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Arc F1.8 | Chapter 12: That Isn’t How xpherns Work

Vtraní was already tugging Curtisal behind them as the three of them exited the building that housed the children’s apartment. Anarch shifted in front of them, Vtraní pulling their abilities into a configuration that swept out in front of the young woman, pushing the attack that was shooting their way out of existence—their attacker’s energy falling back into the aether—while simultaneously pulling their power taut around themself and Curtisal so Anarch could be free of their control of the aether.The girl was powerful, but even she wasn’t powerful enough to counter Vtraní’s near-impenetrable Control. Low-dev lavender codes could occasionally touch them—slip free of their control of the aether with their own overwhelming abilities; even that was rare.

Anarch exploded forward, slipping through a barrage of attacks coming from down the street, her energy slamming outward as Vtraní called after her to be careful.

they muttered, Curtisal holding up one of their xpherns to determine who, exactly, had been attacking them. It zoomed in, giving them an image of—

Vtraní grumbled, tugging Curtisal along as the boy called out to Anarch that it was fine to kill their attacker, one of Fräthk’s more ambitious captives who had long-coveted Curtisal’s position as the minder of Fräthk’s security systems. Apparently, in the chaos, they’d decided to try and kill the boy—it would be easy enough to slip away and blame it on someone else, after all.

Idiot. Even young as she was, there were very few people who could take Anarch, and to try and touch her friend? To dare try to take his life in an attack that, had Vtraní not been there, might have succeeded?

Behind them, an explosion went off, their attacker’s screams filling the otherwise silent void of the city—that was good. Easier for them to get where they were going when no one was around.

Curtisal asked, flipping through security cameras on his xphern as he was dragged along. xpherns weren’t meant to be used one-handed, and while Vtraní had seen some amputees manage to make it work, it was always cumbersome. Curtisal neither used it one-handed nor use it one-handed; instead, he had attached one of his creations to his arm, plugging the second into the circuitry he had long ago installed throughout his body. This particular plugged into the hinge of his elbow, allowing him control of the metal fingers. It was disturbing, Vtraní had always thought, the way in which the boy could alter and extend his body through prosthetic limbs with so much ease, as though his body had always been meant to have more arms and hands, more veins of metal running through him. The most he’d seen Curtisal wear was four—an extra hand attached to each arm, another set of arms jutting out of his shoulders.

To be capable of not only managing so many limbs but also controlling them when the human minds were not meant to have so limbs, not meant to be doing so many finicky things with each limb, finger, nail—it was a lot, and despite how the boy be cute and soft-spoken, he was just as much a monster of power and innovation as Fräthk had always hoped he would become.

Fräthk, however, was the short-sighted idiot they had always been. Just as they had taught Porsq too much without first gaining the child’s allegiance, so too had they done with Curtisal, and now, with any luck, Fräthk would lose both.

Vtraní replied as they shifted into the alley that would lead to Curtisal’s workshop—a little control mechanism from Fräthk, refusing to allow Curtisal a home with an internal workshop. As long as most of their creations were confined to another location, he couldn’t hole up inside their apartment and remove himself from Fräthk’s influence, after all.

Behind them, another explosion went off, another voice screaming—apparently Anarch had found someone else to play with. The xphern on Vtraní’s right side—the one they had taken from Curtisal to message their contact at The Black Knot—buzzed.

Curtisal said, sliding his surveillance xphern away and tugging the one he’d been using to act as an informant for the Baalphorian organization out of Vtraní’s waistband.

That wasn’t an easy question to answer. What Vtraní themself were going to do was get Curtisal and Anarch out of the city. If Fräthk found out that Curtisal had been acting as an informant for anyone, they would kill the boy. It wouldn’t matter that they’d been giving The Black Knot, who had little reach within their nation outside of occasional side-missions with the Drinarna, information. An informant was an informant, and the fact that Curtisal had been giving The Black Knot information in hopes that some sort of incident would occur and they could either ask Baalphoria for help getting himself and Anarch out of Falmíer that it would become something like this disaster and they’d be able to use the distraction to escape?

Yeah, if Fräthk found out they would order both killed. Valuable or not, if Curtisal couldn’t be trusted, there was no point in keeping the young man around.

Within their mind, Vtraní weighed all they knew about The Black Knot and the Baalphorian government, added in what he’d seen of the clones both before today and within all of the footage of them, all of the stories of them trying to herd Olivier’s students back to the embassy.

they replied, Curtisal muttering off that they weren’t gonna say but

he noted, as though Sireth weren’t half the city away, as though Vtraní hadn’t been a monster their entire life.

It was one thing to rescue children and young adults and captives who had never counted themselves amoung as stupid as that term was. They were not loyal to Fräthk; they were simply people who knew that following their master’s orders was less painful than refusing. It was still painful, but Vtraní knew worse pain—knew their fingernails being pried off, their nerves exposed to heat and ice, to drops of acid and cooling breaths and saliva. They knew starvation, each rib popping out, their heart being eaten away as their body attempted to find it could use for energy. They knew what it felt like to be laid out on hot coals, buried under mountains of dirt, buried under hoards of bugs, each clamping down on their flesh because they were just as starving as Vtraní themself.

