Sobon found him-self dan-gling up-side down in a dark place by his an-kle. When he looked around, he found that he seemed to be des-tined to be one of a num-ber of grue-some spec-ta-cles, as there were oth-er bod-ies strung up be-side him in a row, all carved open and miss-ing or-gans, only the last of them still drip-ping blood. The lo-ca-tion seemed to be a dead-end al-ley-way of stone walls on three sides, emp-ty-ing out into a cor-ner or in-ter-sec-tion a lit-tle ways away. Of the butch-er re-spon-si-ble for the grue-some dis-play around him, he could see no sign.


    He closed his eyes and did his best to re-call what had hap-pened since he ar-rived, though it wasn''t much. As he did, that in-ef-fi-cient as-sis-tant roused from its own slum-ber, and he tried to shout cod-ed in-struc-tions at it. When he did, though, it only with-ered back from the in-ten-si-ty of his men-tal com-mands, not seem-ing to un-der-stand.


    He tried again, low-er-ing his in-ten-si-ty, but it was not un-til he low-ered him-self to think-ing in words that the blast-ed thing fi-nal-ly re-spond-ed. What are you? he asked, in frus-tra-tion.


    [ I''m you, or I was. ] The voice that an-swered was small and shak-ing. [ But I died, and uh... you took over. ]


    Sobon parsed those words with a de-cent frac-tion of his old cy-borg ef-fi-cien-cy, quick-ly dis-card-ing any thought of sit-ting around try-ing to un-der-stand why, or if this was even real. They said I don''t have qi. What is that?


    [ Qi is qi. ] The last word was, at last, a cod-ed in-for-ma-tion pack-et, though it seemed frus-trat-ing-ly in-stinc-tu-al, fleshy. Sobon tore the thought apart, to find that the voice in his head knew lit-tle. Ap-par-ent-ly, the word de-scribed a lo-cal form of Aether, sim-i-lar to the en-er-gy in the great galac-tic veins that pow-ered warp dri-ves and made ad-vanced civ-i-liza-tions pos-si-ble, but it was pure-ly lim-it-ed, in the bro-ken crea-ture''s un-der-stand-ing, to re-in-forc-ing bi-o-log-i-cal sys-tems and some ba-sic en-er-gy ef-fects.


    That''s all? Sobon dis-liked the im-pli-ca-tions of the thought in-tense-ly. These back-wards peo-ple had in their pos-ses-sion the keys to the uni-verse, and all they knew to do with the stuff was punch hard-er and set things on fire? He shook his head, think-ing. There was no way that the body had no ac-cess to Aether; that wasn''t how bi-ol-o-gy func-tioned, from the cel-lu-lar lev-el up-wards. The prob-lem was get-ting start-ed uti-liz-ing it.


    The thought pack-et had no in-for-ma-tion on that, ob-vi-ous-ly, but Sobon had fin-ished ex-plor-ing the lo-cal knowl-edge for the mo-ment. In-stead, he re-laxed his body, let-ting his nerves feed him un-bi-ased data on his wounds, and cat-a-loged his in-juries. That bro-ken rib was still the worst of it, but he felt agony rip-ple through him with every twitch of a mus-cle, as nerves in most of his or-gans com-plained of bruis-es and worse. Now, of course, his foot was los-ing cir-cu-la-tion where the rope cut into him, and soon enough it would be be-yond sav-ing.


    A foot-step at the end of the al-ley-way end-ed Sobon''s think-ing, and he jerked his en-tire body with pure will, forc-ing mus-cles that had nev-er worked prop-er-ly in their life to bring his hands all the way up to where a rope grasped his an-kle.


    "Oh, thisss one''sss ssstill got fight in it." The voice from the end of the al-ley-way was a sin-is-ter hiss, but Sobon ig-nored it, fo-cus-ing on the knot that held up his en-tire weight. As ex-pect-ed, there should have been noth-ing he could do about it, but the Mixed Ma-rine train-ing pro-gram ex-pect-ed the im-pos-si-ble from their re-cruits.


