Moloch stared down at the miserable creature. Hybrids were once all Aneoki like himself, with two arms, two legs and a normal hair covered head. It all started from either boredom, undiagnosed mental disorders, or general ingratitude for being given a healthy body by the light. These disenfranchised citizens voluntarily injected themselves with radical gene resequencing therapies, taken from one or more of the many sentient and dangerous creatures to be found on their Jungle Planet.
Then after a painful period spent in a gestation globule, they would emerge reborn, their physical forms being completely altered.
As the hybrid's process became more refined and more sophisticated the leaders of their dens brazenly declared themselves and their followers an emerging master race, superior to all normal Anoekians, and began to recruit followers. Many of the poor who had limited prospects in pillar life, or employee inhabitants of a level like Drydellia, who were not disgusted to have their physical form twisted and deviated by homebrewed mutagenics, eagerly flocked to the Hybrid dens as a way out of the difficult predicaments of their lives.
The Den masters were usually skilled enough in sequencing the mutagenic concoctions to prevent deaths from dosing, and saw that their packs grew in strength, striking deals with shady members of the pillar underworld for ducats and mineralis-vita. They oversaw the injection mixes of their members and helped craft and administer progressively more mutagenic compounds.
But it was a fine line between developing the maximum benefits of mutation and evolving too much and losing most of the higher brain functions attributed to sentient beings. If a mixer became completely insane and reverted to a primitive mode of function, it would be called a Drainer.
If a drainer was not dealt with in time, it would escape the den and feed on citizens as their appetite for spinal fluid would become insatiable. Should that happen, it was the Den Master's obligation to put down any Drainers they created, as ravenous beasts that preyed without restraint on a local population was a surefire way to attract undue attention to the hybrid den from the local constabulary and the legion.
Many of those who gambled on changing themselves won big. They used the mutagenic genes to increase their strength, vitality, speed, and lifespan. But for those who lost, Moloch only had to look at the vile spectacle of Screwtongue, who kept nervously scratching at his puckered flesh, as his mind flitted from idle thought to thought. His chin quivered and leg restlessly trembled as he stood hunched beside the Centurions.
Moloch could not remember any occasion where citizens began mixing as means to rebel against an oppressive level's socio-political regime. Most Republic citizens resented Hybrids, or Mixers as they colloquially called them, and their general disdain drove the hybrid dens into the robust underground scene of the pillar, where they acted as hired muscle, mercenaries, and slavers.
A Hybrid Den had the reputation that no job was too detestable, if the ducats were good, and the mineralis-vita was pure. Generally, their dens could be found in the forgotten quarters of the lower levels, like this one but there had been rumors that they started a colony out in the deep jungle. However, Moloch knew that out in the Jungle there were real predators whose talent for killing wasn't pharmaceutically induced through gruesome therapies but honed by mother nature herself through eons of merciless evolution.
To survive in the jungle was another thing altogether.
Ubiquitous to all hybrids was the desire for mineralis-vita, a powder derived from massive crystal formations that grew in the sea of burning sands to the west. Historically it had been consumed as an all-purpose vitamin and spice; for it greatly enhanced the flavor of food, while imparting all of one's daily mineral requirements. However, those that hybridized themselves, soon figured out that it greatly enhanced their genetic reconfigurations and was a powerful euphoric intoxicant and they sought it out in the purest forms they could get. Tracking where the supply of mineralis-vita went in the pillar was a very effective way to catch hybrids.
"If you did not choose to become a rat, why have you become one?" Krasus asked.
"O great one! Screwtongue did not choose to be a rat in the Master Race! Screwtongue was made a rat because the Den Master played a cruel trick on me. He switched my chosen species dose at my rebirthing as revenge! Revenge for a lover that I once seduced. She had chosen me instead of him! But look at me now after all, I am a rat, and despite my best efforts, he ran his clawed fingers over his feathered cloak, it was not enough! Instead of being a beautiful, feathered cock, who crows atop the mountain of love, I have been reduced to this. My lovebird, the beaked beauty she was, flew away and back to the den master. Back to his foul, festering clutches!"
