Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

It was eight days since the weather warning was issued, and Terry refused to deny the truth any longer: the apocalypse was incredibly boring.

He fumbled for the bleating alarm by his bedside, striking home on the fourth attempt, and threw his bed sheet aside. Stifling a yawn, he retrieved his phone properly. The screen flashed on with an unobstructed view of his chosen lockscreen, that being a close-up of a flower he still could not identify but thought looked okay enough. Terry’s finger hovered over the screen for a moment before placing it back on the nightstand. It had been three days since anyone had bothered sending him anything and frankly, after the last few ominous messages, he might be okay with that for a while.

Groaning, he dressed himself in the first shirt he grabbed and yesterday’s jeans. There would be time to sit and do nothing later. That, and if today was the day something finally decided to break in and eat him alive, he’d rather die in anything other than a ratty undershirt and boxers. Barefoot, Terry trudged into the kitchen to scavenge.

By now, his fridge was stripped bare, of course. Rummaging around the freezer, he produced a forgotten back of cheesy potato bites, dumped them in a bowl, and sent them to make themselves comfortable in the microwave for a good few minutes. That out of the way, he snatched the last of his coffee ice cream and ate that straight from the carton. He was near certain it had no caffeine but getting through the day without coffee was a big ask under normal circumstances and, forever cursing his lonely soul, Terry may have forgotten to stock up on the instant stuff until it was much too late. If he didn’t check the ingredients, lying to himself was concerningly easy.

He gave the freezer one more once-over before attending to his improvised breakfast. Cleaned out, for real now, not just “cleaned out” as in full of food that makes you actively suffer when you check the best-before date. Terry grimaced. He had had a few “errand days” and made it out intact thus far but by now, all the empty residences had been picked off. You know your choices are bad when going to the “ground beef zone” starts to sound attractive.

Terry popped open the microwave door before the timer went off and shoved a potato bite into his mouth before it could cool. Which was fine, because it was cold inside anyway. Still chewing, he took the plate and wandered over to the only window. The rug he’d draped over it was still holding, but barely. He made a mental note to pick up some duct tape while he was out. The window overlooked an enclosed alleyway (not exactly what Terry would call a “stunning view of the outdoors” as quoted from the apartment description, but whatever), so it was fairly safe, but he did see a couple trash bins staring back at him when he took a peek once and didn’t care for any of that, thank you very much.

From there, he simply wandered around the apartment while eating cold potato, pretending there was something interesting to do. Truth be told, it was probably good for him to go out every once in a while, even with the risk of permanent physical and psychological remodeling. There was a reason why “touching grass” was considered the epitome of health online, and nowadays, that wasn’t exactly popular. The next closest thing was talking to someone who still had a couple marbles left, which was actually pretty hard when the extroverts all got hit first. Sometimes all they needed was a little material encouragement…

Oh right, he could try to trade. Hopefully he could scrape up enough to get through a few more days without having to dodge through the laser maze in the stairwell. His bookshelf was looking extra bare lately, having given up most of his collection. All that was left were a few textbooks on beginner astronomy.

…Maybe he wouldn’t trade those until he was desperate. Seemed to be in bad taste.

With his lukewarm breakfast finished and less ice cream than Terry was comfortable with left in the carton, he was unable to delay heading out any longer. He hesitantly placed the lid back on the carton and chucked it back in the freezer, licked the spoon, and threw that in the sink along with the breakfast plate that he would wash when he was truly dying of sensory deprivation. That done, he gave the bookshelf one last glance before slipping on his boots, a cheap overcoat that wasn’t quite appropriate for the September weather but seemed alright for keeping people’s teeth out of one’s skin, a small backpack, and a slightly bent golf club. With that, he was off to explore the great unknown.

This part of the hallway, just outside his room, was fairly normal. Often the light blinked out but it did that before lockdown too; the landlord was usually lazy about repairs. The blood was… normal. Probably. Anyway, Terry had never seen the source of it and it hadn’t come back since day three so he was hopefully in the clear. The ears in the walls were definitely not normal but they’d been there for approximately forever and didn’t do much, and it wasn’t like Terry was spewing government secrets, so no big deal. Staring at the nearest one, he considered his options.

Laser maze was out. Exactly one glimpse of that disco rave hellfire was enough to completely disqualify third floor access from his list of options. That left just his floor, the ground floor, and underground. Terry wasn’t a fan of going anywhere unless he had an escape route planned, so anywhere too far from the stairwell was also a no-go. That left the ground beef zone, the dark room, and the storage room.

Of those, he really did not have the willpower to even think about the ground beef zone, and something about the storage room just… freaked him out, so the dark room was Terry’s best bet. That would be all the way to the end of the hall on the left, turn right, and the third room on the right. Not too far. He could do this. Hefting his golf club, he took a breath, swiveled on his heel, and got moving.

The journey there was without incident. And there he was, standing right in front of the unassuming door. A quick turn of the knob proved it was still unlocked, as he’d left it. As the door swung open, it revealed a room, completely immersed in darkness, completely silent. He slipped in, instinctively swiping at the light switch next to the door. Terry instantly cursed himself out only for nothing to happen. Lights were out, good to know.

He took a miniature flashlight out of his back and shook it before turning it on, illuminating a meager cone right in front of him. Quickly scanning for hazards, he took another couple steps in, propping open the door as he did so. Swinging the cone wide, he pointed it roughly in the direction of where his kitchen would be in his apartment; seeing nothing, he checked the opposite side, and a flash of light nearly blinded him. Terry stifled a gasp and flinched away only for the light to disappear. Hesitantly, he drew his focus back to where the light came from. There was a young man staring back, with an unseasonably thick coat–

That was him. It was a mirror. Resisting the urge to facepalm, Terry continued to scan the area. As he did so, more lights sparked in his direction, every single one with his face right next to them. Though they were just reflections, he couldn’t help but feel he was being observed. Studied. Shuddering, his light finally landed on a bare kitchen counter, and then the fridge. With nothing in his path but a few mirrors, Terry made a straight beeline for it.

Halfway there, he stopped short. Slowly, he turned around, glancing behind. The door was still open, the path just as unobstructed as it was. The light shook a little with his hand, and he took a moment to breathe, steady it. Nothing to worry about. After one last once-over of his escape route, he turned his gaze back towards–

There was something in the mirror.

A dark, filamentous figure draped long, thin fingers over his shoulders. Not quite gripping them yet, but about to. As his reflection’s eyes widened, the figure’s single milky, sunken socket constricted, narrowing in on it. Just as the hands went to clamp down, Terry dove for the ground.

The firm wooden boards forced the air from his lungs and he struggled to recover it, breaths fast and shallow. Scrambling back to his feet, he swung the flashlight around to the other mirrors, raising the golf club. The thing was in every single one, slowly but methodically twisting its eye around and behind to figure out where its prey went. Before it had a chance to find Terry, he turned to a mirror on his left, guessed the distance the thing had from the right side of his reflection, and swung at the empty space to his right.

He felt and heard nothing but in the edge of his vision, he saw something black spurt in every direction in the mirrors, coating his reflection and blotting out some of their glass. He drove the club into the ground where he’d swung to be sure, more viscera soundlessly erupting in the images. Backing away, Terry shoved the flashlight in his mouth and swung the backpack around his shoulder, yanked the freezer door open, and indiscriminately loaded whatever contents he got his hands on. Twelve seconds and a full backpack later he zipped it up, a couple items falling to the ground, where he left them as he sprinted out of the room, slammed the door, and slid to the ground panting.

Cardio. That was another thing Terry could do to pass the time. Some fucking cardio.

Well, fingers crossed that it couldn’t get through a shut door. Or at least couldn’t tolerate the light. Terry could treat himself and sleep with the lights on for a few days or maybe forever. With all the adrenaline, sleeping would be hard, but he was determined to make his 7 AM self proud and do nothing for the rest of the day.

Wearily, he trudged to the end of the hall, turned left, and kept going to his apartment. Just a few more weeks. Surely this would be over by the end of the month, how long could a passing astronomical event possibly…

…Lost in thought, it appeared Terry had overshot his apartment. Resigned, he spun on his heel and walked back the distance. Maybe he should pay more attention to–

Wait, no, that was room 217.

He’d just been at…

Spinning around and jogging a few metres down the hall, he skidded to a stop in front of the next room down. Room 221. Shaking his head in disbelief, he ran back to the door he was just at. Still room 217. He knocked on the door, tried the knob. Still locked, like the last time he checked two days ago. Sprinted to room 221 and nearly fell over trying to slow down. Tried that lock too. Still locked, like before.

Terry lived in room 218.

He stared at the space between the two doors. A very normal amount of space between two apartments, enough to maximize the amount of space used, and not enough to actually have functional soundproof walls between rooms.

What the fuck.

Well then. Terry did not seem to have a room anymore. Wonderful, really. Who was he kidding, it was the apocalypse and he was managing a little too well with his quarter carton of coffee ice cream and cinematic view of two and a half dumpsters, wasn’t he. Yeah, no, he should’ve seen this coming.

Didn’t make it sting any less, though.

And he knew 219 and 220 were empty, so at this point he was wondering if it was personal or not.

It probably was.

Unfortunately, the forces above definitely caught him at a bad time. The freezer goods were starting to melt at this point, cold water seeping through the backpack and onto his hands. Any longer and they would thaw out, and then having no idea what was in there they would maybe spoil, and then all that was for nothing. And as far as Terry was concerned, he wasn’t in the business of nearly having his skin peeled off by a mirror monster for kicks.

He tucked his legs underneath himself and pushed himself from his hands and knees to a standing position. He couldn’t just live in the hallway. If he’d learned anything from the random howling and screaming at night, that was a good way to get shredded. There weren’t too many of his neighbours left, or at least responsive to his visits, but there had to be someone, right?

Room 213 seemed nice enough, but hasn’t answered the door lately and Terry never did figure out why. Room 210 was absolutely out of the question. Room 209 seemed okay, except that one time it wasn’t and although Terry wasn’t sure which of the voices was lying, the one begging him to leave was very convincing. Room 232 was cagey, but at least still answered the door now and then, as did room 236. But room 236 had also started asking for some… questionable goods. It was probably possible to get leather, but in this economy, and in those quantities?

Room 232 would probably be okay. Maybe. Hopefully.

Well, it was that or replace the bloodstain that disappeared with the hallway outside his room, so it couldn’t be that bad.

Terry repeated that phrase as he made the short trek over until the word “bad” sounded like gibberish, and then repeated “it’s probably fine” until the word “fine” also sounded like gibberish.

Outside room 232, he extended an arm, and cautiously tapped on the door. The light flickered a couple times. Another drop of condensation ran down his back this time, sending a shudder down his spine. Tapping his finger against the back of his hand, he reached out to knock once more only for a soft voice to call out. “Sorry, I’m, um, I’m not really up for much right now…”

Terry took a breath, and forced his hand to stop fidgeting. “It’s me, actually, hi. Trader from down the hall? I traded you the Game of Thrones series a couple days back?”

A faint shuffling sounded from beyond the door. “Oh, um, hi, Terry. Nice to talk, but… sorry, I’m out of food, and… I’m out. Thanks for the novels, I’ve been… I’ve been very bored here.”

“Uh, yeah, same.” Terry coughed, and cleared his throat. “No, but actually, there’s been a… situation? With my apartment.”

“Oh.” The voice tapered off uncomfortably, unsure. “I’m sorry about that. Are you okay?”

“Yeah, it sucks. Well, I wasn’t there for whatever happened, but it’s kind of… it’s gone. Like, gone gone, so I don’t have a place to stay, I’m just stuck in the hallway. So, um, do you mind if I stay here for a bit? I don’t know how long.”

Silence sank into the air. Terry hefted the strap of the backpack on his shoulder where it began to slip, and hesitantly stepped back from the door. “Sorry, I’d ask somewhere else, it’s just… you know, I’m not really sure how everyone else is on this floor, and you seem okay, so.”

“I don’t really… I don’t know if that’s a good idea.” The voice shook, and grew quiet enough that Terry nearly had to press his ear against the door to make it out. “I’m not exactly… I’m not in perfect condition myself? I’m not sure…”

Terry shuffled his feet. “I, ah, don’t exactly have high standards for hospitality here…”

The voice went quiet again. Terry was about to continue, with what he wasn’t exactly sure, when it concluded with “You can stay here. I’ll… it’ll probably be fine.”

“Thank you. Thank you so much.” The relief washed over Terry, smothering at least his most superficial fears. “Do you mind if–”

“Don’t come in yet!” The voice rumbled, clear through the door, and Terry flinched back. Until now he wasn’t even sure if the owner of the voice was capable of speaking at a normal volume, let alone that. He barely heard it take a breath on the other side as it continued. “Sorry, sorry, I didn’t mean… I need to sort some stuff out… I’ll let you know when you can come in, okay?”

Terry stopped, then nodded and realized they couldn’t see him. “...Okay.”

“Okay.”

Terry was acutely aware of the rapidly thawing goods in his back. His bag was thoroughly soaked by now, which was a pain when every single store on the face of the earth was inaccessible to you. He tamped down on his impatience to stash his loot immediately. They were doing him a huge favour. He could at least be patient.

After the shifting and thudding of multiple objects, eventually the light click of the lock sounded. True to his word, Terry made the effort to not immediately walk in and kept waiting. After only a few more seconds, the voice affirmed, “Um, you can come in now.”

Slowly creaking open the door, Terry scanned the room for any potential threats. It seemed mostly normal, if fairly messy. Not in a dirty way, it was clean at least, but furniture was scattered haphazardly, precariously, and generally in a way that made zero sense to anyone who’d ever sat on a couch before. There was also absolutely no one to greet the door. Brows furrowed, Terry called in, “Hello?”

A muffled voice emanated from a room on the far side, door shut and something blocking the light at the base of the doorframe. “I’m in here, sorry… um, I have my own space, you won’t see me much.”

Terry reached behind to shut the door behind him. “It’s fine, uh, you can have the living space if you’d like though? It’s probably larger than that room, just judging by my own room? It’s your place, after all.”

“No, it’s okay, you’d have to pass through here anyway if you took my room.”

Terry nodded to absolutely no one. “Suit yourself.” With that, he was left to find some way to use the provided furniture in a way that wouldn’t snap his spine in half. But first, the food. Terry swung the bag around to his front and started unzipping the contents. The inside of the bag was thoroughly soaked, as he expected, but luckily most of the items were still cold to touch. Holding the zipper shut with one hand, he waddled over to the freezer, almost bumping into an upside-down chair. “Do you mind if I stash some food in your freezer, actually?”

“No, go ahead.”

“Right. Thanks, um…” Terry racked his brain for a moment. “Actually, I don’t know if I ever got your name?”

“Oh! Oh, right. Um, I’m Bosco, I’m a him, I wa– am, I am a guy. Yeah. I would still– yeah.”

Terry was honestly not sure if he’d ever heard someone so uncertain of their own personhood, but in these times that was really more reflective of how little he talked to people than anything else, and it was frankly none of his business either. “Alright, yeah, thanks Bosco.”

“No problem.” Something shifted in the other room. “Actually sorry but can I ask a favour?”

“Yeah, of course, I’m literally squatting in your house.”

“Okay, good. Good! So I wasn’t… I was being very serious when I said I didn’t have much food, I am really running low… really low.”

“Mhm.” Terry nodded absently, looking into the freezer as he started dumping bags of frozen vegetables. There was plenty of room to do so, being nearly as empty as his own freezer was a couple hours ago before it was vaporized from existence. He made sure to carefully set aside the two individual frozen peas in the drawer so as to not crush all of Bosco’s remaining food supply. “I’m seeing that.”

“Yeah. So… I don’t actually need to eat that much– okay, nevermind, I do need to eat that much, just less than… okay it’s a lot. I get hungry. And I’d go out but I don’t really… like to? So I’m kind of…” Bosco trailed off and didn’t bother trying to continue his thought.

Terry gently placed in a couple of frozen pork chops thick enough to maybe break the freezer if he handled them as before and shut the door. He turned around to talk with Bosco face-to-face before remembering there was only an empty room and a closed doorway to greet him. “You need me to get food for you?”

“Yes please.” Terry couldn’t see what Bosco looked like of course but he pictured his entire body sagging with relief. “Thank you.”

“It’s nothing.” It actually wasn’t nothing, but as much as Terry also did not want to go out, he had at least the impression that Bosco actually had something going on and wasn’t just a complete recluse like he was. “You know, I could probably head out right now actually.”

“Oh, no, no, you don’t have to!” Bosco immediately regained all his lost tension. “You can take a break, I’m not… I’m not forcing you to do it now.”

“Nah, it’s fine, I had another stop in mind anyway. I didn’t get that much.”

“...Okay. Be careful though.”

“Yeah, I will.” Inwardly, Terry shook his head. He’d only gotten what little he’d had by being incredibly stupid in the first place. Taking an extra thirty seconds to loot the fridge while an actual shadow demon decided to go after his ass? Questionable at the best of times. Oh well, at least he was still alive somehow.

Hefting his backpack, the wet material clung uncomfortably on Terry’s exposed skin. He approached the room door but took one last glance behind him. “Actually, do you by chance have another bag I could use? This one could take a few hours to dry.”

“Um, maybe?” Bosco hummed under his breath. “Sorry, I can’t go outside… I’d rather not leave my room right now, but I might… I have a duffel, but I don’t know if you’d want that. I think I have a backpack by the couch?”

“By the couch, right.” Terry meandered over to the couch, standing on end somehow, and got a large, apparently tough, high-quality hiking backpack. “Thanks, this is great.”

“Do you… need anything else?”

“Well, maybe a weapon would be nice? I have this golf club but I’m afraid it’s gonna break…”

“Oh, I might have a hammer… under the sink? If you’d like.”

“Gotcha.” Beyond the sink cupboard was a very standard looking hammer, a little small, but in alright condition. “Yeah, this’ll do, thanks.”

“It’s… it’s nothing, good luck.”

Terry transferred the remaining contents of his wet backpack into the new one and reached for the door. “Thanks. See you.” With that, he slipped back into the hallway and shut the door firmly.

Well. Back to it.

Terry turned to the right this time and headed straight for what he lovingly called the ground beef zone.

Okay, if he was going to be fully honest, the ground beef zone was not that bad. Unpleasant, sure. Anywhere that involves wading through inch-deep meat mush would not be ranked high in his mental list of scenic locations. That being said, it didn’t seem like there was much risk beyond that. As far as he could tell. He didn’t exactly care to stick around.

The door entered his field of vision. Identical to the rest down the hall, save the filmy sheen of grease seeping out from around the edges. Digging around in his bag for his gloves – no, not those ones, the shitty gloves – Terry pulled them on and struggled to grip the doorknob before shoving it wide open. He cursed as a small tide of flesh splattered itself onto his kneecaps. He couldn’t even burn the pants in these kinds of conditions.

Exactly one and a half steps into the place and he was interrupted by a “Heya, neighbour!”

Eyes wide, Terry stumbled back into the hallway and pulled the hammer free. He arced it around and into a chunk of flesh just on the other side of the doorframe, nearly out of view. A meaty thwack sounded and the face began to gurgle messily, teeth coming free from nowhere quite identifiable. Terry pulled the hammer back and went to finish the job only for the lump to gurgle out a “Stop! Stop, god dammit!”

Terry was frozen in an attacking position, silent save for the cries of the thing and a little bit of viscera dripping from the hammerhead. After a small-to-medium eternity, he hesitantly lowered the hammer. “...Sorry?”

The face shook itself off, fine bits of meat spraying the walls and Terry’s face. “Damn boy, I didn’t think I was that ugly. Fine, I get it, whatever. Can’t anyone just ask before they start trespassing nowadays.”

Terry let the hammer drop all the way to his side and averted his gaze. “Eesh. Really sorry. If it’s any consolation, um, I did check this place out a couple days back, and I didn’t see you. Didn’t know anyone lived here. Honest.”

The face sneered at him. “Yeah and the first thing ya do is go straight for assault and battery, right?”

“Look, I’m really sorry. I can go now.”

The face laughed. Terry was pretty sure it was a laugh. It might have been choking. “Just pulling yer leg, son. Hammer’s not gonna do anything to me anyway. Ya don’t wanna fuck around with some of these guys, I’m telling ya.”

“Yeah.” Terry laughed weakly.

“Yah. Least I could do is let ya take the food. I don’t eat much anymore, ya know? Not usin’ it. And ya seem like a pretty normal kid, so make yerself welcome.”

“Oh.” Terry began to lean on the edge of the door frame before immediately remembering where he was and aborting the motion. “Well, I don’t want to intrude?”

“Well I’m sorry kid, but I’m not exactly equipped to bring it out to ya. Don’t be shy, I don’t give a shit, just don’t whack me again.”

“Well…” Options were slim. He could go to the storage room, but that was not somewhere he cared to go alone. And as much as he wondered if this place was capable of just drowning him in digestive juices and assimilating him into the system, it wasn’t like it was much different even just in the hallway. At least the meatball thing was nice about it. “Okay, sure, if you don’t mind.”

The thing did another choke-laugh and drew itself out of Terry’s way. Path now clear, he waded into the apartment proper, grimacing at the vague sensation of pulp on his boots. Now properly seeing the interior, it wasn’t honestly as bad as he’d expected. Definitely ground-beef-esque, sure, but surprisingly the stench of decay was nowhere to be found. Honestly, it smelled better than the slaughterhouse he passed on his alternate route to work when the traffic got too thick.

Trying to disturb the flesh fluid as little as possible, Terry made his way to the kitchen cupboards, opening the first to find a myriad of canned goods and instant noodles. He took a few packets and stowed them away before calling back to the resident. “You’re totally fine if I take all this stuff?”

“Go crazy kid, I’m not usin’ it. I got some meds in the bathroom too if ya want ‘em.”

“For real? Thanks.” The first cupboard done, Terry checked out the other. Not as much, but still a sizable haul. The fridge was fairly empty, unfortunately, and he didn’t think he’d be capable of opening the freezer with all the meat crowded around it and probably would rather starve to death than dig it out of the swampy mass. With the kitchen cleaned out, he made his way over to the bathroom.

The door opened inwards, so he barely had to push on it before the liquid took over for him. Shockingly, the place seemed untouched by the… whatever had happened just outside the door, at least until then. As the meat lapped gently at the edge of the bathtub, Terry tentatively reached out and pulled aside the curtain, revealing absolutely nothing. He’d seen one too many horror movies to leave the shower unchecked, thank you very much.

Fears assuaged, he pulled the door open the rest of the way and opened one side of the mirrored cupboard by the sink. True to the meatball’s word, there were a couple bottles of anxiety meds, painkillers, and a small first-aid kit. Grinning to himself, he began to tuck the items away, starting with the painkiller–

Terry choked and clawed at his neck, letting the bottle splash into the liquid, as his throat began to constrict. He tried to tuck his fingers under whatever was there, but encountered no resistance, only air. Fumbling for his hammer, nearly dropping it, his vision began to lose focus, but not enough for him to miss the dark shape behind him in the cupboard door that remained closed, halfway behind the shower curtain. He could almost make out a milky eye.

He swung his hammer around and tried diving into the hallway again, but the liquid slowed him down, only sending him into a tumble. The shadow caught him before he met the ground, its eye still focused on him. He swung his hammer, and he saw black ichor spatter across the mirrored glass, but it didn’t even come close to letting go.

And Terry realized. It let him leave the dark room. It wasn’t after him, it was after the exit.

And now that it had the advantage, it was there to finish the job.

Gasping, Terry reached up for the counter. The monster’s grip tugged on his neck, but gave just enough to prop his palms flat on the surface. Vision going black, he let the hammer fall to the ground to drag his other arm up, to gain just a little more leverage. On his knees, he waved his arm above him blindly searching for the cupboard door.

His hand met the open one first. Wrong one, but he had to be close. Just as his knees were about to give out, he scraped his nails across the other door, and weakly pulled it open. Immediately, his lungs were flooded with sweet air, and he gasped, hardly caring about the greasy juice mere inches from his open mouth. Forcing himself off the ground, he searched wildly for any other reflections. The toilet lid was closed, thankfully, and the beef juice was almost completely opaque.

Breathing heavily, steeling himself, Terry gripped the edge of the cabinet door in one hand and his hammer in the other. One more deep breath and he slammed the door shut.

