Shadow Slave

Once again, reality turned out to be very different from how storytellers liked to portray it. There was no conflict over jurisdiction or negativity expressed by the police officers. Instead, they were genuinely happy to see the Awakened specialists arrive.

…Well, of course they were. It was just as the old policeman had once told, right before Sunny faced the First Nightmare — if he died there and no Awakened was near, they would have to fight the Nightmare Creature his body had turned into themselves. And that was not something mundane humans ever wished to do.

Master Jet walked over to one of the policemen and greeted him with a short nod. Despite the fact that he was much older than her — not to mention Sunny himself — the officer treated them with the utmost respect.

"Nice to see you again, ma\'am. Greetings, sir. Let me show you the way."

He led them deeper into the alley, toward a heavy metal door that hid in the deep shadows. It was wide open, and there were strange flashes of intense white light coming out of it, mixing with the red glow of the police sirens. The whole situation seemed a little surreal to Sunny, as though he was in the midst of a strange dream.

\'I mean… where else would I be addressed as "sir" by a police officer? Life sure is funny sometimes…\'

Slightly amused by this thought, he turned to Master Jet and asked:

"What is this place?"

She hesitated for a few moments, then said in an unexpectedly dark tone:

"It\'s a… club, of sorts. Called the Slaughterhouse. One of the few such establishments in the city."

Sunny stared at the door, which had no sign or any indication that there was a club on the other side of it. Was this a marketing ploy to create a feeling of mystique and exclusivity, or were there things going on inside that needed to be hidden?

"...A peculiar name for a nightclub."

Master Jet smiled with a corner of her mouth.

"It is meant for a very specific clientele. The ground floor is your usual dance club, but beneath it, there is a VIP area with an underground arena. There is nothing illegal going on there, just… things that are in poor taste."

She paused, and then added somberly:

"They send Echoes, usually dormant beasts, to fight against mundane fighters there. The fighters are paid generously, of course, and the club profits from the rich assholes who enjoy watching this sort of thing enough to recoup losses if one of the Echoes is accidentally destroyed. Everyone wins… I guess."

Sunny frowned.

He knew that wealthy people were big fans of wasteful forms of entertainment, and that there were arenas where precious Echoes were made to fight each other just for the spectacle of it. Hiring mundane humans to battle them, though… wasn\'t it a bit too much?

\'Did I suddenly become a child after the Awakening?\'

Of course, nothing was ever too much. Sunny knew all about how vice worked, from his childhood in the outskirts. His current surprise was just because he lacked knowledge of what forms it took among the more affluent layers of society.

"So what happened in that Slaughterhouse?"

Master Jet shrugged.

"That\'s what we have to find out. All I know is that everyone inside is dead. Kind of ironic, actually!"

The police officer guiding them spared her a glance, and then said hoarsely:

"It\'s a… proper mess there, ma\'am. Not for people with weak stomachs. And also not something that a mundane human would have been able to do."

\'Charming…\'

Inside, the air was filled with the smell of blood. Sunny found himself in a vast hall flooded by flashing lights, blinding white mixing with short moments of absolute darkness to create a strange and invasive atmosphere. It was hard to perceive anything in this strobe light hell.

Master Jet frowned:

"What\'s with the light show?"

The policeman looked down in embarrassment.

"Sorry, ma\'am. We figured out how to turn off the music, but the lights are giving us some trouble."

She gave him an unamused look.

"Well, get on with it."

The officer turned around and walked away, shouting at his colleagues. A few moments later, the hall suddenly became enveloped in darkness, and then the regular illumination kicked in.

Without the constantly flashing strobe lights, the club looked smaller and more worn down than Sunny had expected. He did not pay too much attention to the design of the interior, the raised stage, or the bar with hundreds of expensive-looking bottles standing on the shelves behind it.

With a gloomy expression on his face, Sunny was looking at the bodies.

There were more than a dozen of them, all broken and terribly disfigured, as if chewed and spewed out by a tornado. But of course, a natural disaster had nothing to do with what had happened in the seedy club. The result only looked like it.

This was the work of an Awakened.

Suddenly, he remembered Master Jet\'s question, seeing it in a new light.

When an Awakened loses control… what do you think happens?

The answer was right in front of him.

Terribly battered human bodies were lying on the floor, drowning in pools of blood. Indeed, this was not a sight for those who had weak stomachs... but, for better or worse, Sunny had seen enough horrors to not be moved too much by such a scene.

It left a deep impression even on him, though.

Sunny didn\'t have to look too closely to realize what had transpired. The position of the bodies, the nature of their wounds… the murderer had not used some powerful Memory or let an Echo loose on these people. No, it was much simpler.

They just did it with their hands.

Back during the Gate battle, Sunny had thrown a heavy vehicle at the advancing horde of Nightmare Creatures, carving a bloody path in their ranks. That was the strength of an Awakened. Even if he had been augmented by a shadow, his own strength was still vastly superior to that of a mundane human.

A frenzied Awakened could tear through a dozen humans in a matter of seconds, and none of them would be able to do anything to stop it. In front of a Spell carrier, mundane humans were like paper dolls. It only took a little effort to destroy them.

\'That bastard…\'

Sunny remembered how he had doubted whether or not he wanted to play the role of an executioner on the way to the crime scene.

...Rain could have been one of the victims. He could have been one, too, before becoming an Awakened.

As he was looking at the broken bodies, all his doubts disappeared.