"I was ridiculed and forced to live life begging for scraps from the other pack members and subsisting off the meagre generosity that pity affords," He lamented.
Screwtongue rasped out a wheezing laugh. "Is not life cruel? The Den Master discovered Screwtongue's dalliance with his beloved and as revenge he gave Screwtongue; the crudely designed ratticusrex amalgum with a concrescence compound, so now Screwtongue is stuck like this, forever! I cannot change! I can never dose again - and I cannot go back! Now I am remorse made manifest!"
Screwtongue drew close, intruding into Krasus' personal space and leaned his whiskered snout forward, wrinkling it from side to side and giving Krasus' chest a long deep sniff. He sighed with satisfaction.
Krasus put his hand on his holstered emitter pistol and Moloch could see that he was tempted to draw it.
"It's not like a brave handsome and powerful centurion like you could understand Screwtongue's miserable plight, Krasus"
"I feel as if he has interpreted my interest in his addiction as an opportunity to violate my personal space. Also, his ingratiating speech feels very much like he's trying to patronize me, Moloch. That makes me very cross." Krasus said with a dangerous edge to his voice.
Screwtongue instantly knew he'd made a mistake and went too far, taking liberties with Krasus.
"I dare not ply you with disingenuousness, great one! I dare not!"
As the creature bowed low to declare his fealty to Krasus, Moloch could see a stubby tail-like growth emerging like a twisted barb from the creature's tail bone.
"Patience brother. Screwtongue will be dealt with by the Drydellians." Moloch said.
Krasus relaxed and crossed his arms.
"Never trust a gossip, cheater or a snitch, Moloch, because you're never the person that their character will make an exception for." He spoke.
Screwtongue knew that silence was the best course of action, and he retreated several steps away and stood with his head bowed.
"Have you heard enough of this creature's sob story yet? They are all the same tales, life treated me so unfairly that I was left with no choice but to rebel and dose! Pathetic! Refusal to pay your dues is more like!" Jakob spat as he raised his fist in a menacing gesture at Screwtongue.
The hunched rat creature cowered behind Salazaar's leg, his force restraints clinking together as he did so.
"Mercy! I beg of you!" He wailed.
Jakob lowered his fist and brought it behind his back in a modified parade rest stance.
"Your fate will be decided by Supervisor Rofoscue when he regains consciousness." Jakob said. "You ought to beg the light that he will be in a good mood upon the restoration of his senses."
"I can guarantee you that he won't be." Salazaar said.
Jakob arched a thin manicured eyebrow at that statement.
"A Drydellian is known for his keen sense of justice. If you've done nothing wrong, then you have nothing to fear." He said as he turned to Moloch and Krasus.
Krasus extended his arm towards the yawning darkness of the empty street before them.
"We didn't travel all the way down here to this festering stinkhole to listen to your witless idioms about Drydellian sensibilities. Now, stow the idle chatter Constable and take us to the hybrid den."
A very nervous look crossed the young chief constable's face, as his eyes searched around the dim darkness, in the direction that Krasus indicated. He then pulled out his intelor and made some inputs.
"I just sent the navigational route I received from Forrester to Salazaar's intelor. He can lead you the rest of the way. Afterall my first duty is to Supervisor Rofoscue's well-being. Your centuri should be more than enough to deal with the hybrids and I'm sure my presence won't be missed."
"Never have truer words been spoken." Moloch said. "You stay back here and tripsit Rofoscue. I'm sure you two will have a lovely time." Then he turned around and gestured with his hand in a few quick circles above his head.
"Are you ready legionnaires? We're moving out." Krasus said.
By way of an answer, the legionnaires rapped their knuckles on their armored breastplates in three quick taps.
They turned and started quickly filing down the street, spreading out with their emitter rifles held in a ready position.
