_ _ _ Bim

  Of all the humans eligible to act as her escort and her cover's personal attache, the fact that it was Treu—her personal Tormentor—displeased her immensely.

  In her vessel's neutered state, any one of the meta-human living weapons in the employ of Titan's Crest could easily ensure her vessel's termination if events forced such drastic action. Considering Treu detested her presence as much as she loathed his, Bim could think of no one less suited to spend the foreseeable future with her. It was purely speculative on her part, but it seemed as if he actually drew some solace from their mutual unease around each other. It was commonplace that she would feel rationally disgusted in his presence, yet there were rare occasions where he would grace her with a look utterly devoid of his standard malice, instead his eyes would reflect a perverse intimacy. She speculated that torturers like him might harbor some warped and entirely fictitious companionship with their victims. Paradoxical as it was, Bim found herself longing for him to revert to his normal, hateful glaring and passive bloodlust each time they vanished.

  In her study of humanity thus far, Treu was the least human individual she had ever met. Granted, the total number of humans she'd had a more-than-incidental meeting with was still fewer than ten. Still, it was her scholarly hypothesis that even when she had met a thousand, million, or even billion humans, Treu would remain an outlier from the norm.

  Bim breathed a stately sigh.

  "Be silent, Devil." Treu reflexively growled without taking either eye from the twinned tablets he'd been reading. This routine had become something of a habit, one she was entirely through with.

  "Calling your charge a devil is not very becoming of you, Abomination." Bim countered, carefully observing him for any reaction to her name calling. This latest seemed no more effective than the rest she'd tried so far.

  "Be silent, my lady." He practically snarled, adopting the least subservient tone possible in his fictionalized genuflection.

  "In time I shall, Tormentor. All things will be silent in time as all things will end, such is the inevitable conclusion of this fragile dimension composed of seething vacuum, finite matter and infinite time. While such eventualities are comforting to contemplate, I find my present circumstances entirely uncomfortable."

  Treu shifted one of his eyes from his reading, the movement so minute that he wouldn't be looking at her vessel with anything more than his visual periphery. Even that fraction of his murderous attention was enough to cause Bim's skin to prickle in disgusted recollection.

  "If you tire of this plane, I am more than happy to remove you from it." Treu purred with savage delight.

  "I wish to leave this chamber."

  Treu stepped bodily to block the cramped room's sole portal. He said nothing, but there was an impending sensation flaring within the seal in her back. This was another part of their routine she'd grown the loath. While the pain was agonizing, it was also fleeting, unlike the enduring boredom.

  "Is this a traditional human pastime? To be trapped and confined in a room under guard?"

  "It is." Treu answered. Bim was disinclined to take his word on the matter.

  "Perhaps my comprehension of your language is flawed, but wouldn't the most accurate term for my present captivity be that I am 'held prisoner' by you?"

  Treu reluctantly turned the focus of his wayward eye fully from the tablet he was reading. "By the strictest definitions, no. We are not formal enemies, and since you're not a criminal in any formal sense of the law due to your non-human status, you are not my prisoner. You are far more akin to an undocumented, dangerous, unpredictable, feral xenos. As my charge, your ignorant actions would be my responsibility— and beyond that, the responsibility of Heaven's Gate."

  "Feral and unpredictable seem a stretch." Bim noted indignantly.

  Treu returned his eye to his tablet.

  "May I read one of your devices?" Bim inquired.

  "Not on your life."

  "I wish to leave this 'honeymoon suite' and-"

  "No."

  "Will you at least educate me until you no longer deem me to be ignorant?"

  "I will arm you with no further knowledge than is necessary."

  "Do you have any intention of complying with a single request of mine?"

  "Not if it can be helped. Now. Be. Silent." Treu growled, the seal in her back weakly burning her like the first crack of a whip. More would follow, she knew they would but she pressed on regardless.

