Visceral Read online

  Table of Contents

  Episode 1: We’ll Do It Live

  Episode 2: Nightmares

  Episode 3: Transformation

  Episode 4: Showdown

  Episode 5: Horse Trading

  Episode 6: Escape

  Episode 7: Betrayal

  Episode 8: The Machine

  Episode 9: What Drew Said

  Episode 10: Wild Midwest

  Episode 11: Scorched Earth

  Episode 12: Whatever It Takes

  Epilogue

  Copyright © 2016 by Adam Thielen

  All Rights Reserved

  For questions, comments, or issues with the book, including mistakes, please contact the author at [email protected] - I value correspondence with readers!

  Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in, or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means without the prior written permission of the author.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, brands, media, and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used in a fictitious manner. Depictions of companies, brands, or corporations are fictitious and do not represent real activities, roles, or any other aspect of those entities. Mentions of actual brands or corporations are not endorsements, nor are used with the endorsement of any brand or corporation. Any resemblance to actual events is coincidental.

  Special thanks to Billie Jo, the love of my life, for patiently helping mend the broken parts and strengthen the weak.

  Episode Guide

  Episode 1: We’ll Do It Live

  Episode 2: Nightmares

  Episode 3: Transformation

  Episode 4: Showdown

  Episode 5: Horse Trading

  Episode 6: Escape

  Episode 7: Betrayal

  Episode 8: The Machine

  Episode 9: What Drew Said

  Episode 10: Wild Midwest

  Episode 11: Scorched Earth

  Episode 12: Whatever It Takes

  Epilogue

  Episode 1: We’ll Do It Live

  A cool breeze swept over cold stone walls. Walls painted white, chipped and marred with smudges of brown and black. Years of neglect were as apparent in the hallway of the small apartment complex as they were on the exterior facade. The facade. That’s what the physical world was called after the collapse and emergence.

  A man named Matthias Trent carefully, silently stalked down the brightly lit corridor. He might be easy to see, but damned if he wasn’t going to be impossible to hear. His thoughts drifted. Facade. A fitting label for this pathetic world. So labeled only because another world existed beneath it. And after its discovery, people called that other world the Ethereal plane or simply the Ether. A strange choice, he pondered. A hallucinogen. A solvent. A fuel perhaps.

  Like many of his kind, Matthias had seen the Ether through dreams. Such experiences had once been discounted as merely an oddity of their condition. That is, until men began to use it to wield magic…

  Room 206 stood in front of Matthias. Its door and its brass numbers matched the rest of the building for age and wear. The numbers were gunked along the edges and scuffed randomly. The wooden door was frayed along the bottom with various scratches around the doorknob. The rent for such a place was relatively low and the probability of mugging relatively high. It was the kind of place college students mingled with the random working-class citizen. What was behind room 206’s door would be neither.

  Matthias was a thin man. He looked about thirty. His hair was a reddish brown, and he stood at five feet and eleven inches, give or take. He was white. Very white. His eyes were the same color as his hair. His dress, while neat in appearance, was nothing out of the ordinary. A plain black t-shirt and gray khakis, with a thin black longcoat that came down to his knees. He wore hiking shoes with thick treads. They came in handy at times like these.

  He planted his left foot forward, crouching slightly with his arms out. Pushing off with his right foot, Matthias flung toward the door. He extended his right leg as his arms swung back. His foot slammed against the door, next to the knob, tearing the contact plate through the frame. The door swung open, and light from the hallway flooded into the room.

  A twin sized mattress lay on the floor of an otherwise barren studio. On the mattress lay a man, completely naked. A small damp blanket was crumpled at the foot of the bed. Though his eyes open, he didn’t seem to take notice of Matthias’s intrusion. A reflective glaze obscured the man’s iris and pupils. A similar gloss covered his chest, which drew short, shallow breaths.

  Beside him sat a woman who did take notice of the intrusion. She did not leap up in alarm, but simply turned to look at Matthias. The woman looked to be in her twenties. She wore pajama pants with some flowery print and a similar top. Other clothing lay about the room. She too was very white. Her black hair was cropped short, and her eyes were red to match the bloodshot surrounding them. Crimson painted the inside of her right wrist, a sharp contrast to her skin tone.

  “Matthias,” she said in a fatigued voice. There was a hint of surprise in her tone. She looked him in the eyes for a moment, then turned her attention back to the naked man on the mattress.

  “Pathetic,” Matthias replied. He took a careful look around, his eyes adjusting to the dimmer surroundings. Satisfied, he stepped inside. He pushed the door as closed as it would go, damaged but still on its hinges.

  “When you cooked up this plan, how exactly did you think it would end?”

  She took a breath. “He can make it. You know what that would mean for us. I only need more time.”

  “It doesn’t work that way,” Matthias replied. “They can’t be turned; you have only doomed him and yourself.”

  Her brow furrowed in anger. “If it doesn’t work,” she paused, “Then why is it forbidden to try? Not for any concern for mages, that much I know.”

