Archive of Our Own

Chapter Text

By the time Feng Min loses the next game, she feels a headache flooding in. Once Herman has her in check, she throws her hands into the air and plants her feet on the ground to push her chair back a few inches.

"Well, I tried," she says, trying not to sound as frustrated as she feels, but she then sees that he's nodding in approval.

[Your queen sacrifice was most promising,] he says, clearly pleased with her. [You made strong decisions.]

A little smile falters on her lips. "Oh. I always did like playing with super low health. Made the stakes feel more exciting."

[Yes,] he says. [You did well. Your choices were more tactful.]

"Aggressive, right?" She laughs. "But I still lost."

[Did you? You made it to thirty-two moves.] Herman sounds slightly smug.

Feng Min is surprised by that; she realizes she stopped keeping track. She feels a genuine surge of pride. "Wow. GG, I guess."

[What is that? GG?] he asks.

"'Good game,'" she says, trying to overcome the feeling of embarrassment suddenly gripping her. "Gaming lingo."

[Ah,] he says. [GG, Feng Min.]

"What?!" She bursts out laughing. She can't help herself. It sounds so ridiculous in his voice that it's impossible not to laugh.

[I mean that I agree that it was a good game.] He sounds puzzled. [Did I use it incorrectly?]

"No, no," she wheezes, trying to get a hold of herself. She reaches up to brush the tears out of her eyes. "Sorry. It's just that when you say it, it sounds so..."

He doesn't seem to mind being the subject of a joke; he merely snickers in return. [I get the message.]

"No, it's all good. You're fine," she says, unable to stop smiling. "It's been a long time since someone said that to me."

[Did you enjoy our game, then?]

"I..." She trails off, surprising herself when she says, "Yeah. It felt good to get back in that mindset a little."

[With enough practice, you will become a formidable competitor.]

Herman reaches across the table to shake her hand. Feng Min stands to take it. His grip numbs her all the way up to the shoulder, but he's solid and warm and grounding. He always is.

She sits down again when he lets her go. There's just one thing she still wants to know, even if she thinks she might already have the answer.

"Herman," she says, "is there anything that could make you change your mind?"

His luminous eyes consider her in silence for about five seconds before he replies.

[No. I have had a relative eternity to think about it, and while I appreciate your sentimentality, any compelling reasons I might have are not simply enough to delay any longer. Surely you understand.]

She swallows and nods. "I do understand," she says, "and I'm not trying to be sentimental." She laughs a little— a small, sorry sound. "You always end up calling me out. Am I that easy to read?"

[I don't like secrets,] he says simply. [I will describe it as I see it.]

"You've got way too much info on me in general."

Herman acknowledges that fact with a nod. [I have enjoyed picking your mind apart.]

"If only I could pick yours," she says.

[You wouldn't want to believe what you would end up seeing,] he says plainly.

Feng Min thinks about how much violence she has experienced in the Black Fog, how she has been burdened with a kind of knowledge she never wanted to possess. All the different ways a person can suffer. The infinite number of ways a person can die. But there's one thing they all share in common: there's never a light at the end of the tunnel.

"No," she says. "I'd believe it. I know what the human body looks like on the inside." She grimaces. "Every part of it."

[You have never taken a human life. That is the difference.] Herman shakes his head.

"So I have to kill someone to be able to understand you?" she asks flatly.

[Hahahaha...] Feng Min hears the laughter in her head as much as she does in her ears, with the way it's rolling around in his throat. [Is that how it sounds?]

"I just..." She clenches her hands into fists on her lap. "I feel like you understand me in a lot of ways. But I want to understand you, too."

Herman drums his fingertips on the table. He simply stares at her, and she can't help but take in the sight of him in that moment.

She considers what it would be like to exist in the Entity's world without him, and she doesn't know how to feel about it. It feels like he holds a part of her she's afraid to relinquish. So much of what he has seen in her mind are things she planned on taking to her grave. Things she would never dare tell another living soul.

If he goes, she'll be alone again with that pain. She knows it.

But she also knows that her feelings are self-serving in nature. To try to dissuade him from his decision is to disregard who he is. So the only thing she can truly do — the only right thing to do — is accept it.

That will mean returning to a bleak existence among the other survivors, where she'll end up serving out the rest of her sentence in the Black Fog until her inevitable end as an empty husk.

But... Is that the ending she really wants for herself? Especially when the other option is rest?

"Dreaming forever doesn't sound so bad," she murmurs.

He tilts his head at her. The light surrounding his body takes on an unearthly ultraviolet hue for a moment. [It certainly doesn't, does it?]

Feng Min's eyes start to water looking at him, so she looks down at the chessboard to make it stop. She watches his gnarled hands move as he begins to pack the game up.

