Midnight Metropolis: Chapter Eleven (3/4)
Midnight Metropolis: Chapter Eleven (3/4)
Freaks
A serialised novel of sunless planets, hallucinogenic mushrooms, daemons, and... pizza rats. 🍕🐀
New chapters posted every Friday! Scroll to the bottom for content warnings.
They left Caggotty to his drunken gibbering and made their way into the belly of the club. Tattie paused halfway to the bar, holding her arms out to halt Ginx and Brax on either side. Ginx glared at her, a harsh insult forming, then bit it back when she realised Tattie was watching two figures at the bar. They were hunched on their stools, heads hanging close together as they whispered. The trio crept forward on silent feet.
“They’ll turn this place into a sun-spa, I reckon,” one of them was saying. “A fancy job with a foot cleaning station.”
“There’s a grave problem with that,” the second person said. “No one would go near a cleaning station that your frankly repulsive flesh hooves had touched. I saw something wriggling between your two pinkies last week, Knoot. I nearly lost my lunch.”
Ginx pushed past Tattie, a grin stretching her face. She would recognise that whiny nasal tone anywhere.
“Riven,” she said, leaning on the bar beside him. “What are you doing here?”
Riven gestured at the empty beer bottles clustered before him, then startled when he turned to look at her.
“Have you been in an accident, Ginx?”
Ginx turned from him, rapidly pulling dry strands of mulberry hair down over her forehead. It did little to disguise the broken ruin of her lower face.
“No,” she said. “It’s complicated. I don’t want to explain it, but I’m fine.”
“You don’t look fine,” Knoot slurred. His own scarred face creased with concern. “Shit, child. I thought my mug was ugly. Have you joined with those weirdo wraith-witches? They’ll clear your credit as soon as look at you. You can’t trust those cut-up freaks.”
“Aren’t you a cut-up freak?” Ginx countered, staring pointedly at the livid lines carved into his forehead. A further mess of swirling designs was etched into his stubbled cheeks, long faded to lumpen scar tissue.
Knoot drew himself up on the bar stool. “I am not a freak,” he said, eyes flashing dangerously. “I practice cutting to show devotion to the Divine Cosmic Head, the Regurgitator of All Life. I’m not like those witches, clowning for credits.”
“Nobody said you were,” Tattie said. She placed a calming hand on Knoot’s bare shoulder. “We’re just looking for a quiet place to talk. Why don’t we take the upstairs, and you can stay here near the beer.”
This idea was agreeable to Knoot. He nodded and reached for a fresh bottle, snapping the cap off with his teeth while the rest of the group moved towards the stairs. Ginx squeezed Riven’s forearm, indicating he should join them. He vacated the bar stool with a surly expression, his lips pressed into a bloodless line.
He’d rather keep drinking with the half-naked zealot. Quality friend.
“You didn’t tell me why you’re here,” Ginx said as they crossed the silent dance floor. Riven was unwilling to meet her gaze.
“I was looking for Traci-Lynn,” he said. “She’s nowhere though, the husks spooked her good.”
“Your dealer’s scarpered, so you lowered yourself to drinking the Bunker’s piss-beer with Knoot?”
He offered her a lazy half-shrug. “Piss-beer tastes better when it’s free. Caggotty’s lost the tenuous grip he had on his marbles. He hasn’t left his office for days. I think he’s past caring about us ripping off a few drinks.”
If he had a half-full set of marbles before, the bag’s definitely empty now.
Tattie stopped on the landing, barring their entry into the upstairs room. “He has to wait outside,” she said, glaring at Riven.
“It’s just Riven, Tattie,” Ginx said. “You can trust him.”
“I barely trust you, Ginx, and that’s being generous. Either Riven buggers off, or we do this thing without you.”
Brax joined Tattie in staring them both down, his face wearing the same self-righteous expression.
The weird ghost guy was right, he is her lapdog. Would he sit and roll over if Tattiana asked him to?
Ginx wanted to laugh, but that would have been deeply inappropriate. She covered it up by sighing dramatically.
“Fine. Go back to your piss-beers, Riven. I’ll meet you downstairs.”
Riven didn’t argue. They waited for him to snake his way back down the curving staircase and into the yawning darkness of the club, then shut themselves inside the room at the end of the landing. Ginx tried to ignore the boxy green chrome of the prophecy phone glinting against the far wall. That was where she’d been sure that Luke wanted to kiss her, back before her best friend had been kidnapped and violated with husk tech. Before she had offered an all-area pass to a tentacled daemon.
