Archive of Our Own ^beta

“I think we got off on the wrong fin. Foot. Whatever.”

Despite yourself you glance to the right, where you could see the ocher stains against the metal of the walls and floors, having been poorly scrubbed off. In the back of your mind not paralyzed by animal fear you guess there weren’t many mops large enough for something like this.

Your mind was still spinning, still aching, still headachey, but something crystallized. Gained enough solidity to press to the front of your thoughts, like an icicle in the meat of your mind.

That was you. It wasn't a dream. 

You died, and you were back again.

Its tail, a long appendage strapped in satchels and nylon rope, swept over the dried smear. “Hey, now. Don’t waste time pondering over something as small as that.” When you looked back it was clearing its throat, two cracked clawtips meeting the indigo scales there. It glinted strangely in the light of its own lure, dropping from its forehead to dangle between its three eyes. Glowing iridescent blues and greens, like the surface of an oil spill, and shimmering out entirely in other spots.

It spread its arms wide. All three of them.

“I would start with my normal introduction, but that would be more than a little counterintuitive by this point, so I’ll cut to it. My name is Sebastion, you’re only friend. If I'm correct, your supervisors have told you to secure 'loose assets'. Documents, vials, whatever. However, if I can make it worth your while, I'm gonna ask you to cut a deal. Give me any research you might have on you, and I'll give you some of the items I've scavenged. Here, you can just, pick it off my tail. These could be more useful to you, compared to some 'silly data', no?”

You finally find your voice. You croak, rusty from fear-disuse, “ Sebastion ? Your name is Sebastion?”

“Yes.” Its—his?—voice was like a metal-stringed harp being sawed in half. “What of it?”

Nothing. You guess you just weren’t expecting that. 

“Why did you…shoot me?” You almost said killed, but that also almost gave your brain an aneurysm.

“In defense of our prior meeting, you snuck up on me.” He grinned toothily, which you thought looked painful. “I don’t like surprises.”

“As for that? In my defense of our prior meeting, you snuck up on me.” He grinned toothily, which you thought looked painful. “I don’t like surprises.”

Glowing pupils were the only features visible past a moss of hair thin and textured like angler lures. And the very literal angler lure dangling over you both, The light it emitted shone bright white-yellow at the center before curdling to the color of pus around the chamber edges. A radio on a table you only just noticed murmured white noise. Somewhere above came the quiet metallic jingle of bells. That’s what you could make out of your peripheral—you refused to look at his face. Too busy eyeing the triple-barreled shotgun hung at his hip. 

“Two rules in here.” He splayed a four-fingered hand for emphasis. “One: No weapons. Of any kind. Two—”

“You have a shotgun.”

The eye to the very right of his face blinks out of sync from the other two, winking at you. “It’s my shop. Two: You don’t ask questions, neither will I. Three: You can linger if you’re browsing, but if you’re not buying something, scram. They’ll blow your diving gear if you stay off grid too long anyway, so unless you intend on cleaning up after yourself…”

That final statement made you acutely aware of the assembly arranged at the back of your neck. Positioned—you had no doubt it was intentional—so that if you moved your head back and up, the crown of your spine would rub against the bullet chambered there.

“It was an accident. Honest.” He held up his three hands in a placating gesture, but his smile was all teeth. Then he brought his towering face, fangs, claws, into very clear view over you. “Living down here, you kind of develop an itchy trigger finger. I’m sure you’ve noticed the other residents. I don’t think it’d be undo arrogance to say I’m the better alternative. Besides, friends forgive each other, don’t they?”

He had you dead to rights there, and you both knew it. 

Didn’t mean you had to be happy about it.

He moved up, looming taller still, before seeming to settle in on himself, the whipcoil of it his body following suit. A seat without a chair. His uppermost set of hands rubbed together in a way unique to used auto salesmen. In other words, he was an untrustworthy bastard. You’d met his kind before.

But he did have things. It was at least worth a look.

“Now. Enough talk. Interested?”

You probably got scammed. Hadn’t even looked at any of the data they had you run around collecting yourself. In your defense, you never had the time. Now you knew that it hadn’t done you any favors. Sebastian had grinned over you the entire time, offering his professional opinion. Repeatedly. Even when you don’t ask for it. His expression was—despite his inhumanity—positively shit-eating. The smile of someone who knew something you didn’t, and wanted you to damn well know it.

The hefted the flash beacon from your previous oscillation. It was slightly scuffed, one bulb was shattered, and it was the only thing you could afford. The handle still had a bit of dried blood on it. Your blood. It was not the first time you’d seen it, no. But it was not often one got to hold the source of their demise after the fact.

You had argued, tentatively, more a suggestion, that it was yours. You found it, after all. “Sentimental value costs extra.” had been his reply. At least he’d changed the batteries—so he said. Not wanting to repeat the last time, you hadn’t argued back. You could tell he found your capitulence amusing, and it grated on you.

“Another satisfied customer.” He purred.

You took the keycard on the table by the radio and hurried back the way you’d come.

“Oh, and, one more thing.”

You turn, slowly. Half-expecting to be staring down three muzzles, ready to boom the same hello as before.

Sebastian curled his four claws in a wave.

“Be seeing you soon.”

You didn’t make it far. Your head was still spinning, caught off-kilter by the confirmation of your death. So when the lights flickered, fluorescents sparking in and out of being, you barely noticed at all.

And then it started. Like a roar submerged in oil. A sensation like the building wave of pressure in front of a storm. You notice ripples traveling across filthy puddles. The lights flickered again, and this time, you knew something was very, very wrong.  On some deeper level it trigger an instinctive understanding. Something is coming.

It rose into the screech of static and dry click of gears. The wind began to harp, displaced en masse. You look over your shoulder and see the lights a dozen rooms down sparking and shattering one by one, coronas of broken glass and weak mantles of sparks, circuits slamming close like black-iron gateways. A cascade of wet darkness and razorblades moving toward you at unbelievable speed. Something frothed inside, spilling over itself in spark-dripping tendrils and bony protrusions. You think you see a face. A skull, but…unlike any you’d ever seen before.

Panicked, you tried running. You kept that up for a little bit—a room—but they’d been holding onto you for what must have been months. The diet was lean; your cell small. Your legs burned from all the walking just to get here. You stumbled. Vision faltered tunnel-vision gray. The sound was not of this earth.