Shocked, the shadow figure in the door blinked once from the bathroom door, where it had apparently wandered, before lunging at him. Before it got there, Terry drove the hammer into the mirror as hard as he could, shattering it completely with a cacophonous SMASH. Incomprehensible swearing drifted in from the living area as the ichor now flowed out of the mirror, drenching Terry in yet another variety of gore.

As he cautiously eased the other cabinet door shut, he saw reflected a dark amorphous mass of vague tendrils, completely motionless on the floor. He let himself breathe freely.

He swiped the rest of the medications into the backpack, zipped it shut, and stumbled out of the bathroom, no longer caring about further dirtying himself. As he made to leave, the flesh mound jumped out at him from an unassuming meaty wall.

“Hold up kid, what tha hell was that god damn noise? Didja wreck my damn bathroom? Repairs ain’t cheap, ya know.”

“Jesus Christ.” Terry let out a breath, pinching the bridge of his nose. “I might’ve, I’m sorry. There was an… incident.”

“Excuses, boy. Ya better pay up.”

Terry winced. “You don’t by chance still take money, do you?” The meatball did what might’ve been an approximation of a grin, or a snarl, or anything else. “I do. It’s good for barterin’ now and then. Fork it over, kid.”

With a huff, Terry unzipped the inner compartment in his backpack and flipped through a few crumpled bills. He finally pulled free a couple hundred dollars and held it out. “This should cover it. It’s just the mirror.”

“Yah, yah, I’ll take it. Get goin’, boy. And be more careful next time!”

“Sorry again, nice meeting you. First impressions aside.” Terry nodded, and the meatball nodded its wrinkly head back, and Terry left, shutting the door behind him. He stamped his boots to get off the bulk of the meat residue before making his way back to Bosco’s room.

Terry was careful to knock on the door before entering, and waited for a couple seconds before Bosco gave the a-okay. As soon as he got inside, Terry shut the door behind him and laid on the floor. He stared longingly at the couch, wishing it was somewhat less of a health hazard to exist near. He’d have to find some way to rotate it so it was at least usable. As it was, he’d have to be happy with the cold hard floorboards.

“Oh, Terry? Are you… is everything okay?”

Right. He was in someone else’s home, just laying on their floor like a freak. At least Bosco couldn’t see him. Terry craned his neck up slightly to respond. “...Okay enough. I got more food.”

“Oh, that’s good. Thank you.”

Terry exhaled and set his head back on his hands. “You’re welcome.”

After anywhere from two to thirty minutes of floor time, Terry finally forced himself to put his finds away. Luckily for him, nothing was refrigerated or frozen, so he could get away with his little break scot-free. He dragged himself to his feet, tore off the gloves and tucked them back in their place in his bag. Then he began restocking the kitchen, pulling free a few granola bars for himself and eating those as he went. Closing the cupboards, he leaned on the counter, looking vaguely at where he guessed Bosco would be.

“So, uh, by the way, how are you going to access all this stuff? If you don’t want to come into the common area.”

“Oh, well, you’ll be out sometimes, right? Um, but otherwise… you can just leave it by my door, I’ll figure something out. I’ll be okay for a day? Yeah, but… just put it there.”

“Gotcha.” Terry placed a couple pill bottles on the counter. “Do I have, like, free reign, by the way? You don’t mind if I take over the bathroom or anything?”

“No, not– not at all, please do.”

“Alright, great.” Terry scooped up the pill bottles and headed for the bathroom. Just before crossing the threshold, he stopped, and peeked at the mirrored cabinets through a crack in the door.

… It seemed safe.

Terry grabbed a random sheet from off the floor anyway and got to work duct-taping it around the cabinets, uncaring whether it was his apartment or not. Yeah, he wouldn’t be comfortable around mirrors for a while. That done, he shoved all the bottles unceremoniously in the lower cabinet and scavenged the counter for toiletries. It had soap and toothpaste, at least. There weren’t any new toothbrushes but using someone else’s toothbrush was far from the least sanitary thing Terry had done in the past week, or even past hour.

He poked his head out to check the clock in the living area. 9:37 PM, actually much later than he’d expected. Still enough time for a quick shower and to head off to bed.

Terry picked the first towel he found on the ground that seemed relatively clean, brushed it off, and slung it over the towel rack as he set to using his newly acquired toothbrush. He mulled over his thoughts as he went. Bosco seemed alright. Losing his home sucked, but it was so ridiculous he’d hardly had a moment to really be upset about it as much as just wonder what the hell happened. This didn’t seem like a terrible outcome, though.

Bosco definitely didn’t seem to be the sociable type, though, he thought as he spat out the toothpaste and stripped down for the shower. But he could hardly complain. He was only slightly more outgoing than Bosco, anyway, and he was still normal even. No excuses there.

He did also really want to know what was up with the furniture, but asking about that seemed like pushing his luck. Invasive questions would wait for sometime after the first day of moving in.

After a few minutes of cleaning up, Terry changed into his sleep clothes and wandered back into the common area. Frowning up at the couch, he asked, “Hey Bosco, you don’t mind if I rearrange some of the furniture, right?”

Bosco let out a soft little eep. “I completely forgot it was like that! Oh, I’m so sorry, I don’t even know if you can move some of it on your own… Please do… I can fix it whenever you leave, but…”

“Could I just lock myself in the bathroom?” Terry mused. “Would that work?”

“Oh! Oh, yes, that would be okay. Just, please don’t… you can’t look, okay? Don’t open the door, please.” “I won’t, promise.” Terry stepped back into the bathroom and shut the door. Faintly, he heard the bedroom door creak outside, and a loud shuffling. Then came the creaking and groaning of furniture, and an ungodly squeaking of table legs on the bare floor. Something made a massive THUD, nearly causing him to bash his head into the wall on reflex, and he heard some very delicate but also very furious cursing. After a couple minutes the noises stopped.

A minute after that, Bosco distantly called “You can come back out now.”

Reemerging, Terry found the place now significantly more normal. The chairs were still somewhat askew, and one of them was facing away from the table instead of towards it, but they were now all standing on their four legs. And thankfully, the couch was now no longer seconds from crushing the nearest person, even if it was on a bizarre 150 degree angle away from the television one would expect it to be facing. Perfectly suitable for sleeping on. Bone tired, he set an alarm for 8 in the morning and crashed.

Terry couldn’t quite make out what he dreamt of, but it had something to do with forgetting.

Chapter Text

Terry actually got up about six minutes before his alarm was meant to go off, primarily because he was starving. Supplies were limited, true, but there was evidently a difference between rationing and having two granola bars for dinner. As he rubbed the sleep out of his eyes and swung his legs around the edge of the couch, a startled yelp and the slamming of a door made him throw the thin bed sheet off and stand up straight, glancing around wide-eyed. The room was empty, misaligned, and unfamiliar…

Right, this wasn’t his apartment. Because it vanished. And, contrary to all appearances, Terry now had a roommate. Said roommate was nowhere to be found, but presumably had been roaming, you know, since this was his apartment and not Terry’s. Sighing, Terry debated between apologizing and complaining, eventually settling on saying “Bosco, you’re allowed to hang out in your own home. Just… if you don’t want to be seen, could you let me know next time so we don’t scare the shit out of each other?”

“Sorry! I’m so sorry! Ohh I should’ve… I should’ve thought it through…” Terry could almost picture Bosco wringing his hands, despite not knowing what said hands would look like nor whether he even had any. “I didn’t think you’d be awake yet, you seemed tired… I was just… getting breakfast? I’m hungry…”

Terry waved vaguely in Bosco’s direction. “It’s fine, I woke up before my alarm anyway. Um, from now on, should I maybe… say something first? I’ll keep my eyes shut until you say it’s okay. Is it just looking? Is there something–”

“Yes, yes yes. That’s fine. Just… tell me, yeah. Do you… when do you wake up? Are you usually awake around now?”

Now with his heartbeat approaching a normal speed, Terry stretched his arms above his head. “Usually a little earlier. Say, seven or so. I’ll let you know.”

“Okay.”

Satisfied, Terry went off to get himself dressed for the day. Stopping himself just outside the bathroom, he called behind him for good measure, “I, uh, didn’t see anything by the way. Just now, I mean. You’re clear.” “Oh.” Bosco’s reply was soft, so soft it was hard to tell if it was intended for Terry to even hear it at all. “Okay. Good. Thank you.”

As Terry shut the bathroom door behind himself, he selected the most hygienic set of clothes he had on hand. Which wasn't great, of course, but not terrible; though the laundromat was completely off limits with the rest of the lower floor insanity, Terry often had so much time on his hands that he took to washing all of his belongings out of boredom. After slipping on his sweatpants and slightly stained white shirt, complete with possibly the most generic grey hoodie ever created, he picked out the toothbrush he borrowed the night before. The toiletries were all shifted around, some now inverted upside-down, as if someone had knocked everything off the counter and had about five seconds to restore it from memory. Hopefully this meant Bosco didn’t also use that toothbrush, but really there was very little Terry could do about it if that was the case, so his preferred course of action was to not think about it.

As he brushed his teeth, he checked the tape on the mirror cover. It was still holding, thankfully. It seemed more secure now than it had last night, actually. Instead of peeling off the corners, the tape made smooth, flush lines all the way down the sides, sealing the mirrors away from all possibility of light. Brow furrowed, he spat out the toothpaste and re-entered the common area.

“Hey Bosco? Just wondering about the mirrors? Did you adjust them last night?”

“Oh, yes, I actually did, I hope they’re still okay…” Bosco had this way of being apologetic for literally everything, including someone else vandalising his apartment.

“No, it’s fine, it’s not my stuff, I get it. I just… wanted to make sure it was covered? And it still is, so.”

“Oh. Yeah, it was… weird? I don’t mean that in a bad way!” Bosco rushed the last words out in a single breath. “Not at all! I figured you had a good reason and just didn’t… know how to… I get it.”

Terry thumbed through the newly acquired contents of the kitchen cupboard. Instant noodles would be as good a breakfast as anything else. “Well, I did have a reason, it’s… kind of stupid though. If it bothers you, feel free to take it down.”

“Oh, no, it’s okay, I don’t… like… use… the mirror is better covered. Yeah.”

Terry nodded absently, pulling out various cookware, attempting to get an idea of how much food he could fit on the stove at the same time. “Mhm… say, how much food do you eat? I’m making breakfast for myself, and I was gonna get you something as well.”

“Oh…” Bosco trailed off, indecisive about something. “Well you got a lot… you don’t have to get it all now… just get as much as you can handle right now, I can make myself more when you’re out today.”

Terry’s eyes nearly bugged out. “Wait, you know how much food I brought back, right? I was kind of hoping that would last?”

“No… I’m sorry… I get hungry…”

Exasperated, Terry tried to exhale silently so as to not give off the wrong impression. “It’s fine, you can’t help that. Okay, I’ve got… probably enough cookware here to make all the noodles, that’s about eight packs and I’ll be taking one, so that’s seven for you?”

“Yes please, I’d… appreciate it, thank you.”

Terry turned the stoves on and began filling all the pots to boil. “No problem.”

As the water sat, Terry leaned on the countertop, careful not to crush the noodles. Bosco’s voice wafted back out from his room. “Why do you… why did you cover the mirror? You don’t have to answer if it’s personal! I’m just… I’m just wondering about it.”

Terry snorted at that. “Okay, bear with me. It’s not like, body image issues, or a personal thing as much as a weirdly specific scenario only possible in this very specific state of society and you’re just gonna have to believe me, got it?”

“Yeah, I’ll… believe anything.”

“Right, okay. It was just yesterday while I was out, actually. Um, there’s this dark room I was avoiding on the far end of the hall, and I ended up stopping by because my usual spots were running dry. Turns out there is an actual, honest to god mirror demon in there and I let it out while I was looting the place, and then when I went out for the second time it waited for me to find another mirror so it could strangle me to death.”

“Oh my god! Oh my… oh are you okay?” Bosco stammered. “Well not okay because you wouldn’t be that’s traumatic and there’s nothing wrong with that but are you injured because you were attacked and oh god I sent you out I am so fucking sorry–”

“Dude, relax! Relax, chill, it’s fine. Yeah, I’m okay, it’s just…” Terry realized he never actually checked for injuries and tentatively poked his neck. He nearly choked. “My neck is just tender, that’s all. Not your fault anyway, consider it like me paying rent.”

“But you’re going out there alone and I can’t even do anything…”

A little wave of guilt nipped at Terry’s insides. “Seriously, it’s not your fault, I understand there seems to be… extenuating circumstances? Don’t tell me if you don’t want to, it’s fine. I mean, it’s just like that nowadays anyway, you are saving me a lot of trouble by letting me crash here.”

“...Okay. As long as you’re okay.” Terry could hear the sigh even through the shut door, though only for a moment as it was swiftly interrupted by the first of the pots beginning to boil. Bosco spoke up enough for the next bit to be heard even over the noise. “Is it still there? I can… try to…”

“No, no, it’s alright! I killed it. Probably, it wasn’t moving and seemed pretty dead, so. It’s more of a psychological comfort than anything.”

“Okay… thank you for telling me… I’ll keep an eye out.”

The remaining two minutes were passed in near silence, Terry only accompanied by the many pots burbling away. He forced himself to not fetch his phone immediately. Times like these both made him miss when doom scrolling was only harmful after prolonged exposure rather than randomly and immediately and also just made him incredibly embarrassed. It was two minutes, for christ’s sake, he could afford to have a single second of uninterrupted thought.

That being said, if there ever was a time for separating oneself from the reality of their situation, it would be now.

Methodically, he tore through every flavor packet and dumped the contents into the pots, shutting off all the stoves as he did so. Terry took a moment to stir each and started to retrieve bowls before realizing there were none even remotely large enough to hold Bosco’s portion and it was equally impractical to give him ten individual bowls of noodles. He started to pick up the first pot before frowning at the door. “I have your serving, I can wash the dishes later if you just put yours outside the door when you’re done. Um, how exactly were we going to do this?”

“Oh right, I have something set up…” The latch clicked on Bosco’s door and it swung open. On the other side was… another door. Well, a door-shaped wall made of mismatched plywood with a little flap at the bottom. “Ta-da! I made it last night, you can just… put it in front, I’ll take it.”

“Alright, be careful, I just took it off the stove a minute ago.” Terry grabbed some random coasters and coaster-esque items to arrange around the door flap, and then placed all the pots save one in a neat half-circle. “I’ll turn my back, if you want to take those in.” “Okay are you doing it?”

Terry spun around. “Yup.”

“Okay…” The light sloshing of liquid and creaking of wood came from behind. At one point, a particularly loud splash was followed by a muffled hiss, and Terry winced in sympathy. “Okay, you can turn around again.”

Now free, Terry got his own noodles from the stove and set them on a couple coasters at the table. Fetching a set of chopsticks, he raised the first bite of noodles to his mouth, eager to finally have breakfast.

It got maybe three-quarters of the way there before there was a knocking – no, pounding – at the door.

Terry couldn’t help but groan a little. “You’ve got to be fucking kidding,” he muttered as quietly as he could manage. Resigning his noodles to their gruesome fate of becoming somewhat lukewarm, he got up and speed walked over to the door.

“What’s going on?” Bosco called.

“No idea, there’s someone at the door.”

As he approached, Terry could now make out not just aggressive banging but also yelling. “Open the fucking door! You have to let me in now can someone hurry and answer the fucking door already!”

Terry glanced in the peephole briefly. A very well built, masculine figure. Unusually so, almost unrealistically so; his attire was also… quite bizarre to say the least, looking somehow both incredibly dated and also elegant. In this economy, not even to speak of the current state of the world. He wore a belt lined with glass vials, knives, and what seemed to be a long leather whip. His expression was a lot more mundane, however, being screwed up in a wide-eyed desperation.

Blinking, Terry forced himself away from the peephole. “What the hell is going on? Are you safe?”

The man began pounding against the door with both fists now. “No I am obviously not fucking safe! Just let me in for fuck’s sake! I’m going to fucking die!”

Helpless, Terry glanced back at Bosco, who remained silent. Presumably it was his place to take charge here. “Okay I really want to let you in but are you going to kill us if I do that?” “No! Just open the goddamn door!”

Shaking, Terry rested his hand on the doorknob. The thought of this guy’s blood strewn across the hallway, all because of him and his asshole decision, put the taste of bile in his throat. But it was stupid to trust people nowadays, especially desperate people. Terry had seen it happen. He hadn’t stepped within ten metres of room 210 since, not even to access the rooms past it in the hallway. And if he let this figure in, it wasn’t just his life on the line either. He would be letting some unknown, potentially dangerous individual invade Bosco’s home, potentially maiming or killing him, completely helpless to stop him.

Terry started to take a step back from the door when the figure shouted, “I’m going to break down the fucking door if you don’t let me in!”

“Woah wait wait wait!” Terry peeked through the eyehole so fast he nearly smashed his nose on the wood. True enough, the figure was drawing a massive battle axe from thin air. “Holy fuck I’m opening the door don’t swing!”

As soon as he unlatched the door, the figure plowed through the door, knocking over Terry in the process, fell onto the carpet, crawled back to his feet, ran back to the door, slammed it shut as loudly as physically possible and locked it. As Terry watched, still in shock, the figure finally turned to him.

“I just need to hide for a while. Do not open the fucking door. Do not let anyone in. Got it?”

“Okay hold on a fucking minute.” Terry raised his hands, whether to say stop or calm down or I’m sorry he wasn’t exactly sure. “Who are you? What is happening?”

“None of that matters right now, I need to be sure…” The man kept lecturing Terry on the severity of the situation without telling him anything about said situation, but the words faded as Terry studied his figure more carefully. There was something strange about his appearance, like it was too consistent somehow, but also there was something vaguely familiar about him…?

Terry’s jaw practically dropped off his face, and as he interrupted the man, his eyes narrowed at Terry. “Excuse me but are you fucking Alistere Triumphiale from Catafalque?!”

“I knew you would– do not call me that. Everyone always asks! I’m also not a guy either, by the way, even though I’m apparently Alistere from fucking Catafalque, because I know that’s your next question.”

“Okay, Jesus,” Terry raised his hands higher and this time he could definitely pin it down as apologetic. “You just look a lot like… there’s clearly a lot going on, my bad for the tangent, can we just start with your name maybe? And pronouns?”

They glared at him. “People call me Jay. I go by they/them.”

Terry nodded. “Right. I’m Terry. He/him. He,” Terry pointed to Bosco’s door. “The other guy living here, his name is Bosco. Actually this is his place.”

Jay looked behind Terry at the door, like they didn’t notice it was there. “Who–” They cut themself off mid-sentence, face completely pale. They ran one hand frantically through their hair, the other pressed against their chest. “Fucking hell.”

Terry squinted at the door. Nothing seemed amiss. “What?” “Nothing!” They said. “Nothing at all! Just… surprised!”

“Hi.” Bosco could not, as it seemed, read the room for the life of him. At the mere sound of his voice Jay nearly jumped a full foot in the air.

“...Alright,” Terry tried to force a neutral expression but could not stop staring at Jay. “Alright. Well, since we have time and you haven’t murdered me yet, why don’t you try explaining whatever is going on.”

Jay shook their head. “I can’t. It’s sensitive and I have no clue who you are.”

“...Right.” It’s not like Terry just let them, a threatening stranger, into the place out of the kindness of his heart. Although, he kind of didn’t; there was the threat of property damage involved. And he wasn’t dead yet, either. Maybe they were even. “In any case, I’m under the impression we’ll be spending some time together?”

“I can tell you then. We’ll see how it goes.” Jay’s eyes only narrowed.

“Great.” Terry hoped he came off as genuine. Jay remained tense. Not quite turning away from them, he slunk back to his now cold noodles and finished his breakfast. “I would offer you noodles but you came about ten minutes late. Help yourself to anything in the kitchen.”

Jay shook their head again. “I don’t need food.” They helped themself to the contents of Bosco’s bookcase, mostly filled with Terry’s literature, and reclined on the awkward couch.

Terry didn’t bother looking up from the noodles. “Gotcha.”

The room was perfectly silent for the next half hour.

Loathe to interrupt the silence, Terry resigned himself to washing his breakfast dishes anyway. Once he’d wiped the last of the dampness from his hands he turned to Jay. “So, I do have to head out–”

Jay whipped around to look at Bosco’s door and then back at Terry, near comically. “Please don’t.”

Terry stopped midway to getting his backpack. “Okay, what now.”

“It’s not– I don’t– I can’t stay here alone.”

Terry gestured towards the door. “You’ve got Bosco.”

“No, I– don’t leave, for fuck’s sake, what the hell are you even doing out there? Did you forget the part where I showed up at your door, a total stranger, begging to be let in?”

“I didn’t.” Terry shrugged. “I need to get food for Bosco. He gets hungry.” “I do.” Bosco piped up.

“Okay, I–” Jay’s breath hitched. “Can I just, can I please just come with you instead if you have to leave? Please.”

Terry’s brows furrowed in confusion at that point and he was inclined to share a glance with Bosco before remembering that was not a thing he could currently do. Realistically, if Jay wanted to kill him, there were probably easier ways to do it. And to be fair, Bosco’s sort of secrecy could be read as fairly suspicious, especially to someone like Jay who seemed very… up front about what information they chose to share, rather than the type to dance around it. And if Jay didn’t kill him, an extra set of hands would be nice. “...Alright, sure. You’ve got to help though. I should have a spare bag by the bathroom door for you. Are you armed?”

Jay made an exasperated gesture towards the massive whip on their belt. Terry could see himself getting tired of this pretty soon. Something about digging graves and lying in them. Once Jay had the bag and Terry was set to go, he said a quick goodbye to Bosco, who wished them luck, and the two slipped out into the hallway.

Terry stared down the hallway, Jay impatiently edging into his field of vision. “So I do have one place in mind here but I should give a heads up that I think there’s something… hazardous about the place. Can’t place what. You can handle yourself?”

Jay rolled their eyes. “You just asked me if I was armed.”

Terry took a breath. Best not to lose your patience alone with a defensive stranger. “I did. Uh, I more so meant, are you alright with that?”

Jay rolled their wrist as if to say get on with it. “I just got here dude, I dunno. Can we just– let’s be quick.”

Worked for him. Terry gave a nod and trotted down the halls, Jay keeping pace easily. Only a few doors down was the last unexplored, accessible, and at least not instantaneously lethal room he’d found. An innocuous storage closet. Even as he berated himself for being afraid of one of the most normal doors on floor 2, some primal shudder ran down his spine as he reached for the handle, coaxing him to check over his shoulder. No one but Jay, of course. Though, they didn’t seem disdainful the way he’d expected; rather, their gaze flitted around much the same as his own.

Steeling himself, Terry bit the bullet and creaked the door open. It was unusually dark. The light of the hallway, flickering or not, should have been enough to illuminate the back wall of the place, but the space seemingly stretched out beyond where the meager light could reach. He immediately thrust his hand against the side of the wall, banging against it painfully. Thankfully, unlike yesterday, the switch triggered a series of fluorescent strips to blink on in sequence across the ceiling at least a couple metres up. They eventually stopped at the far wall, which lay about twenty metres farther from the entrance than was reasonable for even a large broom closet.

Jay whistled. “Awfully convenient to live a few doors down from an entire warehouse.”

Terry scratched his neck. “Um, yeah. I didn’t exactly… check this place out yet. Kinda wish I did.”

“No kidding.” Jay sauntered over to the nearest aisle, loaded with disheveled cardboard boxes on rickety metal shelves. “We could probably head back in a few minutes if we’re fast.”

“Okay–” Terry grabbed Jay’s arm as they passed him. They shot him a glare, and opened their mouth to speak before Terry hushed them. “We can afford to be a little cautious, though? Keep an eye out, don’t speak too loud, you know?”

Jay scoffed. “Fine, whatever. Let’s go.” Jay made their way over and Terry followed at about half speed, plodding across the floor as gently as reasonably possible.

The first box had nothing. The next, also nothing. The third had a couple pieces of random junk that Terry left. Jay shook their head. “No way these are all duds.”

Terry didn’t look up from the next box, also empty. “Keep going. We don’t want to miss anything.”

Jay shuffled past and snatched boxes at random, grabbing their contents with hardly a glance. “I’m not searching all these damn boxes. We’ll grab what we can in twenty minutes and call it a day, got it?”