"Hey," she says softly, "I get a prize for lasting more than twenty-five moves, right? That's what you said."

[Yes,] Herman says as he lines the pieces up inside the case. [As promised. What will you have for your reward?]

"Your coffee maker," she says, half-serious.

[Fine.] He finishes packing away the pieces and closes the chessboard. [Take it.]

"No, I'm kidding. We don't have access to electricity at the campfire, anyway." She shakes her head.

[Alright,] he says. [Then choose something else.]

She thinks for a moment. She hasn't forgotten that hot water is accessible in the Institute, and she's itching to clear her mind one way or another. Standing under scorching hot water sounds like the ideal way. It's an old habit, anyway— her shower was a frequent place for soul-searching back in the lonely apartment she had to crawl to after her life went to shit.

"A towel," she says finally.

[I am sure we can find one somewhere in the recovery ward,] he says. [It may not be clean, however.]

"That's fine," she says. "What I really want is a shower."

[We'll find one.] Herman stands, tucking the chess set under his right arm. [Come.]

Feng Min stands, too, but first she crosses over to the little sink, where she rinses out her coffee cup. Herman waits patiently for her, but as soon as she finishes and turns back towards him, he sets off. She grabs her backpack, slips it on, and follows the thick static left in his wake, matching three steps for each of his. She catches up to his side and grasps for his left hand. He lets her take it.

Eventually they come across a sign labelled RECOVERY WARD. Curtained beds line the walls amidst haphazardly strewn-about equipment that has definitely seen better days.

Feng Min pretends not to see all the bloodstains and instead heads for the closet Herman motions at. She finds linens and towels inside— most of them just as stained as he warned, but she soon manages to find one with only a few small brown splotches along the bottom. It'll have to do.

"Okay," she says, throwing it over her shoulder and turning to look at him where he waits for her by the doorway. "Where to?"

[Across the hallway,] he says, and he moves aside to let her through.

He's right— they're next to one of the bathrooms, a large communal one lined with broken, filthy tiles and open shower stalls. Feng Min very carefully drapes her towel over the top of one of the stalls and reaches out to test if the plumbing is functioning. She turns the knob, and then jumps back and gasps as ice-cold water starts immediately gushing down from the shower head, splattering all over her shirt and boots. She quickly turns the knob all the way to the left, then she waits with her open palm underneath the cold spray.

Soon, as she hoped, the water begins to warm. She sighs in relief, then looks back over at him. "Did you know that this is the only place I've ever come across here that has hot water?" She shakes her head and waves her hand in the stream. "I didn't know how much I missed it until I found it here."

[Well, you brought it here,] he says mildly.

"What?"

[The facility did not have access to hot water before you began visiting.] A shrug rolls across his broad shoulders. [As I said, many are unaware of their own ability to manifest.]

Startled, she looks at the shower, and then back at him. "Are you serious?"

[Am I?] He laughs, leaving her question unanswered.

Bewildered, Feng Min just accepts it. She remembers that the first time she'd discovered water here, she'd been anxious and afraid of him, wondering just what he had planned for her. The water was exactly what she needed then— something clarifying and comforting. It makes sense, if everything he told her over the chessboard is true. Maybe her mind is capable of a lot more than she thinks.

[I'll leave you to it,] says Herman, turning to go. The electricity that coats his body intensifies for a moment, and as she observes it, she becomes curious about something.

"Wait."

He stops and looks at her over his shoulder.

Cautiously, she asks, "Are you able to touch it? The water...?"

Herman laughs, turns around, and walks over. [Let's find out,] he says cheerfully, extending his hand towards the spray.

"No!" she yelps hastily, grabbing at his arm to stop him. "Not if you don't know. What if you electrocute yourself?"

Herman turns to her and gives her a flat look. Well, it's the same scowling teeth-bared expression as ever, but she can tell.

"...Right," she says, slightly embarrassed. "But what if you electrocute me?"

[I won't.] Herman doesn't elaborate. Instead, he extends a hand into the water.

Feng Min jumps back at the immediate sizzling and popping sound that cracks into the air, trying to get away from whatever reaction he has started, but there is no accompanying electric shock. Rather, something interesting is happening when the water hits Herman's skin: each drop blooms when it lands, flaring in violet, sparkling light. Like little pops of static electricity in the dark, but so much brighter, lighting up all over his hand in brief little splashes. She's reminded of the way he melted all of the ice in her glass back when he took her to the desert bar. Violet light had burst in ripples across the water then, too.

Feng Min doesn't think too hard about how it works, or why. She just reaches out into the water and grasps his hand in hers. As she suspected, there is no shock, just the usual low-grade numbness. Go figure. Maybe she'd wanted this, too.

