"Yo! That's the crazy vato who turned Carlos and Hector into modern art!" Jimmy's screen-face flashed a giant red exclamation point, a pixelated skull-and-crossbones animating beside it.
The golden figure, Aurelian, let go of the nurse's arm with a gesture of sublime disgust. He didn't need to speak; he simply pointed a regal finger toward the gurneys, and the two hulking medical droids moved as if slaved to his will, pushing Jacqui and Ethicca toward the door.
"My name is Aurelian, the Sentinel of Pride," he said, his voice a cold, condescending baritone that resonated from some internal speaker. He turned his masked head slightly towards Jimmy. "You will do well to remember that, you worthless piece of scrap."
His mask was a flawless, featureless white, a blank canvas of porcelain perfection, save for a single, stylized red teardrop painted beneath the right eye slit. It was utterly devoid of emotion, making his presence all the more chilling.
The moment the gurneys moved, Jacqui and Ethicca began to struggle, a primal survival instinct kicking in. The nurse, Luong Wang, moved with practiced speed, jabbing the hyposprays into their necks. A wave of icy cold spread through their veins, and the world dissolved into a soupy, lagging fog.
Aurelian stood by the door, a silent, golden statue, as the procession filed out.
"Ayyye! Mr. Pride Month! Fancy-pants! What about me!?" Jimmy shouted, his boxy body wiggling helplessly in its electrified chains.
Aurelian didn't even look back. He simply stretched out a hand and made a delicate, plucking motion in the air, as if playing an invisible harp.
The thick chain suspending Jimmy didn't break; it unraveled, each individual link separating and falling to the floor with a soft clink clink clink. Jimmy's body, still bound, crashed to the floor in a heap.
Aurelian then curled his fingers, and an unseen gravitational force dragged Jimmy's metallic body across the floor, stopping it directly at his feet. He lifted a gleaming golden boot and planted it firmly on Jimmy's box-head.
"One small step is all it takes to crush a roach," Aurelian mused, his voice dripping with aristocratic boredom. "But the Church has a use for you. So for now… be quiet." With a snap of his fingers, a surge of golden energy arced from his boot. Jimmy's screen filled with static, glitched with a final, pixelated frowny-face, and went dark.
***
Jacqui regained consciousness in jarring fits and starts, her system, long accustomed to black-market combat stims, fighting a losing battle against the high-grade sedative. The world was a blurry, lurching mess viewed through the armored window of a high-speed transport. Then, something came into focus that sent a jolt of pure, undiluted adrenaline through her, burning away the chemical fog.
A wall. A colossal, gleaming white wall that reached for the clouds, encircling a city of impossible, alien architecture. And emblazoned on it in letters a hundred feet high were two words she never thought she'd see: SECTOR 1.
The shock fully woke her. She was still bound, but her mind was sharp with terror. She looked forward. Aurelian sat motionless, perfectly postured, like a divine machine in sleep mode. Beside him were the two guards, Dr. Wang, and Ella, who was swinging her legs like an impatient child.
"It sure is beautiful, don't you think, street rat?" Ella chirped, not looking at her.
Jacqui's head lolled, her vision swimming. "Where… are you taking us?"
"Shhhh, don't be impatient. We're almost there!" Ella pointed a newly-reattached hand toward a building that defied physics. It was a spire of what looked like living white marble and solid gold, pulsing with ethereal data-streams, piercing the very heart of the sector. Floating high above its needle-like tip, suspended in the air by unseen grav-emitters, was a citadel.
"That's The Spire. Our home," Ella said with a smug sigh of satisfaction. "The Seven Pillars Church. I can finally take a nice, long sonic bath and wash the filth of the lower sectors off me. You know, for a girl, you really don't smell very good." She glanced at Jacqui's fading consciousness, a malevolent grin spreading across her face. "Oh, you're in for a hell of a time when we land."