“Woah.” Terry looked up from his eighth box. “I don’t remember letting you make the decisions. I’m letting you join me. We need all the food we can get. We’re staying until we get today’s haul.”

Jay shook out three boxes at once. “Well you better hurry up because I’m ditching in eighteen minutes and you don’t seem to want to be here alone.”

Terry shook his head and forced himself to continue going through boxes. “If you’ve suddenly changed your mind and decided you’re safer back with Bosco, or back out in the hall with whatever you were running from, be my guest.”

Jay paled a little, but didn’t take their eyes off the shelves. “Yeah, that’s the point, this place isn’t exactly known for having safe spaces at regular intervals and the only sane guy left on this floor decided this would be the time to run errands in hell. So forgive my impatience.”

“Well, my roommate is going to starve to death otherwise. I don’t like it here either.”

“Fine.” Jay growled. “Hurry the fuck up.”

“I’m going as fast as– okay, what the fuck are you doing?” Terry barely restrained himself from slamming his current box on the floor. “Are you even checking those?”

Jay continued with their side of the aisle. They’d nearly cleared it already, boxes left lying in heaps on the floor. They reached into one and picked something out of it, pocketing it, before moving down three metres and picking another at random. “No, I’m just taking their contents, it’s faster that way.”

Terry put his box down and strode over. “What do you mean no, are you just guessing which ones have stuff? You have to–” “I’m only checking the ones that have items, okay? I’m only checking the ones with the prompt, I don’t need to fucking waste my time with empty boxes.”

Terry furrowed his brow. Opened his mouth, and shut it. “Prompts?”

Jay rolled their eyes. Again. “Yeah, like the ‘Take All’ prompt, I don’t need to pick and choose past that, I’ve got plenty of space.”

Terry sighed and placed his hands over his face. “Wait, can you just… what the hell are you even talking about. You’re just taking everything? How are you holding nothing right now? What is a fucking ‘prompt’?”

Jay exhaled and copied the motion, somehow looking even more exasperated than Terry. “Look, I have an inventory. Right? These are storage containers. There’s like, a hotkey to put their entire contents in my inventory, but only if they have at least one item. My inventory is pretty empty so I shouldn’t run out of space while we’re here, a lot of these items stack.”

“Like.” Terry blinked. “Like a fucking video game.”

“Yes, like a fucking video game.” Jay scrutinized Terry’s expression, then refocused on his lungs as he took a breath. “Don’t you fucking dare–”

His hands shot up. “I wasn’t going to!”

“Alright. Good.” Jay squinted at the far end of the wall. “Wait, I’m seeing something. I think these shelves are just junk, but there’s something good piled up over there…” They started jogging over, and internally cursing, Terry followed.

Just as Jay got close, Terry clapped a hand on their shoulder. “Jay, this is very obviously a trap.”

“Yeah, I know.” They grinned, to Terry’s utter confusion. “That’s why I was gonna use this.” From apparently nowhere on their belt, Jay produced a bizarre spherical jar with a thin neck, capped with an unusually large cork and filled with a frothing yellow substance. Before Terry could ask for further clarification about… any of that, they spun it around so they were gripping it by the neck, and hurled it at the pile of boxes strewn around the back corner. Immediately, the room was filled with a horrific hissing, like if peeling tape could rupture eardrums, and the pile twitched into motion.

“Jay, what the fuck did you just do!” Terry snatched his hammer before holding his other hand out to Jay. “Give me a fucking weapon!”

“They don’t really work for regular people…” They, for once, looked slightly apologetic.

“What in the ever-loving hell is wrong with you then!”

“It’s fine, I’ve got this,” Jay stepped half in front of Terry, whip brandished, and snapped it in the air in a cool but incredibly impractical way. The boxes were starting to rise, bracing themselves against the wall, forming a shambling figure that nearly reached the ceiling. “That’s what the weakness potion is for, anyway.”

“The w–” Corrugated cardboard smacked Terry aside directly towards the nearest wall, sending him rolling limb over limb until cracking his shoulder against the concrete. He groaned. No sharp pains, and hopefully no major injuries, but his head spun and his entire right half ached whenever he moved. He brought his left hand underneath himself only to decide he’d rather stay on the floor.

Jay’s eyes widened incrementally. “Shit.” The cardboard beast let out another ear-piercing shriek, lunging for Jay, only for them to dodge near-effortlessly. As it careened into one of the shelving units, Jay leapt over its head, or where its head might have been if it had one, wrapped their whip around the top end of the shelf, and flicked their wrist, sending it crashing down onto the form. It wrapped more cardboard around the shelf in an attempt to recover, only for Jay to whip out an axe – the same one that nearly broke down Bosco’s door – and drove it into the thickest section of boxes and about an inch and a half into the solid concrete floor. With a final wail, the mass stopped struggling.

Tucking the axe away, Jay shuffled over to Terry, refusing to make eye contact. “Sorry, I kind of forgot you might not be… equipped. I’ve got a health potion, you should be fine.” They produced another object from thin air, this time a pyramid-shaped glass jar with a little pink cork and fizzy red liquid.

Terry braced himself against the wall and staggered to his feet. “I’m fine, I’m just bruised. And telling me that’s a ‘health potion’ doesn’t actually tell me what’s in there. I could get poisoned.”

Jay snorted. “If it was poison, it would be green.”

Terry rolled his eyes this time. “Okay, but you said your weapons didn’t even work for regular people. Why would that be any different?”

They shrugged. “I dunno, just is.”

Terry leaned against the wall, one hand clutching his more beaten bicep. Even bruises weren’t worth the risk. And really, if Jay was the type to kill Terry now, they probably wouldn’t have spent the last fifteen minutes trying to speedrun a potentially sensitive and potentially lethal excursion. “Fine, hand it over.”

He raised the potion to his lips. It smelled quite sweet, actually, but tasted like absolutely nothing. Within seconds the soreness vanished. Terry gave Jay a quick nod. “Thanks.”

“Yeah okay, let’s hurry, we’ve wasted enough time.” Of course.

Biting back any comments, Terry approached the boxes by the wall. True to Jay’s suspicions, these were filled with all kinds of contents: food, weapons, textiles, gasoline, cleaning supplies. Terry picked out a shovel to replace his hammer with and a small handgun, checking the safety on the latter before tucking it into his waistband. In that timespan Jay had already taken literally everything else.

Terry pointed to the last box, currently residing in Jay’s hands. “We don’t need all of this.”

Jay shrugged. “Yeah, but we can take it.”

“But why?”

“Might as well.”

Terry frowned but dropped the discussion. Loath to admit it, there was some truth to the sentiment. Where would he put the stuff anyway, if he was going to give it to someone else? There wasn’t a shortage of people wanting free things nowadays, but there certainly was a shortage of trustworthy people. He could always give out excess supplies when he actually met someone who needed them.

With Terry’s bag no heavier than when he’d entered the storage room and Jay holding hundreds of pounds of supplies, the two of them silently agreed to head out. As they were about two-thirds of the way to the exit, Jay suddenly yelped and dove to hide behind some of the remaining boxes. Confused but alarmed all the same, Terry dove to join them.

Jay’s breaths were rapid, heartbeat equally so. Terry peered through a gap in the boxes. “What’s going on?” “Shut up!” Jay yanked him back down, Terry stifling a grunt as his chest mashed into the floor. “It’s looking for me. Stay low.”

Terry’s heart picked up now, too, and he begged himself to calm down. “What’s the situation? How are we–”

“Shh!” Jay stood stock still as something came into view past the boxes. Light bounced off the walls, colouring the room in a myriad of chaotic hues. Even as the thing moved, Terry couldn’t hear a thing as it almost seemed to glide across the floor. Jay clamped their hand over his mouth, but there was no impatience, no frustration. Their arm was shaking, no, it was shuddering.

Terry remembered the way they rushed him along. They weren’t angry. They weren’t bored.

Jay was absolutely terrified.

They both had their backs against the boxes. There were no gaps, no crevices. From where the thing was, they were completely invisible.

All the same, it punched through the shelving unit where Jay was sitting, mere millimetres from their head. They ducked down, crawled across the floor, and broke into a sprint straight for the door. Before Terry could even stand up, he saw a long, shiny, vaguely curved appendage plunge into Jay’s head, lifting them into the air, eyes shiny and pale white.

Terry felt a gasp bubble up and bit into his forearm instead. His flesh stung, and he put the pain in the forefront of his mind, trying to let the rest of the world fade. Do not make a sound. Do not.

Too late. His movements knocked a box to the ground, soft, but not soft enough. The thing on the other side swung around, startled; somehow, it knew exactly where Jay was but never considered there would be another person. Frozen, eyes wide, Terry beheld the thing as it slunk out from around the shelving, approaching from the exit end. Black, deep black, with lines and fissures flashing all kinds of lights. Red, green, blue, solid colours, gradients, blips and blinks and flashes. Fans whirring, too, behind black grate, running perfectly silent. Wires bunched and wrapped around its neck, its collar, one shoulder. It had at least a dozen thin black appendages, curved elegantly, and a slim, nearly regal figure. It was a lot more stable on its base than its head would have suggested, being a bright, high-quality, wide-screen monitor nearly as wide as the thing was tall. On the monitor flashed a series of emotes, most of which were unrecognizable to Terry but a few he recognized from popular video games, albeit clearly altered for meme potential.

Currently, the largest emote on the monitor was an amorphous blue cartoon creature with eyes bugging out of its skull and its jaw dropped through the floor. Terry had a vague impression that the computer monster might have been slightly surprised to see him.

The ridiculousness of it couldn’t hope to draw Terry’s attention from where Jay was dangling limp, but still barely breathing, just a couple metres over from the monitor. He drew his shovel and raised it in front of him. “Drop them.”

The screen seamlessly transitioned to a smiling chibi fox, waving its little paw enthusiastically as if to say hello. “I am only retrieving my Hero. I have no quarrel with you. You are permitted to leave.” The screen shifted once more to display a man’s face, vertically flattened and holding out a comically large, poorly edited thumbs up.

Terry gritted his teeth. “I’m currently witnessing a kidnapping and you’re clearly dangerous. I’m not going to just walk away so you can… possess Jay and come back for seconds.”

The screen showed a gangly man in a superhero costume shaking his head solemnly. “Do not be alarmed. The Hero is my property, not a distinct individual. I only keep what is mine to keep.”

“Maybe they aren’t yours to keep.” Terry spat. Before the computer could get another word in, he charged for it, slicing at the nearest appendage. It jerked mostly out of the way but the tip came clean off with little issue.

The computer assumed a hostile stance as the screen showcased an MS Paint style stick figure eating another unconscious, bloodied stick figure. “WHAT THE HELL ARE YOU DOING.”

Terry didn’t bother dignifying that with a response and took another slash. The computer backed up against the wall, not quite moving its torso out of the danger zone. A couple more appendages were sent after Terry and he smacked one aside, and found the other missed by a foot or so. The screen shifted through more images, all viciously aggressive and a fair number horrendously racist. “STOP CAMPING YOU PIEEEEEE-E-E-E-E–E–ECE OF SHIT CHEATER.”

Terry couldn’t help but snicker. “I don’t think you know what camping means.” Several more appendages started whirling around, but there were so many they were tangling each other before they could even get close. Those few that managed to escape flailed wildly, and Terry smacked most of them aside with little trouble. “Actually, when’s the last time you’ve picked a fight without an unfair advantage?”

The computer might have screamed, or maybe that was just its fans whirring as it started to heat up. By now it was twitching so much with rage it couldn’t even target Terry properly. Distracted, it didn’t notice the appendage it sent was the one holding Jay, and Terry wasted no time severing it clean off. Jay fell to the ground, unconscious, but hopefully okay. No time to check. Realizing its mistake, the computer abandoned all caution, lunging its entire body at Terry. “HE’S MINE. HE’S MIIIIIIIIIII-I-I-I-I-I–I–I–INE YOU FILTHY HACKKKKKKKK-K-K-K-K–K–KER, PLAY THE GAME FOR ONCE AND EARN YOURRRRRR-R-R-R–R OWN GODDAMNED RARES–”

Before it could continue trash-talking him, Terry let it pounce directly into his shovel, spearing itself on the head. Something burst and popped in what would be the chest cavity, sparks cascading across the floor. He yanked the shovel out of its body and brought it down on the monitor, smashing it into three neat pieces. He brought it down again, and again, until it was hardly more than a shattered windowpane. Heaving and panting, finally satisfied it wouldn’t be getting back up, Terry turned back to Jay and started frantically rifling through their backpack.

Thank god or whoever else was left up there that he could actually access Jay’s inventory. The backpack seemed empty, which prompted a surge of panic, but upon reaching in, a long list of items, sorted by type and alphabetized, appeared in his mind’s eye. He quickly found the list of potions, and then narrowed it down to something labeled H. UP and wrapped his hand around the object in question. Wasting no time, he uncorked it and poured the contents directly into Jay’s mouth.

Sputtering and coughing, Jay sat up immediately and attempted to get to their feet, trembling all the while. Terry placed his hands on their shoulders and forced them to stay seated. They still tried to throw him off, trying to reach around to their whip. “G-g-get away from me.”

The sheer anguish coming from someone previously so aloof and, pardon his words, such an asshole, caused Terry’s heart to twinge in concern. “It’s just me, Jay. It’s Terry. I killed whatever that was that was looking for you.”

Jay froze, but notably their breathing did not slow at all. “Terry?”

Terry squeezed their hand. “Yep, just Terry.”

Jay curled in on themself a little, turning to look towards the computer. “Is it really…?”

“Yep. It’s dead.”

They let out a shaky breath. “I figured… you didn’t let it take me?”

Terry nearly lost his footing, just out of shock. “What kind of person am I that I’d… no, of course not. I’d be standing by as you died, or…” Terry remembered some of the computer’s words. PROPERTY. “Or worse. And I shouldn’t have made you go out anyway. You were obviously in danger. I almost killed you.”

“No.” Jay slowly shook their head. “That’s my fault. I didn’t tell you anything. I wouldn’t… I wouldn’t blame you for leaving me after all that. I almost killed you.”

“Yeah, but you probably thought I’d kick you out if I heard you were being hunted by a monster, right?”

Jay didn’t say anything. Terry took that as an opportunity to continue. “Look, we both did stupid shit. I think we’re basically even. Are we good?” He held a hand out to help Jay up.

Hesitantly, they grasped it. “...Fine.”

“Alright. I’m glad you’re okay.” That was good enough for Terry. They set off at a slow but measured pace, Terry keeping the questions going. “Are there any other digital monsters you might want to tell me about?”

Jay shook their head no, eyes downcast. “There’s a bunch of others on the third floor, but that was the only one that would’ve cared about me.”

“You’re from the third floor?”

“Yeah.”

“Huh.” Terry was bombarded with memories of laser turrets and strobe lights coming from the stairwell. “Never wanted to head up there myself. Seems rough.”

“It is.” Jay reached out to the storage room door, holding it open for Terry. “There’s some others like me and some others like that thing. The ones like us, we all just… did our best. I’m glad the fucker’s dead.” The last sentence was muttered quietly, like they weren’t even intending to say it aloud.

“Do you know if they’re okay?” As soon as he said it, Terry wished he hadn’t spoken up at all. For all he knew, everyone Jay knew was dead. And even if they weren’t, what the hell was he supposed to do, storm the whole third floor?

Luckily, Jay didn’t seem too perturbed. “I dunno. They’re free, at least. I just hope they can make it out. I can’t really… go back.” They stopped walking, almost as an afterthought. “I wonder if I could have taken one of them with me sometimes.”

Terry reached out to Jay and took their wrist. They let him. “You got out. That’s what matters. And now they’re free. You’ve done the best you could.”

“...Yeah.” Jay didn’t exactly seem convinced, but still, Terry was way out of his depth. Giving Jay’s forearm one last squeeze, he let it be.

As they knocked on the door to room 232, Jay paused again. “Wait.”

Terry spun to look at them. “What is it?”

“I need to ask about…” They peeked nervously in the direction of the room door. “Why are you with Bosco?”

Terry frowned. “What do you mean?”

“I mean, where do you know him from? Do you know if he’s safe? Can you leave?”

Terry mulled over his thoughts. It seemed like a simple enough question with a simple answer, but he didn’t know much for certain, either. Bosco seemed fine, but that didn’t say much about whether he was fine. “I don’t know him. Or anything about him. I could leave, but I don’t have anywhere else to go, either, and I’m more afraid of everyone else on this floor than him.”

The edge of Jay’s mouth twitched downwards. “Are you completely against moving somewhere else?” “Okay, what are you actually getting at here?” Terry tried to keep his face neutral, but he was definitely feeling the irritation start to show. “What do you have against Bosco? He’s weird, and secretive, but I don’t even see the guy. The fact that he keeps an entire wall between us and him already makes him safer than basically everyone else on this floor, and maybe the whole building.” “I don’t know if a wall is enough.” Jay’s voice began to hush. “Look, I can sometimes see stats, right? Not a lot. Normal people like you and the ones like me are friendlies and the really fucked up ones are enemies.” Terry nodded. Jay was making him realize how much illogical nonsense actually existed in video games that he was willing to ignore for the sake of immersion. “Bosco is a boss enemy, Terry. I’ve never even seen a boss before, I don’t know what that even means. Nothing I’ve seen on floor three is a boss. I don’t really care to find out either. You get me?”

Terry nodded slowly. “I mean, sure. Does that record intentions though? Like, the weird ones are always enemies, no exception, right? Even the sane ones?”

“That’s different, though, because they’re not fucking bosses, just regular old grunts.” Jay was starting to pace, boots tapping against the floorboards. “I’m supposed to kill grunts. I don’t have revives, because this is real life, so if I fight a boss I’m fucking dead.”

Terry was not completely sure why realism was a significant factor for only the revives thing and literally nothing else but decided that comment was more irrelevant than not. “You don’t have to fight him, though. He’s just a guy.”

Jay stopped pacing and finally made eye contact with Terry. “Terry, this isn’t Understory, I don’t get rewarded for letting monsters run around.”

“Maybe you do, though.” Terry didn’t break his gaze. “We can agree it’s mutually beneficial that neither of you kill each other, right? Bosco gets more food, you don’t get slaughtered. I’m sure he understands the same.”

Jay set his sights back on the dirtied floorboards. “If we die, that’s on you.”

“I figured as much.”

That resolved, the two closed the rest of the distance to the room and snuck inside. Immediately once the door shut, Bosco made his presence known. “Oh you’re back… you were out for… it was a while? Are you… are you okay?”

“We’re fine,” Terry called. “Exhausted, though. I’ll tell you about it tomorrow?”

“...Okay.” Terry hoped Bosco wasn’t too disappointed, but he seemed alright. “I already had dinner… don’t worry about me, get some rest. Thank you again.”

“It’s nothing.” The words slipped out automatically. Terry dropped his bag by the couch and checked the packaged goods for something halfway substantial, eventually settling on a mishmash of snacks when he failed. As he turned to head to the table, he caught Jay awkwardly standing by the couch by the bags. He held up a bag of chips. “You want anything?”

“Nah, I don’t really eat.”

“Suit yourself.” Terry opened the bag and started eating, not bothering to take a seat. “You can have the bathroom first, then.”

Jay nodded and went to the bathroom to wash up. Terry wasn’t even onto his next chip when they reemerged, six seconds later. At Terry’s blank expression, they clarified, “Most activities are instantaneous for me. Also, don’t worry about sleeping arrangements, I’ll apparently just vanish and reappear in the morning.”

“...Got it.” Sure, that seemed normal enough. Whatever. “Could you maybe, um, help me out with the couch first? If you’re up to it?”

Jay grimaced. “Nope. I don’t have permissions to move furniture in anyone else’s living space, and I can’t physically override that, so.”

“No worries. See you in the morning, then.” Jay gave Terry one last nod and blinked out of existence.

With Jay gone, it was almost like yesterday, but with slightly less viscera. Terry finished up snacking and took his own turn in the bathroom and stumbled over to the couch, and fell asleep before he even remembered to set his alarm.

He dreamt about being born and his parents locking him in a display case, never even bothering to give him a name.

Chapter Text

“GO AWAY!”

Terry bolted upright with a shout of his own. As he leapt off the couch, he got dragged down by his blanket and fell to a heap on the floor, where he shoved himself back up and clambered to his feet. Despite colliding with every object in the surrounding area, he could hardly hear himself over the rapid thwack of flesh on drywall and a cacophonous screeching. Swiveling, he locked onto his bag where he’d discarded it nearby the night before, dumped the majority of its contents onto the floor, and scooped up the pistol, pointing it directly behind the couch, at the source of the commotion. His finger brushed the safety, ready to switch it off if things got dire.

Jay, who was completely alone, raised their hands above their head, eyes cartoonishly bugged open. Terry’s breathing grew louder, drowning out the rest of the noise. No, it was silent now. Just Terry huffing, and Jay nearly hyperventilating, the two completely unable to break eye contact.

Seeing that no one was going to voluntarily give him any information, Terry was the one to break the silence. “What the hell is happening now?”

“I don’t know!” Jay yelped. “I just got here and Bosco tried to obliterate the entire room or something! I have no fucking clue!”

Terry eyed the bedroom door, shut flush and seemingly the same as yesterday save a couple new scratches on the paint. After about three seconds he realized Bosco wasn’t exactly present to pick up on visual cues. “Bosco?” “I’m sorry!” To his credit, he did sound sorry. “They startled me! I didn’t… I thought it was clear… they just appeared.”

“Jesus Christ.” With the current situation now clarified to be not, in fact, a direct and immediate threat to his life, Terry’s brain decided he no longer needed all that adrenaline anymore and he slumped into the couch, hand on his temples. Terry liked to think he was a relatively considerate person but times like these made him really wish he was morally deficient enough to blame a scapegoat for everything. “Technically, this is my fault. Jay, Bosco doesn’t like being around people, so let him know when you might log back in. Sorry I didn’t mention that last night.”

“No kidding.” Jay scowled. “Sure. I’ll be logging in at 7:00 sharp. Try not to eat me or anything.”

A quiet snuffle drifted out from the bedroom. “I don’t… eat people.”

“Sure you don’t, buddy.”

“Okay,” Terry stepped forward to break up the discussion before realizing he was really just stepping in front of Jay, and that felt targeted, and then Jay was glaring at him a little and he awkwardly shuffled back to his original position. “Okay. Glad we could resolve that.”

“Uh huh.” Jay turned to head into the kitchen, fully disengaged. As Terry started to follow, Bosco called, “Wait, can… can Jay… appear? Just, wherever?”

“Nope,” Jay shouted over their shoulder. “I reappear back in the same spot I logged off.”

“What do you mean…?” Bosco somehow sounded even more unsure than he usually did.

Jay, perturbed, started to explain before Terry realized and cut them off. “Oh, wait, I never did tell you about Jay yesterday, did I?”

Bosco paused. “No…”

“Yeah, then none of this makes any damn sense. Jay, is it alright if I…?”

Jay waved their hand without even looking. “Go wild.”

“Right.” Terry nodded uselessly. “Right. So Jay is… a video game character?”

“...What…?”

“Yeah, a video game protagonist.” Terry tried to rearrange his explanation in a way that was both comprehensible and sane. “Okay, not the actual character, they were very adamant about that, but… based off of one, or something? And they follow game logic, so instead of sleeping, they log out and stuff.”

“...Oh.” Bosco did not in fact sound like he understood the situation any better, and perhaps instead understood it worse.

Undeterred, Terry continued. “Yeah, so we went to the storage room yesterday. Got a lot of stuff, Jay was actually very helpful because their inventory is stupid huge, but that is still the last room on this floor. It’s… it doesn’t look good, in other places, so I’m hoping this can tide you over for a bit.”

Bosco hummed. “I checked. I think it will be okay… maybe for… a day. Sorry…”

Jay yelled from the kitchen, “I have more still in my inventory, about triple.”

“Oh!” A little thud came from Bosco’s room, like he mistakenly rammed into something. “That’s good! Thanks… thank you.”

“All good,” Terry continued. “Yeah, I wouldn’t say it was stress free, but certainly better than yesterday at least. Jay’s pretty good at this stuff. Um, there was one… situation, with Jay, but I think it should be okay now? Someone was looking for them, that’s all, but it should be taken care of.”