"Join me," she blurts out before she can reconsider it.

She's not much for flirting, and that's not really what this is. She just doesn't want him to go. She knows that it's a total coin flip whether or not she'll be able to find him again in the Institute before the fog inevitably sweeps in to return her to the campfire. She's not ready to part quite yet, especially considering the conversation they just had.

Herman just stares at her at first, as if studying her expression or intentions. He is taller than the nozzle— it's barely level with his shoulder, not exactly designed for a person of his size. She certainly wouldn't blame him if he said no. But she wants him to say yes, even if it's for selfish reasons.

She squeezes his hand imploringly, waiting for his answer, the little blossoms of light on his skin throwing purple shadows onto her face.

[Alright,] he says finally. [Why not?]

"Yeah. Why not?" Feng Min beams. She slips off her backpack and sets it down before shrugging off her jacket and tossing it into a nearby sink. She decides that she'll have to get undressed before she loses her nerve, reaching for the hem of her t-shirt to pull it off. With no undershirt or bra on, she is left topless once she's thrown it on top of her jacket. The frigid air has her shivering almost right away, but the steam pouring out of the shower stall helps mitigate it.

She realizes as she reaches for the button on her jeans that her companion is really taking his time. He's still undoing his tie, and maybe the reason he's moving so slow is that he's staring at her. She feels a surge of self-consciousness and a compulsion to cover herself, but then again, there is no part of her that he hasn't seen already, so she just reaches out to give him a little shove in the chest, which — of course — does absolutely nothing to physically move him.

"Hurry up or I'll put everything back on," she says, and she mostly means it.

Herman laughs then, a real laugh, one dense with broken tension. [Oh, I can't allow that to happen.] He pulls his tie free and opens his long, tattered white coat, and Feng Min reaches all the way up to slide it off of his shoulders, smiling at him.

"I wonder what else I could convince you to do...?"

She begins undoing the buttons on his shirt to reveal the astonishing sight of his glowing ribcage and sternum. It's just as mesmerizing as the last time she saw it, the way the murky light ebbs beneath scarred flesh and muscle. She can faintly make out each defined rib— like the bars of a cage. She presses her palm to his left side and feels the deep electric thrumming of his heart generating power inside.

[Well, you can be very persuasive.] With a metallic click, he frees his belt.

"Oh?" she prompts, lifting a leg to stand on one foot as she undoes the laces on her boots so that she can take both of them off and toss them towards the sink, where they thunk against the wall and fall to the ground. She steadies herself, then asserts, "No, I think you actually like being around me."

[In a way.] He pauses. [Yes.]

Feng Min doesn't know if she's just imagining it, but she picks up on a thread of embarrassment in his tone, which delights her. Emboldened, she strips off her jeans, leaving her in only her underwear, and then she takes that off, too.

She expected to feel more uneasy and lose her nerve the more of her clothes came off, but instead there is just a sense of affinity with him. She even kind of appreciates the way he's staring.

"I told you to hurry," she says, giving his belt loop a tug. It's far too cold to keep standing there in the nude, so she backs up into the water. The sudden blasting warmth of it makes her sigh with pleasure as it pours down her shoulders and back to wash the chill away. She extends a hand out to him encouragingly, beckoning him closer. "Come on."

Herman doesn't delay further. She watches as he removes his shoes and strips off the rest of his clothing and gear. She is once more confronted with the more strange and shocking, inhuman qualities of his body— the scars that cover massive portions of his skin, the way the cables and wires dive in and out of his flesh along the lines of every major artery, the shimmering surface of his body and all the potential energy just barely held back within it, and, of course, the sheer size of him.

But he's so human, too. She knows it. Those long, labored breaths. The pulse she can see throbbing in his neck. His voice in her head, somehow always so familiar. The way his fingers flex against hers as she reaches to pull him into the stall with her. And that very human face of his, right there behind all the scars and the frightening, frozen expression and the unearthly modifications. Right there for anyone who's willing to see it.

Herman's body practically glows ultraviolet in the water, the electricity rolling off of him splitting each droplet into tiny fireworks. It's still freaking her out a little — especially the popping sounds — but at least he's safe to touch. She cradles his hand against her chest, smiling and swaying on her feet.

"It's nice, right?" she enthuses.

[It's a strange sensation,] he says, looking down at himself, as if fascinated by the way the water sizzles against his chest, but then he catches her gaze. [One I think I almost forgot?]

"Me, too," she says softly, and in that moment she's thinking not about him or herself but of the other survivors, and how much they all deserve the comfort of a hot shower, too. There's that familiar twinge of guilt, then, a swelling of self-awareness that makes her break the eye contact and look away.