  "So you ARE deliberately obstructing my mandate and elongating the duration of my research into this dimension's secrets. Should I add to my grimiore that all humans can only be expected to honor their agreements when it suits them, or is that trait exclusive to you?"

  The unpleasant weight of reality disappeared midway through her tirade. For a single moment of stunned euphoria, Bim mistakenly thought her vessel had absconded from gravity in response to her numerous visualizations of Treu being violently rent from her presence. Her second, equally incorrect theory was the Treu had killed her, severing her soul shard from its host without any visible exertion on his part. While she was certain that he could have accomplished the deed within her estimations, the fact that she was still soul-blind and bound within her intact vessel disproved this theory. Bim puzzled out the answer to her sudden weightlessness through a long and tedious process of observation, theorizing and disproving until she reached a suitably probable answer.

  She concluded that their vehicle was no longer accelerating and had no appreciable gravitation fields in its vicinity. She further concluded, that she rather enjoyed the sensation of weightlessness as it freed her from most of the discomforts caused by touching things. Both of these conclusions were pleasing to her, bringing about a momentary distraction from her Tormentor and his impending threats. Yet inevitably, time marched on and the momentary joys of discovery and comprehension faded while her captivity under Treu persisted.

  Her Tormentor was anchored to the floor, the subtle tells of bulging grate-style decking betraying where he was pulling himself downwards with the invisible claws he favored. Idly, Bim attempted to mimic the feat. Her crippled body and diminished soul failed to respond, reminding her of her limitations and of her mutilation. Suddenly, any lingering trace of joy she'd felt was gone, lost to her bleak memories. She floated there above the honeymoon suite's overlarge bed and searched for any shreds of contentment amidst her misery, finding none.

  Even Treu's eyes had lost their customary bloodlust in favor of something she'd yet to see in his few expressions. He seemed distracted. It was a slight thing, but Bim found those vacant eyes to be unexpectedly beautiful in what they represented. Her Tormentor was not without his flaws, a singular moment of implausible calm captured amidst a raging storm of potent destructive force. Then Treu blinked, and malice filled his eyes once more.

  "Your kind are transactional by nature. You fetishize contracts and obey them with slavish devotion to your own detriment. Humans rarely embrace such self-destruction so readily. They seek salvation in subtext, the idea that some pacts are more binding than others."

  "All pacts are equally binding." Bim objected instinctively.

  "So you think. Humans will usually disagree. There's a degree of interpretation, reading between the lines, that both parties should reasonably assume."

  "…I do not understand." Bim admitted, once more ashamed of her ignorance.

  "No, you wouldn't. Know this if nothing else, Devil, I am not pleased to share your company-"

  "A sentiment I emulate."

  "-but, I know far more about your kind then you do about humans. I know that you will not abandon this little quest of yours. I know that—as intolerable as I find you—you are far better off in my immediate proximity than out of it. Know that I have my reasons for everything I do and permit or forbid you to do."

  "Will you explain your reasons to me?" Bim inquired.

  "No."

  Bim released another stately sigh by way of her displeasure. The slightest twitch of her Tormentor's brow was the first show of annoyance he'd physically made in her presence. While annoying him hadn't been her intention, Bim found a modicum of satisfaction in his sufferance.

  "I will however, make a deal with you, Creature."

  "I have recently learned that a deal made with humans is likely made on false pretense." Bim retorted smartly.

  "Then consider this a learning experience— an education, if you would. If you can remain relatively silent for the next fifteen hours, local time, I will arrange for alternative accommodations and company with the ultimate objective of expediting your research by an appreciable degree."

  "Why would you do this for me? Surely my silence is not so great as to merit such a prize."

  "My reasons are my own." Treu said, his face a mask of restrained hatred.

  "What guarantee do I have of your compliance to this verbal contract?"

  "Should I fail to honor my end of this agreement within nine hours of your completion of the specified duration, I will permit you to physically strike me—consequence and retaliation free—with one of your limbs, a single time. Said striking will occur within a period of fewer than twenty-eight hours of this pact being sealed but not before the specified condition of my breech of contract."

