The Exorcist Doctor

Jin had already lost track of how many rooms they'd checked. The Endless Masquerade’s upper levels were worse than the ballroom. Down there, at least, the crowd was large enough to make sense as a crowd, but up here, everything came in fragments. The private halls, dance rooms, and winding corridors seemed to twist through the building in a way meant to disorient and confuse, and couple all that with the complete lack of windows, Jin found himself more exhausted from the architecture than the actual dancing.

Still, he danced.

His hand remained at Maeve’s back, guiding her through mechanical turns and steps. It’d been a while since they started dancing—and hadn’t stopped dancing—so she followed well enough now that he barely had to think about stepping on her feet. That was useful. Maeve learned quickly if nothing else, and more importantly, she didn’t ask stupid questions while they moved. Like him, she only gave the occasional curious glance whenever they passed under a painted ceiling or some bizarre statue of a moth-faced noble with three hands.

Every time they finished ‘checking’ one of the private upper floor rooms by dancing through them, Maeve made a small, subtle gesture behind her back. Then one of the Three-Face pairs trailing them would twirl in and continue dancing around the door, marking the room as cleared of suspicion.

Just last night, Gael had informed the Master of Masks that they suspected the laboratory creating artificial Myrmur Hosts might be hidden somewhere in the building. While the Master of Masks also wanted Myrmurs ridden of, the Endless Masquerade wasn’t theirs to command. Too many wealthy Vharnish owned too many slices of the building and funded its endless dance, and any disruption to it—even for ten minutes—would cost them a fortune in business opportunities, which meant even the Three-Faces couldn’t simply lock down the entire building and let Jin and Maeve tear through it looking for the lab.

So, the Master of Masks had agreed to give them backup instead. Around fifty pairs of Three-Faces danced right behind Jin and Maeve under the guise of normal guests, and while they were dressed like guests without their signature three-faced masks, Jin had seen enough of them to recognize the alert posture beneath the elegance. Each pair of them checked routes, blocked corridors when necessary, and stayed behind to mark entire sections of the building cleared without drawing attention to themselves.

So far, by Jin’s rough count, Maeve had posted around twenty-four pairs to stay where they were. That was twenty-four sections of the building’s upper floor cleared of suspicion, and still the building kept going.

For that reason as well, Jin had completely lost track of time. He had no idea how deep into the building they were, how many more sections they still had to check, and if they even had enough Three-Face backup to mark the future sections as cleared, but whether it was fate or simple fortune, both of them suddenly stopped mid-twirl in a brightly-lit corridor to sniff.

Then they both turned their heads slowly towards a pair of unassuming wooden doors they’d just danced past.

“... You smell that?” Maeve whispered, nose scrunching.

“We have the same ‘Scent Latch’ mutation,” Jin muttered, brows tightening. “The perfume in this corridor is much thicker than usual, isn’t it?”

Around them, a few dancing guests scowled at them for breaking the rhythm of the music, but the two dozen Three-Face pairs quickly twirled in and ‘shoved’ them out of the corridor, dancing in such a way the other guests had no choice but to back off. That was how they’d carried out their searches so far: they’d caper into a room while the Three-Faces would become a wall made of dancers, stopping anyone from entering or exiting while the two of them were still inside.

Once the normal guests danced away from this particular corridor, Jin finally stopped dancing and broke away from Maeve, the two of them stepping towards the doors cautiously.

The scent of Myrmurs sharpened with every step.

By the time they were close enough to press their faces up against the grand wooden doors, there was no mistaking it. Myrmurs had passed through here recently, and there were more than one of them.

“All that perfume’s just to hide the scent, huh?” Maeve said, glancing back at the dancing Three-Faces. “Do any of you know which wealthy Vharnish has bought or reserved this room?”

The nearest Three-Faces shook their heads, and one of the pairs spoke in unison. “We do not have access to buyer records in the Endless Masquerade. Likewise, we do not pry the purpose of a Vharnish’s visit to Bleakhearth when they buy a mask from us.”

“You really should. How else could you ever have found this laboratory without us?”