And then absolute quiet. Stillness. It overcame. It overwhelmed. It’s like being wrapped in a warm, wet, weighted blanket. It’s drowning in a river of fire. And in that inky black mass a thousand bone hooks leech into your skin and tear your soul in a thousand different directions. It hurt, but it is quick.

You came too with the feeling of stomach acid kissing your throat and cheeks. 

Pain was waiting for you in the waking world. It throbbed behind your eyes, riding the cords from the server centers of your brain, making you teary. Your jaw was stiff, and your heart burned in some way you failed to place. Like you’d been scrapped empty and everything put back in wrong. Your skin felt sensitive and sore. A look at the back of your palm revealed an unquantifiable number of crossing scores. Scars almost entirely faded, just visible in the grimy glow of the single overhead lamp. The air smelled of smoke and some kind of briny headiness that was disconcertingly familiar.

You were sitting—sat? You didn’t remember sitting yourself at least—in an office chair. Cheap plastic and aluminum. In front of you was a table—lacquer wood, more expensive. Files were arranged on one side in a bundle an inch thick. An ashtray with dozens of flakey butts sat at the other end opposite of you. You stopped looking at anything else when you realized one was still glowing.

You followed the coil of smoke into the air. Three blue eyes flash in the dark.

It took a few tries to unlock your jaw. It was still stuck in what you guessed was the position of a scream. “Sebastion?”

He pulled forward, darkness concealing him dripping away in the light. He was just as huge as before, but meandered down to your level. This was the first time you’d actually looked at his face. Hair lanky and jet black, pale semi-translucent skins drawn tight over gaunt cheekbones. A streamlined face, one side pulled up in a waterlogged twitch of facial scales to sneer fangs, faint blue veins spidering beneath his skin.

He held half a cigarette between two clawtips and blew smoke at you. You cough.

“What gave it away?” He rasped dryly.

You didn’t know how in the hell to respond to that. This didn’t happen last time. Last time you didn’t even think anything had happened. Not for real. But then you saw the stain. Then he’d all but confirmed it.

You died. Now you weren’t. Again.

“How am I—”

“Alive? What did I say the rule was about questions?” He took another drag before tilting his head and finishing the rest of the rod. The sound he made was hardly one of satisfaction. “You’re alive. That’s more than what these other sods can say.”

“But…how?”

Why?

“Because my employer has taken an interest in you. For some reason.” You weren’t sure if you should be insulted or not. He rested two of his hands, each twice as large as yours and ending in blunt claws, on the top of the table, folding them. It creaked and bent under the weight of his elbows. “Listen. I get it. You got your mind flayed and brains blown out both in the same day. It’s been an afternoon for you, but frankly, I don’t care. While I’m here, any schmuck is welcome to waltz into my shop and steal my shit. I am taking time out of my day to come to you…” His clawtip waved in the air before your face. “whatever your name is. Don’t say it. I don’t care.”

The conversational tone was absurd. You only had more questions than before, but the walls of your throat were pressed together, and you felt more acid biting the back of your tongue. It hurt to try and form words. It hurt to think about words. What did that thing do to you?

But when you looked back at him, you noticed there appeared to be something behind him. But it hurts to focus too. You drift: you can look at it only through the corner of your eyes, but your attention slides off it like water off a globe, and only hones when Sebastions snaps his fingers. The sound—like nails over chalk—has you sitting straight in your chair. When you try and focus on it again, you find nothing there. 

“Pay attention. Here’s the low down. You’re gonna go back in there.” He walked two off his fingers across the desk in mimicrty of a stickman. The tips leave lightly-colored indents in the dark surface. “Don’t worry, nobody’s going to be any the wiser. And you’re gonna keep going back in there until you get out by grabbing that crystal Urbanshade wants so badly. Easy, right?”

“I died to…to something.”

He flicked the butt into the ashtray to sit among dozens others. Ashes dust through the air. His movements are sluggish, almost awkward, telling you this place is not as cavernous as the dark suggests. The table is comically small for him, as are the cigars. You guessed all of those were from him, and probably recent. There were enough there to kill someone.

“Yeah, well. Easy is a relative term after all. But that’s why you’re here.” Sebastian reached for the thick pile of documentation to his right. With surprising dexterity he tapped through the sheets until stopping. He drew one from the stack and placed the rest back on the table. He nudged the pile into order with a tip from his tertiary arm. “Since those idiiiots up there didn’t feel like telling you about which exact dangers you’d face down here, I’ve been… asked, to fill that role.”

The manilla folder whispered over the tabletop. You moved to take it, but his claw came down on its center like a knife.

“He was very specific with…how much information I could share with you though. It’s stupid, I know,” You weren’t sure, but did his third eye bat to the right? “his orders, not mine. All the documents are heavily classified—lots of black lines, [REDACTED] text, whole nine yards. Oh, and no heads get popped in this room—unfortunately for my shop. They don’t know were here, so take your time.”

He said that last part in a tone that implied he did not wish for you to take your time.

His digit pulls back. You grab the edge of the folder and pull it open. It smells like dust and ink. Your eyes skim over the top, locking fast on the picture held in place by a paper clip of what you guessed that thing was. It took barely ten seconds to get through; the paper was more black than white.

“There’s barely anything in here.”

Sebastian made a thoughtful noise. “You should really get working on that then.”

You gave him a fish-eyed expression. He chuckled, then when you kept staring at him, sighed. He reached into his vest pocked with a hand like the branch of an ancient oak, pulled free another cigarette and a match. He struck the phosphor head with a claw and it bloomed into orange-red life, fire oiling of azure lacquer scales.

“So, obviously, these aren’t the real documents. They keep those upstairs somewhere even I can’t get to—and I’ve tried. They're replicas provided to us by our mutual employer. It’s all we get to work with. The more you die to something, the more black lines he lets me remove. You see where this is going.”

Your mouth feels like cotton and metal shavings. “Find out more, by dying more.”

Sebastion nods. “We adapt. That’s how we survive. So adapt faster.”

You placed the document back on the table, uncaring how it landed. It pushed the ashes at the other end. “What if I don’t?”

Sebastion shrugged his massive shoulders. “Then don’t. Wait at the sub until they get bored of playing with you. They’re sadistic fucks, but they’ll get tired eventually. And when they do, you wind up back here anyway, no worse for wear, and we can resume our staring competition. And I don’t need to blink.” To illustrate this, a transparent lens slid over his eyes. “Between you and me, this really is the better option. For whatever reason, you’ve been picked for this. Yeah, sure, you may die painfully one or two or two dozen or a hundred times, but statistically you outta make it through the gauntlet at least once. When you do, you’re home free.”

