Chapter Text
Beneath an overcast sky, Mason stood before his childhood home. The apartment building with its cracked bricks and rusty pipes was untouched by the Syndicate that had torn apart his family. Surrounding him on either side of the concrete road were the familiar shops and abodes of his neighbors. He paid no heed to them—his gaze was locked on to two distant figures down the street.
He ran toward them. Their silhouettes sharpened as he got closer. The man standing on the left wore a threadbare apron. Oil peppered his hands and stained his clothes. His indigo hair was bundled in the shortest of ponytails, the ends sticking out like the bristles of a paintbrush. The woman on the right donned the blue uniform of a Cinq South Section 2 Fixer. Waves of scarlet hair cascaded past her shoulders, almost reaching the two silver swords resting at her hips. Her red lips smiled warmly.
“Mom? Dad?” he called out to his parents, alive as they could be for a pair of corpses.
His mom wiped a tear rolling down her cheek. “Mason, you’ve done us so proud.”
His dad’s eyes twinkled. He hugged his wife around her waist. “It isn’t time for you to join us yet. You still have a lot to do.”
What were they talking about? He was done fighting. Hell, he was dead. It was time he joined them, he had been denied this eternal slumber for far too long.
An invisible force jerked him backward by his chest. His heels dug into the concrete. Where was he going? He couldn’t leave, his parents were right there! He kicked his legs in a desperate bid to plant himself on the ground.
Mom took her hat off. She waved the floppy brim. “We love you! Take care of your sister. Remember, you always have each other!”
He reached out to her and Dad’s shrinking forms. He wasn’t ready yet. He wasn’t ready for the agony of parting from them again. He opened his mouth to shout, only to be shoved under the ground. Dark crimson swallowed his surroundings. No matter how hard he flailed, his descent continued. He tried to scream—the crimson filled his lungs. Choking forced what little air he had out of his lungs. Bubbles floated past his darkening vision. His flailing ceased as he drifted down, down, down...
Mason’s eyes flew open.
His lungs burned. He gasped for air, coughing and sputtering on nothing, though he could’ve swore he had been drowning in a thick liquid that reeked of iron. The fading remnants of a dream slipped between his fingers, and it was gone.
The last thing he remembered was dying on the floor of Disciplinary. He had been lying in a pool of his own blood while staring up at Odelie’s tear-streaked face, Nothing There stalking toward them. He couldn’t even finish his last words to his sister. What happened to her? Where was she?
For that matter, where was he? He focused on the sensations of his body. Physically, he felt fine. There was no pain, meaning the giant hole in his stomach should’ve been gone. The floor beneath his back was hard, but it was not like the cold press of metal. Turning his head, he glimpsed dark brown hardwood panels. Piles of colorful books were stacked on top of each other like bricks prepped for construction work, stopping at tall bookcases that stretched beyond his field of vision.
Wherever this was, it wasn’t Lobotomy Corporation. The only room that came close to carrying this many books was the employee break room with its meager shelf. He had reread that pitiful collection more times than he had fingers to count.
He sat up, and saw a beanpole of a man wearing a plain suit standing several feet away. Hands stuffed in his pockets, he met Mason with a curious lift of his eyebrow.
“Who are you?” Mason demanded.
Although the displeasure in his tone was evident, the man seemed to shrug it off. “The name’s Roland. Just a washed up Grade 9 Fixer that pulled you out of a nasty book. I think it was called Bloodbath? It had to be, there was so much of it just lying around. Put up one hell of a fight, too! That bathtub really didn’t want to let you go.”
Mason squinted at him. “You fought Bloodbath...in a book? Am I hearing that right?” Bloodbath, designation T-05-51, was a TETH class Abnormality that inflicted WHITE damage. It couldn’t even breach containment from its unit in Architecture.
Roland laughed. “Unbelievable, right? Wait, you know what Bloodbath is?”
“Of course I do. I worked at Lobotomy Corporation. What about you? I don’t recognize you or this place. Where the hell are we?”
