Behind the Bitmask Read online

  “Well, I shouldn’t need to be saying it,” responded Adrian, “but we have signed up for the Blood Army of Sigmar the Conqueror. A new hell awaits us, one that appreciates and rewards the efforts of a master warsmith such as myself. And the girls, too; they live for combat.”

  This did not bode well for anyone besides Sigmar. Even if he gave Agnus a wide berth, he was still on a mad conquering spree. Surely somebody could rise to the challenge? I didn’t want to imagine what would happen if he managed to get an Earth military riled up enough to invade. Haxabalatnar took this moment to saunter into the room.

  “Is it just me, or has Adrian moved up a bit in the world?” he asked, after staring at the ongoing interview for a few moments.

  “You know this guy?” I asked, raising an eyebrow.

  “Terrorize and Ravage worked the streets here about three years ago... Well, I say streets, but strictly speaking, they stayed just outside the city limits in a purpose-built warehouse. They said it gave them more room to stretch their legs. We got some decent tax income from them. It turns out there’s a lot of titans who want to spend a wild night with a giant robot or two.”

  Every time I think I’m beginning to understand titans, something proves me wrong. I was beyond speech.

  “Agnus even paid them a visit once,” Haxabalatnar continued. Literally nothing shook his composure. “He climbed into what I think was Ravage’s cockpit... Don’t look at me like that! Anyways, he came out about fifteen minutes covered in blood and grinning maniacally. I’ve seen him do worse, to be honest.”

  I finally found some useful words. “Hax, do you think we should be considering them in our defense plans?” I asked him.

  “Definitely. I still don’t think Sigmar is going to attack us, but it never hurts to be prepared.” Haxabalatnar turned to leave, but stopped about halfway to the door.

  “You know, if Sigmar is focusing on munitions, you might not have to worry about assassins as much. Every cloud’s got a silver lining, my mother used to say,” he informed me. I didn’t know if I believed it myself. What if this instead freed up more goons to try and kill me? At least, I’m getting some combat training now.

  While we were talking, the broadcast cut to a series of commercials for increasingly inane and bizarre products. In short, very much like how we do things on Earth, although I suspect these ads had a tinge more violence and less sexual innuendo than what I’m used to. When the news broadcast returned, it was my turn to recoil in disgust.

  “Why is Terminal on the news?” I shouted.

  “You threatened to kill our entire production company unless we gave you a slot on our show. Why did my supervisor take your threat seriously?” asked the anchorman. Despite his similar line of inquiry, I highly doubt that he had heard my outburst.

  “You know what’s funny about people? They usually try to maximize their lifespans. I think that’s your answer,” Terminal said, as if he hijacked hell’s broadcasts all the time. Maybe he did. A few grinding gears suggested that Adrian’s robots hadn’t quite left the set yet, and I suspected they were filing their equivalent of fingernails.

  “Anyways, I wrote a book, and I want people to buy it so I can have their money without having to personally rob them. It’s called Buy This Book, Or I’ll Kill You,” continued Terminal. “Not the subtlest title, I know.” The anchorman barely stifled an irritated groan.

  “Could you tell us about the contents of the book? What does a murderous sociopath write about?” he asked, once he regained his composure.

  “It’s mostly about other people that I’ve killed, really. I was kind of beginning to get curious about what these people were like when they were alive, so I decided to put on my thinking cap and do some research. Most of them were boring, so I made sure only to write about the interesting ones.”

  It was an obvious field for Terminal to study.

  “I also put in a couple of recipes that I like. They’re all very tasty and vegetarian friendly, and unlike most of the things I make, they won’t kill you unless you do something profoundly wrong when cooking them,” he continued. Didn’t he give me one of those recipes once? I guess we all have our hobbies.

  “We interviewed a roboticist in the service of Sigmar the Conqueror earlier this hour. Are you still working for him?” he asked, trying and failing to stifle a twitchy eyelid. He would not live very long if he couldn’t keep his temper under control.