“You didn’t mention any of this in the shop.”

“Out there things get busy. But in here, there’s no one else to bother us. This was supposed to go down differently, but since our first meeting was a bit…er….irregular, this is what we get. You done with this thing?” 

You nod stiffly, still at a loss for words. You felt dizzy and your heart beat strange and weighty at your center. Sebastian lines the file up straight with the rest. He tucks them all under his offset arm and uncoils himself from where he’d been sitting. You only hear the quiet murmur of scale sliding off one another as he moves. The rustle of the fabric of his clothes is louder.

You half-rise from the table. “Wait.”

Sebastian stops. Smoke curls through the air like a sluggish, living thing. In the gloom behind it three eyes as bright as the embers clustering to the stick burn back.

You could have asked any number of things. Who was this employer? Where was this place? Were you the first? The second? The hundredth?

“How am I still alive?” You ask.

Sebastian looks at you.

“You sure about that?”

“Mutagen samples. Three of them.”

You almost gawked. “For a flashlight? What do you even need this stuff for?”

“That is precisely none of your business. Now, pay up.”

Sebastian's grubby claws made a beckoning gesture. The tips of another hand clicked against the stock of his shotgun. You noted that habit early. One tap for one second, slicing time into a million clicks. He did something similar with his primary hands, tugging on the golden—real gold, by the looks of it—ring around the middle finger of his left hand. It looked like it barely fit. If it was uncomfortable, you didn’t understand why he didn’t just take it off.

You shake your head, weary of his third hand’s nervous skittering. “No deal.”

“You’d really prefer the people that strapped a bomb to your neck get anything more than what you were sent to get?”

Not for a second. “Yes.”

You turn to leave. In the distant darkness you hear growling and grinding, and sounds you had no hope of identifying the sources of until you saw them yourself. The dark out there is almost complete. All light and heat have been drained of everywhere but this particular room, spilled away.

You make it five steps before you come to a halt. A sound like a cigarette addict’s snore underscored by cracking cartilage came from behind. It took you a moment to realize Sebastion was laughing

“Alright. What’ve you got?” he says.

You pulled off your utility bag. It was shoulder slung canvas with waterproof zippers. Eleven liters wasn't enough to hinder mobility, but was to store a few worthwhile accessories. You take scrunched folders, water-stained around the edges, USB drives, spreadsheets of data, and a single mutagen sample. The stabilized extract within the glass vial twisted in a helix, glowing with soft bioluminescence. You didn’t even want to know what it had been extracted from. All unopened—or in the case of the sample, natured. The shopkeep increased his prices for tampered material.

You notice his eyes linger on the sample longer than the others.

Bartering was never your forte. You were a tallyman before—by nature, you disliked guesstimation. Especially when trying to blackmail the wrong people is how you wound up here. Of course I read your file. It was an admirable attempt.

He had something you wanted. But you also had something he wanted. That was your one confidence booster. Which meant practically nothing when considering Sebastion had a gun, but you clung to it regardless.

You start with what you know he wants. You relinquish the sample, your hand not making contact with his claw as you do so. You were still trying to sort his angle; the shopkeeper stuck to some arbitrary code only he understood. He never tried to just take the things you brought in, but if you refused to haggle and subsequently left with the short end of the stick, it was your own fault. 

He holds it with surprising gentleness, staring deeply from the cavern of his hair, eyes backlit by their own bio-glow, like a ghost’s.There is a device on a nearby stand he inserts it to. The vial spins on a rotary dias as a spectroscope views its emissions intermittently. It chimes twice as a green light illuminates. Sebastian, hunched like an alchemist toiling over bubbling racks, chortles as he plucks it from the rack and returns it to you.

“Where’d you find this?” he asks.

You reach back into your pack. Files crinkle between your fingertips, the sensation entirely lost in the deadzone between you and your suit. “Whatever happened to not asking questions?”

He gives you a sour expression, but lets the subject drop. “Going to take a bit more than that, unfortunately.”

You are careful not to let him see inside your stock. Didn’t want him trying to pick and choose. You put your best foot forward to hook him in, but it would be stupid to let him know the full extent—or lack of—what you carried. Better to leave him thinking this was the best he’d be getting out of you.

You pawn over a dozen folders along with the sample, the latter going into a satchel that spilled cryotic vapors the moment the buckle sealing it was undone. All unopened, since he seemed to like that kind of thing. You took a peek at a few once, and didn’t find anything particularly noteworthy—division funding requests, snack shack restocks, work orders for faulty equipment—but he refused to accept them afterwards. Said that tampering deflated the value. Quantity was valued over quality. That was a parallel you were not ecstatic to draw.

He shifted his tail closer to you. Taking the cue, you grabbed the flashlight. It turned on after a few attempts and a ritual knock of your knuckles, but the light was bright and steady against the opposite wall. You turned it off  with a press of the bottom-mount button. You turned to find him pouring over his half of the exchangel. He reads with one hand and opens another’s contents with the other two. 

“What are you doing?”

He pulled the documents closer to his chest, twisting away as if remembering you hadn’t left only now. “Thinking.” he said curtly. 

“About?”

Sebastion doesn’t reply right away. Then he stops what he’s doing to crack a half-smile that makes the puckered skin above his lips flex. You disliked it when he did that. There was something almost agonizingly human about it, up until the seams of his mouth part fully to reveal black, translucent teeth heaving from corpse-gray gums.

“Chocolate.” He answered, throwing you for a loop. 

“Chocolate?”

“Oh, yeah. Dark bitter-sweet. Been a minute. Raided all the vending machines a while back—don’t look at me like that. Not like anybody else was buying them. It was fair game.”

You weren’t sure what to say to that. You surprised you both.

“White. I like white.”

Sebastian blinked, looking atypically wistful. His expression was distant, bright-eyed in more ways than one. A cold sweat had broken out beneath your suit when that benthic gaze settled on you. Sebastion very carefully set the hardware he was holding down and turned away from you.

“You should get going.” He said, not sounding aggrieved—just not entirely in the room with you anymore. “They’ll start to suspect something if you remain off their radar for too long.” With that, he begins to pack up his shop.

He was right. You’d forgotten. You make for the threshold, but stop at the exit. “Don’t be so hard to find next time.”

“The locations pick me.”

