Flawless//Broken (25 page)

The disgruntled sounds of a woman huffing and getting dressed resound. Vox turns the phone back to his mouth.

“So, what do you need?”

“I’m going to build something,” I say carefully. “And I need you to ensure certain things happen in order for the machine to work.”

“Like what?”

“I need you to plant amplifiers by every Reaper portal in San Francisco.”

Vox sucks in a breath. “Christ, Darius. Every portal? Just what the hell are you planning?”

“In addition, I’ll need you to look after Ava, Reeves, and the house. I’m contacting my lawyers in the morning and naming you the successor of my estate.”

Vox goes quiet. I can practically hear him putting the pieces together.

“Darius, you can’t be serious -”

“I will be buying a pint of blood from whichever alchemist gets the honor of housing Mia. With that much of her blood, I’ll be able to create the device. With the amplifiers, the effects of the device will theoretically bleed through the portals and into every corner of the world, to every alchemist’s house with an expander. It will act like a satellite system, bouncing the effect from point A to point B, and so on. Provided I harmonize the wavelengths properly, of course.”

“You’re -” Vox swallows hard. “You’re going to make a massive Pointblank.”

I nod and mix iodine into the mercury solution slowly. “Large enough to wipe every homunculus off the face of the planet. I’ve had a similar idea before, but without a raw power source I was unable to carry it out. With their army of homunculus dead, the Mutus will be easy pickings for the Reapers. We can finish this, once and for all.”

“But that means you, you idiot,” Vox snaps. “A room of mithril isn’t going to be enough to block the effects from reaching you, too. You’ll -”

“I’ll die,” I say smoothly, stirring the darkening solution in the beaker and pouring it into a purifier. “A fitting end, don’t you think? I was born, and I brought evil into the world. I die, and I take the evil with me.”

“Darius, you can’t -”

“I can. Your concern is touching,” I cut him off. “But I’ve lived long enough. I just want to rest.”

I just want to live
. Live and burn under her gaze - burn inside of her, burn beside her. To protect her, to sleep curled together in each other’s warmth, to make her meals that delight her and feast on her golden Azoth in turn. I want to have Christmas with her; decorations, cookies, Jeeves would be ecstatic to be able to put up a tree for once, and she would help him, I’m sure. Laughter, kisses. Nights at restaurants, in what humans call a date; I thought they were so frivolous and pointless before, but now they seem wonderful. Nights spent in bed, reveling in each other’s bodies until we’ve memorized every tender weakness, every molten sigh, pretending to forget the next night and learning them all over. We’d travel together, and I’d show her every corner of the world - and every corner of my past, good and bad. I want every possible mundane thing humans do together, and I want to do them with her. I want to see her smile, to
make
her smile -

But Rose showed me. I am the monster, and Mia is the human - and as long as I live, as long as the homunculi live, her life becomes more difficult, and more sad.

“I have to make a new world,” I say. “One in which all Azoth will be safe. One in which alchemy can flourish without being abused. I have to re-make the world like it was meant to be - free of my mistake. Of Nicholas’ mistake. I’m going to put things right.”

“Don’t be naive, Darius!” Vox snaps. “Even if you kill all the homunculi and the Reapers end the Mutus, someone somewhere will make more homunculi, someday. The cycle will never end.”

“That’s the last part of the favor I wanted to ask you,” My voice gets low. “When I’m gone, please use your shadow to kill those who’d bring the homunculi back. Appeal to the Sage Council and make better rules - harder rules. Throw every alchemist who threatens the peace I make into the Darklands. Be vicious. Be heartless to those who’d make the same mistake again. That is my last wish.”

“You selfish son of a bitch!”

“This will end your father’s reign of terror, too,” I say. “It will be truly, truly over.”

“The Mutus…Darius, they’ve brought back her father.”

I’m silent for a moment. “Mia’s father? He was dead?”

“He’s been dead for almost six months. But they brought him back.”

“How?”

“As a homunculus. They’re enhancing him with so much Azoth - it’s deforming him. He’ll become a monster. And he knows Mia’s scent. They’re going to send him after her.”

“That’s all the more reason to go through with my plan<” I insist stonily. “I can end him. It doesn’t matter how powerful he is - the Pointblank will kill all homunculus.”

