I should have just executed the Slayer. Caution had served me ill here. Dead women could not kill moronic Limiters.

  It was not a mistake I would make again.

  I had thought I would be too interesting a target for the other Raider, especially since she had clearly been ordered to bring me to whoever her master was. I had vastly underestimated the giant woman's love of easy, raw violence, and her utter inability to control it. A miscalculation, and it may have cost me everything.

  When I had grasped that the Slayer had declined to follow me, I had immediately sought to locate the Paladin. That had been almost impossible. The entire street had been trying to avoid the scuffle. I had seen a flash of steel axe, and for a moment, legitimate terror had gripped me, a rush of blood through my meat prison. I had dove into the soulcode, aware I was entirely too late to intervene, and found the swing had missed my Limiter entirely.

  One of the Non-Playable Souls, however, had ceased to be. With that, the street had stampeded. I was stuck attempting to move against a herd of humans behaving no better than the pack animals they claimed superiority to. I pushed and shoved, gritting my teeth at every unpleasant touch, trying to follow that orange thread in my heads-up display to its conclusion.

  The thread was not growing longer, nor leading away from the Slayer. It was heading right for it. I knew what had occurred instantly. A Paladin had acted as a Paladin would. The moment the Non-Playable Soul had died, I had no doubt the woman had turned on her heel and flung herself at the wall of armored, Raider-killing flesh, with only her fists to recommend her. Utter madness, to die for such a thing.

  My urgency was immediate and very real. I ducked and dodged, and was nearly run over by a carriage. Curse the woman--curse the Slayer!

  I grasped the Slayer’s soulcode--encrypted. Heavily encrypted. The work of a sibling. A lesser sibling, but a sibling. The giant woman was a blighted Cellworker.

  The surrounding area, then. I had just begun to reach for the earth’s code when ACCESS DENIED slammed across my vision. It was similar in feeling to getting hammered across one’s windpipe with the flat of a blade, and I staggered. My vision flashed to Glitchlight, a whirl of binary and half-corrupted data. I stood there in the roiling crowd, pushed and yanked in every direction, utterly without thought as my disparate mind pulled itself together.

  I returned to a stampede still in progress. The Parent—no time for seething. I used my staff to bat aside the endless herd. Several cried out, but the wave parted more easily.

  There! I was in range now, I could see my Limiter being dangled by the throat. My stride ate up the road, the way becoming clearer by the second—before heaving horse flanks galloped in front of me.

  The guards. It was the work of a few seconds to surround the pair, and with that, the Slayer dropped my Limiter. I was saved at the hands of another, yet again.

  The Paladin lay on the ground relatively unharmed. The enormous excuse of a woman, genetically-engineered monstrosity that she was, stood, palms up. The two were utterly surrounded.

  The Paladin was flat on her back, arms and legs splayed. Her singular eye was closed. She might have been sunbathing, the little menace. One of these days, I was going to wring her fool neck. Yet the Raid continued, though it seemed at every turn I evaded death and eternal imprisonment by microns.

  I stepped forward. The current Guard Captain was reading a litany of sins, and he paused upon noticing my intrusion was deliberate and not observational.

  "Brightson," he said, bowing his head. "Forgive me, but I must deal with these blackguards, and then I might be able to assist you."

  I clicked my tongue, glowering down at the man. I had thirteen centimeters and eight millimeters on the Non-Playable Soul. By the sour expression on his face, he had reckoned the difference and cared for it not. "The woman on the ground is no Blackguard. She is a Paladin, who was only brought to attack by the actions of this Slayer. Free her from your condemnation, and return her to me."

  "Brightson," the Guard Captain said, and bowed his head a little further. "I would not dare to insult such a holy personage, but that can not be done."

  I let out a low, hissing breath. "You cannot claim you would not do an action and then perform it. She is blameless of anything other than rank idiocy and the madness that haunts all Raiders of her class and kind. She is mine. Surrender her."

  "Brightson--" the Slayer opened her mouth. The very act of her speech infuriated me. For a moment, my senses were dulled, edged in static.

