Lemmy pulled another coolant hose around the back of the trip boat and set it into the final valve inlet. Twisting until the hose locked into place, he wiped a bit of sweat from his forehead and marveled at the line of hoses that ran down the side of the boat, all of which were feeding his dream. His dream to finally, truly, revolutionize transportation.

“So, think we’re gonna live through the trip? Yiddek an- Yiddek has a lot riding on this.” Parker asked, leaning over the side of the interspace vessel. For a moment she had forgotten Harvel was dead. It had only been about twenty minutes since they’d put him on the table.

“Yeah, I think we will. If we’ll all be in the same shape afterwards is the real question. We might turn into cubes, or beings a micron thin. You never know with extra-space travel. You kind of have to expect anything.” Lemmy answered, sounding a bit more anxious than he wanted to let on. He couldn’t be the universe's greatest engineer if he ended up as a crab, or a wire, or a shoe.

‘Admittedly I could probably work a keyboard as a crab, but I certainly don’t want to find ou-’ Lemmy started to think, but the thought was cut off. Parker's eyes had gone wide, the iris expanding nearly instantaneously.

“What? What is it?” Lemmy asked. Parker wasn’t looking at him. She was focused on the back of his workshop, near the office.

“Stay here. Grab Aldon.” She answered, vaulting over the side of the ship and landing next to him. She’d drawn her pistol on the way down, and was checking the ammunition. Lemmy nodded and began power walking around the bow of the vessel nervously.

“Yiddek? Are you alright?!” Parker asked, grabbing a couple of spare bolts and tossing them lightly through the doorway. Her eyes found Harvels eviscerated corpse, still spilling over the edges of the table. Having seen the horrors lurking inside of Harvel she could only imagine the worst of possibilities.

Parker started to slide in beyond the doorway, careful to check her corners. She was glad she did, or she would have missed the 12 foot tall mycelia abomination that was slowly beginning to envelop Yiddek. Her memories of the tentacled evil attempting to eat her spread through her thoughts like wildfire.

As the flames started to eat away at her sense of reason, Parker leveled her weapon at the monster's head. Its sunken soulless eyes stared blankly at the concrete in front of her. As her finger began to squeeze, another small detail stood out to her. The pair looked like they were holding hands.

Her finger paused, holding the trigger at the very threshold past which it would fire. As a moment passed, Parker's vision focused on the larger picture. The fog of fear and instinct cleared and she took in the scene as it was.

The two were in fact, holding hands. Holding hands the same way herself and Harvel had earlier. When Parker had seen him, all of him, as he was to no-one else. The thought made the tips of her fingers itch. She could still occasionally detect hints of polymer framed pistol on her tongue.

“Is- is it alright? What did you find?” Lemmy whispered as he peeped his head around the corner of the thin drywall barrier his garage considered a wall. His face made its way through a few stages of horror and confusion as the pair of brothers came into view.

“I don’t know. It might be Harvel, or what’s left of him I guess.” Parker answered, lowering her pistol. The hand that Harvel had caught her by felt as if it were filled with television static.

She drew a bit closer until she could get a better look at the organism's face. Parker wasn’t sure what she was looking for. It wasn’t as if the thing looked like the foul mouthed wastewalker in any way.

‘No pointed nose, or laugh lines. No gentle green eyes, or handso-’ Parker shook her head clear. ‘Get a hold of yourself! Is now really the time to be thinking about his face? Why not just look at it? It’s over there, and over there, and there’s some on the floor near your foot!’ Parker thought frustratedly, grimacing as she moved her right foot approximately six inches to the left.

Why? Why hadn’t she been able to get his face out of her head since he had caught her? She had seen plenty of other things during her moments crashing her way through Harvels mind like a black friday sale. Why him? Why now?

She wasn’t some starry eyed fangirl in front of her crush. She was a mercenary who was somehow on the precipice of scientific discovery, and he was now a large sentient mushroom. Something must have gone terribly awry in this romance novel. Just her luck.