Vox’s voice cracks with the beginning of a sentence, but he falls silent. After what feels like eternity, he exhales a frustrated breath.

“Fucking hell, Darius. I didn’t want this. You’ve been the brother I never had.”

It’s as much of a confirmation as I can hope for. Guilt only barely nibbles at me, my determination harder and stronger than it can ever bite.

“You have been a brother to me as well, Vox. Thank you.” I smile, and hang up. My work consumes me, and my hands move with lightning agility - pouring, analyzing, purifying and re-purifying, evaporating elixirs into powder form and back again. The whine at the stone doors is the only thing that breaks me out of my concentration. I open it, and Ava slips through, tail wagging as she wildly rubs against my legs. I bend and pet her.

“There, girl. It’s alright. I’m fine. I just need to work.”

She whines again, her ice-blue eyes run through with concern. I laugh and put my forehead against hers.

“Don’t worry. I know what I have to do, now, and I can do it. I have the tools. Everything I’ve been waiting for has come to me, and I can finally finish this. Our long journey is almost over.”

Unconvinced, she pushes her head against mine, tail between her legs. She knows. Of course she knows - she has always known. Ever since that night in the woods, ever since I saw her small, dark body cowering as the homunculi advanced on her, I knew that she would be the one to know. She nursed me when I refused food, she brought me hope and joy when I’d all but given up. Her human body had been taken from her by the Mutus, but Zhen managed to seal her soul in the body of a wolf pup. Gaderi - or, in English, ‘
Avalanche
’.

“It’ll be alright,” I assure her softly. “You will be fine. You’re a human in another body, not a homunculus. It will not affect you.”

She bark-whines, and I pet her nose. Lying to her pains me, and she knows when I am. But I do my best to hide it.

“I will be fine, I promise.”

Avalanche finally settles after an hour of shadowing me around the lab nervously. She sleeps at the foot of my cot, fluffed tail hiding her nose. She dreams, her little twitches betraying just how much is on her mind. Vox will treat her well, and she will come to like him. It’s his shadow she despises, not him. Reeves, however, can never be told of what I plan to do - he would certainly try to stop me. He has been the constant companion of my many lonely decades, as his father was before him, and he takes his duty to protect my well-being very seriously. Too seriously. I’ll have to make up a story as to what I’m creating down here - a generator, perhaps.

I assemble the silver casing of the machine first, etching the runes needed to hold such power in a relatively small box with a laser-cutter. The work takes me until early morning, the clock on the counter reading nearly 5am. My hands are blackened with soot and the hunger - hunger I hadn’t realized was eating at me. My fingers are dark and swollen - a sure sign I’ve overused them. My eyes ache, so dry even blinking hurts. I’d been concentrating too hard.

I open the doors of the lab to find a tray of sliced raw bison for Ava, and a vial of Azoth for me. Reeves is nowhere to be seen, but I know he left it here. I gratefully down the Azoth, though it’s bitter and weak compared to the mere smell of Mia’s. It sustains me but doesn’t satisfy me. I place the bison in front of Ava and walk into the bathroom. A hot shower will do me wonders.

I come out and am in the middle of toweling my hair when my cell phone rings. I expect it to be Vox, with some argument about why I can’t go through with it, but it’s the one person I never thought I’d see - Rose. I answer.

“Rose,” I say. “It’s not like you to ever speak to me.”

“It seems I have to,” Her impatient voice is even more strained than usual. “And I will have to much more often.”

“Why?”

“The Sage Council has decided,” She says slowly. “You are the one who will retain Mia as an Azoth.”

“No,” The word is out of my mouth instantly. “That will be impossible.”

“It’s been decided,” She insists. “Her Azoth is too much of a threat. It must be contained and watched by an alchemist with adequate skills. And as much as I dislike you, you are the most adequate among us.”

“She cannot,” My fist squeezes around a glass beaker. “I will not have her.”

“Trust me, Darius,” Rose scoffs. “If it was up to me and only me, you’d never see a hair on her head. But logic overrides my personal desire. This is what’s best and safest for the community, until we can determine how to use her strength. In the wrong hands, she’d decimate us.”

She will decimate me.