And the truth was, their mission was already complete here. Gael had told them the purpose of their visit was just to find the laboratory and where the kidnapped people were being kept, because getting into a fight here might cause a commotion, whereas backing off and letting the Master of Masks request a formal search of this particular room before them would neither disrupt the Endless Masquerade nor link the investigation to the Heartcord Clinic, thus keeping their presence even more secretive. Vharnveil didn’t have to know Jin and Vivi were here tonight. They didn’t have to know the Heartcord Clinic was here tonight.

But on the other side of the doors, a child cried.

“Shh,” whispered another man inside. “Go back to sleep. It’ll all be over soon. Saintess, why’s my dosage all wrong these days? What’s going on with me?”

Jin went still.

For half a heartbeat, the corridors, the doors, the Endless Masquerade, the mission—all of it faded.

He heard his father’s voice, weak and dying, and he looked at Maeve.

She was already looking back at him, and the gentleness that usually sat in her face had gone completely quiet and sharp.

... Fuck the mission.

Apparently, Maeve thought the same.

The two of them reached for their briefcases. For Jin, it’d been hanging at his hip in a modified, even more compact version, and for Maeve, it’d been slung over her back in such a way it almost looked like a fashion satchel, but the moment they grabbed the handles, their bioarcanic weapons snapped out. His gauntlet expended across his right hand, glass tubes locking into place and metal bracings clamping down. Maeve’s umbrella unfolded with a series of mechanical clicks as well, the shaft extending until it was long enough to be a blade.

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Maybe the Three-Faces dancing around them wanted to tell them to stop, but by then it was too late. Neither of them counted down. Neither of them needed to. Jin drove his gauntlet into the left door at the same moment Maeve thrust her umbrella into the right, and both doors cracked open with a splintering boom.

The two of them stepped in.

“Don’t move!” Maeve shouted.

And Jin’s eyes swept the room in one hard pass. The laboratory was smaller than he’d expected. It was only about the size of the Heartcord Clinic’s prayer hall, but a vast glass dome ceiling arched overhead, looking up at the dark, cloudless sky. Workbenches crowded the walls. Dozens of shelves sagged under jars, vials, and little unlabeled boxes, while loose papers covered every single inch of the floor, so thickly layered he doubted anyone could take more than a few steps without kicking through some notes.

At the center of the lab, directly beneath the glass dome, sat a surgical table. The thing was built on a rail that ran from the far left wall to the far right wall, and at both ends were pipe-like openings curving down into darkness. One pipe to receive. One pipe to discard. The entire system was seemingly built for routine. A patient could be rolled in from the pipe on one side, operated on beneath the dome, then sent away through the other pipe like meat passing through a butcher’s chute.

… Dad was here?

The metal of his gauntlet creaked as he looked closer. A boy lay strapped to the surgical table, dressed in thin surgical clothes with his stomach already cut open. His cheeks were wet with tears, and little broken sobs trembled out of him as he tried not to move. Above him, a set of surgical instruments hovered from brass arms to dangling supports, far more complex than anything Jin had seen in Gael’s surgical chamber. There were needles, clamps, glass feeders, and thin metal hands so delicate they looked like they’d snap at the wind’s touch… but the old man operating all of them stood at the head of the table, holding two scalpels.

Jin narrowed his eyes.

The old man in the dirty research coat was ancient. His skin hung dry around his face, his back was bent like a shrimp’s, white wisps of hair clung to his dry scalp. But his eyes beneath those brass-rimmed spectacles ruined the image of frailty. They were bright. Too bright. Those eyes were curious and sharp and gleaming with the restless hunger of someone who saw a crying boy as experimental material before he saw him as a child.

The man was dangerous, that much was for sure.

“... Oh,” the man said mildly, blinking towards them. “Hello. I didn’t hear you come in. If you’re here to discuss investments into my projects, I’m afraid you’ve arrived at a rather unfortunate time, so please wait in the side room over there while I…”

Then his gaze dropped to the bloodshackles at their ankles, and his expression went blank so quickly the air seemed to change with it.