  The wording of his proposal was atypically specific, almost as if he'd switched to another dialect of the same language. Repulsive as she found his presence, the idea of striking him had not crossed her mind— she'd failed to consider her vessel as something capable of inflicting physical harm. She found the prospect uniquely appealing. Being able to return some small measure of the agony he'd inflicted upon her (even if it had been for her own good, as he claimed) would be well worth the nauseating moment of skin contact.

  "Why were none of my previous dealings with you and your employer this clearly communicated?" Bim inquired skeptically.

  "Likely because most humans find lawyering tedious and such overly formal agreements are frowned upon as a waste of time. This however, is a teaching moment. One that will bear fruit should I ever need to make another bargain with you, Devil."

  "I can't say I fully comprehend, though I do believe I take your meaning."

  Bim extended a hand to be shook by Treu in the human gesture of pact sealing. For his part, her Tormentor flicked a single eye to her hand with as much contempt as he normally regarded her with.

  "Let's spare ourselves the disgust of touching each other and communicate our acquiescence verbally. Shall we?"

  As much as she loathed the man, she agreed with the sentiment whole-heartedly and allowed her hand to drift back to her side.

  "Treu, I agree to the terms of our contact as presented and the punitive guarantee you have offered. As spoken, so mote it be."

  "And I expect your compliance, creature who wears the false name Bim. This contract is sealed in our words, as of now."

  This tale has been unlawfully obtained from Royal Road. If you discover it on Amazon, kindly report it.

  In retrospect, she would have liked to clarify how much noise violated the agreed upon 'relative' amount of silence. Instinctively, Bim attempted to coalesce her present and past self but could not. It was an annoying facet of linear time that she was growing to dislike more and more. The fact that she had to remember events in advance of making decisions and contemplate probable future considerations all while trapped in a single point in space and moment in time was downright ludicrous. It was a wonder that any fleshling creature existed with a modicum of sanity or logic as she could understand them— though she wondered how well she truly understood them…

  For his part, her Tormentor seemed entirely ignorant of her introspection. The idle hatred he commonly wore had vanished, the attention of his body entirely focused on the single tablet he was fervently manipulating. His wayward psyche appeared to be everywhere and nowhere at once; tidying the room into straight lines and neat edges, categorizing items before packing them, idly manifesting heat, light and force. His labors concluded within two hours and for the first time since their journey had began nearly four-hundred and fifty-nine standard hours ago Treu closed both eyes and visibly relaxed. Seeing his body floating opposite her, Bim marveled that her Tormentor was even capable of relaxing. His herculean proportions slackened, adopting the slightest suggestion of a curve at the joints under the casual wear of Treu's cover identity.

  Seeing an opportunity to escape Treu's watchful eyes, Bim reached out a hand to push herself towards the door. The faintest whisper of her dress against her skin alerted Treu in an instant, eyes wide and full of wrath. Bim returned her arm to her side, abandoning all hope that she could abscond from her Tormentor's vigil.

  She allowed her own eyes to close and her body to float in the null gravity, by all appearances completely lifeless. Bim kept her tenuous peace and allowed herself to disassociate from her vessel in contemplation to pass the time. When exactly fifteen hours and one minute had passed, Bim opened her eyes and looked expectantly at Treu.

  She had a vague, half-memory from her first teacher shimmer towards her awareness; he'd been waiting for a present, he'd been well-behaved and done everything his father asked of him. He'd waited with bated breath, just as she was now, for the fruit of his labor. Bim recalled his excitement, the memory's anticipation blending with her own in the present moment in a fashion not entirely dissimilar to how Bim's prime consciousness would have concurrently experienced sensations in its native dimension. A fragmentary portion of her mind idly noted that anticipation was yet another moderately pleasant sensation she had never experienced without coming to the painful, fragile reality and its omnipresent, linear time.