Roland held his hands up as Mason rose to his feet. “Okay now, don’t freak out. We’re in a place called the Library. I was on my way to lunch when I stumbled in here all of a sudden. I don’t even know how I got here, so when Miss Director saw me, she cut all my limbs off. She gave them back after, but I thought I was a goner!”
Well, that sounded awful. Nothing Mason was unfamiliar with, though.
He scanned his surroundings. They were in a vast room surrounded by towering bookshelves. They were stuffed full of books near the bottom, but as his eyes trailed upward, they quickly thinned out. At the center of the room, papers rested on an elevated desk carved out of polished wood. His eyes traced the gears engraved into its side. Past the desk and cutting through the bookcases was an ascending staircase lined with more empty shelves. The stairs faded into a soft, brilliant light in the distance.
“A Library is a place that collects books, right?” he asked. “They’re exclusive to the Nests.”
“That’s right, makes it even weirder how I got here since I’m from the Backstreets. By the way, what’s your name?”
Instead of answering, which he didn’t care to, he asked for the name of another. “Who’s this Miss Director you mentioned?”
Roland bristled at his dismissal. “You’re a pushy one, aren’t you? Miss Director runs this place. Since you said you worked at Lobotomy Corporation, you might be familiar with the name Angela?”
Mason’s blood ran cold.
Angela. The AI who went rogue and declared she would destroy all of them to seize the Light for herself. Loath as he was to admit it, she was the closest person he had to a companion in the thousands of years he spent enduring the time loop. Even if they weren’t on the best of terms, it still stung when she betrayed him.
What hurt even more was watching so many of his colleagues die for good, all because of her selfishness. Where was Odelie, or Christopher for that matter? What happened after he died? Was this Library the result of the destruction she wrought?
If so, did that mean she won?
The crisp snap of someone’s fingers alerted him. Head swiveling, he laid eyes on the devil herself.
Angela had chopped her sky blue hair to her ears. Patterns of white leaves adorned the dark indigo coat that hugged her hourglass figure. She wore a white collared shirt underneath a black vest, with a feathered cravat as if she had ripped off a crow’s wing and stuck it on her chest. Her snow white hand tightened around the large tome she carried at her side.
“Hello, Mason,” she greeted coldly.
Perhaps he’d died and went to hell. In which case, he had nothing left to lose.
Unlike a human, she had no windpipe to strangle, but ripping his fingers through her fine circuitry would do, if only his nails could pierce her outer shell. He lunged at her with his arms outstretched, surprised by both the gloves on his hands and the lack of speed from his body.
Angela brought up her free hand. She snapped her fingers, and the environment shifted in a blink. He saw two long rows of bookshelves on either side of him before he fell face-first on hardwood. Nose aching, he snapped his head up. Angela stood farther away than before, yet her gaze burned like a searing dagger at his throat.
Mason clamored to his feet. “What the fuck did you do?” he snarled. “Why am I alive?”
“If you don’t stand down, I will put you back inside a book, where you will remain for the rest of your miserable existence until the day I leave this place,” she spat.
He needed a weapon. He remembered the beautiful sword he created moments before he died to Nothing There. He tried to call on it, to summon the hope and desperation that had fueled him before he murdered Griffin.
The hilt of a silver blade flickered into his grasp. It remained flickering in and out of reality, but he could still hold on to it. That would have to do. Clutching the sword, he lunged once more. “Ange—!”
She snapped her fingers. He felt his head leave his shoulders and watched as his decapitated body fell forward, his sword dissolving into thin air. The back of his skull crashed atop the floor. Stars danced across his vision. His brain screamed for oxygen, and his blood-red mouth gaped open, begging for his disconnected lungs to work.
A snap. He found himself standing upright, head attached to body. He could breathe again, so he gasped—gasped as a second snap tore his upper-half free from his hips. Intestines unraveled beneath him as he fell to the floor in two halves, intense pain blooming across his tattered gut. Organs slipped out of him, collecting in a puddle of his own blood—
Snap. He was standing in one piece. A second snap, and he was struck by a pang of dread before all four of his limbs were ripped off, as if they had been caught in the gears of some cruel and merciless machine. This time, he screamed as he landed on the floor, showered in warm flecks of his own blood. He wailed in pain, forced to endure horrific agony as the sweet embrace of death failed to reach him.