You slip back into the hall.

This time, it started with a whisper.

You turned into a wide tunnel of rivet-colored plates. Glass arced up and around, comprising the walls and ceiling. They reveal nothing as they blur by, only blackness, huge and protean, like a cutout in the background of the world. It is always night here. No sun pierced this far down. The only constant illumination came from below. From the unsteady humming fluorescents, the warm glow of thermal vents, the phosphorescent spore-mists of rotten coral polyps.

But here, it was black. Total, endless night.

Your flashlight falls victim to the tremble in your hands. Your own footfalls are gunshots in your ears. Far behind—but growing steadily louder—was a grotesquely moist noise, like a bag of raw meat hitting tile. Plap, plap, plap, plap.

You just had to look. 

You turned a corner at an almost ninety-degree angle, soles squeeling against the decking. A few seconds later you heard it crash into the wall, slipping on its own putrescent mucus trail. It was like a lizard or a gecko, scaled up by a factor of a hundred. When it opened its mouth to face you, you saw its maw was filled with eyes. It had not screeched, but croaked. A sound at once sharp and weak as a string of glass. Then it burst into motion, sprinting after you, parts of itself sloping off onto the floor as it fell in pursuit. 

It hit the wall with a liquid sound, limbs slapping wetly for purchase it found on the glass of the separator. It skittered up, then onto the ceiling. Hot on your heels.

You throw yourself into a locker off to the side, slamming the door behind you. Trusting aluminum-alloy to protect you against something that, biologically, had no right to be alive. You’re hyperventilating, breath loud and claustrophobic in your diving mask. You want to tear it off, but your hands are busy holding the door. Braced. Focused.

Existence in that tin can shook. It’s lowing its ghoulish death-rattle cry, a sound decrepit and hungry, as desperate as you are. Its talons rake the seam between the door, parting metal: three-jointed digits that look too close to phalanges curling.

You might have been able to hold until it lost interest if not for the stench. A thin film of black goo oozed in with you, steaming on the floor. It smelled like fermented fish guts and engine lubricant. You choke on that miasma even through your rebreather. It’s indescribable: a mix of rotten meat, medicinal sweetness and feces. But that doesn't convey the extent it makes you want to hurl. To rip off your rebreather, to pluck your seamy eyeballs out and crush them between your own melting fingers.

Gulping for air, your grip weakens.

Shit.

Metal rips. It is a huge, misshapen creature. Limbs stretched and skin flappy, threatening to loosen from its bones like heated tallow. Four-limbed and surrounded in a gas spill of buzzing insects, the kinds of things you’d see clinging ferociously to carrion. Its maw splits all the way down its wattle, skin flowing like a sleeve rolled up. Bulging through the thin black film of its subcutaneous layer along its back, like a camel’s humps, you see several human skulls and fish spines in various states of disintegration.

Inside of its mouth is nothing but eyes.

It reaches in with its bloated head to swallow you whole, diving gear and all.

You were starting to lose count.

“Send me back.”

In another life, Sebastian might have raised an eyebrow. He no longer has eyebrows. He barely has any facial features.

“You haven’t even looked at the folder.”

“Send me back.”

“Come now. Don’t be stupid. It happens to the best of us. Here, maybe you should—”

“Whatever data I collect from this point on, I’ll leave all of it with you. Whatever I don’t trade, you can keep. But only if you send me back in right now.”

Sebastian shut up. You watch the fin on the right side of his head twitch. You follow his offset eye and swear you can see something glint in the dark. Like the reflective eyes of an animal at night. You were sure there was something there; you’d gotten remarkably good at subitizing.

Even then, you do not notice me waving your colleague on.

“Alright then.” Sebastian said with a shrug, his grin returning. But his eyes were different. Still ghostly and blue—otherworldly, but with a markedly intelligent quality. It was a hesitancy that was communicated even through a lack of words. “I take no issue with expediency.”

He pushed back from the table with the untouched documents in hand, but not before he reached into one coat pocket. 

“I’d say good luck, but, you know.” 

He flicked a coffin nail and match onto the table. You didn’t get to ask if that was supposed to be ironic or not before he slithered off into the shadows.

Rats always lived longest.

That was the first lesson Sebastion had learned. There was no shame in that. Not when it’d kept him alive longer than everyone else down here. 

Sebastian was, at his core, a practical being. Any sense of pride at his current circumstances that wasn't excised at the end of a scalpel was reserved for within the boundaries of his shop. Not this dim world of emergency lighting that he dragged himself through, following deck markers painted on the insides of the maintenance duct, blue glow of his eyes dispersing across their reflective surfaces in purple splash-bands.

He’d learned plenty such lessons. Always out of necessity, never pleasant ones. No use regretting it. Even when you learned them too late. 

“Need to start charging MORE for this shit.” He growled softly.

His two hearts heaved in his chest, an echo only he could hear, as he hauled himself up past another web or girders and then down and out into a lower vestibule. His fell onto the spring of his tail, careful not to snag the scrambler on the way down. Above, the massive ventilation van continued to spin slowly, casting his shadow in increments.

For a while he just breathed. He didn’t sweat anymore, so had to regulate his temperature with frequent stops. With only a vestigial nose, he respired through his mouth. It was unnatural even years later, taking a small conscious effort, but he preferred it over his gills, which could filter air both on land and in water, and their membranes even worked against some gasses. Containment teams were not ecstatic to find their tear gas only aggravated his eyes. He had other senses to make up for the loss of sight, now. 

Smiling at the memory, he uncoiled himself. Prostrating his serpentine body straight he set forward around the nearest corner. The rest of him, over fifty feet of satchelled scales, followed suit in increments.

Air clicked through rust-clogged pipes. Sebastion idly dragged a claw down one as he slithered, feeling the flow of ice water within.

It was an easy route. Almost enjoyable by station standards. Despite his size he had no trouble navigating the narrow aisles. This form was— if nothing else —adaptable: he slithered silently through the halls and squeezed through upkeep shafts with equal ease, pathways only blocked when he couldn’t fit the immalleable scrambler burdening his back through with him and had to seek alternative passage. It was only when he had to haul himself over creaking stairwells he began to have trouble. It was a lot of mass to move, and it made him exhausted.

