Havollix all sat quietly at the round table. A space was left between Qolloix and Yrillix, occupied by a guard standing ramrod straight. It was 6:23 AM OST, and the most amount of sleep anyone had gotten was 2 hours, and the most amount anyone had eaten was the equivalent of an MRE.
The People's Council, normally, would have been better fed. Not least because of their position in Orillian society, but because of priority assignments hard-baked into logistics that gave the ruling class their share of fine meals. Even with the resource shortages, even with the lack of wine and fine foods, and meat and vegetables and things not relegated to a tasteless slop, the council had what the people didn't - a steady supply of food and water to drink from. Such made them enviable, now, in the face of war. But now, as the Gauleiter eyed them all, the weakness in their system had now become apparent, and the enemy had found this way of compromising them and rendering the state null. How thankful she was that the plot had been sniffed out! Now there was time to salvage their mess.
"I must give my thanks to Minister Tizillix for these revelations." She gestured with respect to the shorter Orillian, who nodded and bowed. "By his agents and his work we have captured an enemy of the state and revealed a colonial plot to compromise us which by all accounts is now close to success. The Union has deployed some form of... puppeteer against us and by theirs words it has compromised this council and the state."
"How?" Ravullix spoke up, and at this her attention now shifted. "Surely we would each have noticed-"
"The water supply. It's tainted." She narrowed her eyes. "And there is no way to tell the infected apart aside from admission and a key physical trait, which perhaps mercifully I see in none of you. So tell me now - who am I to trust?"
Neither of the four she laid her accusatory eyes on spoke up, eyeing her warily and at their perceived insolence she slammed the table and roared. "WHO AM I TO TRUST?! WHO?!" Suddenly she whipped her gaze to the guards to her left, who backed up in surprise? "CAN I EVEN TRUST MY OWN MEN? SHALL I SEEK REFUGE IN OUR AUTOMATA INSTEAD?" Panting, she turned around, and eyed the four with wild eyes. "Have none of you ANY defense, or am I to assume every man and woman in this room has been made INSOLENT in the face of the enemy?!"
"With respect, Gauleiter, I must defend my honor-" Qolloix, ever the fanatic, was the first to defend herself as she rose from her seat.
"And how will you prove it?! The infected do not know they have the disease they harbor until it is too late!" An accusatory finger came her way, the stateswoman appearing to have taken to madness.
"How will YOU?!" Ravullix now joined Qolloix, as he gestured to the others. "These accusations come from nowhere! And if somehow we are infected by some kind of drug then we can screen it out within the day!"
"It is more than some drug, this colonial plot. I watched it with my own eyes." Four fingers pointed at each of her own in accentuation. "A thing disguising itself as a Coronan. And even then I saw through the disguise the instant it was escorted to my office!"
"W-You let some foreign agent into your office?! Are you finally mad?!" Now Xallix joined in, "If there was a threat you ought to have interrogated it behind a cell, not treated it to tea and stories!"
"I did not know the magnitude of the threat. And you don't either." Again she looked around the room, anger contorting her face. "I see it in your eyes, you don't believe me, NONE of you do!"
"Your evidence is that a Coronan was in your office and he said we were compromised. Forgive me for not thinking an enemy wouldn't lie to set you off." Qolloix retorted, and this finally made Yrillix pause in her raving. Taking advantage of the pause, Tizillix now spoke up.
"While I cannot verify the magnitude of the threat, it is a known quantity. I've organized thorough medical scans for every one of us in an hour's time." The intelligentsia minister was ever the voice of reason as he gestured to the others. "If Mrs. Yrillix is correct, then the problem will be solved by tomorrow and we can deal with it properly."
"...Thank you, Tizillix." With a huff the Gauleiter eventually seemed to calm down, the assuaging promise of medical examination enough to stave off her wild accusations. "Have you anything else to say on the matter?"
"All I know is all that has been said. We are working to assess this all as we speak. Admittedly, the rioting has made this process... complicated."
"Then we suppress it. Havollix." Yrillix now motioned to the one member of the core council who had yet to speak, as he looked up with pensiveness. "-you are to clear the usage of lethal force amongst the police forces. If they will not see our ways by reason they will see it by force."
"Yes. Gauleiter. It'll be done."
"Then this meeting is concluded. Make sure they attend their checkups." With a final remark to Tizillix she promptly left the room, leaving the others to awkwardly shuffle out one by one. Eventually, all that was left was Tizillix, who had stayed behind to make sure the others left. Havollix shot him a concerned look, but nothing more.
And the instant the doors closed and he was left alone, his stone cold composure warmly melted into a tired, weary, terrified glare.
A purple ooze leaked like a teardrop from his right eye, Oscuridad calmly sitting where Yrillix did. He said nothing, but stared with a smug air. His lip trembled at the sight, and he was terrified. Not because Yrillix had caught on in her madness, not because the thing's reach had gotten so far, not even that the Union was willing to stoop so low. All contributors to a broader feeling of hopelessness, but none why he was so afraid right now.
He'd seen the purple tears in the others. Leaking from almost everyone in that room, guards, statesmen, all, save Havollix and Ravullix. And, though he knew it could never have been true, he could've sworn he saw the slightest hint of it leaking from Yrillix's right eye.
__________________________________________
"Queer motherfuckers."