The transport touched down on a pristine helipad. The guards hauled Jacqui and Ethicca out, followed by Dr. Wang. Aurelian seemed to boot up from his standby mode, his masked head snapping toward Ella as she hopped out.
"Wrath," he said, his tone like chipped ice. "Where do you think you're going?"
"Inside, duh!?" Ella shot back rudely.
"I see. You will do well to also bring the piece of scrap with you," he said, his gaze flicking to Jimmy's inert body in the back of the transport.
"Do it yourself. I'm not your garbage boy," she retorted, flipping him a jaunty middle finger as she walked away.
Aurelian made another minute, graceful gesture with his fingers, plucking at those invisible threads of fate. The air shimmered. Ella's cybernetic arm, from the shoulder down, fell apart into a dozen clean, sliced pieces, clattering onto the concrete with a series of sharp, metallic pings.
She froze, then scurried back to the transport, her face a mask of panicked awkwardness. "You know what, I think I forgot something! Oh, look! The robot! Silly me! Let me just get that for you!" She started dragging Jimmy's body with her one good arm.
Aurelian tilted his head, the mask hiding whatever lay beneath. "Is there a problem with your arm, Wrath?" His voice was thick with false, condescending concern.
"O-oh, nothing! Just a few loose nuts and bolts! I'll get them fastened up in a jiffy. You just… you just make your way inside, okay? Please?" she stammered, backing away.
Aurelian didn't move for a long moment. Then he turned, walked off the helipad, and stood on the impossibly green lawn, staring up at the night sky as if contemplating the cosmos.
Ella, not taking her eyes off him, dragged Jimmy toward the entrance. As she passed through the massive doors, she whispered under her breath, "Fucking weirdo."
"Did you say something, Wrath?" a voice whispered directly into her ear.
She spun around. Aurelian was right there, having crossed a hundred yards in the space of a thought. Before she could scream, another voice, feminine and melodic as wind chimes, cut through the tension.
"Aurelian, stop bullying the child. The Hierophant wishes to connect with Moros, and we are all required." A woman with iridescent, shifting hair and eyes like swirling nebulae approached. Echo, the Sentinel of Lust.
"Echo, leave me to discipline this unruly whelp," Aurelian snapped. "She brings no Pride to our cause." He raised a hand as if to strike her.
Echo simply sighed and hummed a single, soft note. The sound seemed to resonate in the air, and Aurelian's rigid posture immediately relaxed. He turned without another word and walked away toward the main hall as if on command.
Echo giggled, mimicking Aurelian's pompous tone. "You would do well to… blah, blah, blah." Then she reverted to her own voice. "Honestly, he needs a firmware update. Now come on, bring… whatever that is. Moros is waiting."
Ella shrugged and continued dragging Jimmy. "Sentinel of Lust, my ass," she muttered. "You and golden-boy are both just big fat meanies."
Echo laughed, walking beside her. "Unlike him, I believe true pleasure is the mother of all pain." Her smile was both beautiful and terrifying.
As they entered the main hall, their playful demeanor vanished, replaced by a cold, reverent seriousness. The hall was a vast, circular chamber with six ornate, high-backed thrones. In the center, a horrifying fusion of man and machine floated. A half-disembodied figure, his arms tethered by thick cables into the very walls of the Spire, his lower body a maelstrom of wiring. Moros, the Sentinel of Sloth.
As Ella and Echo took their places, his three faces opened their eyes. "So good of you to finally join us, Sentinels of Wrath and Lust," his voice was a chorus of a thousand tired whispers. He turned his gaze to the other thrones. "Aurelian of Pride. Rose of Envy. Silas, the Magpie of Greed. And Carcass, Sentinel of Gluttony. It is good you are all here."
His gaze lowered to the center of the room where Dr. Wang stood with the unconscious Jacqui and Ethicca. Ella unceremoniously tossed Jimmy's body, which skidded to a halt beside them.
"Wake them up," Moros commanded.