Aetheral Space

Many years ago...

Soot was drifting down from a factory overhead by the time Sait arrived, like inverted snow raining down on the facility.

He didn't wait for his driver to stop before opening the door and jumping out, his weakened knees shaking as they dropped the meter to the ground. He didn't take the time to notice; sweat was pouring from his forehead and his breath was coming out in ragged, unsightly breaths. To him, right now, the only thing that existed was the facility.

It wasn't much to look at - it had been built using an old warehouse as cover, after all. Beneath the ruined veneer was a cutting-edge medical facility, but there was no sign of that from the outside.

"Sir!" cried his driver from inside the car - Sait ignored him as he ran towards the factory.

The call had come just as he'd been preparing to go to bed for the night - now, after hearing it, Sait was as awake as anything. Likely he'd never been as alert in his life. Likely he'd never be again.

He had to hurry. He had to deal with this quickly, or else…

As Sait reached the outside wall of the warehouse - nearly slamming into it with the speed he was moving - he fumbled around in his jacket pocket and pulled a keycard free. There were no identifying details on it - no photo, no name, just a jet-black piece of plastic. This wasn't the kind of facility you wanted evidence to exist of, after all.

He pressed it against the wall with such force that he almost cracked the thing - and then a hollow click was audible from within the concrete wall.

The whole thing slid away, withdrawing inside the wall and to the side to reveal a doorway. Within, a compact elevator could be seen - just big enough to fit one person. This was an express way down, after all, not the intended entrance.

Sait didn't waste any time - there wasn't any to waste. He strode inside the elevator and slammed his fist against the button, the tired machinery waking up as the lift descended. The shaft was dark - the only source of light being the lightbulb hanging above - and Sait couldn't help but hold his nose at the mingled scents of rust and blood.

There was an abundance of corpses in Taldan - people died every day, after all, and most of the time those deaths were without purpose. The penniless, the destitute, the criminal … when they died, they were only useful to the flies and worms. This facility, and others like it, had been created to change that.

The elevator stopped. Sait stepped out into a sterile white corridor, ignoring the alarmed shouts of two passing doctors.

As he ran through the hallways as quickly as he could - he already knew the way - Sait caught glimpses of the extraction rooms through the windows that lined the corridors.

Each and every one of them was full of human corpses, lying face down beneath the tender mercies of mechanical arms. Veritable factory lines, designed to extract the useful organs from corpses as quickly and efficiently as possible. To fully harvest a corpse took only around a minute - and then the organs could be preserved and moved to storage, where they could be sold on to interested parties.

It was a simple calculus, if you really thought about it. These corpses could go undisturbed and benefit nobody, or they could be put to use and benefit Sait. There was no choice: only one option created more happiness in the world, after all.

And if some deaths had to be expedited for that purpose - well, accidents happened.

He reached the door he was looking for, opened it with another swipe from his black keycard. The moment the door opened, he charged into the surgery room - hoping beyond hope that it wasn't too late.

His heart crumbled.

Dr. Kreig sat down next to the operating table, taking a sip of water from a paper cup. The nurses who assisted him had clearly already left the room. The tools - scalpel, saw and all the rest - lay on a metal foldaway table next to Kreig. They'd been washed already, but would need to be fully decontaminated within the next hour or so.

The operating table was empty - save for the smallest pool of blood, dripping off the side. Drip, drip, drip.

A choking sound escaped Sait's throat.."I told you to wait," he muttered, putting a hand against the glass window for support.

Dr. Kreig sniffed, didn't look up as he spoke to Sait - whether from guilt or disrespect, he couldn't be sure. "I told you before you came here," he said. "The other Sponsors wanted me to deal with this before it became a problem. I wasn't about to disobey them. Even for you."

"I told you to wait."

Surely this was a dream. Surely, surely, he'd turn over in his bed the wrong way and wake up, and he would laugh later at just how illogical this dream was, how the pieces just didn't fit together…

But they did. They did fit together, like a nightmare jigsaw.

Dr. Kreig looked up at him. There was no sympathy in his eyes. "Waiting was not an option," he said, calm. "Please sit. You look unwell."

Sait collapsed into a chair, the exertion of the last few minutes catching up to him as he panted. "No, no, no," he muttered into his hands, voice muffled. "You can't do this. You can't."

"I have," Dr. Kreig went on. "As you would have ordered me to if it were anyone else. The girl was in contact with the media. She'd taken pictures, videos. She was an unacceptable risk, granddaughter or not."

"Oh, Anna," Sait wasn't sure who he was talking to. Himself? Krieg? Y? "I told you, I told her to leave well enough alone. She shouldn't have … no … I'll have to … to bury her … my Anna … my Anna…"

Krieg cleared his throat awkwardly. "That won't be possible," he said, now with the slightest hint of trepidation. "After harvesting, we couldn't leave any evidence behind, so…"

The taste of bile rose into Sait's mouth.