“Oh… that’s good.” Bosco seemed pleased, at least. “I’m glad you’re okay.”

“Yeah, me too.”

“I’m also glad I’m okay, don’t know if anyone else remembered.” Jay added, their input only partially welcome. Flustered, Bosco began to defend the two of them before he realized they were just teasing and gave up.

Finally getting his train of thought back on track, Bosco tried talking again. “So… maybe… you don’t have to go out today?”

Terry mused for a moment. It wasn’t a terrible plan; no reason to risk his life excessively, right? That said, his pack was quite low on a few supplies. “Jay, what’s your potion stock like?”

“I mean, it’s fine,” Jay stopped taking stuff from the cupboard they currently had open and instead started rummaging in their own pack. “Not great.”

“Hmm.” Terry hummed, mostly to himself, and turned back towards Bosco’s door. “Well, we might still want to go out for medical supplies. Things could still break into here, and I wouldn’t want to be caught off guard. There weren’t really any in the storage room.”

“None there,” Jay affirmed.

“Well…” Bosco huffed, hesitant. “Isn’t the point to avoid danger?”

“Yeah, but still. Or someone could get sick. You never know.”

“Sure… it’s your choice… be safe, please.”

Terry nodded. “Will do.” He glanced back awkwardly, then turned back to Bosco’s door, then with nothing left to say headed into the kitchen, where Jay was hustling around to different locations and pulling free assorted plants from their inventory to craft with. As they brushed past Terry, one of their arms blurred with the sheer speed at which they…

Well, they were moving at more of a saunter, or leisurely stroll, than running. It was a measured pace.

A slow pace.

“Wait,” Terry grabbed Jay’s arm and they violently tugged it away. He tightened his grip, nearly stumbling directly into Jay. “What–”

Jay shoved him away successfully with their other arm. “Don’t grab me, asshole.”

“Sorry!” Terry raised his hands in surrender. He’d be doing that a lot, it would seem. “Sorry, didn’t mean to. I just–” “Why would you even do that anyway? What’s your problem?”

“I didn’t– I don’t know, your arm is, and I don’t know if this is normal, blurring? Maybe that’s fine? I just don’t recall it happening yesterday. None of my business probably. I’ll lay off.” Jay wasn’t looking at Terry anymore, rather just staring at their arm, flexing the joints. The fuzziness expanded around the edges as they did so, and Terry could almost make out fine pixelation in the texture. “... It did not.”

Terry racked his mind for something that wouldn’t be considered horribly invasive in this context, or even more difficult, something Jay wouldn’t consider somehow irritating. “Yeah. Is that… okay?”

Jay’s eyes snapped back to meet Terry’s. The look they gave was bewildered, eyebrows bunched in concern, before they immediately fixed their demeanor back to “mildly impatient”. “I’m sure it’s safe. You worry too much about everything.”

Terry sucked in a breath. “Okay, but is it for sure safe? I don’t want you to turn into a, I don’t know, dragon, and shred me.”

“I said it’s fine.” Jay stormed off about five metres over into the kitchen. Still well within talking distance, but Terry did have a point at which he stopped pushing someone’s boundaries for information and he seemed to be rapidly approaching that point. Resigned, he followed Jay and scavenged for a half-sufficient breakfast.

Pancakes were easy, and they had about twenty boxes of pancake mix, so he took those and got to work. Jay meandered around, mostly around the sink area to get water. Occasionally they headed over to the stove to make something or another but it didn’t seem like they actually needed to use the stovetop, so Terry went about his business unbothered.

“It might be because it died.”

Terry blinked, wondering if he heard correctly over the sizzling of pancakes. “What?”

“The blurring. The computer used to restore me or something, maybe twice a day. Maybe it’s because I’m not being serviced regularly or whatever.”

Terry flipped a pancake. “You don’t have to tell me.”

“Okay, but I have to tell someone,” Jay said, rolling their eyes. As far as Terry was concerned, no they didn’t, but if sassing him was the only way for them to open up in any meaningful capacity he would sit there and take it. Unchallenged, Jay continued. “It’s fucked up. I don’t know what’s happening either, and I hate that. I’m just not allowed to win at anything, apparently.”

“That’s… it’s how it is when you… are like that. Everything has to be hard.” Jay swore and Terry flinched in response, tossing nearly a full pan of pancakes onto the floor. Bosco immediately followed up with, “Sorry! I didn’t… I shouldn’t be listening in…”

Jay shook their head, picking up the pancakes where they fell, still hot, and shoving them somewhere deep into their inventory. “It’s whatever, I forgot you were there. You haven’t killed me yet, so, feel free, I guess.”

Bosco didn’t respond. Terry opened his mouth to ask after him, but Jay took that as an affirmation and Terry opted to just run with that. Jay stood back up. “But yeah, like Bosco said. Actually, the part that bothers me is that I don’t even have anything to look back on. Everyone always talks about how nice it was before the sky imploded or whatever and I’ve certainly got no clue.”

Terry poured another batch into the pan. “Do you not… remember? Before?”

Jay left the stove again, now filling a series of jars with water to mix with very normal ingredients like glowing flowers and hairy eyeballs. “Sort of? I wasn’t around back then, but apparently I was partly made from… okay, so this,” they turned around, gesturing very generally to their entire body, “is because I am partly made from, not the same as, but made from, Alistere Triumphiale, protagonist of the hit video game Catafalque, as everyone is familiar with.” They stared at Terry for a minute, as if challenging him.

Terry blinked, still holding the spatula. “Right.”

Jay nodded, as if his blinking performance was satisfactory. “Right. And I am also partly made from some random amateur speedrunner I never learned the name of, as everyone is not in fact familiar with. And there were others made from other characters too. It was the one who… made us, so we could be, like…” Jay trailed off, hands pressed together, one nearly phasing through the other. “It was obsessed. We were almost like collectible figurines, or something? It liked to make us act out stories and such. Like the games we’re from, but like, we were really doing those things. I was… well, I’m the cool-guy hero, so I was usually fine, but…” One hand curled around to grip the other. The nails didn’t draw blood, rather pushing through the flesh like putty.

“Jesus.” Terry put the pan aside, turning around to face Jay directly. “That’s horrible.”

“You’re telling me.” Jay snorted. “You can keep going. Don’t make this a big deal.”

Hesitantly, Terry nodded and put the pancakes back on, absently pushing them around with the spatula. “So you never even saw it?”

“Nah. I’m not planning on it either.” Jay shoved the last of the potions back into their inventory, and returned to hang out by the stove. “I don’t care if I’m probably immune or what, I’m not fucking with whatever made it.”

“Yeah, it’s not exactly high on my list of good ideas.” Terry finished with the last of the pancakes, attempting to arrange them on enough plates that they wouldn’t topple and few enough that they would actually fit on the counter. “I mean, I do wonder, sometimes.”

Jay gave him a side-eye. “Do you really think something that melts your eyes is fun to look at?”

“No, obviously not!” Terry picked up the first of the plates to take to Bosco. “But I’m just curious, you know? Like, what is it that’s actually capable of doing… that.”

“Don’t do it.” As Bosco spoke up, Terry nearly dropped the plate he was holding. Well, he did, but it was only about an inch away from the floor, so no big deal. It wasn’t like his input was unexpected, at least this time, it was just… Terry didn’t think Bosco could sound authoritative about anything. Anxious, definitely, urgent, sure. Not stern.

Terry stood back up, facing the door. “Don’t worry, I wasn’t planning on it.”

“Don’t.” Bosco’s response was hushed, nearly inaudible through the door.

“Bosco, did you look outside?” Jay made an expression that communicated, very clearly, this guy definitely looked outside.

Bosco said absolutely nothing for maybe seven seconds as Jay watched the door expectantly and Terry desperately tried to find a way to de-escalate. Eventually, Bosco came around, replying, “...Yes.”

“Okay,” Terry glared at Jay, who glared right back. “You don’t have to talk about it, it’s fine.”

“No, I don’t mind,” Bosco assured. “Since you were wondering…”

“Mhm.” Terry brought another plate over. “It does explain a few things.”

“What’s your deal then?” Jay set another plate next to the door, briefly meeting Terry’s eyes long enough to give them a smoldering glower. “If you want to answer that, I guess.”

“I… don’t… I don’t know if I want to…” Bosco’s voice muffled a little, like he was laying on something. “Not good, anyway… didn’t you see me?”

“Nah, my senses didn’t load in until you were gone, anyway.”

“Oh…” Oddly, Bosco didn’t seem too assured by that. “Okay… well, it’s not good. It really messes you up… it’s a good thing I don’t leave, trust me…”

“I believe that,” Terry said exactly in unison with Jay, slightly less sardonically than they did. Finally fetching the last plate, he gestured for Jay to step away from the door. “We have your food, by the way.”

“Thanks…”

Terry started to drag Jay away to the bathroom before Bosco interrupted. “Wait! Wait… it’s fine, if you want to know… my deal. Not all of it… just what I look like? That’s okay?”

“Oh.” Terry shook himself out of his stupor. “I wasn’t actually expecting you to say that, honestly.”

“Yeah, not all of me… of course… just a little is okay, you don’t have to… leave every time I do anything. We live together now anyway…”

“Alright, yeah, that’s fine.” Terry still kept a small distance from the door.

“If it’s safe, go for it.” Jay also did not get any closer to the door. Actually, they were standing partially behind Terry, but he couldn’t blame them for not wanting to be in the line of fire, and Bosco was sort of his roommate, so.

“Okay…” More objects dragged and shifted from behind the door, followed by the sound of fabric pulling. “I’m going to cover myself though… just in case…”

“Gotcha.” Terry eyed the door flap, waiting.

The flap pushed open ever so slightly, just a few millimetres, then another few, before something shoved its way out. Some kind of shape draped in a dark green blanket. Under the fabric, it twitched, like it was feeling its way into the open air blindly. Well, that was probably what was actually happening, too.

A little more inched its way out before two feet of appendage dumped itself out of the flap. It coiled around, no, not quite coiled. Coiling implies an organized, neat, spiralling kind of bunching; this was more of a haphazard heap of smooth circular curves that couldn’t quite compress themselves into a neat collection. Like if someone tried to tie a snake into a knot. It twitched, flexing and curling, the end roughly swinging around before it grasped one of the plates. In one smooth motion, it wrapped around the circumference of the plate, pushed the flap back open with the “base” part of the appendage (not really the base, it looked like there was a lot more where that came from), and darted back inside the door.

There was a faint splat from the other side, followed by an “Oh, shoot…” from Bosco. Maybe it wasn’t that smooth a motion.

As the… tentacle? No, although it seemed to be a tentacle, that just didn’t seem quite right to describe it, guess Terry would have to keep calling it an “appendage” of all things. In any case, as the appendage returned to get the next plate, Jay absently looked away from the scene back to Terry instead. “Are we just going to watch in silence? This is hella awkward.”

“I mean, it’s kind of…” Terry really didn’t want to say weird. “Distracting.”

“You mean weird.” “No, I–”

“I… am weird, it’s fine.” Bosco’s statement was punctuated by the door flap swinging shut. “No offense taken…”

“Okay, yeah.” Terry let out a breath, resigned. “I don’t think anyone would’ve believed me if I said this was very normal, anyway. I guess it’s not that crazy for current times specifically.”

“Oh, that’s true…” Bosco squirreled away the third plate, almost slipping up but righting the plate just before any pancakes fell off. “I don’t know what it’s like in the hallways… outside is really bad though…”

Jay snickered. “Yeah, no kidding.”

Terry grabbed his own breakfast and sat down in front of the door. “How bad are we talking?”

“It doesn’t look like… real. Very very… chaotic… dangerous… fanatical, almost? Not… not like… cults… there is an… involuntary, blind worship to the thing in the sky.”

Terry chewed his pancake. “How is that not a cult?”

“It’s not… belief, it’s just existence. They… I think… are… copying its existence. The form. That is… they become it to understand it? But they… cannot…?”

They become it to understand it. It… almost made sense, in a completely abstract, non-sensical way. Terry wrapped the idea around in his head, trying to glean meaning from the words. Before he came to any kind of conclusion, Jay jumped in. “So we’re becoming the thing outside?” “...Yes?” Bosco seemed hesitant, but not unsure, more like he just knew this was a bold claim to be made. “I don’t know… I think so, it’s what… makes sense.”

“Then what the hell appeared in the sky that looks like…” Jay aggressively waved their arms around in every direction. “This bullshit?”

“It’s…” Bosco fell silent. For quite a while. The stillness was broken now and then by his aborted attempts to get back on track, but to little avail. Every time it happened, Terry looked to Jay, fully expecting them to interrupt or lose interest. But they didn’t. Simply waited, arms crossed, facing the door, expectant. Or maybe, secretly, patient.

It was almost a minute before Bosco found a way to phrase it. “It branches. It’s always more. No matter where… no matter where you look. There’s no… end, no beginning, it’s just… there’s more. It keeps going. It keeps branching, and… and splintering, until… there is no until. It just does that forever.”

Like an ouroboros. That was the first thing to crop up in Terry’s mind. The tail-eating serpent, no end, no beginning. But that was just a cycle. There was no end nor beginning to the ouroboros, but there was no argument to what space it occupied. It was a simple ring, in space. Whereas this thing… “It expands forever.”

“...Forever. Yes. That may as well… that is what it is.”

The three of them digested that.

“Great,” Jay finally huffed, resigned. “So Earth is being haunted by the concept of infinity, which gives us all existential crises so bad that we turn into horrible monsters, like flesh amalgamations, or League of Champions players. Sure.”

Terry did not really want that to be the main takeaway of Bosco’s explanation. Yet, none of what Jay said was nearly as wrong as it rightfully should be.

Terry opted to remain silent for the good of the general public.

“Sorry… I didn’t mean to… bring the mood down…” Bosco whispered.

“No, you’re good,” Terry replied, only happy to finally have an excuse to talk that had nothing to do with comprehending the ridiculous reality of the situation. “It’s good that… it’s good that we know. Even if it’s some crazy shit like ‘the concept of infinity permanently melts our brains’. At least now it sounds stupid enough that I’m not even tempted to go out there.”

“...Yeah… curiosity is… scary.” Bosco said the last word with an air of finality.

“Alright.” Terry, now done with his pancakes, took his plate to the sink. “As much as I am not going out there, I think it is in our best interests to look around inside here again. Jay?”

“Fine, whatever.” Jay stashed their dishes in the sink too, even though Terry was pretty sure they could wash them near instantaneously. “What now?”

“I don’t actually, um, have a place in mind…” Terry gathered up his bag, along with his gun where he left it after nearly shooting Jay in the head that morning, and slung it over his shoulder. “We need medical supplies though. Upper floors are out of the question, and I do not want to go anywhere I haven’t already been here, so that leaves us with floor one?”

“Doesn’t make a difference to me.”

“Alright.” Terry nodded. “Unfortunately since neither of us know the… situation, we’re going to be going blind.”

“Whatever.” Jay shrugged. “I can handle it.”

“I’ll trust that. Let’s go.”

Another quick goodbye to Bosco and they were out in the halls once more. Terry looked down the left end of the hallway. Then the right. Looked down at the blood smeared all over the corridor, still a little fresh. “I hate this place.”

“If I’m supposed to be your moral support, I can just turn around and leave.”

“Don’t bother.” Terry kicked at the ground. “I’m just… it’s hard to stay optimistic about exploring new places, you know? It’s bad enough here, and this is like an oasis of easy pickings. There’s a reason I’ve made it this long and it’s not skill.”

“Well,” Jay swept their hand around the filthy hallways. “If you really were that incompetent, that would be you on the walls. Anyway, we might as well get killed by something that’ll get the job done fast. I don’t care to bleed out over a week.”

“That’s true.” Terry tentatively took a step towards the stairwell, setting the pace. “Can you even bleed out, actually?” “Why would I not be able to bleed.”

“I don’t know! You’re made of pixels or something, those don’t usually have blood or juice or whatever.”

“First, don’t call human or sub-human bodily fluids juice ever again.” Having reached the stairs, Jay reached around Terry to shove the doors open. “I hate that. Also, bleeding is maybe one of the most common status effects in every game ever, obviously I can bleed.”

“Jay, don’t just open the door like that!” Terry nearly dropped his bag as he fumbled with his shovel, in a guarding position. His arms trembled slightly. Nothing jumped out from the doorway, nothing snarled or howled or hissed from beyond. Jay gave him a side-eye and Terry let out a quick puff of air. “I’m not looking to get ambushed.”

“Whatever, asshole.” Jay started descending the stairs. “Don’t you have a gun or something? Why are you trying to swing an entire shovel through a doorway?”

Terry blinked. “I don’t– Well, I didn’t want to–”

“Did you forget?” Jay swung completely around to meet his eyes, flabbergasted.

“No! I didn’t forget I was carrying a gun! What do you–” Terry pressed his fingers to the bridge of his nose, and forced out a sigh, suddenly humbled. “Okay, I don’t really know how to use it. Okay? Never touched one of these before. I’m barely even certain that the safety is on right now.”

Jay quirked an eyebrow. “Wait, really?”

“Yes, really. We’re in Canada, people don’t just have pistols lying around. Rifles, maybe. In the city? Hell no.”

“Huh.” Jay broke eye contact, staring at the wall, and automatically started drifting back down the stairs. “I guess I didn’t even consider that having weapons all over the place would be strange.”

“Well, it’s not that weird.” Terry snorted. “Go down south a couple hundred kilometers and you’ll find plenty. Too bad for me, I guess. I could use some gun training about now.”

“Yeah.” Jay eased open the door to the ground level, looking around briefly before stepping forward. The halls smelled nicer, for sure, but Terry wouldn’t really call them cleaner; rather, they were caked in dust and mud instead of gore. Still a nice change of pace. His musing was interrupted as Jay continued their thought. “Wonder how they’re doing there.”

Terry snorted again, the corner of his mouth almost grinning. “I mean, on the one hand, guns would even the playing field some. But I also imagine everyone would’ve just started shooting day one. All things considered. I don’t think my chances would’ve been any better in America, really.”

Jay tapped their fingers against the handle of their whip. “At least you’d die fast.”

“Yeah.” Terry’s smile dropped off his face. “Hope it’s not too late for that.”

The gun chilled his fingertips as he went to feel where he’d holstered it on his belt. He snatched his fingertips away, as though shocked, rubbing them together. Curled them into a loose fist.

He really didn’t want to think about that right now.

Doors passed them by on both sides. Terry hesitantly reached out and tried one. Locked. Jay didn’t stop, and he had to jog to catch up, immediately asking them once he was back at their side, “Are we not going to check these ones?”

Jay shook their head. “Not interactable. Even if you got them open, I couldn’t get in. Invisible walls.”

Terry nodded, eyes drifting. “Gotcha.” Trusting their lead, he let Jay pull ahead as he raised his shovel, swiveling to catch any stalkers or straggling predators behind, occasionally reaching for his pistol before abandoning the movement. Jay held a hand out and he nearly bumped into them, pointing out a door. No number, strangely enough. And it wasn’t made of wood, either; rather, it was a metal door with a reasonably sized reinforced glass window in place of a peephole. It shone as the garish fluorescent flickered from above, reflective sheen still present, free of filth, save a small bloody handprint on the doorknob, long since dried. Terry could almost smell bleach, and could definitely smell alcohol. “This one?”

Jay winced. “I know. This is the one, though. Everything else down that hall is off limits, and if you want to go alone, be my guest. But there’s good shit in here. It is a,” Jay broke off, sucking in a breath. “It is a moderate-risk area. But really good medical supplies, it’s just what we’re looking for, we can pop in and out in five minutes.”

Terry hovered his hand over his handgun. “I guess if we split up and I don’t find anything, we’ll end up going in here anyway.”

“Yeah.” Jay nodded enthusiastically. “It’s risk mitigation, if you think about it.”

“Oh, who the fuck am I kidding.” Terry braced himself, toggling what he hoped was the safety of the handgun, finger firmly off the trigger. He didn’t trust himself not to slip up with his hands shaking so much. “Let’s just go.”

The door eased open to reveal a long, sterile hallway. Not neat, not at all; the floor was strewn with papers, stands, stools, even the odd gurney here and there. Not sterile in the sanitary sense, either, as traces of blood and bile and piss and other fluids stained white sheets and multicolored hospital greens here and there. Still not a lot. But most if not all stains were dried, residual, and sparse, and the overpowering scent of alcohol drowned out anything else Terry might have noticed.

Overall, it wasn’t great. Could have been worse.

It was bad. “Are you for real.”

Jay shifted on their feet. “Fast, remember?”

“Yeah, okay,” Terry said, stepping hesitantly into the hallway. “Let’s all enter the set of the latest B-tier horror movie about an insane little girl who talks to ghosts. That’s fine.”

Jay shut the door. “At least we know there’s lots of stuff.”

“Why, for fucks sake, would you shut the door!” Terry launched himself back at the door, tugging it wide open.

Jay rolled their eyes. “Dude, relax, it’s not going to lock behind us or anything. It doesn’t have a lock on it. And the only thing worse than being in here is being in here with a bunch of freaks from the hallway.”

Trembling, Terry let the door swing shut. “...Okay.”

Jay nudged him along. “Great. Let’s go.”

Forcing himself away from the door, Terry crept down the hall, white-knuckling his shovel all the while. The gurneys were annoying, but most were still intact enough to wheel around, so they weren’t too strenuous to guide out of their way. Despite all the junk, there wasn’t much in the way of actual supplies. Jay stood behind, letting Terry clear a path.

“Hey, Jay,” Terry held up a relatively clean sheet. “I wouldn’t use these for bandages or anything, obviously, but you think you could cut a piece off anyway? It might be useful to have fabric, and I can’t fit an entire sheet.”

“Nah.” Jay didn’t look up from the stool in front of them, making no effort to move it. “I can’t actually interact with most of this stuff anyway.”

“Right.” Of all the things Terry thought to carry on hand, for some reason a knife was not one of them. He’d considered it before taking a glance at Jay’s belt that morning and opted to go without. Terry dragged the stool aside with a squeal of metal on metal. “Sorry, I’ll move that.”

Just past the stool was another door, slightly ajar. Terry stood in front for a second, still. Quiet. With a creak, he reached out and pushed it open a bit more, enough to see, then enough to enter. Waving Jay in, they both searched the room. It was still somewhat orderly, unlike the hallways; the desk was far from clear, but at least it was standing up the right way. Only a couple unlabelled jars of medication were lying exposed, but there were plenty of drawers to rifle through. Scanning the area for potential hazards, Terry found the room to look fairly ordinary, even, perhaps like a mundane disaster such as an earthquake hit the area. Jay was the first to step forward, examining the pill bottles, squinting.

They held one out to Terry. “You know what these are?”

“I can’t say without a label. Medications aren’t exactly visually unique, y’know.”

“Hm.” Jay plunked it back onto the counter. “That’s a shame.”

Terry batted Jay aside, reaching around to open the first cupboard by the desk. Here was the jackpot. Bandages upon bandages, tonics, medical twine, scalpels, scissors, the heftier painkillers. He hastily started packing them into his bag, waving Jay over to take some of the goods themself. As he went, he couldn’t help but marvel. “These are really good quality. Right in the open, too, I’m shocked no one’s taken them yet.”

“I wouldn’t want to explore the creepy hospital either.” Jay shrugged. “Plus, clearly there’s some reality warping going on, considering how long this hallway is. Maybe they replenish somehow? I’ve noticed some of my consumables reappear now and then, but I don’t know if that’s exclusive to the third floor or not.” They reached out to open the next cupboard.

“Well, it would make sense.” Terry’s hand stilled. “You don’t think there’s a reason no one’s taken–”

Jay was flung across the room. Something unwound itself from within the cupboard, launching itself over to where Jay landed, before something caught and the entire desk fell onto it with a massive CRASH. Undeterred, in a blur of off-white, it flipped and flailed, scratching at the desk with horrific metal screeches. Terry ran for Jay and scooped them off the floor, slinging their good arm over his shoulder before they got their feet underneath them and ran ahead, pulling Terry along instead. Terry slammed the door as they left, only for it to jam two inches from closing and wrench open once more. Through the gap, he could see dirty cloth and a long steel needle poking through.