Snap.
“Fuck you!” he bit out between ragged breaths.
“My apologies,” Angela said coldly. “I assumed that since you were accustomed to dying, you could handle more pain. Do you understand the point I’m trying to make, or do I need to physically nail it through your skull?”
“You’re the god of this place,” he seethed. “You control my life. If I don’t listen to you, I die.”
“You missed one. This is the beginning of my payback for you betraying me.”
He opened his mouth. He wanted to protest that she was the one who betrayed him and that she was foolish for thinking her half-assed deal could’ve swung him to her side, but when he saw her fingers rise, he flinched.
Seeing that she got her threat across, Angela lowered her hand. “Now that you understand how impossible it is for you to kill me, I will answer a few of your questions as a courtesy.”
And ask, he did. He had so many questions that they practically spilled out of him. “Where are the others? What happened after I died? Did anyone survive?”
“All of your remaining colleagues died,” she answered, plain and simple.
Her words sent a shock through his system.
Odelie. Christopher. The Control Team. The facility. The people he cared about, the people he fought for, whom he spent ten thousand years in a cycle of hell for, they were dead. And somehow, Mason alone got to live. He was ashamed of himself. He had failed them, all of them, and he was cursed to suffer for the rest of his days without anyone he loved while carrying the burden of his failures.
Mere moments before he was overcome by despair, Angela continued. “That doesn’t mean they’re gone for good.”
He blinked. “What?”
“Let me explain. The Sephirot and I made a deal. Because of the resistance you lot put up, I was only left with three days’ worth of Light. That’s not enough for me to become free—not only do I remain bound to the confines of Lobotomy Corporation’s headquarters, which are the grounds this Library is built upon, but even if I were allowed to step foot outside, the Head would immediately execute me under the AI Ethics Amendment. Thus, I offered the Sephirot this: they must agree to work for me as librarians and recollect all the missing Light that has been scattered throughout the City. In return, I will revive everyone.
“Once I have all seven day’s worth of Light, I will obtain the perfect book that will contain everything I wish to know. Using this, I can restore everyone’s bodies to their flesh and blood state. What happens to the Light then depends on the Sephirot, but you employees will be free to leave.”
His heartbeat quickened. “If you revived all the employees, then where are they?”
“So far, you are the only one who has been revived.” His face fell as Angela continued, “Roland awakened you from the Book of Bloodbath. This is because I reconstructed your bodies using the Light’s power and preserved them inside Abnormality books to keep your forms stable. Abnormalities are themselves bound to books due to their weakened states without Lobotomy Corporation’s technology to maintain them.”
“Is my body still made out of Light? What happens if I try to leave the Library?”
“Your body is still made of Light, meaning you will simply disappear the moment you step outside of Library grounds.”
His stomach began to sink. “So as long as I’m like this, I’m stuck here?”
“With me, for as long as it takes to find the perfect book. That is the only way I can truly restore your body.”
He craned his head upward at the vaulted ceiling so high up, it might as well have been the sky. “And how long is that going to take?” He couldn’t endure another eternity as a caged bird.
“It’s hard to say at the moment due to my lack of data. However, I do not expect it to take more than one year.”
He breathed a sigh of relief. One year, maybe less. That was more than doable.
She narrowed her eyes ever so slightly. “Were you worried it would take longer? I wouldn’t prefer that—I am far more sick of waiting than you are.”
Relief gave way to irritation. He would be free already if it wasn’t for Angela’s rebellion in the first place. “Where do we get more Abnormality books?” he probed.
“It depends on the amount of books collected. The Library itself has stowed away the Abnormality books on different floors, most of which haven’t been opened yet. As more books are gathered, the Library expands, revealing more and more of itself, including the Abnormality books. What this means is the more books you collect, the more librarians will awaken.”
