Chapter 19: Mental Warfare
Fred didn’t open his eyes. He became aware of them being open. There was a difference. Sight usually crashed in—lights, shapes, motion. Here, vision seeped into him, a slow stain of perception on an endless black canvas.
For a long, dislocated moment, he was just void. No up, no down, no body, no breath. Panic was a concept, not a feeling. Then, a prick of light. Not ahead of him. On him.
He looked down, if ‘down’ was the direction his consciousness tilted. A bandolier crossed his chest. Real, worn leather. The light came from one of the capsules—Scorch, glowing with a weak, persistent ember-light. He felt a familiar weight on his right shoulder. He turned his head. Voltage was there, protoform, his blue hide dull, the lightning-bolt marks dim. He chirped, a static-filled sound that held no energy, only recognition.
Fred didn’t need a head count. He felt them. The solid, stoic bulk of Hammer at his hip. The cool, patient presence of Zero near his collarbone. The latent, spiky energy of Grime. All nine. They weren’t just with him. They were anchored to him, points of warmth in a sensory deprivation chamber that stretched forever.
“Kord?” His own voice was muffled, swallowed by the nothing. “Pronto?”
Silence.
“Trixie.”
The name wasn’t a call. It was an invocation. As it left his lips, a pain lanced through his skull—a white-hot needle behind his eyes. He gasped, a sound that made no sound.
A flash: Trixie’s face, pale and streaked with grime, looking down at him. Her lips moving. He couldn’t hear her.
The pain receded, leaving a throbbing echo. And there, maybe twenty feet away in the featureless dark, a light sparked. It grew, swirling into an oval portal burning with soft, orange-gold light. It didn't illuminate the space around it; the darkness just…stopped at its edges.
And the scent hit him. Not a perfume. The specific, comforting mixture of machine oil, ozone from a camera charger, and the faint, clean smell of the moss-soap she used. Trixie. The portal smelled exactly like her. It was a homing beacon wired directly into his brainstem.
He had to get to it.
He tried to run. His legs churned in the blackness, finding no purchase, like a nightmare sprint. He kicked, trying to swim. He moved, but agonizingly slowly, as if the void was thick resin.
He was halfway there when the air in front of the portal shimmered. Not a fade-in. A coagulation. Darkness pulled itself together, layered into the sharp lines of a high-collared coat, the severe angles of a face, the neat point of a goatee.
Dr. Blakk stood between him and the light, hands clasped behind his back, observing the orange portal with detached curiosity.
Instinct bypassed thought. Fred’s left hand swept down, the motion muscle-memory flawless. His blaster was in his grip, cold and familiar. He didn’t think of strategy, of testing. Rage and terror fused into a single, crystalline objective: clear the path.
He loaded Shrapnel from his bandolier, the Hop Rock clicking into the chamber. He aimed at the center of that obsidian chest and fired.
The blaster coughed. A pathetic, sputtering sound. Shrapnel tumbled out of the barrel in a lazy, low-speed arc. He didn’t velocimorph. He didn’t glow. He was just…a yellow slug, tumbling through the emptiness. He bounced off Blakk’s coat with a soft tink and drifted away, disoriented and stupid.
Blakk didn’t flinch. He turned his head slowly, a smile spreading across his face. It wasn’t a smile of victory. It was the smile of a scientist watching an ant trying to lift a stone. Amusement, pure and cold.
“Where am I?” Fred growled, his voice gaining strength from the fury. “What did you do?”
Blakk chuckled. The sound was dry, like pages turning in a forgotten book. “I? I did nothing. This is all you, Frederick. We are in the one place my influence has taken root without a single drop of dark water.” He gestured with one hand, a graceful, sweeping motion that took in the infinite black. “Your mind. Or rather, what’s left of it.”
The words meant nothing. They were traps. Fred glanced past him at the Trixie-portal. It pulsed, beckoning. “Get out of my way.”
“Or what? You’ll throw more of your…pets at me?” Blakk took a step closer. He didn’t walk; he drifted. “They are as broken as the vessel that carries them. This place is a shipwreck, Fred. A fascinating, crumbling shipwreck.”
A throbbing started in Fred’s temples. The blackness began to warp. Rust-colored streaks smeared across his vision, resolving into shapes: walls of corroded iron, pipes leaking steam, a low ceiling of flickering, faulty neon tubes. He was standing in a corridor. It felt like the bowels of a failing machine, industrial decay humming with weak, sickly light.
Blakk was now leaning against a dripping pipe, his coat untouched by the grime. “You see? The architecture of a…what did you call yourself? A ‘blue-collar’ mind. All grit. No polish. All these little rooms.” He tapped the iron wall. It rang hollow. “Let’s see what’s in this one.”
The wall beside him melted away. Not vanished—it liquefied like hot tar, revealing a small, stark space. In it, a memory played, silent and vivid:
A younger Fred, maybe sixteen, standing in the Red Hook shop. His hand was wrapped in a bloody rag. An older slinger with a scarred face was laughing, not unkindly. “Left-handed draw’s too slow, kid. Everyone knows it. You’ll always be a step behind.” Fred just stared at his wrapped hand, his jaw tight, saying nothing.
