The puzzle pieces were beginning to fit together in my mind. Trevelli had been cultivating Orgiastics in the building’s sub-levels. At some point, their containment protocols were breached. They must have attempted to deal with the outbreak alone for some time, trying desperately to cover up the mess. When they realized it was futile to keep up the charade, they called in Dice to investigate a so-called ‘single sighting’ of an Orgiastic. The people responsible for this were long gone. Trevelli Corporation would be dissolved by the end of business tomorrow. The executives would siphon as much from their accounts as possible and disappear. At the end of it all, I remained; a glorified janitor for this monumental fuck-up.

  A garden? Do you think they were growing Imps down here or something? Pritch asked, still transmitting her thoughts to me.

  There’s no way you get a Bacchanal like this appearing out of thin air. Trevelli was hiding this place under Dice’s nose for a long time. I thought to Pritch.

  So, how do you want to play this? She asked.

  We have to find the brood chamber. The Harlot Queen will be there. She’s incarnated across every Imp in the building. Kill her, and the Bacchanal tears itself apart. I explained.

  Glossing over how you even know all that, what happens to us when the Bacchanal self-destructs? Pritch questioned.

  The chattels will start to frenzy and attack one another. It will be chaos, but it still leaves us a chance to escape. I responded.

  It could be worse. Any clue where this brood chamber is? Pritch wondered.

  Down, sweetheart. Isbrand interjected.

  You’re fucking with me. Right? Pritch asked.

  Orgiastics structure their Bacchanals very carefully. The brood chamber is always in the lowest part of the hive. I clarified.

  So, exactly how many sub-levels of this shit are we going to be wading through? Pritch demanded. I felt like I had answered the wrong question.

  The building plan shows eight levels. However, I wouldn’t trust anything from Trevelli’s systems. I responded.

  Great. Is there a silver lining to any of this? Pritch complained.

  No need to bother looking for survivors. Isbrand offered.

  You don’t know that! I argued. It sounded feeble, even to me.

  Come on. Trevelli wouldn’t have left loose ends down here. Isbrand countered. I may have hated it, but he was right.

  Let’s take the elevator down to the bottom, then. No need to slog through every floor. Pritch thought.

  Agreed. I reached out to the elevator controls with my mind again and commanded it to bring us down to the eighth sub-level. The compartment started to move down before lurching suddenly. Metal screamed as the compartment stopped abruptly.

  “Fuck” I said aloud. That was more than enough noise to alert any chattel nearby.

  “Open the doors; we’ll climb up!” Pritch said. I sent the mental command, and the compartment door started to open. Whatever halted the elevator must have misaligned the compartment; the doors scraped loudly against the shaft walls as they opened.

  Warnings began to fill Isbrand’s sensors. J-readings were spiking. The easiest way to scan for Orgiastic presence was to measure the ambient levels of the psychic disturbance they gave off. These Impulsates had a chief emotion over all others: joy.

  Strange sounds began to echo down the hallways toward us. Carnal grunts and ecstatic screams drew closer with each passing moment. The chattels were coming.

  Isbrand raised one of his large limbs to the flesh wall that trapped us in the elevator’s compartment. A metal cover slid back from his knuckles, revealing two stubby slugger barrels. A brief moment of blinding light and booming thunder erupted from them. The flesh ahead of us was shredded away like tissue paper. Isbrand charged through what was left of the flesh barrier, ripping it out of the way and entering the hallway.

  “Pritch, get up here and hold them off!” Isbrand ordered, scanning in each direction with his weapon ready. Pritch hurried out of the compartment, lethal blades sliding out from her forearms.

  “And what are you going to do?!” She asked, taking up point in the hallway.

  Isbrand stepped over to the other elevator doors, hidden beneath a layer of orgiastic flesh. With his large, clawed hands, he ripped through the wall to expose the doors. He opened them with a mental command and leaned into the shaft, looking down.

