“I heard Siren Voice so far out, I had to come investigate, Bet-tah,” Leviathan chuckled to itself. “And here I find you hiding a Kraken child. Who’s do you have? Cuttle? Lineolata, Mestus? Typica’s, mayhaps?”
“A little Simil for a big Simil?” I posited to the Mad Hatter. “Benefit the system, and the system benefits you.” He plucked at a grape. It slipped past his fork to roll to the other side of his plate. Baffled disappointment creased his features.
It seemed that the hallways were perpetually empty. Maybe it was that the complex was so vast that it distributed people well enough to make it rare for more than a couple of people to occupy the halls at any one time. I was perpetually amazed at the layout of the tunnels. There were no…
The solution, for the moment, was a long abandoned dock a few miles from the bay. It had belonged to a private property. From the water edge, appearances were that the roof of the mansion had collapsed years ago. The beach receded into a cobbled-together mass of sandstone boulder and shrub brush before the boards…
“That witch was sure as hell tripped out on something. Are you sure you want to go along with a twenty-plus-year-old prophecy that was probably just the delusional ravings of a mushroom-hopped, senile, old lady?” I settled back into our nest of crates in the dungeon-like room. “Then again. Don’t want to ruin a good…
I woke where I had been left. The shore trees, backlit, cast long afternoon shadows. The water had receded to my feet, leaving me covered in mud and leaves.
Hana sat in a locked utility closet on the first floor where her brother had shoved her. Sleet pattered on the roof of the building two stories above her. Footsteps echoed in the hall, growing louder. A key slipped into the lock on the door, and the hinges creaked as the heavy metal door slipped…