"One more thing before you go, Salazaar." Jakob said, reaching into a pouch at his waist. He pulled out a micro dot camera, and then stepped forward and stuck it right in the middle of Salazaar's forehead. The adhesive camera blinked a faint green color to show that it was on and transmitting.
"You didn't think you'd just get off so easily? This is so we can stay in touch. I'm not just going to let one of my Constables wander off into a dangerous Hybrid den alone and without the benefit of my direct supervision! With this I'll be able to see and hear everything you do at least until the monitoring drones arrive, but this will make do until then." He smirked and walked up the gondola steps, waving his intelor screen, at them showing the video feed from Salazaars point of view.
"I'll see you when I get back." Salazaar said, as he clenched his fists.
"I have every confidence you'll pull through, but if not, that's life." Jakob said flippantly as he ascended the steps and disappeared aboard the gondola.
Salazaar, Moloch and Krasus could hear him talking in soothing tones to Supervisor Rofoscue.
"Now, Now, I'm here. No need to worry."
"Oh Jakob, I must ask you in all seriousness, is this real life?" Supervisor Rofoscue, asked.
"Of course not Supervisor, you are having strange visions induced by the bite of a psychedelic leech." Jakob said gently."
"That is where you are wrong Jakob! All of this is real because my consciousness has examined it! In a breath I have borne witness to such strangeness and splendors that would take a thousand artists a millennium to create and with the next breath forgotten them, only to be given another dispensation of the same! It is real life! For the eye of my mind has perceived it!"
"Sir, you aren't talking sense! You were bitten by horrible slimy leeches!" Jakob said, shivering at the thought of it, and taking both of Rofoscues hands in his.
Rofosucue rested his head on Jakob's shoulder.
"O my sweet Jakob, I don't expect you to understand, but the means of induction of such perceptions are of no consequence, only that the consciousness perceives! There is no difference between mundane perception and this! None whatsoever! What is the difference in stimulation from my physical eyes and my inner eyes? They are both streams of perception offered up to my consciousness!
"I'll take your word for it, Supervisor!" Jakob said with a tone of confused sincerity.
Rofoscue ran his fingers through Jakob's scalp, and then pulled his face back to better examine it with a glassy eyed, red rimmed stare.
"Also, I never realized what splendid hair you possess. It's like a fine golden mist! I really should add it to my collection."
"But Sir, you can't shave me bald, I'm not suited for it!" Jakob said with a note of consternation in his voice.
"Nevermind that Jakob, we will revisit the idea another time. Now listen closely and mind my next words." Rofoscue said.
Jakob leaned in closely, and his soft pink ear quivered with a sense of anticipation.
But all Supervisor Rofoscue was able to utter was "Yhargmhiumbue..." just before a long sour belch turned into a fit of vomiting that ended up retching sick all over constable Jakob's shiny new boots.
"Supervisor, really! These are my good boots!" Jakob shouted as he scuffled around on the gondola, trying to extricate himself from Supervisor Rofoscue, who had begun laughing uproariously.
"I think I am beginning to feel much better." Rofoscue said.
Krasus, Moloch and Salazaar shared a chuckle as they began moving down the street and away from the pair of Drydellians.
"That fellow really needs to learn how to handle his intoxicants." Krasus said with a dry chuckle, as they turned and began walking down the street to join the Legionnaires.
"Guardsman Trench!" Moloch called out.
"Here, Sir." Trench replied. The guardsman double-timed it up to walk beside Moloch. He was an older legionnaire and stood taller than the others in the Centuri. He had a golden mechanical right arm, to replace the one he had lost on one of the many jungle campaigns that he had served in.
"Take Screwtongue to the back and mind him, while we travel, as Salazaar will be navigating us to our destination."
"As you command Sir." Trench said, as he took the lead from Salazaar and walked Screwtongue to the back of the column.
*** Thank you so much for reading SOL! Hit me with a hot vote and a comment and let me know what you think so far! ***