“Terry, no time, fucking move!” Jay shoved Terry away from the door, almost sending him tumbling into a gurney blocking the way. As he rushed to clear the way, Jay spun around, pulling free their whip. Back turned, they didn’t realize Terry was done until he grabbed them by the shoulder and pulled them after. From behind came the thunk and clatter of myriad objects being knocked askew, and that same nails-on-chalkboard screech. Too close. The next gurney was wedged in, with two wheels missing to boot. Back to the wall, Terry tore his pistol free, swinging around to meet his opponent.

Only a few metres away was a faceless crawling bloodied–

BANG

The recoil smashed Terry’s elbow painfully into the gurney behind. As his arm spasmed, the gun fell from his grip, clattering to the floor. The thing stumbled back too, as its tail smashed into the gurney just next to Terry’s face, shoving it back a few inches. It covered the right side of its face with a hand tipped with hypodermic needles, where there was a raggedy impression with little shards sticking out. No blood. The only fluid was the thin transparent contents of its needle-fingers, slowly leaking free at the tips. Tiny drops speckled the floor where he snatched up the gun.

The distraction was enough to squeeze himself past the gurney. Twisting around, Terry reached out to help Jay past the gurney before realizing they were going in for their own attack. “Jay! Come on!”

“I can’t!” Jay kicked out, sending the thing stumbling. “Invisible barrier! You have to move it!”

“Shit.” If that thing barely budged it, Terry couldn’t do a thing. Standing back from the commotion, he raised the gun, trying to line up a reasonable shot. An impossible task. Jay was grappling with it with their whip, nearly wrestling it, as it tried to pin them. Overbalanced, they slipped and fell backwards onto the gurney, head smashing into the mattress. The thing leaned over with leathery limbs, crushing them underneath, scrambling up the length of their body.

With any chance of a shot blocked by Jay’s head, it plunged every needle on its two front hands directly into their neck. Jay screamed, loud at first, before trailing off into a wheeze. The thing craned its head back, expressionless, revealing wrappings peeling off at the edges. The claws scraped down Jay’s neck, tearing short gashes into the flesh like thin paper, and vividly blue, pixelated fluid leaked out from under a superficial layer of blood. Its fingers started to draw back. It flexed its knuckles, keeping the death grip by Jay’s collarbone, as the tough flesh around the finger joints swelled in anticipation. One of the two was shuddering. It was hard to tell which.

Just as the first bit of bright fluid started to fill one of the fingertips, it recoiled violently, collapsing to the ground. It spurted the fluid out from its fingers, pumping air and tiny pixels as though purging itself, and scrambled back to its feet before careening away at a breakneck pace. Terry fired a shot at its back, to no avail; it was already long gone.

Jay gasped where they lay on the ground. Terry hurled himself over the gurney, swearing and hyperventilating himself as he started searching Jay’s inventory. “Shit, shit, it’s going to be fine, you’re going to be fine. We’re going to figure this out–”

Jay reached in and snatched up a potion from their hotbar before Terry could even try choosing one himself. A very thin vial with a rainbow fluid in it. As they swallowed it, most of the fluid leaked out from the messy gashes in their neck. Terry would have to hope it still did whatever it was supposed to do.

He began to panic again when nothing happened only for Jay to take another health potion and chug that, too. The wounds knitted themselves together. “We need to go, that was my last cure-all and we cannot go without if there’s more like that.”

“Jay, wait, holy shit, you’re okay. Okay. I’m with you but I need to know what that did to you–”

“Cure-all. It’s fine now.” Jay placed a hand on his shoulder reassuringly. Terry was not reassured. Although maybe that wasn’t actually why Jay put their hand on his shoulder as they then shoved themself to their feet, using him as leverage. “But that thing gave me… probably every single status effect I’ve ever heard of and then some. We’re going to die if we don’t leave immediately.”

“Let’s fucking go, then.” Terry instinctively grabbed Jay’s hand as he walked before they tugged it out of his grip with a glare. Though, with a second more hesitation than he’d expected.

The exit was far, but not too far. Thankfully, the space-warping hallway stretching did not appear to be currently ongoing. As he walked, Terry tried to avoid knocking his shovel against the random obstacles scattered about, to some success, as he nervously gripped the gun in his dominant hand. Jay had their whip ready, but their arm swung stiff, fingers twitching across the grip. That, and also…

“Jay, are you completely out of potions?”

“What? No?” Jay checked their inventory. “Definitely not, I’ve got a half stack of health potions left.”

“But your…” Terry gestured at their belt. Or rather, lack thereof. “It’s missing.”

“No, it’s– wait, what?” Jay stopped walking, giving themself a pat-down. “Oh, okay, great. Well, it’s just cosmetic, so whatever.”

“It could be…” Terry winced, regretting bringing it up now of all times, but he was committed. “You think it’s the… condition? Glitch?”

Jay shrugged, but their hands only tightened around their weapon. “It’s probably nothing.”

Terry nodded. “You do say I overthink all the time.”

Jay averted their eyes. “...Yeah. I do.”

And if he was overthinking, there was probably no need to keep spouting his every thought. Terry opted to stare holes into every door they passed, instead of desperately searching for a non-stressful topic of conversation.

Only a few tens of meters from the exit, the door just ahead on the right was ripped from its hinges. Wind rushed by Terry’s face as he stumbled back into Jay, the splintered remains of the door nearly embedding themselves directly into his face. Thin plastic tubing groped at the edge of the doorframe, rubbery and transparent with sludgy brown blood inching along inside. Bubbles pooled in a bend as the tubes tightened their grip around the frame.

In one choppy step, the rest collapsed into the hall. More tubing caught itself on a gurney, overbalancing in the other direction, where it didn’t quite stand up straight but propped itself over enough to not fall backwards. A long metal scaffold held a swollen IV blood-bag seven feet up, enough to scrape on the ceiling. Bits of the steel pole splintered off along the sides, branching out into spindly limbs with forcep-like claws at the ends, tapering off from lustrous metal into plasticky IV tubing. Blood caked every inch of the thing, both brown and flaky, and freshly oozing crimson. It stank of copper. Copper and something sharp and antiseptic.

Ramrod-straight, yet hunched over, it tipped over in Terry’s direction, reaching a stick-thin claw out to snatch at his hoodie. Darting out of the way, it didn’t get much more than that but did tear off a good chunk of it. He followed up with a two-handed strike from above, the sharp edge of the shovel glancing off its back with a harsh recoil. Less delicate than it appeared.

Half-crawling, half clambering to its many tiny feet, it charged towards Terry once more from across. He jumped out of the way, only to smash his shoulder into the wall, nearly enough to wind him. Jay took the opening, charging in with their whip, wrapping it around the bag before throwing it aside with a flick of their wrist. They let out a strained grunt as the IV monster’s head-pouch rolled over sideways, before it easily corrected, realigning it so it hung forwards from the top of the pole once more.

It snagged Jay on a tangle of tubing. They’d leapt back in anticipation but not soon enough; they collapsed in a heap as their ankle was caught in the filamentous mass, smeared over with rusty gore and ever-tightening, flesh cracking and skin parting to add more blood to the mix. With a yank, they slid across the floor towards the pole.

Terry pulled out his gun and shot at the blood bag, the gunshot reverberating down the halls. Swinging crazily, it flipped about from its attachment point, bullet going wide. “Shit! Jay!”

“I can– I swear–” Jay’s cries were muffled as their face was mashed into the filthy linoleum. Tubes were starting to tighten around their neck now, some worming their way into their mouth, nostrils, ears.

Swearing, Terry forced himself to hold the gun steady, aiming for the engorged IV bag. It had to count. As Jay choked and thrashed from under the IV thing’s apparently frail frame, he gritted his teeth and squeezed the trigger. The gunshot nearly deafened him once more, but the thing didn’t let up. Another miss.

Squinting his eyes, adjusting his grip, hands still shaking slightly, he fired a third shot. The gun clicked, empty. Terry stared at it in his hands for a second, just a split second, before dropping it to the ground, pulling the shovel forward in both hands, and swinging it cleanly into the IV bag.

It still didn’t do more than spin around its point of rotation. No slices, no pricks; the blood stayed firmly in the bag as the bouncy exterior cushioned most of the blow. Twitching, another offshoot of the pole clamped a wiry cold claw around Terry’s shoulders, binding his arm and torso in plastic. He bucked in an effort to throw it off, but they crept across his skin anyway. They crushed his lungs; as he sucked in a breath, some tubes crawled over his collar, tracing his neck, inching down into his shirt. Moist smears stained his skin. He felt something wrap around his ear, coiling towards the ear canal, and he could only shut his eyes and brace for the feeling of stale blood in his innards–

The IV pole jerked backwards suddenly, collapsing onto the floor, wrenching Terry along with it. His arm smarted, nearly being pulled out of its socket, but most of the tubing on his skin slackened. He tugged his arm, unable to free himself enough to pull the tubes off. A white blur in the corner of his vision dove into the pole, slamming it into the ground, enough to dent. The tubes dragged themselves away from Terry, giving him the chance to roll onto his hands and knees, choking. He spared himself less than a second before stumbling to his feet.

The thing had let Jay go, too, who was standing ready as the IV pole struggled underneath a creature with peeling off-white skin, needle-tipped tail thrashing around. Not skin, bandages; those were bandages. It had a good pin, but some of the tubing wound around its back legs, untangling its own bandaging from its body. Raking the air, the creature burst the IV bag effortlessly, gushing its irony contents all across the floor. The IV pole spasmed, but the creature held it down with three syringe-tipped arms, plunging them at various points across the length of the pole. It raised its head, warped by a point-blank gunshot wound, the exact way it had when it had pinned Jay.

Thin, clear fluid – not blood, then – pooled in its many fingertips. It began to relax. Tension drained from its body. Still gasping for air, Jay crawled to their feet, half leaning on Terry and half still attempting to brandish their whip. Terry would have held his shovel in both hands if he didn’t need one of them to lean against the wall for support.

Just as he gathered the strength to hold his shovel a little higher, the creature pounced, tearing its fingers free from the IV corpse, sliced through the straps of Terry’s backpack, and stalked off through the exit, goods in tow. It tripped as it left, barely clearing the door as it slammed shut.

“Fuck, are you kidding.” Jay chugged a health potion, handing another to Terry. “Just take this, we need to be fast.”

“What?” Terry shook his head. “We’re following it?”

“Yeah, we’re following it. It’s clearly injured, and it took literally all of your shit. It’s barely able to keep pace with us. I have ammo, you can reload. We can just outpace it down the hall, shooting all the while, until it falls over dead.”

Terry picked up the gun, holding his other hand out for ammunition as he slung the shovel over his back. “I don’t know if it’s worth it, though.”

Jay handed over a fair number of bullets. Terry didn’t really know how many the gun took but it looked like enough, anyway. “If we let it lick its wounds, it’ll just come back for us anyway. There’s no good options.”

“...Fine.” Terry slotted the bullets into the gun. “Careful, though.”

“No shit.” Jay got in one last eye-roll before slipping out the door. As Terry exited, he was sure to close it firmly. Maybe he’d come back and barricade it when he got a chance, supplies be damned.

Thankfully, it wasn’t too hard to follow the thing’s trail; thin gouges tore into the wooden flooring from where the needles scraped for leverage. As he approached a corner, Terry made sure to give the wall a wide berth, gun ready.

There was no need to. A dozen metres away, the creature dumped the contents of Terry’s bag all over the floor, tearing apart bandages and tossing them aside with wild abandon. One of its legs was twisted underneath it at an odd angle. It pulled a vial of medication out of the wreckage and smashed it and its contents into the floor, not even bothering to unscrew the cap.

Jay snapped their whip in the air, and it flinched. “Alright, you’re done.” They took a couple steps forward, and it…

Staggered backwards, struggling to drag its bad leg along. Staggered backwards, while… shaking its head?

Just as Jay raised their whip, Terry rushed in, forcing their arm back. “Wait! Jay, hold on.”

Jay ripped their arm free, huffing in exasperation but refusing to take their eyes off the monster. “Dude, what now.”

Terry gestured to where the monster sat, cowering. “It doesn’t want trouble, there’s no need to kill it. Let’s just take our shit and leave.”

Jay scowled. “There’s no reason to let it run around, either.”

“That’s a person, Jay!” Terry lowered his gun slightly, gesturing with his other hand. “Or it, it used to be! I don’t know, just… this isn’t self-defence. I’m not doing this.”

“You don’t have to do anything,” Jay countered. “Hell, you can leave if you want, I can handle this.”

Terry shook his head, adamant. “I don’t want you to ‘handle’ it. Let’s just get my shit and go.” He trained his gun back on the creature, taking a tentative step towards the supplies.

Just as he reached to take the closest bottle of pills with his foot, it sprung forward. Terry swung his foot back, stumbling away. The BANG of the gunshot echoed down the hall as Terry squeezed the trigger on impulse, its head snapping back, a new crater forming in its fiberglass and cloth face. It cowered away, covering its head and face with its hands, clutching the pill bottle from where it grabbed it off the floor.

The creature was only going for the bottle, not Terry.

Even curled up on the ground, they kept shaking their head.

“I told you this was stupid.” Jay cracked their whip, sending the creature into a full body tremor. It flicked down, wrapping around their other leg, as Jay twisted it around the wrong way. It didn’t snap, but the creature suddenly dropped their weight onto just their hands, back half completely unsupported.

Jay turned slightly to face its head.

Terry stepped in front. “Jay. Stop.”

Jay nearly growled, trying to find some way to shove Terry aside that wouldn’t send him tumbling into their target. “You’re going to die, dumbass.”

“I said stop. You’re killing a defenceless thing. It– They’re injured, they probably need those supplies more than us. We’re going.”

“You’re anthropomorphizing it.” Jay grabbed Terry’s shoulder. “It’s not a person anymore. That’s an enemy. It’s hostile.”

“Who says they’re hostile!” Terry shouted. “We’re the aggressors here.”

“It attacked first,” Jay hissed. “Remember when it fucking stabbed me?”

“And then they saved us from that IV fucker! They’re fast. If they really wanted to, they could have just grabbed one of us and ran off, but they didn’t even touch us. And they’re not posing any threat now.”

“You don’t know anything. You’re making shit up.” Jay pulled Terry back, giving enough space to focus on him instead of the bandage creature. “It’ll just hunt us down later.”

“You could say that about anything! I sure as hell thought you were going to kill me yesterday!”

“That’s different.” Jay’s grip tightened. “You know that’s different. I’m not… one of those.”

“You are!” Terry gestured, forgetting he was even holding a gun. “You are very literally ‘one of those’! That’s literally what you are!”

“I’m here to hunt them, Terry. That’s my whole deal, remember? Because they’re not safe?”

Terry let his arm drop to his side. “Why?” His voice was hushed, much more than he’d intended. “Who said that’s how it is?”

“Because– It was– Oh, fuck. Fuck you.” Jay broke away from Terry, one arm crossed against their stomach. Their outburst trailed off slightly; it wasn’t targeted, at least not to anyone present. “Fuck you. Fuck.”

“Yeah,” Terry said quietly. “Yeah.”

“Well, I don’t know what to do then.” Jay still wouldn’t look at Terry. “It’s still dangerous. I don’t… I don’t know what to do.”

“We could ask, right?”

“It could lie.” Jay shook their head slightly.

“Anyone could lie.” Terry tried to put their hand back on Jay’s shoulder, but they slipped out of the way.

“...Yeah. Anyone could.” Their other arm crossed over their stomach too, now.

“Right.” Terry nodded awkwardly before turning back to where the bandaged thing lay. They were still shaking slightly, maybe with pain or fear or the sheer exertion of propping itself on their arms, but wasn’t covering their face anymore. Instead, they faced the pair, curious but apprehensive. Or that’s what Terry suspected. Bandages covered every part of their head, leaving them expressionless.

They backed up slightly when Terry crouched down by them. He faced the gun down, away from them, but not quite brave enough to put it away. “Look, we’re not going to hurt you if you don’t hurt us. Are you going to hurt us? You can have all our bandages and stuff, too, if you want, but I would like the backpack back, if you don’t mind.”

They sat, motionless, before shaking their head. Terry started to question how much they could even understand before they introduced a new gesture: tracing a needle-finger across their face, where their mouth would be.

Terry’s brows furrowed. “You can’t speak?”

They nodded. Jay glanced over just in time to catch the motion. “Of course. Fuck.”

“It’s fine, Jay.” He’d have to talk with them later. He looked back at the creature. “Are you going to hurt us?”

A head shake. Good. Next question, then. Terry pointed to the bandages laying askew on the floor. “Do you need those? You can keep what you need.”

They turned their head away slightly, as if looking at the supplies. Frankly, Terry was shocked they could see or hear at all; kind of strange that this unusual form drew the line at being able to speak. Slowly, they shook their head.

“Okay.” Terry nodded. “Can we take them then?”

They shook their head so frantically Terry nearly fell over. He pulled his hand away from the supplies. “No. Got it. Okay. Can you tell us why?”

They cocked their head for a moment, as if thinking, and then simply tapped against their head with one finger. When Terry didn’t respond, they found a loose bit of bandage and gently pulled it out, holding it with two fingers, and held up a piece of torn bandage with another hand. Pressed it flush against their face, where it blended in with the rest of the wrappings.

Terry started nodding automatically, before they even finished gesturing. "You still want them in case anything really bad happens to you, right?"

They shook their head, now waving a hand too for emphasis. Terry frowned, carefully observing. They put a hand on their temple, unsure, before tapping the bandages, pointing to Terry, and then pointing to themself. Pointed to Terry again, pretended to apply the bandage to their arm, and then gestured to their whole body with three arms.

Terry’s eyes widened. “Oh, shit, that's why you're... I’m not touching them then, don’t worry. Thank you, and, uh, I’m sorry that happened.”

They nodded. Their eyes would be downcast, if they had any, judging from their posture.

Terry stood up, putting the gun away, fidgeting with one hand. Jay was still turned away, a few metres back, pacing. He put his hands in his pockets. “Are you dangerous?”

Still looking away. They nodded, scratching a line in the floor as they did so.

“Shit,” Terry muttered. “Not right now, though, right? Do you know how long you’ll be safe for?”

They nodded, and held up two fingers.

Terry nodded. “Two what? Please don’t say minutes. Is that hours? Days?”

They held up a hand, stopping him. Days, then.

Terry nodded some more. “Alright. Um, can we… is there something that can keep you safe?”

They tapped some of their syringes, still filled with a little clear liquid, and then their neck.

“You need blood? Plasma?” Terry mused.

They shook their head, and tapped their head.

“No, not blood, then… brain tissue? Or is this abstract, or…” He trailed off as he was only met with more head shaking. “I’m sorry, I have no clue. I don’t know if… I’ll have to discuss this with Jay too, okay?”

They turned away, giving him the opening to leave. He walked over to Jay, who didn’t notice him until he tapped them on their shoulder. They flinched, backing away before composing themself. Terry put his hand down. “Can you talk?”

“Sure, I mean, fine, sure. Whatever.” They could barely get out a stammer.

“Okay.” Terry started leading them over to the bandage creature. “I’m sorry, by the way. For saying that.”

“No, it’s true, you’re right,” Jay sighed. “It’s all true, it just sucks ass. I should be aware, I should be careful. Thank you.”

“It’s not your fault, either.” Terry patted their shoulder. They didn’t react in any way, and feeling awkward, he stopped immediately. “It’s a rough situation. That’s why we’re talking about it.”

“Yeah. Of course it is.” The two of them were now in front of the creature, the three of them forming a little circle. “What’s going on?”

“Right. So,” Terry gestured vaguely at the creature. “We have two days before they pose a threat. They can’t talk. I’m having trouble on the details, as a result of that, so I was thinking we could head back and try to find some way to communicate back in Bosco’s apartment. He should have paper, I know he at least has books. The issue is that then they would know where we live, I guess.”

“Okay.” Jay frowned. “We can do that. I mean, they’d probably find us after stumbling around in the halls anyway if we didn’t, so whatever.”

“Okay, then, are you comfortable giving them a potion? I don’t want to…”

“Yeah.” Jay pulled a potion free. “Go for it.”

Terry handed the potion off to the creature, who guzzled it immediately. Well, they uncorked it and stuck two fingers down the neck of the bottle, draining it through the syringes. As they “drank”, their legs twisted back around sinuously, rewrapping themselves into a vaguely correct shape. Their tail rearranged itself too, growing rigid; it actually resembled a half-grown leg more than a tail, really.

Potion drained, they nodded and placed the jar back on the ground rather than handing it directly to Terry. He picked it up and gave it to Jay to pocket. “We’re good to go, then?”

“Yeah, sure.” Jay didn’t start walking until the creature nodded too, but refused to look at them directly, rather staring from the edge of their vision. The creature never bothered to stand up, rather opting to scurry around on all fours (all sixes? Sevens? Terry couldn’t quite see how many limbs it had, or how many it used). Terry held the door open for it at the stairs, only for it to hang back and wait for him to gain some distance, so he went ahead and let it prop the door open with its bizarre half-leg. Other than the bottlenecking in the doorways, the trip back was surprisingly smooth.

At the door, Terry hesitated. “Um, my roommate, Bosco, he’s… a little different. He’s safe, I just don’t want anyone to freak out, okay? Jay almost did when they came by for the first time.”

“I did not freak out.” Jay snorted, but it didn’t bite the way Terry was used to.

The creature leaned back slightly on their haunches, and nodded. Satisfied, Terry opened the door. “Hi, Bosco, we’re back.”

“Oh, hi… are you okay? Oh no, oh fuck, there’s blood… shit…”

“We’re fine, don’t worry,” Terry assured. “Sorry for the alarm.”

“It’s okay… sorry you had to… do that.” Bosco trailed off.

“Dude, it’s fine,” Jay cut in. “It was Terry’s stupid idea anyway, blame him if anything went wrong.”

“Oh… I don’t…”

“Nothing went wrong,” Terry shut the door behind them. “Well, not anything important. I have… interesting news?”

Bosco said nothing, so Terry continued. “Okay, so we didn’t get any supplies. We do have a new… guest. They don’t have to stay if you’re not okay with that! They can’t talk, so we’re just here to find a way to communicate and then figure stuff out.”

“...Okay,” Bosco stretched out the word longer than strictly necessary. “That’s okay.”

“Great.” Terry gave the creature a thumbs up. They didn’t really do much in response. Frankly, Terry wasn’t sure why he did that in the first place. Pretending he meant to scratch the back of his neck, he scanned the apartment. “Do we have anything good for… impromptu communication? Actually, wait, can you write?”

They shook their head, displaying their needles.

“Yeah, that would be a problem, wouldn’t it,” Terry mumbled.

“We’ve got Scramble,” Jay called over from where they were rifling through the bookshelf. “We could use those.”

“Oh, shit, perfect.” Terry hustled over, taking the box before Jay could dump everything onto the floor, and opened the box like a normal person. Then he carefully removed all the pieces from the bags and began sorting them alphabetically into neat piles. Like a normal person.

“Okay fuck off, we don’t have time for that.” Jay shoved Terry aside and gave the creature full jurisdiction over the tiles. “Let’s talk. What’s our first question again?”

“Actually, now that we have the means, we can start with a name maybe? And pronouns? I have no idea how to refer to you, I’ve just been calling you “the creature” and that’s pretty demeaning, so.” Terry winced.

“Well, I think Needles is an alright name.”

“We are not calling them Needles, Jay.” Terry shushed Jay before they could get another word in.

In the meantime, the creature had spelled out two words: ASH and SHE. Terry leaned over the board. “So your name is Ash? And we’re calling you she? That’s okay?”

Jay snorted. “I thought it was pretty vague, actually. Especially after you asked her a direct question.”

“Jay, shut the fuck up.” Terry covered his smile with one hand but could not, for the life of him, figure out a way to make it look natural. “Okay, well, Ash, I’m Terry, and you probably know Jay by now. You can, uh, think of me as he / him, I guess.”

“They / them,” Jay added, clearly holding back more snark.

“Yeah.” Terry broke his suspicious glare towards Jay. “So, Ash, how can we help you, then?”

He gave her a minute to find the right tiles. See, if Jay just let him sort them, it would’ve been so much faster. If you didn’t account for the time it took to do the sorting. Eventually, Ash found what she needed, and dragged her finger under the words for emphasis.

