Slamming head first into the bubbling iron cauldron, Jun, in turn, drenched those witches in the nearest vicinity with all its boiling contents.

  Those he didn’t bowl over with his still flailing body outright, that is. With a sharp crack, Jun came to a sudden, explosive halt, colliding with the trunk of a tree hard enough to bruise.

  Only later would he know how lucky he’d been that it hadn’t been one of those with a child nailed to it instead.

  Witches screamed as their spattered flesh began to melt, while those he’d impacted outright lay in broken, unmoving heaps. Given each witch had been swimming in their cultish red robes, they now resembled a wrapped bundle of sticks soundly trampled upon by a stampede of angry bison.

  Very dead, in other words. Something for which, once he’d gathered enough of his wits to properly assess the situation, he couldn’t say he’d be losing much sleep over.

  Jun coughed. Nearly retched. Plucked errant leaves from his hair where they prickled his scalp.

  Gah! That smell!

  Whatever they’d been cooking, the stench of it was foul. Like it was actively crawling up his nasal passages to die. He was just glad he hadn’t gotten any on him in the fall. After taking in the semi-liquidated remains of those who had, doubly so.

  Then his gaze landed squarely on the crucified children, and his blood turned cold.

  Transfixed, his gaze trailed from one sobbing child to another. From the children, to the animal hybrids with their blood encrusted instruments, and finally to what looked like the failed remnants of a terrible ritual.

  The shadowy presence of any demon lord pointedly nowhere to be seen.

  Not all of the coven appeared injured in the aftermath of his dramatic entrance. And, excluding those that had scattered immediately upon his arrival, half a dozen stood completely unharmed, if visibly agitated. It didn’t take much to put the pieces together from there.

  Jun rose to his feet in a smooth, well practiced motion, suddenly freed of the disconnect between mind and body. Entirely unified towards this one, singular purpose.

  When he came to, he was standing over a corpse. Young or old, male or female, he couldn’t rightly say. It’s skull had been caved in to the point of being unrecognizable, and his fists were strangely sticky, though he couldn’t place why any of that was, just that second.

  He turned around then, taking in the scene anew, before managing a wobbly step toward the first of the children—wide eyed and trembling—from where they hung suspended, stark naked, and afraid.

  It was as he grappled with the heart rending process of removing the crudely hammered iron stakes, that his mind seemed to retreat back a step. Falling back on a bad habit trained and subsequently perfected within the trial worlds. He spoke to himself.

  “You know, I have to say I think I’m starting to understand the whole “burn all witches at the stake” policy this world seems to have adopted. I mean, the execution leaves something to be desired, sure, but these ladies definitely do not engender any of that “benefit of the doubt” business you would normally associate with little girls in red hoods, tramping alone in dark forests.”

  As he rambled nonsensically, something truly unexpected happened. Trembling seemed to ease, sobs abated, and pointed ears pricked up in interest—the black orbs they had in place of eyes all swiveling in his direction.

  If asked, he couldn’t have said why that was exactly.

  Why he started talking, or why it was they chose to listen. Only that, if he dwelled too deeply on the horror of the moment, he knew he was going to go mad. Compared to that, distracting himself was deemed infinitely preferable. Perhaps they were simply of the same mind.

  Whatever the case might’ve been, by the time he’d pried the last of the stakes free, not a peep disturbed their little patch of forest but the sound of his voice, the rustle of leaves, and the creaking of shifting branches.

  Draped in salvaged scraps of red cloth, twelve little creatures sat cross legged before him. Their ages ranging from five years old to nine, they, each and every one, stared up at him in what was quickly becoming an eerie silence.

  Normal children at a glance, on second perusal they appeared anything but. They were a weird bunch, that was for sure. All gangly armed and unblinking. They also healed insanely quick—the puncture wounds they’d suffered already turned the raised pigment of completely healed scar tissue.

  A part of him wondered what he was supposed to do with the little foundlings, though a larger part had already made up his mind.

  “I don’t imagine the locals will be all too pleased with your, uh, um… well, your unique looking appearances, let’s say. I mean, if I came off as overly suspicious—while, admittedly, participating in arguably suspicious looking activities—barely a day into this tri-! I mean world. Barely a day into this-! Actually, that sounds worse, if anything. Never mind. I just can’t imagine they’ll let you off so easily looking like… that. Even if you somehow managed to prove yourselves outstanding, law abiding citizens.”

  Silence.

  “Yeah. I know what you mean. It sucks, but that’s just how the world is unfortunately. And, well, looking at the evidence for all that prejudice, I can’t really say I blame them. If it’s discriminatory, it’s more reasonable than any I’ve come across thus far.”

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  More silence. They didn’t even look to be breathing.

  “Which means… if you can’t take care of yourselves,” he counted on his fingers. “And the locals are out, then…?”

  Jun briefly thought over the dilemma, then sighed in comprehension.

  “Then it would appear I’ll be staying here a great deal longer than I had originally planned.”

  More silence. More stillness.

  But wait! No!

