Thump! Thump!
Zorak's heavy footsteps thudded across the floor as Cheryl walked him into the room, and Zuri watched in horror as he marched slowly toward her and knelt in front of her.
She should never have gotten involved with that man. She had known it, and she had given in to his persistence anyway, and now here she was, alone, her protector under someone else's control, three against one. The only thing standing between her and them was the Phase Veil charm, and once her energy ran out, she would be at their mercy.
Her heart raced as Bol stepped forward and stood beside Zorak, looking at her. "Start," he said.
As if she had been waiting for the word, Cheryl closed her eyes and began to murmur. Zorak raised his massive hand with a puppet's jerky motion.
BAM! BAM! BAM!
He punched himself in the face, three heavy blows, and blood spurted as the golden brass knuckles connected squarely with his jaw. He could see what was happening, hear it and feel the pain, but he could not shout, and he could do nothing against the fists raining down on his own already scarred body.
Worse than the pain was Zuri's face. He had promised her protection, and now she was watching him beat himself bloody for a stranger's amusement. He couldn't even look away from her. His eyes were no longer his to move.
Zuri's dark face went gray. When she called Zorak, she hadn't imagined this. Where was the solution her reading had promised? She had fifteen years of experience with readings, but only two or three as a true mystic, and for the first time she doubted what they showed her.
Bol looked at her again, deeply this time. "Give us the information we need, and"—he pointed at Zorak—"he lives. Struggling is useless. Your charm has a time limit." He nodded at the shimmering air around her. "Tell us now, and you both walk away. Or be stubborn, and he dies, the charm runs out, and we get what we want anyway."
The sound of Zorak's fists against his own face filled the room, and blood pooled on the floor around him.
"Where is the man we're looking for?"
"I... I don't know," Zuri said, her voice trembling. She had never been in a situation like this, and she didn't know what to do. If she told them what she had seen, would they really let them go? She doubted it. The world was cruel, and these two were no exception.
"Harder," Bol said.
The next punch came down with more force.
WHAM!
Zorak's head snapped sideways, his neck twisting at an unnatural angle before it snapped back, and Zuri flinched.
"Where is he?"
"I don't—"
Another blow, harder. Zorak's nose cracked, and blood poured down his face.
"Don't lie to me," Bol said, his voice calm, too calm. "You did a reading. You saw something. Tell me what you saw."
Zuri's hands shook and her breath came in short gasps. "I... I saw..."
Another blow.
"His name!" Bol shouted. "Start with his name."
"Makun!" Zuri screamed. "His name is Makun! That's all I know!"
Bol raised his hand, and Zorak's fist froze in mid-swing. "Makun," Bol repeated. "Good. What else?"
"I did the reading." Her voice was breaking. "But I didn't see anything clear. Just... just things holding him back."
"What things?"
And she saw it again, as clearly as if the cloth were still in front of her: the shape her own finger had traced on Friday without her meaning to, a mark that wasn't drawn anywhere, pressed into every link of what she had seen wrapped around him. It was no sigil she knew. It didn't look like the work of human hands. It was the thing that had frightened her most, and she kept it to herself.
"Chains," she said. "Heavy chains. Wrapped around him, binding him. I saw them in the reading. Spiritual chains, tight, suffocating, like they'd been on him his whole life." She swallowed; her throat was dry. "That's all I saw. Chains. I don't know where he is. I don't know where he went."
Bol was silent. Cheryl opened her eyes and looked at him.
"Friday morning, here," Bol said slowly, laying it out. "He leaves, something triggers, his signature disappears at his home, and then he's evicted." It was something to work with, but it still wasn't enough; tracking him would be far easier with an image. He stepped closer to the shimmer around Zuri. "It's still not enough."
"That's all I know!" Zuri's voice cracked. "I swear! There's nothing else!"
"You're a seer," Bol said. "You saw him, his face, his energy. You can give us more."
"I can't! I don't have a picture! I don't—"
"Then we'll get it out of you." Bol turned to Cheryl. "Let's get it out of her." Then he looked at Zorak. "Finish him."
Zorak's fist rose, slow, deliberate and puppet-like, higher and higher, and came down in the heaviest blow yet, aimed at his own skull.
It froze in midair.
The scar under Zorak's left eye began to burn and shine, and raw, violent golden light poured out of it.
"Stop him!" Bol shouted.
Cheryl grunted, and a thin line of blood appeared at her lips. Controlling him was getting harder by the second. "He's made a connection to The Deep," she said through her teeth. "He's probably called for help. I can't hold him."
Zorak no longer cared about the Suppression or the organizations; he had decided to unleash everything. These two were professionals, and professionals always eliminated their targets. They were never going to let him and Zuri go, and if he was going down, he was taking them with him.
Even as a puppet, he had reached The Deep. He had projected, his consciousness slipping partly out of his body, just far enough to reach the second layer. Projection was dangerous, all the more so under someone else's control, because his body stayed here, exposed. But his spirit dove through the Veil, pierced the barrier between the physical world and The Deep, and reached for the entity he had made a pact with as a Pactbound warrior.
Years ago, Zorak had made a contract, a binding agreement with a being from The Deep: his service, in exchange for access to its reservoir of energy. Now he called on it, and the entity answered. Energy exploded through his body, massive, foreign and dark. It wasn't his; it was borrowed power, the entity's reservoir flooding through the connection, and Cheryl's control began to waver.
The Sovereign Marionette worked through sympathetic entanglement: it locked onto the target's biological frequency and overrode his will with the Puppeteer's intent. But intent needed focus, and focus needed a single source of energy.
When Zorak's body flooded with foreign energy, his harmonic signature changed. The doll still held his hair, and the entanglement channel still existed, but the resonance was no longer pure. The entity's energy interfered with the link like static on a radio, like two frequencies colliding, and the puppet strings began to fray.
It would not take long before he had full control again. Then they would have no choice but to go all out and draw attention, and after that it would end one of three ways: they fought to the death, they were caught, or they fled. Fleeing was better than dying, and to Zorak's surprise, Bol was decisive. "Let's go," he said. "If we stay until he's free, we're in trouble." He dashed out of the room.
Cheryl spat on the porcelain doll, her own blood, fresh and hot. Blood was biological matter; it carried her signature and her will, and adding more of herself to the doll reinforced the entanglement and bought her time. The doll absorbed it, the energy flared, Zorak's body went rigid again, and the strings tightened.
Then she ran after Bol.