_  Bim

  She had lost control. On an intellectual level, Bim had always known her vessel was not indestructible. It was copy of the fragile human form; a hollow imitation she'd torn from the dying mind of a mortal being. Human's were weak— as was she, evidently.

  She had lost control, that single thought resounded within her vast mind. More cursed knowledge that she could never unknow. She'd barricaded herself in solitude as soon as pseudo-humanly possible once they'd returned, trailing streamers of her gossamer dress like a shredded funerary shroud as she did.

  She'd been a prisoner inside her own rebelling pseudoflesh; seconds of tormented eternity spent failing to reassert dominance over her decaying vessel. She (an entity composed of naught but desire and intellect) had been rendered to a helpless stupor. Her mind had been insufficient to halt the negative feedback loop she'd become trapped in. Bim was a creature of knowledge and willpower yet ever since she'd ventured from her native realm to this damnable existence she’d discovered her supply of both to be dreadfully inadequate.

  Her previous experience of being perforated—when Princess had attempted to kill her Tormentor as they'd first arrived on the Stalking Shadow—had given her a false measure of how devastating firearms were. The single stray pellet Bim had torn from her vessel in the past was negligible compared to the volume of assorted metals she was in the process of excising from herself. There were already fifty-three similar bullets scattered on the floor of her room.

  Bim grimaced as she located another foreign object trapped within the roiling pseudoflesh of her vessel's immaterial interior and she began driving it out through an inhuman force of will. The solid matter lodged inside of her body was anathema to the extra-dimensional protoplasms that primarily constituted her vessel's interior. To humanize the allegory, her 'blood' was tearing her apart to recoil from the poison pulsing throughout her body. The dense-metal flechette clattered to the floor to join the rest of the ordinance she'd already forced from her vessel. Bim’s face unconsciously abandoned its pained expression for one of short-lived relief. She set about locating the next bullet to be removed.

  Had she full access to her faculties this painstaking process would have been long since concluded, but the dampening torc around her neck and the misery-inducing sigil embedded in her back were doing their damnable jobs adequately. A further sign of yet more control that she'd had taken from her. The recollection of being momentarily freed of the torc's influence assaulted her consciousness.

  The bloodlust radiating from every human mind around her, their pained confusion, their joyful dread. It had all been so raw! Intoxicating! In those fleeting moments Bim had gleaned more of the human psyche than she had from a month of half-blind observation. These flesh-bound slaves of time were enraptured with the all-consuming present in a way she could barely conceptualize. Past and Future were little more than abstract notions compared to the tangible, tactile Now.

  In those moments her control had lapsed, Bim had flicked her consciousness across the periphery of nearly a hundred-thousand human minds. There was commonplace hostility, desperation and curiously-primitive savagery— the so-called 'Human Condition' as she understood it. There had been fewer than ten drastic outliers to the overwhelming norm, and of them all only one held enough allure to call her back from the brink of oblivion. The anomaly had been a fraction of Bim's higher self. That discovery had been so jarring, so infinitesimally improbable, that even the autonomous instincts of Bim's rebelling vessel had been rendered dumbstruck for several seconds. Bim was a fragment of her true self, the vast intelligence that existed outside of this time-slaved dimension of matter, looking at a mirror of what she might have been.

  That mirror had been behind the eyes of Hiiro Volshebso.

  Bim—this present, scattered, broken fraction of herself that she was—had found her own mind reaching out to herself. At that moment, she had discovered that she was not alone in this dimension, this time or this place, and that certainty of fact had been enough for her to reassert her will upon her rebelling vessel. There was a portion of her, a distant cousin perhaps to the Bim that she was presently, that existed outside her current limitations; there existed a Bim who was unbound by contracts and untainted by the burden of cursed knowledge best left unknown.

  Hiiro was the key. An essential partition between knowledge, power and obligation. He was in essence an extension of herself. Had that been why their souls called out to each other? Why his was the company she most enjoyed? Was he nothing more than a second vessel of her higher self? Bim thought not, though the possibility could not be dismissed. Soul-blinded as she was, it was impossible to tell exactly what this other entity inside of Hiiro was.