“So we need books.” Mason sighed, already seething at what he was about to say. “As much as I hate the idea of working for you, I’m willing to do it as long as you hold on to your promise to let us get out of here at the end.”
Angela lips quirked into a bloodcurdling smile, and a jolt of terror paralyzed him. This was the same smile she wore when she declared war on the facility. “Is that so? Funny how you think you have a choice. I haven’t even told you what it means to collect books.”
Hesitantly, he asked, “What does that mean?”
“Your duties as an assistant librarian consist of sorting books and receiving guests, outsiders from the City who carry a fragment of Light. They enter the Library via an invitation I send. This is the only way to enter the Library.”
“What about Roland? He doesn’t seem like a guest.”
“He is an exception. Even I’m not sure how he got inside. In any case, he knows better than to threaten me. As I was saying, when a guest chooses to come here, you librarians must engage them in a trial by combat. If the guests win, they will receive the books that were listed on their invitation. If they lose, they become a book themselves. The look on your face tells me you understand what this means.”
Indeed, Mason’s eyes were wide in horror. He felt the mountain of his past sins weighing on his tired shoulders. “My job is to kill guests.”
Angela’s smile twisted into a sneer. “Correct.”
Mason swallowed. He didn’t want to add to his ocean of guilt. After Griffin, whom he killed in self-defense, he never wanted to take another life. He didn’t have a choice now, and even if he did, that choice would be between saving his conscience or the rest of the facility.
“You’re evil,” he murmured.
“If evil is the price of my freedom, then so be it,” Angela replied. “It’s already unfair that I did not get to explore the world I was born into like the rest of you. The only ‘mercy’ I can offer is bringing you back to life should you fall during a reception, meaning not even death will set you free from my grasp. Do you have any other questions, or should I let you process this information until your first guests arrive?”
His head was spinning. There were too many things for his mind to juggle. Killing guests, recollecting Light, reviving his slain colleagues, Abnormality books, the fact that he was pulled out of one.
“How come I ended up in Bloodbath?”
“I did not care who was being placed with what Abnormality. The floors that each Abnormality ends up on is also outside of my control. You are the first assistant librarian to be awakened on the Floor of General Works, and the first assistant to be awakened at all.”
“What other floors are there? Why do you call me an ‘assistant’ librarian?”
Angela shut her eyes, exasperated. “How many more questions do you have? So far, only General Works, based on the Architecture Department, has been opened. You employees will become assistants to your floor’s Patron Librarians, which are the Sephirot and Roland.”
Mason realized that Roland, the random man who stumbled into the Library on complete accident, was ranked higher than him, Mason, the facility’s most competent Agent, responsible for breaking the time loop that was keeping Angela trapped in the first place. “Angela, what the hell? Why are you placing a Grade 9 Fixer over me?”
She curled her lip. “Why would I give you any level of authority after you betrayed me?”
“I’m still better than some rando you got off the Backstreets!”
“I did not choose him. He came to me before any librarian was awake, so now, he’s my servant.”
“You made the first guy who showed up at your doorstep your personal servant? That’s even worse!”
Angela huffed. “I’ve had enough. Go sort books until the next guests arrive.”
Snap.
Mason landed on his ass next to Roland. Angela’s servant jumped. “Woah! When did you get here?”
He got up, teeth gritted as he rubbed his aching tailbone. “Just now.”
“I heard a lot of yelling over there. Is everything okay?”
Was Roland listening in on them? “How much did you hear?”
Snap. Angela appeared before them, and Roland jumped again. “By the way, I can see and hear everything you do at all times.” She turned to Mason. “He won’t hear anything I don’t want him to hear.” She snapped her fingers and disappeared.
Mason groaned. Angela wasn’t just the god of the Library. Worse, she was an omnipresent one.
He turned to Roland, who was extending his hand. “What?” Mason hissed.
“I think we got off on the wrong foot. You were confused, you just came out of a book, and then you had to argue with someone you clearly have a history with. To be clear, I don’t want to be your enemy. I’m just looking to survive this place, too, so let’s start things fresh: I’m Roland. What’s your name?”
