Note: "What took so long?" I started playing Balder's Gate 3 and thought, why are you writing such a soft Heisenberg? When you can be toxic and fun? So rewrote everything then dedicated every waking moment of my life to getting a high approval for that sexy elf
So sorry for the delay tho - I'm only on Act 2 tho so can't make any promises that I won't disappear for nearly a month again
Shout out to the commenter that thought Heisenberg was being sweet in Chapter 5 bc I feel you lmao - I promise there'll be more nicer moments soon, but this man knows what he wants and right now that is someone who he can boss around that isn't a mutant, metal corpse.
Chapter 9: Pinky Promise
It had been two weeks since Iris's "promotion" at the Heisenberg Factory and in all honesty… things were good.
Iris was good at her new job as "grunt" as Heisenberg called her. The flashy title of apprentice fading into distant memory by day 2 of her new role, when he had her hauling "delicate equipment" up and down the never ending hallways of the factory as he "didn't trust" his haulers yet. Liar.
Iris swept sweat from her forehead, bopping her head to the faint, tinny music from an old, battered radio perched on a tall shelf in the corner of the workshop. She couldn't quite make out the words, signals of any kind in the village were near impossible to grasp, but had a feeling that they were classics, ones she'd heard before.
On the workbench behind her lay two neat rows of Hauler helmets, one the standard mold casting Heisenberg had shown her after her tour, the other a little experiment she'd been cooking up. Heisenberg had come in night after night complaining about glitches with the Haulers, about how the signal from his powers to the brain would glitch and corrupt due to physical distress on the helmet, caused by the creatures bashing into each other, scuffling, and full out brawling with each other. Heisenberg insisted that there were no personalities left in the reanimated corpses but Iris disagreed. Some of those things were far too mean to not have some kind of soul still lingering inside.
To combat the issue, with some soldering and scrap metal taken from the gigantic waste room, Iris had come up with a way to provide extra protection to the small node that received the signals. Essentially, a second box welded into the side of the helmet, encasing the node between two protective walls of metal, a hole allowing the blinking green or red light to shine through, to show Heisenberg or Iris, should she ever get terribly lost and end up in a Hauler infested area, that things were working properly.
She'd not told her boss about the upgrade yet. If she could even call it that, she was yet to test out the helmets on an actual Hauler, but after spending a few days perfecting the process, and making her clumsy add on seem more seamless, less shoddy, she had mentioned to Heisenberg that she had something to show him after he was done working tonight. Which, from somehow even more unbearable heat of the forge, the creaking of the water pipes, and the screaming of her stomach, meant that dinner was soon. She snatched up the neatest looking Hauler helmet and scurried into the living quarters, placing the helmet in the middle of the table as if it was a vase of flowers.
That was another improvement.
Iris and her Lord had fallen into a tentative routine of stumbling into the kitchen at night, after a long day at the forge or doing whatever Heisenberg did, to share a meal of whatever could be cooked up as fast as possible, and some drink. He'd let her sit with him, go over dreams and memories, mock her a lot about One Direction, her favourite band ever, then help her grasp the idea of phones, computers, the internet. Iris would always get worked up, so excited to gain a seed of the person she used to be, desperate to let it bloom even in the desolate soil that was Miranda's village. Then, sometimes, after one or two many glasses of Heisenberg's unending whiskey supply, Iris would get upset, angry, she'd rage and cry out about the audacity of this woman, Miranda, to take away her life, her youth. Should she ever escape this prison, she'd be so far behind, a relic of an age long, long gone, only kept alive in this measly existence, to do nothing but work, and starve and play doting cultist towards her "God".
It had been a hard pill to swallow, even if Iris always knew in her gut that something was wrong with her God, Mother Miranda. Heisenberg always encouraged her "tantrums", he seemed to relish in watching her lash out, throw things, scream. Iris had to admit that her outbursts were a stark difference to her usual demeanor.
Hence why tonight would not be ruined by another tantrum. If the experiment worked, she'd allow herself one small glass of wine, always white wine, never red. She could never get the phantom taste of blood and piss out of her mouth after seeing Heisenberg… well.
