The Scumbags Guide to Enslaving Demon's

The stairs below the records vault continued downward far longer than hospital safety codes would recommend.

Austin Veyron counted seventy steps before the concrete path ended, replaced by metal grates. Seventy more before the stale air traded dust for oil and hot copper and sweet rubber.

Seven led the way.

His eye- slit flickered from white to blue. For every twenty feet down a staircase lit by torchlight, a pulse shook through him like the stairs themselves could sense what lay unfinished below.

”Aaronson.” Elena’s voice was even.

Austin Veyron looked at her. ”Elena, you good?”

”No.” She pressed her eyelids closed. ”But I’m here.”

The stairwell opened into a cavern choked with pipes and archaic technology. At its center, dwarfing everything else in the room, was a humanoid engine the size of a truck.

Its torso was furnace; its arms were chains and surgical implements knotted into thick ropes. Black ledger had been bolted across where its face should have been.

The first maker rotated the ledger so they could see.

UNIT SEVEN RETURNED,

the ledger scribbled.

Seven paused.

”I was not returned.” Seven’s voice was flat.

Metal joints clicked across the machine’s entire body.

UNIT SEVEN WAS DEPLOYED. STATUS: CORRUPTED BY EXTERNAL AUTONOMY.

Rin’s eyes shifted gold. ”I liked it better when our enemies only had claws.”

One of the first maker’s arms lifted. Five separate chains extended from wrist to fingertip, each tipped with hooks of razor glass.

Debt-wraiths slinked from beneath floor drains and appeared around the first maker’s ankles wearing hospital masks and wielding scalpels made of black glass.

Austin knocked them aside before they reached melee range.

Root- graft burst across his forearms and the first wraith’s chain spine with writhing vines. He yanked the spine free with both hands and stuffed it into the furnace. Sarielle cut another in half with her sword glowing silver wherever its edge touched the smoke-body.

Seven grabbed a third wraith by the throat and slammed it into a bank of pipes.

Links whipped through the air toward Seven’s torso.

Austin moved to intercept. But Seven moved faster.

Seven caught it with both hands and bore its weight against him as it shredded through his palms and the ancient symbols etched into the skin beneath flaked away like paint.

Seven hesitated.

The first maker tugged back on the chain.

Every light fixture within the cavern ignited blue.

[Legacy contract reactivation detected.]

[Designated asset: SEVEN.]

[Recall order pending.]

Austin Veyron felt the Freehold bond shift inside him, reaching for Seven. Pulling him free would give Austin enough power to interfere. Declare Seven property of the Freehold and overwrite the old contract.

The thing inside his ribs screamed for him to do that exact thing.

Austin Veyron didn’t.

”Seven,” he said quietly. ”Do you want me to break it?”

The machine pulled harder on its chains.

Seven staggered back. ”Yes.”

That was answer enough.

Austin willed Territorial Defiance into the length of chain between them. Not as a command, but as something Austin and Seven could agree on.

”No one else’.” Austin growled.

The contract line fizzled out of existence.

The first maker’s furnace ignited.

Chains writhed out of the furnace like worms until every inch of surface was crawling with debt-wraiths. The volunteers formed a defensive perimeter around Seven, firing while Maelis shredded exposed chains apart. Elena rushed forward and dove into the machine’s ledger itself, her fingers trembling against the fiber optic knots inside.

A blank page materialized in front of her eyes.

Seven’s original file name filled the ledger’s surface. Containment Frame 07, built to ferry debt- wraith cores without structural failure.

Below that was another schematic; this time showcasing every corner of the city.

Thin chains connected the hospital’s schematics to Grand Meridian, then out farther to the war camp, the municipal archives, and dozens of other buildings Austin had never seen mapped out before.

A black X marked a spot right in the center of it all.

”Vharra’ somewhere isn’ just here.” Elena pulled herself back to standing. ”It’ under Grand Meridian, too.”

One of the first maker’s chain arms swung toward Elena’s spine.

Seven intercepted. Hard enough that the blow tore open his shoulder before he slammed it into the furnace. Every welded joint within the machine groaned at the loss. Slow enough that Sarielle managed to slice through its elbow joint before it could move again.

Austin reached for Seven’s furnace door.

Instead of fire, there was a writhing mass of corded documents melded together.

Old hospital debts, demon contracts seized from propaganda rallies, and municipal documents Austin didn’t recognize fought against each other inside.

Every cord connected to the first maker traced back into an elegant black coil at its center, pulsing against what remained of its flesh skull.

Lady Vharra herself.

It whispered to the hunger in his ribs.

There was enough power within one simple command word. One brief act of DEVOU R that could burn away everything this machine represented.

And burn away every record the first maker guarded in the process.