Mason paused. There was something weird about Roland he couldn’t quite put his finger on. Something about how a washed up Grade 9 Fixer could randomly showed up inside a building ruled by an omnipresent god that only lets in those she invites.
He took Roland’s hand, gripped it hard enough to snap a bone, and gave it a good shake. “Mason, former Captain of the Control Team at Lobotomy Corporation’s main branch.” It was not nice to meet him.
Roland whistled through his pain. “Wow, sounds like quite the position. Did you have to grip my hand so hard?”
“Yes.” Mason let go. As Roland shook the pain out of his hand, he asked, “Where are the books I’m supposed to sort?”
“You want to put a dent in the heap?” Roland gestured to the many piles of books on the floor. “Anything that’s not on a shelf hasn’t been looked at yet.”
Wordlessly, Mason moved to the nearest pile. It wasn’t as though he wanted to work for Angela. If it weren’t for the threat of agonizing death, he’d throw a fit every time he was ordered to carry out a task just to make her life harder.
However, his mind was buzzing with everything he had learned. Angela won, he needed to kill to revive his colleagues, and he was out of the facility for the first time in millennia. He needed to soothe all these thoughts before they got the better of him, and the only way he could do so was by keeping his mind occupied. It was ironic—ten thousand years of toiling without rest, and the only thing he wanted to do now was toil some more.
With his gloved hands, Mason picked up the title at the top of the pile. The Book of Walking Down the Street With Your Head Down to Make Sure Nobody Notices You. How oddly specific.
Noticing his gloves, he also took the time to check out what kind of clothes he was wearing. A black jacket outlined in white fitted snugly around his torso. The bottom of the lapels were held together by a cute bow. From underneath his jacket, a pair of black straps ran over his white pants. They connected to knee high black spats wound around his white shoes.
He couldn’t help but pluck at the straps. Why in the world would Angela come up with such an outfit?
Returning to the book in his hands, he recalled what Angela said about them. “Do all books in the Library come from guests?” he asked.
Roland appeared by his side. He swiped a book off the pile. “Nope, there were already plenty of books when I got here. Most of them are filled with gibberish.” He lifted his arms and gestured to a wide swath of bookcases, their shelves pouring with titles of different shapes and sizes. “Everything in front of us is where the gibberish goes.” He turned around and pointed to two individual bookcases behind them. Only the bottom shelves were full. “Those two are for anything of substance.”
Mason furrowed his eyebrows. “That’s not a lot.”
“Right, but I bet they will be full in no time. I swear, every morning, new books keep appearing out of thin air.” Roland walked off to one of the gibberish bookcases, leaving Mason to his own devices.
He opened his current book. Strings of meaningless words and symbols trailed the page. Gibberish indeed. He shut the book, started a new pile of books he would take to the gibberish shelves, and resumed going through his current stack of books. When he reached the bottom of the stack, he took several heavy piles to the gibberish section and a light pile of only four books to the substantial one.
Mason brushed the dust off his hands. That was one stack done. He surveyed the room and took in the many, many heaps of unsorted books he had left to go.
Didn’t you die right after Odelie said she remembered you? How will she feel when she comes back?
Before a wave of emotions could swallow him, he hurried off to the next pile. He didn’t want to think about that just yet. As long as he did his due diligence, Odelie was going to come back. He could fix this as long as he kept working.
He had started sorting another pile of books when Angela snapped in next to her desk. “An invitation has been sent out,” she said. “We’re going to witness the moment our guests sign it.”
Mason tugged at the stiff, black collar around his neck to air out his sweat. Another weird design choice from Angela. “What does that mean?”
“It means put down that book you’re holding and come here,” she ordered. “The scene is about to begin.” Roland was already at her side.
Mason set the book on top of his current pile. As he began walking to them, the room transformed, halting him in his tracks. The bookshelves melted away. Rusty filing cabinets rose to take their place. Sheet metal walls with dirty windows and a moldy, water-damaged ceiling closed in on them.