He glared at Krieg even as he held his face in his hands, eyes peering like twin nightmares from between his fingers. "How dare you?" he hissed.

Krieg adjusted his tie. "It's standard operating procedure."

That was right. It was standard operating procedure. He'd written those procedures himself, agreed that this was the best course of action when it came to leaks. He'd signed off on this fate coming to countless journalists, countless activists. He'd had their organs cut out and exchanged for money.

He'd bought his house with that money. The clothes on his back, everything he owned … and now, now that it affected him, he became disgusted? Repulsive. What a repulsive thing he was.

But still. As hideous as he was, as he felt in that moment, a small vindictive thing was unfurling in his chest. Like a spiteful maggot. A warped mockery of a conscience - self-serving and hypocritical, but insistent all the same.

"Once you calm down," Krieg was saying. "You'll agree with me. I'm simply following your example, after all."

"Mm," Sait grunted as he stood up, legs shaking for a moment like those of a newborn deer. Then, they stopped - his whole body becoming deathly still, a kind of awful calm coming over him as his next course of action presented itself in his mind.

Each step felt like an effort, yet he made them all the same. One step, two, three, until he stood before the table of surgical instruments. His eyes settled over the scalpel, scanning it. Not so long ago, this thing had been used to cut through…

"Sait?" Krieg said from behind him, a measure of worry finally making itself known. "What are you doing?"

Sait took the scalpel - between two fingers, like a pen - and turned it over, inspecting it. There. Just beneath the hilt, the tiniest drop of dried blood.

It demanded things of him.

He tightened his grip on the scalpel - so tightly his hand ached - and swung around, taking the first step towards Krieg.

The doctor never even got the chance to shout.

-

Lucius Sait opened his eyes.

He'd fallen asleep in his wheelchair - as he nearly always did these days - and his attendant had left him facing a window with a view of the night city. Towering buildings like the great trees of a metal forest, cars zipping this way and that like tiny steel bees…

Once, he'd thought this city to be a grand monument to progress, the future writ large on the skyline. Now, though? Now it seemed little more than a grotesque parody of civilization.

This is yours, he told himself, his traitorous inner monologue turning it's knives upon him. All of this has come from you. Look at it. Look at your good work.

He sniffed. These kinds of midnight loathing sessions were not uncommon - quite often he'd find himself awake, staring out over the city he hated, mind rushing through the life he hated.

And yet he'd never done a thing about it. No matter how much he hated, he had no will to act. And that sloth only inspired further self-loathing. An almost comedic cycle of apathy and spite - and even while he was aware of it, he still couldn't bring himself to do a thing about it.

"Fool," he croaked - spitting upon the ground. Perhaps Haynes would slip on it and break his neck. That would be quite nice.

He tapped a button and the left arm of his wheelchair opened up - revealing the contents within. Nothing much, just a few pieces of stationary and his script. He wrestled the script free with one hand, taking a spare pencil with the other to use as a makeshift stylus.

The script activated automatically at the warmth of his touch - returning to its display from earlier that night. A news story from Brighteye Taldan, talking about the Citizen. Dreams had done a fine job of covering up most of the details of what had occurred at the niain, but a warped version had hit the news regardless. The circumstances were unknown, but it was now 'public knowledge' that the Citizen himself had appeared and wreaked havoc.

Sait smirked ruefully at the sensationalism. That damn night-eyes Dreams was an annoying bastard, but he knew what he was doing.

His finger stroked over the word - Citizen. He hadn't given the man much thought, to be honest. All he'd been was another annoying reason for the Sponsors to invite him to more meetings.

There was a kind of fire to him, Sait realized. Even without seeing the Citizen, even without hearing him, you could feel the heat he emanated - feel the way he burned away at the structures they'd built. It wasn't that bad a feeling, to be honest.

Sait's gaze flicked back up to the city. It wouldn't be that awful at all to see this place become an inferno.

That young woman - Serena del Sed - had said something, when he'd informed her of the way this world functioned. She'd said that if nothing meant anything, then she might as well do what made her happy. He'd thought it nonsense, but it wasn't so far from the idiotic optimism his granddaughter had spouted.

Something unfurled in his chest. The light shifted, just slightly - and for a moment it seemed like Sait's whole life had reached a single ephemeral image. Everything made a kind of momentary, transitory, sense.

A thin, humourless smile spread across his wrinkled face. Right here, right now, he knew what would make him happy.

A course of action had presented itself.

-

Haynes adjusted his tie as he entered the room, summoned by a signal from Sait's wheelchair.

To summon him at this time of the night … the old bastard had no sense of decorum. It was damn near three in the morning. He hadn't been sleeping, of course - he'd taken the opportunity to grab a drink - but the principle of the thing was the same.