Herman seems to pick up on something in her mood, and so does the static, which broadens in her ears, sharp and unyielding. He tugs his hand free of her grip and reaches instead to push her wet bangs out of her eyes and smooth her hair back. His fingers on her scalp send little clusters of pins-and-needles through her nerves, and it's strange, but it's also soothing, in a way. She lets the weight of her head fall into his hand, pressing her cheek into his palm.

"What am I going to do when you go?" she whispers, even though she knows that he can't — and won't — tell her what to do.

He shakes his head. [That's not a question I can answer.]

Although she expected that response, it's comforting in its own way. She inhales, then exhales slowly. "It's all up to me, right?"

Herman nods. His sparking thumb brushes over her cheekbone, and for a moment she can only see bright flashes of white in her right eye. She closes her eyes. [Whatever choice you make... I'm sure it will be the smart one.]

"I'll try," she murmurs, her lids fluttering open, blinking the water away. His face is supernatural in the static-thick steam, glowing with the dull throb of a faraway star.

There are so many things she wishes she could say. Things she doesn't know how to define, or describe, or even begin to name. Regrets and fears and heartaches. Confessions and convictions. And, still, impossibly — somehow — a little kindling of hope that refuses to die, that continues to make itself stubbornly known somewhere deep inside of her. She doesn't know what the hope is for yet, but it's still there. Barely alive, but there.

She pulls herself back together and takes a tiny step closer. "Herman," she says hesitantly as she raises her head from his hand, "can you just hold me?"

He doesn't hesitate, though, leaning over for her so that she can lock her hands together behind his neck and hop into his arms. He holds her by the thighs and supports her weight as she wraps her legs around his ribcage. He is somehow even warmer to the touch than the water, almost scalding, but there's still a chill in her core, so she just presses her shuddering body against him, burying her face into his neck, where his electrified skin burns hotter than anywhere else.

"Thank you," she mumbles, and then she lapses into silence, immersed in the heat that is slowly overtaking her. The sensation feels almost wrong. Aberrant. She's usually shivering out there in the fog. It's like trying to rely on muscle memory, attempting to relax into the warmth with a body that has become used only to trauma and survival. It's easy to forget what comfort looks like, let alone what it feels like.

Herman presses a hand to her back. His fingertips stroke over the ridges in her spine, slowly drifting higher and higher until they settle at the nape of her neck, before descending downwards again. He seems to appreciate her need for silence, because he makes no noise— not in her head, and not out loud, either. They stay like that for what feels like minutes as the water pours over them.

Feng Min eventually pulls her head back to look at him. Because he's holding her, she can look him right in the eyes without having to tilt her neck nearly all the way back. It also gives her a closer look at his face than she typically gets— especially his hypnotic eyes, which are locked on hers.

"I wanted to kiss you so much," she says. "Before. When we..." She trails off.

[I could tell,] is all he says, and although she searches the voice in her head for a trace of smugness or sarcasm, she doesn't pick up on any. She splays her fingers over his face, tracing his jawline, the bridge of his nose, the bared teeth and mouth forced open by the hardware drilled into his skull. She tries to find something frightening about his face, tries to remember the terror it used to instill in her, but she can't any more, not really.

"Touch me," she whispers against his ear.

[Where?]

"You pick."

[Oh?] He shivers, or at least the circuit tracking over his body does, jagged slashes of light pouring down from his head over the both of them, almost as free-flowing as the faucet. [If you insist...?]

Before Feng Min can say anything in response, he presses her back against the tiles, his weight shifting forward abruptly as he lifts her up higher, high enough that she understands that he wants her to drape her legs over his shoulders and grab the top of the stall to retain her balance. She immediately understands what he intends to do when his hands slide under her and hike her pelvis up. She's certain that her face would be going red even without the scorching heat of the water, but she eases her thighs apart just a little bit, self-conscious but curious.

"Can you even..." Feng Min starts, unsure how to ask what she means. "I mean, with all of that on your face..."

She trails off when Herman lowers his mouth to her crotch and she suddenly feels his hot breath flooding over her. She realizes quickly that although the hardware on his head apparently prevents him from fully closing his mouth, it doesn't prevent him from opening it wider. She sucks back her breath when he makes contact. It's a bizarre feeling— his tongue is as electrified as the rest of him, and a sharp hot-and-cold feeling immediately splinters up through her body.

"Fuck," she gasps.

Herman goes at her like he's just been waiting on standby for the opportunity. She's reminded once more of the sensation of licking a battery, except this time, she's the battery— it's like his tongue on her clit is pulling the nerves out of her, finding pathways to connect to them and take control. Her hips jerk upwards involuntarily as she's upended by the raw satisfaction of it, the way the static seems to strike at her pulsing core. Her legs are anything but steady, shaking violently as she struggles to keep her ankles hooked together behind his neck.