Despite his frustration, he moved deliberately. Cunning and caution were king over strength and speed, and hasty decisions had a habit of being regretted later. He was far from the biggest fish in this sea. When he finally broke from the red-light underworld into the surface of the sterile monochromatic hallway, he exited one limb at a time, earfins twitching, eyes squinted against the harsh lighting, each buzzing fluorescent like a nova in his mind. He always did everything he could to keep off the station’s primary corridors. No part of the Blacksite was exactly safe, but some routes were securer than others. But there was no alternative forward here.

He stays that way, absolutely still, long enough his scales attempt to mimic the surrounding colors. He sniffed the air, forked tongue lashing out. The air was warm. Fuzzy with the static pulse of lights and current surging through wires. It was dizzying and difficult to detect anything else amid that medley. But when nothing happened after a long minute, he pulled himself free of the passage.

Sebastian went left. He had to duck through the door, size appropriate for the average human and not a ten-foot-tall fish monster. Scales slid silently over the metal of the flooring. His hands reached out to touch walls and pipes, feeling for irregular vibrations. He didn’t need signs to find out where to go: the pull of an invisible magnetic map told him where he was. And by association, where he wasn’t. He never got lost down here. 

To be fair, you didn’t order much. Sebastian guessed you didn’t trust hand-outs of any kind. Fair enough—neither did he. But he wondered just how many more of these pointless little ventures he’d have to make. It was all well and good when he was getting something out of an exchange. That was just good business. This charity didn’t sit right with him.

Still, your mutual employer had ordered it, and he was powerless to do anything but comply. He wondered if he ever would have bothered breaching containment if he knew this was what was waiting for him. Freedom, yes. But freedom inside of a prison meant nothing. Less than. His plan was at a practical dead end if not a theoretical one. Didn’t help that Painter was still in the dark, and actively working against you as a result. He had not been ordered not to tell Painter anything; he just didn’t have the strength.

Still, Sebastian held out. This dismal little business, scrapping by off scraps, was more than he’d had in a long while. He just needed more time. 

His tongue lashed again, and this time chemoreception picked up something else. A chimera like rotten meat and spice on his tongue, filling his mouth. Sharp iron tang that overwhelmed machine oils and rust. It sent a part of him that required a good kick in the teeth baying. He was very familiar with that scent. It only became stronger when he ground the unresponsive pneumatic door open.

Keen as his vision had become, the interior was so dark not even Sebastion’s three swollen eyes—all pupil to discern details in lightless depths—saw much. From rendering places a human would be blind into monochrome shadowless worlds to seeing colors like oil alchemized with blood and molten gold, there wasn't much he couldn’t see. But the most he could make out were the broken edges of upturned office effects. And it wasn’t until he was quite close could he discern the finer deets.

They had been workers from before the protocol had been engaged. Two researchers, identifiable by the torn yellow-orange ribbons of what remained of their hazmat suits, and a three man security detail. Crushed together through circumstances no doubt. Must have been stranded here with the rest of them when the lockdown initiated. Living in vents, drinking condensation dripping down pipes, eating whatever they could find. They’d lasted for quite some time. Until their luck ran out.

The creatures down here and him had an unspoken agreement. He looked like one of them: that was enough to keep them away for the most part. Even if he was a creation of science and they of…something else. Evolution, or at least evolution-adjacent. But he was decently sure the puddles of void-mass didn’t have a life-cycle as was categorically quantifiable. 

Between his observations and his illicit-acquired documentation, he’d learned a great deal. Some of them were truly malicious. Some of them were just following their nature. Most of them were just hungry. And some of them—scarce few—just wanted to be free.

And they all had enough of being poked with sticks. So yes, he breached containment, killing one guard because he was an active threat and several more scientists because they annoyed him. And yes, he let all of them out of their cells because he needed a distraction. And yes, these deaths were, indirectly at least, on his hands. He knows his human self would have been horrified by his current actions. Somewhere within his addled innards he still possessed that stigma: the cultural, psychological, arguably biological repulsion inherent to killing another of your own kind. But Sebastian Solace died on the operating table ten years ago when his heart exploded trying to pump blood into a body far too big for it, and what came back into this world was not him. He was not sure what that meant. Worse, he was not sure if he cared.

Beating aside a skull flayed of all but a few gobbets of meat with his tail, he drew closer to the slaughter: a scavenger plucking at carrion. He couldn’t say from looks alone which abomination had its way with them. Definitely not Z-367—they were still here after all. Not a wall dweller either, same logic. As he moved, he felt a carpet of glass flecking the deck.

By the looks of it the whole Blacksite had a go. One researcher collapsed against a door at the bottom of a flight of concrete steps. Strange mildew growths had covered them in a fuzzy patina, luminescent hyphae unfurling from their pale, sunlight-deprived skin, feeding off puffs of reeking corpse-gas. What was left of the other three looked like something a trench bleeder had stepped on. Remains of body armor and PPE sticking up from the meat like islands at sea. The fifth, further down at the opposite door, perhaps most disconcertingly of all, was nothing but clothing. Their uniform and gas mask lay on the ground, one lens cracked and reflecting something red off the inside.

He stared at the bloody phlegm for a cluster of his twin heartbeats. Longer than he’d like to admit before pulling himself away. Cannibalism was below him—he still considered it that regardless of the changes wrought by biological flux—even if the temptation was not. Instead his jaw distended to spit on the ruin.

Vermin. All of them. He took stock in using his new traits as tools. He might look like one, but he didn’t belong here with these things. After everything, at least he still tried to act human. Unlike them. They deserved this and worse. And the meat they sent down deserved little better. He’d met expendables who would sell the skin off the person next to them for a half-charged battery and not blink.

But not him. Sebastian Solace was innocent when he’d died. Negligence, they’d said. Laziness. Complacency. He’d done everything right. Did someone out there genuinely think he belonged here? 

He realized he hadn’t been moving. 

He tugged on his lure. Even its meager light made his eyes begin to water, but he hated the dark.

The corridor swayed and flexed like the inside of a giant snake. To his left was a window. Its blackness had a reflective quality.

Within himself he felt the cancers chewing at his bones, the nerve endings regrowing as fast as they shriveled. It was only a short while ago he noticed the bony protrusions erupting from his elbows and collar. Knobs of nerveless keratin, like polluted coral pushing up from glistening marrow. The mutations were subtle—for now—but they were getting more frequent. How long until his mind rotted into a soup of tentacles?

Memories, coated in blood, wrapped in screams, rose in his mind like blood in water. The broken turning of a fan. The pulse and shriek of a heartbeat monitor. The silver whisper and knocking grind of a bone saw. Darkness. The covers of a bed. Wildberries and butterflies. Guitar strings under fingertips. Somewhere water dripped. He thought it sounded like rain.

