Chapter 6: The Price of Information

Chapter 6: The Price of Information

The industrial canal was a dead artery of Aethelburg, its waters thick and black under a sky that was beginning to bleed from bruised purple into a sickly grey. The reek of chemical rot and stagnant water was a physical assault, but it was the perfect camouflage. Kaelen moved through the skeletal remains of the city’s manufacturing heartland, a ghost in a graveyard of iron and brick. Sunrise, and the Enforcer’s deadline at the Cinder Docks, felt like a pressure plate under his heel. One wrong move, and everything would detonate.

The cannery loomed ahead, a rust-eaten carcass of a building, its windows long shattered like vacant eyes. This was the territory Borris had described, the nest of the Ghoul scavengers. These weren't the pale, cunning servants of the vampire Houses, bred for servitude. These were the feral dregs, twisted creatures whose minds had been eroded by disease, hunger, and tainted blood, leaving only animal instinct and a ravenous appetite for flesh and anything that glittered.

Kaelen scaled a crumbling brick wall, his movements silent, his worn boots finding purchase where there should have been none. From the rooftop, he peered through a gaping hole in the corrugated metal. Below was a cavernous main floor, a chaotic tableau of overturned machinery and mountains of refuse. And moving among it all were the Ghouls.

There were at least two dozen of them, their hunched, emaciated forms scuttling through the debris. They moved with a twitching, insect-like quickness, their long, dirty claws scraping on the concrete. They chittered and hissed to one another, their voices like grinding stones. This wasn't a gang; it was an infestation. Borris’s suggestion that he could "slip in and slip out" suddenly seemed like a gross, perhaps deliberate, understatement.

His enhanced eyes scanned the hoard. The Ghouls were magpies of the apocalypse, collecting anything with a shimmer or shine. He saw hubcaps, broken glass, gaudy costume jewelry, and even a street sign, all piled into a massive, glittering nest at the center of the room. The Fae-tech capacitor, the "storm in a bottle," had to be there.

He slipped through the hole in the roof, landing as silently as a falling shadow on a high catwalk. He crept along the rusted metal, his gaze locked on the treasure pile below. And then he saw it. Nestled at the very peak of the junk heap, pulsing with a soft, internal light of its own, was a glass and chrome cylinder about the size of a thermos. It cast a faint blue-white glow on the grotesque face of a particularly large Ghoul who sat before it, stroking it with a proprietary claw. The pack’s alpha, guarding its prize.

Getting to it would be impossible without alerting the entire nest. He needed a distraction.

His eyes scanned the room, cataloging his options. A heavy chain hanging from a winch. A stack of empty, fifty-gallon drums. A frontal assault was madness. Subtlety was the only way. He decided on the drums. A loud enough crash on the far side of the room should draw their attention for the few seconds he needed.

He moved to the end of the catwalk, his muscles coiling. He timed the Ghouls’ chaotic patrol patterns, found his window, and leaped. He landed silently behind a derelict conveyor belt, the scent of their filth thick in his nostrils. He was a stone's throw from the drums. But as he moved to shove them over, his foot brushed against a loose piece of sheet metal.

Scraaaape.

The sound was minuscule, barely audible over the Ghouls' chittering. But one of the creatures, its head cocked at an unnatural angle, froze. Its milky, cataract-filmed eyes swiveled in his direction. It sniffed the air, its nostrils flaring. It couldn't see him, but it could smell him. The cold, sterile scent of the undead, so different from its own living rot.

The Ghoul threw its head back and unleashed a piercing, bird-like shriek that echoed off the high ceilings.

Instantly, the entire room erupted into a frenzy. Two dozen heads snapped towards his position. The distraction was a failure. The hunt was on.

They swarmed him, a tide of filth and claws. Kaelen’s rusty combat skills, dormant for twelve long years, roared back to life. He moved in a blur, his fist connecting with the first Ghoul’s jaw with a sickening crunch of bone. He wrenched a pipe from a crumbling wall and swung it in a vicious arc, clearing a space around him. They were fast, but he was faster. They were strong, but he was stronger.

But they were many.

For every one he knocked aside, two more leaped to take its place. A claw raked across his back, tearing through his leather jacket and drawing a line of fire across his skin. Another lunged, its teeth snapping inches from his throat. He was being buried, dragged down by a wave of chittering, stinking bodies. His years of hiding, of being the quiet gas station attendant, had made him soft. He was being overwhelmed.

Pinned against a piece of machinery with three Ghouls tearing at him, panic and desperation flared hot in his chest. He thought of Elara, waiting for him, her fragile hope entirely dependent on his success. He thought of the Enforcer's cold smile and the promise of a final, agonizing death at sunrise. He would not die here. Not in this filth.

He closed his eyes, shutting out the chaos, and reached for the ghost inside him. The forbidden power. The cancer.

His Hemokinesis.

He didn’t try to create a subtle distraction this time. He needed a weapon. He spread his senses wide, tasting the environment. The concrete floor was stained with decades of grime, oil, and the spilled blood of the Ghouls' own prey, both animal and human. It was a polluted, corrupted wellspring, but it was enough.

He focused his will, not with the panicked burst of his youth, but with a cold, desperate precision. He pulled.

The dark, reddish-brown stains on the floor began to shimmer and crawl. The foul liquid lifted from the concrete, coalescing in the air around him into three thin, whip-like tendrils of semi-solid blood. They hovered for a second, vibrating with contained power, before lashing out at his command.

CRACK!

The sound was like a bullwhip. The tendril of weaponized blood struck the nearest Ghoul across the chest, not just hitting it, but searing it. The creature screamed, a sound of agony and terror, and stumbled back, a smoking, cauterized gash across its torso. The other Ghouls froze, their primitive brains unable to comprehend what they were seeing.

Kaelen pressed his advantage. He sent the blood-whips lashing out again and again, a whirlwind of dark, crimson energy. He wasn't just defending himself anymore; he was attacking. The power flowed from him, an extension of his will, and a terrifying, exhilarating thrill shot through him. He was not just a survivor cowering in the shadows. He was a predator.

The Ghouls broke. Shrieking in terror at this display of impossible magic, they scattered, melting back into the darkest corners of the cannery.

The momentary reprieve was all he needed. He vaulted over the machinery, his body screaming with effort, and scrambled up the mountain of junk. The alpha Ghoul hissed, trying to shield the capacitor, but Kaelen was on it in a flash. He kicked the creature in the chest, sending it tumbling down the far side of the pile, and snatched the humming cylinder.

It was warm to the touch, vibrating with a contained, electric life. The price of their freedom.

He didn't wait to see if the Ghouls would regroup. He sprinted for the nearest exit, a loading bay door hanging half-off its hinges, and burst out into the pre-dawn gloom. He didn't stop running until the cannery was a dark shape behind him and the air in his lungs burned—a phantom sensation from a life long past.

He leaned against the cold brick of a warehouse, the storm-cell capacitor clutched in his hand, its gentle pulse a counterpoint to the dead stillness of his own heart. He had the prize. He had paid the price. But as he looked at his own hands, he could almost still feel the phantom sensation of the blood-whips in his grasp.

Evangeline had called his power a seed of chaos. A threat to her precious order. But twice tonight, it had been the only thing that stood between him and annihilation. For the first time, a dangerous thought took root in his mind: maybe chaos was the only thing that could keep them alive.

He looked east. The edge of the sky was now a soft, pearlescent white. The sun was coming. Time had run out. Clutching the capacitor, he began to run again, a desperate race back to the garage, back to Borris, back to the fragile hope of a map that would lead them out of the fire.