Sunday Pilots 7 - Disagreeable [3/3] – A dystopian hero civil war story (Patreon)

“Congratulations to coming to the cove of chaos,” Nykoh was greeted by an enthusiastic man. “My name is Mynak Namjar and I am the leader of this lot.” He had long brown hair, perfectly styled, on top of a beautiful and charismatic face, all of which went contra to his otherwise mediocre hygienic state and clearly run-down clothes. With his clean and graceful attitude, he stood out immensely in this filthy room, barely big enough to contain the small square table and the two chairs inside. Nevertheless, there were a few crates squeezed in there with the four of them. Perhaps calling the whole thing a broom chamber would have been more accurate.

If Nykoh had an answer, it was silenced by Linua finally leaving his lungs. The noxious purple coloured smoke pulled out of him and gathered at the side of the table, taking the shape of a woman. 

She was of average size, both in height and the chest department, with quite the nice, well-rounded figure. Normally, Nykoh wasn’t one to look at these things, but the fact that the smoke changed into smooth, naked skin of a young woman, light brown from time in the sun and trained from running from authorities, left him with little choice but to notice. Her hair was long, wild and had the purple shade of the smoke she transformed into, her eyes were a deep red.

“Gimme my clothes,” she said to the man in the green overall. “And…” she turned to Nykoh and came closer. There wasn’t a lot of space to bridge, as mentioned the chamber was quite small, and not a lot to allow dodging either. It didn’t help that she was quick, without a doubt she had the Acquired Power of body strengthening.

Not that Nykoh planned to evade her. The knife on the table made keenly aware that, no matter how friendly they treated him, he was in danger here and the shock of the situation outside still sat in his bones. His mind was churning for answers as to how the States propaganda was to properly explain this situation, that was a much bigger concern right now.

That was until she threw herself on him opening her mouth widely. Revealing fangs befit of a vampire, long and pointy, that sunk into his neck, penetrating skin without much of a problem. The sharp pain pulled him back into the now, the draining feeling of his blood getting drunk forced a response in shoving her back. “Get off me!” he demanded in a stern voice.

Linua landed with her ass on the table. “Ow! Mhm…I like a man who can give a good shoving,” she complained and moaned in the same sentence. “And…oh my god this hurts my brain waves…and my eyes…urgh, so many lights, I don’t see anything.”

“What are you…,” Nykoh wanted to know as she squinted her eyes in a way that was familiar to him. He had seen himself do that exact expression an endless amount of times as he tried to figure out his ability. “You are mimicry.” As the name implied, that was the category of people that were able to copy others.

“Linua here is our most alluring asset, all of her abilities are quite able, not to mention all-rounders,” Mynak commented from the background. “What is that we need dear?”

“The documents said that it was going to be hard to figure out but oh boy, do I not get what I am seeing, there are just lights everywhere,” Linua’s crazily shaking voice answered. “Wonder if it would be easier if I was inside him?”

“If you want to be inside me again, I will have to arrange a meeting with the marriage council,” Nykoh stated.

The room fell silent for a second. “Congratulations again,” Mynak clapped. “You are the first joe we joinked that made a jest. You State-servants are standardly stuck up. Was spoiled by this though,” he pulled a folder from underneath the table and waved it around. “A folder following your fate from fowl to famous. Your sarcastic attitude is securely archived.”

“M-m-marriage?!” Linua finally got a word out, she was heavily blushing and squirming on the spot. “Sure, let’s go there tomorrow, I will bite you every night!”

“Tell me what we need already!” the man in the green overall, the only sane person around in Nykoh’s opinion.

“Urgh, fuck you Cassick. Fine. Urgh, this is like trying to urgh with your brain…” the purple haired crazy narrowed her eyes again. “Give me the med-kit.” 

“Why?”

“Psh, I don’t know, I am just using this thing.”

Nykoh was letting them waste time like this without further commentary. In just a few minutes, the chasing protocol would make everyone act in a unified fashion and blow this place out. It was regrettable that he wasn’t lead to their actual headquarters, Chaos was known to be bigger than three people, but this was a good start. Surely worth a promotion.

At the idea of that, Nykoh should have felt joy. Instead he felt…concerned. What worth was a promotion, he wasn’t starving in the first place. The people outside were.

“You must be wondering why we brought you here,” Manyk finally dropped the alliteration act and spoke in a more serious tone.

“To use me as a blood supply for this psycho,” he stated, nodding at Linua, who somehow laughed as if she had been complimented.

“No,” Manyk denied that, taking the knife of the table. He cleaned his fingernails with it as he continued talking, “We need a seer. Our last one was caught and killed by the twelfth district. Join us.”

“Why would I do that?” Nykoh asked and checked the Fatelines. ‘What do I have to do to ensure the mission succeeds?’ he asked them and was granted the sight of none at all. He just needed to stay still and waste time, as he had predicted.

The man with his perfect brown hair waved the folder around some more. “Because you are an outlier. You don’t keep to the exact norms of the state, you use wrong speak and you are using whatever bit of individuality you can manifest within the State. We have been recruiting people like you since forever, I know the pattern. Behind that well-trained facade works the mind of a man who is trying to come to terms with what he saw outside.”

Nykoh didn’t answer and eventually Manyk placed the knife back down on the table, right next to the med-kit Linua, now covered by a blanket she wrapped around herself, had requested.

Manyk had been right, but Nykoh had actually moved on from trying to find an answer right now. “You see, the reason why they are out there is that they don’t have a voice. Our goal is to topple the State and bring about a system where the people can…” the man of the State tapped out at that point, shifted all his concentration to asking more questions of the Fatelight.

‘What do I need to do to be secure in my future?’ No lines. He still needed to finish the mission.

‘Where is the path where I am going to never suffer hunger?’ Again, no lines.

‘What must I to live comfortably?’ No lines.

‘What must I do to be happy?’ a line connected to the knife on the table. Nykoh stared at the line as it faded away. Before he could ask anymore questions, his spirit needed to recover. However, in less than thirty seconds the tracker would trigger and the State would descend on them like a swarm of angry locusts.

In his heart, Nykoh already knew what he had to do. His hesitation came only from one question: Did he want to be safe or free?

Manyk’s expositional monologue was suddenly interrupted by Nykoh darting forwards. Everyone in the room was surprised by that sudden movement, surprised enough to be too slow top stop him. The knife in his hand, everyone expected him to assault Manyk, the self-announced leader, but instead, Nykoh turned the tip of the blade at himself and plunged it into his side.

“What the he-?” Cassick cried out but the sound was drowned out by Manyk groaning in pain as he pulled the knife back out and plunged his fingers into the wound. A moment later, an object the size of a fingernail was thrown on the table. 

Nykoh had no idea why he was doing this. There were many different things that the Fatelines meant to tell him by highlighting the knife. Between his newfound doubt, the accurate things Manyk had said, the resulting confusion and the little time he had to make that decision, he had just made it. “Take it and run!” Nykoh told nobody in particular. Just destroying the chip would have simply triggered the State to come down on their last position immediately. If one wanted to fool the state, they just needed to know the rulebook.

Linua already had her hands on the thing before he got out the first word and was out the door by the last syllable.

“Well, we welcome you into our group then,” Manyk said with a nervous smile, opening the med-kit.

He chose freedom.