- Chapter 054B -

  Gentleman's Game

  Mark took a disoriented step back, his bare feet cold on the familiar laminate floor. The world was a thick, syrupy fog of confusion, and these two men, sharp and solid in their impossible suits, were the rocks against which his reality was straining. He saw Eric’s gaze sweep the room, a sneer of profound disappointment forming on his face as if he’d just walked into a squalid bedsit. The casual, absolute contempt was too familiar.

  As they stepped fully inside, his own front door swinging shut behind them with a soft click, a primal instinct took over. He wasn’t thinking. He was just moving. His hand reached out, a desperate grasp for something solid, something real. He found the worn, familiar shape of his armchair, and then, resting against it, the smooth, cool wood of his cricket bat.

  Relief cut through some of the haze. He didn't question its presence, he should have, but the memory was correct. It was just there, exactly where he left it. A piece of his life, solid and tangible. His fingers wrapped around the worn grooves of the handle, the weight of it granting a moment of comfort in the face of the unwelcome guests.

  "I've grown tired of these little games, Shilling," Eric began, his voice smooth and condescending, completely at odds with the naked aggression in his eyes. "We gave you an easy contract. You chose... to be difficult." He gestured with a theatrical, dismissive wave toward the man beside him. "So, a specialist in expediting these processes has been called at a great expense. Clyde here," he said, the name spoken with the reverence one might reserve for a prized weapon, "is Jade with the Heart of Memory. He is more than capable of resolving… issues such as you."

  The deduction was simple, it wasn’t real, but they were here. Striking out with the bat would probably not achieve anything, not yet.

  Clyde offered a thin, predatory smile that held none of the forced politeness of his introduction. He took a slow, deliberate step forward, his gaze sweeping over Mark with the detached, clinical interest of a surgeon examining a tumor.

  "Your... companions," Clyde said, his voice a quiet, almost bored murmur that was somehow more chilling than Eric's open contempt. "They will be lucky to remember their own names when I am done with them." He let the words hang in the air, a casual, brutal promise. "And do not mistake my abilities for those of the child playing with dreams."

  The threat was so direct that it momentarily cleared the fog in Mark’s head. The memory of them flashed in his mind. The thought of any of them, being on the receiving end of this arrogant, smiling monster... it was a chilling thought he couldn't even begin to process.

  “You have a mind that is tiresome to navigate, I will give you that.” Clyde added, not out of any compliment, but to emphasis. “And that some memories have turned out to be good cages.”

  It was Eric who broke the tense moment, his composure cracking for the first time. His gaze snapped to the television, to the frantic, hissing static that filled the room with its incessant, grating noise.

  "For the love of the Founder, turn that infernal noise off," he snapped, his voice sharp with annoyance. "It's giving me a headache."

  Mark's hand, still clutching the cricket bat, moved automatically. He grabbed the remote from the arm of the chair, an automatic motion from thousands of pointless evenings. He aimed it at the screen and pressed the power button.

  Nothing happened. The static continued its relentless, monochrome dance.

  He pressed it again, harder this time, a flicker of frustration cutting through his fear. Still nothing.

  The remote was dead, and a quick glance at his captors confirmed they didn’t know what they were looking at.

  The useless plastic clattered back onto the chair. With a slow, deliberate motion, he walked toward the television, the cricket bat held loosely at his side. He reached out and pressed the physical power button on the side of the unit.

  The screen went dark. The high-pitched, hissing static was gone, replaced by a sudden, oppressive silence that was somehow even more menacing. Mark stood there for a long moment, his back to the two men, and took a slow, steadying breath. He had just performed a single, simple act of control in a situation that was completely out of his hands. It wasn't much. But it was a start.

  Mark turned slowly from the blank television screen, letting the cricket bat hang loosely in his right hand and against his leg, hidden from their view. His mind, though still foggy, was beginning to piece together the dangerous edges of his situation. He was in the middle of what he would have professionally called a hostile takeover, and he didn't know what the stakes currently were.

  "Alright," he said, his voice surprisingly steady. He met Eric's cold, expectant gaze. "What do you want? And where are the others?"

  A flicker of something crossed Clyde’s face. Not annoyance, but a brief, sharp wince, as if he’d just been jabbed with a pin, only to be followed with a sinister smile. “See for yourself!”

  For a moment, Mark’s world violently faded.