  “Merciful heavens, no! I used to be in Sigmar’s employ, but no longer. We haven’t been on great terms since I tried to kill him. A rare failure on my part; that much, I will admit.”

  Terminal then wandered out of the shot. After a second, the camera crew apparently woke up and started tracking him. He’d grabbed a glass of water from a refreshment table and was idly sipping on it.

  “Sigmar, on the other hand, has apparently been having a lot of fuckups lately. He’s sent at least half a dozen so-called assassins after me, but I’m pretty sure he’s trying to punish them and not me, know what I’m saying?” he continued, after finishing half the glass.

  “I...don’t understand. Please explain,” said the anchorman.

  “Think about it like this – would you want to try and kill me?”

  “No…”

  “And Sigmar’s latest string of assassins are even less cut out for the job! I’ve been otherwise keeping a low profile these days so that he doesn’t send anyone serious. There was a girl I once knew – even tried to help me out with the damn platypus titan. Doesn’t have a hundredth of my skills or kills, but Sigmar apparently thinks she’s a bigger threat. So you know what he does? He sends this monstrous brute fellow named Nicholas after her. She actually managed to kill the bastard...though she almost died in the process, at least from what I’ve heard.”

  “Charlotte, is this guy talking about you?” Hax shouted from a side room.

  “Guess so…”

  “I have one question for her, if she’s out there – Charlotte Metaxas, how in the pits of hell are you still alive?”

  Cut me a break, Terminal! I’ve been so wrapped up in learning how to survive that, to be entirely honest, I’m not sure how I managed beforehand. I noted that the TV had finally cut to commercial while I was ruminating, and I switched to a channel displaying cartoons. I’ve decided I’d rather stare at those than actually think about what would happen if Terminal kept making TV appearances.

  “There’s a news broadcast on the financial channel in a few minutes that we need to catch. May I change the channel?” asked Hax, stepping out of the side room.

  “Go ahead. What’s it about?”

  “One of the companies in our 401k plan is betting on Sigmar accelerating his conquests. If he does, their stock will go up, and we’ll probably get larger bonuses this summer,” Hax explained, shifting through the channels. Either Hell TV was surprisingly normal once you got used to the occasional chimeric monstrosities on screen, or something was very wrong with Earth’s broadcasts. I got back to work and let Haxabalatnar watch his money. The office quieted down. I guessed we were safe for now, but what would happen when Sigmar ran out of places to conquer?

  After a while, Hax turned back to the news, and despite our better instincts, we gradually started watching it. It wasn’t long until they interrupted their coverage (some “human interest” story about how a titan had been discovered in the far reaches of hell keeping humans in a zoo) to tell us that Sigmar had announced his next target. I hoped it wasn’t us.

  Agnus had his beloved security checkpoints on near lockdown and was presumably skimming off contraband for personal usage, and he was also building a wall with the help of local skilled engineers and thaumaturges, but we were far from being able to withstand a protracted siege, even before Sigmar added Terrorize and Ravage to his bestiary. To use a World War II metaphor, we didn’t know if our policy of neutrality was going to end up like that of Sweden
(i.e Sigmar would be content to exact tribute and call it a trade agreement while leaving us nominally unmolested) or like Yugoslavia (i.e invaded and dismembered), so we had to pay special attention to wherever Sigmar’s little excursions took him. That part was easy – even without Sigmar telling the public what he was conquering, he still had a veritable army of news reporters following him. Honestly, I think Sigmar liked the attention. If my example had been anything to go with, all it took was a quick display of charm (and an occasional deicide) to acquire more subjects.

  “Another war? Whom do you plan to conquer next?” asked the same anchorman who had just interviewed Terminal.

  “We’re invading the realm of Azure because she won’t cut ties with someone on my shit list. That’s a real big no-no in Sigmar Land,” Sigmar giggled, spinning his trident for emphasis. I gasped and swore a few times before my subordinates could calm me down. I wondered if they knew (or cared) that I was seeing someone on the side.