    For only a mo-ment, he was able to lift his en-tire weight with one arm, though he could feel the mus-cles in his arm on the verge of tear-ing, and with his oth-er arm, he pulled on the knot. It didn''t budge; it wasn''t ny-lon or any-thing smooth, but some kind of dis-gust-ing plant fiber rope, now held in place part-ly by how the frayed edges of it had merged into a dis-gust-ing pulpy mass glued to-geth-er with dried and dry-ing blood.


    Nev-er-the-less, a sec-ond tug loos-ened it just slight-ly.


    "Yesss, a bit of ssstrength," the voice was close, now. "All the bet-ter to--"


    Sobon didn''t need to hear the vil-lain''s speech. A third tug was all he had left in his arm, and the rope slipped just past his heel. When his el-bow and shoul-der and wrist all gave out--not to men-tion his fin-gers--the sud-den weight shift fin-ished the job.


    Sobon had a pan-icked mo-ment when he re-al-ized that as weak as he was, the fall might dis-lo-cate a shoul-der or break a bone, but he man-aged to get an arm un-der him at the right an-gle to de-flect and roll. He tried to turn the roll into a stand, but no part of his legs want-ed to sup-port him in that mo-ment.


    At the very least, he could turn to face the vis-i-tor, and he was un-sur-prised to find the crea-ture armed with a very large and very bloody knife. He could feel his body re-act-ing to the aura the wicked thing gave off, re-spond-ing with a su-per-nat-ur-al sense of for-bod-ing, as though what the knife would do to him was far worse than death.


    He took that as a good sign, which the as-sis-tant--the dead spir-it of his pre-de-ces-sor, he sup-posed--didn''t un-der-stand in any way.


    Sobon tried to speak, only to find his tongue feel-ing fat and out of place in his mouth. The ac-tion caused the ap-proach-ing men-ace to pause and ad-just his large, thick glass-es, the over-size gloves that cov-ered his hands drip-ping gore, and there was a pause as he seemed to wait to see what Sobon had to say.


    "I''m not dead," he man-aged, though he knew his pro-nun-ci-a-tion felt com-plete-ly off. The lan-guage he was speak-ing was not at all like the one he knew.


    "No, of course not," the butch-er said. "If you were, the or-gans wouldn''t be fresh when they were served." With a ca-su-al move-ment, the knife shift-ed in his hand into a re-verse grip, and the man raised it, lamp-light from the end of the al-ley glint-ing off the blade. "Do me a fa-vor and try not to punc-ture that lung while you strug-gle. It''s worth a lot."


    The aura that the blade gave off was the trig-ger, as he hoped it would be. In the mo-ment when his body could sense the blade, so clear-ly that he knew it would be there if he shut his eyes, Sobon grasped the sense, know-ing that it linked to the Aether, men-tal threads tan-gling with it and just bare-ly forc-ing it out of align-ment. Per-haps sens-ing some-thing, the man stopped the blade paused in midair, only for an in-stant, and Sobon rushed for-ward as quick-ly as his pa-thet-ic, grotesque-ly in-jured body could. Al-though he could only bare-ly stand and every move-ment sent waves of twitch-ing through his body, he did man-age, for only a mo-ment, to get his weight over his feet.


    He grabbed the knife as close to the hilt as he could, with both hands, and just bare-ly man-aged to pull it free from the butch-er''s fin-gers with a pre-cise-ly an-gled yank, cut-ting into his fin-gers in the process. All in the same move-ment, he piv-ot-ed around his bet-ter leg, mak-ing a dou-ble-hand-ed stab with the knife into the butch-er''s knee, read-just-ing one hand to grab the hilt as he did.


    For a mo-ment, the dag-ger bounced off the man''s knee like it was noth-ing. He twist-ed aether he felt on the oth-er side of his link, in the blade, and sud-den-ly the sense of the dag-ger in his mind''s eye van-ished, its aether spent, and it sank through flesh and bone like they didn''t ex-ist, tear-ing through the crea-ture''s knee and near-ly sev-er-ing his fin-gers.


    The butch-er screamed, and Sobon dropped the knife and fled, limp-ing away as fast as his body would let him, his body ar-gu-ing at every step that it should be his last, that he should col-lapse and ac-cept death. At the end of the al-ley-way, he found him-self un-able to turn, and plant-ed him-self face-first into the wall, us-ing the bricks to give him some-thing to lean on for a mo-ment, and he closed his eyes against the pain that want-ed him des-per-ate-ly to black out.


