76 - Ekarone Days Pt. 3 [Cherno]

“I had several sub-brains slaved to my main one so that I could function and survive even if a big part of my head got blown off. Eyes that could see magnetism, heat, even into my world's plane of information, to appraise everything in my field of view, to see up to five kilometers in perfect fidelity. Similar for my ears. Balancing units that didn't rely on liquid, obvious one. Fibre-optic nerve replacements to nullify any delay in my reactions. Near-zero impedance wire made of nanomachines - microscopic metal insects - for the smaller nerves that couldn't be replaced with fibre-optics. Electromotivated muscle strong enough to tear the turret off of a tank, or punch through a solid slab of steel thirty centimeters wide, lift a couple tons, so on. A miniaturized fusion generator to power it all; the anathema of my world, but completely clean if handled properly. The fusion cells usually lasted a couple years, though I could function fine without them. I just couldn't use most of my strength and I would get exhausted like any normie, even need to sleep a couple hours a night to recharge. Weapons... Boy. Monomolecular wire whip in the left thumb, a classic light-ray weapon in the left eye, vibroblades in my legs. Blackhand Radiation Blasters built into my arms; or rather, my arms were built around the blasters. This..."

She raised her left hand.

"This might one day match up to those. One day. The Blackhands could go through walls and melt holes into building-sized war machines inside-out, or just blow up the engines without needing to destroy the armor. Any living thing caught in the radiation blast would die, even if it was a grazing hit. Anathemism is downright clean compared to what the Blackhands did. All that power," she said. Profound sorrow and rage gripped her face as she reached for her neck.

"And it still wasn't enough to get at the high-and-mighty bastards who treated my world as a playground, who treated billions of people as nothing but a natural resource to be exploited and depleted. The one person I trusted, who knew enough about me to know how to kill me, was my undoing. This time 'round, I won't make the mistake of ever thinking I have enough power. If I end up a walking weapon of mass destruction, all the better."

"A graft-saint undone by treachery..." Casus sighed.

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Meanwhile, elsewhere in the city…

“We will not come after them,” decreed Damrus Hashem. “Should the opportunity present itself, both Silberblut and Blackhand may be disposed of, and the same goes for the possible acquisition of Blackhand’s Pattner or Silberblut’s Coupler… But they are not to be considered priority targets, nor are they to be hunted. The Old Street Butchershop was chosen for Silberblut’s detainment due to its obscurity; the loss of that place is a minor blow to our operations. As for Slaughterhouse Nine, most of our equipment has already been relocated to Slaughterhouse Twelve. Product loss was minimal, and human resource expenditures acceptable. Moreover, Silberblut and Blackhand exposed a traitor lurking in our midst and disposed of him for us. I’ve found no evidence to suggest that their target was anything other than the Silberblut Coupler, and as such… We are done with them. Moving against them would only weaken our position, and we do not have the spare manpower to divert from fulfilling our obligation to the Benefactors.”

Damrus turned his gaze to his son, who was making an active, but lackluster, effort to seem inconspicuous.

“I certainly hope you were listening. You are not to go after them or send anyone in your stead. Am I understood, Semzar Hashem?!”

“...Understood, progeni- father.”

Letting out something halfway between a sigh and a groan, the Hashem Family’s patriarch lit up a cigar. This had been a total shitshow, but the damage they had sustained was lesser than what would be caused by a Red Hood coming into play, let alone a Graft Apostle of greater power and destructiveness than Silberblut. Much like that blade of his he was a precision weapon, at least when put up against others from the Twin Churches.

Damrus hadn’t become the head of Audunpoint’s reigning mafia family by overcommitting and trying to put down everyone who had ever opposed him. Usually, just a warning was enough to deter fools from acting against the Hashem Family. Sometimes it was a piece of graffiti, a message delivered through the window, a dead pet or burned-out personal vehicle. But he didn’t often find it necessary to kill. It was counterproductive, and drew too much attention.

If he ever could help it, Damrus also took the greatest possible care to avoid catching civilians in the crossfire, and he severely punished anyone who did something so stupid as killing an uninvolved civvie. That didn’t just draw too much attention like an out-in-the-open gang skirmish, it drew the wrong kind of attention too.

Righteous contractors didn’t give a shit if gangsters killed each other, or if someone participating in underground prize fights went missing. But a civilian getting assaulted for bumping into a gangster zonked out of his gourd on Fuxutro? That could bring all sorts of high-and-mighty bastards down on his head… And at the end of the day, Damrus wasn’t the sort of man to set himself in opposition to lawful society. He was in this to make money and grow stronger, just like the average contractor. If he ever got the opportunity to peaceably cooperate with that Blackhand woman or to pay her a small fortune for that gun of hers, he would gladly take it.

As for the traitor he had mentioned in his speech, Damrus wasn’t referring to the Foreman of Slaugherhouse 9. That man, Jahangir Panahi, had been known to him for months, in no small part due to his background as an exceedingly talented grafter. Damrus had intended to try converting him to his side with a favourable deal: A path of least resistance to an easy and lucrative position where he could carry out his grafting experiments to his heart’s content, while the Hashem Family would benefit from access to weaponized graft-beasts. Failing that, he would have used him as a fall guy and Slaugherhouse 9 as a sacrifice to the Twin Churches to get some heat off his back.