206 Brainwashed Goon
206 Brainwashed Goon
The woman peeled a sticker from the inside of her jacket with a sharp, practiced motion. Space folded around her fingers like compliant paper, and the sticker thickened, gained depth, metal blooming outward until it became an assault rifle resting easily in her hands. The transformation was seamless, elegant in a way only spatial manipulation ever was, and I felt a brief, unguarded flicker of admiration despite the circumstances.
Her power was terrifying in its scalability. Folding space itself meant weapons were only a question of imagination and inventory, not logistics. Give her enough firepower, enough preparation, and she could erase city blocks without ever breaking a sweat. Nukes, if she ever got her hands on them, would turn her into a walking extinction event. It was a beautiful power, in a cold, impersonal sense.
“You should think twice,” I said evenly, keeping my voice steady as I stood under the flickering light. “Your bullets won’t work on me, and I doubt null rounds will fare much better. You’re welcome to test that assumption if you want.”
That wasn’t entirely true. Null bullets did affect me. I had ways to phase through them, techniques honed through experience and desperation, but every pass still scraped against my reserves. Power fatigue was a quiet killer, and I wasn’t interested in bleeding myself dry just to make a point.
Her finger tightened on the trigger anyway.
“What did you do to my teammates?” she demanded, and then the rifle barked.
The shots were sharp, concussive, ripping through the air toward my chest. I let the rounds phase through me, forcing my body into that precise, exhausting half-state where matter and absence overlapped. The bullets punched into the wall behind me, concrete erupting in sprays of dust and fragments.
I kept talking.
“Two-D,” I said calmly, watching her eyes widen despite herself. “Intangibility–teleportation hybrid. Thirty-four years old. Single. Claims she’s slept with several men, but you and I both know she prefers women. Terrible at Scrabble. Gets violent when people call her a brute. Likes the color orange, hates broccoli, and built her reputation stealing from people who deserved it less than they think.”
Her breathing hitched.
I didn’t stop.
“Long history in the outside world. Learned early. Burned fast. Learned humility the hard way. You keep your team alive because you’re afraid of being alone again.”
The rifle dipped, just a fraction.
“And that’s just the surface,” I continued. “I can keep going if you want. Terra. Elena. Vibe. Halo. I’ve had the time to get acquainted.”
Her finger slipped off the trigger. The muzzle lowered, shaking now, space around it warping erratically as her control wavered. I could feel it, the storm of emotions battering against my senses, fear colliding with rage, anxiety spiking into helpless fury. I filtered her thoughts out as best I could, but emotions were harder to mute than words, and they hammered at me all the same.
I’d pushed too hard.
That had been intentional, but I’d misjudged how close she was to snapping. I needed her thinking, not breaking.
I raised my hands slowly, a gesture more symbolic than necessary.
“Easy,” I said, softening my tone. “We don’t need to escalate this any further.”
She stared at me, jaw tight, eyes searching my face for lies.
After a long moment, she spoke. “Are they alive?”
I met her gaze and didn’t look away. “I swear on my honor,” I said. “They’re alive.”
The words mattered. I made sure she understood that.
Her shoulders sagged slightly, the rifle dissolving back into a flat sticker that she slapped onto her jacket with a trembling hand.
“What do you want?” she asked. “If this is about the cure—”
“It’s not,” I interrupted. “At least, not directly.”
That caught her off guard.
“There’s something else I want,” I said. “From Candyland. From Whimsy.”
Her eyes narrowed. “You picked a hell of a place for negotiations.”
“This place works,” she replied after a pause, glancing around the ruined hallway. “No NPCs. No players left alive in the hospital.”
I frowned inwardly. Gameboy had a habit of watching even when he pretended not to, and I doubted he lacked contingencies. I’ve seen for myself how he was able to turn this hospital into some kind of game. Still, my own analysis of the pill told me what she was saying was probably true. It bent perception, dulled oversight, and created blind spots in Urbanite’s systems.
“Safe enough,” I said. “That doesn’t mean I’m relaxed.”
She huffed quietly, tension still coiled in her posture. “Fair.”
I studied her for a moment, weighing my options, then made a decision.
“For the sake of trust,” I said, “I’ll let you ask me questions. A few. Your choice of order. No tricks.”
Her eyes flicked up to mine, wary but curious.