The static suffuses the stall the same way the steam does, dense clouds of it that rain down in sparks all over her body and his neck and shoulders as Feng Min writhes in his grip with nowhere to go. Her whole cunt is throbbing with the unsteady, pulsing current pouring out of him, and it feels like it's moving all the way up her body, up into her chest and neck and head. The light coming off of him is almost blinding through the steam, or maybe it's just the way he's got her mind spinning, but either way she can't stop staring at the otherworldly glow on his face.

"Herman," she manages to get out. She can feel him laugh in response, the way he shakes under her, and his left hand lets go of her so that his right arm can slide under her back and support her fully. She picks up right away that he's definitely getting off on this, if the way he's groaning is any indication. She thrills in the fact that he can't help but touch himself, that he's turned on enough to be uncharacteristically disinhibited. She strokes approvingly at his scarred scalp with her right hand, and the electricity suddenly wraps up around her fingers and holds it there.

Feng Min startles as the current takes hold of her nerves and seizes her flesh all the way up to the shoulder, forcing her arm muscles to contract and apply pressure to his head. This forces his jaw to open a little wider and his mouth even closer to her crotch, making her cry out, and Herman makes a sound of satisfaction, like he'd achieved the intended result.

"Aah— that's—"

But her mind is wiped blank of whatever she intended to say, if she ever even knew, when he lets go of himself and raises his left hand to slide his fingers into the cleft of her ass, following the curve inward and upward until he's prodding at her cunt. She clenches her jaw and swallows a gasp as his index and middle finger nudge up against her leaking entrance. She feels her inner muscles already contracting and twitching from the low-grade tingling coming from his fingertips, and she's both concerned and extremely curious to know what they might feel like inside of her.

[Should I?]

Hearing his voice interject for the first time since he'd gotten her mouth on her catches her off-guard, but she nods.

"Do it already," she breathlessly implores him. She feels his teeth run lightly over her clit as he nods in return, sending another little arc up her spine, and then he pushes his fingers into her. With the motion comes a thrill of explosive sensation that makes it feel like her whole body is splitting apart. Feng Min's head tips forward, her chin nearly touching her chest, as she reacts to the shock and the pleasure. She can't even get out a gasp, the way her whole body has seized up.

It starts to release her once he's working his fingers inside of her, and she can't resist the instinct to push back against him, into the thrusting motion of his hand and the eager pressure of his tongue against her clit. The electric current running through her body has her seizing intermittently in involuntary pulses that seem to strike at random, making her spine arch upward and her hips rock into his mouth. He buries his fingers up to his sparking knuckles again and again at just the right angle to get her whimpering, like he's reading the signals coming out of her nerves. The current keeps her tethered to the pitch of the static as it careens her towards her peak, which soon strikes and forks through her body with the spectacle and intensity of a lightning bolt.

Feng Min gasps as she climaxes. Heat flares up all throughout her body, hotter than any fever, and all she can do is clutch at his head with her thighs as she floats on the height of the feeling and then crests back down. It feels like her heart is going to explode from the grip of the static on it, like any more pleasure might completely overwhelm her. As she blinks away the stars in her eyes and tries to catch her breath, she looks at him, and she realizes that she can feel his whole body shuddering now, as well, the way his whole spine jerks and then arches forward, and she knows he must have reached orgasm, too, by the way he's panting and drooling against her cunt in sputtering groans.

Herman is making an indeterminate sound, way down in his throat, and she doesn't know if it's an attempt at some word or if it means nothing at all, but she loves how it sounds, how she knows it has everything to do with her, how he didn't even need to be touched to get there. She soon feels his quaking body even out, then slacken a little. He lifts his head and looks across at her, and she thinks she can read an expectant sort of expression on his locked-down face.

"Wow, okay," is all Feng Min can manage to say, because there are no real words she can think of for the things she just felt. Her whole pelvic region is still throbbing. "You know what people say about how nobody has ever had a truly original experience? I think that was one."

Herman laughs. Light goes spilling from the crown of his head all over her lower abdomen, where it harmlessly lands on her skin with little, barely-detectable zaps. She can feel the heavy rise and fall of his chest as he recovers his breath. [I've always wondered what it would be like.]

"You're so..." She can feel her face going red. She feels totally drained but reinvigorated all at once. "Just help me down."

Feng Min has become aware all at once of how numb her arms are from clutching onto the top of the stall. She can barely keep her torso elevated; the only reason she hasn't fallen is because he's still supporting her. The water has long since started to run cold, too, which she hadn't even noticed due to his inhumanly elevated body temperature. But now that she's reminded of the way it's cascading down her back, she flinches away from it. He takes the cue and wraps his arms around her waist so she can pull her legs off his shoulders. He lowers her to the ground, and she stumbles onto her feet, pressing a hand against the wall for balance.