She looked back up at the sunken holes peering sightlessly down at her. If he was in fact him, he was very unnerving to look at. When Parker looked into its eyes though, she could see it. The same gentleness Harvel had, nestled deep within the sockets.

“You know, I don’t think I like the idea of you an’ him dating any more. Don’t really care who his brother is.” Aldon said, leaning against the table. Parker turned, giving him an incredulous look.

“What? I had a feeling back in the bathroom that something along these lines was gonna happen. Believe it or not I’ve got a nose for this sort of weirdness.” Aldon explained as he holstered his own sidearm back into his jacket.

“I’m not going to accept that you called this. Something, sure, but not this.” Parker teased, getting a bit closer to the pair of brothers. She knelt down and inspected their hands clasped together. There was a bit of overlap, but she couldn’t in any way say Harvel was attempting to absorb Yiddek.

* * * * * * * * * * *

Deep in the depths of Harvels memories Yiddek watched wastewalker after wastewalker fall in what would later be known as the Hall-West incident. Harvel didn’t show him everything. He would skip forwards occasionally. They had thought help would arrive after only an hour or so, yet here they were six hours later. Down to the last four left.

Two men that Harvel had called Yanez and LaFayette held large slabs of steel in front of them while Harvel and the now conscious Selby fired through gaps in the cover. Harvel didn’t know the mens names. He’d never met them before. There was a break in the fight causing the two to throw themselves towards the last box of loaded magazines. They each took exactly half of the magazines left.

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“Hey, thanks for saving my ass back there.” Selby said, exhausted after the longest night of his life. Harvel nodded his head as he stacked the rest of the magazines next to the man holding up his barrier.

“Well, we’ve been saving each other's asses for the last two hours. So, we call it even, yeah?” Harvel said, reloading his rifle and bracing it against the steel.

“Yeah, sure.” Selby answered, seemingly unsure. If Harvel hadn’t carried him nearly half a mile, well they’d both probably be dead by now, but he would have been dead much sooner.

As the two sat in silence, waiting for the last time they might hear it, shots rang out. For a few seconds each of them assumed the other was the one firing. They kept their eyes focused on the mouths of their respective tunnels.

“Is that you? Is my hearing that shot? It ain’t me.” Harvel asked, lifting his head from the sights of his rifle. Selby shook his head. They hadn’t heard gunshots that weren’t their own for nearly two hours.

Harvel stood still as stone before pointing down the third tunnel. The third pipe that intersected their own was a downward outflow. The ants hadn’t figured out that they could have come from below. Harvel followed Selby for a few feet out of view before pulling off the top half of the suit he was wearing.

“Put it on. I’m gonna need mine back before anyone else sees us.” He stated, holding the jacket out towards Selby.

“Okay, okay. No need to sound mad about it. I didn’t lose the patch” Selby commented, pulling off the custom jacket and trading with Harvel. The two slipped on the insulated outerwear and Harvel walked back out to the barricade Selby had been shooting from.

Yiddek looked down at his brother. Neither of them had said anything for a while now. He felt his brother's grip tighten suddenly. At first Yiddek thought this might be due to the flashlights that had appeared at the end of the tunnels. Safety at last from the endless violence, yet he had gone stiff.

“Harvel? What are you looking at?” Yiddek asked, following the line of his eyes. If that were any indication he was looking down at a crumpled beer can covered in unspeakable things. As Yiddek waved his claw in front of Harvels face, he spoke in a distant tone.

“The most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen.” He mouthed. Yiddek felt the urge to ask if he meant the flattened receptacle but decided against it.

* * * * * * * * * * *

Back in the garage, Parker had leaned in close to the two clasped hands. She wondered if Yiddek’s claw would feel like television snow too. It might be nice to discuss the feeling with someone else. She didn’t know how else to describe it and calling it that was making her feel a bit silly.