  He saw Tori and Valerie. They were on his beach, his broken and poisoned sanctuary. The sky above was the bruised, angry purple of his trauma, and the waves that crashed on the sand were not water, but the roiling, red-tinged light of pure agony. Tori stood with her staff held before her, a desperate, last-ditch defense. The two person-shaped voids of hunger, the ones she had summoned in his dream before, were there. But they were now sentinels standing between her and the specters of splintered bone and screaming sinew that rose from the bloody tide. She was fighting a losing battle against his pain, her face fixed with terrified concentration.

  Valerie was behind her, but she wasn't fighting. She was on her knees in the sand, her body convulsing, a silent scream tearing from her throat. One of the spectral bone-shards had struck her, he knew that in that instant, she was feeling what he had felt. She was drowning in a memory of his agony, and it was breaking her.

  The vision fractured, shifting into the bizarre.

  He saw Dawn and Carl. They were elsewhere, in a landscape torn not from memories of places, but from the imagination of countless hours of childhood dreams and games. They stood on the polished wooden deck of an airship, a fantastical vessel of brass and canvas held aloft above a sea of clouds by huge, glowing crystals strapped to its sides.

  This was designed as a slaughterhouse, not a voyage. The deck was a battlefield. Strange, robed humanoids, their faces hidden by deep cowls, swarmed toward them, their hands crackling with raw, painful-looking magic. Dawn was a whirlwind of leather and steel, her daggers a blur as she met their assault. But her movements were stiff, her face pale with a primal, absolute terror. She was a hunter, a creature of the solid, unmoving earth. The simple, undeniable fact of flying through an open sky was a horror that went bone-deep. She was fighting on pure instinct, her skill warring with her fear.

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  Carl, however, was a revelation. He wasn't cowering. He wasn't just a craftsman. The quiet, cynical gemsmith was gone, replaced by a brawler or by his professionalism at it a pugilist of terrifying efficiency. He wore a pair of heavy steel gauntlets, each one socketed with glowing gems. He met the robed figures' attacks not with a weapon, but with his fists.

  A robed figure threw a bolt of crackling energy. Carl deflected it with a gauntleted block, the gem on the back of his hand flaring with a brilliant light. His counter was a single, brutal punch. The force of the blow channeling energies from the mounted gemstones. A second, focused strike, he released the stored power, as a kinetically-charged fireball erupted from Carl's fist, vaporizing one of the humanoids in a silent, explosive flash of orange and red.

  The images vanished as quickly as they had come, leaving Mark gasping, his hand braced against the television stand to keep from collapsing. Phantom echoes of Valerie's screaming lingering as if to prove a point. The whole assault had lasted only a few seconds, but it felt like an eternity. He saw Clyde again, the man’s perfect smile now a tight, strained grimace. His attempt at torture apparently more difficult than he had wanted to show, but he accomplished his result.

  Eric let out a low, appreciative chuckle, clearly enjoying the display.

  "It's no longer about what we want, Shilling," his voice triumphant. "That implies a negotiation. A request."

  He took a slow, deliberate step forward, a predator closing the game towards prey.

  "Your mind, your coin, your connections? That belongs to the Guild now. If we let you wake up, we may let you clean floors."

  Mark let out a slow, steadying breath. The phantom images of the beach and the airship receded, leaving the reality of his living room. His grip tightening around the cricket bat, but he knew that's what they were aiming for, a loss of control. His friends couldn’t afford that, not while he couldn't see the whole trap.

  That fact that Chambers had failed to notice his anger threatening to boil over was even more telling, previously his own Heart of the Community gave him the insight, and now…

  "You know," he said, his voice a calm, conversational deadpan that was utterly at odds with the frantic thumping of his own heart. "The last time we had one of these... unpleasant conversations... I believe I mentioned something about preferring a cricket bat."

  He hefted it then, the smooth, polished willow a solid weight in his hand. He didn't raise it to swing, didn't brandish it like a weapon. He rested it casually on his shoulder, a simple, declarative act. "An implement," he added, a thin, tired smile touching his lips, "from a very civilised gentleman's game."

  Eric’s sneer faltered for a fraction of a second, a flicker of genuine, baffled confusion crossing his face. "A... cricket bat?"

  Clyde, however, was not amused. He looked at the solid, physical object in his non-physical domain with an expression of pure, professional annoyance, as if Mark had just tracked mud onto a pristine white carpet. He didn't even bother to look at it properly. He just... waved a hand. A lazy, dismissive gesture.

