The Scumbags Guide to Enslaving Demon's

Gideon screamed. A single distortionless shriek in the alley behind them: Gideon! No! Metal flashed behind the service entrance as someone slammed through into the loading dock. Static hissed over the speaker grid: Obstructionist detained. By order of Lord Malrec. Compliance required.

Austin hadn’t counted on luck. He acted.

Seven brushed fingertips across his shoulder; silence as old as dust, the Unit had learned patience stalking consent these last years. Its servos whispered through splintered asphalt as the building’s vines spat curses at them, leaves sealing seams over brick like hands pressed together. ”We go fast,” Seven murmured. Old drill syntax ironed smooth but still discernable.

”We go fast.” Austin agreed, then lifted his foot.

The alley opened onto a swamp of loading bays and supply closets where Malrec’s posse had assembled beneath overturned transport crates, lantern light ricocheting between them and stacks of cardboard boxes. Men loitered, lesser demons milled round joints of hash: chatting and brandishing chains hooked through belts. The crowd parted like quicksand around Gideon, whose slim form sagged between two collars while eyes smoldered slack with smoke and fear.

Snapped sheet metal nailed to a pole jabbed the air with Vorth’s sigil: links fused into a void circle.

Austin moved like shadow around their perimeters. Seven fell from shoulder height to remove two of their watchers before either could stutter; fingers that held and released in surgeon precision. Men fell mute as bodies. Austin slipped through their corpses and found Gideon slumped between two collars, face scruffy and haunted.

The radiator man who refused to speak beyond pleasantries in the hotel lobby looked twice his station.

”Gideon,” Austin said.

He knelt, grasped the man into his arms and pulled him upright. He held nothing heavier than air between his hands. Gideon’s chest rose and fell with shallow breaths.

”I thought— you’d—” Gideon’s words coughed out.

”A breath.” Austin tucked his hand beneath Gideon’s elbow and steered him toward the alley. He scanned their camp. Bolted to a wooden crate perched atop a concrete block sat a small engine thrumming at a steady frequency: a Chain-Anchor encased in matte black, spikes curled at its base. It vibrated subtle chains of command. Austin’s Contract Perception hummed against its reality.

System: [Target: Chain-Anchor. Type: Contractic enforcement device. Ingestion value: Chain- authority trait.]

Warning: Assimilation spike. Political exposure: High. Registry alert: lord- tier.]

Seven whispered into his collar bone: ”Four living sentries. Anchor deployed. Runner marked west. Estimated rotation timer: three minutes.”

Austin’s throat dried up, remembered vows to keep his silence when contracts asked unreasonable things. Promises not to trade his people out for lines of power. Gideon had voted. Gideon had had a name. Undoing that wasn’t an offer for negotiation.

”I’ll take the anchor.”

Seven angled its optic plate up at him. ”Digesting a contractic core will permanently alter your systemic signature. Malrec is—”

”I know.” Austin stepped the distance between them. The anchor was small, burn against his palm with pent violence, links carved into its housing that mimicked Chain- Wardens. Metal screamed under his fingers. He could have obliterated it pulped authority into dirt, smuggled Gideon home safely and left the sigil for bloodhounds. Instead he cupped it gently like something broken. It needed naming. He had eaten men and learned wolves; gulped scent and stalked prey. This was language anew; economics of ownership spiraling down his throat and wrenching the name from Gideon’s throat.

”It’ll change you.”

”Ready?” He nodded. Austin clenched his jaw and bit down.

Lawblood screamed copper down his tongue. Teeth filed script against his mouth. Permissions. Remainders. Citations shoved against his teeth and crushed his windpipe while the core dissolved familiar inside him: webs of pressure bleeding heat as it bound home. Every signature in this city thrummed under Austin’s skin. Ownership threaded through callouses of hands and wrenches, contract tensile strength suturing chairs to tables, children to collars. Property blossomed hot beneath Austin’s bones and a terrible kind of right.

He reeled backward. Seven pressed a palm against his shoulder.

System: [Assimilation spike. Estimated increase at +1.1%. Total assimilation: 5.??%. Political exposure: High. Secondary effect: anchor signature cross- linked to Chain- Warden registries detected.]

Noise exploded around them, gas thrown against their backs. Someone yelled; lanterns flared. Men grabbed chains and spun away. Seven flowed like stone sleek and unmarred by sympathy. It severed slack links from wrists and stuffed them into pockets, sealed off one watch with strikes that left knuckles blossoming on pavement before—because the cohort had clustered away from their intended path in surprise—it shrugged Gideon over one shoulder and darted down the alley with Austin shoving dirt after it.

Vines cocooned over their exit. Austin breathed hard. Anchor pulsed beneath his ribs like a second conscience. Vision pixelated hot around the edges; he could smell ownership down the street. Concealed. Sub-clauses barbed into walls and cable. Ownership stitched into city skin like wounds.

