Music blasted and pounded against walls made of starship pieces. At a glance, Tasla could see parts of at least eight completely different ships making up the walls, floors and roof of the building. Six floors surrounded a central arena. A large bar was build into one of the walls of each floor. Most of the liquor was homemade mixtures of whatever the owners could get their hands on as it passed through Black Mary's to be sold or smuggled elsewhere. Names for the drinks were almost meaningless since nothing tasted the same on any given day.
Criminals and travelers dressed in modified flight suits or cannibalized military gear or both pushed past each other throwing down silver coins for ceramic tankards overflowing the Black Mary's finest. The regulars had the handful of unbroken stools riveted into the floor. Everyone else was standing, pressed tight against each other. Large speakers were bolted into every odd corner, pounding noise into the crowd and through the walls of reclaimed space junk. The music shifted every couple moments, jumping from world to world, from culture to culture. The smell, of sweat, blood, alcohol, and human waste hung over the building, the mist from the artificial atmosphere gave the smell physical form and it soaked through clothes and hair, permeating threads and fibers like a virus.
Tasla didn't mind the smell. His heightened senses made it more and less than what it was. If he focused, he could dissect the stink around him as impartially as a man looking at germs through a microscope, but he had no interest in such things. He had no interest in the tankards of blended alcohol littering the crowded floors and piling across the filthy bar counters either. Alcohol was far to weak to have a real effect, or hold on him.
He had gotten drunk once when he had first escaped the jungle hellhole they'd all been imprisoned in. It had taken days, and when it finally had its hold on him, he had found it incredibly underwhelming. He spat, as if removing the taste of bad experience from his mouth. His spittle landed on a woman trying to push past him. She didn't notice.
He felt a sudden tremor run down his spine. His body was begging for sensation. Nerves and receptors across his body were dull and lifeless. He could feel the world around him like looking at the sky while underwater. It was all distant. and it had been for weeks now. He had no adventure, no release. The people pushing around him were shadows. He touched them and they were no more stimulating than furniture. He was a dead man lost in the mists of the dead. His fingers twitched and reached for his pistols, but they weren't there. The Theater like many of the pubs in the Rat Quarter of Black Mary's had a strict policy against weapons. He swallowed a taste of bile and pushed his way to the center of the building.
The center of the Theater, was a massive cage with bars of rolled iron. Layers of rust coated the black metal and flaked off, staining the floor. This cage was why hundreds of people flocked to this particular bar day and night. Anything else at the Theater could be found anywhere else, but nobody else in Black Mary's could boast the kind of entertainment that the Theater offered. Others had tried, building their own cages or fighting pits, but the best fighters always came here. Touching the rusted black bars sent a tickle through Tasla's fingertips.
He had entered the Theater, making a deal with himself that after attending to his own needs he would search for a pilot, as he had been assigned, but just one touch of rusted, rolled iron erased all thoughts from his mind. He was a breath away from what he needed. It pumped with his heartbeat. His need was so powerful that his body was already inventing punishments for not satisfying it. He could feel a headache stirring towards the front of his skull, and tears welling up in his left eye. A lump lifted into his throat, a feeling akin to grief. He felt a tap on his shoulder.
He grabbed the hand and spun around, but he was still in control. He didn't try and kill the man who had tapped him.
"...have my hand back?" asked the man. Tasla had missed the beginning of the man's question, but he let go anyway.
The man was short and pudgy, with pale, soft, hands. Like many of the dregs who called Black Mary's home, he wore a modified military uniform. Black Mary's official status as a military base made stealing and repurposing a wide variety of standard issue wares commonplace. This soft man had had red silk pinstripes worked into his coat and pants, he wore a silver handkerchief in one pocket. His hair was greased back. Light glistened across it like black glass.
"What do you want?" grunted Tasla.
"This is about what you want," said the man with an oily smile. He pulled a bag from under his coat.
Tasla reached for it and the man leaned away.
"Payment first, you know that," he said. He was still smiling. He knew a good customer when he saw one. Tasla thought he had had dealings with this man before but at the moment all he could think about were the shivers running down his spine, the pounding in his head, and the bile rising in his throat. He reached into a sealed compartment in his combat suit and pulled out a bag of silver coins and folded paper money. Hands on criminals like him didn't trust digital money, it was too easy to track, and the thought of losing it all with the press of button didn't help either.
The man grabbed the plastic bag and slipped it into his coat, then he handed his own bag to Tasla.
"Pleasure as always, Tasla," he said. His teeth were pointed and yellow, no doubt stolen from some carnivorous beast and grafted into his mouth.
