To a human, hunger is a warning. To an Orc, it's a compass.
While Arthur prepared his surgical instruments in the Crystal Palace and Valéria welded Imperial Mithril plates onto the chassis of the new truck (now christened "The Dreadnought of the Ridge"), I was wandering the cobblestone streets of the Imperial City.
The fog smelled of lavender and coal. It was an artificial scent, made to hide something.
My nose ignored the perfume. It sought the protein.
But there were no animals in Petrópolis.
I saw no stray dogs, no pigeons, no horses pulling the carriages (they were all mechanical).
"Where is the food?" I snarled to myself, kicking an empty oil can.
I stopped in front of an elegant shop window on Avenida Koeler. "Imperial Confectionery: Refined Nutrition for the Biomechanical Elite".
Inside, cakes and pies gleamed. But they didn't smell like flour or sugar.
They smelled like... iron. And plasma.
A mechanized noble entered the shop. He bought a dark red "cupcake."
Instead of biting it, he opened a hatch in his bronze neck and inserted the sweet directly into a feeding tube.
I heard the sound of suction and processing. His organic "brain," floating in the glass helmet, glowed with satisfaction.
"They don't eat for pleasure," I realized. "They eat to keep the biological part alive."
I followed the smell.
It wasn't coming from the confectionery. It was coming from the back. From a dark alley where steam pipes descended underground.
There was a rusty metal sign: "Biomass Recycling and Processing Sector - Restricted Access".
Two service automatons were loading heavy black bags into a freight elevator. The bags had the wrong... shape.
It wasn't trash. They were bodies.
The elevator descended.
I didn't call the elevator. I jumped on the steel cable and slid into the darkness, holding my cleaver in my teeth.
The Petrópolis underground wasn't elegant. It was an industrial slaughterhouse.
The heat down here was suffocating. The steam didn't smell like lavender; it smelled like copper, feces, and fear.
I walked along the grated walkways, observing the production line below.
Conveyor belts brought "raw material."
They were the refugees the gate guards rejected. They were the lobotomized servants who got too old to clean the streets. They were political dissidents.
They were naked, drugged, hanging from hooks.
There was no cruelty in the process. There was only efficiency.
Automatons with circular saws and grinders processed the bodies.
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Blood and Mana: Drained and refined to create the "Vital Fluid" the nobles used in their brains.
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Bones: Crushed to make the porcelain for the mechanical bodies.
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Flesh: Cooked, processed, and canned as "Type A Nutritional Paste."
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Soul: The most terrible part. There was a giant furnace in the center of the factory. A Soul Boiler. The "useless" remainder of human essence was burned there to generate the steam that powered the city.
"Pig on a spit..." I whispered, feeling bile rise. "They eat people. They burn people to keep the streetlights on."
I saw an automaton separate a group of "new cattle."
Among them, a human child. A girl dirty with mud, probably from the Baixada, holding a rag doll.
The robot butcher lifted the girl by one foot, analyzing her with a red lens.
"Purity content: 85%. Classification: Delicacy for the Emperor's Banquet."
The girl started to cry. The robot activated its arm's circular saw.
My vision went red.
Not Arthur's tactical vision. The blood vision of an Orc.
We are monsters, yes. We eat raw meat. But Orcs do not waste. And Orcs do not kill cubs. That is tribal law.
I let go of the steel cable and fell from a height of ten meters.
I landed on top of the robot butcher.
The impact crushed its bronze skull.
My blade came down.
SHLACK.
I severed the saw arm before it touched the girl.
"Kitchen's closed!" I roared.
The robot, still functioning without a head, tried to grab me.
I spun my body and drove the cleaver into its chest, where the internal boiler was.
I pulled sideways, tearing the metal. High-pressure steam exploded, cooking its circuits.
The girl fell to the floor, trembling.
I scooped her up with one arm and put her on my back.
"Hold tight, short stack. Auntie Gristle is getting you out of here."
The factory stopped.