  The tablet Treu had been so captivated by earlier chimed, stirring him from his meditative stupor.

  "We have a face-to-face meeting to discuss alternate accommodations, transport and company."

  Bim continued staring at him in relative silence.

  "We will be maintaining the fiction that you are an aristocratic youth who's looking to explore outside your normal spheres and that I am your bodyguard."

  "I understand the need for this fiction," Bim stated, hesitantly breaking her silence. "Though operating under false pretenses displeases me nearly as much as your resumed glaring does."

  "I don't care. Ready yourself, Devil. We'll be leaving shortly."

  She had little to ready. She was already wearing a dress and once she'd slipped on a pair of minimalistic sandals, she was finished. Treu's earlier organization came to fruition, aided by dozens of telekinetic hands, he stored the trappings of their cover identities' lives in a nondescript carryall.

  Meeting places seemed to be of no consequence to humans. It was another addition to the growing list of differences between beings such as her and these strange fleshing things. Meetings were also far less intimate and dangerous between humans than they were amongst her own kin. Human's might exchange only words of no true meaning in a chance greeting (that was her impression of the common ritual at present anyhow). Among her own kind, when two beings of nothing but energy and consciousness met, there was a great deal at risk; personal ideology, vital essence and aspects of ones name were all liable of corrupting (or being corrupted by) either party. In a human scale, it would be like meeting another human who could overwrite their personality, infect them with toxic blood and condemn their very soul, all from a chance meeting in a hallway; it was a natural consequence that such perilous meetings were things of great importance and diligence for both superluminal parties, but evidently not so for humans.

  Bim's present meeting seemed to be of little importance based off her surroundings. Her Tormentor had shared no further information with her, only leading her to a hanger identical to the one they'd initially boarded and having 'her' remaining possessions retrieved from the void-liner's cargo hold. Bim's allotment of 'her' belongings was exactly four dresses loaned to her by Kaleigh, each made of ultra-fine materials that were tolerable to wear, and two sets of lightweight sandals of similar high quality. The remaining tonnage remained another secret Treu obfuscated from her.

  The hanger airlock disgorged an ugly, boxy shuttle and her Tormentor adopted a stance one might have mistaken as protective. The shuttles tailgate slammed open, five matte-black and blotted-grey troopers scattering into an obtuse V with their point centered against Treu, two on either side of their leader. There was some slight variance between them, height and build predominantly, but the five troopers could have been a single image viewed in warped shards of a broken mirror. Despite their similarities, Bim found her too-human eyes pulled not to the leader, but to the trooper to his immediate left.

  "Your reputation precedes you, contractors of the Stalking Shadow." Treu spoke with an overly formal tone, a degree of ceremony uniquely disconcerting to witness from her Tormentor. "Whom do I have the pleasure of meeting with, specifically?"

  Four flanking heads turned to their leader in a halting unison, who removed his full-faced matte-black helmet to reveal a face that clearly shared common ancestry with Treu's. The severe features of their skulls bore a striking resemblance that Bim had yet to see in two humans. Their blue eyes could have been reflections of each other until one looked beyond the surface, Treu's opposite was far more expressive than her Tormentor. By far the main difference between the two's faces, was that where Treu was shorn hairless save for his brows and seemed pristine despite his years, this other man had growths of black stubble ringing his weathered face.

  "Leeroy, von Stalking Shadow. Hallo, der Vetter."

  "You are mistaken, Leeroy. I'm not from the Germa?nisch clans." Treu stated.

  "Ah! Entschuldigung, Mister Johnson-"

  "Treu, will suffice given the nature of my proposed contract." Leeroy frowned at the name, but carried on without commenting.

  "Very well… We've—that is, the outfit's command team and I have—reviewed your proposal and we're interested. I assume the principle you're subcontracting us to escort is the young lady behind you."

  "You assume correctly." Treu answered curtly.