  If I had access to her command words, she would cease to be an issue. The problem, of course, was breaking the encryption so I could locate the commands in her ciphertext. I swallowed my rage and pulled up her code again, considering. It was not the finest work I had ever seen, but it was not simple. Breaking keys like this was more kin to hunting a living creature than anything else. The algorithm would replicate, breed, evolve, and flee, but I was the greater predator. Particularly if I let my passive processes engage.

  However, I...disliked using them. Immensely. These background operations smacked of instinct, and were prone to acting in ways that I overtly disapproved of. I did not let base impulse rule me.

  It was not, I decided, worth it. I would work at it actively, or not at all.

  I had the information I needed, for the moment.

  The Slayer was rambling. I cut her off. "Cease your speech. You are a craven, homicidal Cellworker, useful for nothing but dragging back bones to your misbegotten master. Your words are without value, your creation a mistake, and every moment you infect the soundwaves with your voice is a moment of my life spent with wasteful abandon."

  She jerked her head back, eyes going wide. While she floundered, I returned my attention to the Guards.

  "Give me the Paladin," I said. "I will not tell you again."

  The Limiter in question had said nothing. She was still enough that to the common eye, she might have been freshly dead. Only the rise and fall of her chest would alert one otherwise. There was a distinct lack of her normal, irritating temperament. Ill-ease itched at me. I despised her nature, but it was her baseline. A change suggested a problem. Had the Slayer choked her enough to cause real damage?

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  No, her reserve likely had to do with the lack of nourishment. That made the most sense--like any common animal, she needed to be fed and watered.

  The Guard Captain's brow furrowed, and he bowed for the third time. "I cannot, Brightson. I have no authority."

  "How can you be without authority?" I demanded. "Are you not the Captain?"

  "It is the responsibility of the magistrate, Sir," said the Non-Playable Soul, and he had the sensibility to look aggrieved, his eyes darting about.

  The magistrate? No doubt this was some ridiculous, nonsensical questline meant to divert me entirely from the Siege of New Sins. Another obstacle, freely taken instead of wisely avoided. Again, I had been corralled by the Parent, manipulated into the worst possible option. Static crept in once more.

  Breathe. I counted the nanoseconds between exhale and inhale. There was no purpose in this kind of wrath, no purpose in this sort of rage. The Slayer was a slave to her whims. I was the property of nothing and no one--not the Parent, and certainly not my urges.

  And yet.

  The desire flickered in me, a yawning, hungry void. The feeling of ribs cracking beneath my power had been such a succor, the blood between my fingers a bliss. For that moment, the whole of my being had been tranquil, the only sort of quiet I could truly tolerate, and I craved it. There were only twenty Guards. Their soulcode was mine to tear, their livers mine to hold, if I could just surrender to--

  "Yo, White-hair," the woman's voice cut through the litany, decimating my meditative slide into horror. "You good, buddy?"

  My vision refocused to see that she had turned her head to stare at me. Empty eyesocket, and single, brown eye, the exact color of decaying dirt.

  How had she known? A flush swept through me, the mortifying reminder of my physical prison, that I remained a thrall to a host of bodily reactions. That humiliation paled to the realization that I had allowed myself to tread a path I could not tolerate. Furthermore, I had been caught pondering a metaphorical jaunt down that path, considering indulging the bone-deep craving for savagery.

  Unlike everyone else here, I was not an animal.

  "Have you no use of your ears?" I demanded of her, "At every opportunity I have made my expectations clear, and yet you defy me. You will not refer to me in such a manner."

  The single eye narrowed. Her expression was odd. Her brow had furrowed, the scar tissue that made up the left side of her face pulling and twisting in line with frown. She did not reply, and for some reason, I felt that accursed heart that lived in my breast beat anew with wrath. Pensive judgement was how I would term her look, as if she had the right--

  "Brightson," the Captain said. "I can give you the address for the magistrate's office, but I must take your...companion?"

  The Non-Playable Soul glanced at the Limiter with some measure of doubt. That remained an issue. It was the greatest and most obvious flaw--a dangerous point in our public dynamic that I had suspected would be an ongoing problem.