Fred flinched. “Shut that off.”
“Why? It’s truth. It’s foundation.” Blakk moved, and the corridor extended before him. Doors appeared, hundreds of them, lining the rusty walls. Each was labeled in that bleeding ink he’d somehow known was there: First Duel Loss (Gully Run). Near-Miss: Falling Stalactite. The Time Pronto Ate Your Rations. The Shane Gauntlet—Failure.
The doors began to rattle on their hinges.
“Your life is a catalog of inadequacy,” Blakk said, his voice a smooth, hypnotic drone. “A desperate, sweaty struggle to prove you belong in a story that was written before you were born. The loyal sidekick. The capable mechanic. The…vanguard.” He sneered the word. “But never the hero. That title is taken. By blood.”
Another door blew open. This memory had sound.
The hideout. Laughter. Eli had just pulled off some impossible, lucky shot, Blaster firing, Burpy screeching with joy. Eli was grinning, rubbing the back of his neck. Trixie shoved his shoulder, her smirk wide and full of genuine admiration. “Show-off.” She said it like a compliment.
The memory wasn’t cruel. That was the worst part. It was warm. It was real. It was a moment of family from which Fred was subtly excluded, standing at the periphery, holding a wrench.
The pain in Fred’s head became a vice. He stumbled, the corridor tilting. His slugs chirped in alarm, their lights fluttering.
“Look at her face,” Blakk whispered, now right beside his ear, though Fred hadn’t seen him move. “Look at where her eyes go. They follow the legacy. The name. Why would she ever look at the background noise?”
“You’re lying,” Fred rasped, clamping his hands over his ears. The memory looped—Trixie’s smile, Eli’s grin.
“Am I? This is your mind, Fred. I’m just turning up the volume. This is the rot at your core. The doubt. I don’t need dark water here. This place is already poisoned.”
The corridor convulsed. The doors shattered open all at once, a blizzard of his failures, his insecurities, every missed shot and second-place finish rushing out in a deafening roar. The image of Trixie’s smiling face fragmented, multiplied, becoming a mocking mosaic on every wall.
Fred fell to his knees. The orange portal was still there, at the far end of the now endless, screaming corridor, but it was smaller, dingier, its light barely penetrating the storm of his own psyche.
Blakk stood over him, a slate-grey monument in the chaos. “This is where you belong. In the machinery. In the dark. It’s quiet here. You can stop fighting. The girl is safe with the real Shane. Your purpose is served.”
The words were seductive. The noise was so loud. To let go… to sink into the rust and the quiet…
Voltage launched from his shoulder.
The little Tazerling didn’t shoot toward Blakk. He slammed into the side of Fred’s head with a small, desperate thud. A tiny jolt of electricity, weaker than a static shock, fizzed through Fred’s temple.
It wasn’t an attack. It was a nudge. A reminder.
Scorch flared, hot against his chest. Zero pressed a circle of cold to his skin. Hammer’s capsule thrummed with a deep, solid vibration.
They weren’t broken. They were waiting. They were him. Not his doubts, not his memories. His choices. The gear he’d chosen, the partners he’d earned. Every callus, every weld, every calculated shot was a argument against the void.
Fred lifted his head.
He looked past Blakk’s smug silhouette, past the swirling memories, and locked onto the dying orange light. The scent of Trixie was almost gone, buried under the smell of rust and ozone.
He didn’t try to stand. He planted his left hand on the grimy, illusory floor. He focused not on running, but on the connection—the taut line of belonging that led from his bandolier, through the storm, to that light.
“You talk too much,” Fred said, his voice grinding like broken gears finding purchase.
He pushed. Not with his legs. With his will.
The corridor screamed. But the orange light held. Just a pinprick.
Just a start.
Just a start.
Fred began to move.
The grinding wall of memories resisted, each image of failure a physical barrier of thickening air. He pushed against it, legs driving as if through cooling slag. Slow. Liquid slow. He focused on the pulse of warmth from Scorch against his chest, a tiny furnace in the dark. He thought of the exact weight of his wrench in his real hand, the grip of the tape on the handle.
The resistance eased, just a fraction.
He was walking. Then striding. The corridor of rust and neon blurred at the edges as his focus narrowed to that orange disc of light. It grew. He could see motes of gold swirling within it. He could almost smell her again, that scent cutting through the metallic tang of his own fear.
Soon he was jogging, the floor solidifying under his boots with each thudding step. Pipes rattled in the walls as he passed. Then running, his breath tearing in a chest that felt gloriously, painfully real. The door labeled The Shane Gauntlet—Failure shattered as he barreled past it, the memory-fragments dissolving to dust.
He was sprinting, a raw burst of kinetic energy fueled by nine distinct heartbeats clinging to his body. The portal swelled, filling his vision. Warmth washed over his face. He coiled the muscles in his legs, tensing for a leap he knew would carry him home.
He leapt the final meter, arms outstretched.
His fingers brushed the shimmering surface. Heat, real heat, kissed his skin.
He was violently jerked back.