Iris snapped herself out of her stupor at the distant sound of thumping boots, despite his eagerness to see Iris smash what little plates he owned, he hated to see her sad, mopey, "boring". Like Lady Dimitrescu, Heisenberg treated Iris best when she catered to him. Made him feel smart and powerful, entertained him with her "silly human emotions" despite him having a temper like an atomic bomb. It was funny, how alike the two siblings actually were. Maybe one day, Iris would be able to tease him about it without being eviscerated.
"Ok Igor what wreckage do you have to show me?" Heisenberg quickly made use of two tumblers that had been drying next to the rusty sink, fishing a half empty bottle of bourbon from the cabinet underneath.
"I made some changes to your designs?" Iris could hear the uncertainty in her voice, presenting this to the Lord of Metal made her feel a bit like a child presenting some finger painting to a parent. "I was hoping I could test it out?"
The Lord judged her work silently, the helmet spinning in a slow circle. The prolonged silence made Iris sweat more than the heat of the forge.
"Make the opening 0.5 cm larger, there's some mesh wiring in the field we could make use of to cover the opening for further protection." She scribbled the comments on her hand with an old pen she'd found in his desk. "Test out a helmet with a lighter weight metal on the side, this current version might be too heavy for the corpse. Their muscles aren't the best even when they are still bleeding".
Iris was still ignorant of the exact goings ons in Heisenberg's "surgery" rooms. He'd forbidden her from ever going near, said she'd get all human and emotional, and that if he wanted a fainting waif he'd just go into the village to find some maiden. It had somewhat offended her, that the Lord didn't see her as a maiden. She put it down to being so revered as an "innocent maiden" by her Lady for so many years.
A gloved hand dropped onto her head, scruffing up her head like a dog.
"You did good kid. Really taking a shine to this tinkering work huh?" He took a swig of his bourbon, grimacing "Duke's cheaping out on us, this tastes like piss"
"Thank you Heisenberg! I'll get to it first thing in the morning!" Iris then choked down the bourbon, her boss was right, it really did taste like piss.
To distract from the bad taste, Iris jumped up to make up for dinner. A more extravagant one than usual, a miniature celebration of her success. Although that didn't say much, with just some meat, potatoes and root vegetables remaining from their latest order from Duke. He really was cheapening out.
"Do you think he's having trouble getting in and out of the village Heisenberg? The Duke?" His response was a bark of laughter.
"Hell no, that man, thing, whatever is like smoke, you can't catch him no matter what."
"Who even is he?"
"We don't have enough booze in the world to get me to ponder that question"
Whilst she set up a roast of beef, potatoes, parsnips and carrots, with the last dredges of honey and gravy found at the back of a dusty cupboard, her Boss took care of the remaining piss-bourbon. Iris snatched up a bottle of wine to replace it and shoved a full goblet under the man's nose before plating and presenting the meal.
"What a good little housewife you are Iris, surprised you even know what cooked meat is after spending so much time up in that convent"
Iris grimaced, it had been worse than going down to the cellars in her opinion, carving the fat bloody meat of countless dead pigs was something she avoided as much as possible whilst living in the castle.
They ate the food in a peaceful silence, though Iris noted the amount of drinks her boss was taking in, it took a lot to get him drunk to be fair, but this was excessive even for him. Every so often she'd catch his dark eyes that glittered more and more with each drink.
"I have a proposition for you, my little apprentice." The man finally announced after finishing his meat and playing around with his vegetables enough for Iris to consider it an attempt at eating them. She was not going to stoop so low to nag him like a mother. Well not his mother but still…
"Yes Boss?" He liked it when she called him that, weird since it had pretty much the same connotations as 'my Lord', power and authority of her.
"You're a good worker, quick learner, and you want to get that bitch six feet under as much as I do.. Right?"
"Of course I do!" It wasn't rare for him to demand reassurance that she was indeed against Miranda and willing to back him up in his war against her. Iris didn't blame him, she imagined trust was a foreign sentiment to all of the Lords.