"You got me into the arena as well?" said Tasla, shaking as he shoved the people around him so he would have room to open his bag. He was starting to remember this man, more or less.
"Walk in, whenever you're ready," said the man.
Tasla nodded and pulled a couple of syringes from the bag. They were small things, but potent. It took a supreme force of will to keep from taking a ride then and there, but he resisted because he knew it wouldn't be enough.
Taking a couple of deep breaths he shoved his way through the crowd to the locked gate of the arena. Two men with electric prods stood on either side. Tasla nodded at them. One of them smiled, his face lighting with recognition, but Tasla didn't know him. He didn't know anybody. He spat a mixture of spit and stinging vomit on the floor. Taking a quivering breath, he stepped through the gate and into the arena. The floor was dull metal, with a drain at each end for when they washed away the blood and urine at the end of each day. Stains that could have been rust or old blood still clung to the corners.
Tasla looked down and saw he had a knife in one hand. He didn't remember anyone handing him a knife. He laid it down for a moment with his handful of syringes and stripped off his combat suit. It made a beeping sound as it went offline and he folded it and slipped into a compartment beneath the floor built for that purpose. He rose to his feet, leaving the knife on the floor and picking up the syringes. He wore nothing but a pair of black skin tight shorts around his loins. White scars cut through the thick hair that covered his arms, legs, and chest. A large pinkish spot of scar tissue covered a third of his back, a gift from an enemy with a flamethrower. The pain had been intense.
People were shouting now, noticing that someone had entered the arena. Once someone entered, it was an open invitation. Anyone could fight him now. Sometimes fighters would bring friends with them, there was no honor in killing an outnumbered man but some would do it for a lark. More often, fighters would come in one by one sometimes waiting in line for a chance at a brief flash of glory.
Tasla leaned against the bars and waited. After an agonizing collection of seconds the gate rattled and his first opponent walked into the arena. Tasla rose to his feet and stabbed all of his syringes into his leg at the same time. He pressed down on the plungers quickly, one by one and then tossed them out between the bars. His opponent undressed and lifted his knife. Tasla waited, his knife still lying on the floor.
He waited as his opponent crept forward. Tasla barely noticed him. He was waiting for his ride. His eyes slid from the flickering knife to the scratched metal floor and the rusted drains. He could hear his heart beat, feel his blood forcing itself through threads of veins and arterial tubes. He could feel his lungs expanding and contracting, oxygen being pushed into his blood with each inhalation. He sensed all these things, but he was not yet alive. He was only breathing.
Pure instinct and muscle memory allowed him to catch his opponent's hand. He had gone for a throat slash. Tasla looked at the wrist he was holding, attached to a knife-wielding fist. His opponent was trying to pull his hand away, but Tasla's grip was too strong. He felt the young man kick him, but it was a distant thing.
Then the liquid in the syringes, a concentrated blend of brain chemical destabilizers, nicknamed "Sturm," suddenly took hold. His pupils dilated. Colors flooded his vision. He could see everything, smell everything, taste everything. The world opened before him. His opponent spread across his vision, not a young man, but a map of anatomy, a blood pumping, air inhaling, machine of flesh and bone. Tasla could see the blue prints and he wanted to take the machine apart and see how each piece worked.
He was moving.
He was moving and it was slow. He could feel each individual muscle expand and contract for each blow. His knuckles connected with his opponent and he felt that connection like a sudden jolt of ecstasy. Bone on bone, flesh against flesh, he felt himself connecting with this man as he took him apart. He didn't know this young man's name but he knew him. He knew his opponent better than he knew himself. Blood shot out from somewhere and he tasted it on his tongue. It was not merely a dull taste of iron and oxygenated fluid; it was life. He could taste life on his tongue. He could taste his opponent's desire to live, to overcome a sudden unstoppable obstacle.
Tasla opened his fist so he could use his fingers.
He could hear screaming in his ears. He heard it as notes blending together in the air, accompanying the music blaring from the speakers above. It was a song of desperation. He heard it with his heartbeat pounding through him and flickering across his bare skin.
He saw flashes of light and metal, glittering red trickles and sprays that started warm and turned cold. He heard another heartbeat, one that beat quicker than his own. He tried to change it, to make it match his own rhythm. He could feel a powerful, slavering need to make the rhythms match. Colors rolled out before his eyes, colors hidden beneath thin layers of skin. He could peel back the layers and have all the secrets revealed.
Time quickened to real time. He was staring down at several corpses laid open.
Where had these others come from?