  Matthias could only give the same answer he was given. “You know what they say; if anything they simply turn into monsters. Very dangerous monsters.” Such an answer made more sense before he had seen the man on the mattress.

  “Are you threatened by him, laying there struggling to breathe, covered in his own sweat, shaking and completely unaware of his surroundings?” she asked as obvious rhetoric.

  “Maybe it’s possible,” he said. “Maybe there’s some trick to it. Some ritual or catalyst. Maybe it’s old superstition. Was he as willing to give his life as you are to take it from him?” Matthias’s voice had become loud and tense with sincerity. “Have you been communing? I can see it in your eyes, the yellow.”

  He walked over to her and grabbed her chin, lifting her face toward his. He released her and sighed. “Naive. How did you get involved with this man, Shaila?” Matthias looked down at the nameless, naked, shivering body. “Well?”

  “I l-love him,” she stuttered. Matthias sighed, clenching his eyes while rubbing the bridge of his nose. His eyes weren’t dry, nor his nose sore. “Not love,” she said, as if to correct herself. “I fell in love, and he wanted this. I started communing, and it became clear, so crystal clear. It should have worked.”

  Matthias knew Shaila from vampire clubs. She had been nocturnal for less than two decades, a relative newcomer. It was common for the young to spend most of their waking hours intoxicated or fucking, or fucking while intoxicated. And that is how Matthias knew her. They had shared conversation, a bed, and some booze. Shaila learned what he was, but that night they were just two nightstalkers killing time.

  Her eyes gazed upon the carpet, nervously moving from one spot to the next. Her despair was clear. Shaila knew that what she had done was a grave offense to the vampire leadership. There are few rules vampires have to
follow and turning those capable of shaping and manipulating ethereal forces explicitly breaks one of them.

  “You know why I am here,” Matthias said somberly. “And what I have to do.” Shaila’s youth and clean record might save her from execution, but that wasn’t Matthias’s call. The council might instead order her defanged, with silver fused to her jaw to prevent any regrowth. An extremely unpleasant process that would take a lot of the fun out of drinking. As for the mage, he would have to be put down, immediately. Such an abomination could not be allowed to live.

  Shaila took little time to ponder her options, exploding from her sullen disposition and leaping at Matthias. She swung her right hand at his throat. Her claws had come out and were razor sharp, and she was fast. Matthias was faster. He leaned backward to avoid the attack while kicking her right shin. Shaila’s knee buckled and her hands instinctively reached for the ground to catch her fall. As she fell, Matthias leapt forward, catching her shoulder with his right arm, using it to pivot behind her. He wrapped his right leg around her waist and his left arm around her chest, pulling her backward to the ground. Weakened, she could do little to fight against his strength, but was able to stab her claws viciously into his legs.

  Matthias, hardened from years of various confrontations and enforcing the council’s will, yelped loudly. The pain was always a jolt, no matter how many times it happened. He had not stabbed or shot her because he had not brought a gun and didn’t want her blood all over him. A foolish decision he was making a mental note never to repeat. Despite the pain and the likelihood that he was now bleeding profusely all over the dingy carpet, Matthias slid his left arm around Shaila’s neck, grabbing the inside of his right elbow. Leveraging the choke hold, he knew a light squeeze would knock her out, eventually. However, while her initial reaction was to try to pull his arm away, he knew her secondary attack would be to strike at his face now nested behind her head, and he couldn’t risk any more injury. In a split second, he flexed his left arm tightly around her neck, fracturing her vertebra.

  Shaila went limp, embraced by Matthias, both laying in a pool of his blood. His wounds had stopped hemorrhaging, and he was still conscious. Things could have gone worse. He pulled a small silver capsule from his pocket and held it delicately between his index and middle fingers. Using his own claws, he drew a small incision on her chest and placed the ball-bearing sized capsule inside. Even with a broken neck, he had to make sure it was finished.

  Laying next to her, Matthias was reminded of their intimacy. His stomach twisted into a knot, and he felt a gloom descend over him. He cursed himself for existing, and for carrying out the council’s will. He told himself it was for the greater good. He told himself he had no choice; he wasn’t good at anything else. Both were true, but neither made him feel much better.

  When Mathias rose, his attention turned first to his legs, gashed up but already starting to heal, and then to the naked mattress mage. To Matthias’s surprise, the man was no longer breathing and his eyes were now closed. “I don’t know who got who involved in this, but I’m sorry.” He didn’t know which deceased he was addressing. Perhaps both, he thought.

  Covered in blood, Matthias disrobed and started exploring the apartment. “Good”, he said out loud as he found a small laundry alcove. While the washer churned, he went to the kitchen, which was more or less an extension of the living room. “Not so good,” he said as he peered inside the empty refrigerator. Despite competing with the washer for hot water, he decided to start cleaning himself up. As he climbed into the shower, he realized how weak his wounds had made him. Matthias was vulnerable; he needed blood, and the two corpses already present would not do.