“Spinal fluid.” Jay grimaced. “Great.”

“Okay, I… yeah, that’s not good. Not exactly easy access, that.”

“Spinal…” Bosco’s voice drifted from the door. “I don’t know if… I have… I could…?”

Terry squinted. “Bosco, could you repeat that?”

“I could, um…” Terry couldn’t blame Bosco for hesitating; no matter what he was trying to say, he couldn’t imagine it was anything normal. “I have a lot? Probably?”

“Oh.” Terry blinked. “That would be weirdly convenient.”

“Wait,” Jay waved their arms. “Wait. I don’t like those needles. Those are real biohazards. How do we know Bosco doesn’t fucking die, again?”

“I… I think…” Bosco didn’t seem too perturbed, actually. “It’s fine, I’ll be fine. I’ve always been… I’m always fine.”

“Okay.” Terry looked at Jay, who also seemed stunned. As did Ash. He shrugged. “Alright. If you’re sure. Ash?”

She still shirked away from Bosco’s door, for one reason or another. Terry frowned. “Are you sure you’d be fine?”

“Um, if I’m not, it’s no big deal to… I could just cut a piece off, it’s no big deal. It should show adverse effects if there are any? Just a little piece. Not forever… they take a while to… grow back…”

Ash perked up a tiny bit at that. Terry absently rubbed his elbow. “Okay… if you’re really sure, I guess…”

“Okay, I’ll just…” A wet thunk sounded from Bosco’s room and he let out a tiny yelp.

“Now?” Jay turned away. “Jesus, you could give us some warning, maybe.”

“Sorry! Sorry… I’m done, though.”

“Alright, let’s, uh, let’s get that severed limb, then.” Terry nodded stiffly. A normal sentence for a normal situation. He headed over to the door with Ash. Just as they arrived, a little bundle of sheets with something wriggling inside was dumped out the flap. It really did remind Terry of a worm cut in half.

Cautiously, Ash wrapped her hands around it before stabbing them through the sheets. The wriggling got more intense and the limb started to thrash, but she held it in place easily. The pistons on each of her hands pulled back, clear fluid pooling in the chambers and into her body. She stayed like that for a time, holding it down, Terry unsure whether he should help or look away. Eventually, she carefully extricated herself, only for the limb to continue flopping like a suffocating fish.

Terry almost grabbed it himself before he remembered why they had to sever a limb in the first place. “Bosco, what do we do with your… oh shit, it’s going to break something.”

Jay eventually tangled it in their whip, stopping it from knocking over any small or breakable items. “Bosco, do something with your stupid tail.”

“Oh, I can… yeah I can take it back,” Bosco said, snatching it up with another covered appendage just as Jay yanked their whip away. “I’ll see if anything bad happens…”

“Cool.” Terry wandered to the fridge. “Well, that was an experience. I’m ready to sleep and have nothing interesting happen for the rest of my life.”

No one stopped him. Jay stood in the middle of the room staring at nothing before blinking out of existence. Terry let a frozen dinner heat up in the microwave as Ash cautiously wandered over to Jay’s most recent location, examining the spot. Just as the microwave went off, he took the plate and started eating at the table alone. Ash glanced over for a moment before snagging some loose sheets and curling up next to the television.

Everyone else asleep, Terry was left to eat in silence. Fine by him, he was never one for conversation, not drained as he was. Frowning, he nearly got his phone, consequences be damned, but forced himself to shut it down last minute. If anything important happened, Bosco would tell him.

Cleaning up his dishes, he stopped by the bedroom door just before washing up for bed. “Hey, uh, Bosco. Thanks for letting Ash stay, I really appreciate it. And… allowing all of us to, really. I know neither of us really had a choice.”

“Oh, it’s… it’s fine… I don’t mind!”

“Good.” Terry’s hand fidgeted in his pocket. “It’s just, it’s nice meeting you. You seem cool. Just want you to know that.”

“Oh… thanks!” Bosco seemed hesitant, for one reason or another, but filled his voice with cheer anyway. It could have been fake, or not. “You too… thank you… it’s actually nice, having someone else here.”

“Mhm.” Terry opened the bathroom door. “Well, goodnight, Bosco.”

“Goodnight!”

Terry slipped away, brushing his teeth and taking a quick shower. As he exited, all was still as it was an hour ago. Powering his phone back on, Terry covered his recent messages with one hand and quickly scrolled over to his alarms, setting his usual. Thinking for a moment, he set his alternate one for an hour later instead. He could use the rest. Setting it on the coffee table, he rolled over onto the couch and passed out near-immediately.

Terry dreamt of being parched in the desert, and finding an oasis only for a crocodile to jump out and drown him.

Chapter Text

The sound of Terry’s default phone alarm startled him awake and he’d never been happier to hear it, for once.

Groaning, he fumbled for the phone where it lay just out of reach on the coffee table before he resigned himself to sitting up on the couch and flicking it off, sitting in a disheveled heap, slumped over and bleary eyed. He sat there doing and thinking about absolutely nothing before he regained sapience and eased himself into a standing position much like how an elderly tortoise might.

“Looks like the old man’s finally out of his coma.” Terry squinted over the back of the couch, where Jay was absently examining their nails. As if on cue they glanced up at him and shot him a smirk.

Terry huffed and rolled his eyes. “I’m thirty two, for the record.”

Jay turned their attention back to their cuticles. Well, if they had any; from this distance, it didn’t really look like they had nails at all. “As I said. I’m less than two weeks old, you’re practically decrepit.”

Terry frowned. He couldn’t really see Jay’s expression that well either. Well, they were pretty fuzzy with Terry having just woken up and all. Blearily, he rubbed his eyes with his knuckles, hoping he didn’t look like he’d just jumped out of a kids cartoon. “Not how that works, but thanks anyway.”

“I’m… I’m twenty six…” Bosco chimed in. “I feel okay…”

Jay gestured their hand roughly towards Bosco’s door. “Well, you’re probably in much better shape than Terry, I’ll give you that.”

“I said thanks, you can stop.” Terry pushed himself past the couch to wash up in the bathroom. He brushed his teeth with the mirrors still covered, awkwardly staring at the wall as he did so, and splashed some water on his face. Wiping the water out of his eyes, the world came back into focus. At least he wouldn’t need glasses.

Draping the towel back over the rack, he stepped back into the common area. Ash was up and about too, off in her corner, and blending in reasonably well with the drywall. Idling, mostly, but she perked her head up when she saw Terry exit the bathroom. Jay was leaning on the countertop, and jerked their head away when they instinctively looked at her too.

They were… still fuzzy.

Terry blinked. Jay raised a brow, and he opened his mouth. Closed it, opened it again, this time successfully getting some words in. “Jay, you know you…”

“I’m what?” They said, hint of a shit-eating grin still on their face.

“You know you’re… blurry, right?”

The grin immediately melted off their face. “I’m what.”

“Like you… your face…” Terry helplessly pointed to their face, chunked heavily with pixels, resolution only just good enough to make out whether their eyes were closed or not and no better. “It’s… unfocused?”

“I don’t know what the hell you’re talking about.” Jay said, glowering, demeanor shifted on a dime. “I’m fine.”

“Okay, but–” “I said it’s fine, I’m sure it’s fine, it’s not a big deal, Terry.” Jay crossed their arms. They shook, and Terry wasn’t certain it was because of their condition. “It’s fine.”

“Okay.” Terry rubbed his elbow, glancing away from Jay. Ash was fully facing the two of them now, stock-still, hand half raised like she wanted to step in if she had any idea how to. Terry set his eyes to the floor. “Okay. You’re fine.”

Rather than the weight of eyes on him, Terry felt the heaviness of eyes looking at anything except each other. Eventually, Ash tapped the floorboards with a couple needles, catching Terry’s attention. He just saw Jay flinch in his peripheral as he approached Ash, who was already fetching more Scramble tiles.

By the time he got there, she’d already spelled out BANDAGE and was working on a word, currently spelled TH W. Before he even let her finish, Terry shot up straight and nodded, striding over to Jay.

“Right. Jay, we need to throw out the rest of your bandages, I don’t think we did it last night. Unless you’ve already done that while I was asleep?”

Jay’s eyes widened to match Terry’s. “Right. Shit, yeah, let me just…” They reached into their backpack to access their inventory and stilled. Not just their arm, reaching in, but their mouth stopped moving as they went silent, their eyes stopped roving the contents. Hell, Terry didn’t even see them breathing. Just staring, dead-eyed, into their inventory.

Something slithered down Terry’s spine. “Jay…?”

They sparked back to life, head shaking frantically, fingers scratching at the inside of the bag. “No. No, what the fuck, what the fuck–”

Terry stepped forward, unsure whether to intervene. “Jay, please, I need to know what’s going on–”

“It’s gone! Half my shit – more than – it’s gone, I don’t, I don’t even know…” Their words faded into weak hyperventilation. “This isn’t supposed to happen, I don’t know what to do if–”

“Jay!” Terry rested a hand on their forearm. They nearly shoved him off, but restrained themself at the last minute. Terry eased the bag down, away from their frantic eyes. “Jay, it’s fine, we can get more stuff. I just need to understand–”

“No! No, it’s not fine, Terry, I’m going to fucking die here! I lied! I lied, okay, I don’t know what the hell is happening because my inventory is not supposed to be volatile and I can’t– I can’t even see half of it, okay? And– and I know I don’t look right, and I–”

“Jay, please,” Terry pleaded, finally wresting the bag from their grip. Nowhere else left to look, Jay finally made eye contact. They reminded him of a cat, cornered in an alleyway. “Jay, we can figure this out. Okay? We’ll find something to help you. You said something about maintenance, right?”

“System backups…” Jay’s eyes bounced across the room behind Terry. “Mostly backups, database management, the like.”

“Right! That’s good, then.” Terry nodded, placing a hand on Jay’s shoulder. Somehow, they didn’t bolt on the spot. “Maybe it’s a memory issue, then. We just need to find some storage. We can talk about it when we go out today, okay?”

“Okay…” Thankfully, Jay was starting to breathe normally now. Terry wasn’t sure if it physically made a difference, but it was a good sign anyway. Shakily, they took their backpack back and reached in. “I’m going to… I’m going to make breakfast. I’m going to throw out the medical stuff first and then make breakfast. Just in case.”

Terry nodded, curling his lips into a smile. “Good idea. You…” He mused for a moment. “Tell me if you need anything, okay?”

He fully braced himself to be berated again only to be met with Jay’s response of another “okay”. He let his eyes linger on Jay’s retreating figure before heading over to Bosco, concerned.

“Is… what happened? Is it all… are you okay?” Bosco’s voice dripped with even more anxiety than usual.

“Yeah, it’s… it’s fine. Well, it’s… we’ll figure it out, don’t worry. I figured you might want me to fill you in on stuff? Especially since Ash can’t talk, it’s not like you can really chat with her or anything…”

“Oh… if it’s okay… is she okay?” Bosco dragged something around, and it hit the ground with a meaty whump. “It’s safe, by the way… she can just… take right from me, it’s safe.”

“Oh.” Terry blinked. “That’s… kind of surprising? But if you’re sure? She’s fine, by the way. Well, she’s lucid, I haven’t really had an opportunity to chat with her. Oh actually, Ash,” Terry called over his shoulder. “Ash, can I introduce you to Bosco? Formally?”

Ash nodded and started scooping the Scramble tiles back into their box, before delicately placing the lid on, clutching the box in a pincer-grip so as to not pierce it straight through, and scurried over to join Terry about two metres away. She carefully dumped the pieces onto the floor (not from a metre off the ground, Jay) and started picking through them.

“So, we met Ash,” said Terry. “Um, she, uh… she’ll explain more, I guess, I don’t really know much about her. We didn’t talk.” Ash nodded again in response.

“Okay…” Bosco shuffled behind the door. “What about the bandages?”

“Right! The bandages,” Terry exclaimed. “Okay. So, we found this hospital ward type of place, which was creepy as hell but we figured it would have good stuff. Ash actually attacked us first.” Ash flinched a little at that, hands resting still, no longer searching the pile of pieces.

Terry continued, a little shamefully. “But she saved our lives, really soon after. I don’t know the exact details, but she was… in bad condition. Hence why we asked you for the spinal fluid. She’s very…” Terry glanced back at her, where she unenthusiastically selected another piece with two needles. “She’s clearly not hostile otherwise. Anyway, the bandages, she said they messed her– they made her like that, so we’re not taking the risk with those.”

“Oh… are you safe though…?” Bosco’s voice trembled slightly.

Terry scratched the back of his neck. “Well…” Ash was facing him now, not the pieces. No way around this, really. “Right now. Yeah. Jay did get… well, they said she applies lots of status effects? Which probably means biohazard, at the very least, and maybe a million other things too. Um, there’s also a… with the current situation, we’ve actually lost a bunch of supplies, probably. So, um, we do have to go out pretty urgently, but we’re all– we’re mostly alright.” He could stretch the truth, but Terry felt scummy even considering actually lying to Bosco.

That would bite him in the ass, though. “You’re not alright? Oh shit… oh no… what’s wrong? Is it bad? Oh fuck…”

“Bosco, we’re fine for now, it’s just… we don’t really know what the situation is. Something’s up with Jay. I think they’ll be fine for… a bit, we just need to get a storage drive or something. That’s all. We can probably check out the third–”

“You are not going to the third floor.” Jay set down several large plates of American style breakfast, complete with toast with jam, sunny-side up eggs, and bacon. Somehow both plates looked both generic and identical.

“Jay, it’s our best bet–”

“And you’re not doing it.” Jay glowered at Terry. “I’m not– it’s not worth the risk. Find another solution.”

“But–” Jay glowered harder, and Terry practically felt his hackles raise. “Fine! We’ll do something else. I understand, I’m just… we’re concerned for you.”

“But why–”

“They’re from the third floor,” Terry said, interrupting Bosco. “And it’s no good, anyway, I’ve seen it from the stairwell.”

“Okay… don’t, then.” Bosco’s voice shrank. Terry couldn’t blame Bosco for feeling out of his depth. Hell, Terry was exactly the same way a few days ago when he’d also refused to leave his room under any circumstance.

“Okay, no third floor. Oh shit, sorry Ash,” Terry whipped around to Ash, who was sitting with her hands splayed, a few words in front of her. “I didn’t even give you a chance to say anything. Sorry, it’s just… it’s not usually this tense.”

Ash waved her hand dismissively and pushed her words forward. GOT, HURT, and SORRY.

“Oh shit, no, it’s fine, you don’t have to apologize, Ash. It’s not your fault,” Terry stammered. “You clearly didn’t mean it, and now it shouldn’t happen again, right?”

She nodded, shifting around some words. She kept HURT but swiped GOT away and built HEAD next to it, and then put together the word FIX.

Terry hummed. “So your head got hurt and you need to fix it… oh, that makes sense, actually. So you got concussed or something, and then the bandages… did that? And now you need spinal fluid to alleviate that?”

She nodded, relaxing. Just as she went to discard the rest of the words, Jay set down the last of the plates and sucked in a breath. “You’re nineteen?”

“What–” Terry refocused on the words in front of him. Just where Ash was hovering a hand were three letters he’d dismissed, spelling XIX. “Oh.”

Ash stared blankly at the two of them. Well, it was hard to tell whether it was meant to be a blank stare, but that was a reasonable enough assumption for the context. After a second, she started rearranging more of the Scramble tiles. DOES IT MATTER.

“Well… yeah? It kinda does matter?” Terry frowned. “I mean, I just feel bad, because you’re so young and all?”

Terry vaguely had the impression that she would be rolling her eyes if she still had any. She didn’t even bother spelling out anything, instead just pointed to Bosco’s door.

Terry blinked. “What about Bosco?”

With an air of exasperation, Ash aggressively threw together a new word. WORSE.

Terry half raised his hand, and lowered it. “Bosco has it worse? I mean, sure? But–”

“You don’t… you don’t know that…” Bosco interrupted.

“Yes you do.” Jay snorted. “You literally don’t let anyone in the same room as you, I think it’s safe to assume you’re well and truly fucked up.”

Bosco didn’t bother replying to that, and frankly Terry didn’t think it was appropriate for him to step in either. Trying and failing to find an easy way to continue the discussion, he decided to switch tracks. “Okay, you know what, let’s just not compare each other’s suffering. It sucks, right? It just sucks, let’s leave it at that, Ash, I’ll drop it.”

Ash dipped her head, then nodded. Bosco remained silent, Terry desperately thought of any conversation starter and came up short, and Jay just sat there. Devoid of other options, Terry took his plate from next to Jay and took a bite of egg. Tasted more… neutral than he’d expected, considering how long he’d gone without a real balanced meal. Actually, the whole plate kind of tasted like generic breakfast flavour. He didn’t really understand the mechanics behind whatever Jay did to make this but he supposed he shouldn’t have really expected anything different.

“Fuck. I’m sorry.”

Terry looked at Jay. So did Ash, in a very disinterested way, like they were talking to Terry; yet she was the one they were looking at. It was impossible to make out their expression through all the graphic distortion and the hand covering half their face but Terry could make an educated guess. Their jaw moved slightly under their hand as they finished their thought. “Ash, I shouldn’t have done that shit back there.”

Now she was really looking at them, shocked into stillness. Barely looking at the pieces, she started fumbling around, her hands independently moving to bring select tiles into her line of sight before laying them down in sequence. I DID TOO.

“No, but it’s not…” Jay’s voice could have hitched, or Terry could have been imagining it. “It’s not because of… the thing outside, not really. I’m just like this. It’s what I do.”

Ash shifted forwards, as if wanting to assure Jay, before rapidly snatching all her hands back and tucking them under her body. Still, she held her head up toward them plaintively. Hoping he understood her thoughts well enough, Terry stepped in. “Just because it’s not something you got from becoming a monster doesn’t mean you aren’t affected, Jay. This isn’t… well, if you really were created on day zero, then you’ve literally been manipulated your whole life. It’s not all on you.”

“I know,” Jay snapped. “I know. Fuck. That doesn’t make the consequences any less terrible, it doesn’t fucking matter if I end up doing the same shit.”

“Ash is still here.” Terry tilted his head in her direction. “That's an improvement.”

“That’s bare minimum, Terry. I didn’t commit murder, that’s what you’re celebrating right now.”

“Well, it was a scary situation too. I’d be celebrating that even if you had a much tamer background, considering how many perfectly healthy individuals wouldn’t hesitate to smash in the skull of an apparently bloodthirsty monster. No offense intended,” Terry hastily tacked on, hand up to placate Ash. Thankfully, she just waved him off, not even looking at him, instead finishing the words she’d already started on.

Before Jay could respond, she pushed them forwards. ME TOO.

“You too?” Jay scoffed. “You weren’t even lucid. You need fucking spinal fluid to keep your brain from exploding, what were you expected to do? Ash, you’re fine.”

She shook her head, tapping her needles as she fetched more tiles. It wasn’t nearly as methodical as before, now. She wasn’t getting letters to form a word as much as grabbing letters at random and seeing if she liked the word they created. She presented a final statement of BEFORE and MISTAKE.

“You made a mistake before?” Terry leaned forwards. “Is that why you’re like this? Oh, you don’t have to answer that.”

No need for the last sentence, as Ash nodded immediately. She set another couple of words out, almost like she had them ready. MY FAULT.

“Oh, yay, you too.” Jay uncovered their face, now instead cupping their hands around their temples. “Guess we can be shitty together.”

“Okay, you guys, it’s just… it’s literally the apocalypse.” Terry let out a sigh, hands on his knees as he sat cross-legged. If he was the only relatively un-traumatized member of the group, so be it. “I’m not trying to downplay anything here, but I really don’t see a scenario where any of us come out unscathed. Or where we aren’t faced with impossible decisions. I have a feeling that no matter what happened, you guys were in a life-threatening situation and had to do something. You did what you could. Let’s just… do what we can from now on, yeah?”

“Ugh.” Jay put their head in their hands. “I just fucking hate everything. I wish I knew what I’d be like if all this shit didn’t happen and I wasn’t groomed into being a murder-machine.”

Ash looked like she might have said something, but with the effort it took to actively form words Terry could pinpoint where she became conscious of what she was doing and stifled the impulse to share. Unsure if his words were even helpful, Terry did his best to continue. “Well, for the record, I’m glad to have met you guys.”

Jay cackled, more in a crazy way than a happy way. “I’m sure you are.”

“No, really,” Terry insisted. “I really am. Like, don’t make fun of me, but I swear it’s been forever since I talked to someone. Before this week.”

“Really?” Jay actually took a moment to look at Terry. “You unemployed or something?”

“No, and you wouldn’t actually believe how often I hear that considering how little I interact with people. Okay, well, now I probably am unemployed, but the world is collapsing, so I don’t think it counts.”

Jay snorted, and it almost didn’t sound miserable this time. Terry rested his chin on his hands, arms balanced on his knees. “I had an office job. You know, the kind where you don’t have to talk to anyone ever, and I certainly didn’t talk to anyone whenever I had the opportunity. Fell out of touch with a lot of people, actually. Didn’t really know how to pick it back up, they wouldn’t really answer me. I started getting some texts back just as this happened, you wouldn’t believe how close I was to picking up the phone, even though everything they said was weird and kind of terrifying.”

Jay hummed, maybe half in agreement, and didn’t bother responding meaningfully. They seemed… calmer, at least. Ash fidgeted with a Scramble piece. She was looking away from Terry just as she had earlier, clearly not caring to engage, and Terry could only hope that it was out of boredom.

“I… used to be… I miss people.”

Terry snapped his neck up to the door. Truth be told, he’d half forgotten Bosco was even there, with his tendency to listen rather than speak. And really as a direct result of his skittishness he definitely wasn’t expecting him to say that. “Sorry, Bosco? You want to talk?”

“Yeah…” Bosco took a breath, one a little longer than Terry thought was realistic. “I just… I used to be different… outgoing? Very outgoing, very chipper… social… I liked to talk to people, I liked to be active. I went clubbing, I went hiking, I liked being outside… I was biking back from the gym when it happened. I don’t like… being this.”

“Oh.” Terry physically could not form any more words after that.

“I know you weren’t expecting that.” Bosco sighed. “I’m not… I don’t seem like that now.”

“Yeah, I, um,” Terry stammered. “I can’t really lie, I did not see that coming. You seem very, um, reclusive. Like, the real deal, more than me even.”

Jay’s eyes flickered. Terry assumed that was what eye rolling looked like now. “Leave the backhanded insults to me, dumbass.”

“I didn’t–” Terry began to defend himself.

“I am… it’s fine.” Bosco somehow sounded more confident saying that than he had saying anything else ever. “I can’t be around people… I’m scared to tell… I can’t tell you why. I don’t… I can’t. I don’t. Things… things happened.”

“Oh. I’m… I’m sorry,” Terry said, hushed. “All of you really… went through it, huh.”

No one responded. Terry wasn’t sure how they could possibly respond, really.

He continued.

“Well, I’m still here.” Jay looked up at him, as did Ash, and he could only imagine what Bosco did but he pictured much the same thing. He kept going, standing up with his breakfast dishes and raising his voice slightly. “I’m here for you guys. I mean, it is the apocalypse, and it does suck balls, so I’m not guaranteeing anything. But I’m going to give it my best shot to keep things as good as they’ll get from here on out. We’ll figure this out.”

“...Okay,” Bosco eventually let out. “I’m scared… but okay. I’ll try too.”

Jay snorted but stood up to join him anyway. “Lame.”

“Yeah, I know you think I’m lame already, Jay. I’m saying it anyway.” Terry glanced down at Ash, where she was still forming more words.

She stepped away from them, allowing Terry to lean down to view them. ALSO MISS PEOPLE.

Terry nodded. “I’m not trying to pretend to understand, but it’s tough. I get that much. I’m also not going to pretend I’m an adequate replacement for everyone that’s come before, but I’m here for you anyway, and I’m sure that’s better than nothing. I care about you, Ash, and I want you to make it through this with me, okay?”

She crouched there for a minute, hands not anywhere near the pieces, just waving absentmindedly in the air. Considering something. Terry hoped whatever he’d said hit the right mark; he’d apparently taken for granted how much facial expression and verbal cues helped with reading someone’s emotions.