“Ask,” I added.
I was sure she had more questions than she was letting on. Anyone in her position would. By answering some of them honestly or honestly enough, I could build a thread of rapport, something thin but usable. That didn’t mean I was about to lay all my cards on the table. I wasn’t stupid.
She folded her arms, eyes sharp. “Your kill count,” she said. “You were alone. How did you rack up numbers like that without showing yourself?”
I exhaled slowly, as if considering whether the answer was worth giving.
“I used reach,” I said. “Not proximity.”
She frowned. “That’s vague.”
I lifted my hand.
From somewhere above us, beyond the ceiling and concrete, something stirred. A second later, a tarot card slid cleanly through the floor as if matter were optional, followed by another, then another, until a small fan of them hovered in the air before settling neatly into my palm. The motion was smooth, deliberate, and almost gentle.
Her eyes widened despite herself.
“I don’t need to be in the room,” I continued. “I sent them a floor up. Let them hunt while I guided them. Telekinetic control with empathic feedback. I knew where people would move before they did. For your information, I’ve been in this floor the entire time, since the ‘game’ began. Curious, isn’t it?”
That part, at least, was true. I teased her a bit to provoke her curiosity.
The cards rotated slightly above my hand, edges glinting in the flickering light. I willed them outward, and they obeyed, circling the space between us in a slow, controlled orbit before snapping back into place.
Two-D watched every movement, jaw tight.
“So you just… slaughtered them from above?” she asked. “What? While watching us?”
“Yes,” I replied. “I needed tos tudy you and your team, before I make a move and ensure my plans are met. Moreover, it brought me an opportunity to study the system. I wanted to see how far Gameboy’s eyes reached, how the system attributed cause and effect. Let’s just say I stole a few kills from your lot through direct and indirect means…”
I didn’t mention the possession. I didn’t mention phasing Vibe’s bullets at just the right angle, or electrocuting a spine from a blind spot, or nudging emotions until allies turned on each other. Those truths stayed buried.
“What did you learn?” she asked.
“That it’s observant,” I said. “Painfully so. Direct kills, indirect ones, even subtle manipulations through physical force, they were all counted. Whoever was watching didn’t miss much.”
“Didn’t miss,” she echoed. “Almost.”
I nodded. “Friendly fire didn’t count. Emotional pushes. Telepathic nudges. Either they can’t detect psychic influence, or they’ve decided not to.”
Her gaze sharpened. “And which do you think it is?”
“I don’t know yet,” I said truthfully. “But either answer is useful.”
The cards settled fully into my hand, their edges clicking softly together before I let them sink back into my sleeve. I could feel her reassessing me, recalibrating whatever mental profile she’d built.
“You’re bluffing,” she said after a moment.
I met her eyes and allowed myself a faint smile. “About some things,” I admitted. “Not about being dangerous.”
Two-D didn’t lower her weapon, but her stance shifted. The aggression bled into caution, and caution into calculation.
“What’s your plan?” she asked. “Not the performance. The real one.”
I didn’t dodge it.
“I’m building a connection with Whimsy,” I said. “Not negotiating. Establishing leverage. Candyland doesn’t survive by accident, and Whimsy isn’t stupid. I intend to take over Lockworld, and I’m giving her advance notice through you.”
Her eyes narrowed. “You expect her to kneel because you asked nicely?”
I shook my head slowly. “I expect her to kneel because I’m offering her something no one else can. An exit.”
That gave her pause.
“This world is a prison,” I continued. “A sophisticated one, layered with incentives and illusions of choice, but still a cage. My end goal is escape. Not just for myself, but for everyone worth bringing along.”
She stared at me as if I’d just spoken a foreign language.
“You’re Foresthome,” she said. “They’ve adapted. They’re thriving here.”
“I’m using them,” I replied evenly. “Just like I’m using this place. When this is over, they’ll fall in line too.”
The silence that followed was sharp enough to cut.
“And how,” she asked carefully, “do you plan to pull that off?”
“Demonstration,” I said. “I subjugate Gameboy. One way or another. When that happens, the balance of Lockworld shifts, and Whimsy will know I am serious.”
Two-D exhaled through her nose, a humorless sound. “And us? What’s next for us? What’s my part in this grand plan of yours?”
“This is what’s going to happen next. You retrieve your sisters from the basement,” I said. “You leave Urbanite with what you came for. After that, you work for me.”