  He lingered in the shower, letting the water rinse the red from his skin. Some familiar emotion tugged at him from some crevice deep inside his brain wrinkles. Was it guilt? It was just small enough that he and his vampire kin simply ignore it when they want to. Matthias did not want to ignore it that night. He let the feeling take him, engulf him, even if it only lasted a few moments.

  Matthias traveled back to his childhood, remembering bits and pieces of his life as a human. This ritual always ended the same way. He thought of a few moments from elementary school, then a few more from junior high, then several from high school. Then somewhere in his twenties, the memories of his humanity stopped. Something was missing, lost forever. A gap of ten years existed between his memories of human and vampire life. Every time he traveled this road, it ended in frustration and sorrow that cut him to the core. But if he had shed a tear, it was lost in the streams of water pouring over his face and down the drain.

  When, after some time, he realized only cold water was shooting at him, Matthias vacated the shower stall, ready to hunt and feed before dawn broke. His clothes were still wet from the washer, however. “Such a waste of time,” he said as he threw them into the dryer. He fumbled with the controls until the machine whirred to life.

  Matthias went back to the living room, taking care to avoid stepping in the blood, which had spread out to cover a large portion of the room. Shaila lay there, still dead. However, the mattress mage… was gone!

  “What.” The door to the hall was now open fully. Matthias darted out with his bits still dangling, hoping to catch the man. He didn’t even know his name or anything about him. To lose him now, after all this… “Oh this is… bad.” There was no sight of the mattress mage in either direction.

  Matthias darted to a window and again saw no one. He sprinted to the stairwells at both ends of the hall and saw no one. He even went to the back and front entrances of the apartment complex, despite the risk of drawing immediate attention to his recent murder… and saw nothing. Somehow the dead naked mage had gotten up from his not-so-eternal slumber and made his escape. Weakened and without a lead, Matthias knew that running down the street naked in a random direction would be futile. He needed help, and he needed it fast…

  Visceral

  Long ago, in the year 2029, governments buckled under the pressure of financial debts and dwindling natural resources. In a chain reaction, one state after another declared bankruptcy and ceased providing services. For a month it was armageddon, as there were no police, the hospitals were closing, fires were raging with no one to put them out, and riots filled the streets.

  While America’s collapse wasn’t pretty, Europe’s was far uglier. Their people, either less complacent or more disgruntled depending on the perspective, took to property destruction like a dog to a new chew-toy. Much of Western Europe was in utter ruin for years. While the western world imploded, the eastern world exploded into conflict with each other, their generals seizing power and waging campaigns over resources with neighboring states. Any states spared conflict and unrest simply slumped into a new era of economic depression.

  But as quickly as America had collapsed, life returned to perceived normalcy with a relatively quick and complete reinvention of government. Corporations such as Apple, Google, and Exxon, who practically printed their own money already, convened a summit to determine how best to provide law and order to the country. Territory was separated into districts; each one assessed for taxation value, then split up among the largest publicly traded corporations.

  In the following years, this new corporatocracy spread around the globe. Continent after continent found their economic leaders and tasked them with restoring order. A global council, with representatives from each district was voted into power by shareholders. Some constitutional rights were preserved, but most could no longer be interpreted under the new system and were left behind.

  Every year, districts changed hands or were re-sized based on market capitalization. Profit margins, revenue, and projected growth became the most sought after news. Investigative reporting could spur global power shifts. After a tense battle with the Yuan, the Dollar won as the universal currency for the new world order. Some things never change.

  When the corporations first took over, they often stated it was a temporary solution, and that
a new government would be established as soon as feasible. However, prosperity in the face of the previous decline stalled attempts to convene a new congress and establish an executive branch. The world had been saved by big business, and as long as it worked, no one—almost no one—cared about conflicts of interest or having a fraction of the voting power they had before. The latter was irrelevant to most constituents, who never voted anyway. Freedom is a matter of perspective, and the old perspective died in the collapse.

  Some say the new world was actually born seventeen years earlier, in 2012. That was the year that something came into the world of mortals that would change everything, though its existence would be hidden until well into the 30’s. And so it became the responsibility of the new world order to fear it, control it, exploit it, and when necessary, destroy it.

  * * *

  Taq liked to consider himself a creature of the night. Really, he just didn’t like to get up in the morning. Still, he felt comfortable after the sun went down, and most people retired to their homes and beds. The sun… was irritating. And shady people hanging out at street corners did not frighten him. In fact, he was on his way to visit with one. Not on a street corner exactly, but even better, a dark alley in an abandoned business district.

  Not that Taq would ever go anywhere without being armed and taking precautions. That would be foolish. As a mage, Taq had the ability to appear non-threatening while stalking the streets at night. He didn’t actually like putting himself in close proximity to thugs and thieves, but what he wanted was contraband. Though the Magic Enforcement Security Service denied that such contraband had any use for a mage, they would waste no time in prosecuting Taq for buying the allegedly useless product.