"Thanks," she says unsteadily. She can't feel anything below her waist— only the strange sensation of trying to balance her weight on both numbed-out legs. She reaches for the knob and turns it off. The cold water tapers out, then stops entirely.

A bone-deep chill immediately grips her — no surprise there, given the draft coming in through a hole in the ceiling on the other end of the room — and she shivers as she quickly grabs the towel and wraps herself in it. She then realizes something and turns towards Herman. "What about you?"

But her worry is misplaced, because Herman doesn't need a towel. The water is already rising off of his body in the form of steam, the lightning-hot circuitry running just beneath his skin evaporating the moisture so quickly that he seems to dry right before her eyes.

"Of course. I should've guessed." She inches closer to him — she's still shivering all over, and he's the strongest heat source in the building — and begins trying to dry her hair as quickly as she can, leaning forward to squeeze the water out of it. "How many other tricks do you have that I don't know about?"

[I just showed you several.] He calmly begins to redress himself.

She knows she should probably feel embarrassed, but she only peers at him and asks, wryly, "Is there more where that came from?"

[If I told you, it would spoil all the fun,] he snorts as he buckles his belt closed.

"'Fun' and 'Herman Carter' go hand-in-hand, huh?" she teases.

[You tell me.]

"I think you already know." Feng Min throws her towel down and reaches for her jeans. She gets dressed as quickly as she can.

By the time he's pulled his coat back on, she's slipping on her jacket and zipping it up. She's still shivering; her damp hair makes her vulnerable to the cold.

"Thank you for this," she murmurs, gesturing vaguely at their surroundings.

[What's on your mind?] he asks, his unblinking eyes studying her intently.

"I..." She reaches for her backpack. Swallows. "I need time to think about everything you told me."

[Naturally,] he says. [We have all the time in the world. More or less.] He snorts.

She slips on her backpack and peers up at him. "Well, the fog hasn't come for me yet... Will you come lay down with me?"

[You would do well to rest, at least until your muscles recover from the current,] he agrees.

"Whatever passes for 'rest' around here." She holds her hand out to him, and he takes it.

Together they find an examination room with a treatment bed. Feng Min throws her backpack to the floor and slides onto it. When he doesn't move to join her, she stares up at him expectantly and pats the stained mattress.

"Come here."

Herman sits down next to her. The treatment bed screeches under his weight, but it holds. She leans against him and rests her head on his bicep.

"I actually think I might miss this nasty old place when you're gone," she says, a weak little attempt at a joke.

[Feng Min...]

"You can call me Min, you know," she blurts out suddenly. "Just Min."

His eyebrows flick up. Even though she'd said it without thinking, she feels the satisfaction of causing something like surprise to show up on his restrained face.

[Min,] he repeats. She likes the way it sounds in his voice.

"It's my first name." She settles her head against the crook of his shoulder again. "I don't go by it a lot of the time."

[Why not?]

She hesitates, not knowing how to explain. It's not a privilege she just hands out at random. Being called by only her given name makes Feng Min feel very exposed. Vulnerable, in a way. It's such a small name. Something delicate. Something to hold close to her chest and protect.

"My name is really..." Her mouth moves soundlessly as she tries to find the right words. "It's just... me." It sounds so inadequate when said like that, but she doesn't know how else to explain. "Just me, without Shining Lion." She curls up against his side. "I can't explain it."

[I think I understand,] he says. [Min. What does it mean?]

"In Chinese? 'Clever'," she says.

He chuckles. [How fitting.]

"My parents called me Minmin." She smiles a little. "My fans sometimes, too."

[Minmin?] He pats her on the head. Sparks pop against her scalp. [Minmin.]

The childish, cutesy nickname sounds utterly ridiculous in his dry, scrambled-radio voice. She bursts out laughing. "I didn't say you could call me that."

He seems to feel only glee in the face of her embarrassment. [Minmin.]

"You seriously annoy me sometimes," she says, looking up into the face she can't feel terror for any more and then adding, teasingly, "You're lucky you're so easy on the eyes."

Herman's leering gaze settles on her face as his hand rests atop her head. [And here I thought I had a face only a mother could love.]

Feng Min can only think then about Herman's mother, who she'd only caught glimpses of in his memories. A petite woman with bright, luminous eyes who had been left alone to raise three boys after the death of her husband.

"I'm sure she would," Feng Min says softly, and she means it. Her heart throbs in her chest. Once, twice. "If she could see you now. Even after everything. She still would."