  "And your mistress is okay with outsourcing her protection to us?"

  Treu said nothing, instead passing the question to her along with the unmasked threat in his eyes now that he'd turned from these other humans. Bim dismissed her glaring 'protector' from her mind and composed a suitable answer.

  "While I have no question as to the lethality of my personal Tormentor, I would rather my protection be handled by literally any other human I've met in my brief existence." Bim stated regally. "You meet that criteria."

  "That's not exactly a high bar lady." Leeroy said, a defensive note edging into his voice. "The dossier we got was light on details, but if you're that desperate to see the real world, we'll let you tag along— for the right price."

  "Excellent." Bim said.

  "Just so I know you know, this isn't a pleasure cruise. The Shadow is an armed frigate. If you get aboard and change your mind, we're not turning around to fly you home, you're getting dropped off wherever we are with whoever will take you. Your bodyguard is paying us to show you the real world, outside of your walled gardens and ivory towers. Before you agree to this, I'll tell you right now that whatever you think your gonna find out there, is probably gonna turn out to be a big heaping pile of scrap. The real world is like nothing a spoiled little rich girl has ever seen; it's hard and dirty and desperate. There are going to be times when things suck, and if you are serious about tagging along with us for a peak at the 'glamorous lifestyle' of us vagabond guns-for-hire, you might be in more danger than we can protect you from."

  "I am very serious about witnessing uncensored truths of this galaxy." Bim decreed.

  "You could die." Leeroy cautioned. "No glory, no meaningful purpose fulfilled, not even a burial of choice. Are you prepared for that? To throw away a long, safe, happy life full of possibilities for the not-so-great unknown."

  "From the second I was born, I've risked oblivion more times than you could know to gaze into the unknown and glean what secrets I could from it. Death is inevitable. Life itself, completely meaningless. My sole purpose is to learn all I can, while I can."

  'You think, therefore you are.' Leeroy said, then shook his head with the hint of a warm smile on his lips. "I've heard worse reasons for star-hopping, but not many."

  "All the same, I am resolute on this course of action."

  "Very well, you've been duly warned and I can see you won't be scared off so easily." Leeroy turned his attention back to Treu. "If the young lady has made up her mind on this and your money's good, there's no reason we can't hammer out the details with some weight to us on the flight to the Shadow."

  Treu drew a tablet from one of his pants' pockets, tapping at it officiously before tossing it to his opposite.

  "This will do for as long as we're in transit, but we'll need to reevaluate our expenses and obligations once we reach the Trastorno system. We'll also need a ten-percent advance as a deposit. Other than that, I can't find a reason not to take you on." Leeroy said, tossing the datapad back.

  Leeroy snapped his fingers and his troopers got to work, three of them functioning as a cohesive unit, transferring and storing cargo for the flight. A spectacled man of portly build exited the idling shuttle to receive the updated figures for the return journey's calculations— Bim briefly considered correcting his tendency of truncating lengthy numerals, but his estimates were accurate enough that she dismissed such a notion. In the tizzy of activity, the single trooper who'd caught her eye initially seemed almost as out of place as she did. He was watching the proceedings as intently as she was, staying out of the way of those who were actually working.

  With the necessary preparations seen too, they all boarded and Bim once again felt the heavy pull of acceleration bearing down on her. Treu and Leeroy haggled, lawyering the finer details of their burgeoning contract while the remaining troopers sat mutely with their gaze meekly downcast. Save for the outcast among them, he was staring at her. Bim stared back.

  "Have we met before?" The outcast trooper asked. "I've got the strangest feeling of déjà vu."

  The negotiations between Treu and Leeroy abruptly halted, each man looking to his respective charge. Bim ignored Treu's traditional glaring, pondering the significance of the question to warrant such a breech in observed decorum. It seemed unlikely in the extreme, yet she couldn't deny that something she'd failed to quantify was drawing her attention to this man. There was… something, about him.