He was in the middle of an Office space. Angela and Roland were nowhere to be found. Instead, a blond man wearing a rugged overcoat materialized into view. He was pacing around the room, huffing on a cigarette in his mouth. Before him, a white-haired girl in a green jacket was checking her nails. Her other hand balanced a heavy chainsaw over her shoulder.
“Finn has failed as expected. He wasn’t going to last too long, anyway,” said the blond, whose name Mason knew was Yun, as if the information had been inserted into his mind. Yun was the operator of this Office. He went on about how much this Finn guy apparently sucked until the cutely dressed, white-haired girl named Eri responded.
“Too bad, I kinda liked his affable and cutesy attitude.” She dug dirt out of her nails and flicked it away. “Though I agree, he was bound to die sooner or later.”
Yun stopped pacing. Mason was worried he had been spotted intruding on this room, until Yun stared straight through him without so much as blinking. “Congratulations, by the way. You must have more options now that you’re a Grade 8 Fixer.”
Eri grinned slyly. “Yep! So you’d better be careful. If you don’t pay me well enough, I might move to another Office. Heard that you’re barely covering your own taxes these days, let alone the monthly rent for this Office space, am I wrong?”
As the rest of the scene unfolded, Mason learned why they were coming to the Library: the Office was about to go under. Yun had received another invitation after Finn’s failed attempt, and despite the risks, he planned on taking the rest of his Fixers to the Library in a last ditch effort to keep his Office afloat.
The room faded. Mason found himself back among the towering bookcases of the Library.
Roland whistled. “A whole Office coming at us, huh? It might look like a small and insignificant one, but it may prove a little tough for us to handle right now.”
Mason scoffed like it was some funny joke. “Them, tough? My body isn’t what it used to be, but that Yun guy can’t be more than Grade 7 at most. This won’t be a problem.” Fighting this Office was going to be child’s play compared to suppressing Abnormalities. These Fixers would wither like leaves if they saw something like the Mountain of Smiling Bodies.
Roland furrowed his eyebrows. “Don’t get too cocky, now. I don’t know what you used to do at your Wing job, but people with nothing left to lose are the most dangerous kind to fight.”
“Oh, I’m well aware of that. Thing is, you don’t know what I used to do at my old job.” Mason stared Roland dead in the eye, bearing down on him the weight of those ten thousand years.
Roland leaned back uncomfortably. He stole a glance at Angela. “You know him best. Is he getting ahead of himself?”
“Many in the Backstreets assume that once they reach the Wings, they’ll never have to worry for their survival again,” Angela said. “They could not be further from the truth.”
Mason and Roland took their spots in the reception area.
They were standing on a gray bridge made entirely of books. The bridge spanned wide enough to provide ample space to fight, and stretched far to connect two sides of a dizzyingly large room. He had to crane his neck upward to see where the walls ended, except there was no end. They kept climbing into a bright fog that obscured the Library’s ceiling. If he looked over the edge of the bridge, he found a stomach-lurching drop into the abyss waiting for him.
Mason’s heart was pounding. He had talked himself up earlier, but now that they were about to fight, the adrenaline was kicking in. It was strange—he had been fighting in life or death situations for centuries, yet he still couldn’t temper his body’s most base instincts.
“Are you holding up okay?” Roland asked.
Mason snapped back to reality. “Yeah, I’m fine.” He studied Roland. The man tucked his left hand inside his pocket, while his right held a black sword with a flat tip.
It was at this moment Mason realized he was about to run into a fight without a weapon. He debated summoning the sword he tried to run through Angela with, but its existence was so frail that he was afraid it would disappear in the middle of fighting. He didn’t even understand what it was or why he could summon it. He had to settle with asking Roland for a weapon. “Where did you get the sword from?”
“Oh, this?” Roland palmed the metal handle of his onyx blade. “Angela gave it to me. Standard librarian weapon, I think. To summon it, you first need to pull your book out.” Light shimmered above Roland’s empty hand. A black book with silver sprayed edges landed on his palm. “Just imagine holding a part of you, and it’ll come out.”
Mason extended his arm. He imagined ripping his beating heart out and putting it in his hand.