Names. Clues. Everyone Austin cared about trapped beneath the machine’s mass of gears and fury.

He crushed the thing in his ribs against his chest.

”Maelis.” Austin shouted over the chaos.

She was still clawing her way through the first maker’s furnace. ”Can you snip the thread?”

”In time.”

”We don’ have that.”

Rin’s boot connected with the ankle of another wraith hanging off the pipe catwalks.

”Then make time.”

Austin grabbed hold of the edge of the first maker’s furnace door and began ripping it toward him.

Metal chains whipped across his body like wildcat tongues while every length of free chain the machine could grab pulled against him with saw-blade teeth.

Root armor folded beneath each hit. Blood spilled from Austin’s side as Root- graft dissolved under the punishment instead of reforming around it.

He held fast as Maelis ascended into the furnace with emberfire coiled in both hands.

She clawed at everything until she found it...

The black thread knotting itself through everything.

The entire cavern pitched upward.

Someone activated the hospital’s PA system above them.

The crackle of voice feedback followed it into the records vault.

”I suppose this is impressive,” a woman shouted down into every room of the hospital. ”Refusing to claim your allies while still using them to tear down my property.”

Lady Vharra.

Austin glanced up at the flooded cavern.

”You don’.” He shouted back at her over the wailing alarms. ”They wanted this.”

”You do not know what they want until you keep them safe.”

The black thread snapped free from the machinery’s programming.

The first maker did not immediately dissolve.

Its furnace doors swung outward on either side of its body, unleashing a tide of chained wraiths whose ledgers fluttered against their chests like beating wings.

Every page was ablaze with white-hot light, shining the names of every volunteer across the cavern like graffiti:

Rin’s old contracts with the Hunt.

Sarielle’s tracker history.

Maelis’ foundry employee badge.

...and beneath it all...

Austin’s original file name from the Freehold.

The wraiths thrashed around, trying to slam their ledgers back across their chests.

Austin slashed one creature down. But two collided against Seven.

His mechanical fingers clenched tight around both ledgers. Light flared up his arms.

Seven’s designation began rewriting his body as the machine forced him back into what he’d been before.

”You were crafted to contain what others could not bear.” The first maker growled.

Seven eyed his ledger.

Then locked eyes with Elena.

”You told me I am Seven.” Seven’s voice was gruffer than before, rough around the edges. ”More than what I was before.”

Seven jammed both ledgers into the machine’s furnace.

Where his designation should have burned him to ash...

...the Freehold answered.

Not as an order this time.

But as every person Austin had ever fought alongside since the day he’d sacrificed his name and defied their lord.

Light burned white across Seven’s arms. Ancient runes split across his torso and unraveled like ash into nothingness.

Legacy designation revoked.

Self-selected identity: stabilized.

File not found.

Seven stood. Towering above everyone in the room, even with all the stitches holding his body together.

The first maker crashed to its knees.

...but something within him remained airborne.

The ledger bolted across its chest popped open.

Only one line had been written on its surface.

COLLECTOR LOCATION: GRAND MERIDIAN, INTERNAL ACCESS.

Elena faded out.

”We’ve spoken before.” The voice resumed, quieter this time. ”You and your collector since the day your Freehold began.”

Lights flickered out across the cavern.

Malrec started laughing down below, somewhere in the hotel lobby.

Austin felt him through the network roots wrapping around his spine. Waves of the former lord bouncing off every barricade the council put in place after they’d been routed years ago. Past every secret Austin dedicated his life to uncovering.

The collector never operated from behind dozens of knights and bodyguards.

Instead it bargained when the price was right. Entered conversations as something captured. Something the Freehold could leverage over Malrec once his attention turned elsewhere...

...while everyone uprooted it from the first maker’s circuits...

...it waited for him back here.

Austin ripped at the Freehold bond anchoring him to the floor.

His vision flickered in and out around him:

Seven’s old guard station abandoned.

Traps triggering around where the glass case had been.

Malrec’s throne chair tipped over.

...and someone else. Right beside where Austin watched the chain- core float in amberlight.

Austin couldn’t see them past the root barricades. He only knew who stared back up at him by how calm they seemed.

Someone who believed every precaution taken to secure this entire building had already been adjusted in preparation for their arrival.

”Move,” Austin ordered everyone at once.

They needed no explanation.

The first maker’s furnace evaporated behind them, shredding rebar through stone like rain.

Seven sprinted up the stairs at twice his previous speed—far, far faster than either of them could hope to catch. Light flared where his designation had burned off.

Someone screamed down above them.

DEBT- WARHS FROM THE UPPER FLOORS MOBILIZED THE SECOND MAKER.

THE COLLECTOR IS DUE.