I glared at the T-posing captive with my jaw clenched so hard that my teeth ached. “Can you repeat that, please?” I spoke slowly, unable to keep the venom out of my voice.

The captured haures nodded. “The three of us are in Holt’s party. We were attacked by digressers and were then caught by Markus.”

“Did you see her?” I said. “Silica, the one which basks under the scorching sun, the sun eater, whatever the fuck you call her?”

The haures shook his head. “No, just a lot of digressers. The whole north end is probably being swallowed up as we speak.”

Sure, the haures used the word “probably” to be accurate, as there was no way for him to know, but the way he spoke gave a sense of certainty.

“Listen,” I announced loudly so that the entire lobby could hear. “I hope you realise this, but Silica is a greater threat to everyone here than either Holt or Markus. We should ally with them to fight her.” I turned to Rin. “That should be possible, right?”

Rin glanced at Markus then said, “Don’t ask me! You just saw that I barely read Markus’ contract.”

Great. I had two reasons for asking Rin that question. The first was that I hoped she would reveal a loophole in Markus’ contract. It was a long shot, but there was no harm in trying.

The second was that I wanted to form a narrative about cooperation. Given Markus’ murder-hobo behaviour, I believed it was only a matter of time before he burnt the captives to a crisp. However, if I could convince him that it would be more beneficial to let them survive by, say, getting Toll and Volce on my side, then maybe he’d let them stay bound to this world. Maybe.

If Rin was my first choice, Toll was the second now that they were back from scouting. I suspected Markus had been keeping the balaam from the party to avoid this exact situation. If that didn’t work, then the only option left was to try beat Markus in a game of wits in the hopes that he would reveal some critical information.

Believe me, I’d already tried asking other haureses and balaams about the contract. They had no issue answering other questions, but whenever I brought up the contract, they’d all given me the cold shoulder. So that wasn’t happening.

I turned to the eagle-headed balaam. “Toll—”

“No,” Markus said firmly. “If you have any questions concerning the contract, you can ask me.”

Of course. I flashed a smile at Markus. “How generous,” I said. My knuckles were white on Möbius’ handle. “Markus, you know what situation we’re in so don’t fuck with me. Is it possible to ally with Holt’s party?”

Markus rubbed his chin and considered the captured demons. “Theoretically, yes, since the terms of the contract state that an enemy is anyone that my allies are fighting. Practically, however…” He trailed off and stared very intently at the captured demons.

“Then should we make a contract with Holt’s party?” I said in a rush. “Or are you stupid enough to think we can take Silica?”

There was a long silence, broken only by the scratching of Markus’ glove, Monk, rubbing against the demon’s unnaturally smooth chin. “No and no.”

He reached out with Penny. Flames burst from his palm and the captured demons were scorched before they had a chance to protest.

Once the intense heat died down, I uncovered my face and stared at the ashes in shock. Volce, who was hovering off to the side, had nearly been singed by the flames. He immediately shouted at Markus.

“You fucking asshole! I bet you shot near me on purpose.”

“Hardly,” Markus said, giving his gloved hand a shake. “As long as we’re ‘allies’, I literally cannot harm you.”

Volce thrust a finger at one of the lobby’s walls. Some of the old steel-legged chairs that had yet to have their upholstery chewed out completely by moths were now licking up flames. The plaster was beginning to slag and fall off its frame.

“I’d say bringing the whole building down would count as attacking all your allies.”

“Oh, please.” Markus snapped his fingers and the fire faded away.

I stared at the whole scene in disbelief. He’d scorched a bunch of demons inside of a building, the same building which had housed our entire alliance. That was dangerous, irrational. Worse, getting rid of potential allies was itself irrational. More allies would have made it easier to fight Holt, and we needed all the horns we could get.

This was all wrong. This was not the sort of decision that a demon should have made. The only rationale I could see behind it, was that Markus was trying to fuck with me, because nothing else made the slightest bit of sense.