  “I’m improvising!” Isbrand shouted, his voice echoing through the elevator shaft. Pritch did not know the other mental command Isbrand had sent to the building’s elevator. I, however, knew precisely what Isbrand was planning.

  The other elevator compartment was traveling to the upper floors at Isbrand’s command.

  “Isbrand, don’t!” I protested. “You’re going to bring down the whole shaft on top of us!”

  “That’s the idea!” Isbrand shouted and let out a vicious laugh.

  The tale has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.

  “What the fuck is going on back there?!” Pritch shouted, still scanning down each end of the hallway. The screaming of the chattels had reached a fever pitch.

  Isbrand turned back to join Pritch. He drew two long, jagged machetes from his waist with each of his two smaller limbs. The edge of each blade glowed red-orange and blistering hot.

  “I’m punching a hole down to the lower level. We need to hold here until it’s done!” Isbrand explained.

  “We’re going to get overrun standing around here!” Pritch yelled.

  “Don’t worry, sweetheart. It’s not going to take long,” Isbrand countered.

  Pritch was about to yell something back. The manic cries of the chattel drowned out her voice. The first Orgiastics came loping down the long hallway in front of us. The chattel had a long, tubular frame, which it carried on two powerful legs. There was little distinction between its head and neck. Where its face should have been was a verticle slit lined with jagged teeth. From that orifice, a mass of slick, writhing, tongue-like appendages groped at the air in between its frenzied moaning. A narrow, whipping tail lashed about chaotically behind the creature. It had ugly, wrinkled flesh the color of a day-old bruise. It was hard to imagine that this thing had once been human. The only vestige of its previous form was the croaking, hoarse voice with which it screamed.

  Isbrand raised his fist toward the chattel and fired a shot. The hallway exploded in a flash of light and a booming peal. One of the chattel’s legs was ripped from its body by the force of the slug impacting it. The creature fell to the floor because of the sudden lack of balance, skidding along the ground as ruddy fluid sprayed from the wound. The chattel pushed itself along the ground in our direction, using its remaining leg to slowly inch across the floor. Isbrand fired again. The chattel’s head and neck blew apart, splattering the floor in a blossom of blood, flesh, and bone fragments.

  As the last echoes of Isbrand’s shot waned, the chorus of screams from the approaching Orgiastics rose to a crescendo. More chattels started to come charging out of the dark. Their numbers swelled. It became impossible to discern where one chattel ended and another began.

  Isbrand began firing down one end of the hallway in a rhythmic procession punctuated by a loud, cacophonous boom after each volley. He filled the approaching hoard with one multi-slug after another. Masses of chattel burst into sprays of viscera as each shot made an impact. Somewhere in the roar of combat, I could hear Isbrand laughing.

  I turned briefly to check on Pritch. Her end of the hallway had become a display of slashing blades and vivisected chattel. Each new creature that drew near looked as if it had been shoved through a sieve. If you were too close to her, pieces of you scattered away into ribbons and blood splatter.

  “Whatever you’ve got cooking better happen soon Isbrand!” Pritch screamed over the chaos.

  “We’re close!” Isbrand shouted back. “Should be happening any minute—”

  Isbrand’s voice was drowned out by the elevator compartment slamming through the blockage in the shaft at our level. Metal beams groaned, glass shattered, and debris peppered the hallway around us.

  “Right on time!” Isbrand called, rushing back to the elevator shaft. “Pritch, come on!”

  Pritch disengaged from the chattel, running to join Isbrand at the edge of the shaft.

  “Now what?!” She demanded.

  Isbrand scooped Pritch up in one arm and jumped into the elevator shaft before she could even voice a protest. He landed on part of the metal framing that separated the compartments. Isbrand leaped across the shaft to the wall under the remaining compartment. His claws dug into the metal, gaining purchase and letting him hang there.