    He glanced to the left. The al-ley-way con-tin-ued, door-ways to the left and right, both closed fast. A old, ugly whore in a torn-up dress and smok-ing a cig-a-rette lounged next to the door on the left, and she was look-ing at him dis-pas-sion-ate-ly, nei-ther seem-ing in-ter-est-ed in be-ing the one to squash him like a bug, nor dis-play-ing any sign of hope or in-ter-est in his well-be-ing. At most, he thought she might be cu-ri-ous what would hap-pen, but there was so lit-tle life in those eyes that she might not even have had that. He glanced past, but the al-ley bent, and he couldn''t see an-oth-er in-ter-sec-tion any-where close, or even a light source.


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    He turned his head to the right, but he could see the blood trail lead-ing to one of the doors in that di-rec-tion, and al-most in-stinc-tive-ly fled the oth-er di-rec-tion. In-stead, he looked past it, see-ing an-oth-er in-ter-sec-tion, with lamp-light.


    Light leads to civ-i-liza-tion. Sobon had no idea who to trust, here, but flee-ing fur-ther into the dark-ness would only make him lose out to any-one who knew the dark al-leys bet-ter than he did. He forced him-self away from the wall and stum-bled past, his eyes on the door that the butch-er had clear-ly been us-ing, but he stum-bled past it, un-sure of whether some-one would come out to in-ves-ti-gate the man''s screams.


    Of course, if any-one had come out in re-sponse to screams be-fore, how could he pos-si-bly do his work? He forced him-self to look away as he passed the door, one strug-gling foot-step at a time.


    "You..." The voice be-hind him came with foot-steps, and from the fa-mil-iar hiss to the sound, he knew that it wasn''t the whore. He turned around to look, but the butch-er was there at the end of the al-ley, stand-ing on two ful-ly healthy legs, though the pant leg on one was torn, and blood soaked the low-er half of it. "You ssshouldn''t be able to do that."


    Im-pos-sib-- Sobon cut his thought off im-me-di-ate-ly. Of course it wasn''t im-pos-si-ble; it was un-fair. As long as the aether was abun-dant enough, even prim-i-tives could heal some-thing as sim-ple as a stab wound, if they got to it in time. If any-thing, again, this was promis-ing. With-out con-scious ef-fort, he cal-cu-lat-ed the aether den-si-ty that the plan-et must have for even the dregs of so-ci-ety to be ca-pa-ble of so much.


    It was high. Ad-vanced civ-i-liza-tions would nuke this plan-et and ter-raform it from scratch to have a hab-it-able plan-et with this lev-el of am-bi-ent aether; that wasn''t a guess, it was his-to-ry. Sobon turned and leaned against the wall, star-ing at the man who stared back at him. The butch-er be-gan to walk to-wards him, his heavy and plod-ding steps echo-ing in the al-ley-way, but Sobon was let-ting those men-tal cal-cu-la-tions run on ahead, won-der-ing just what he could do--from scratch--with that lev-el of aether.


    Sobon found him-self smil-ing, as his mind set-tled on a thought, and some-how, the look on his face was enough to make even the im-placa-ble butch-er pause.


    It''s ba-sic bi-ol-o-gy, Sobon re-mind-ed him-self, lift-ing his two hands to-geth-er. Bi-ol-o-gy re-quires aether. Sen-sa-tion re-quires aether. Con-scious-ness re-quires aether. I wouldn''t be here if I weren''t touch-ing it. I just need to bring that aether un-der my con-trol.


    There was a dirt-sim-ple tech-nique, one he had been taught in a med-i-ta-tion class, to help calm his nerves; it was noth-ing more than a cy-cle, to bring fresh aether in and ex-pel "dirty" aether. The use-less hip-py who had taught the class had ex-act-ly the op-po-site in-ten-tions that Sobon had now; he ar-gued that men shouldn''t keep their own sup-ply of Aether, and only by de-lib-er-ate-ly emp-ty-ing one-self, in a pu-ri-fied en-vi-ron-ment, could they be free of so-ci-ety''s con-t-a-m-i-na-tion.