  "That seems… improbable. I've met very few people in my life, and I cannot recall you being one of them."

  "Sorry. I just thought you seemed familiar." The outcast said bashfully, his hands bumping into the foreign bulk of his equipment as they settled.

  "Stow the romance, Rookie." Leeroy barked, then in a neutral voice.

  Near silence reigned for the remainder of the flight. A pleasant weightlessness graced Bim once the shuttle concluded its final deceleration. The fine maneuvering needed to bring the shuttle into dock failed to recreate the monotonous intensity of their earlier flight; the mono-directional thrust replaced by near imperceptible adjustments that ever-so-subtly altered the positions of the shuttle's occupants as the ship moved around their relatively static forms. The shuttle lurched downwards, its occupants seemingly throw upwards as the ship dropped out from beneath them to clamp onto the hanger floor as it landed.

  "Treu, lady Bim, welcome aboard the Stalking Shadow." Leeroy said, a hint of fanfare underpinning his words. "If you would follow me."

  The troopers of her new escort detail set to task dismounting and unpacking in the null gravity with an ease that spoke to their years of experience— all except the outcast. The shuttle's rear ramp lowered to reveal a spacious hanger. Leeroy led the way drifting effortlessly across the hanger. Bim following close behind, Treu floating to her rear with one of his malicious sneers held at the ready.

  Leeroy had yet to reach the first handhold to reposition himself when Bim's attentions was seized by a curiously inhuman noise. One that sounded like some animal's gurgled, warning shriek. Bim followed the sound to its origin, sighting a pale woman with overlarge violet eyes wide with terror.

  Eyes staring through Bim as the pale woman fought through her panic to bring a firearm to bear.

  Bim made the calculations of her flight in an instant. She'd be completely exposed and unable to alter her course for another 4.8 seconds as she moved in a slow, straight line. She found herself entirely helpless to alter the outcome of events which should have been a trifle to modify. Her crippled vessel's continued existence rested on the dubious marksmanship of a manic woman weeping tears of blood.

  Time's formerly languid march jumped to rapid tempo. Everything happened all at once, almost too quick for Bim to follow.

  The pale woman lined up a shot, sighting in advance of her moving target. Leeroy was bellowing orders and humans were flying into motion on all sides. Bim floated through the pale woman's aim unscathed. Bim caught a single momentary look of satisfaction on Treu's face, which turned wrathful as the pale woman finally pulled the trigger.

  A single spread of pellets ripped through the hanger bay. The pale woman's weapon disassembled before she could even attempt to clutch at the pieces, let alone rack another cartridge.

  Something tugged at Bim, altering her flight before the projectile passed through her pseudo-flesh and pinged into the distance. It hurt, but the pain was a minor nuisance compared to Treu's frequent ministrations. Furthermore, it was only a single, ricocheting pellet that struck Bim.

  The majority of the weapon's spread had been centered on her Tormentor.

  Treu's flight had halted. He floated without motion in a way that defied mundane explanation and the fiction he'd been so insistent on establishing. Hung in the air centimeters from him, entirely robbed of all relative kinetic energy exactly as he had been, were thirteen damning pellets.

  For her part, the pale woman allowed her weapon's recoil to propel her away as she cackled. The sound of her laughter was a miserably broken thing that lilted and burbled into the growing distance, much like the single blasting note of her shot's echo.

  Leeroy rapidly alternated his gaze, watching the pale woman leave and looking at the man who should have been dead. The clatter of arms being snapped to interrupted his faltering examination of what should have been impossible. On all sides, mercenaries were looking at Treu down the lengths of whatever weapons were on hand.

  For his part, Bim's Tormentor didn't seem to notice or care. If anything, he was somewhat affronted that it was him being condemned and not Bim.

  "Steady! Hold your fire!" Leeroy bellowed. "Alright big guy, give me one good reason not to find out how many bullets you can catch!"

  "Because, we have a contract." Treu sneered. "And I paid in advance."