Chapter 19: The Right Road (1/2)

What a bright day. As Ryan drove towards the ship graveyard and Shroud’s warehouse, he felt utterly happy with himself. The courier had the intuition that everything would turn out well for him this time around.

“I feel like you’re my lucky charm, my friend,” Ryan told Ghoul. “Like a rabbit’s foot, or a four-leaf clover. I should have kept you ages ago.”

The Psycho’s bodiless skull glared at him, hung on the rear mirror by a rope.

Surprisingly, it had cost Ryan less money to convince the Private Security to keep the Psycho for himself than imprisoning it. He guessed it cost more to feed a prisoner than to just ignore a vigilante.

Like all loops so far, Wyvern visited him, although she sounded a bit less enthusiastic this time, for some ghoulish reason. She had also insisted he deliver Ghoul for safekeeping, as a sign of trust—and for his own ‘safety.’ Vulcan followed with her own recruitment pitch, putting him firmly on the Augusti Path.

So far so good.

Ryan stopped in front of the warehouse, grabbed Ghoul with Fisty, and then stepped out of the car. “I will kill you,” Ghoul snarled. “I will kill you, I swea—”

He never finished his sentence, as Ryan started juggling the skull while whistling. He looked through the warehouse’s window, seeing neither the servers nor the friendly neighborhood assassin. If he didn’t have absolute trust in his power, the courier might have mistook the events of the previous loop for a feverish dream.

Instead of breaking in this time, Ryan knocked on the door, Ghoul’s nauseous skull under his arm.

“Hey, can you let me in, I have a car window problem?!” Ryan shouted. “Shroudy repair, Shroudy replace?”

He waited a full minute before the door finally opened, revealing a glass man and servers on the other side. “How did you know?” the Carnival member asked, glancing around as if expecting a hidden camera.

“Oh, I’m alone, my Carnival friend!” Ryan said, before showing him the skull. “Except Ghoul Wonder here, but it’s a package deal. Like Dresden and Bob, or Laurel and Hardy.”

“Get in.” Ryan walked inside, the Shroud closing the door behind them.

The Genome remained fully visible this time, perhaps believing the courier didn’t know about that trick. He sat in his chair, the screens of his many computers showing a map of New Rome with multiple locations marked. Most seemed to be Augusti fronts, like the Bakuto and Renesco’s place. A cup of camomile tea waited near the keyboard.

“Quicksave, how did you know?” Shroud asked him again, skipping the pleasantries and being all business.

“You don’t ask a magician to reveal his tricks,” Ryan replied, glancing at the cup. “Like this one: tea.”

He shook Ghoul’s head in front of the teacup until the skull let out a puff of white mist. The liquid turned cold, ice cubes appearing on the surface.

“Iced tea.”

“True genius,” Shroud replied with heavy sarcasm, although he didn’t touch the beverage.

“He also works with fridges, and it’s eco-friendly.”

“I will rape you, you maniac!” Ghoul snarled. “I will kill you, and then I will rape your corpse while it’s still warm!”

“You deserve the pain, asshole,” the glass manipulator replied, completely unsympathetic to the Psycho’s plight. “You killed at least seventeen people, according to my files.”

“Only seventeen?” The Psycho laughed, before bragging. “I killed hundreds! Hundreds!”

He sounded really proud of it too. You would think Ghoul would know better than brag about his body count while in his current position, but nope. Shroud observed the Psycho with cold disdain, before turning to Ryan. “What do you want me to do with him?”

“Why, interrogate him of course!” Ryan said, caressing the back of Ghoul’s skull. “Isn’t that right, Skellington? You’ll tell us everything about this big bunker your big bad boss wants so much?”

“A bunker?” Shroud asked, instantly interested.

“BLEEP you, Quicksave! BLEEP you!”

“Shut up slave,” Ryan replied, before slapping Ghoul.

“Y-you slapped me!” the talking skull complained. “You slapped—”

And Ryan slapped him again, the Psycho glaring at him with fury and humiliation. “Everything you can do to me, Adam can do worse.”

“Oh, really?” Accepting the challenge, Shroud separated a glass shard from his armor, shaping it into a thin needle. The object floated right in front of the Psycho’s skull, lining itself with his left eye. “If you don’t tell me everything, that needle will work its way into your eye, and then the brain. Slowly, painfully. Then I will work on the other.”

“I have survived decapitation, bitch,” Ghoul replied, unimpressed. He stared at the weapon as it came closer and closer, without faltering.

Ryan sighed, putting his hand on Shroud’s shoulder. “What?” the glass manipulator asked, stopping his needle as it reached the cornea, “You believe he doesn’t deserve it?”