Sebastion approached the mirror-like surface of the vestibule.

Skin shedding to scales, itchy and bleeding. Forefingers fusing, nails elongating as the skin pulled back, like on a corpse. His legs melding was the worst. Weeks spent paralyzed on the chamber floor, listening to his bones growing inside of him; a sound like overstretched timber. They’d given him anesthesia, but even that was not enough. No coma could hide from that. Surgery and torture were two sides of the same knife.

He put his hand—his inhuman, gnarled claw of a hand—on the glass. The ring on his finger glinted softly.

One day.

Waves bubbled at the concrete shore of the moonpool. A square-shaped lake, it and others like it were the only access to and from the Blacksite. Power here was fed by external cables from the main facility up top, so the lights were always on. 

Sebastian knew a lot of how this place was made. Most of it was anodized aluminum and concrete. Buying this much steel would draw attention. But own a few dozen airfields, and having spare aluminum for metalworking made total sense. Anyone crunching the checks might be inclined to believe Urbanshade was building a fleet, but not a city.

He moved toward a lone crate atop a moldering pallet. Same place as always. He brought his tail to his side to reach into one of the many satchels there. From the waterproof interior he extracted two objects, both cylindrical tubes.

The flare burst to life, phosorphor-bright, as he struck it against his scales before dropping it. The second went into the box, then he locked it, same passcode as always. It would be some time before you arrived, and the chances of it getting stolen by another were basically nonexistent. But buyer surety, or whatever.

This last part wasn't necessary, but if he was going through all the effort of doing this, he was going to leave some kind of mark. He holds the audio recorder to his gums and hisses three words. “You owe me.”

Then he turned to leave, tail fin slapping the crate onto its side on his way out. All this for a fucking flashlight.

“Sixty Seconds.”

The waiting was always the worst.

You viewed the interior of the sub through the black-tinted glass of your diving mask. Stylized icons and skeletal white text scatter and skip down its curving surface. Semi-functional denotations of depths and oxygen, your mission objective in constant sprawl across the top. Nothing you could do about that, but you preferred to clean it up as much as you otherwise could. After so many oscillations, the tactical feed had become clutter that just got in the way more than not.

It was the very definition of claustrophobic. You had your period of terror and alarm, of banging on the walls, of lingering at the back of the sub until the device at your neck began its slow, terminal countdown. You didn’t want to go back. You’d take the bullet over stepping foot back in there. You had, once.

Now you stood. One hand on one of the stabilizer cords hung from the ceiling. Face underlit by red light. Listening to the teeth-aching purr of the generator and water slashing off the hull through a foot of metal.

“Thirty seconds.” blared the mechanical voice of the Navi-AI once more. 

The hull began to shake. Your stomach lurched, heart crashing from your sternum to your stomach. You were ascending. Felt like falling in reverse. Turbine burning hot to guide the drone-controlled sub on target. The Let-Van Zone, despite being miles below the surface, somehow had pressure comparable to that of a pool. But there were still mishaps, and outside the hull was nothing but crushingly cold water. 

This was where most people would throw up. You did, at least, originally. It had nothing to do with cowardice—just biology. A long trip in a sardine tin, left in the dark, subject to rapid changes in pressure, bent the body in ways that left your stomach feeling inside-out and churned your confidence to mulch. Most were staggering when the ramp finally dropped.

“Fifteen seconds.” The voice chimed from everywhere and nowhere at once.

It was rare that there was terror now. No hysteria, no fear at this stage. Just a slow-moving tide of emotion and thoughts, like waves. 

Some thoughts were old: what was Z-1? Why did they want it so badly? Should you really be getting it for them? They said this was your redemption, but was it nobler to suffer instead? You had never been noble. You had never been anything. That’s how you wound up here. Trying to make a name for yourself. You were guilty. You had reason to be here, this you knew, but not for the reason you were convicted, which you didn’t.

“Ten seconds.”

Breaching. Pushing up from the water and into the waiting bay like a squid’s beak ripping into flesh.

For you, this was the easiest part. Every muscle locking tense, coiled spring-tight. You were ready. Scared, but not at what was to come. You were going to die again, you knew that. It was a spinal discomfort that left you rolling on your heels. But there was a delicious edge of irony. Every drive, every step, every door, blazed a path to reclamation. 

You’d called in a favor. It was rare, but you felt you were owed. The conversation with your employer had been extremely one-sided. Making your requests to an empty line that gave you the incredibly uncomfortable feeling the channel was live and whoever—or whatever—was on the other end was hanging to every syllable and choosing not to reply. At the very end, when you’d been about to hang up, you’d gotten your response in a voice like a whispered hex.

“It will be in a green crate to the left of the landing zone. It will be delivered by our middleman. If it is not there when you next arrive, call me back and you will be reimbursed.”

And then the line had gone dead.

A little something to even the odds, hopefully. You had no idea how it could be prepared on such short notice, but you weren’t being paid extra to figure that out. You were decently sure you knew who this middleman was, and was pleased to know he would not enjoy such a task. It felt good to be petty.

“Three. Two. One.”

There came a grind of metal and hiss of escaping air pressure. You were out before the embarkation ramp had even fully unfolded.

“One.”

Sebastian tapped the top of the blocky device with a claw. Nudged it to the left, keen eyes gauging the distance in millimeters. He reached for the next.

“Two. Three. Four.”

He didn’t have to count out loud, but it filled the empty space. Made it feel less cavernous. Less like he was the only sane person left down here.

“Five. Six. Seven.”

Did sane people talk to themselves?

“Eight. Nine…” he made a final adjustment to the right, two millimeters distance. “Ten.”

Sebastion metaphorically stepped back to look at his work.

He’d spent the better part of two hours idly taking stock. Ten battery packs, each consisting of five batteries, four individual AAs, three flashlights, two blacklights, a hand crank, miscellaneous foodstuffs, and a pack of bottled water. Nicotine and alcohol too, carefully placed out of sight so nobody tried to buy. He does not even pretend those are for something useful—he has his hobbies.

Most of that time was spent arranging battery packs on one of the tables. Ten of them sat in perfect order. At least, as perfect of order as anything that had been dropped, dented, chipped, exposed to water, bodily fluids, and who knew what else , could be.

