xp_logs | Day Zero: A terrible mercy

Emma sighed as the woman's death blazed across her senses in ecstatic fire. She'd forgotten how many Hellfire Club lackeys she'd slipped from collection squad clutches and sent to their deaths, but it was too many and they were too pointless. Despite the fact that their deaths at Mastermold's hands would have been far worse than those she chose for them, they burned on Emma's conscience still. If they had succeeded . . . but despite sending them in to break power lines, to destroy optic fibre cables, to release water mains and set fires, Mastermold's hold on the Stock Exchange remained as strong as ever. Emma had achieved minor damage, small setbacks to the increasing power going into the building, but they had bought only minimal time and the Primes and meat spores that were coming out of the building were increasing in number and size. And none of it had helped Doug make any inroads in his fight.

Emma closed her eyes, feeling tiredness wash over her for a moment. This much telepathic work on this little sleep was starting to give her a headache. She locked the sensation away and, when she opened her eyes, was as fresh as if she had just woken.

Time to try something else. The first rush of sensation as she opened her mind to the prisoners held in the meat pens was almost enough to make her flinch. This was terror at its rawest and, from what she could see through their eyes, well-justified. The trading floor appeared to be some kind of Lovecraftian nightmare, and Primes and meat spores lurched past the windows of the meat pens. Time after time, Primes came to the door and Emma rode in the mind of their victims, mapping what Mastermold was building, shutting down the minds of each person as they were fed to the machines or the flesh pools, taking their pain into herself and ending it cleanly. Those who fought the Primes, noted Emma, were no more successful at avoiding their fate than those who were catatonic with fear.

It seemed to take forever, but at last a Prime took a man from the pens and away from the main floor. Down they went, twisting and turning through the maze of maintenance corridors beneath the building. The Prime led the man to the door she had hoped for, the room that housed the emergency generator, and Emma allowed herself a moment of anticipation. It was only the smallest of chances, but if she could use the chance to break something on the generator, reduce the power to Ignatova exponentially, rather than a drip at a time . . .

The door opened. Rank upon rank of Prime stared out, half-fleshed, being built even as Emma watched. The first rank was completed even as the man whose eyes she looked through stood in the doorway. A hundred Primes, made and unmade, stood between her and any chance of disrupting Ignatova's power supply.

She shut down the man's mind before the Primes could add him to the flesh pool, then went back to the meat pens and shut down the minds of everyone in them. There was no hope of rescuing them, or those who would be collected after them, not for a long time. At the rate Ignatova was building her Primes, those already in the pens would be long dead before such rescue could come. With a terrible mercy, Emma took away all their terror and their pain, leaving only their flesh to suffering.

It was time, Emma decided, to concentrate on Plan B.