He gorged on three plates of steak with no regard for table manners. It was surprisingly good—because it had been delivered from a Michelin star restaurant in New Manning, a perk of working hard for Helviter.
Everyone was amazed at how fast he could make food disappear. He both ate and swallowed almost five times what Jenna nibbled on, and he was done with it before she was halfway through with hers.
The food put him in a better mood for the fourth session. He had two more hours to rest until the scientists figured something out in the lab.
He went outside after some polite chatting with Torga and Jenna. He needed to clear his head before the next session.
Looking for a quiet place to be with himself, he climbed a thin staircase up one of the water tanks and sat away from any sources of light. He didn’t want to end up talking to anyone else. His social battery ran dry a long time ago.
He lit a cigarette and leaned back to relax. Ruminating while looking at the darkness of the tower chamber wasn’t good for his mind. Fumbling with his phone, he started checking unread messages.
Kysa had blown his notifications up with pictures of herself. Earlier that day, she had wanted his opinion on a dress to wear. There were thirty-two pictures to sift through.
Why does she even bother with this stuff?
He couldn’t have helped, because he couldn’t tell her outfits apart. There was only one parameter that he had any opinion about—the amount of fabric versus skin. She was wearing a cozy-looking yellow dress with lace straps at the midriff.
She looked beautiful in anything. He’d admitted as much even as a teenager, when he used to hate her guts. He hit her with the usual ’looks good’ with a thumbs up emoji even though it was way too late.
Kylan wanted to know where Arcen’s new shoes were. He’d waited three hours for a reply and then raided his bedroom, found them tucked under his bed, unpacked them, and worn them. It was unfortunate that his brother had feet large enough to match his.
Arcen would’ve been mad if he hadn’t been going through life-changing experiences on this day. He still hit him with the ’I’m gonna kill u’ with a knife emoji.
Their three-person family group chat had more than two hundred images.
Kysa had started their weekend dinner thing much earlier than planned. There were photos from everywhere in New Manning: the city square, the lake, the museum, lobster dishes, wine, at least twenty selfies hugging each other.
They were having a lot of fun.
New photos kept coming even as he watched the old ones. It was past nine. They were somewhere in a concert—no doubt another spontaneous thing that came out of Kysa’s brain.
Oh, you bastards. Rub it in my face, why won’t you.
Arcen really regretted not kicking Kylan’s ass harder for the pills. He was having too much fun. Kysa was overcompensating with the full weight of her superior bank account.
While I’m out here getting my brain fucked.
He felt bitter about it, but they were part of the reason he was here getting his brain fucked. That was their deal as a family, and he committed to it years ago when he decided not to kill himself.
He still replied with three angry emojis.
He needed another cigarette and looked for the lighter that he put next to him on the ground. It wasn’t where he put it, and this wouldn’t be the first lighter that he lost this way. He used the light from the phone screen to locate it.
“Eeh!” he squeaked when the white light revealed a glistening foot.
“So, how is it all going?” The oily girl shook his lighter with a grin on her face.
This just keeps fucking happening.
“It’s going well, little Miss Ivy, Thirteen,” he said, going on the offensive immediately.
She dug up his past, it was only fair to throw what he remembered from the session.
She smiled widely.
“I lied to them. That’s not my name. I’ll be thirteen in two months, by the way.”
Arcen gasped.
What an absolute bitch!
“Norm Lorraine. He died to let you escape. You lied to that guy. Feel bad about that yet?”
“Kinda, yeah,” she said with some regret in her voice.
“Mind stealing the fucking thing before the fourth session so I can go home?” He asked, taking the lighter from her oily hand.
“Not yet. It’s hard to break in there. They have that lab completely locked. No vents I can fit through.”
“Then why are you here?”
“Just to keep an eye on you,” she said, looking up at him, her amber eyes glowing bright. “And I wanted to tell you to be careful in the next one.”
“Why’s that?”
“It won’t be the past or the future this time. They’re going off-script…they’re putting you in the egg.”