"Well.. you're great and all but… so very, very human."
"Unfortunately I guess?" Iris didn't like where this was going.
"Well… I can fix that." He must have seen her freeze up with those predatory eyes of his, immediately jumping onto his reasoning for removing her humanity, "See, I've been studying, getting our Dukey to do some research for me, some spying. Miranda certainly has her fingers in all of the infected pies around her, but the control is weakened when she is not the one infecting the host."
"Host?"
"Ah right, you villagers don't know shit about Cadou… Well, long story short. That Black God you all worship, that's not another name for Mother Dear, it's a mutant fungal colony, hidden deep within the caves in the mountains. Miranda stumbled across the damned thing and learnt that she could infect parasitic nematodes with the stuff, stick it in living beings, and mutate them, control them… Control me."
Iris remembered children's stories of beasts in the mountains, guarding Mother Miranda, their Queen, their Black God's treasures. Clearly there was some truth in the fact.
She'd always wondered how Miranda's gifts had been granted. How Lady Dimitrescu became the way she was, how innocent maids were turned into Moroaica, or whatever those bird creatures were that scratched at the roof at night, waking up the newer maids.
Iris didn't think, with all the time in the world, that she'd ever guess that the answer to these powers was… fungus and nematodes? Weren't nematodes some lizard thing found in ponds? She pushed that question aside, focusing on the present, looming threat of her drunk boss deciding that Iris needed to come face to face with a mutant pond lizard.
"Please… Please no."
He snarled, like Dimitrescu the word "No" scored him like a devil washed with holy water.
"No? And here I thought you'd be jumping at the chance to be anything but your pathetic, weak, human self."
"No… it's not that! I've seen what my- Dimitrescu's gift did to my friends, those poor maids left to rot in the cellar! Feeding off rotten flesh! Doomed to stumble around in the dark forever!"
"Ah yeah, that big bitch was never too smart. Tried to make her own experimental version of the Cadou.. Didn't like that her 'daughters' had such a big weakness. One snowball and those buzzing bitches are dead." What? That was why the castle had to be kept warm? The girls would die without the fires?
It was that easy to be rid of them? To escape? To save her friends?
Iris chugged down her glass, Heisenberg immediately refilling it, eye's never leaving hers. She had to break the contact lest she start crying again. She had a feeling he wouldn't tolerate her tears tonight.
"Don't worry kid. I would never risk you like that. As pathetic, weak humans go… You're pretty decent." He gave her a roguish smile, one that would have had Iris blushing if it was any other time, if he wasn't trying to convince her to become some science experiment.
"W-What would you do to me?"
"It'd be sweet and painless, I'd give you some of the good stuff, none of that plant shit that's growing all over the place… Just a tiny cut right here," He grazed her right ribcage, barely brushing the underside of her breast, Iris felt her face heat up, his smirk widened. "Pop in a sample, then sew you back up good as new. Even got some special salve so you won't scar."
"What if it doesn't work? What if I become a monster?"
"You won't don't worry… Now come on, you don't trust your boss? Have I not been good enough for you? Told you enough info about your stupid boy bands and teen vampire books?"
"What if I don't want to?" Came out as a tiny whisper, Iris would never have said the words if she wasn't so drunk. She already knew the answer.
Heisenberg let out a big, theatrical sigh, his hand leaving her ribcage and cupping her reddened cheeks,
"Well then kid, there's not much use for you. You can't help win a war just by making helmets."
Iris was too drunk to be sure if it was a threat of death or just abandonment. She liked to think that Heisenberg enjoyed her company enough to not brutally murder her for saying no. Shipping her off back to the castle on the other hand…
"Please promise me that I won't turn into a monster." A shaky pinky extended towards him.
"I promise." With his free hand Heisenberg entwined his pinky with hers, eyes boring into her very soul, sharp teeth glinting. Looking at the very definition of the cat who ate the canary.
The hand on her cheek stroked her face, a mockery of a sweet gesture that a lover would do.
Iris hated herself for leaning into it.
A pathetic, weak human.