  On the opposite side of the shaft, the chattels had started to pour through the opened doors after us. The creatures sailed down the shaft, their bodies slamming into the walls and metal beams. They sank into the darkness below us, still screaming wildly.

  The stream of Orgiastics continued to rush through the doors and fall to their deaths for several agonizing moments. Chattels were vicious, horrific creatures, but they had very little in the way of actual sentience left. They were already doomed once the first crossed the threshold and sailed over the edge.

  The last chattel disappeared into the shadows. I listened to the jubilant cries of ecstasy wilt into muted silence. I couldn’t believe it. Isbrand’s mad plan worked. I sent a scan down the shaft, updating our map. The structure was in ruins at the bottom. But, there was the bottom we had been hoping for. Express access to the brood chamber. He was never going to let me live it down.

  “What the fuck was that?!” Pritch shouted.

  “That… was improvising,” Isbrand said. He sounded as if everything had gone to plan.

  “Do me a favor, sweetheart, the next time you want to improvise? Leave my ass out of it!!” Pritch had knives in her voice. Her one eye blazed wide and focused on Isbrand.

  “Speaking of ass,” Isbrand spoke as he shifted the hand he carried her with as if to emphasize his words.

  I thought I saw Pritch’s eye widen further.

  “You wanna keep that hand?” Pritch asked. She always reminded me of a growling cat in her particularly enflamed moments.

  “I’m rather fond of it. Maybe a little more right now.” Isbrand feigned a nonchalant demeanor.

  I was sure of it. I saw Pritch’s eye twitch.

  “If you don’t let go of me right now…” Pritch snarled.

  Isbrand laughed. I recoiled at the haunting mix of malice and mirth.

  “Of all the things you chose to say…” Isbrand muttered.

  Then he dropped her.

  Pritch was too stunned to react. The sheer surprise of it all was painted across her face.

  I don’t know what made me reach out to catch her. But I did.

  She was solidly in my grasp and held closer than I imagined.

  To her, it must have seemed just a mischievous prank. Pritch started to laugh as well.

  She liked it.

  “That had to be the worst one!” Isbrand shouted like he’d just played the greatest trick in the world.

  Who’s to say? Perhaps he had.

  Whatever the case, it was at my expense.

  I felt outraged. It passed quickly into confusion.

  I didn’t know why I had been so angry in that moment.

  Isbrand and Pritch laughed together.

  I dampened every sense I had to zero. I was nowhere and nothing in an instant.

  I stopped laughing. Why wasn’t I laughing with Pritch? Elias had shut himself off. I felt like kicking myself in my own fucking jaw. I had never been so happy this Incarnum had no face.

  “Now. Let’s get our job done with these Imps. I can think of much better ways to spend our time than this.” I said, carefully drawing down the situation.

  Pritch flashed me a final smile before jabbing my metal frame with a bladed elbow.

  “Don’t fucking do that, you prick!” She huffed. She sure was making this easy on me.

  “And deprive you of a good time?” I asked. “Not on your life.”

  “Uh-huh. It’s going to be your life next time you fuck with me,” Pritch warned.

  “I’ll keep that in mind,” I lied.

  Pritch jumped out of my arm and clamped onto the wall nearby.

  “Last one down buys the drinks after…” She spoke as she beckoned me with her finger. She let go of the wall before I could even process her words. I let her get a head start. I didn’t mind buying the drinks.

  I did, however, need Elias.

  Time to wake up, buddo! I thought, reaching out mentally and reenabling Elias’ senses.

  The light switched on. Isbrand and I were alone.

  “Now is not the time for this shit!” Isbrand hissed.

  “I will leave!” I threatened.

  “And do what?! Go where?! Back to Maria and say you failed?” Isbrand asked. He was right again, and I hated him for it even more this time.

  “No,” I admitted.

  “Exactly. You are here. Right now. With me. I’ve got this.” Isbrand assured me.

  “And that’s why I’m afraid,” I admitted.