Ten was an absolute haul down here. Enough that he’d begun to worry he’d gone overboard. He spirited frequently, never liking to linger in one place for too long. Most of the really important things he kept strapped to his person in any of the satchels along his tail length, in case he had to make a quick getaway. His ears were always perked, listening for the single slip-up in the static to denote the jammer was finally dying. The device in question hung from its place on his back by its makeshift harness. It had been—by his shaky estimate—weeks since he’d last relieved himself of it.

Despite being the most wanted man this side of the Atlantic, the biggest threat to him by far was boredom. Locked in the dark, deprived of sunlight his body no longer needed but mind craved to see and feel, hunkering with horrors almost beyond comprehension, he had to find every way he possibly could to stave off insanity. If that meant drowning his liver, burning holes in his lungs, or cleaning every speck of dust and ensuring every battery pack was flush with its neighbors every time he set up shop, then so be it. It kept him busy, which kept his mind off other things.

Far to his left the keycard sits on a spar, a layer of dust over its blue-white chevrons. It was the one thing he never bothered to clean. It always found its way to him, somehow. Sebastian honestly didn’t know when it had appeared this time, and actively chose not to think too hard. It made his scales itch.

It was a good spot. One way in, three ways out. Lights not too bright. Floor reasonably comfy, didn’t chip his ventral scales too bad. He almost, almost, felt safe. 

He hated it.

His shop was dark and empty before him. No matter the location, it always had the same smell: like broken dreams, rust, and wet socks. Fusty, like confinement. Far above at a height only he could reach, bells on plastic strings jigled in the quiet breath of an oxygen ventilator, glowing brassy in the sick amber of his lure.  Shadows would melt at his gaze. Now and again he would close his real eyelids—the same color as his scales—to get a taste of the dark. Not for long though. Never for long.

He rubbed his raw eyes, fighting sleepiness. All this time later insomnia still didn’t sit right with him. The rote processes of survival, stimulating his nervous system to maintain constant vigilance, didn’t make up for sleep debt.

Business had been slow. That could mean anything. Expendables just weren’t getting far enough in to cross paths. Urbanshade was changing their tact. Maybe they’d cut their losses and concreted all the exits. Anything. He’d been betting on status quo bias. They had the bodies, the crystal wasn’t going anywhere. Even if they died by the shipload it would take a while before they ran out. He could attest that just because something didn’t work the first time didn’t stop those freaks up top from doing the same thing over and over again. But while he knew more than any of the fodder they sent down here, he was just as in the dark as them in other ways.

To the dark alone Sebastian was willing to admit he had not thought his next step through. He’d been fixated on nothing but initial escape for so long. Everything—his shop, stealing data to pay for passage, meeting Painter—had been one flight of fancy to the next. Out of the pan and into the fire. That was the original function of the dusting and organizing—before it became habit. A meaningless, calming, hateful task to help him make up his mind whenever he was undecided. But when he thought the thoughts and brooded on his options he found they weren’t just dangerous, but limited.

That’s why he’d accepted. He’d spent days mulling it over, though he knew the term was entirely relative. Clocks were both rare and out of sync, and without a sun there really was no way to tell when one day ended and the next began. He used to chalk a day up to whenever he woke from sleeping, but knew that would count as sparse hours at most. Now he typically went by whenever he moved residence. He’d spent all day packing, slink out at night, and have set up the following morning. 

Now, his decision made, be it right or wrong, he had nothing but time. Time to scheme. To plot. To tally and collect. Time to think.

That left him to wonder what had happened to you.

Perhaps you had finally snapped under the strain, curling up in some forgotten hole, unable to live but unwilling to expire again. The thought made him irritated. That you would have gone through all this misery just to give up. Nobody down here suffered more than him, and he was still standing. Then a strange wave of regret washed through him. He couldn’t blame you. It had been a long time since he was baseline human.

Then another thought, one that surprised him. Maybe you’d finally made it. Maybe you’d left this place behind—one way or another? He wasn’t sure how he felt about that. Jealous, alarmed, but strangely melancholic. And just a little hopeful.

And if thinking about you was enough to bring you into being, he heard footsteps down the incoming corridor.

Sebastion coiled in on himself. Clawtips clacked as he folded his primary hands in greeting.

“Been a while.” He chorused. “My stock not good enough for you anymore?”

You throw something underhand at him. He snatches it off pure reflex, but goes still once he feels foil move beneath his digits. It was a chocolate bar. King-sized—more a changemaker in his claws. 

“What’s this for?”

You held up a device. The audio recorder. You shrug and toss it onto a nearby table.

“How much?”

He could smell the iron-flavored taste of exhaustion even before you opened your mouth. “Nothing.”

Sebastion moved a slick of hair aside from his offset eye. A curiously human gesture. “Surely you want something?”

 “Haven’t been hungry since arriving. However long ago that’s been.”

At least he wasn’t the only one losing track of time.

You move across his store, limping on your way to the keycard. He smelled the blood before he saw the wounds. He could tell you’d been shot at, even if they were only glances. He had not looked at himself in a mirror in some time, but running clawtips over the fabric of his chest and back offered more than a slight pebbling of scar tissue. 

It’s not guilt he feels—that had been cut away with most of his organs—but he knows he’s responsible for your current state, and likely for your next death. If he could smell the blood, other things could too. He needed to tell Painter. Soon.

You don’t buy anything. You knew it was deadwood; no point loosing the gear. You still leave him all the material you’ve collect this far: a few documents, a handful of hard drives. Practically nothing.

He almost wants to offer you a place to rest. But this was his sanctuary, not anyone else’s. Besides, only one of you got the luxury of sleep, even if it was only a few hours every few days. They’d pop your head if you decided to take a nap on the job.

Not one for delays, you exchange no more words, disappearing back into the outside with your newly acquired keycard, all the data you’d accumulated left on the table. Sebastian watches you go. Lingers until the chiming of the card reader and your footsteps have long since receded, before turning back to rearrange his old wares. He begins to carefully, with an almost religious reverence, undo the wrapping with two hands.

“One.” He starts again.

You drop a fistful of loose files and USBs on the table between you. Everything you had, all at once, as was typical. You might not like paying such a price, but if you had to pick your poison, it was better the merchant got it than Urbanshade.

Sebastian swiped it all up, folders and drives vanishing into the interior of his overcoat, never to be seen again. His gimlet eyes dart. He has the same grin as always, but there’s something different about it. You can’t quite place it.