  There it was! The briefest flicker of life.

  She had blinked!

  One of the younger children, barely a day over six summers old, had actually blinked! It was a languid, asymmetrical affair, and quite possibly the creepiest thing he’d ever seen or experienced, but still.

  “Right then! So!” he rose unsteadily to his feet. “I’d say this direction’s as good a way as any!”

  And so saying, Jun attempted to venture purposefully into the brush, stride confident, head held high, and pointer finger raised aloft. In so doing, he inadvertently launched himself headlong through the densest patch of brambles for miles around.

  And, like the dutiful little ducklings they were, his nameless group of foundlings were quick to trail behind in the wake of his passage.

  Trial Difficulty: 4 Stars

  Satellite City: Corporate Sector

  OmniCorp International: Residential Quarter

  “Understood,” he paused. “Yes sir… Of course sir…” a longer pause. “I intend to look into it personally. Those that perpetrated this crime will be swiftly apprehended and punished to the fullest extent of the law, you have my word on that,” another pause. “I’m sorry…? I’m afraid I don’t… Y-yes, you’re right of course. It is entirely my own fault and that of my department’s. I take full responsibility. Understood… Right you are sir,” a final pause, longer than all the others. “I’ll see it done.”

  Click.

  When the tinny voice raging on the other end of the line abruptly cut off, not a soul in the room dared to move or even blink.

  Sasha Petrov, senior security officer and aspiring live feed commentator, even went so far as to silence her personal feed. Ultimately unsure whether a holo-ad of all things would be enough to provoke an involuntary twitch, and so sign her early death warrant, but unwilling to take the chance regardless—top-of-the-line semi-automatic railgun with electromagnetic shield attachment be damned.

  Granted, she did take a second to buy a container of nano-infused anti-aging cream—confirming the purchase with an imperceptible twitch of her retina—though that was ultimately with good reason. It was on sale after all. Better yet, a flash sale at that. Nearly seventy percent off for the next five seconds.

  It was practically more expensive not to buy it.

  And its SoftWire BioLab certified so it must be legit. Not like that gutter repo trash they sent me last month. Ugh. What a nightmare. I’m getting hives just thinking about it.

  In the meantime, while Sasha lamented her chronically poor choice in beauty products, their dour Head of Security, Alexi Ivanov—a true bear of a man at just over six feet nine inches—stood with his implausibly broad back to the small gathering of trusted officers, eyes seemingly riveted to the strobing lights of the distant city skyline.

  The grimy streets of the commercial sector almost picturesque when seen from the high vantage of the residential penthouse. Gleaming head to toe in class A body mods, so bleeding edge and high tech most had yet to reach the market, he cut a truly terrifying figure no matter which way you sliced it. Half man, half machine, and the human half had never been all that friendly to begin with.

  Finally, the silent statue that was their head of security shifted, to which everyone else in the room flinched.

  “Explain to me again,” he rumbled in his gravelly baritone. “How precisely a clusterfuck of such monumental proportions was allowed to happen under your express supervision?”

  A beat of silence followed. And in a few more moments it was clear that no answer was forthcoming. Indeed, the cowed group of senior officers were far too absorbed in the polished sheen of their combat boots, in counting each individual shoe lace, etc. The head of security only sighed.

  “Well. Please tell me you’ve tagged his whereabouts at least?”

  Silence.

  “His I.D. Chip?”

  Silence.

  “He… didn’t have one sir,” one brave officer supplied.

  “He didn’t-?! The fuck do you mean he didn’t have one?! Is he fucking Anonymous? Fuck! It would be one of those fucking cultists, wouldn’t it? When they found the balls to target Omnicorp directly, and in such a public manner no less…? No… No, it just does not fit their m.o… unless… ”

  “Uh, sir! We… umm, we actually don’t think it was Anonymous this time. We’ve dealt with their techno-jacks in the past, and if it really were them there’d still be some trace of prior tampering for our analysts to latch onto. No, instead it’s almost as if… it’s like whoever did this was never born with universal identification to begin with.”

  “But that’s impossible!”

  “Nevertheless…”

  Face turning red with fury, Alexi looked just about ready to choke on his rage, it was so tangible.

  “WELL THEN DO WE AT LEAST KNOW WHAT THIS REPO GUTTER TRASH LOOKS LIKE? And I swear, if you try to tell me we somehow let some repo scum-fuck nobody waltz right on past our state of the line surveillance systems completely undetected I’ll…!”

  “N-no sir! That is to say, yes! Our surveillance team were able to perform a full facial and body scan. Actually, it was like he didn’t even try to hide or otherwise disguise himself, which is why it took our people so long to verify.”

  “Oh,” the man sighed, and it was like those in the room could visibly see his blood pressure fall.

  “B-but-”

  “BUT?!”

  “He… isn’t in any of our registries… sir.”

  Suddenly, there was a crack as the holo-phone the head of security held so delicately only moments before was shattered into a thousand little pieces.

  Crushed in a sudden flash of white-hot rage.