“Huh? What for?”
“They want you to interact with whoever it is inside. It could get dangerous. Don’t say I didn’t warn you.”
Oh, here we fucking go.
The fourth session went from something he wanted to get over with quickly to something he dreaded more than the previous three after he heard the oily girl’s grim predictions.
Dragging his feet, he found himself back in the lab, ready to dive yet again. This time, four scientists were in the mortuary room with various equipment carrying huge canisters of liquid nitrogen strapped to their backs.
“What’s with all this?” Arcen asked, looking wearily at them, pretending to be surprised. He didn’t really need to be told what this was. They were here to do something in case things went south with the dive.
“Things will be different this time, Mr. Henwick,” doctor Bourbon began explaining. “The last three sessions were focused on data mining from the past events. This session is for interacting with the occupant of the egg.”
“Not chicken. Definitely,” Arcen said, chuckling nervously. Bourbon raised an eyebrow at him, pursing his lips.
Act surprised, act surprised!
“That’s, well, uh, crazy. So what should I do in there?”
“You should do exactly what you do in sorting. Except you won’t be using a contract. You will simply interact with the egg’s occupant directly.”
“Is it dangerous? Is that why they’re here?” Arcen gestured to the four scientists.
“Of course not. The egg is harmless in our tests thus far. That said,” doctor Bourbon paused, patting a nitrogen cylinder nearby. “We won’t let anything bad happen to you. We’ll terminate the session and freeze the egg.”
Motherfucker just lied to my face, didn’t he?
Arcen sighed and sat down. The only way out of this was through.
You could be reading stolen content. Head to the original site for the genuine story.
It was almost like his day job. He was inside the egg within milliseconds of plugging in. The egg’s liquid was more viscous and cloudy than the white cylinders.
There was an ominous source of heat far below him in the depths, glowing through the translucent liquid. Everything around him pulsed at regular intervals as if the egg itself was breathing.
He moved further in. He didn’t have to do this step in his job. The cylinders were configured to make it easy for him to find the embryo immediately.
He saw a blurred silhouette against the faint orange glow. It filled almost half of the egg. If it was an embryo, it would be one of the largest he’d ever seen.
Surely it can’t be an embryo?
He orbited it three times to figure out what shape it was. It looked like a curled up kitten burying its face in its paws. He moved closer once he was confident about the overall shape.
It was wrapped in a separate membrane filled with a liquid that was thinner in viscosity than the rest of the egg. He didn’t like to think about the word oil anymore, but that’s what it looked like—a pale yellow oil sack.
He passed through the membrane into the clearer liquid, gazing at this weird fish in this weird tank.
It was hard to gather his thoughts looking at this creature he had never seen before, but his first thought was the same one he had when he first saw Kysa’s new ragdoll kitten.
Aw? It’s kinda cute?
This thing was entirely bald and tar black. It had huge eyelids, a tiny mouth and two stubby little horns on a gigantic, shiny forehead. It looked bipedal, something between a cat, a goat and a monkey.
It was really cute in an ugly way.
Embryo? This is a full-blown goddamn baby!
It looked too grown to still remain in an egg. It even had muscles on its tiny limbs. This was beyond an embryo or even what a fetus should be. He slithered past its face a couple times.
He was sent here to interact, but it hasn’t even opened its eyes yet. Thinking about what ‘interact’ would’ve meant, he realized that he had to touch it. There was no other way to interact.
Bracing himself for a violent reaction from the creature, he touched its head. He wanted to contribute towards whatever action that would count as an ‘interaction’ to get this over with. The scientists had to be watching everything.
The effect was immediate. The oil-like clear liquid around him turned redder than blood in a split second. The creature’s forehead caved inwards in a spiral, sucked him in like an insect in a whirlpool.
Arcen emerged from the dive with a mighty jolt. He grabbed his chair instinctively—his head was spinning and his knees felt weak.
Huh?
There was no chair. He wasn’t in the lab. He wasn’t even wearing the hazmat suit. He was lying face first on a cold, hard surface. He stood up in a panic.