  The solid weight on Mark’s shoulder vanished. The wood didn't dissolve or fade. It was simply... gone. The absence of it was more shocking than any explosion.

  Mark looked at his own empty, tingling hand, then back at the two men. His fear, his anger, his carefully constructed plan of defiance... it all temporarily receded, replaced by a genuine sense of personal offense.

  "That," he stated, his voice flat, "was rude. And very uncivilised!"

  Eric let out a short, sharp bark of a laugh, the sound dripping with contempt. "Rude? Shilling," taking another slow, confident step into the room. "We control everything here. The walls, the floor, the very air you breathe. Any apparent threats are meaningless because this reality is whatever we decide it is."

  He leaned in, his face a mask of triumphant, petty cruelty.

  "Moving onto business, to our first stop," he continued, his voice dropping to a conspiratorial whisper, "is what scared that little provisioner, the one who sticks her nose where it doesn't belong."

  He savored the moment, a cruel smile spreading across his face.

  "You are going to take us to this... Man-chester... of yours."

  A strange sense of calm settled over Mark. The loss of the cricket bat, as jarring as it had been, had revealed an interesting piece of the puzzle. They had removed it, not him. A small distinction, but a critical one. They were manipulating this reality, not controlling him within it, that was apparently outside their scope, even now Chambers was demanding he do something, and not just doing it themselves.

  "You want to see Manchester?" he asked, his voice regaining a fraction of professional confidence. He gestured with a calm, almost lazy wave of his hand toward the large window, to the grey, rain-streaked panorama of the identical apartment block across the street. "Be my guest. You're already looking at it."

  Eric's triumphant smile faltered, replaced by a flicker of genuine annoyance. "Don't try to be clever, Shilling," he snapped, his voice losing its smooth edge. "There is more to it than this sad little hole. Accept you’ve lost and let's move on."

  "Have I?" Mark countered, the question quiet and analytical. He looked from Eric's frustrated face to Clyde's slightly strained one, and a gamble, almost a plan started to click into place. He was learning with everything they did, and while their plan seemed very ill-defined, it was showing some cracks..

  "Let's consider the facts," Mark began, his tone shifting to that of a man delivering a deeply disappointing performance review. "If you really control everything here, and your plan was to 'take everything'... why are you still here?" He let the question hang in the air for a moment. "You would have taken your prize and left. The fact that you're still standing in my living room, trying to intimidate me with cheap parlor tricks, suggests the plan has already gone... rather spectacularly off the rails."

  He then turned his gaze to Clyde, his expression one of pure, professional pity. "And as for your new... specialist," he said, his voice dripping with disappointment, "I'm not sure he's worth whatever gold you're paying him. He created this car boot facsimile and never bothered to check the address was Manchester!"

  The gamble paid off.

  Clyde moved. It wasn't a lunge or a charge, but a single, fluid step that covered the distance between them in an instant. The back of his hand struck Mark across the face with a sharp, cracking impact.

  The blow was heavy, a solid slap that sent Mark stumbling back against the arm of the chair, his head ringing. He felt the immediate, hot flare of pain on his cheek, the coppery taste of blood in his mouth.

  It hurt. A lot.

  But as he brought himself back to balance, a single and beautifully clear thought cut through the rapidly fading pain.

  It hadn't hurt enough.

  He had already felt the raw, bone-breaking power of a Garnet-tier in a rage. Alex Smith's casual throw had shattered his spine. This man, this Jade-tiered master of the mind, had just delivered a raged induced slap that, while painful, felt no stronger worse than a blow from an average, angry man.

  Clyde stood over him, his face something dark. "You can’t hide behind your little stars here," he hissed, his voice a low, venomous mutter. "When we are done, I’m going to enjoy unmaking you!"

  Mark just looked at him, a predatory smile spreading across his own bruised, bleeding lips. He tasted the blood, spat a small amount onto the carpet, and met the Jade-tier's gaze without a trace of fear.

  His gamble had proved he was correct. Their control here wasn't absolute, terrifying yes, but not absolute. Their power, their magic, it wasn't translating properly. They had generated his world as a method of intimidation, and failed along the way, the rules had been copied.

  The initial declared certainty of his loss now felt far from failure. It had just become more interesting, and potentially more dangerous for all involved.