I’d spent my entire life being dicked around by demons. Work was a constant hassle. When I was working under the Mojave Group, before I was booted and had to suffice for working in Markus’ shitty conglomerate, management decided to resurrect a piece of fifty-year-old software. I was stuck with the task of getting it to work.

Naturally, it didn’t, because the technology we were trying to run the software on didn’t support it. I’d told management that; they wanted a second opinion so they asked Alastair, my then co-worker and later victim. The bastard who’d landed me in the Culling after I shot him. Alastair told management that it all worked in theory. Sure enough, the theory didn’t pan out in practice.

After I’d spent three months trying to get that junk to work, I got called in by management who were wondering why the fuck their theoretically fine software was practically useless. I made the case that it was not going to work unless we overhauled our entire system. Wanting a second opinion, they asked Alastair again, who produced a list of every error he’d seen me make along the way. I was fired on the spot.

Demons are so blinded by their logic that they forget that, sometimes, they’re actually fucking morons. And a demon convinced that they’re right is like a boulder rolling down a hillside, ready to crush anything in their way.

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At that moment, I’d come to a rash conclusion: out of Holt, Markus, and Silica, this haures was the most dangerous. Once I’d made that choice, all reason evaporated from me.

Because fuck logic.

Without any warning, I lunged at Markus with my knife drawn. The haures took notice and his right hand was up in an instant with his index finger locked onto me. The tip of Markus’ glove lit up in a vibrant red and heat rippled off of Monk in waves. Undeterred, I pressed forward with Möbius held before me, ready to deflect a shot.

With only another step to reach Markus, Toll leapt in from the side. With one smooth motion they wrapped an arm around my chest and I was hurled to the ground.

The landing left me winded. I writhed on the floor, trying to catch my breath with Toll standing over me. The balaam twirled their spear and pointed it at me. I wanted to knock it away with Möbius, but the knife was floating in the air between me and Markus, where I’d dropped it earlier.

“Don’t be a fool!” Toll bellowed.

I struggled to get into a crouch, ignoring the spear tip that was digging into my jacket. “He’s the fool!” I choked out, pointing at Markus. “He’s going to get us all eliminated.”

Volce floated down and slapped me in the face. Hard. The force of the slap sent me sprawling on the ground again. The world was spinning and my vision had narrowed into a pinpoint.

“You fucking idiot!” Volce screamed. “You’re going to get yourself killed for some petty human revenge. Use your head!”

“You’re the idiot,” I managed. I braced myself on both arms and remained there, waiting for the world to stop spinning. “All you demons. So stupid you don’t even realise it.”

“On the contrary,” Markus said.

Undeterred, I crawled my way towards Möbius. I knew it was stupid and I knew I was outnumbered. I didn’t really care anymore.

However, I was halted in my tracks when another familiar voice cried out, “Algier, you’re no match for him, so stay down and be quiet.”

I glanced up to see Enzi walking down the stairs, dressed all in pink. She fixed me with a hard stare to reinforce her point. I glared back at her, but the demon didn’t flinch in the slightest under my gaze. Why would she? I looked pathetic.

Then Enzi tilted her head to the side. “Besides, if you fight, then our whole party might be caught up in it. Do you really want to me make fight over something so minor?”

Those simple words struck me. No, I didn’t want to make her fight, no matter how much she’d pissed me off over the last day. Gradually, my desire to stab Markus faded away. I settled back on my rear and stared down one of the dark halls, acting like I never cared to begin with.

Markus clasped his hands together and his gaze darted between our party. Monk was no longer aflame so the temperature had turned back to a slight nighttime chill.

“May I speak? Yes? No?”

“Permission was never denied to you,” Toll answered.

“Excellent! Now, Algier. I understand your frustrations, but there’s a teensy-weensy problem with trying to contract Holt’s party. It turns out that they are already under a contract. Now, this is typically not an issue when trying to get something out of our captors, but that contract was a rather nasty one. See, it prevents them from ever betraying their party. Joining out party fits those conditions perfectly and, well, the consequence would have been self-erasure.”

“Then why the fuck did you bring them back here?” I growled.