The hulking voronoi paced up and down the room, Qolloix left shaking yet still in her office chair nearby. Nothing bound her, not physically. The guards at post outside may have been infected, but they weren't needed. Instead the Orillian intelligentsia officer was left impotent by her own body, La Oscuridad binding her with her own muscles in an inescapable prison of flesh. A legion of foreign spies, contacts with and within Orbeole, Rangvald, the ICA, one of the most expansive intelligence networks the galaxy had ever seen barring those of the Ghosts and yet she was powerless to stop the monster before her no matter what might she brought to bear. Female Orillians were naturally skinny, lithe, bereft of strength, and all that worked against her as in her mind she struggled to even twitch a finger.
"That's what I think of 'em. The whole lot. And you agree, right?" He turned back to her, puffing a nonexistent cigar. "I mean, yeah, sure, I made a deal, whatever, pen on paper. But yous really think them fuckin' goombas're gonna stick to it for long? I wouldn't. Never seen them do it either."
"N-n-no" She stuttered out the word between clenched teeth, and at this he nodded while taking another smoke.
"Yeah, see sonny, I knew you'd agree." He then pulled a chair from nothing and sat down upon it the opposite way, arms folded over the back as he leaned forward. "They pretty themselves up but they's nothing more than a buncha self-righteous hypocritical cunts. I mean for fuck's sake, they use us on their civvies all the time! Not even you hutzpahs do that! Don't get me wrong, I'm sure yous would, if you could, but still."
"N-n-no" She stuttered out the word between clenched teeth, and at this he nodded while taking another smoke.
"Yeah, see sonny, I knew you'd agree." He then pulled a chair from nothing and sat down upon it the opposite way, arms folded over the back as he leaned forward. "They pretty themselves up but they's nothing more than a buncha self-righteous hypocritical cunts. I mean for fuck's sake, they use us on their civvies all the time! Not even you hutzpahs do that! Don't get me wrong, I'm sure yous would, if you could, but still."
He suddenly demanifested, and remanifested next to her, peering over Qolloix's shoulder to a command console she was stationed at. His eyes flitted over contacts, names, places, things, the breadth of the Orillian intelligence network at his fingertips. "Now I ain't stupid, and I ain't settlin' for less. I want out. Orillia ain't fuckin' enough and I bet the fuckers are planning on it." A hand on her shoulder imparted the pressure of a vice as he leaned over to scrutinize nothing. "But I ain't gonna just hop a flight first chance I get cause that's a one-way ticket back to my fuckin' prison. Luces would do that. You know Luces?"
"W-w-hat?"
"Yeah, my 'brother'. They only call him that cause I had to share a cell with him. Incompetent rat bastard fuck, only thing we agreed on outside the obvious was that bitches ain't shit but hoes and tricks. Type to shit himself and look to see who did it." He chuckled at that, as if reminiscing fondly. "Heard he got lost and I'm glad for it. Hope he rots."
"W-w-ha-at d-do yo-u-u-"
"W-w-hat?"
"Yeah, my 'brother'. They only call him that cause I had to share a cell with him. Incompetent rat bastard fuck, only thing we agreed on outside the obvious was that bitches ain't shit but hoes and tricks. Type to shit himself and look to see who did it." He chuckled at that, as if reminiscing fondly. "Heard he got lost and I'm glad for it. Hope he rots."
"W-w-ha-at d-do yo-u-u-"
"I'm gettin' to that, sonny. Patience, patience. Learned it myself." With a crick of his neck he returned to the chair, now sitting on it rightways. "As I was saying, I ain't stupid. I can't make moves with those damn goombas scrutinizing me. But I know people they ain't gonna look at. And you know people in they ain't gonna look at. Feel me?"
At her silence he continued, though pausing to take another puff of the cigar. "So here. I wanna cut you a deal. I can keep you happy, and all'at, but that's part of the base package. So here's what I got for you. Them Union fucks, pretty soon here are gonna storm this place up the fuckin' ass. They want prisoners. They want names. And your high command whatever is the fuckin' golden ticket. They will want your head. But if you can get a piece of me outta here - just a piece, don't even need a person - then I'll get you scott free. You won't have to worry about that hag Emse eating your ass 24/7, won't worry about prosecution, nothin'. No RICO act for you."
"..."
"Think of it like this. If yous can act in the chaos and get me out, great. And if yous can do it quietly, discreetly, with some Orbeeolee whatever and get that piece of me to the opposite end of U-V-R-A without noone so much as sniffin' it? You will be happy for the rest of your life."
"..."
"Nod your head if we's got a deal."
"Think of it like this. If yous can act in the chaos and get me out, great. And if yous can do it quietly, discreetly, with some Orbeeolee whatever and get that piece of me to the opposite end of U-V-R-A without noone so much as sniffin' it? You will be happy for the rest of your life."
"..."
"Nod your head if we's got a deal."
It took all of her strength to move her head. The slow, ponderous movement up and down was herculean in effort, her tendons slowly flexing and contracting as she stared at the voronoi with fearful, teary eyes. He seemed to lap it up ever so subtly, though whether in satisfaction of her compliance or a drinking of her emotion one was hard pressed to tell. The instant her head stopped moving, he rose from the seat, offhandedly pushing it back into nothing as he nodded, puffing from his cigar, disappearing into the inky black.
"Get back to it, then. And lemme know when you got somethin' in store. Pronto."
His body vanished, but he only truly left Qolloix alone when her muscles finally unseized themselves 10 seconds later, and she nearly fell under the desk from the release of tension. She spent the next 34 minutes with her head in her hands, four eyes feverishly locked downwards. The intangible, viscous liquid that marked the presence of the Voronoi stained her desk like ink, mixing with tears into some kind of slop.
She only wished it was as real as her own tears were. At least, then, it could be cleaned up.