He was looking at his hands. Scarred, battle hardened hands slick with deep red blood. Droplets fell from his fingers and plopped into the pool clogging the floor drain. He was crying. He wept as he stared at his bloody hands. Hot tears slid down his face and blurred his vision. He blinked his eyes clear and the flicker of a blade swung into his vision and time quickened again.
Tubes of fluid in a box, he opened the box and pulled at them. They felt slick and ropey in his hands. Bones cracked and split as he pounded and twisted. His hands and arms were steel; his fingers were knives. He heard gasps and screams above him, through the bars of his cage. He heard the sound of terror. Their fear made him afraid. Fear slid through his veins and settled in his chest. Locked in a cage and filled with fear. He knew this; he knew where he was.
...They had caught him. It had taken his squad days to track them through the jungle, and they had caught him. He watched spiders bigger than his hand scuttle across the floor of his cell and hiss at him. He took a perverse pleasure in killing them, as if by taking enough of their little lives he would save his own.
He knew they were planning on eating him. The practice was common now. Both sides did it religiously, almost as an honor. He had done it himself, repeatedly.
Gunfire pounded into the darkness. The door of his cell tore open and two killers walked in, weapons at the ready.
Tasla roared and rushed them both. One hand found the shiny barrel of a MA-10 their standard combat rifle, the other connected with the soft lump of his captor's throat. He raised the rifle, pumping thick bullets into his captors. The large bullets tore through flesh and bone, cutting both men into pieces. Tasla walked over them and into the camp.
Ilias stepped out of the shadows and Tasla nodded at him in greeting. The creatures within the surrounding jungle screamed up at the night sky and Tasla wished, as he often did, that just once he could have a night of absolute quiet...
Tasla strangled his opponent, his iron fingers popping vertebrae in the man's neck. He watched life flee from the man's eyes. Blue eyes that had been desperately clinging to this miserable piece of existence went dead, like broken lights.
"I just want quiet," Tasla whispered. "Just silence, pure silence. Can I not have one night of silence?"
He tasted blood again and he wasn't sure if it was his or not. The metal flavor hung in the humid air around him. He could smell and taste it along with the other smells rising from freshly killed bodies. He heard a footstep behind him. It sounded like a child jumping into a puddle on a rainy day. Tasla swung around, catching the attacker's face with his elbow. In that half a second he felt teeth slip from the man's jaw.
The fighter tried to slip his knife into Tasla's belly, but Tasla turned at the last moment and caught his arm, snapping it over his knee. The young man squealed in pain, the sound of his throat and vocal chords mixing with the snap of bone. The sound made him think of death, Black Death haunting the edges of his vision.
"You're not taking me!" shouted Tasla into the young man's terrified eyes. Taking a bloodied blade from one of his victims, he plunged it into the fighter's chest, slicing him all the way open in three quick cuts, like an autopsy. Then he tossed the blade aside. He stepped over the pile of dead bodies and wondered briefly where they had all stowed their street clothes. He was pretty sure the arena only had a couple of compartments for putting personal belongings.
He sauntered over to his own compartment at the far edge of the arena. The speakers above him blasted the voice of an announcer. They had decided to forego the music at some point and announce his fight moment by moment. He took a deep breath and opened his compartment, removed his combat suit, and stepped up to the gate without putting it on. They opened it for him. Both guards looked afraid. Tasla knew one of them.
"Jakrin," he murmured.
"Yes, Tasla?" said the guard. His hair was spiked and his wide eyes were hidden behind dark glasses. Security personnel often wore eye coverings of some kind with micro scanning apparatus so they could assess potential threats.
Tasla looked down at himself. Every inch that he could see was drenched in blood. Some of it was already coagulated across him in flaking scabs. "Could I have a towel or something?"
"Sure," said Jakrin, after a short pause. "Here, I'll lead you to a washroom."
The thick crowd parted as Tasla walked through, leaving red footprints on the metal floor. He was breathing easy, a world of calm welling up inside. He followed Jakrin through a hidden door and into a small room with a showerhead built into the ceiling. He looked around as Jakrin stepped back to the door.
"Have I been here before?" asked Tasla.
Jakrin looked back at him. "Yeah, champ. You always come here after a job."
Tasla nodded, tossing his combat suit to one side.
"Gregor made your usual bets, he has your money for you at the third floor bar," said Jakrin.
Tasla said nothing. He was looking at his hands, at how the blood was a darker red where it had collected around the edges of his scars.
"You okay?" said Jakrin, his hand on the door.
"Oh yes," said Tasla hitting a button and feeling warm water pour across his bloodied shoulders. Salty sweat and arterial spray slipped from his skin in a glittering cascade. Pink, watery streams slid across the floor and down the drain.
Jakrin stepped out without saying another word.