  Her line of thought veered explosively into memory. In reaching out to herself, Bim had nearly destroyed him. Hiiro had consumed himself, his soul burning bright as a beacon to draw her back into the present, and in that fleeting eternity, she saw his potential. Such potential as she had never theorized from a mortal being, blazing impossibly bright.

  She had never been in the material until recently, never ascended beyond mortality via the magnum opus as so many devils had before her. Yet one day, Hiiro might. He could escape frail mortality and cross the dimensions, or he might obliterate himself trying. He was haunted by the higher mysteries, searching for answers that not even she could provide him with. Was that what drew her to him? His potential not in this fleeting life but in the timeless immaterial that lay beyond? That he craved for true comprehension just as she did? Bim pondered at these questions for long hours, the carpet of bullets excised from her vessel sprawling exponentially wider all the while until there wasn't a single scrap of material taint left inside of her.

  She had subconsciously created a circle filled with geodesic lines, the mathematic abstract pleasing to the eye in its unequivocal definitions and dimensions. Bim admired her unwitting work. This fragile reality was a shifting, alien place but there was recurring certainty in math that transcended all else. She wondered if her other self, the sibling entity within Hiiro, would find the same appreciation in the creation of her present subconscious mind. Was Hiiro even conscious of his ethereal observer? He must be, surely. Yet she felt no conviction at the thought. How could Hiiro (or any reality-blinded mortal human for that matter) have seen something she had failed too? What of her Tormentor? In the vagaries of the super-luminal, Hiiro exuded Bim's astral scent; he was marked as her own. It seemed impossible for her Tormentor to have made such a blatant oversight.

  Experimentally, Bim attempted to reach her mind beyond the constraints of her body. Her inquisitive tendrils of thought found the physical prison of her skin and could venture no further. On a whim, she threw as much of her focus as she dared into a single mono-molecular dart of condensed willpower and hurled it outwards at the circle around her feet. The metals surrounding her showed no indication of change; not even her ragged dress so much as swayed under her force of will. She could compel nothing beyond her own body.

  Bim's range of expression for indicating dissatisfaction was easily her most extensive among human emotives, so much so that deciding which minute display was most appropriate was the most taxing step of the endeavor. She settled on an indignant sigh, followed by a tut of her tongue. Not for the first time she regretted agreeing to such a severe neutering of her capabilities. For lack of better options, Bim stepped out of her mathematic artwork and dressed her vessel with the last of the intact dresses she'd been loaned. Bim released another stately sigh, watching her shallow breath form a cloud of frozen vapors before her face.

  The anomaly was a curious one, but not without precedent. She knew it was caused by moisture and temperature inequalities between her vessel and surrounding reality. The cloud of her breath was a fleeting curiosity, one that vanished all too soon in the everpresent Now which played master to this dimension. The only other time Bim had witnessed such an irregularity had been just hours prior, when she was calling Hiiro back from the frozen abyss threatening to consume him. She idly noted the similarities and subtle differences between now and then before an obvious conclusion dawned on her.

  This had happened only once before, when Hiiro had nearly destroyed himself.

  Bim bolted for the door, scattering her artistic carpet in her single-minded haste. She was inured to the revolting experience of touch for the manic seconds it took her to unbar the door of her chambers, her infallible memory storing the unpleasantness for later recall. She flung open her door to find a tall Caucasoid man, who's false name was Malik, scratching at the spreading frost on the hallway's windows.

  "Is this you?" Malik asked, one hand reaching for the machine-pistol in his belt, the other touching the radio stud on his collar.

  Bim would have considered the question under more traditional circumstances. Instead she ignored it entirely, using the seconds saved to launch her vessel at top speed towards the deepening chill. Some part of her mind idly noted that this observation was technically incorrect, as cold was not an actual factor it was simply the absence of ambient thermal energy. Any other time, she would have used such a thought as a stepping off point for introspection and scientific inquiry; the multitude of idle thoughtforms that composed her subconscious mind presenting the discoveries to Bim's active mind for review. She discarded the thought out of hand. Hiiro was in danger and she needed to be at his side.