Where the fuck am I?
He was in a world with a bright red sky, sprawled out on all fours in the middle of a stone circle with cracked pillars and broken pieces of slate rock. A staircase on his right twisted around another similar circular platform.
AE DUH NER?
A childish voice echoed in his eardrums like the hum that he’d heard since Mayday. The voice was in his head. It was the same voice that he narrated his own thoughts with, only a couple octaves higher. The red sky flickered as the letters he couldn’t read passed through his bone marrows.
The hell is going on!
There were other things to worry about. His body was completely different. For the first time in eight years, his hands were that of a human. He had real dark brown hair like he used to have, and when his fingers brushed over his face, it felt exactly as he last remembered.
Checking himself excitedly, he immediately found out that he was naked. He’d fallen into this red world with nothing—no tentacles, no boxers either. He covered his crotch with his hands, turning beet red. He’d not felt this vulnerable in a long time.
CORT TE IN
The childish voice reverberated in his skull this time. The tone sounded different. It was a command. His hands dropped to his sides, and his legs moved on their own, taking him up the staircase towards the next platform.
Walking slowly up the final steps of the staircase, he came upon a dark figure sitting on the ground facing away from him. Arcen tried his very best to get his legs to stop, but he wasn’t in control no matter how much he tried.
He was just in his brain for the ride.
He’d gotten to enjoy being human again for a few seconds, but seeing this black figure quickly culled his enthusiasm. It was as twice as big as he was. He knew the voice in his head was coming from this thing—that it had summoned him here.
AE DUH NER?
It asked in a more venomous tone this time. It wanted to talk with him. Arcen opened his mouth to ask his own questions but discovered quickly that he couldn’t. The creature was still in control.
Let me talk!
IN BEI HOBE YOR
Oh?
That was timed just right, like a response. This thing was already inside his head, warping his own voice to command him. It was hearing and to some degree, understanding his thoughts, though he couldn’t parse what he was hearing at all.
AE DUH NER?
What are you?
He asked, expecting nothing coherent from the creature. It was pointless to try, but this was all he could do in this position. He had to kill time to justify his three-hour session somehow. The figure glanced at him over its huge shoulder.
Arcen noticed something familiar about it.
It was hard at first because the figure was tar black, but he couldn’t dismiss the gut feeling that he’d seen a roughly similar facial structure before. The thing had horns on its forehead, scaly skin on the sides of its face and shoulders.
Not only did he know who this was, he’d been inside of this person’s memories for a total of 12 hours now.
Norm?
NOM?
There’s no way?
NOM WEY?
The figure turned around, its dark face lighting up with excitement that sent sparks down Arcen’s spine. There was no doubt about it. This was the body of Norm Lorraine with a mind of an alien toddler inside it.
Things couldn’t get much more bizarre than this. The man had died and age-regressed inside his own body. He remembered the stubby horns on that baby in the egg. That was a rougher version of what was sitting in front of him.
NOM! NOM! NOM!
It recited happily at three different intensities.
IN BEI NOM!
Arcen couldn’t imagine being this close to this creature in the real world. As scared as he was, he also knew that nothing that happened here could physically harm him. He just had to babysit this thing until the end of his session.
That’s your name, kid.
He decided to treat it as an actual toddler.
For a second, he thought about being much more rude to it, but he felt bad about Norm’s death and he couldn’t bring himself to taunt his handsome monkey face on a toddler.
The creature gazed at him with its mouth slightly ajar whenever he directed some response towards it with his thoughts. They were both grappling with the translation.
That’s your name. It’s Norm Lorraine.
N… o... r... m...
L... o... r… r... a... i... n
He spelled it out.
Somehow his Helviter job had put him here, an octopus man pretending to be a preschool teacher for the world’s scariest overgrown fetus. He could’ve written books about this if it wasn’t for the all encompassing NDA that he had to sign to get the job.
NOM LOR!
NOM LOR! NOM LOR!
NOM LOR!
