133 - The Aftereffects of a Femme Fatale's Involvement Pt. 2 [Cherno] (Patreon)

A/N: Posted the wrong chapter draft. Fixed.
__________________________________________________________________________________________
“Hey, hey, don’t worry. I’m not gonna scoop your brain out of your head,” Semzar reassured unconvincingly. “I’m just asking. You’ve seen the pictures, right? Trash. Those self-proclaimed artists don’t even know how to draw burnt skin. I just hoped that you might have a good mental snapshot of the target and the ability to draw it, that’s all. Get rid of the middleman.”

“Ah! Ahahaha… I did get a good look at her, but I’m afraid that I cannot draw.”

“It’s alright, it’s alright. Was that the end of the incident?”

Of course it wasn’t. Semzar knew that; he was just prompting Cassius to continue, and that he did: “No, no. We gave chase. Caught her in a back alley. I know my territory better than anyone. After that, however… It all fell apart. She used that same smoke-like form, as well as short-range teleportation, geomancy, and a sort of… Arm-missile. I’m sure it was theurgy. It felt like theurgy. There was certainly anathema in play, but I am not familiar-enough with the vile discipline to know.”

“You stink of it,” Semzar said dryly.

“This house happens to house a piece of my father's collection that could come in useful,” Semzar said with a malicious grin. “It’s a working Anampictor Automaton. If you make a clear picture come out, I’ll let you off the hook.”

“Working” and “safe” were two very different things when it came to those machines. They were an ancient and out-of-favor technology, having come into being as one of the only methods of memory extraction. A machine that could pull out a particular visual memory and render it. This was opposed to memory deposition, entailing special techniques or artifacts that allowed someone to willingly place memories into a vessel. When properly maintained and managed by a trained operator, they were “safe” - but the margin for error was hair-thin, and the process unpleasant at best. An unmaintained anampictor machine could, at worst, just turn the user’s brain to mush. They were also notorious for causing “mnemonic burn-in”, causing a previously pulled memory to come to the forefront far more easily than others, often in undesirable circumstances. They had been famously manufactured for only one year before the makers were shut down and erased by the Churches. As it turned out, they achieved what the competitors couldn’t through dark magic that violated the soul and left it irreversibly scarred. Cassius knew this. He also knew that Semzar would probably kill him if he refused.

It was tantamount to making him bet his life on double sixes in a game of dice, and the worst part was that Cassius knew it was still his best chance.

“Alright,” he sighed.

“Very good!” Semzar exclaimed, springing out from his seat with a clap of his hands.

His guards immediately grabbed Cassius, and led him to the machine. It was a jumble of essentech that resembled ancient Jas’raban machinery to a degree that couldn’t possibly be accidental. Its principal components were a seat, a slot for the subject’s arm, an operating panel, and an upper-half automaton in a turban with a glass pen in its hand. The moment they shoved him into the seat, Semzar instructed: “Focus on the subject memory. Done?”

Semzar didn’t wait more than a few seconds before he threw the switch and torment became reality.

Cassius wanted to scream, but the only noise that came out was a strained, wheezing grunt. It felt like an eternity of having his soul pulled out of his body by a claw of red-hot iron, and though it truly only took a few short seconds, it very much looked the way it felt. For a merciful few moments, the torment abated.

“Second subject memory, focus!” came Semzar’s voice again. Like a man holding onto the edge of a cliff with broken fingers, Cassius grabbed for that thought, and the torment began with renewed vigour. When it was over, Cassius slumped to the ground, lingering at the edge of consciousness. His mind’s eye repeatedly flitted between Blackhand’s face, with Habib’s mangled corpse hanging on her harm, and her smoke-wrought form, as seen when she walked out of the dust cloud in the back alley. His actual vision was shot; the blood vessels in his eyes had erupted.

An amused whistle came from above.

“Lucky devil. They’re both good, even if one of ‘em is a touch on the abstract side.”

Semzar’s leather boot dug into his ribs, and with something between a shove and a kick, he was rolled over onto his back. The mafioso squatted down over him, staring into Cassius’ blood-blurred vision. A frustrated sigh.

“His eyes are fucked. Hey, Saeed! We got any spare eyes? Pull some grunt’s eye if not.”

At that point, Cassius faded out into nothingness.

He woke up strapped into a grafter’s chair, unable to move a limb, and utterly blind.

Again, Semzar’s voice chimed in, filled with mirthful amusement: “Oh, he’s awake! Make a noise if you can hear me, you probably can’t talk ‘cause of the surgery juice.”

Cassius grunted. It was true. His tongue felt like a dead snake in his mouth.

“Good. You’re getting some new eyes since you did so well with the anampictor,” Semzar said. He added, lying: “I am not pointlessly cruel.”

His vision returned, but he had no eyelids to blink with, nor could he move his eyes. Moreover, his field of vision was noticeably wider and sharper. Saeed’s metal fingers came in from the side and tapped against the glass shield of his vision, followed by the renegade grafter waving his hand in front of his face. Just barely in the corner of this expanded vision-field, he caught the forward-leaning figure of a seated Semzar. Cassius grunted again.

“Alright, you can see me,” Saeed said. “Look at that poster over there on the wall. Which one’s better? This… Or this?”

His vision changed very slightly. The second one was better. Cassius grunted twice. This went on for some time, with Saeed dialing in the settings to a point where, as much as he hated to admit it, his natural eyes didn’t even come close. At some point, Semzar left, clearly growing bored. Saeed took the opportunity to come in front of Cassius and inject something into his arm. The paralysis abated a bit, but he still couldn’t move much at all.