Forget him. He’s a self-centred loser, and he plays guitar like a strung-out pizza rat.
Tattie flung herself on a sagging mustard-coloured sofa and put her booted feet up on a coffee table. Brax sat beside her, leaving Ginx to choose between standing, or sitting apart from them at an angle that would make it difficult to talk. Deciding she’d prefer a third option, Ginx stepped over Brax and deposited herself on the table facing them. Tattie retracted her feet.
“Let’s get started, shall we?” Tattie said, showing no sign that Ginx had annoyed her.
She thinks she’s clever, this one. Be careful. Her power hums like shifting lava. You don’t want to be the one to make it erupt. Even our flesh can bubble and melt.
Ginx fixed Tattie with her best patient expression.
“You already know what we intend on swiping,” Tattie continued, “so I’m not going back over that. We need to decide how to get the guard-husks away from the Noctarum. Perhaps we should kill them, or something.”
“I think killing twenty husks might raise some alarm bells,” Brax said. “Plus, that’s a bit harsh, isn’t it? They‘re still people.”
“Can we just make them really sleepy, then?”
“Wait,” Ginx said, leaning towards them. Brax inched away from her, his face a careful study in repulsion control. “We’re not hurting husks. Toni’s husked. If you do anything to her, I’ll—”
“You’ll rip us apart with your shiny new tentacle jaws?” Tattie finished. Her eyes were large and focused, the set of her jaw resolute. “You can try, but I promise you, you’ll die bloody.”
Careful.
Ginx blew out a breath, rifling the flower petal flesh curling back from her mouth splits. “I preferred the sleepy idea, that’s all.”
The flesh of a sentinal mushroom would disorientate and confuse the guards.
“Some stalk might work.”
Tattie sat up straighter. “Might make them sleepy, might make them wander off. Either way, that’s an excellent idea, Ginx.”
She really could try harder not to sound so surprised.
“We’d have to buy our way into the sentinal plant,” Ginx said. “They send everything to Mustara now. You won’t find any stalk in the city.”
“Will that be a problem?” Brax said.
“No, we’ll get in there,” Tattie replied. “I’ve talked my way into harder places.”
I bet.
“Will you tell me about this husk data now?” Ginx asked. “How will it help Toni?” She shifted on the hard surface of the stained coffee table, starting to wish she’d chosen the armchair.
Tattie crossed one leg over the other in an attempt to appear nonchalant. “I won’t know how it will help Toni until we get our hands on it. All I do know is that it’s deep in the Noctarum’s research facility, stashed on some ancient computer—”
Tattie was still talking, but Ginx was finding it hard to listen over the rising torrent of the daemon’s voice. Shrill rage echoed against the inside of her skull, flushing her entire body with searing heat.
She has no idea what’s on that computer and has no intention of finding out. All she wants is that rich old woman’s credits. Once she’s secured the data, she’s going to cash it in and bounce from this planet before you have time to catch your breath.
Ginx gripped the edge of the coffee table and closed her eyes, willing herself to calm, for her flushed skin to cool and her heartbeat to cease ratcheting. She was startled by a cool hand gripping her arm.
“Are you okay?” Tattie said.
Ginx nodded through gritted teeth. The alien voice receded.
“I know you don’t care what’s on that computer,” she said, “but please promise me we’ll scan the data out before we hand it over to this Verna woman. I have no reason to help you if you can’t promise that, and you’re going to need me.”
“Why do you think that?”
The wrinkle-nosed suspicion was back, but this time the seer’s eyes were softer. She both distrusted and felt sorry for her, and that realisation made Ginx feel vaguely nauseous. She took a shallow breath.
“You’re going to need me because you’re attempting to break into the N.E.X.’s headquarters and steal their shit, and I have daemon tentacles inside me that can eat people on command.”
Tattie nodded slowly, fighting a smile. “Well, when you put it like that then yes, you’re bloody indispensable.”
“Great, we’ll make a copy of the data,” Brax said, sounding tired and impatient. “That’s what I said we should do in the first place, but what’s the point of keeping score? Now can we please plan stage one?”
Tattie grinned at him. “Stage one is scrounging up some hallucinogenic mushrooms.”
Deep within the fleshy warren of her body, Ginx felt something stretch and settle like a satisfied cat.
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Content Warnings
Description of alcohol use/inebriation, swearing