  "Hey! Stop!" Malik yelled at her from behind.

  Bim failed to oblige.

  "This is Malik! Second floor, east wing. Spooky shit's going down and Bitch took off running. In pursuit, moving to palace center."

  The portraits and extravagance decorating the halls rushed by in a blur. More idle thoughts attempted to make themselves known to Bim's active mind and she ignored them all, just as she ignored the shouted warning of the lean blonde chasing her.

  Bim reached the stairs first, mere meters ahead of her pursuer, and took them three at a time. Malik took them five per stride, reaching out a hand to grab her. There was no outrunning the tall sprinter. Bim considered her options in an instant and arrived at the least disagreeable.

  "Touch me and your death is assured." Bim stated, pouring willpower and presence into her words without slowing in the least.

  While not strictly untrue, the ruse nauseated her. It was her understanding that all humans were fated to die, and thus her statement was technically true, even if the given conditional was fundamentally irrelevant to the outcome. Despite her logical self-assurance, the near-falsehood sickened her soul.

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  Malik's desperate grab faltered, his stride slowing just enough for Bim to slip ahead. She hadn't lied! It was his own fault for interpreting her words in the most logical and direct way. Her reassurance only furthered her feeling of disgust. She smothered her self-loathing and powered on, leaving the stairwell for the fourth floor royal apartments.

  There was power in the air now, sparks of potential energy flickering into a brief half-life of fleeting possibility. Bim could feel the heat rushing ahead of her, drawn inwards to some terminal center point. Soul-blinded as she was, there was no telling what all this energy was being used for. Her memories brought all past experiences to the forefront of her mind and none of them were pleasant possibilities.

  A doorway was open, lights unlike any she'd seen before clawing their way out of the room within. The ripe scent that filled the grand hall was an entirely human one; that of pooling iron-rich blood, gastric acids melting down bones, and the fatty aroma of exposed marrow. Malik's half-hearted pursuit faltered entirely under the assault of sensation but Bim's alien mind was not so frail.

  She charged into the maelstrom of chaos determined to witness its origin, to know its cause and (if possible in her crippled condition) to put an end to it. Bim could control nothing in the place but her own fleshy vessel. If she could trade this fleeting existence for the potential her true self must have seen in Hiiro, then her false life was a negligible price.

  Her Tormentor was at the heart of the gathering storm, channeling and transforming the surrounding energies so as to revitalize his victim. Treu's massive hand lashed out with unerring precision excising metal, glass and stone from Celio's corpse-still body. Bim heard the grinding of his realigning bones in her teeth and felt them socketing home as an aching in her jaw. The meat of the man sealed itself like a fungus spreading from both sides to sew every open wound.

  Hiiro wasn't here. This manifestation wasn't his. She looked on, stunned into mute observation as Treu concluded his work. Hiiro was safe. The realization came with a wash of vertigo that threatened to bring Bim to her knees. Suddenly a unfriendly hand latched onto Bim's shoulder and steadied her with an iron grip.

  It was Leeroy, pinning her in place while Malik stood dumbstruck nearby from the things he'd nearly seen. The scarred veteran was glaring down at her with an expression she knew to be wrathful, hints of fury and puzzlement underlying his outwardly stoic features. His expression didn't soften in the slightest when he turned to Treu, an outraged demand rising from his throat. Leeroy was interrupted by Celio drawing in a ragged breath and coughing.

  "Your precious Client lives." Treu stated, his usual hateful contempt replaced by something resembling a quiver of breathlessness. Bim gathered that the healing had taxed him greatly and stored this momentary weakness in her mind for future exploitation. "And it seems he wishes to speak with you."

  Treu departed their company without another word, sealing the door behind him as he left. The silence was pregnant with the implication of his words and actions, Bim's vast mind pulling in countless directions of tangential thought. She only noticed that Leeroy's hand was cold and clammy compared to the air around them when he started dragging her towards Celio's garishly ornate bed.

