The Exorcist Doctor

Chapter 152 - Shackles // Of Silence

Behind a row of headless mannequins dressed in half-finished luxury coats, Vivi tried very hard not to die.

Not going very well.

The warehouse store had probably looked elegant before Jin started fighting in it, but now it looked like a tailor’s absolute nightmare. Bolts of expensive fabric had been torn open and unrolled across the floor. Racks lay bent, lacquered display tables had split in half, and even now, toxic blood hissed wherever it landed, eating and hissing into folded velvet mats and carpets on the ground.

The only thing she could do was crouch low with the two unconscious men curled against her side. Her breaths were fast. Her head hurt with pressure. Jin told her to keep watch over the two of them, but her fingers kept slipping against their sleeves because her palms were wet with sweat. She knew Jin knocked them out earlier and told her to protect them, but what if they woke up in a frenzy and started clawing at her? Could she even bring herself to shoot them at this distance? Could she even shoot them to begin with?

Knowing they were Myrmur Hosts didn’t make it easier to grapple with the thought.

Jin, on the other hand, was still fighting the two Wretch-Class Myrmurs out in the open by himself. Both beetle-things were taking the form of ball-jointed human dolls—that was their disguise before Jin found them, anyways—and yet now they moved too light on their feet for creatures that sprayed toxic blood from every cut Jin gave them. Each time he smashed one back, black-red droplets burst through the air and spattered across more walls, more shelves, and more floorboards.

His mud walls blocked most of them for himself. He blocked one slashing arm, drove an elbow into a Myrmur’s throat, then pivoted just in time to catch another horn charge on a rising slab of muddy blood. The other Myrmur crashed into him from the side, so he simply lowered his weight and threw it away hard enough to break through an entire wall.

A few more drops of toxic blood splashed against the floor—less than a foot from her—and she yelped before she could stop herself.

Saintess, protect me!

Jin glanced back at her. It was only for a moment, but still she saw that look on his face:

Irritation.

Then one of the Myrmurs lunged at him again, and while knocking its arm aside and driving the other back with a mud-shot from his gauntlet, he barked, “Did the Hosts take the flowers already?”

Vivi jolted. Her hands were shaking so badly she nearly fumbled one of the unconscious men’s wrists, but she forced herself to look down.

Yes. Yes, they had. The pinkish exoparasitic flowers Gael had given them had already spread thin roots into the shallow cuts Vivi had made in their forearms.

“They’ve rooted!” she shouted back.

“Then destroy their hearts already!”

That was her cue. Fingers trembling, she yanked out the two enhanced vials of symbiote elixir and gave them a good, hard shake. According to Gael, that’d activate some reagent inside the vials and make it so the elixir would specifically target the Myrmur hearts—and nothing else. She uncorked both with her teeth, nearly gagged on the bitter scent, then tipped both into the Hosts’ mouths.

For half a second, nothing happened. Then both men began convulsing, and over her cover of headless mannequins, both Myrmurs also started to falter mid-step. One stumbled as Jin blocked its claws. The other landed badly after a leap and skidded through a puddle of its own blood, joints suddenly less precise.

The connection was failing. They were dying.

“Estimated time until systemic collapse: one minute!" she shouted, forcing her voice steady. “They’ll run out of life in one minute! You can finish them off now!”

As if Jin needed the reminder, though. He immediately pivoted, pulling his legs apart and rearing his gauntlet back in a trembling fist.

Vivi knew that tremor. The first time she’d seen it, she’d thought his weapon was malfunctioning. Now she knew the tremble for what it was: an immense amount of blood loading into the pressurized chambers on his knuckles. The gauntlet’s seams glowed a deep muddy red as veins of pressure swelled along the glass tubes and plates, so Vivi started pumping blood into him through their bloodshackle as well. The more blood he could pour into his gauntlet, the stronger the attack.

The two Myrmurs made their last move together. Maybe they felt their hearts dying through their umbilical cords, or maybe their instinct told them Jin was about to do something incredibly destructive, but they charged him at once with their horns lowered.

Jin stepped in and drove his gauntlet upward, and a whole wave of muddy-red blood exploded from his knuckles. It roared across the warehouse. Both Mymurs were caught mid-lunge, slammed backwards, swallowed whole, and the wave hardened almost immediately into a massive crest of mud—now the Myrmurs were trapped inside with no air to breathe, no room to move.