    Ab-sorb the lo-cal aether, and let it back out.


    Sobon''s eye-lids twitched, but less from pain this time than from the queer tick-le of cold, for-eign pow-er through dam-aged--per-haps crip-pled--chan-nels.


    The foot-steps sound-ed again, and Sobon took a breath. All he need-ed was a sin-gle thread of it--just one in-signif-i-cant thread, thin-ner than a hair. His new body''s chan-nels hadn''t even the ca-pac-i-ty for that, but he forced it any-way, cre-at-ing the sim-plest thing he dared, even as his spir-it burned in protest.


    One spi-der-web-thin hair at-tempt-ed to form a cir-cle, and failed. Sobon re-viewed the data buried in his emo-tion-al state for the rea-son why; the body want-ed to fight or flee, not to stand here fo-cus-ing on aether with-out mean-ing or pur-pose. It wasn''t ac-cus-tomed to the pu-ri-ty of Aether; it de-mand-ed a rea-son to act. There was no emo-tion-al will-ing-ness to be de-tached un-der these cir-cum-stances.


    An-oth-er foot-step, and Sobon grabbed hold of his en-tire mind and will. He had forced the body to act when he knew it would de-stroy it-self, and he could do the same for this body''s spir-it. His eyes glowed, and a hair of pow-er formed a com-plete cir-cle, even as his own be-ing flared in agony from the act.


    That was step one. The thread hung be-tween his hands, and he felt its ea-ger-ness to leap at the en-e-my, but he re-fused it. The thread, the cir-cle--that was the lev-el of de-tach-ment he need-ed. He grabbed it with his mind and turned it like a knob, de-spite great re-sis-tance, know-ing that the twist would cre-ate a crude aether dy-namo, a flim-sy con-struct to cre-ate more aether, aether that would be at-tuned to him and him alone.


    A mo-ment lat-er, there was a speck, as thin as the thread that formed the cir-cle, and bare-ly as long as it was thick. It ap-peared nat-u-ral-ly at the ring''s ex-act cen-ter, the thorn to the dy-namo''s cy-cle. Sobon de-tached his mind from the dy-namo it-self and fo-cused on that point of light, his eye fi-nal-ly fo-cus-ing back on the real world.


    The butch-er was two steps away at most, well with-in the reach of a lunge, and his long arms felt en-tire-ly too close to Sobon, giv-en how small and bro-ken his body was. Those eyes, hid-den be-hind the shine of lamp-light on his glass-es, stared down at him. "You ssshouldn''t be able to..."


    The speck of an aether thorn length-ened with every mo-ment, and Sobon took a step back away from him. The cy-cle spun, and the thread grew, the speck of dust length-en-ing just a bit, go-ing from near-ly spher-i-cal to a bug''s whisker.


    "...ss-stand, let alone..."


    He took an-oth-er step back, but his an-kle gave way where the rope had cut into it, and he fell to a knee. Only his Ma-rine re-flex-es kept his cen-ter of grav-i-ty in be-tween his foot and his knee, keep-ing him up-right as the bloody crea-ture took a step to match his own, re-main-ing just not quite close enough to touch.


    "...sssense the great qi veinssss of thisss world." The butch-er knelt, one hand go-ing to his knee, the oth-er re-main-ing at his side. Sobon cal-cu-lat-ed, but if the crea-ture had any sort of re-flex-es, he could dodge any at-tempt to thrust at him with the new thread-thin thorn. That would be the end of it, most like-ly; Sobon had the one shot, and noth-ing more.


    "...but more cu-ri-ousss-ly," the butch-er hissed, "I wasss told that you did not pos-ssesss the tal-ent for qi. I hear a great many liesss from a great many peo-ple, young street rat, but I too mussst live in fear of the great pow-ersss of the world." The man''s back hand, by his side, ges-tured, and sud-den-ly, the knife that Sobon had dropped was in it again.


    "Ssso, I mussst know, who your massster isss, young ssstreet rat." The knife re-versed it-self, from a thrust-ing grip to a back-hand-ed one, and he moved the knife be-hind his body, as though to hide it. "I would not wis-ssh to in-ss-sult a great massster by dessstroy-ing hisss work."