“Huh,” he murmured. “How strange. I don’t recognize you as any of the local Exorcists I’ve paid to stay away. But that half-Raven mask… and that umbrella… you must be—”

Jin clenched his fist and fired a thick, pressurized wave of mudblood. It tore across the cluttered lab towards the old man’s chest, scattering papers, rattling glasses, and even the boy the table flinched—but as expected, a giant scythe-like claw exploded out of the old man’s back at the last second, slashing once to spit the mudblood wave in half.

The mudblood splattered across the shelves at the back of the lab, making his jaw clench.

Of course.

He’s got one in himself too.

The old man scratched the back of his head irritatedly as he pushed the surgical table aside, no longer bothering to pretend he was harmless. Living muscle strands pushed out from under his coat collar, crawling over and wrapping around his entire body in pinkish-purple layers. Jin had seen these grotesque armors more than once already, but this was the first time he’d seen one this… controlled. Usually, Blight-Class Myrmurs swallowed their Hosts whole within seconds, but this one was taking its time with the old man.

And the old man didn’t even look a little bit fazed the entire time.

“We’re so, so close,” he muttered, scratching his neck as his Myrmur kept wrapping around him. “The two of you can’t be here. All of you can’t be here. I know it’s going to be a long shot asking you this, but won’t you just overlook this and leave? I’ll be gone in a few more weeks anyways, and then I’ll be out of your hair permanently.”

Jin bared his teeth. “Fuck n—”

“You weren’t easy to find, so I’ll entertain you with a bit of talking first. Are you the man making artificial Myrmur Hosts?” Maeve cut in, looking around the lab plainly. “Is this your place, or… someone else’s?”

The old man sighed, and there was something almost disappointing in it. “Yes, I’m your man. Damnit, I knew the Heartcord Clinic would track me down eventually. I told him as much, again and again, that Gael Halloway and his little flock would have to be dealt with eventually with our full, undivided attention, but nooooo,” the old man drawled, voice taking on a bitter, mocking lilt. “‘They’re not a threat’. ‘They won’t find you’. He has a soft spot for all of you, you know. Always has. It’s his weakness. And it’s going to be his downfall, but he’ll never listen to me. Maybe he’ll listen to me now.”

Maeve furrowed her brows. “He? Who’s ‘he’?”

“Only the maddest man in all of Bharncair. And you know, the thing is, I have just the faintest premonition that even after this, he’d still ignore you guys and tell me to bury my head in the sand as if you won’t keep hounding after me.” The old man gave a scoffing laughter then, shaking his head. “Oh, what a man he is. I knew I should’ve ignored him and sent more Myrmurs after you lot. I suppose I was being haughty, too, thinking four low-rank Blight-Class Myrmurs would be able to take you out. I should’ve double-checked to see if they actually did their job.”

“What the fuck are you talking about?”

The old man looked at Maeve for a long moment.

Then he shook his head again.

“... No,” he said softly. “It doesn’t matter. I’ll just deal with you myself.”

The muscle strands finished wrapping him. Chitin followed, sliding over the flesh like pieces of lacquered armor, and a narrow mantis head formed around his own face without smothering it. Two scythe claws extended from his shoulder blades, thin-edged and sharp, but unlike the other Blight-Class Myrmurs Jin had fought before, this one wasn’t the size of a giant—only lean, green-black, and too eerily humanoid in appearance.

Is he… controlling the Myrmur?

He can do that?

“Interesting, isn’t it?” The old man grinned before the mantis’ faceplate covered his own. “You may call me the Breeder. I’ll have you know I’m not exactly wearing a low-rank Blight-Class Myrmur, so I promise I’ll do my very best to make a ruckus out of this. The entire building will know you’re disrupting their silly little dance.”

And any interest Jin had in knowing how a Host was controlling a Myrmur vanished at that.

Maeve shifted beside him, one foot sliding back into a stronger stance, while Jin flexed his gauntlet, feeling the chambers pulse as he loaded mudblood into the pipes.

“We’ll just keep the fight here, then,” Maeve said coldly before glancing at Jin. “Don’t kill him. Tear off his limbs and rip out his tongue, but don’t kill him.”

Jin fixed his murderous gaze on the old man ahead of him.

“No worries,” he said. “A quick death’s too easy for him.”