I’ve already set myself on the path of redemption. If she’s here while I walk down it, my willpower will fade. I’ll want to start living more than rectifying my mistake. What I want is to have her with me, to be with her, but the right thing to do is make this worldwide Pointblank, taking all the homunculi - all my mistaken brethren - with me to hell, or wherever it is the soulless golems go in the afterlife. I cannot want to live. I cannot live, if this plan is to work.

“She will pack and arrive at your house tomorrow morning. Be sure everything is ready for her. I will forward Reeves the billing system for Azoth and assign a Silveria Enterprises account for you in the ledger.” Rose’s voice is ever business-minded, completely oblivious to my inner torment. “And one more thing, Darius. Do not fraternize with the poor girl. She’s been through enough already.”

The phone goes dead, and I slam it onto the table. My fist clamps around the glass beaker, shattering it into thousands of razor shreds. Some embed in my skin - the wounds bloodless reminding me I am dust and ashes and nothing more.

I will not let her sway me. I will not fall in love.

I will only protect her.

***

The shadow curled on Vox’s back as he watched the man wake.

Man? No, it would be presumptuous to call him that. He was a homunculus, risen by his father’s hand. But Vox had seen thousands of homunculus rise at the Mutus’ alchemy, and none of them looked like this man. Vox took in the man’s tattoos - an awful mishmash of tribal tattoos and big-breasted women and latin quotes about power over love. He was tall, nearly a half-foot taller than the 6’2 Vox, but it was hard to tell when he was lying down on the steel cot of the Mutus’ underground bunker. The Mutus had enhanced his body with prima materia, making his bones and muscles unnaturally large and strong. It gave him the visual effect of a doll stuffed too tight, but where it would’ve made most men look ridiculous, the man looked terrifying.
Beastly
.

Redfield. George Redfield. Vox had spotted the name on his father’s desk in a dossier. Employed as a security guard with occasional bouts of unemployment, with a nasty temper that resulted in many domestic violence calls to the police. His wife had taken off four years into their only daughter’s life, leaving her to take the brunt of his fury, no doubt. Child services had deemed him ‘suitable’, which meant the man definitely wasn’t stupid - he knew how to hide his vicious behavior.

Vox pitied the girl. Darius’s girl. Was it alright to call her that? He was going to die creating that monstrous Pointblank before he’d admit to his feelings for the girl, Vox knew that much. She’d had a hard life. And it was only about to get harder.

George stirred in his sleep. His skin was pitted and scarred, open patches of flesh still visible - reversing necrosis was a lengthy and messy process. A homunculus hadn’t been created from a corpse for centuries - not since Darius. It was dangerous, and only possible at the hands of the most skilled alchemists. Even now, Oliver was bedridden, his power spent and barely returning.

Something was wrong, though. Vox had never seen a homunculus grow so strong. They usually capped out at birth - but George continued to climb the echleons. He bent tin plates in half with his thumb and forefinger. His punches to the cage walls shuddered the ultra-strong mithril, and just yesterday he had dented it. Dented
mithril
.

Vox knew his father had created an atrocity of nature.

Is this what Darius had created too with the body of Amelie, all those years ago?

Vox nodded at a Mutus alchemist, who scurried in with a vial of noxious-smelling blue liquid for George. Vox unlocked the cage door, and the Mutus ducked inside, warily approaching the hulking mountain of man. He poured the liquid liberally onto the man’s open flesh patches, and George instantly reared up, frizzy black hair as wild as his soulless eyes. His roar shook the windows, and the Mutus hurriedly backed out of the room. Vox slammed the cage door shut just as George leapt for it, his massive hands straining the bars to their limits.

“Let me out, you little pigs!” He spat. Vox felt his grip weakening, struggling to barely keep the door shut.

‘Shadow,’ he thought. ‘I need you’.

His back exploded with white-hot pain, the shadow emerging from it and snaking over his shoulders and down his arms as one smoky mass of darkness. The shadow reinforced his every muscle, giving him enough power to shove the cage door shut and lock it. The shadow retreated the instant it was locked, scared of the light, and Vox collapsed to the ground panting.

“Hah!” George laughed. “You’re pathetic! Can’t even match me, not without that monster. When I break out of here, I’ll snap you like the stick you are.”