  “Terrorize and Ravage are getting in their first battle under my command! This titan... She doesn’t stand a chance!” shouted Rubovitch, who had apparently hung around on the set. Sigmar nodded and kept spinning his trident. I flipped off the TV in the vague hopes that some sort of magical flux would transmit my contempt to Sigmar, but it didn’t happen.

  Azure was in trouble! I hoped she could successfully defend herself, but I suspected the latest reinforcements would make that impossible. I spent the rest of my shift fretting about Azure’s safety. I’d only known her for a few months, but the idea of losing her to my sworn enemy was too much to handle.

  My phone was ringing again. It was a dark and stormy night ripped straight from a cheesy horror film, and I didn’t recognize the number. For a moment, I considered not taking the call for fear of a phone phreaking technique that magicians could use to detonate your phone if you picked up. Then I remembered that modern phone exchanges and cell towers had been able to filter that stuff out since the late 1990s, so I grudgingly got out of bed and accepted the call. I hoped this wasn’t going to become a habit.

  “Hey, Charlotte, I need a place to crash for a bit. Is yours okay?”

  Within 15 minutes, Azure knocked on my door, and we were reunited. I suspected Azure would try to hold out against Sigmar’s assault for a few days, but this outcome where she definitely survived was probably better.

  “How come you’re not defending your lands?” I asked Azure, once we’d got the usual formalities (read: sex) out of the way and were cuddled up in bed.

  “I told my people to immediately surrender. We may have had the resources to hold out if Sigmar had attacked earlier, but now that he’s got Terrorize and Ravage, there’s not much we can do except die pointlessly,” she explained.

  “They’re that bad, eh?”

  “Like you wouldn’t believe. There’s this tape circulating around hell from when they were besieging the fortress of Solaris – they literally grabbed his defenders off the walls and devoured them. They’ve also got huge cannons for when they’re done playing with their opponents.”

  Azure paused for a moment, and her eyes bulged slightly for a second. “What if Sigmar kills my underlings for not giving him a fight? Charlotte, you’ve worked under Sigmar. Would he do such a thing?” she asked.

  “Personally, I don’t think Sigmar’s reasons for killing are that rational,” I snarked...which was probably the wrong thing to do, but Azure smiled slightly.

  “A few of them were definitely planning acts of sabotage once I left, now that I think about it,” Azure said after a minute.

  “Sabotage? If I’d known how strong Sigmar was, I would’ve tried that before hiring an assassin.”

  “I told them it was too dangerous, but that didn’t stop them from blowing up my precious teleporter! I needed that thing to make dramatic entrances and save money on postage! They aren’t very good at concealing their thoughts.”

  That sounded suspiciously like telepath talk, and I considered the ramifications of that for a moment.

  “Yes, Charlotte, I am a telepath,” continued Azure, as if I’d spoken instead of merely thinking. “But I still need to use a phone for anyone more than...I’d say about a mile away.”

  That makes my first telepath. I shouldn’t be surprised; I’m from Earth. Everyone I know who liked the idea of telepathic powers ended up buying a cell phone instead. I’m guessing there aren’t many telepaths in hell, either – there’d be more tinfoil hat models in the local fashion shows.

  Azure interrupted my train of thought. She turned her head to face me, and we stared straight into each others’ eyes for a moment. Suddenly, her intense gazes made sense, and I swear I could feel her mind touching mine. I was blushing again, and her smile widened.

  “You know,” she finally said, “I could teach you how to communicate telepathically if you were interested. With your proficiency in magic, you could probably master it in a few weeks... Although with your proficiency in electronics, I’m not sure how much use you’d get out of it.”

  Tempting proposition.

  “I’m willing to give it a shot. It gives you more reasons to come over and visit,” I told her. A flash of bright blue shone in her hair – she really liked that.

  “Like I don’t already have enough already!”