A flash of light. The heavy book he was suddenly holding nearly pulled him off balance. It was about the size of Angela’s tome, its spine thicker than his arm. The cover was deep purple, dark like a deadly poison. His fingers brushed over the coarse texture.
Roland gawked at his book. “Why is yours so thick?”
Mason gave a shrug as he opened the humongous tome to a random page. Most of the text was faded to the point of being illegible. He flipped around until he found a page that he could read. This section described the exact moment when he figured out where a Green Dusk’s weak point was, and the answer to Roland’s question dawned on him. His book documented all of his experiences, including the events of the time loop; several dozen lifetimes worth of human experiences had been compacted into this monster of a codex. Perhaps jogging his memory would recover some of the faded text.
From there, he figured out how to materialize his sword. All he had to do was imagine it, and a hilt rose from the pages. He pulled the sword out and dispelled his book into bubbles of light.
“There you go!” Roland exclaimed. “You’re a natural at this. By the way, I’m sure you already know, but just in case, did Angela tell you about key pages?”
“No. Are they important?”
“Wh—crap, that means you don’t have any pages equipped!”
Snap. They looked ahead. Two shabby Fixers had appeared on the other side of the bridge. They took a moment to gather their bearings, studying the grand space with wide eyes before honing on the two librarians ahead of them.
“Hey, are you the librarians that are supposed to receive us?” one of the Fixers asked.
Roland turned his attention to them. He was all smiles. “Yep, sure are!”
The Fixers exchanged wary looks. When they decided they were done sweating their asses off, they nodded before bolting toward them. One wielded a bat with nails sticking out of it, the other a crude sword.
Mason was about to advance when Roland stuck his arm into his path. “Let me take care of these guys. Since you just got here, I’ll show you how it’s done.”
“I don’t need you to teach me,” Mason hissed, but Roland ignored him. He was almost certain this Grade 9 Fixer was going to get his ass beat in a 2-on-1.
To Mason’s surprise, Roland held his own. He took a few hits, and there were several close calls, but he managed to deal the finishing blows all on his own. Two books lying on the floor and the blood dripping down Roland’s sword were all that remained of the Fixers.
People really do turn into books here.
Roland brushed the dirt off his sleeves, wincing at the few injuries he sustained. “They were a bit tougher than I expected, but it wasn’t anything I couldn’t handle.”
“In terms of strength, the only thing that separates a low-grade Fixer and a Rat is prestige,” Mason said. He recalled a distant memory of a group of Rats killing the Grade 8 Fixers that were accompanying him. That was the day he committed his first murder.
Roland scratched his chin. “Well, if that’s what you think, I’m not going to argue.”
Snap.
Yun and Eri appeared on the other side of the bridge, the same place where the two Fixers had spawned in. Yun was cracking his knuckles, cigarette still in his mouth. “They might not be as weak as they seem. We should stay alert,” he said.
Eri lowered her chainsaw from her shoulder and revved up the engine. Its mechanical roar echoed from across the bridge. “If any of these half-baked nerds do hit me, I’ll hit ‘em twice to even up the score.”
This time, Mason stepped past Roland. “I’ll handle these two.”
“I know I got tossed around a bit, but you don’t need to step up for me. I’ll be fine!”
Mason pivoted on his heel, shooting Roland a contemptuous glower. “You’d only get in my way.”
Roland’s mouth gaped open. Whether it was from astonishment or indignation, Mason didn’t know. Nor did he care.
He turned back to Yun and Eri. Both appeared unimpressed. Yun even scoffed. “They look like regular men. Did those useless idiots really die to these two?”
A Lobotomy Corporation employee shouldn’t be able to learn any new techniques from E.G.O. It’s impossible to build muscle memory while using a tool that rips away those neural connections every time it’s unequipped. Because of this, Mason in his infinite boredom got an idea. He downloaded CCTV footage onto his PDA and studied the movements of E.G.O. wielders in his free time. For almost five thousand years, he practiced with wooden sticks and staffs, copying their techniques, ingraining them into every fiber of his being in the event he needed to fight without the help of E.G.O.