There was, in the end, only so much torture someone could take, doctors tugging them back from the brink, before they broke and became to Fräthk. Death would have been better, but Fräthk wouldn’t do it, and Vtraní couldn’t bring themself to cut their life to an end.

Some people, Fräthk would kill for the smallest of slights. Vtraní would likely have to kill Fräthk themself for anyone to bother thinking them so much a risk that killing them was the only option.

Vtraní replied.

Vtraní asked, accepting back the xphern when they arrived at Curtisal’s workshop, the boy handing it over so they could work on opening the place up—it had just as much security as Curtisal and Anarch’s apartment.

Skimming through the few messages that Curtisal had exchanged with their Black Knot contact, it didn’t take long for Vtraní to realize the source of the strangeness: Curtisal had never actually told them he worked for Fräthk. As a result, the contact had no idea they were likely trying to decipher the chat each of them had buzzing on and on within their work xpherns.

Contemplating the pros and cons of outright telling the contact that they were part of Fräthk’s group, Vtraní instead told the person they could try to help them decipher to code, but that most of the criminals within the city used a program within their xphern to decipher it. As Curtisal managed that program, he might be able to explain to someone how to design something for a Censor to decipher it, but with so little time…

the contact replied, adding that, as the person was simply related to a member, they had a xphern that was still working, but while they had access to the chat, they seemingly had no deciphering program.

Curtisal noted when asked about it, the last of his locks popping open. There was a faster way inside, but as they would be taking at least one of Curtisal’s death traps out, they needed the opened, and those had an inordinate number of locks.

Vtraní started when Anarch appeared behind them, wrapping her arms around their waist and peeking at the xphern—the girl was just as tactile as she had been when she was a toddler, always wandering up to Vtraní and plopping herself in their unwilling lap. Despite over twenty years of knowing they were not tactile, Anarch continued to enjoy wrapping herself around them.

A short conversation later, Curtisal had pulled out two of his machines and Vtraní was caught up on the reality that the Baalphorian girl still trapped within Curtisal’s playground—she was back to banging her head against the one wall, which, while amusing to watch, didn’t seem like a good use of time—was likely travelling with Clemence and Rayleen, as well as someone named .

Vtraní noted, remembering the missing Lowdouran once mentioning a close friend named Vern.

Curtisal said from where he was squatted, checking over his machines to make sure everything in them was working correctly—they were more of a pet project than something useful; as a result, they were rarely taken out and about. The city’s streets were too cramped and busy for the things, most often. With virtually everyone this side of the city either fighting or hiding away, now was the perfect time to use them.

One of the extra arms he had slotted into himself shifted, plucking up a tool from some sort from the cart behind him. Said arm shifted around and handed the tool off to Curtisal’s right hand before returning to hovering over the tray for two seconds. Then, it was reaching for some sort of oil and dropping that into Curtisal’s waiting left hand. Another hand, plugged in to Curtisal’s left leg, held the machine he was working on still, the metal of them virtually indestructible, just as most of the boy’s creations were.

Anarch asked from across the workshop where she had stationed herself at the open doors, watching for anyone coming for them. According to the group’s chat, no one else was so close yet, but they would be soon.

they replied, accepting Curtisal’s work xphern and plugging in the xphern exchange number their contact had given them for Clemence before adding it to their own xphern and then Anarch’s, the girl having thrown hers their way—risky, considering they wouldn’t be able to replace it at the moment.

While their contact had sent over contact information for all of the xpherns the Baalphorians and their allies were using in the city, clearly, whoever the contact was didn’t understand xpherns well. The moment they each messaged Clemence—whom they had deemed most likely to understand xpherns better—she diligently added them into the giant group chat that included all of the xpherns the Baalphorians had brought into the city. From there, they were automatically provided with everyone’s contact information—much easier than importing the contact numbers from the informant xphern, which none of them wanted directly connected their to work xpherns.

Fortunately, the group chat was using Lüshanian to converse, but when Vtraní was added to it, the chat was… baffling.

To say they had concerns about how such a disorganized group was actually going to get out of the city with all of their members, plus all of the people they had picked up along the way, still alive, was an understatement. As they summarized the conversations within the chat to Curtisal and Anarch, even the latter had to agree—a bad sign, considering how chaotic she herself was.

Curtisal muttered as he stood, wiping a dirty hand over his forehead and leaving a smear of black over his golden-brown skin. More oil and grime ended up in his hair, which Anarch had recently dyed mostly blonde before braiding the now black and blonde hair. It suited him, Vtraní thought, even if all black hair had helped to cover how dirty the boy often got while working.

Skimming through the information on in the chat, Vtraní let themself relax. The situation wasn’t over, but at the least, Porsq would be safe with Gëon, who never hurt children, who never used them as cruelly as Fräthk did.

Of course, as much as the Baalphorians were making plans to get the preteen out of Falmíer along with a number of other locals, Vtraní thought them too optimistic. Gëon might be kinder, less harsh, but he was still a criminal, coveting and capturing power wherever he could.