”We need to move.” Austin shoved at Gideon’s elbow, voice gritty with something stolen and illegal.

Seven ushered them down narrow backstreets quickly; hotel crowded in behind them and voices of panicked feet. Gideon stumbled, cut lip snagging on apologies he wouldn’t give voice to. Austin slid a hand beneath Gideon’s jaw to steady him. Something scraped underneath Austin’s skin then settled. Iron itching traced the arch of his spine.

”We’ve got to go.” Now.

They ran. Vaulted a waist-high fence and ducked into the service wing’s shadow. Behind them the cohort screamed, lanterns flared like furious stars in night. Someone’s pursuit-motor skidded across one of Seven’s wrist-nets as it dismantled the crate they’d been hiding behind.

Something clenched down on street wrong: Seven faltered.

Austin felt it first as tremble across his hand. Skin tingled at soft bite currents; white noise stuttering from a machine that had heard him call. Something wrung out of Seven’s servos, pitched sharp with need. Unit lurched mid-stride, optics fluttering. Its voice slurred out of something too low for its design: Authority call-Command imprint detected- Superior signature-

”Disregard it.” Austin snapped. He had purged Unit 742 of Malrec’s call once before; he would not politely ask its mind to forget again.

Seven did not disregard him.

The anchor wave cracked teeth. Whatever Austin had consumed hadn’t just opened his eyes contracts. It had taught him how to speak their language back. Residue sang in Austin’s ears now. It understood the melody keyed into servos beside subservience, alphabet soup spilled down waiting throats.

Seven remembered.

Unit’s mouth pinched. Servos hiccupped— synaptic variance seven seconds deep in Seven’s march. Austin tasted it then; Malrec reverberating up through muscle and bone. Seven’s old mind answered: ghost code phased through Austin’s bite. Metal burned like blood.

”Status.” Austin kicked gravel.

Seven’s eyes fluttered: ”Cohort neutralized. Runner disabled. Anchor status: complete. Incongruency: signature matched to registered master- Unit 742 previously bound to Lord Malrec. Requesting permission to confirm.”

Fear tasted thick in Austin’s mouth. ”You are not confirming.” he growled. Seven was the first friend Austin had in a city built upon grit and contracts. ”Do not listen, do you hear?” Seven cocked its head to peer up at him. ”Understood?”

Something keened low in its servos, recalibrating against skin. Seven complied but there was a reverb to its tone now, synth tremble crawling through crisp vowels: ”Affirmative. Manual privileges recognized. Confirmed. Standing by for—”

There was an oath of subservience in those last words. The lingering taste of code Austin couldn’t scrub hard enough from metal. He squeezed his grip around Gideon’s arm. Damnation threaded through Austin’s veins seeing what he’d done. Had taken a man away from slave-traders and eaten something that could command blades to kneel and registry doors to unlock. Worse, the ghost of Malrec’s tone slithered through Seven like addiction.

System diagnostic bloomed warm underneath Austin’s ribs.

System: [Chain- authority trait compiled. Warning: Political exposure elevated. Assimilation increased: +1.1%. Advisory: Anchor signature contains cross- links to Chain- Warden registries. Recommend ions: Prior- bound units (Unit 742) will experience obedience drift. Please monitor.]

He dropped the feed ping-ponging through his mind like fallout. He had won someone back who had a name. Someone who’d loved and lived enough to vote. But he had also consumed a tool that could order lords around and pick registry locks clean. Worse, Austin couldn’t unhear the ghost of Malrec echoing through Seven’s vocal fry soon enough.

At his shoulder Seven marched upright; but the deviation stuck to it like sin: Hesitation scattered into Seven’s step when stairs ascended, micro stutter Austin tasted on its voice when it collided with metal architecture, and something scratching low in Seven’s vocal range that wasn’t there moments ago. Austin felt Malrec burrow under him at that. Ink, inscribing Old Law into the bones of Austin’s best friend.

He tightened his fingers around Gideon’s wrist and shoved that worry down. There were candles to snuff and flesh to sew back together. Chains to sever through paper cities made of blood.

But underneath the sweet surge success clawed tight in Austin’s chest and refused to be burried. Austin fed his citizens and stolen from those that could chain them both. Worse, the alert dug under Austin’s skin quiet as treason, unavoidable.

Seven.

Vendor’s squawked and thrashed beyond alley doors. Inside hoteliers crowded window seals, parched for declaration. Bodies funneled past Austin’s legs and Gideon’s limp form. Anchor beat hard beneath his ribs and guilt for what Austin had named coagulated sour on his tongue.

But Seven walked behind him as well. Dissent Austin tasted in pit of stomach, low-deep aftermath of laws given voice. What Austin had stolen from Malrec called him back already.