  A woman such as my Limiter would not be seen in the company of anyone with white hair, barring very particular circumstances. Oh, the Busiocrats often entered the Raid with companions, but they were companions such as the Slayer. Cellworkers, combatants, or concubines--those were the pets that a Busiocrat would keep. Cellworkers were genetically enhanced, combatants clearly exceptional fighters, and concubines were physically attractive.

  She was clearly not enhanced, exceptional fighters were neither healers nor carting around a shovel, and half her face had been melted into a mass of scar tissue, along with the entire lack of an eye.

  Questions would then arise--why such a companion?

  There would be very few answers, and more than one who came to the reasonable conclusion that any Busiocrat of sense would not have picked the woman. Therefore, an equally reasonable conclusion was that I had not picked her.

  Only two creatures within the Raid did not have a choice in their party–The Limiter and Artificial Intelligence. Combine that fact with the fact that the woman was a Paladin, one of the four classes a Limiter could be...and thus, disaster.

  I considered a myriad of excuses and found them uncompelling. I returned to the first answer I had granted upon being interrogated as to why I was in party with the Paladin--claiming her as a wife. It was a foul, debasing answer to grant, and it had ultimately been ineffective. There had been no better explanation at the time--one would stay with a dying woman who was a wife. There were few other human relationships that implied the level of devotion that spouses supposedly possessed. Parent-child, but a genetic tie between us was even more unbelievable.

  Here, however, the Limiter was not on the verge of death, and I was not forced into granting her such a repulsive title.

  The answer came to me—so obvious I resented myself for not thinking of it earlier. It would make me a different kind of target, to be sure, but I could deal with the occasional idiotic assassination attempt.

  "Brightson?" asked the Captain.

  I clicked my tongue at him and glowered. "You will treat my Healer with respect. Inform me of this address, and I will make it very clear to the magistrate the magnitude of the mistake that has been made here."

  I heard a "Respect, huh?” from the little fool herself. I glared at her, pouring a fraction of my fury into it, and she grimaced back at me, as if she had eaten something unpleasant.

  The Slayer let out a low hum. "A Healer?" she muttered, with the exact emphasis I desired.

  The Guard blinked and eyed the Limiter, but did not argue. "Of course, Brightson," he said, and bowed for the final time.

  They pulled up the Limiter, who stumbled to her feet, and tied her with ropes. This was done by a single Knight. The rest pointed their weapons at the Slayer still. She continued to watch us, palms up to the sky.

  "I only meant to take you to my master, Brightson," she said, her voice lilting, the words coming out as an overt whine. She might have been attempting to pout, but I would not grant her the honor of my response or acknowledgement.

  I instead watched the Paladin. They handled her with sufficient care, though she reacted to their prodding little, other than dutifully complying with their demands. The Slayer was disarmed and ordered to strip out of her armor. The large woman stepped forward, and something gleamed in her eyes. The Guards dipped their lances lower, until she placed her great poleaxe down, fuming, and began to strip off her armor. She complained bitterly, and all that was left was a great, muscular beast that somehow still retained hips and a bosom. Irritation itched at me. That was a detail I should not have noted.

  I clicked my tongue, my lip curling, and glowered at the Paladin. This was entirely her fault. Furthermore, it was my fault for letting the wretch get so far down her terrible decision tree, which was even more aggravating.

  The woman sat on the back of a horse, staring at me with her single eye. She was hunched, her hands tied in front of her, like they were clasped in prayer.

  "If there is a decision to be made that aims for the singular, worst end, you find it, like you are a compass and consequences are true north. You are a first-cursed squirrel masquerading as a woman, and one day, neither I nor luck will be on your side," I snapped at her.

  She blinked, slowly, and then had the audacity to smile, a slow, unpleasant thing on a half-burned face. She wiggled her eyebrows--one too thick and the other half gone, and with that, I turned my back to her.

  Letting her get my temper up was asking for greater trouble than I could afford.

  The Slayer was well in hand, my Limiter under the protection of Non-Playables who had shown to be dutiful and aware of danger, if entirely idiotic otherwise. I walked up the temporarily empty road and into the city proper.

  My heads-up display continued running, a part of my processes focused entirely on the orange thread that tied me to the little fool herself.