Mason’s lips quirked. If only this operator knew how terribly outclassed he was.
He blasted forward. His first target was Yun—taking out the leader would lower his subordinate’s morale greatly. However, Eri wasn’t going to let him have his way. She slid into his path, swinging her growling chainsaw in a wide arc.
Her movements were agonizingly slow. Still, deflecting a blow like that was probably more than this body could handle. He backpedaled, cursing the way her chainsaw’s teeth missed him by a hairsbreadth. Was this seriously the best body Angela could craft? It was pathetic!
He was aware of Yun circling around him, trying to flank his back. He abandoned Eri and gunned for Yun. The blond’s eyes widened. He dodged Mason’s first slice and threw a jab with his gloved fist. He was either wearing a Workshop’s glove, or his hands were augmented.
Mason stepped to the left. Yun’s fist whizzed past his ear. He deflected a nasty hook, noting the strength packed in it, and evaded several more punches before closing in on Yun’s exposed flank. He whipped his sword, slicing his waist.
It was so easy.
Yun’s cigarette fell from his lips. He stumbled backward, clutching his abdomen as blood gushed down his coat. Sweat perspired across his brow. “I didn’t...expect that,” he grunted through clenched teeth, but the librarian wasn’t paying attention to that.
Mason was about to kill a man.
He barely even tried. Unless Yun received immediate medical attention, he was going to bleed out on the floor of the Library. He was going to become yet another book lining this graveyard of a bridge, and it was going to be Mason’s fault.
All his fault. Always his fault.
He didn’t even care for this man. What he couldn’t handle was the weight of yet another sin. The best thing he could do for Yun now was to end his suffering, but that meant directly killing him.
A chainsaw screamed for his head. He ducked. The saw whizzed over him. “Yun!” Eri screeched. “You were so confident about this! You can’t just die here and leave me alone!”
Mason whipped around, thrusting his blade at Eri’s chest. She had the wherewithal to move out of the way, but the tip of his blade cut her arm. She winced. Eri said she would hit him twice for that, assuming she could even touch him.
The chainsaw flew. Mason strafed out of the way. He didn’t want to attack, so he pretended to put up a struggle, throwing his body this way and that to account for his slowness as he dodged her attacks. Untouchable all the same.
A disembodied voice whispered to him. It spoke of hands in a tub full of blood. Hands of loved ones he wished to grasp so that he may join them in their crimson rest, but the voice insisted that they help him instead. He accepted the offer.
Pale hands erupted from a crimson puddle beneath Eri’s feet. They grabbed her ankles. She screamed. “The hell is this? Get off me!”
Mason held his sword in a double-handed grip. Lowering his stance, he brought the hilt to his face. The tip of his blade pointed at Eri as he summoned the technique for wielding Life of a Daredevil.
He went in for the kill, a thought so wrong and twisted, yet he couldn’t stop himself from swinging his sword. Eri brought up her chainsaw to block. Metal shrieked as the flat of his blade glided across the saw’s teeth. He batted the chainsaw away, twisted his sword, and tore his blade across Eri’s stomach, spattering fresh blood over the floor of lifeless hardcovers.
A thick, crimson line bloomed across her green jacket. She looked down, a trickle of blood escaping the corners of her trembling lips. “That’s...not fair…!”
The pale hands retreated into their puddle. It shrank out of existence as Eri’s chainsaw crashed against the floor. Then, she collapsed, exploding into a flurry of radiant pages. Where her corpse should’ve been, there laid a book the same shade of green as her jacket.
It should not be this easy.
He was vaguely aware of heavy footsteps coming his way. His body moved on autopilot, ducking beneath Yun’s fist before plunging his sword through the blond’s stomach. His body dispersed into pages. A leather bound book clattered on the ground.
Mason stared at the book by his feet. Stared at the Book of Yun as if he was expecting the blond to jump out and strangle him in rightful retribution. He stared, and he waited, but nothing ever happened, leaving him alone to grapple with the magnitude of what he had just done.