  Even with Azure’s warmth and scent keeping me company, my attention turned again to Sigmar. For once, he’d done something nice by getting Azure to visit me. But I still felt bad that her other friends were in mortal danger. I needed to redouble my study of Edgar’s annotated maps – maybe there’d be something that’d help Azure even the odds and take back her state. Actually, hold on, why was I thinking she should go it alone? She’d need a strong, tech-savvy person to support her... And then, I realized I was staring at her longingly again.

  “You know, I don’t listen to every thought you have,” she said. It sounded pretty nonchalant, but I swear I felt a vague flash of regret. “That’d be unethical. Plus, it’d hurt me. You have a lot of pent up rage inside of you.”

  “It’s all because of Sigmar, isn’t it?”

  “I think I’m beginning to understand why you hate him so much.”

  “You should help me take him down and get your land back.”

  It just kind of slipped out. Now, I’m not entirely unfamiliar with strange and sudden emissions when Azure is around (and I really need to stop making double entendres lest my womanly modesty be compromised), but inviting your girlfriend to what is at least a murder conspiracy, if not potentially a full-fledged war, is not something you should do lightly.

  “It’s because I’m a titan, isn’t it?”

  “I’m also seeking human help, but titan power would certainly come in handy.” But she didn’t respond to that. In fact, she looked positively frightened.

  “What’s wrong, Azure?”

  “Don’t get the wrong idea, Charlotte, but I’m not a fighter. Sigmar eats titans like me for breakfast. I think even you could defeat me in combat if you had your laptop on hand.”

  You know, the last few months have really shattered any reverence I could ever muster up for titans. Every other titan I’ve had the pleasure of meeting has either been evil (Aux, Sigmar), incompetent (Hyperion, Aux again), or completely insane (Agnus). Just my bad luck that the powerful ones aren’t on my side...or in Azure’s case, literally by my side.

  I gave the matter some thought. Azure needed comforting again, but I still wanted to convince her to join my quest.

  “Maybe you’re not a skilled warrior, but you’re good at other things, right? How did you acquire your realm?” Azure seemed to calm down a bit after I asked her.

  “Well, I started a company,” she explained. “We started doing marketing and advertising research for humans and daemons in return for money. We made a ton of profit, and I managed to convert it into a decent chunk of sovereignty before Sigmar marched in and conq
uered it. I’ve got good people skills, I guess.”

  I didn’t tell Azure, and I tried not to think too loudly about it, but I already knew the last part from firsthand experience.

  “Please believe me when I say I still want your help,” I responded. “If I’m going to go around raising an army or finding weapons with which to fight Sigmar, having a skilled diplomat around is very useful. You wouldn’t believe how many skills can be useful in my line of work.”

  That reminded me of Sarah McGeer and her dreadful fate; I still needed more time to finish parsing that. Would bureaucrats be willing to resist Sigmar? I knew that a few strategic delays in paperwork could make any organization grind to halt, but most of them don’t have psychopaths at the top that would personally kill underperforming paper-pushers, right? I realized, however, that his bloodless conquest of Azure’s company could very well give him a fresh supply. Damnation! He just keeps winning! I managed to snap out of this train of thought before Azure (unnecessarily) asked what was causing me so much anguish.

  “I mean, if you want to get better at defending yourself, we can spar a bit in the local gym,” I told her. “I’m not quite sure how I’d teach you, but maybe we can also find someone who’s good at combat. Barring that, my personal trainer’s looking for new students. If you sign up, I get a 20 dollar referral bonus.”

  “You’re taking lessons with Mindy?” Azure quipped.

  “The fliers around town tipped you off, didn’t they?” Azure’s hair sparkled. Disaster had been averted yet again.

  “I’ve also been doing some late night research on other subjects. An old friend tells me hell is littered with all sorts of magical artifacts that could give me an edge. You know anything about that?” I asked. Azure’s hair went back to normal.

  “I wish I could help you with that, but I never placed much importance on magical whatsits. Technology was more profitable, honestly.”