“I know you want to play Jack Bauer, but that’s not how you torture a Psycho,” Ryan replied, searching inside his trench coat while putting the undead’s skull on a corner of the desk.

Ghoul’s eyes changed from confident to mesmerized, as the courier revealed a green potion, put inside a perfume-like receptacle. Dynamis’ logo was plastered on it, alongside the concoction’s name.

“The Hercules knockoff Elixir, made in Dynamis,” Ryan advertised the product, dangling it in front of Ghoul. The skull tried to take it with his teeth, but obviously, he couldn’t do it without legs. “You like it? I bought it this morning. It grants superhuman strength and stamina, and I heard it feels like drinking a liquid orgasm.”

“Give it to me!” Ghoul snarled, his junkie addiction taking over. “Give it to me dammit!”

“Uh uh, it’s contraindicated for quadriplegics,” Ryan taunted him. “I guess I will have to flush it down the toilet.”

“Y-you monster!” The Psycho sounded genuinely horrified. “You won’t dare, do you know how much they cost?”

“What do they cost?” The courier exploded into maniacal laughter, chilling Ghoul to the bone. It made him laugh even more, with Glass Man looking at the scene in disturbed silence. “Life isn’t about money! It’s about having fun!”

“You have to stop him!” Ghoul snarled at Shroud. “You, glass man! You have to stop him! He’s mad! Mad enough to do it!”

“I don’t think I can restrain him unless you give me information,” Shroud replied, removing his needle and switching to good cop mode. “I barely have any control as it is.”

Ryan opened the bottle, letting Ghoul smell its sweet perfume, before tilting it sideways. Some of the product fell on the ground, the undead letting out a snarl of horror.

“Stop, stop!” Ghoul quickly caved in. “There’s a place below the Junkyard! A place!”

“A place?” Shroud asked, unimpressed, while Ryan kept slowly spilling the product. “That’s not enough!”

“A bunker, below the trash tower!” Ghoul said, his desperate eyes on the Elixir. “It’s full of robots and laser turrets, they shoot at Genomes on sight! We came to New Rome for it!”

This time, Ryan stopped spilling the knockoff on the ground, having kept half of the bottle. Ghoul let out a breath of deep relief, which was odd since he had no lungs.

“What’s in the bunker?” Shroud asked, his tone dangerous.

“Adam won’t tell us,” Ghoul replied, sounding truthful. “He only told a few. He doesn’t want word to get out.”

“So, you throw yourself at a fortified place without knowing what’s inside?” Shroud deadpanned, although he sounded more and more interested as he listened. “Forgive me if I find that sketchy.”

“Adam knows best,” Ghoul replied. “He always does. And he’s obsessed with it. He says it’s, how does he say it… the future, yes! The future! The automated defenses sense Genomes and we lost a few people to them, so Adam decided to send normies in! Even dogs!”

“Another question then,” Ryan said. “How about the sweet supply of Elixir you Psychos are high on?”

“I don’t know, alright!” Ghoul snarled, Shroud listening like a hawk stalking a dove. “Psyshock handles it for Adam. They distribute knockoff Elixirs regularly, so long as we play by the rules. If we disobey or we look into it, we’re cut from the supply.”

“It would be impossible to generate a supply of genuine Elixirs, considering their rarity,” Shroud mused, his arms crossed. “Do they come from Dynamis? If they are knockoffs, I would assume so.”

“Are you deaf? I already told you, I don’t know! I don’t give a BLEEP where that sweet nectar comes from, so long as it flows!”

Ryan turned towards the glass man, very proud of himself. “See?”

“That’s worrying, I will grant you that,” Shroud admitted. “I will look into it. Can I keep Ghoul for further interrogation?”

“Sure, I have the rest of the body in cold storage in my trunk.” Ryan chuckled at his own joke, doubly so when Ghoul sent him a death glare. “Though I would like it if you kept me updated on your progress. I promised someone I would get the Meta out of Rust Town, and I will follow through.”

Shroud tilted his head to the side but didn’t ask for details. Ghoul, meanwhile, grew even more agitated. “Give it to me now! I told you everything!”

Ryan looked at this skull, and into his tiny, adorable eyes. “No arms, no Elixir.”

The undead let out a snarl of pain and anger, which warmed the courier’s heart with twisted schadenfreude. “Hopes are like breakfast eggs,” he told Shroud, as he put the knockoff on the other side of the desk, too far for Ghoul to reach. “You can’t start the day without crushing them.”

Instead of responding, the glass man detached a part of his glass armor, reshaping it into a jar to imprison Ghoul’s skull inside. “Why are you giving me this information? What do you want in return?”