Eventually she stood up. Well, she definitely wasn’t at eye level, but she put a considerable effort to do so and ended up with her head at chest height. Unable to support her posture, she quickly collapsed back to a crawling position.

“Alright.” Terry nodded at the two of them once more for good measure, and went to grab his backpack. “Then let’s head out. Anyone have a place in mind? We need food, medical supplies, and a hard drive.”

Jay shrugged. “I clearly don’t know shit considering yesterday’s excursion.”

Ash, however, eagerly started spelling out her own answer. By the time Terry came back with his bag, she happily presented it to him. FOOD, MEDS, FOLLOW.

“Food and meds. Okay, that’s still two things, that’s still really good. Jay, do you–”

“I’ll be fine, shut up. We’re going with Ash.”

“Okay, great.” Terry held the door open for the two of them. As he did so, just as he left, he turned back into the apartment. “Bye, Bosco.”

“Bye… be safe.” With those last words, Terry let the door shut behind him. “Alright, so where are we–”

Terry turned around only to see Ash already scurrying halfway down the hall. Shouldering his bag, he shook his head half-heartedly as he took off to follow her, only just ahead of Jay. Ash stopped to wait after reaching the first corner, at which point Terry’s breathing was more strained than was probably reasonable. He could’ve afforded to do some cardio before everything went down. Too late now. At least she took it easy on the stairs.

Jay shuffled into place, limbs stiff, posture slightly rigid on the stairwell. They lurched a little on the first stair, pulling themself back upright with both hands on the railing, almost prompting Terry to steady them. Almost. At this point, the last thing they needed was probably another reminder of their situation.

Ash paced around the bottom of the stairs, door held open by her pseudo-tail, not quite enough for a human to fit through but enough that it looked like she was really trying to meet that goal. Terry took the door from her and held it for Jay, who pushed the door open anyway, nearly slamming it directly into Terry’s face before he adjusted his grip. Shaking out his wrist, he let it shut behind them and kept an eye on the group’s rear.

The hall was about the same as yesterday, albeit a little less intimidating now that Terry knew every door they passed was locked securely. As they passed the hospital corridor, Ash slowed down a little, opting to scamper across the far wall like a gecko to maximize her distance. Wishing he could do the same, Terry hugged the wall instead, as did Jay.

Not too far beyond that, Ash leapt off the wall and planted herself in front of a fairly unassuming door. It resembled essentially any other door on the floor except for a faint trail of dirt around the floorboards in front of it. Terry pointed a thumb in its direction and raised an eyebrow for confirmation, just for Ash to nod fervently. Bracing himself, Terry turned the knob and let it swing open.

Inside was greenery. A lot of greenery, and the chatter and chirps of unseen creatures, like a forest or–

Oh shit a forest–

“AAGH!” Terry yelped and dropped to the ground, head down against the ground, eyes shut, arms cradled around his skull, not even bothering to shut the door.

Distantly, he heard footsteps by him and someone brushed past his curled-up form, followed by the SLAM of the door. “Ash, what the fuck.” Jay, then.

Silence. Ash was probably trying to say someth– “No, we can’t fucking go out there, Ash, I’m not taking my chances. Is there anywhere else we can go that won’t melt our fucking brains?”

More silence. Jay sighed. “I don’t– Ash, that’s clearly a forest. I don’t know what you’re trying to– Terry, can you help me out here or something?”

“Is it safe?” Terry squeaked. Not his proudest moment, but better safe than sorry.

Another very brief pause that was undoubtedly Jay sassing him somehow. “Yeah, get up.”

“O–Okay.” Terry slowly unravelled himself, propping himself onto his hands and knees, easing his eyelids open, and squinting towards Ash and Jay. Both of whom were leaning over him in a frankly overbearing way, Ash potentially in a concerned manner and Jay clearly just there to judge him up close. Turning back to the floor, he shoved himself back to his feet and stole a glance at the door out of the corner of his eyes. Closed. Good. Maybe he got lucky and didn’t really see anything; it was dark out there anyway, maybe the sky was obscured from here?

Then he realized Ash was moving, pretty animatedly. Giving lots of thumbs-ups and gesturing to the door. Terry shook his head wildly. “Ash, we’re not going outside, holy fuck.”

She waved all her hands, every single one, and shook her head in return. Needles tapping together, she twitched her fingers this way and that, unsure exactly what to do with them. Eventually, she gestured out the shape of a box, a rectangular prism.

“What, it’s contained?” Terry eyed the door warily. “We don’t know that. Things might have changed. Clearly, it’s exposed to something, maybe a wall collapsed or something.”

More head-shaking, more hand-waving. Now a little jerkier, maybe with pent-up frustration, she threw up a couple of hands in exasperation and mimed rubbing something with her others. Well, it was more like stroking something, really.

“Look, Ash, I have no clue. I don’t know what this has to do with anything?” Terry waved a hand in front of him. “Like, stroking something? Petting something?” At the last word, Ash nodded frantically.

“What, petting? Like– Oh,” Terry exclaimed, things suddenly clicking into place. “Like pets. These were indoor plants? Nothing from outside?”

Ash nodded some more, going back to the box motion.

Jay snapped their fingers. Well, it sounded like they did, but they didn’t visually do much of anything. “Terrariums. She means terrariums. Well, I’ll be real with you guys, I still kind of definitely hate that. I’ve already seen a lot of fucked-up former people, I don’t need to know what happens to a Gila monster when they get hit with the crazy sky juice.”

“...That.” Terry winced. “That is… a point. Ash, there’s nowhere else you know of?”

She looked off vaguely by the corner of the doorframe before shaking her head. Well, that sealed the deal, then. Considering their last venture, there was still a significant chance that Ash had better ideas than the rest of the team, so Terry may as well give the mutant nightmare jungle a shot.

“Okay.” Terry pretended he didn’t feel his smile waver at the edges. “Let’s do this.”

Easing open the door, he instinctively clapped his hand over his eyes, allotting himself a tiny crack between his fingers through which to peer after a moment. Thick jungle, but no sunlight to be seen; the only light was from bizarre, highly varied bioluminescent growths littering the forest floor. Actually, every plant looked unique both from each other and from any other plant Terry could imagine. All kinds of unusual shapes, colours, textures. Not a single one had anything like a normal leaf.

Fists clenched, he took one step into the loam. Spongy. Regular dirt, really. Nothing snapped up from the ground and ate him. “Seems… safe enough?” He ventured. Both nodding, Jay and Ash followed behind.

As they travelled, Jay pointed out random flora to Ash, asking her now and then if she recognized it. She always shook her head. Given the sheer diversity, Terry was wondering if there was even a chance to run into the same plant twice, let alone one she could remember from however many days back. Growing frustrated, Jay eventually opted to try picking the ones that looked safest to examine later, much to Terry’s chagrin.

After a few minutes of boredom, Terry absently brushed his own fingertips on the bark of something that vaguely resembled a tree. Ordinary enough, if a little rubbery. Still didn’t look particularly interesting or useful in any way, of course; at this rate they’d be wandering the entire jungle only to come out of it empty-handed. Terry let his hand drop to his side and continued–

His back slammed against the “tree” trunk, hard. Winded, he gasped for breath only for something ridged and plasticky to clench his mouth shut. He snorted desperately through his nostrils, kicking and bucking all the while, but his restraints didn’t even tense at his efforts.

Jay and Ash both whipped around, Jay running to meet Terry as Ash feverishly scanned their surroundings.

“Ter–” Jay was cut off mid-syllable as a stream of sticky goop tangled up their legs, sending them to the forest floor. Ash stuck low to the ground as she tried making a leave only for something from within the undergrowth to secure her too, soaking her bandages with dense slime. She scrabbled for purchase, kicking up a storm of leaf litter and grit, only succeeding in covering herself in filth.

Desperate, Terry silently watched Jay reach around in their bag, rooting for something. A potion, maybe? Something to ward off a stun, or paralysis? They almost closed their hand around one thing, made a swiping motion. A little twitch, barely perceptible as a head-shake.

Shit.

From behind a tree on his right, a fleshy, leathery… something slowly emerged. It was a worm, of sorts. Neutral grey in the strange lighting, maybe pink in a normal context, and covered in thick wrinkles. Soft little legs of varying sizes and too-human bony hands propelled it across the ground. It had no face; rather, the first dozen hands or so were mouths, too, some of which resembled human jaws and some with labra on the end instead. In its neck cavity was a gnarled lump of scarred flesh, speckled with tiny mandibles. Through the folds in its hide Terry could almost glimpse an eye, here and there, squinting out at him with a dull pink iris.

“Fuck off.” Jay snarled. “Fuck you, fuck you, don’t you fucking touch us. And let him fucking go.”

“I, ah…” It paused, craning half its hands. Only one of its mouths bothered to speak. “I am concerned, doing so.”

“Yeah, you should be, fucker. I’m gonna sever your head again, you motherfucking chickenshit piece of herniated–”

“Mmh…” One of its non-speaking mouths winced. “You can… ehh… that one speaks too.”

Just like that, Terry’s mouth was unrestrained. He spat on the ground, attempting to clear the taste of burnt hair. “Jay, please don’t rile them up.”

“Or what? They ambushed us!” Jay pulled out their whip, swinging it towards the worm in an erratic arc it easily managed to duck. They flicked it back only for it to stick securely to the nearest plant. “If you want to ask them politely not to eat us, be my guest–”

“That’s what I was going to do, actually.” Terry tried to ignore Jay’s horrified expression, clear enough to see through the visual interference. He attempted to make eye contact with the worm, unable to decide which pair of eyes to look at, and eventually decided on one at random. “Um, we’re not here to hurt you, promise. If you could… explain? Can we talk this out?”

“What–”

“I, mmh, we were not, killing,” the worm clarified. “We… there are favours.”

“Alright,” Terry tried to nod only for his head to remain immobilized. “Okay, that’s workable. What kind of… favours?” The worm ignored Jay’s raving and turned entirely to Terry. “You, here, you are, for why?”

“Oh. Um…” Terry considered lying, for a moment. But if he lied, chances were either they’d ask for resources they couldn’t give, or wouldn’t bother helping them with what they needed, if they were there to help. And if they were planning to kill him anyway, well, lying wouldn’t help much with that either. If they could escape, they would have, and everyone there knew it already. “Supplies, mostly? We’re not here to steal, if that’s what you’re concerned about, we didn’t know anyone lived here.”

“Mmhmm…” The worm ducked its neck as one would their head. “Yes. Lots, we have, yes. If, ah, favour, there is a friend, you could…” It pursed its lips on one of the hands farther back. “Dangerous. We are desperate. If help, you, there are supplies. Yes.”

“Well, what does…” Terry furrowed his brows. “What would helping your friend… entail, exactly?”

“It, there, fungus is about,” the worm explained. “Eats minds, no good. We, ehh, we possess antifungal for friend. But are not to venture. We will have, die with fungus. So if, mmh, if meat-folk find, lost friend. Lots supplies then.”

“Alright.” Terry tried nodding again, and this time whatever bound him let up enough for him to do so. “We can do that.”

“Terry, we are not–” Jay started.

“Mmh. Yes.” The worm held up a simple flask, which sloshed gently, and offered it to Ash. “You, hmm, yes.”

Craning her neck, Ash peeled herself off the ground as much as she was able and dipped a needle into the fluid, drawing it in. Unlike during feeding, Terry noticed it stayed in the hydraulic chamber rather than flowing back into the rest of her body. She let her hand go limp immediately after and slumped face-first into the dirt.

“Yes. Go.” All the worm’s hands dipped as if nodding, even the non-mouth ones. “There, friend will, it is a guide. Yes. Good luck.”

As it started sucking some of the slime off of Ash, Terry was unceremoniously dropped to the ground. Too tempted to get a good look at his assailant, he flipped around onto his backside where he was met with a looming mantid beast, with maybe a dozen more legs than necessary and raptorial forelimbs that resembled knives more than anything. Curls and whorls of carapace bloomed in many-fingered hands directly on its carapace, no wrists nor arms attached, to create a multicoloured flower-like patterning. Terry couldn’t help but feel his face for any new wounds and thanked every god he could name and some he didn’t that it had held him with the dull edge of its forelimbs.

He was broken out of his stupor by an undignified shout from Jay. “Get off me, you fucker, I can handle it myself–”

The worm didn’t listen, rather just finished the job with the mucus and jumped back hastily as Jay lunged for their whip. Terry just managed to snatch their wrist and give them a healthy glare before they completely undid all his negotiation efforts.

The worm nodded nervously from afar. “Good luck.” The mantis followed, too, giving a brief nod and a wave before slinking into the undergrowth.

“I cannot believe you opted to go on another death mission,” Jay hissed.

“Jay, we need the supplies. I don’t see how stealing it from them is going to be any easier, let alone that being an asshole move. Plus, the only reason they can’t do it is fear of infection, which shouldn’t affect us; I sincerely doubt a fungus specialized for insects is going to do much to a human, at least in the short-term, and we have plenty of antifungal. Let’s just get this over with.”

“You’re stupid.” Jay flicked some slime off their shoulder. “This is stupid.”

“Well, it’s what we’re doing. Let’s go.” Terry set off, glancing behind at Ash. “You coming–”

She had barely stumbled to her feet, drifting woozily. She was still soaked through, and some of the bandages were peeling, a couple strips trailing loose behind her. Terry’s eyes widened. “Shit, that isn’t good. Jay, you have any healing left?”

“Fuck this shit.” Jay pulled a health potion out. “I have like two of these left, by the way.”

“Thanks.” Ignoring the latter statement, he uncorked it and stood over Ash. “Um, I don’t really know how to administer this…”

Ash bumped into him roughly, causing a splash of the potion to slosh directly onto her, where it soaked into the bandages. She did it again, and getting the idea Terry dumped it directly over her back, where ironically the bandages began to clean and dry out immediately. Staring at her, Terry handed the bottle back to Jay. “Things should really stop surprising me at this point.”

“As I said, everything is stupid. Let’s go.” Jay waved the other two along, storming into the jungle. Terry checked to make sure Ash followed only for her to speed ahead, forcing him to jog to keep up. Guess he’d be in the rear again.

“Wait, Jay,” Terry sped up, walking alongside them. “Are we lost?”

“No,” they scoffed. “I was actually paying attention.”

“We didn’t get turned around at that ambush? Because I don’t re–”

“Dude, it’s fine. I have a compass built-in, it said we were going north-west, so–” Jay went still. “Oh, fuck.”

“Jay, don’t tell me–”

“It’s completely broken. I can’t– I don’t even see it anymore. God dammit!” Jay swung their whip into the nearest plant, which started oozing faintly glowing blue blood. Or Terry thought they did. The impression left behind was more fist-shaped than whip-shaped. “God, I didn’t even think about that. Fuck. I don’t even know if–”

“Jay, it’s fine, we’ll worry about stuff as it happens.” Terry placed a hand on their shoulder, which they promptly shoved off. “We’ll figure it out, let’s just… consider that these are things that can happen.”

“You’re so god damned optimistic.” Jay snorted. “One day we’ll just die or something.”

“Yeah, but not right now.” Terry opened his mouth to continue the thought, but Ash rushed ahead, waving an arm to get their attention. Another held a needle in front of her face, and the two of them at least had the good sense to shut up.

Terry strained his ears, searching for something. Too much noise. Too many calls, chitters, hums, warbles, from the random wildlife around. Heartbeat threatening to drown out the ambient noise, he bit the bullet. “Is there–”

Something massive knocked over the two closest trees and mauled Ash head-on. She ragdolled a good several metres before slamming into a plant with a resounding CRACK, more like being thrown into a brick wall than any kind of tree. Her tail twisted around in a dozen places.

Slowly turning to face the rest of the team, the beast locked eyes with Terry. Three, maybe four tons of armour and muscle, all draped in a cloak-like tangled mass of fibrous greasy hide vaguely shaped like wings. Interwoven were tendrils and thin spires of pale fungus, some of the largest stalks sporting caps that gave off hazy clouds. The next breath Terry took was faintly sweet and set a headache pounding behind his eyes. It gazed into him with those foggy white eyes, cataract-filled and dead. It growled. The sound was more of a wet gurgle than anything.

It stomped a couple feet and charged toward Terry, Jay just managing to throw him out of range in time. It plowed straight into them instead, sending them tumbling, though not nearly as far as Ash went with the reduced momentum. Cursing, they rolled over, struggling to get to their feet.

Terry stabbed the shovel down into its backside before he could reconsider harming their target, only for it to easily glance off its coarse coat of hair. It managed to shave off a couple chunks of fungus, but the beast – a moth, perhaps? – didn’t even turn around. Swearing, he tried hitting it with the blunt end to draw its attention, still to no avail.

He couldn’t see past its hulking form. “Jay! Can you slow it down?”

“N-No, I–” Jay grunted as the moth brought one of its legs forward. “I can only attack it! It’s not doing shit!”

“Fuck…” Terry gave its abdomen one last smack before racing around to the front, and wedging his shovel underneath its neck in an effort to lever it off Jay. It crunched its neck down a little onto the blade, with the handle buckling slightly but still holding strong, before swiping the whole thing away, fully disarming Terry. He grabbed Jay by the wrist and pulled them away just as it went to smash both of them into the ground, nearly catching his arm as it did so.

Hesitantly, he drew his gun. He instinctively aimed for the face, and after a second’s reconsideration lowered it and went for the collar instead. Just as he went to squeeze the trigger, Ash leapt in front of him, bludgeoning it across the face. It stumbled back, but regained its footing within the second and bucked her off easily.

In the moment of confusion, it pushed the advantage. Terry couldn’t bring the gun back up in time and it easily slapped it away from him, snapping his wrist in the process. He howled, collapsing arms-first into the dirt.

The ground was hazy. There was… there was noise, still, and maybe a voice? His palm scraped against the debris where he lay. He fell again. His shoulder was actually… it was somewhere it wasn’t supposed to be, maybe, and everything around it hurt. His arm was stuck under him. The other one, not… not that one. Grit caked his throat.

PAIN. His leg. His leg. Some of it. Not his toes, just the… Loud noise. A voice? Screaming? His throat was sore. His leg hurt. It hurt.

…

It hurt, but it wasn’t as bad now. He was… sensation was returning now. Pin-prick sparks tracing their way down his thigh, all the way down to his toes; he couldn’t feel his toes before? That was bad, that was really bad, but at least he could now? His shoulder still–

“FUCK!” Terry screamed, his shoulder flashing white-hot pain down his side before ebbing away. Traces still lingered, but that was an improvement, at least. Actually, he didn’t notice a lot of the pain anymore? The more he focused, the more it seemed gone. Something was resting on his shoulder. A hand? It didn’t quite feel like a hand, but it was something, for sure.

The muted noise he only now registered suddenly started to sound like talking. “–never forgive myself, Terry, god, please–”

Terry coughed, dust not yet left his system. “I’m fine. What–”

“Oh thank fuck.” Jay left Terry’s side immediately. “I thought you were dead for a minute or something.”

“Well,” Terry struggled to lift himself up with his better arm. “I’m not.”

“That’s great, because I gave you one of my last health potions and I’d be pissed if I wasted it.”

“Thanks for your concern.” Terry rolled his eyes. “Everyone’s okay, then? Since you can’t be bothered to take any of this seriously.” Of course this was far from the impression Terry actually had from their general demeanor, but there was no need to mention that in front of a potential audience. Or at all, really.

“Yep. Turns out Ash’s fingers are thin enough to slip straight past all that hair, she just needed a good opening. You’re an alright distraction, as it so happens.”

“I pride myself on it.” Groaning, Terry sat up, and nearly fell over when he saw what was laying next to him. “Jesus, you left me right next to it?”

“Relax, dude, it’s cured now. Plus it’s unconscious.”

“Okay, but still.” Terry did a cursory search for Ash, finding her crouching on his other side, worrying at a peeling bandage on her shoulder blade. Somehow she appeared nearly unscathed from the entire fight, but still had a couple minor nicks that would’ve healed over if she’d drunk a potion. God damn she was a powerhouse.

Giving Terry a wide berth, Ash hooked a couple arms around the moth and tried hauling it away, to no success. Terry opted for the easy route of relocating himself instead, taking a seat a healthy few metres away. As Ash finally gave up and tried sitting down instead, he glanced at Jay. “You don’t by chance have a health potion left?”

“I’ve got one.”

“You don’t want to give it to the moth, by chance? I mean, we are lost.”

“Ugh.” Jay reached back and pulled it free. “This better be fucking worth it.”

Unceremoniously, they yanked up the moth’s head to get a better look at its mouthparts. Definitely a proboscis, of some kind. Holding the limp mouthpart, Jay oriented it this way and that to find a good way to pour the potion down its throat, eventually settling on just sticking it directly down the neck of the bottle. By reflex, the moth started lapping up the fluid, draining it in seconds.

Ash jumped back as it ruffled its wings, then shook them out, scattering bits of forest detritus and fibrous hairs all over the place. It rubbed its eyes with one foreleg diligently, flicking off any stray irritants; they were as foggy as ever, but it didn’t seem to have trouble identifying any of Terry’s group visually. Apprehensively, it tucked one foreleg behind and leaned back, not breaking eye contact with Jay. It sucked its proboscis back under its head, prompting them to pull the now empty bottle away.

It cocked its head slightly. “What happen?”

Terry waited for Jay to respond before deciding they could afford to have their diplomacy rights revoked for the rest of the day or maybe forever. “Um, I don’t really know, but your friends sent us to get you? There was a mantis and a velvet worm? You had some kind of fungal infection and we had to help you out, they said you could maybe get us some supplies and we were hoping you could get us to the exit too?”

“Oh.” It preened its wings back, making no effort to untangle its ropy hair. “You okay?”

“Um…” Best not to get into it. “Yeah, we’re fine, I don’t think we’re infected. It just affects bugs, right?”

“Yah.” The moth nodded, accidentally knocking over Jay in the process. It didn’t acknowledge this at all – didn’t realize? – and kept going. “I thank. You come.”

“Um, alright, cool.” Terry nodded too, the two of them just standing there nodding at each other before Jay snapped their fingers in front of his face to break him out of his stupor. He just barely stopped himself from nodding to Jay in response. “Let’s go, then.”

Thankfully, the rest of the journey passed without incident. Given the sheer volume of fantasy stories Terry read as a child, he’d half expected the moth to fly them halfway across the jungle with him clinging for dear life all the while, but in retrospect he wasn’t even sure if it could even jump given the sheer weight of those wings. It was considerably slower than anyone else as it led, with Ash joining it in the front and Terry and Jay behind.

Ash, for once, seemed comfortable sticking close to someone. Antsy, she looped around the group over and over before flanking the moth again. Some part of Terry was jealous that she’d grown accustomed to it so quickly as compared to anyone else but he silenced those thoughts. It wasn’t fair; she was just trying to protect them from herself.

Really, this was one of very few moments where she could pretend she wasn’t a walking biohazard, and Terry wasn’t one to break that illusion. Not until absolutely necessary.

And Jay was… they weren’t looking at Terry. He couldn’t see their eyes from his angle, not even a glimpse; they weren’t just looking ahead, or around, but actively turning their head away from him. He dropped his eyes shortly too. The moth and Ash’s antics ahead were that much more entertaining to him; there was no need to look at Jay. No… no need. He was fine with that.

They stopped, Terry hardly recognizing they’d even reached a location. At a first glance, their surroundings were effectively identical to the rest of the unruly forests around them; but on closer inspection he found many of the plants were very similar to each other, if not the same. The moth started picking various bulbs and fruits off of them and loading it onto its back.

It handed one absently to Jay, who didn’t take it right away. The moth looked at them. “These ones good. Do take. They good.”

Jay paused, presumably making some kind of facial expression. “What is it? Is it good for all of us, or just you?”

“All.” The moth tilted its head. “Oh. You two. Not short one.” It pointed to Terry.

It was not the time to ask why the hell he was the short one and not Ash, who was maybe two feet when crawling about, so he simply did not say anything to that. Jay, satisfied, took the fruit and put it in their inventory.

“Wait!” Terry made a motion to grab the fruit, and Jay swung it away out of reach. “Is that okay in your inventory?”

“Yeah, whatever, it doesn’t update until I sleep. I’ll take it out later.” Jay waved him off and continued loading.