If he wasn't being paid so much, he'd have thrown this job away years ago - and probably thrown the miserable bastard down the stairs with it. A constant day-in, day-out barrage of cynicism from some has-been doctor wasn't Haynes' idea of a fruitful career.

Still, he didn't let any of that slip out in his words. He was a professional. "You called me, sir?" he said brightly as he approached his client.

Lucius Sait wasn't looking at him - rude - instead staring out the window. A deactivated script lay on his lap, and his gaze was pensive as he looked out over the city.

"Haynes," he croaked. "You're fired."

Haynes refrained the urge to roll his eyes. The senile old fuck. How many times had they had this conversation?

"If you'll recall, sir," he said, as patiently as he could. "You're not the one who pays me. I'm afraid you can't actually fire me."

Sait turned his head, just slightly, to regard him. "Haynes," he repeated, more insistently this time. "You're fired."

So this was the way they were going to play it. Haynes smiled easily as he approached Sait's wheelchair, hands clasped behind his back. "It's very late at night, sir," he said gently, as if speaking to a child. "Perhaps you'd like some medication to help you sleep?"

When he reached Sait, the old corpse reached out, putting a feeble skeletal hand on Haynes' arm. "You're fired, Haynes," he went on, patting at his arm. "You should leave right now."

The irritation flaring up in Haynes finally leaked out. "Listen," he snapped, leaning in to talk right into Sait's face. "If you-"

The next word in that sentence was think, but it didn't come out. All that left Haynes' mouth was a gasp of hollow air and a few specks of blood that dotted themselves onto Sait's impassive face. Confusion gripping him, Haynes tried to speak again - but again, no words came out of his mouth.

Sait glanced downwards, nodded - and Haynes followed his gaze.

A pencil was in the old man's hand - and he'd plunged it, with uncharacteristic strength, right into the softest part of Haynes' throat. It was buried nearly up to the eraser, blood leaking out around it as if it were the cap in a bottle. He blinked. He tried to swallow, and he could feel the pencil inside his throat as he did.

That's not good, he thought vaguely, as if he were drunk. I need to take that out. No, I shouldn't take it out. Should I? I'm … I need to…

Sait made the decision for him. With a grunt of effort, he pulled the pencil free again - and now there was nothing to stop the torrent of blood as it poured from his throat.

Staggering backwards, gasping like an air-drowned fish, Haynes put his hands to his wound and did his best to stop the bleeding - but it was futile. Blood was spilling between his fingers, pouring to the floor like a … waterfall … he felt faint…

Slowly, inexorably, his knees failed him, and he collapsed into a pile on the floor, choked breaths fading away. All his words gone, his eyes fixed on Sait - on his killer - and he gurgled. Why?

Sait didn't dignify it with a response.

-

Ruth frowned as the image on the television switched. "Hey, I was watching that!"

Dragan sat up, frowning as he saw the words in the corner of the now-black screen. Taldan Municipal Alert System. Some kind of emergency broadcast? What was going on?

They'd returned to the room after their training session - Skipper had made himself scarce for the moment - and Ruth had started some sensationalised cooking show while Dragan was reading. There certainly hadn't been any indication of an announcement earlier that night.

The screen remained black, but a voice was audible, just on the boundary of hearing. It cleared it's throat.

"Taldan," it said - an elderly male voice, most likely in his late nineties or further. Who was he? "My name is Lucius Sait." Oh.

As Ruth futilely mauled the remote, trying to find a channel that wasn't being taken up by this monologue, Dragan stood up and carefully listened.

The voice of Lucius Sait seemed to flicker in and out with the switching of the channels. "Most of you will know me as director of … director of the Anna Sait Memorial Hospital."

Ruth paused, mercifully letting go of the remote long enough for Dragan to snatch it away. "That's where Bruno and Serena are," she muttered.

"But," Sait went on. "Others among you may know me as the Sponsor of Care."

Dragan's eyes widened, the questions he'd been about to voice dying in his throat. The Sponsor of Care? Was that like the Sponsor of War, the bovine asshole extorting them? If that was the case, Dragan was fairly sure this wasn't something meant to be aired out in such a public forum.

"I'm not talking to the bastards I work with, though," Sait growled. "I'm talking to you, Citizen.”

"I am done with this. All of it. I want nothing more to see it all come down, see it all fucking burn. If that's what you want, too, then we are of a mind. Come find me.”

"I am at the Memorial Hospital. I've locked down the building - all patient rooms are sealed, and all security drones reassigned. If anyone attempts to interfere with you, they will be fired upon.”

"I'm waiting in my office, on the top floor, Citizen. I'll tell you the names of my associates - and then you will kill me. Consider it a commission.”

"I'll see you there."

The message flicked back to the cooking show. Dragan blinked, not even noticing as the remote slipped from his grip and clattered onto the floor.

"Shit," he said.