    Sobon tried to cal-cu-late the truth be-hind the man''s words, but he had no frame of ref-er-ence, not from his time in Crest, nor from the spir-it of his pre-de-ces-sor. It could be a farce, some-thing more sin-is-ter, or it could be... well, as close to gen-uine as a blood-soaked child-killer could be.


    Sobon, though, could feel his body run-ning low on en-er-gy, and he care-ful-ly con-cealed the ring and thorn he had made in-side his spir-it. As he less-ened the spir-i-tu-al pres-sure he put on the dy-namo, the ring slowed its turn-ing to near-ly noth-ing, and the thorn be-gan to lose its glow, be-com-ing dor-mant with-in him.


    The best chance he had here, he sup-posed, was to count on this filthy mon-ster''s self-preser-va-tion in-stinct.


    "Sobon," he whis-pered in the dark-ness, his lips curl-ing into a sneer. "My mas-ter is Sobon, and he will kill you."


    The butch-er frowned even deep-er, the dis-gust-ing wrin-kles in his face deep-en-ing, and Sobon col-lapsed, feign-ing un-con-scious-ness for only a mo-ment, hop-ing that he could still rise up if the threat didn''t work.


    Un-for-tu-nate-ly, real un-con-scious-ness fol-lowed too soon, as his bat-tered body gave in at last.


    <hr>


    Sobon awoke in what could char-i-ta-bly be called a bed, and he glanced around, feel-ing his eyes refuse to fo-cus, but still in-tent to take in what-ev-er he could. A blur-ry fig-ure moved near-by; it was not the butch-er, but an old man, his pro-file well-lit by a near-by lamp. Un-like the oth-ers he had seen so far, this man ap-peared at least slight-ly healthy, but he didn''t dare trust too deeply. This world was dan-ger-ous.


    The old man moved with a me-thod-i-cal-ly slow pace, as though he had more time than tasks, and Sobon could tell that he was wind-ing ban-dages around an arm--a very thin and short arm, like a child''s, and if he were to guess, not a well-fed one. With a ca-su-al use of aether, he sev-ered the ban-dage with-out look-ing and set the roll of cloth aside, bring-ing his hand back to the arm he was ban-dag-ing. His eyes glowed a mo-ment, and he was lit strange-ly, as though from a light in his hands, and then he set down what he was hold-ing and stared at it for a mo-ment.


    "You shouldn''t be con-scious." The old man''s voice was heavy and plod-ding, like every-one Sobon had en-coun-tered. And then, with a strange feel-ing like death him-self ap-proach-ing, the old man was sud-den-ly there in front of him, sit-ting on a stool and look-ing down on him with the same neu-tral, blank ex-pres-sion on his face as he''d had on the last pa-tient. "Your in-juries are too se-vere. Your spir-it shouldn''t count on be-ing awake to save you. Very odd." He raised one hand, and in the cup of his hand, a spot of green and yel-low light leaked out, light that spoke to him of aether use.


    Sobon closed his eyes at the light, but when he felt the tick-le of aether across him, noth-ing hurt any worse--or any less, for that mat-ter.


    "You have the be-gin-nings of a qi core," the old man said. "But it is in a strange form. Who is your mas-ter? I will call him."


    Sobon hes-i-tat-ed. It was too soon to re-veal his bluff, but hav-ing the old man at-tempt to con-tact a non-ex-is-tent pa-tron would only cause more trou-ble lat-er. Sobon felt his cheeks twitch, and re-al-ized this body didn''t have the self-con-trol to lie con-vinc-ing-ly. He kept his eyes closed, and whis-pered, "He will find me."


    The old man was qui-et for a mo-ment, then growled. "A hunter, then. Very well." With Sobon''s eyes closed, he felt--again--a strange spec-tre like a grin-ning reaper hang-ing there in front of him, death in-car-nate judg-ing him and his lies, but the feel-ing van-ished a mo-ment lat-er.


    Sobon opened his eyes once more, to find the old man had dis-ap-peared, and no glanc-ing around would re-veal to where or how he had got-ten so sound-less-ly away. A part of him want-ed to shiv-er, dwelling on the in-ci-dent, but Sobon in-stead let him-self sleep, forc-ing the thoughts away and let-ting the ex-haus-tion take over.