Chapter 18

 Vera watched the clients from the corner of a room, two people who’d seen better days. They were both Supers, a man and a woman in heavy robes, she couldn’t help but notice how they looked so weary and weak.

They sat together, one creating the Fog, and the other forming the abominations from corpses. She wasn’t too sure how it worked, nor did she really care to be honest. She wasn’t really paid to care. She was only here to get what they were promised, then they’d be gone.

Two hooded figures walked up the stairs, carrying a robed figure. His body mangled, and bloody, they set him down in front of the couple, then promptly slit their own throats. Crumpling in a heap in front of the couple.

Behind her, Vera’s crew noticeably flinched. They were all still young, they didn’t know the lengths that people would take to get their revenge. Well, maybe everyone except Ghost. That man’s composure never broke, even for a moment.

As the blood lapped around her boot, she sighed. She supposed she couldn’t blame them for their fanatical devotion to revenge, after all, it was part of their name.

The Oath of Nemesis, after all, they were a cult of terrorists who did whatever it took to get their revenge. That included things like this. Still, for these two, their bodies would not go to waste.

The man sat himself down next to the bodies, pulling out a dagger and cutting his palm with it. He pressed his open hand against the bare chest of the fallen human, their body twitched and convulsed as their form became a twisted, repulsive, mockery of its former self.

With an unnatural movement, it got to its feet and slowly scanned the room, waiting for orders.

“Do you think what I’m doing is evil?” Asked the man, looking directly at Vera. “I suppose to you, we must seem strange. We dedicate our lives to taking revenge on the people who wronged us. We’ve heard it before, you know. That revenge won’t bring our loved ones back, won’t return what was stolen from us, that only through forgiveness can we heal.” As he spoke, he repeated the same action with the other dead man.

Like the other, it repeated the same action, awaiting orders.

“Does it look like we seek to heal? No, we’re long past that point. Each of us seek only to destroy that which has wronged us, we cannot leave this world until it’s done. That’s really all there is to it. It’s a compulsion, in a way, but it’s one way we happily embrace.” He lifts the face cloth of the man they brought in, someone has truly destroyed this person. If you could call them a person.

“You did well, brother. Though you did not live to see the retribution, worry not, we carry your will. However, I am not done with you just yet.” And just like that, he repeated his action once again. Now there were three additional monsters in the room. “The world has robbed you of your vengeance, but through me you may gain a second chance.”

Vera shrugged her shoulders, “I’m only paid to do a job, nothing more.”

He stared at her for several moments, then dragged a casket from the corner of the room to the center. As he undid the latches, he spoke again, “My wife and I, here… you might find this hard to believe but we were just simple merchants once. We sold augments, machines, tech, scrap. We had a son once, he was sick, but through the technology of the Soluna Consortium, we saved him. He planned to dedicate his life to the pursuit of science, wanted to save up to go to a Soluna university, join their academic caste, maybe find a mutually beneficial solution to the war and break us out of the dome. He experimented for years, even as our business floundered, and his childhood left him behind. He just wanted to see what was out there, beyond the dome.”

The casket opened with the sound of rusted hinges being opened for the first time in years. And laying there covered in bandages was the mummified corpse of a human.

“Then he was murdered. They said it was an accident. Said that they were deeply sorry for the regrettable actions. They tried to claim that it was an act of fate. Tell me, Mercenary. How many accidents do you know that end with a boy shot in the back of the head with his hands bound behind his back?” Solemnly, he glided his hand along the mummy’s cheek.

His wife, who’d been silent this whole time, choked back tears as she gazed upon the corpse. With renewed vigor, she resumed controlling the fog, the glow coming from her hands shining brighter.

“How cruel is it, my powers can return life to that which has lost theirs. But only to the flesh, their minds, souls, whatever made them who they were lost to the ether. They just obey, hunt, kill, devour, and die. That’s all.” The same process was taking hold of the mummy. “I wish I could’ve found a way to bring back the mind, but alas… time’s up.”

The fourth creature rose from its coffin, however it was significantly different from the others. Stronger, leaner, much more dangerous it seemed. The man coughed up blood as his salt-marked hair turned whiter, and his skin began to lose more of its elasticity.

“So I guess that was a failure as well. Ha… I suppose it was too much to hope that if I push my power to the limit, that it could break free of its limitations. Oh well, our revenge continues then.” He placed his hand upon the face of the creature that was once his son’s corpse. “To you, I’ve given a great gift… there is a man, he has been marked. Kill him. Kill everything. Kill and drink and feast until you are satisfied.”

The four creatures screeched an ear-splitting screech and jumped out the window! Their bodies hit the ground with a sickening crunch, however, whereas a human would’ve been a crumbled mess, they were not so breakable. They dashed off into the fog, and that would hopefully be the last Vera ever saw of them.

“We were promised payment.” Vera reminded him, but it wasn’t money she was after. No what she was after was something that was priceless. To her at least, it had been what she’d been working towards all this time.

“Of course.” He lifted up a panel and pressed a hidden button. A section of the wall opened up, and out came a metal case. “This is what you sought? I do not know what you require it for, we could’ve given you any other currency if you chose.”

“Currency doesn’t really have a use for me, not where I’m going at least.” She opened it to confirm the contents, it glowed brighter than anything she could’ve imagined, this was definitely what she was looking for. Now she had the final piece, the final action she’d ever take. She closed the case and signaled to her crew that it was time to leave.

She paused at the top of the stairs. “The reason I won’t judge you,” she began, “is because we’re not so different. There’s someone I absolutely can’t forgive either. Though there is one difference; I want to watch that person die.”