  "I've attended rowdier funerals than this. My deathbed should not be so somber. You there, tall bronco, white boy with hair like a girl. Yes, you. Turn on the radio for me." Celio groaned, attempting and failing to sit upright in the opulent mass of fluffy pillows and shimmer silk sheets.

  Malik did as ordered, his former lithe movements replaced by clumsy stupefaction. Static-laced music lightened the room to some small degree, but it wasn't enough to dispel the mercenaries’ darkened humors. It would seem that recent events were beyond the humans' abilities to rationalize; even with her own entirely alien point of reference, Bim was struggling to arrive at true comprehension.

  "My beautiful Bim, never before have I seen your brow so saddened. I would ask you shed no tears for my fate. Great men must face the greatest trials and the sight of you weeping, gentle lily of my arid gardens, would threaten my heart to such a degree that I would boil the seas just so I might dry your eyes."

  Celio held up a beckoning hand and Leeroy shoved her towards it. Repulsive as it was, Bim did her duty and took Celio's hand to comfort him. The sensation was vile, but she locked her burgeoning emotive expressions behind a mask of facial paralysis.

  "Celio," Leeroy said. "Do you remember what happened?"

  The man paused, finally turning his attention from the present to the past. Bim could almost see the thoughts colliding with memories and suppositions as Celio recalled his most recent brush with danger.

  "I remember watching you die." He said distantly, eyes locked on Bim. "You shielded me with your body and bullets veered from me to you as if by magnets. Then… I think I was flying somewhere warm…"

  The tinny song playing from the radio ended with a flourish and Celio quieted to listen. A woman's voice, tinted with a false sense of self-importance, spoke officiously.

  "Tragedy struck this afternoon in quadrant twelve when Celio-Rodrigo das Estrelas Salvador Dominar's campaigning turned violent in the Hound Hill street market. Early reports indicate the self-proclaimed 'savior' had his men open fire on the general population of quadrant twelve in his increasingly bloody bid to take control of the city. This shocking development came just hours after announcing his candidacy for the regional elective monarchy. As of yet, his condition and whereabouts are unknown, however several groups are already celebrating his death as the city holds its breath. The ruling democratic party, currently headed by President Vincente Dominar, has refrained from commenting on the situation and deny all military and police involvement in the attack.

  "Independent journalists have released unsubstantiated claims that today's attack was in response to Mister Celio's alleged underworld connections and this year's drastic increase in gang warfare. They allege that Mister Celio was 'transporting weapons of mass destruction through the slums in a deliberate and intentional provocation of rival underworld elements,' and that the resultant fires were 'a bold-faced assault on the lower class.' Paladin of the Public, Colonel Marcos Heathcliff, had this to say…"

  Celio puffed out his barrel chest at the name. The radio's next spokesperson had a voice unlike the majority Bim had heard; it was high-pitched and piercing, decidedly feminine yet the speaker was unmistakably a man. It was a far cry from the deep bassy roars she was used to amongst the mercenaries and from her Tormentor.

  "The investigation into today's terrorist attack is still ongoing. The public are urged to cooperate with police inquisitors and militia peacekeepers as they preform their duties in the affected areas. Our efforts have been substantially delayed due to the fires raging in quadrant twelve across the districts of-"

  "Turn it off." Celio snarled, his voice dripping with venom. Again Malik did as ordered, hovering nearby in an obedient daze. "It would seem rumors of my death have been exaggerated already. Unless this is the afterlife and you my beautiful Bim, are the demon sent to drag me down to Hell. If you were not sent to my side by God, then perhaps damnation is not such a cursed fate after all." Celio gave a dry chuckle, before drawing a golden cross from around his neck and kissing it tenderly.

  Bim recoiled, tearing her hand from his, unable to mask her revulsion any longer. Celio's expression grew pained and something inside of her was glad for his momentary suffering. Leeroy interjected himself between the would-be theological combatants and changed the topic with all the subtly of a thrown brick.

  "Celio, Sir, with all due respect as your head of contracted security, today was an absolute disgrace." Celio tried to wave the comment off, but Leeroy pressed on. "You were warned, you withheld the severity of the threat to your life, you ignored my best judgment at every turn and you nearly died because of your own hubris. If that's how you intend to behave throughout this contract-" Leeroy upholstered his pistol and tossed it haphazardly onto Celio's bed, "then my outfit walks and you can defend yourself."