The static in her head polarizes, as if he's not sure what to make of what she's just said. Little shivering tingles seep through her scalp, straight from his fingertips.

[If you say so,] is what he eventually says, and although he doesn't offer anything else, it still tells her all she needs to know. She reaches up and covers his hand with hers.

"I'll come find you," she says. "Soon. I'll... manifest it."

He hums. [We have a lot of work ahead of us.]

"I'm ready for whatever it is," she says, swallowing. She squeezes his fingers. She's starting to feel the exhaustion really sink in. "I know I already picked a prize, but can I ask you for something else?"

A shrug ripples through his body in little waves of trembling light. [You're free to ask any question at any time. Whether or not I will give you the answer you want is another thing entirely.]

"When I fall asleep," she whispers, "can you show me something nice?"

Herman seems to consider the question, and although she expects him to ask what she means, he doesn't.

[Alright,] is all he says.

That's good enough for her. Feng Min buries herself into his side, and his arm tightens around her, and together they lay down on the bed. She presses her ear against his chest and listens to the steady humming of his electrified heartbeat as she tries to fall asleep.

As exhaustion begins to overwhelm her, she feels — as always — the encroaching whispers, beckoning her into the black depths of the Bloodweb. But then she feels something else, something that has become even more familiar to her: the static, which rises and quickly floods over her head, allowing her to unmoor herself into it.

The static soon drops her gently into a memory from her childhood. It's not a specific memory, not really— it's the memory of a habit, a collective memory of a bunch of little moments, so many of them accumulating throughout her childhood to form a lasting impression.

The memories are of her mother, of a little tradition they had growing up, for as long as she can remember: after getting out of the bath, her mother would lay a towel on her lap and beckon Feng Min to come lay her head in it, and then she'd spend the next twenty minutes meticulously brushing her hair. As a child, it was always an opportunity to have a conversation, to giggle over whatever was on the television or listen to her mother tell stories from her own childhood.

She remembers, most of all, the way it let her look up at her mother's face. Her mother's beautiful face. Right here in front of her. She knows she's dreaming, but she knows that face, too.

Mama smiles down at her. Feng Min opens her mouth to apologize, but nothing comes out. Her mother continues to brush her hair. Slowly, lovingly. So patiently.

Eventually, the static comes back for her.

Feng Min blinks the tears out of her eyes as she sits up groggily and is immediately blinded by firelight. Nobody takes note of her; it's just another hour in the long endless twilight of the campfire.

It really feels like she was just with her mother. The memory had seemed so incredibly vivid, so much so that it's strange to run her hands through her hair now. Cutting it short was one of the first things she did when she left home. She feels regret over it for the first time.

She shakes off the disorientation and looks around. They're low on numbers tonight— she only sees Meg, Quentin, Ace, and Bill. Meg, Bill, and Ace are playing a card game, and Quentin is asleep inside his sleeping bag. She considers getting up to observe the card game before she notices that her backpack is slouched over next to her, and something is sticking out of it— the corner of a book.

Feng Min slips it free and smiles when she sees the swirling neon title above the abstract cover art: Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?

On the inside cover, a message has been scrawled in pencil:

Something softens in her chest. She gently closes the book and slides it back into her bag. As she does, her fingers bump into something solid. When she removes it, she sees that it's the bag of coffee from the Léry's break room. And the filters, too.

"How thoughtful of you," she says softly.

She turns the bag over in her hands and then looks up at her fellow survivors.

"Hey," she calls out. "Do we still have that old pot? The little one?"

Meg looks up. "The one Claudette used to boil water? I have it. Well, I mean, I've got all her stuff. It should be somewhere in there."

Feng Min stands up and holds the bag and the filters out, close to the firelight so that they can see what it is. "We could try using it to brew coffee. We might have to mess around with it a little to figure out a good way to do it, but..."

"Coffee?!" Meg squeals. She jumps to her feet, leaps over the log she was just sitting on, and snatches it out of Feng Min's hands, as if she needs to feel it for herself to believe it. Disbelief turns to giddiness on her face. "I love you, Feng Min!" she shouts as she throws her arms around her in a massive hug.

Feng Min wheezes in her grip. "I'm glad you're happy," she manages to heave out.

Meg lets her go and tosses the bag at Ace, who is making 'gimme it' motions with his hands like a little kid pleading for candy. Even Bill seems enthused — at least whatever passes as enthusiasm for him, anyway — as he nods at Feng Min, which is about a good as sign as it gets that he's genuinely pleased and thankful.

"How 'bout that?" says Ace happily. He opens the bag and takes a huff, and then his head reels back. "Oh, fuck! Hits ya like a sack of wet mice!"

"Like a sack of what? That's disgusting," comes Quentin's mumbling, sleepy voice as he sits up from his sleeping bag, roused by the noise.