So Terry was left to stare at everyone else as they packed the fruits away. Well, Ash wasn’t doing much either, being unable to carry much at once, but she was scrutinizing some of them for blemishes and picking out the choicest specimens for Jay to take. As the group went, Jay also went out of their way to pick smaller plants from the borders of the region, most of them small leaves or flowers, presumably for their potion ingredients.

Jay hiked up their backpack. “That’s all I can fit, let’s go. Hopefully Bosco’s good with this stuff.”

The moth dipped its head. “Okay. I take you. Come.”

The exit was surprisingly close; only a few minutes of walking and there it was. Almost embarrassing that they got lost, really, but regardless of how big the apartment was, the towering ferns and vines certainly made it seem huge. The moth stopped a couple metres in front of the door, and waved the group off.

Its proboscis curled a little. “I talk friends now. Bye. Good life.”

Jay waved halfheartedly. “See you.”

Terry waved and at least put in the effort for a smile. “Take care. Thanks for the help.”

The moth flicked its leg. “No, I thank. Thank you. Bye.”

Terry gave one last wave as it slunk away into the woods. Ash was already half-propped on the door, turning the knob. Jay cocked their head to the door. “Let’s get going.”

“Right.” Terry waited for Ash to distance herself before holding the door for Jay, who immediately made their way to the stairwell. Terry had to jog to keep up, as before, but had to keep jogging to maintain pace.

Just as Terry slipped into the stairwell, he held a hand out. “Wait, I want to talk to you guys.”

Jay spun on their heel, glaring from three steps above Terry. “What now.” Ash, too, flipped around, leaning heavily on the railing with a couple arms stretched out, scratching lines into the metal.

Terry did not take a step back. “We cannot tell Bosco what happened here. As far as he’s concerned, everything went well, and nothing happened to me, got it?”

Jay leaned forward, vibrating gently. “Why the fuck not? You almost died, asshole.”

“It’s just…” Terry took a breath, and willed his voice to sound a little less petulant. “It’s just that he gets stressed easily. I don’t want to worry him when we don’t need to.”

“Oh, so we can tell him about my problems, but not yours?” Jay snapped. “Yeah, sure, that’s fair. Fuck me, I guess. I also noticed you didn’t think it was relevant to talk about how Ash might just snap and go murder-mode at any moment.”

Ash flinched in the corner of Terry’s vision, digging deep lines into the steel railing with an ungodly screech. Her shoulders tensed up as she covered her face halfway with one hand.

Terry shoved a finger in Jay’s face, and they nearly tripped backing up the stairs out of shock. “Do not fucking say that about her. I’m not having this. I have to talk about you because we don’t know what’s going on, and something might happen in the future. We don’t need to talk about her, because we fixed the problem. We don’t need to talk about me, that’s in the past. Leave it.”

Jay readjusted their balance and hunched over, looking down on Terry. “Yeah, I’ve never felt so special, being the problem child. Oh, wait, I have, since my entire god damned life has just been sky-high expectations and failing to meet them. Guess I know all about that, at least.”

“Shut the fuck up, Jay. This isn’t about you.” Terry straightened his back, not quite escaping Jay’s looming presence. “You’re always saying shit and riling everyone up, and we don’t need that right now. Bosco’s this close to losing it, Ash is just a kid, and you don’t need to encourage everyone’s feelings of all-consuming despair.” He turned his head slightly to block his view of Ash. She wasn’t… she wasn’t doing that because of him, she was just stressed because of the arguing.

“Okay, well, he has a point, Terry.” No need for visual cues, Terry could hear the sneer in Jay’s voice. “You’re so fucking optimistic. Have you looked around lately? Look at me. Hell, look at her. Look at fucking Bosco. We’re one minor miscalculation, one tiny oversight from just imploding and you need to fucking recognize that. Your leg was crushed. It was crushed into fucking paste, Terry. You’re not going to get up and pretend that didn’t happen because you might not make a miraculous recovery,” they waved their hands for emphasis at that phrase, “next time. You’re going to fucking die.”

“Then I don’t know what else to do,” said – oh, that was Terry, he actually said that. “I don’t know what to do instead. I don’t know how I’m supposed to keep going if I don’t pretend everything’s going to be fine. I know we’re fucked. I know I’m going to die one of these days, probably sooner rather than later, and there’s nothing I can do about it. I know that. But as far as I’m concerned, everything’s going to be just fine because if it’s not, if we’re all going to die anyway, then there’s jack shit any of us can do about that and I might as well shoot myself now and get it over with.”

Jay straightened their neck slightly. “You–”

They fell ass-first onto the stairs and then something yanked Terry’s gun from his belt, and it clattered to the floor. Ash pounced over Jay and snatched it up, sprinting across the walls to the far end of the stairs. She held it against her chest, shaking violently. She was the only one in motion; even Jay didn’t bother to get up from the floor, instead choosing to stare at her agape.

Terry finally got his mouth to work again. “Ash, I… shit, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean that.”

She only started shaking harder, cutting grooves into the gun as she clutched it to her chest. She seemed to be simultaneously curling herself around it while holding it as far away from her and everyone else as possible.

Terry took a step up the stairs, around Jay. “Ash, you can give my gun back, I promise I’m not–”

Her head shook so vigorously it dented the walls around her, forming shallow craters in the drywall. She curled her head into one of the craters, back to Terry and Jay.

Terry took a heaving breath. “I–”

“Let her keep the fucking gun.” Jay sat up, blocking the stairs.

“Okay.” Terry sat down at the base of the stairs. “Okay.”

They sat there for a while.

Not much happened.

“I’m not going to tell Bosco,” Jay started, slowly. “That’s your problem, you deal with it. You keep telling yourself whatever you want. If that’s how you deal with it, then that’s how you deal with it. But you have to tell people shit.” They played with the end of their whip, unwinding it and then recoiling it, over and over. “Ash and Bosco aren’t fine china. I’m not a time bomb. We all resemble those things, but that’s not everything that we are. So you’re not invincible, either. At least everyone knows I’m fucked. We don’t need you blindsiding the rest of us when it’s your turn to fall apart.”

He didn’t…

Terry didn’t really think he needed to make it a big deal, if it… came to that. He’d be out, someone else would take over. Life goes on.

He didn’t say that.

“I’m done with this shit.” Jay stood up. “Let’s just go.”

Terry got up too, silent. Ash didn’t move from her corner, even when Jay called her name, so they held their hand out. “Give me that.”

She shook her head, albeit more gently than before. They sighed. “I’m not going to give it to that asshole. I’m just going to put it in my inventory and hand it to Bosco as soon as we get back, okay? I just…” Their hand wavered. “I’m not sure that you really… want to be responsible for that thing. Am I right?”

Slowly, achingly slowly, she peeled herself out of her roughly fetal position and dangled the gun away from her, clutched loosely between two needles. She poked her head out and made a point of holding it as far away from Terry as possible. She set it on the ground in front of Jay, who swiftly snatched it up and tucked it away. They didn’t look away from her until she uncurled herself fully and got back on her feet.

Jay held open the door for Ash, and surprisingly, for Terry, too. “Come on.”

Not one to push his luck, he trudged back to Bosco’s place, staring down the hallway and not at his companions all the while.

Jay and Ash entered ahead of him and Terry slipped through, shutting the door wordlessly behind him. Dinner was a silent affair. Just him quietly waiting for his microwave-ready meal to heat up, the droning buzz overwhelming all other sounds. Jay crafted some potions at the sink and shoved them and the rest of their inventory into a random cupboard before they sat at the end of the couch, staring at the wall. Ash was tapping at Bosco’s door, where he wordlessly poked a blanket-covered lump out. Terry broke his gaze just as she pounced on it and focused on his food as it spun gently.

“So… What… Is everything okay?” Bosco’s voice trembled, barely audible. Just quiet enough to ignore if everyone wanted to.

“It’s… fine. We’re…” Terry glanced at Jay, only to avert his eyes as he was met with a ferocious glare. He took his microwave meal out early and set it on the table. “I’ll tell you tomorrow. I will tell you tomorrow. There’s nothing immediate, I just don’t think… I think we could all use a break.”

“Okay… I’m sorry…” Bosco’s voice only grew quieter. If he’d been by the microwave, he definitely would have missed it.

“It’s fine, Bosco, it’s got nothing to do with you.” Terry was tempted to keep going, maybe reassure Bosco that it wasn’t his fault nor was it as bad as he was thinking, but he didn’t. Something about fine china. “I just need to… I need to be more honest with you. It’s my fault.”

“Okay…” Bosco might have said something else, but he didn’t. Terry didn’t bother pursuing it.

Just as he took his first bite of half-frozen lasagna, Jay laid down on the couch. “Terry.”

Terry put his fork down. “Yeah?”

“I’m scared.”

Terry abandoned his meal and joined Jay, sitting on the couch armrest. “About?”

Their head shifted. “You already know why I’m scared.”

“Yeah.” Terry paused. “Yeah, I do.”

“I don’t know… I don’t know what happens when I wake up tomorrow. I really don’t.”

“Yeah.” Terry crossed one leg over the other, leaning back on the back of the couch. He didn’t look at Jay. “You already know what I’ll say, though, right?” It wasn’t a question.

“I think I kind of want you to say it anyway.”

Terry took a breath through his nose. Out through his mouth. In, out, go for another. In. Out. “We’re going to be okay, Jay. We’re going to figure this out.”

“Okay.” Jay curled up a little where they rested on the couch. “Yeah. We’ll figure it out.”

They looked so vulnerable like that. They looked like their own brain could come alive and devour them from the inside out.

“Thank you.” They still didn’t look at Terry.

“You’ll be fine. Goodnight, Jay.” Terry searched for a response. There was none; after a minute, Jay got off the couch and simply logged out. And that was the end of that.

Both of them were right, really. Back on the stairs.

It was a lot harder, Terry thought, for him, as opposed to Jay, to admit that.

He ate his dinner. Washed up, changed, laid down on the couch just the way Jay did. Stared at the ceiling. Set his alarm. Shut his eyes.

Terry dreamt of–

He didn’t get a chance to dream of anything before he was jolted awake. The darkness settled thickly in the air; Terry squinted, waiting for his eyes to adjust, until he could barely make out the silhouette of his phone next to him. Picking it up, he covered the dozens of unread messages and let his eyes adjust to the light. Just after midnight. Unusual that he’d wake up so suddenly, but–

A faint splattering sound emanated from the hallway. That would explain it. He sighed, setting his phone down and lay down back on the couch. This was certainly not the first time he’d heard… whatever wandered the hallways at night, but he’d been hoping against hope it had found someplace else to haunt. He’d just have to sleep through it, as always. It had never tried to break down the doors, after all, so it posed no significant threat–

More smacking, a little closer this time. And there was… something else? Curious, Terry propped himself off the couch, ear facing towards the hall. There was a steady slide-thump, slide-thump, and by now it was almost overpowering the sound of the wet sloshing that came and went.

Loathe to leave the comfort of his couch, Terry pulled himself to his feet, taking care not to bump into anything. He grabbed his phone, turning it to flashlight mode. Shouldn’t run out of juice for a bit. He stepped cautiously over to the door; no need to be too silent, the outside sounds were starting to exceed his own movements in volume.

Just as he put his eye to the peephole, movement entered his vision. He flinched back, nearly banging his elbow into the door. Berating himself, he cautiously brought his eye back into place, reassuring himself that nothing had ever tried to break down a door and it wouldn’t if he gave it no reason to do so.

He caught one last glimpse of something lurching out of his field of vision, uneven steps slowly fading out of focus as it did so, while the liquid sloshing only grew closer. Dread settled in his stomach; Terry’s knuckles were sore where they gripped his phone and he whipped it around, intent on getting his gun. Or, shit, that was with Bosco, wasn’t it…

As he searched for Bosco’s door, his sight landed on Ash, who was already up and pacing herself. First things first, though. He made his way to Bosco and tapped on the door.

“Bosco. Hey, are you…”

“...What’s… what’s happening?”

“I don’t know.” Terry glanced over his shoulder, despite it being pure darkness behind him. “I need my gun back, there’s something going on in the hallway.”

“Oh… don’t try… go out there, please, I don’t…”

“It’s fine, Bosco, I’m not going to do anything unless something goes wrong. It’s just a new situation, that’s all.”

“Oh… Here…” Bosco slid the gun out through the flap on the door.

“Thanks, man.” Terry checked on Ash before stooping to pick up the gun. She shied away from the light, but didn’t otherwise react much; hopefully, she’d be alright if he took it back. He checked the safety, grasped the pistol with both hands, and headed back to the door.

At this point, the wet smacking had reached a crescendo. And lo and behold, there it was, the first time he’d really seen the thing lurking in his neighbourhood all week. A thick, glossy tentacle slid into view, weakly grasping the wall for support, red stains seeping into rusty marks and the rare bit of untouched drywall. More followed. Wet and writhing, they contorted in ways Terry never thought a limb could before he realized they weren’t limbs at all, but plumes of blood somehow kept cohesive. More and more dark tendrils came forth, pulling forward, until in the tide of gore Terry caught a glimpse of half a bicep, a chunk of torso, a lonely eyeball with the lid still attached. Every little scrap of meat was knitted together by blood; it throbbed and pulsed over the surface of skin and raw flesh alike, worming between layers of dermis and muscle, pulling parts this way and that. The tide began to thin out, now, and the procession of meaty chunks came to a close, until the last of the goopy strands petered out too.

That raised several questions regarding the fundamentals of physics, but at least it did explain how so much blood managed to get onto the ceiling, of all places.

He checked on Ash again. Ready to pounce. Terry held a hand out. “Stay back. This isn’t a good situation for you, there’s a lot of blood.”

Hesitantly, she backed down, hackles raised in the corner.

A rapid thwip startled Terry, gun jumping back to the ready. He peered to the left side of the peephole, where the two characters had left his field of vision; still nothing. He wasn’t sure if that was a good or a bad thing. He could certainly hear the frenzied slapping and gushing of fluids all over the hallway, though.

The sounds began to die down, now. The liquid seemed like it was stilling, until it sounded less like high tide and more like the trickle of a faucet. Terry counted in his head, up to one minute, then two. He was seriously considering just calling it a night anyway when another sound drifted through to reach him. A voice.

“–there? Is anyone here?” Faint. It seemed normal.

Terry almost considered opening the door. Almost. Of course he didn’t.

He’d almost considered it.

He looked back at Ash, guilty. Still tense. But not… she was still, not ready to act, not ready to run, but frozen stiff. Stunned. Terry opened his mouth to ask her what was wrong when the voice came back, right outside his door.

“Are you in here?” Gruff, and vaguely feminine. Looking through the peephole revealed a stony-faced young woman, holding something of her own at the ready out of view.

Terry gestured to the door, waiting on Ash for input, and mouthed the word safe? He lifted the gun, finger on the safety, anticipating her response. Only for her to nod fervently and mime lowering the gun. It was safe, then?

But why…

“Shit.” The footsteps resumed, now moving away from the door. Ash shook her head aggressively, miming opening the door. Startled, Terry backed into the door.

The footsteps stopped. “Hello?”

“I’m here, I’m here.” Terry shoved the words out as fast as possible, hoping to make up for lost time. “Is it gone? Is it safe, what do you need?”

“I need chemicals. Do you have anything?”

“Oh, I, um, sorry, let me…” Terry hurried over to the bathroom, tripping over a chair and bruising his shin as he did so. Cursing, he threw open the cabinets and started pulling out random jugs. “I have bleach? Is that okay?”

“Yes, but hurry.” Giving the chair a wide berth and running into the wall instead, Terry raced over to the door with a nearly full jug of bleach in hand, and checked his surroundings one last time. Just the woman, still, now urgently looking over her shoulder. He eased the door open just enough to shove the jug out, and did so.

She yanked up the jug almost before Terry even let go and hobbled off, favouring her left leg. Torn, he poked his head outside. Nothing to the right, just the girl on the left. He pulled himself out of the doorframe and shut it behind him.

Ash was still frozen in place. Half-tail rigid in the air, even; Terry realized this was the first time he hadn’t seen it twitching or waving at all. He kept his hand on the doorknob. Thought about the sound of her limp, muddled by the wet slurping of viscera.

He tried not to look away from Ash. “She might be injured. I don’t know why she’s out this late.”

Ash didn’t dignify him with a response. He continued. “I think I have to… I’m going to come back at any sign of danger, okay? Promise.”

Slowly, she nodded. Terry pushed the door open once more, gun at his side, and hurried off to the left end of the hallway.

Just around the corner, a pool of blood and loose organs the size of a lake had settled, with the young woman pouring the jug of bleach as far as she could into the mess. It steamed where it met blood and thin tissues, bubbling and frothing, and he could barely make out little streams of blood jumping into the air, though they were quickly losing energy. Shaking out the last of the bleach, the woman set it aside between them, and turned to face him.

She was at least three inches taller than Terry, which did not make her glower any less ominous. Nor did the tumourous gun-shaped lump of flesh in her arms. “Why did you follow me.”

“I, uh…” At least he wouldn’t seem intimidating, at least. “I wanted to know if you needed anything else?”

“Like what.” She didn’t give him a single bit of expression. Hell, her mouth barely moved when she spoke.

“Well, I was thinking medical attention at the very–” “No!” Immediately, her eyes shot wide open, and she stumbled back. She dragged her bad foot back to stabilize herself, lightly pushing herself off the wall, and crossed her arms. Her eyes returned to their original expression but there seemed to be some effort behind it, now. “I don’t need that, thank you. I was born with this anyway.” She gestured to her bad leg.

“Okay! Sorry, I’m sorry.” Terry backed up slightly himself. “But if you have any other injuries–”

“No.” Her arms tensed, and her teeth were baring slightly.

“Okay, okay, fine, sorry. Again.” Terry rubbed the back of his neck, wondering how much he would regret continuing this conversation. “But it’s not really safe in these hallways, and I don’t know of anywhere good to stay except where I’m at, so…”

She didn’t respond, merely looked upon him like an unamused godling upon a mere mortal. He winced. “You can stay with us if you want…? For the night?”

She didn’t even blink at him. Terry decided to hammer the nail in his coffin himself. “We won’t force you to receive medical attention or anything else. Promise. You’re just there to stay for shelter unless you want anything else.”

She slowly lowered her arms, without breaking her gaze. “Fine.”

“Okay, great,” Terry said, waving her along. “Let’s go.”

Logically, he knew he had to lead the way, since it was his place of impermanent residence, but having her at his back with that… was it even a gun? In any case, it didn’t exactly calm his nerves. He was never one for small talk, though. And right now was not when he’d be learning how to approach that.

Room 232 could not come into view quickly enough. Relieved he hadn’t been shot in the back, he flung open the door, figuring he may as well flick on the light now that everyone was awake. “Alright, so this is–”

“Ash?”

Terry blinked. “How do you–”

The woman’s eyes were blown wide open. So wide, this time, that Terry could see the shine of nearly-formed tears; she’d dropped her gun, leaving it to wrap fleshy tendrils around her waistband, and her hands were shaking. Ash, on the other side of the room, was just as motionless as before, face directly focused on the newcomer. It was as if Terry found himself in a still image, just for a moment.

“Oh my god Ash,” the woman said, first to break the moment, rushing forwards.

“Wait!” Terry grabbed her, pinning her arms to her sides. “Don’t–”

“Let go of me, that’s her, it’s her, you don’t–”

“She’s dangerous, you can’t just–”

“She wouldn’t hurt me, you piece of shit, she wouldn’t–”

“Not on purpose!” Terry’s outburst caused her to still in his arms. “She wouldn’t want to on purpose. But you have to keep your distance.”

“Okay.” Her breaths were shallow. “You can let me go. I’ll stay.”

Terry looked to Ash for guidance. Near-imperceptibly, she gave him a miniscule nod. He slowly removed his arms from around the newcomer’s torso.

“Ash, it’s you,” she choked out. “Are you… are you safe here?”

Ash was curled up, arms over her head. Still, she managed to nod clearly.

“Oh god.” Little circles began to dot the carpet, now, as her tears fell. “Ash, I’m so sorry.”

Ash was shaking her head, now. Didn’t stop, even as she gathered up letters and put them together, pushing them as far as she could towards the newcomer without looking up at her. The woman wandered forward, just enough to read them. MY FAULT SO SORRY.

“Ash, no, I, fuck,” She knelt down, staring at the words. “It’s not. It’s not, god, I swear–” Terry couldn’t quite parse the rest of her sentence as it devolved into heaving sobs. Ash still wouldn’t look up.

“Hey,” Terry said, placing a hand on her shoulder as gently as possible. She didn’t look up. “I don’t know what’s going on here, but you’re both here, and Ash isn’t leaving anytime soon. Okay? We can talk about this in the morning. You’ll both still be here. You can stay as long as you’d like.”

“Did… did you find her?” Her eyes were so hopeful.

“Well… kind of. Yeah, sort of.” Terry’s lips twitched into a half-authentic smile.

“Thank you.” The young woman wrapped her arms around him, sobbing into his shoulder, now. “Thank you, thank you thank you thank you.”

“It’s, um…” Terry wrapped his arms around her. “I’m glad she’s here too.” Over her shoulder, he could see Ash coiled on the floor, one hand lifted off her face, peering out at the two of them. Slowly her body began to relax, bandages losing their rigidity, resigning herself to simply sit on the floor, alert. She placed her head on her hands and watched.

He’s not sure how long the three of them stayed like that.

It didn’t feel like that long, for some reason.

But eventually, she pulled away. “Sorry. I don’t even know you. We… know each other.”

“Yeah, I figured.” Terry gestured helplessly at Ash. “I assume you’re staying here? I’m not sure I got your name?”

“Mia.”

“Gotcha.” Terry nodded. “Um, and pronouns…?”

“Oh. She/her is fine.” Mia wiped her eyes. Honestly, until now, Terry hadn’t even recognized how much turning into an eldritch abomination encouraged people to specify their pronouns. It sort of made sense, if you thought about it enough. And not too much.

“Okay. Well, nice to meet you, Mia, I’m Terry. He/him. Um, I was going to turn in for the night, you’re welcome to whatever, I guess. Don’t go in there!” Terry raced to block Mia’s way as she immediately made her way over to Bosco’s room. “That’s, um, that’s the owner of this apartment, Bosco. He’s fine, he just… he likes his privacy, so we’re not allowed in there. He’s safe, I promise, just… yeah.”

“Hi…” said Bosco shyly from the other room. Understandably so. Hell, this was awkward for Terry, and at least he was actually there to get a vague understanding of the situation.

“Okay.” She shrugged upon seeing Terry’s look of surprise. “I’ve seen worse.”

“Damn, okay,” Terry said, not really meaning to. He cleared his throat, and continued with something actually worthwhile saying. “Anyway, um, yeah. I can sleep on the floor if you want the couch for today, I guess.”

“Don’t bother,” Mia said, waving him off. His shoulders sagged with relief as she continued. “I’ve also slept on worse.”

Terry managed to keep his mouth shut this time. That just meant there was no outlet for asking what the hell this poor girl had been through, though, but he could deal. He settled for a half-hearted shrug. “Works for me.”

Mia strode over to Ash, who hadn’t moved from her spot; as she approached, Ash only backed herself further into the corner. Mia hesitantly reached a hand out before shaking her head gently and pulling it back. She lay down where she was, a good few metres over, took the nearest cushion from off the back of the couch, and lay down, back to Ash. Ash curled up too in an uncanny mirror-image.

Terry stopped by Bosco’s door on the way to the couch. “Hey, man, I know a lot happened today. I’m fucking exhausted, though. We’ll all talk tomorrow, I don’t know what’s up with those two either, so… yeah. Are you okay?”

“Yeah, I… yeah… tomorrow is okay…”

“Okay.” Terry leaned his head on the door. Despite not having time to get into it, he was sorely tempted to keep going. But he had a feeling he’d need all the sleep he could get before talking about… any of this, really. “Goodnight, Bosco.”

“...Goodnight, Terry.”

Terry flicked the lights off and navigated over to the couch via phone flashlight. He turned the flashlight off and checked his alarm one last time, setting it an hour later on second thought, before crashing on the couch, resting his head on the one remaining cushion. Though he couldn’t see it in the dark, he couldn’t take his eyes away from the empty space between Ash and Mia.

Terry dreamt he was fighting a dragon, only to realize the dragon was also him.