“Did he just move?” Lemmy asked, pointing at the 12 foot tall Harvel. Parker looked up. The face had shifted, its eyes now looking directly down in her direction. Though the eyes looked like they were boring into her soul, they felt softer than that. As if steeped in admiration instead of the sadness she’d seen before.

“Thanks for not pulling the trigger.” A voice echoed throughout Parkers mind. It was soft and slow, like muted bells.

“You’re welcome. You’re okay, aren’t you? Yiddek is okay too?” Parker said, unsure of how to proceed. She didn’t usually talk to fungi.

“Yiddek is okay. I am showing him things.”

“And you? You didn’t answer me.” Parker asked sternly. He wasn’t going to get away from that one. She’d seen how he did that to his sister when she asked as well. Harvel stayed silent for a while.

“I am… unsure of what okay means for me at this point. I can’t seem to remember being okay before.”

“Well, I think you were doing the best you could. How much do you remember?” Parker asked, finally taking the time to holster her sidearm. This didn’t seem like the type of conversation you had while holding a weapon.

“Who are you talking to?” Lemmy piped up, pulling himself shoulders first around the doorway.

“Yeah, been talking to yourself for the last minute and a half.” Aldon added, sliding his knife across a whetstone he’d pulled out of a pile of junk.

“You can’t hear him?” Parker asked, folding her arms. She wasn’t about to let them act as if she were insane, not after the night they’d been having. Aldon and Lemmy both shook their heads.

“Must be some sort of romantic connection.” Aldon teased. Parker hid her embarrassment as she looked for something non-lethal to lob at his head. The workshop was full of tools and pieces of tech, but noticeably devoid of oranges like she would typically have had on hand at home.

“If you keep it up I’ll tell Hoang it was you who fucked up her bathroom. Have fun finding pineapple soup anywhere else in the city.” Parker retorted, settling for potentially lethal words instead.

“You wouldn’t.” Aldon stated, a slight whine in his voice.

“I would.” Parker said, turning back to Harvel.

“Hey, can you talk to anyone else?” She asked, jerking a thumb back at her uncle and Lemmy. Harvel didn’t respond. Parker snapped her fingers in front of Harvels face.

“I think I lost him again.” She muttered, snapping her fingers a few more times.

* * * * * * * * * * * * *

“We need to go. They’re waiting for us.” Harvel commented suddenly.

“Damn! Scared the shit out of me! You’ve been gone for nearly an hour. They already came and found you guys. My legs got tired.” Yiddek said with a start. He was sitting on the curve of the pipe, his claw still clasped around his brother's hand.

“Sorry. I didn’t notice. Time is not a line. I’m trying to be in three places, all at once” Harvel stated, ignoring Yiddeks confused look. The pipe around them faded and was replaced near instantaneously with ants. Tons of them.

Yiddek nearly yelped as one of them passed through him and joined the mass of insects forming around what he could only describe as an upside down train. His sister was standing atop the mound. Screaming obscenities in Khalish.

“Harvel, why is she screaming so loud? She keeps saying she’ll rip her own insides out and strangle someone with them.” Yiddek asked, wincing with each booming syllable.

“I see we’ve found her body, but I don’t think that’s her mind. He must think I’ve forgotten our little talk.” Harvel answered, his eyes never leaving the small orange growth on his sister's forehead. He couldn’t actually hear the shouting. The bell was drowning it out.

“Who’s Lindon?! She keeps mouthing off about him!” Yiddek shouted, now attempting to bury one ear in his shoulder while he covered the other with his free claw.

“Ah, we should be getting back. I can tell you about him later.” Harvel answered, having sifted through enough cosmic secrets to know plenty about his teammates' charade by this point. His mind was coming back together. His memories weren’t all there, but he was getting faster at processing the information now.

As the world began to fade, Dibbuk's face turned towards the two. It had heard Harvels bell. The Old Spore knew they were there. Harvel let go of Yiddeks claw and the two were once again standing in the workshop.