“The hand crank.”

Sebastian moves the bulk of his lower body to the side. Copper oxide scales and black nylon scratch against the floor. He presents the object in question. Two dials. A telescopic antenna, slightly bent. The characteristic crank that made it such a valuable commodity. Capacitor-charged, it was a poor substitute for a dedicated stabber, but critical if speed was the name of the game. You reach for it.

“Not so quick.” Sebastian grabs it before you do, pulling it loose from its bucklings. His speed surprises you.

“What gives?” The radio-light dangled above your head between two of his scaled digits, out of reach.

“‘ What gives .’ Do you have any idea the kind of hassle I had to go through to get one of these?”

“I already paid for it.”

“You didn’t pay anywhere near enough.”

You dropped your arms, crossing them in front of yourself. You’d wound up in the Room enough times by now to resist rising to any kind of jab. “Price gouging. Really?”

Sebastian ignored you. “Supply doesn't get to make the demands. There’s not a lot of these left down here. You know what that means?”

You tighten your jaw. Consider reaching for your flash beacon. In that moment a lot of stupid things seemed very likely to happen. You didn’t want Urbanshade getting a single byte back, but you weren’t going to get scammed again either.

“It means you better be careful with it.”

He dropped it into your hands. Along with three batteries. He returned your suspicious-as-hell look with a grin. 

“What? Can’t have my number one customer biting it so soon. Again.”

You were skeptical about that. You dying meant more income  for him. By now,  though, you really did know better than to ask questions.

 You cycle the handle experimentally: the light illuminates the floor and your feet, somewhat bright but dimming by the second, and finally extinguishing.

“Put it to good use.”

You pause by the exit. “Thanks.”

“Of course. What else are friends for?”

“One job. You had one job.”

“Shove it.” You snap. “I almost had it.”

“So someone finally made it?”

“Ye-up.”

Eyebrows, which were really no more than scribbly lines, as if someone had taken a pencil to the old CRTV screen, knitted together.

“Dang. Sorry Seb…”

Sebastian’s ear fins twitched. That had to be the closest he’d ever heard Painter come to swearing.

“S’fine.”

“How is this anywhere close to fine?” Painter was doing that thing when he was upset where he aimlessly drew circles across his display.

Sebastian leaned back in his chair—which was really just the cushion of his own body wrapped beneath and behind him. Most of his tail had to remain outside the security cage. Painter turned his display brightness down to the lowest setting when Sebastion had slithered into the room. It was still a bit too bright, but he managed to hold eye…optic contact.

“Because the plan’s changed.”

“Changed?” Then, concernedly, “Why didn’t you tell me?”

Sebastion clicked his uppermost claws togethers. “I’ve been in contact with an outside source for a while now. I didn’t know if they were trustworthy. I still don’t think they entirely are. But they are partly responsible for our lucky expendable’s early…retirement.”

That was what Urbanshade promised him at least. But his new employer wasn’t a fan of retirement so much as temporary leave.

Painter was unaware of the unusual circumstances of this particular prisoner. He had eyes almost everywhere, but Sebastion knew from his jammer that footage could be distorted. Even an eidetic memory could be altered. Whatever his employer had done made you into a blind spot. Sebastion doesn't like hiding the details from who he considered his only friend. But The Man had always been very specific with how much he could share, and with who. It was better this way.

Sebastion shrugged. “Didn’t want to bring you up in case they were aiming to stab me in the back. You watch mine enough. But the timetables have moved forward. I think they’re our best bet, now that they got what wanted.” Sebastian breathed deeply. “I’ll cut to the chase. You're the only person down here I actually trust. I want you in.”

“Okie.”

Sebastion barked a laugh. “Really? No questions asked?”

Painter’s scrawled features framed from left to right. “No, not really. I’m sure you’ll fill me in as needed. Just tell me what you need.”

Sebastions shoots him an exasperated, though oddly affectionate glance. “Well, some things are going to change. No more radio silence. I had to drop out of contact to meet with this guy, but that’s not happening anymore. I’ll keep you as up to date as I can. Oh, and they shouldn’t be sending down any more expendables, so if you see anybody else, they’re probably an operative, so shoot the shit out of them for me. Kay?”

“Kay.”

“Thanks. I think this is the real deal. No more scavenging. No more killing. No more hiding. We do this right, we get out.”

He could tell the effect those words had on Painter. Despite only having a few crudely-drawn slides to represent facial expressions, the program managed to be more human than some actual humans.

“You have anywhere to be right now?” Painter asks.

“No.” It was honest. He’d been out of business ever since you made it out. They got what they wanted; Sebastian guessed now they were shifting focus to the cleanup op. But that was a monumental feat, which meant he had time.

“Cool. Want to play pong?”

“Don’t you only have the single-player version?”

“Dude, I’m the computer. You be the person.”

The plates of Sebastion’s face itch as they overlap. He ran his tongue up along his face, saliva cooling the burns. He’d been smiling too much lately. 

Painter was a friend—not an associate, not a business partner. That shit hit him hard the first time he realized it. He wished he could be honest with him, but he was keeping his options open.

“Right. Sure. Guess I need hobbies other than smoking and drinking.”

“Keyboard's in the desk.” 

In the space between the ball hitting one side and the other was the hum of fluorescent and repetitive low noises. Machinery thumping. Foundations crumbling. Waves smacking. Water pumps drowning. 

He’d been down here almost half of his life. The sun was like a vanishing memory, one he held onto, but always lost a little of every time he drifted off into what counted as sleep. He thought of the trial, the experiments, the escape, the future. How had the world above changed in his absence? 

Finally, he thought of you. You had no idea what you were getting yourself into. You’d learned to barter, but not where it really mattered. Asked all the wrong questions. He almost regretted dragging you into this. He didn’t know what to expect when he carried your headless corpse to that dingy room for the first time, at his request. He didn’t know if he wouldn’t have done it, if he knew what was waiting for you. At the time, he told himself you deserved it. You were down here after all—proof enough for him. That’s what he told himself. How else could he cleave to the selfish path that has spilled so much blood?

“Seb, you actually gotta move to score points.”

“I have played pong before. Just not like this.”

The only one keeping Sebastian Solace alive was him. That was a torch he would not— could not let go out. If he had to burn every bridge to use as fuel, then that’s what he would do. There was no price he was unwilling to pay.

But for what it was worth, he hoped he never saw you again. You’d gotten good at haggling.