It was like a drum. The world flickered, matching the toddler’s excited proclamations. He could feel its voice creeping through his brain each time it spoke—like sparks crawling up his bone marrows. He had more questions than answers about this creature’s language skills. For one, he couldn’t tell how it learned this language while it was still inside the egg. It had been born with it somehow.
It was mimicking him just fine, but he couldn’t tell if it was backed by some amount of comprehension. Whatever it was, it had decided that ‘Norm’ was an interesting word that it wanted to keep repeating at every opportunity.
There was no doubt in his mind that this was the same language he saw the Meronolith Queen speak. She was simply good at it to the point that the language was removed from her words.
He’d simply understood what she meant without parsing any audio or visual data. This toddler was developing that terrifying ability fast. It was powerful enough to make Arcen’s legs move with just a three-word blabber. This thing was born that way in the chest cavity of an already powerful man.
She said something about birthing the king?
Arcen thought about it.
So, you’re the king, huh?
EKIN!
It mimicked the word immediately. It couldn’t stop with the hard ‘g’ or start with the proper ‘k’ sound, but the sound it made was close enough.
Nice to meet you, King!
NOM LOR EKIN!
There was some comprehension in the way it voiced those sounds. It had picked up the three most interesting words he uttered with emphasis. Norm, Lorraine, and King.
After what felt like several minutes of this nonsense back and forth, the world suddenly flickered grey and black.
King looked up, face twisting into an angry frown immediately. The moment that this world flashed grey, Arcen’s human skin turned back to purple. It had just been an illusion all this time.
Has it been three hours already?
King looked back at him as the ruins crumbled around them and the ground trembled. It stood up defiantly as the platform shifted—a baby learning the first steps. It was weird to see this thing with Norm Lorraine’s face unable to stand on its own two legs.
NOM! LOR! EKIN!
It yelled at the flickering red sky. Arcen still didn’t have any control over his body. He could only watch everything unravel with his heart in his throat. The world turned grey for a moment, and King jumped at him in a single leap.
It had already mastered its legs after standing up once. It was learning at a terrifying rate. It grabbed Arcen like a chew toy. His body was paralyzed and went as rigid as a plank. He was shifting colors between human and octopus as the king fought the collapse of the world with its words.
The corrupted world seeped King’s feelings into Arcen. It didn’t want to let him go, it wanted to keep talking, and it wanted him to keep making funny and interesting sounds. He had never felt greed from another living thing like he did from King.
No! Oh! No!
Don’t you fucking eat me!
AE NOM LOR! EKIN!
Don—
King’s jaw unhinged like a serpent, and it shoved Arcen’s flickering head into its cavernous mouth.
Oh, you fucking—
The inner walls of King’s mouth were coated with a thin layer of black oil, its flesh glowing like the bioluminescent interior of the tower. Bizarre organs pulsed through the translucent membranes all around him as his head went deeper in through the throat.
This felt way worse than that capillary shaft Norm and the team crawled up the tower with.
Arcen screamed the whole way down, heading towards a glowing orange pit of liquid that looked like lava.
His head breached the viscous surface before he could do anything about it. He felt the burning pain at two intensities as he kept flickering between human and octopus. His screams reverberated in his mind, and he felt that primal fear of death he never wanted to experience firsthand again.
Luckily, the stomach pit of the creature wasn’t filled with digestive acid. It was a thick orange membrane that only hurt when passing through.
On the other side, he saw something he’d never thought possible. It took several moments for him to comprehend it.
He was staring at a bizarre organ that looked exactly like a brain. The cerebral cortex was divided into four segments, pointed outward like a flower bud.
King’s brain was somehow in its stomach.
What the fuck!
The flower bud unfurled its petals, revealing the void of space distorted in a billion fractures—like looking at the pre-Mayday starry sky with a kaleidoscope.
Arcen fell screaming, straight into that starry sky.
Early sketch of the oily brat.
While we're all hanging off the steep cliff of chapter 10,
A weird name for a tower huh?