Vivi counted the seconds under her breath.

… Fifty-eight.

Fifty-nine.

Sixty.

And when the Myrmurs stopped struggling inside the mud wave prison, she knew the battle was over.

Of course, the room also got the message. Already-weakened furnishings finally gave in one after another. Multiple lopsided racks slid sideways, and several more stacks of fabric bolts along the walls of the warehouse slumped. A headless mannequin even tipped off its stand and struck the floor chest-first, making her jolt and whirl at the sound.

For his part, Jin simply walked up to his hardened mud wave and knocked it with his free hand. The entire structure shattered. Mud cracked apart into slabs, then dissolved rapidly back into muddy blood and runoff that drained through the grates in the floor. When the last of it had drained away, only the two Myrmur carcasses remained sprawled on the floor, misshapen and undoubtedly dead.

Jin stared down at them without expression as he folded his gauntlet back into its briefcase form.

Then he stooped, grabbed both corpses, and hauled one over each shoulder before glancing back at her.

“Let’s go,” he said. “You take the Hosts to Gael’s hotel room. He can figure out if they’re artificially made and whether they’ve got bombs to be defused inside them.”

Unauthorized duplication: this tale has been taken without consent. Report sightings.

Bombs. Right. Of course. Vivi nodded quickly, though her heart was still running wild, and slid one arm under the first Host’s shoulder.

But the moment she tried to stand with him, her foot slipped. Something cracked underneath her. She’d stepped on one of the weakened drainage grates—and it shattered under her weight.

Shit!

The world lurched. The Host slid from her grasp. She pitched backwards with a gasp, arms pinwheeling uselessly, but just as she was about to plummet head-first into the darkness, the bloodshackle around her ankle snapped tight.

Ow!

The jerk nearly tore a cry out of her as she swung, hanging upside down over the black opening with her hair and sleeves and dress dangling. Jin grunted above her—he probably felt that painful jerk as well—but within ten seconds, he managed to drag her back up by the shackle and pulled her onto the floor.

She lay flat on the back, still gasping. Her hands shook so badly she could barely lift them, and for a moment all she could do was stare up at the warehouse ceiling, waiting for the terror to slowly retreat from her throat.

I’m alive.

I didn’t fall.

I’m still… here.

“... If you can’t fight or defend yourself, then at least don’t be a drag on me after the fight is over,” Jin grumbled, scowling down at her as he picked up both the Myrmur carcasses and the Hosts. “Let’s go already—”

Humiliation caught up with the fear, and humiliation was always hotter.

“I’m doing my best, alright?” she snapped, pushing up on one elbow as her voice cracked with fury and leftover panic. “They never gave us Hosts much practical combat training! I have a rifle and bioarcanic bullets, and that’s it! It’s not exactly easy to shoot Myrmurs when they’re dashing around like lunatics and spraying poison everywhere! You should try it sometime!”

Jin didn’t turn around. “I could do it. How hard can it be? We’ve both got systems. We’ve both got ways to get stronger. There’s no excuse for you to still be this weak after, what, three or four months of hunting Myrmurs in Bharnciar?”

She shoved herself onto her feet, nearly slipping in the mess, and stormed after him while gathering the front of her dress in both hands so she wouldn’t trip over it. “But you never offer me any points from the meat you butcher and cook, so maybe that has something to do with it!”

“You could just ask for some of my portions.”

She almost laughed. “Ask? Come on. The look on your face every time you cook screams you don’t want to share even a scrap of it. You hoard all the points for yourself so you can get stronger, and now you’re standing here acting like you want me to be stronger? What do you really want, huh?”

“Whatever helps us hunt.”

“That’s not an answer!”

“It is.”

“Give it to me straight: Do. You. Want. To. Share?”

“Do you want to be here? ‘Cause I’ve never seen even a shred of enthusiasm from you—”

“Can you answer a question or not? I said—”

He kicked the warehouse’s front gates open hard enough that it flew off its hinges, and both of them stopped as they stepped out into the Bleakhearth night.

A dozen men in neat dark suits stood before them, lined up under the golden streetlamps with the stillness of undertakers and the polish of nobles. Their gold masks bore the triple faces—the mark of the ward’s ruler—and each face glinted softly in the light, though not a single one of them was moving.