  Celio eyed the firearm dismissively. "This was not the first attempt on my life. It won't be the last."

  "I've looked over the only car that made it back," Leeroy added. "That armor should have shrugged off everything smaller than autocannon slugs and it was shot clean through. This wasn't some random thugs blasting away with sweatshop print guns. This was a coordinated, provisioned ambush that nearly succeeded."

  "The Trastorno system has the most lucrative black market weaponry available in the galactic north-east. There are ten-thousand smugglers who would see me dead with a smile on their face and care for nothing except the cash in their pockets. Quality slug-guns are more plentiful than clean water here, and superb ammunition more abundant than the sand in the winds. If you are so concerned for my wellbeing, then I suggest you purchase some new hardware for yourselves. I happen to know several reputable sellers who-"

  "I won't tarnish the outfit's reputation by staking it on a client who goes gallivanting into pointless danger, our lives be damned!" Leeroy snapped, discarding his professional stoicism.

  "And I won't lay down like a whipped dog, Mercenary!" Celio roared, all traces of weakness vanishing before his fury. "I will not show weakness to my rivals! I won't abandon the people of this city! I WILL NOT condemn this world through inaction! I am Celio-Rodrigo das Estrelas Salvador Dominar. The Savior!!! My ancestors once delivered these lands from the tyrants of the Guerreiro and I shall do so again." Celio collapsed back into the fluffy embrace of his bedding, his rage spent. "I cannot fail in this, Mercenary. It is my destiny."

  "Fate and Destiny are fickle things." Bim offered words without appreciating their implications.

  "Be that as it may," Malik said, now somewhat recovered from his stupor. "You got what you wanted, right?" All heads turned to the lean blond. "Weren't we just waiting for an excuse like this to pull out all that stops?"

  "That depends," Leeroy said, turning to Celio. "I can't do what I need to with both hands tied and no eyes on the enemy."

  "Not yet." Celio said. Leeroy nearly turned to leave, but Celio held up a belaying hand. "Are you familiar with the 'honeytrap,' Mercenary?"

  "Vaguely." Leeroy answered. "Espionage through seduction and attraction/distraction. Alice knows more about it than I do. How is this relevant?"

  "Your version is different than mine." Celio said. "No matter. My rivals have tipped their hand. When they see me next, they will be unable to keep the greed from their hearts. And THAT, Mercenary, is when you shall strike and destroy them utterly."

  "We call that a snare." Malik offered. "An ambush for the ambushers."

  "It's risky…" Leeroy said, considering the pistol and the door evenly.

  "But I shall have the advantage." Celio stated, confident in his ignorance. "The terrain, firepower, information. Nothing will be left to the whims of chance."

  For a full minute, Leeroy said nothing, his eyes flicking from the pistol to Celio and back. Their proposal was a fool's gamble in Bim's opinion, but no one had asked for her opinion so she didn't offer it. Humans had a curious tendency to assume the odds were always stacked in their favor— especially when they quantifiably weren't.

  "…Very well then." Leeroy said begrudgingly. "But this time, we're not running off half-cocked, no last minute changes and when it comes to your security I have the final say at all times. Period. I'll need at least two weeks-"

  "You have five. I have an arms deal with a lifelong associate of mine scheduled. We've used the meeting point several times over the years for such arrangements and I suspect it is well known to my enemies by now. The information can be leaked at any time, assuming it hasn't been already, with your permission, Mercenary." Celio added, his deferential tone mocking.

  "Just as well, we could use the time to lick our wounds. We'll start overt security operations on some of the secondary sites in the interim. Your Vigia could use some tempering outside the palace grounds."

  "Yes, yes." Celio coughed dismissively. "The Guerreiro have given me all the casas bellie I require for that much. The thinner my men appear to be spread, the more likely the vipers are to amass at my heels. There's also the matter of retaliation, in a shadow war such as this it is expected. You and your men shall learn how dynasties battle here on Nexo Isla."