"Coffee!" yells Meg again, and they all watch as she performs a near-perfect double backflip, sticking the landing with only the slightest stumble. And then, as soon as she lands, she runs forward and does three cartwheels. Feng Min is extremely impressed watching her, but she can't help but think of the visual of a hyperactive dog zooming around the house. It's cute. She's glad to have made any of the other survivors that happy.

Quentin unzips his sleeping bag and gets to his feet to confirm the existence of the coffee for himself. He smiles. Feng Min can see some color return to his face. "Wow. How long has it been since we scored something as good as this?"

"Dwight's gonna lose his mind when he gets back!" Meg says delightedly, standing there with her hands on her hips, panting.

"Tapp'd probably fight off a grizzly bear to get the first cup," says Bill.

"We should draw straws. Or sticks, I guess. Even the odds, yeah?" Ace is counting out the filters with a gambler's flair.

"I've got the bottled water. I should have first pick," replies Bill.

"You still have that stuff? The hell you hoarding it for?" Ace laughs.

"You complaining?" grouses Bill.

"Does water expire?" wonders Ace.

"Does that goddamn brain of yours work on anything but your wallet?" Bill barks, sitting back and crossing his arms.

"You know, I used to be able to do a backflip," says Quentin to Meg.

"Shut up!" says Meg gleefully. She gives him a playful shove on the shoulder. "Do it, do it!"

"I said used to." Quentin laughs. "I quit gymnastics and started swimming competitively. My coach always said my torso was too long for gymnastics, but it was perfect for swimming."

"It's like riding a bike!" Meg argues. "Look, I'll help you." She puts a hand on his back.

"Let me stretch first, at least," says Quentin, looking hesitant but increasingly eager.

"Hey, can you go find the pot?" asks Meg, pointing at Feng Min. "Please."

Feng Min nods. "Yeah, of course. Is it with your stuff?"

"Yeah, all of her things are next to mine. I just put everything in her backpack." Meg is smiling, but there's a distance in her eyes, a saddened quality that Feng Min sees in the eyes of every survivor when the topic of Jake and Claudette are brought up.

"Okay." She breaks eye contact and heads towards Meg's sleeping bag as Meg turns back to Quentin and begins guiding him through basic stretches like an aerobics instructor.

Just as promised, Claudette's worn brown backpack is slouched there next to Meg's duffel bag. Feng Min takes a deep breath as she opens it. Inside, she finds mostly medical supplies— tinctures and ointments, bandages and gauze and scavenged scraps of fabric, which were better than nothing in a pinch. She finds a small notebook with a worn red leather cover. She opens it to the first page and recognizes that it's a diary. Not wanting to intrude on Claudette's privacy or inner thoughts, she immediately closes it and puts it back.

At the bottom her fingernails brush up against the telltale scraping sound of metal. She pulls the pot free. It's pretty small, only about 5 inches in diameter. It might do.

She brings the pot over to Ace and Bill, and while they try to find a way to secure the filter to the top of the pot with just the right amount of slack, they watch as Meg practices cartwheels with Quentin and tries to coax him towards a basic standing backflip. Eventually, once they get the coffee brewing, the other survivors show up one by one: Kate, David, Tapp, Dwight, Laurie, Nea, Adam. Each of them expresses a similar enthusiasm as the rest, and they're all extremely pleased with Feng Min for it.

Once they're all sitting around the campfire drinking coffee out of a couple of shared cups, she can't help but feel that she already knows the real reason why her heart still clings onto the most fragile thread of hope, why she continues to endure the awful things that happen within the Black Fog, why she can't yet take the same exit Herman is determined to find: she can't give up yet. Not when there are still reasons to smile and laugh and appreciate and be appreciated. And maybe, she thinks, maybe pain is just the toll that needs to be paid out for that. Maybe that's just a requirement for the rest. Happiness not as debt but as equivalent exchange. Everything a balancing act. Everything hideous. Everything beautiful. All of it, or nothing at all.

Later, after the buzz from the coffee has worn off, Feng Min settles back on top of her sleeping bag and pulls out Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? so that she can read the author biography and thumb through the pages before she begins reading it. She notices underlined sentences and paragraphs here and there— things that Herman seems to have found important or interesting. She also sees that the spine is more split in some sections than others, so she sets the book down flat and allows it to fall open on its own. When it does, she picks it up and looks at the page, where she finds one underlined passage:

For just a moment as she reads, she thinks she can feel a static cling on the book, one that wraps itself around her fingertips and up towards her knuckles, before the sensation is suddenly gone.

"I think I understand," she murmurs. She lays down with the book and turns to the first page, and then adds softly, "See you soon."