A fist of inhuman strength had clamped onto the collar of his jacket, wrenching him backwards through the air. The portal vanished from his reach with a soundless pop. Dr. Blakk held him aloft, his arm outstretched, Fred dangling like a puppet. He brought Fred up to his eye level. Up close, his face wasn't human skin; it was polished obsidian, reflecting Fred's own twisted, desperate expression.
"You don't get to simply leave, Frederick," Blakk said, his voice resonating in the hollow spaces of Fred's skull. "Reality is a privilege. If you want to return to it, you're going to have to fight for it."
Fred didn't waste breath on a reply. He swung.
His left fist, the one that had welded a thousand broken things, arced toward that polished jaw. Blakk didn't even lean. He moved his head a precise inch to the side, the motion effortless and insulting. The air whistled where Fred's knuckles should have connected.
Blakk's free hand shot out, seized Fred by the belt, and slammed him down into the corroded iron floor.
The impact wasn't physical. It was conceptual. The shockwave was the sum of every doubt Blakk had voice, every insecurity given mass. Fred gasped, the wind and the will knocked out of him. Blakk looked down from his towering height, a sneer of divine amusement etched onto his dark face.
Fred rolled, pain screaming along neural pathways that weren't supposed to exist. He saw Blakk's boot lift to stomp. On instinct, he drove a quick, sharp jab upwards.
His fist connected with the hinge of Blakk’s jaw.
It wasn't a powerful blow. But it was unexpected. A tiny chip of obsidian flew into the dark. Blakk's head snapped to the side, a flicker of genuine surprise in the crimson glint of his eyes. The grip on Fred's consciousness loosened for a fraction of a second.
Fred scrambled, kicked away, and shot to his feet.
They faced each other in the greasy light. Blakk touched his jaw, looked at the shard of darkness on his fingertips, and smiled. "Better."
They crashed together. This was not a duel. It was demolition. Fred fought with the frantic, pragmatic violence of the garage—elbows, knees, his forehead aiming for the nose. Blakk fought like a calculation given form, each block a dismissive parry, each strike a lesson in pain.
Fred felt every hit a thousand times over. A blow to his ribs echoed with the remembered crack from a fall in the Crystal Crevices. A cut above his eye wept the same salt-and-iron blood as his first lost duel. He was losing strength. Losing energy. The corridor was feeding on his fatigue, the walls drinking the light from his slugs.
He was losing the battle.
Blakk caught Fred's last, weary punch, twisted his arm, and drove a knee into his stomach. Fred folded. Blakk released him, letting him drop to his hands and knees. Fred struggled for air that wasn't there.
Blakk raised his hand. Darkness pooled in his palm, forming a long, jagged shard of liquid shadow. A finishing blow. Fred looked up, saw his own broken reflection in it, and closed his eyes. He reached for Trixie's face in his memory, a final snapshot to hold against the nothing.
And then, he felt it.
Not from his body. From the walls. A tremor in the false iron. A vibration in the pipes. Power. It hummed up through the floor, into his knees, his palms.
He thought for a moment. This was his mind. Blakk was just a squatter. A terrifying, powerful squatter, but a guest in the architecture of his life, his skills, his sweat.
His shop had pipes. And pipes could be shaken loose.
Fred didn't open his eyes. He reached out with the part of him that knew torque and tension. He found a stress point in a welded joint two yards behind Blakk. He hooked his consciousness onto it and pulled.
The pipe screamed as it ripped free from its brackets. Blakk, sensing the shift in the realm's focus, started to turn his head. He was too late.
The heavy steel conduit smashed straight into the center of his face.
The sound was not of breaking bone, but of shattering glass. A web of cracks erupted across Blakk’s obsidian visage. He staggered back, a snarl of pure outrage tearing from his fractured mouth. Fred didn't watch. He kicked out, his boot connecting with the side of Blakk's knee. Something gave way with a sickening crunch.
Fred shot to his feet.
Blakk was hunched, one hand to his ruined face, dark mist seeping between his fingers. The sneer was gone, replaced by a rictus of wounded fury. "You little—"
Fred didn't let him finish. He spread his arms wide. He didn't need to levitate; he simply remembered that gravity here was a suggestion he’d been accepting. The floor fell away from his boots. He hovered, feeling the entire skeletal frame of the mental construct—every I-beam, every conduit, every forgotten memory bolted into place.
He mentally locked onto all of it.
With a roar that was part effort, part release, he tore every loose pipe, every hanging cable, every bent strip of reinforcing steel from the walls and ceiling. The corridor screamed in protest. He didn't care. He pointed at Blakk.
The avalanche of metal shot forward. Blakk raised his arms, a shield of swirling darkness forming. It swallowed the first few projectiles, but the sheer, unthinking mass of it was overwhelming. Pipes speared through the shield, cables wrapped around limbs, sheets of corroded iron slammed into him with the sound of a hundred crashing mecha-beasts.
Blakk was buried, consumed by the architecture of Fred's own resilience.
Fred didn't wait to see if he’d get up. He turned. The orange portal reappeared, brighter than ever, swirling with the texture of Trixie's hair, the sound of her laugh, the feel of her hand in his.
He didn't run. He willed himself forward.
And shot straight through the portal.