Her expression hardened. “You’re insane.”
“Possibly,” I agreed. “But I’m also correct.”
She took a step back, shaking her head. “You think I’d ever agree to that?”
I moved before she finished the thought.
My hand closed around her throat, not crushing, not yet. At the same time, I phased my other hand forward, slipping past bone and resistance as if her skull were suggestion rather than barrier. She gasped, body locking up, eyes wide with shock.
I didn’t linger.
Electrokinesis flared in tight, surgical arcs, guided by biokinesis precise enough to sculpt nerve pathways rather than destroy them. I implanted the construct quickly, efficiently, a biological contingency nested deep where no surgeon could ever reach.
Light’s technique, imperfectly mirrored, but functional.
I withdrew and released her.
She stumbled back, coughing, nearly falling as she caught herself against the wall. Her rifle clattered to the floor.
“What,” she rasped, “did you just do to me?”
I tapped my temple with two fingers.
“I placed a trigger,” I said. “It’s tied to my intent, not proximity. If you disobey me, if you betray me, if you decide this conversation never happened, your nervous system will shut itself down in under a second.”
Her breathing came fast and shallow. “You’re bluffing.”
I met her gaze without blinking. “You’ve already decided I’m not.”
She swallowed hard.
“From this point on,” I continued, voice calm, almost gentle, “you follow my directives. You don’t warn Whimsy out of fear, and you don’t test the leash out of pride. Do that, and you live. Do more than that, and you might even get what you want.”
Her hands trembled as she clenched them into fists.
“In other words,” I finished, “you belong to me now.”
The realization hit me after the adrenaline bled out, settling heavy in my chest like something rotten.
This was a new low.
I had always despised slavery, not just as a concept but as a practice, a stain that turned people into tools and excuses into doctrine. And yet here I was, having put a ticking mechanism inside someone’s head and calling it necessity. It wasn’t brainwashing, not technically, but coercion wrapped in inevitability wasn’t meaningfully different.
I let out a hollow breath and forced a crooked smile.
“Well,” I said lightly, the words tasting like ash, “if it helps at all, at least it isn’t brainwashing.”
Two-D’s expression twisted, somewhere between fury and disbelief.
“You think that’s supposed to make me feel better?” she said.
“No,” I replied honestly. “It’s supposed to make me feel less like absolute garbage.”
She barked out a bitter laugh that held no humor. “Mission accomplished?”
I didn’t answer right away. My gaze drifted to the darkened hallway beyond her, to the flickering lights that hadn’t fully recovered since the massacre.
“You were closer than you realize from a worse fate,” I said at last. “If things had gone slightly differently, you wouldn’t be standing here angry. You’d be smiling, obedient, convinced this was all just part of a game.”
Her jaw tightened. “Explain.”
“Urbanite isn’t just a city,” I said. “It’s a processing engine. I can say with confidence that this place isn’t as colorful as it liked to pretend to be. Every player here is a groomed asset, slowly nudged, rewarded, corrected, and punished until resistance erodes. Most of them don’t even notice it happening.”
She stared at me, silent now.
“You and your sisters being here wasn’t a coincidence,” I continued. “Neither was my team’s presence. Gameboy didn’t invite us for sport. He was setting a snare, one that ended with capable capes either dead or repurposed.”
Her eyes widened slightly, just enough.
“You’re saying we were going to be brainwashed,” she said.
“I’m saying you were close enough to smell it,” I replied. “Close enough that if you’d stayed any longer, you wouldn’t have noticed the line when you crossed it.”
Her fists clenched, nails digging into her palms.
“That applies to Foresthome too,” I added. “I don’t believe in coincidences, and Gameboy’s arrogance is too theatrical to be random.”
Silence stretched between us, thick and brittle.
I turned away, already done with the conversation, already hating myself for how necessary it had been.
“One more thing,” I said over my shoulder.
She looked up.
“Interrogate Vibe,” I told her. “Carefully. Whatever happened here wasn’t an accident, and if there’s a traitor or a breach point in your group, she’s where the thread starts.”
I didn’t wait for a response.
I phased forward, passing cleanly through the door as if it weren’t there at all, leaving Two-D alone with the truth, the threat in her head, and the understanding that nothing about this mission had ever been fair.