Vivi’s anger faltered just enough to make room for a fresh unease. The Three-Faces always felt less like people and more like… one thought, one mind, distributed across several bodies. Tonight, too, they demonstrated their usual eeriness as they tilted their heads in unison, staring at Jin and Vivi blankly.

“... What?” Jin said, jaw tightening. He shifted the burden on his shoulders and scowled at all of them. “I already heeded your warnings yesterday. I didn’t wreck the place too badly this time. If you don’t believe me, just go in and have a look yourself.”

The Three-Faces remained silent for a moment. Then half of them peeled away from the dozen and slipped into the warehouse behind them. Vivi watched them pass and had the uncomfortable sensation that if one of them turned and pulled off their mask, maybe there wouldn’t be a face behind it, but rather gold, gold, and more gold. That certainly wouldn’t come as a surprise to her.

“We believe you,” one of the Three-Faces remaining said, and it was impossible to tell which one spoke. “But from now on, let us handle the cleanup. We always handle the cleanup for Exorcists operating in Bleakhearth. It preserves the peace.” Then four of them stepped forward, each of them holding out their arms. “Hand over the Myrmur carcasses, and they shall be butchered and prepared for you. The raw meat will be sent to your hotel room. As for the Hosts, we shall send them straight to Gael Halloway’s room as well. The menial labor need not burden guests of the Master of Masks.”

For a second, Vivi thought Jin might argue out of sheer contrariness, but—to her surprise—he simply looked satisfied with the offer.

“Is that right?” he said.

The Three-Faces dipped their heads in response.

“Alright then. Thanks. You guys deal with the cleanup from now on.”

Without another word, he tossed the four bodies over to the Three-Faces, who immediately turned and began to leave.

Only one lingered for a short while longer, looking slowly between the two of them.

“Remember,” he said, “peace must always be maintained in Bleakhearth.”

Jin waved a hand dismissively. “Yeah, yeah. I get it. Now go away.”

The last Three-Face dipped his head before turning and leaving. Jin turned the opposite direction and started walking down the other quiet street, making Vivi frown.

“Where are you going now?” she demanded, chasing after him and pointing back towards the other road. “Our hotel’s that way.”

Jin didn’t look at her. “We’re not done yet.”

“Huh?”

“Now that we know the Three-Faces will handle cleanup, we can afford to hunt down a few more Myrmurs every day. We’ll hunt down one more before we go back to the hotel.”

The words made her scowl deepen instantly. She didn’t need to be a doctor like Gael to see the stiffness in his stride, the slight drag in one step where the earlier fight had jarred something, and the mud-blood stains on his clothes. Even the way he held his briefcase-gauntlet made his arm look heavier than usual.

“You’re tired,” she said. “I can tell.”

Jin kept walking, silent.

“We’ve hunted what, a dozen Myrmurs in Bleakhearth already?” she pressed on, frustration creeping into her tone. “A dozen Myrmurs In three days. That’s a record down in Bleakhearth, isn’t it? Just give it a rest already and let your body recover a little.”

“I’ll rest when we find the source of the artificial Hosts.”

“And how long is that going to take you?”

“However long it takes.”

Vivi stared at him in disbelief. “You plan on collapsing out of fatigue, then.”

“Well, if you’re tired, you can just doze off once I find the next target. I doubt you’ll be useful much anyways.”

And that was it. The last fragile thread holding her patience together snapped with a clean, ugly sound somewhere behind her ribs.

“You know what?” she snapped. “Fine. You don’t want me around anyways, so let’s just stay a hundred meters apart—as far as our shackles will let us—and do our own thing. I’ll still be around if you tug on the shackle, but of course you won’t do that because you don’t need me, right?”

Jin walked three more steps before pausing.

“... I won’t,” he said coldly. “Now just leave me be.”

Clenching her jaw, Vivi also stopped in the middle of the street, her chest rising and falling as if she had just run a mile instead of arguing for half a minute—but all the anger she’d gathered suddenly felt too big and too tangled to carry properly, and she couldn’t bring herself to argue again.

“Fine, then!” she said at last. “Have it your way!”

“Fine.”

She turned sharply on her heel and marched down a small alley, heels striking the cobbles with heavy, furious taps.

Behind her, Jin kept walking, and he didn’t look back.