Markus held up three fingers. “Because I was trying to work their contract for a loophole.” He lowered one finger. “To relay their information back to the alliance.” He lowered one more finger. “Because I needed to come back anyway, so I figured I’d take them with me! They let me because they assumed there was a chance to get information from us and escape. They were terribly wrong.”

My head was clearing. Bitter realisation stung me as I put the pieces together. Everything he’d done was completely reasonable. Okay, no, he was fucking with me a bit. That I was convinced of. But it was all part of a more rational decision making process. And that pissed me off far more than if he’d just been outright fucking with me.

However, at this point, it was me versus an army of rational demons. Toll, Volce, and Enzi had all decided to take the only rational course of action available to them, which was to cooperate. I really didn’t want to admit it but, even if they wanted Markus erased just as badly as I did, it made too much sense for us all to drop the issue.

And that frustrated me to no end, because ever cell in my body was screaming at me to rend Markus to bits.

Yet all I could do was what I was capable of doing. Being a human, that limited me greatly. I could fight a little, but mostly, my greatest asset was my mouth. And there was one thing that stood out to me.

“You’re a one name,” I said loud enough for everyone to hear clearly. I was breathing a lot easier now that I’d taken the time to recover. “You should be strong enough to break their contracts, right?”

“Ah, again with the wild assumptions,” Markus sighed. “Not quite. It’s actually just a matter of finding loopholes and ripping them open. However, the capacity to do so is usually defined by a haures’ power. Unfortunately, they have an annoyingly strong one on their team.” His nose wrinkled up. “Some bastard who used to work for my opposition in finance, the Mojave Group. I can practically inhale the mould on their disgusting paper contract. Yuck!”

Again, I had nothing to say. There was nothing I could do about this, and that sense of hopelessness only pissed me off further. But what annoyed me the most was that I knew Markus was fucking with everyone and he was covering it up with logic. Without telling a single lie, he was twisting his words to throw off all suspicion against him.

He didn’t have to make those demons T-pose. He didn’t have to burn them in front of everyone. He could have extracted the information and told us directly, and we’d believe him since he didn’t damn well lie!

And yet, it didn’t really matter if he did all that. Everyone here had to obey that contract of his. So what if they knew he was screwing with them? They couldn’t do anything about it.

Or could they?

“Hey, Toll,” I said. “Did you choose to stop me?”

The balaam cocked their head sideways. “I did.”

A smile split my face which I barely managed to suppress. I don’t think I’d ever been happier to hear the eagle bastard speak. I’d just found my loophole.

Markus clapped his hands together. “Alright, everyone, gather round.” He paused for effect—a wholly pointless act because nobody responded in the slightest. Markus appeared not to care. “Now, in light of all of these new happenings, we will be changing out plans. Rather than wait for noon tomorrow so that we can fully gather our forces, we’ll be attacking at the break of dawn. I would have loved to attack now but, given that half of you can’t see well in the dark, that seems a little pointless.”

“Hang on!” I shouted.

“No, Algier, you’ve said enough,” Markus said firmly.

“Just fucking listen. You realise those demons could have only been feeding you information that was beneficial for their cause. If we act upon their words, we’ll be rushing into a situation unprepared.”

“Regardless,” Markus said, “Silica is here and time is wearing thin. We need to act as soon as possible. Our only saving disgrace is that you are here, human, but there’s no telling what good that’ll do the rest of us. And since you’re under contract to follow my orders, you will attack when I give the signal.” He nodded towards Enzi. “I’ll have you do the honours.”

Enzi returned the nod, and every demon seemed satisfied. The plan had been set and it all sounded reasonable. I wanted to stab them all. Unfortunately, I’d never get the chance.

From then, Markus began giving orders and organising people for the rest of the night. More scouting parties were sent out than ever before. More eyes meant a higher chance of getting a message back to the party in the case that Silica struck.

It became rather dreary at that point. I was being excluded from this process, intentionally. All of Markus’ party were. Not that I cared.

Because in all of that, one thing had stood out to me: the contract didn’t prevent Markus’ party from attacking him. That was something I could work with.