Sirens wailed. Red lights spun.
From all side doors, dozens of Steam Centurions emerged. They were combat models, with four arms and red-hot blades.
"Contamination detected in Meat Sector!" the system voice echoed. "Sterilize the intruder!"
I picked up a butcher's hook from the floor with my free hand. Cleaver in the right, hook in the left.
I smiled.
"Finally. I was getting bored with all the etiquette."
I charged at the army of tin cans.
The first Centurion tried to stab me. I dodged, hooked its leg, and pulled. It fell.
I brought the cleaver down on the neck joint. CRUNCH.
"Arthur!" I shouted into the radio, while kicking another robot into the meat grinder (poetic irony). "Arthur, the plan has changed!"
"Their 'food' is people! The fuel is soul!"
"And I just started a rebellion in the basement!"
Upstairs, in the Crystal Palace.
Arthur stopped with the scalpel millimeters from Emperor Dom Pedro III's exposed brain.
Gristle's message crackled in his ear.
Arthur didn't move. His expression didn't change.
Valéria, who was calibrating the pistons of the new truck in the courtyard, heard it too. She stopped welding.
Luna, who was singing a soft melody to keep the Emperor calm, went off-key on purpose.
Grand Duke Kaleidoscope, who was observing the surgery, noticed the shift in atmosphere. His eye lenses spun fast.
"Problem, Doctor? Hand slipped?"
Arthur looked up from the pulsating brain.
He smiled. The cold smile of the Parasite.
"No, Duke. The diagnosis is complete.
"I thought the Emperor suffered from natural degradation. But now I see it's food poisoning.
"You are feeding him distilled suffering. This causes spiritual toxin buildup in the cortex. That's why he's forgetting who he is."
Arthur twirled the scalpel in his fingers.
"The treatment requires a drastic change in diet."
The Grand Duke drew a flintlock laser pistol.
"You found out. Pity. You would make excellent parts."
"Valéria!" Arthur shouted. "Is the Dreadnought ready?"
"Engine isn't broken in, but the harpoon cannon works!" Valéria replied over the radio.
"THEN BRING DOWN THE GLASS WALLS!"
Outside, the roar of a V12 diesel-mana engine, coupled with tank treads, was heard.
The new truck, now a monster of black and gold steel, accelerated.
CRAAAASH!
The Dreadnought smashed through the wall of the Crystal Palace, scattering glass shards like diamond rain.
The truck skidded to a halt in the middle of the surgical hall, the cannon turret swiveling to aim at the Grand Duke.
"What is this?!" the Duke recoiled.
Arthur seized the distraction.
He didn't attack the Duke. He placed his hand (covered by the symbiote glove) directly onto the Emperor's exposed brain.
"NO!" the Duke shouted. "If you touch him, he dies!"
"Exactly." Arthur looked at the guards storming the room. "I have the Emperor of the city hostage at my fingertips.
"If anyone takes another step, I perform an instant lobotomy and turn His Majesty into a very expensive paperweight."
The Emperor (the robotic body) tried to move, but Arthur squeezed the brain slightly. The body paralyzed.
"Doctor..." the Emperor's voice faltered. "I am feeling... fear. I haven't felt fear in a hundred years."
"Fear is the sign that you are alive, Pedro," Arthur whispered. "Now, let's negotiate.
"Gristle is bringing the 'raw materials' up from below. You are going to open the gates. You are going to free the slaves. And you are going to give us all the refined Ether you have in stock."
"And if I refuse?" asked the Grand Duke, gun aimed at Arthur's head.
"Then I crush this brain." Arthur leaned his forehead against the broken glass dome. "And Petrópolis loses its god. And without a god... you are just scrap waiting for rust."
Down below, the ground shook.
Gristle was coming up the freight elevator, and she wasn't coming alone. Hundreds of armed "refuse" with factory tools were behind her.
The Canned Meat Revolution had begun.
"Tick-tock, Duke," Arthur smiled. "The clock is ticking."