Dominion Chapter 19 (Patreon)

Chapter Nineteen – The Debut

Travelling by Siberian was interesting to say the least. Bonesaw, myself, and Siberian had all chosen members of the Protectorate in one fashion or another, so we, along with my two minions, were going to the rig. Apparently, according to Jack’s game, we had to let the contestants know they were playing before we announced ourselves. 

I had no disillusions. I knew why he had chosen the Merchants. Scum. The bottom feeders. He’d chosen to kill them for the simple fact that I wouldn’t feel too guilty about it. I would actually feel like we were doing the city a favor. 

And I did. I wouldn’t be participating in the killing. I might not even go. Being a member of the Nine gave me the freedom to choose if I wanted to go or not, but it would happen regardless. 

I wished I knew how Jack gained his information so quickly, but then after a moment’s thought, realized I didn’t actually want to know. Jack didn’t have informants. He didn’t have inside men. When you were Jack Slash, anyone was an inside man. And if they weren’t? The next victim surely would be. 

We slid through the city, carried along by the Siberian’s physics-defying jumps, climbing buildings and falling to the streets. We landed in front of cars that only stopped because my control was getting so good that during the few moments I controlled each new string of thralls, I could perceive and stop them quickly enough. 

Hundreds saw us, while thousands of thralls passed in and out of my control. An odd chain of the Siberian jumping, holding Bonesaw and myself while Vigilant and Penny clung to her neck. Siberian’s invulnerability was… astounding. She could gift it to anyone who was touching her, and very suddenly, any and all objects in this world became as paper. 

I felt powerful and in control with my minions but Siberian gave power a whole new meaning. 

As we traveled, an air of terror began to seep into my thralls. Word having spread even faster than Siberian could traverse a city. The nine were here. Dominion was home. 

It could have been my imagination but I think that Siberian took the Scenic route for me. Climbing up Medhall tower, to Captain’s Hill, across the Boardwalk and straight out to the docks. 

Jack may want to make a statement tonight by killing the Merchants but apparently Siberian didn’t care much about that. 

I was… thrilled. 

Home. I didn’t realize how much I’d missed it. Seeing it like this, even carried in the right arm of the Siberian, there was a nostalgia, and a sense of burgeoning enlightenment in my soul as I realized I’d finally finally come back home. Four months of running for my life, of terror, and soul crushing guilt, all seemed to melt away under the warm breeze of the mid morning day as we flew. 

It was almost enough to make me forget we were going to plunge this place into fucking chaos. 

“Want to talk, Dominion? Or should I?” Bonesaw asked as we landed on the furthest pier, closest to the rig. Had I not seen what Siberian was capable of, I would’ve wondered how we were going to get out there. 

I thought for a moment. This was my debut. My showing. My revelation of what the protectorate had forced me to become. Hunting me. Tricking me. Attempting to fucking cage me. 

Shunting away the guilt into all the thralls I had, over twenty at the moment, I set my nerves. This wasn’t what I had wanted, but what they’d forced onto me. This was revenge, catharsis, justice, and… and fun. All mixed together. 

“I want to–!” I cut off abruptly. On a building, spray painted in recognizable script was a message. 

Become who you must. There is more at stake than you know. Bloody hands are necessary, for all that lies ahead. You are not death.
You. Are. Hope.
Take it all.

–CHL

Bonesaw stopped and looked at the message that had so caught me. I am… hope? What… 

The Crazy Hat Lady had never written so much to me. Nor had she ever given me even the possibility of redemption, except that cryptic comment that she would keep my heart clean. 

It didn’t feel clean. Even now, she was still trying. Still reaching out to me, now that I’d committed. Now that I was… turning. Turning into something my father and mother would hate. Now? Now of all times, she tells me…

A tear slid down my cheek. 

“Dominion?” Bonesaw asked. She and Siberian were looking at me with concern. Genuine concern. My thralls felt worry too, though I hadn’t turned them around to read the message. 

“What does… that mean?” Bonesaw asked, pointing at the mural.

I was given no time to answer as a small boom echoed from the rig. I had just enough time to jerk my head towards the rig and see an honest to god missile blasting straight towards us. I had no time to react. None of us did. 

But that didn’t matter as the missile, no larger than a person was tall, slammed directly into my face. And crumpled into slag. 

I watched the inside of an explosion in wonder, feeling nothing as the Siberian’s power protected me from any and all harm. 

The ground beneath us remained firm as well, but a ring a few feet around us showed devastation as the blinding light cleared. Fire and burning rubble were all that remained of the docks. Two of my thralls had been flung back from the pier and were gravely injured, though the rest had been far enough away that they remained undamaged. 

I glowered, forgetting the Hat Lady’s meaningless messages for now. It kept niggling in the back of my mind, but my anger was stronger.

“Take us over there, please, Siberian. Bonesaw. I’ll do the talking,” I said, with a cold rage. What could they have hoped to accomplish with that? 

Bonesaw grinned. “I look forward to your art! Big sis!” 

Bonesaw’s strange obsession with art, training as Jack’s protege apparently, was odd to me. There was no art in murder, and I didn’t see the art in her amalgamations either. Jack had said that I wasn’t yet suited to making art. I needed to be molded first before I could make something new. As far as I was concerned, I agreed with him wholeheartedly.

I would murder Emma. Maybe Sophia too while I was at it. They were the only people I found myself wanting to die. It was a long jump from visceral justice to reveling in artistic homicide. 

Siberian crouched lower than she had on the entire trip, and even though I knew it wasn’t necessary, I hung onto her tightly before we rocketed into the air. Flying over open ocean for what seemed like half a mile, we exploded out towards the rig. When we reached the peak of our ascent and started to fall, Bonesaw lifted her hands and exclaimed in childish glee, like this was nothing more than a roller coaster. 

A rather large part of me wanted to join the girl as we fell.

We impacted on an invisible nothing shimmering in the sky for half a moment before shattering through it. The barrier that surrounded the rig shattered, bits of it collapsing like broken glass before disappearing into wafts of harmless energy that tickled my nose as we fell the last few meters to land hard on the converted oil rig’s landing area, which usually docked the tour boats that came over periodically.

Almost two hundred souls joined my Dominion as we landed. On top of the building, a helicopter was taking off. It was outside my range, so I pointed up a bit. Siberian grinned and we launched to a higher platform again. 

The cacophony of fear from my throng was immense. My thralls’ emotions assaulted the back of my mind dimly. So many and so many feeling the same emotion made those emotions more easy to notice than ever before. Feedback from my thralls had always been muted, if not completely unnoticeable to me, unless I truly tried to feel them. For me to be even slightly aware of their fear meant that all of them must be terrified. 

One hundred and fourteen men, seventy two women. Several with powers. Wonderful. 

There was a man holding his hand over a red button which seemed hilariously cliche in one of the control towers.